Page:Hansard (UK) - Vol 566 No. 40 August 29th 2013.pdf/39

1497 to war is one of the most serious the House can make, if the not the most serious. We need to base such a decision on firm evidence and not on speculation.

Many accuse those of us who question the idea of military intervention by saying, “You believe that nothing should be done. You’re in that camp that says, ‘We should wash our hands of it and let them get on with it.’” Utter tosh! So much more could be done on the humanitarian front. The refugee camps are desperately short of basic amenities. Britain has a good record—we have done a lot of the heavy lifting—but we could do a lot more, as could the international community. Tens of thousands of women and children are living in extremely poor conditions, and yet the west is saying, “There’s very little more we can do to help the humanitarian situation,” which is utter nonsense.

The west could also do a lot more on the diplomatic front. It makes no sense whatever to exclude Iran from the forthcoming peace talks, but that is what we currently intend to do. Iran is a key regional player and a participant in this conflict. Excluding Iran from the talks is utter nonsense. We need to go that extra diplomatic mile. This is a cliché, but it is true: you make peace with your enemies, not with your friends. We need to talk to the Iranians if we hope for a diplomatic solution. A political and diplomatic solution, and not a military one, is the only long-term solution to this vicious civil war. The Syrian people have suffered enough. We must have answers to those questions.

6.48 pm

Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab): A few days ago, I found myself rushing to switch off the television because my five and seven-year-old boys were in front of the news when it was showing images of men, women and children who had been gassed and were lying on the floor dead—they were in front of our eyes. It is impossible to have watched events unfold in Syria in the past few years and to have thought anything other than, “If not now, when?”

It is impossible to have watched the footage in the past week and not to have felt the instincts of liberal interventionism pulsating in our consciences. That instinct tells us that we cannot be isolationist, and turn a blind eye to mass murder and wash our hands of the responsibility to act. It is impossible not to think back to the difference that British intervention made for the people of Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Libya and wonder how it can be replicated for the people of Damascus, Homs and Aleppo. However, the tempering of those instincts should be a resounding message seared on the memories of many Members: liberal intervention can fail—and it can fail badly. It can fail if we have no vision of the outcome, no definition of success and no route map to the exit; it can fail if we allow our thirst for justice to trump the patience to secure the greatest possible legitimacy for our action; and it can fail if we forget that our first responsibility is not to make matters worse.

Iraq is not a reason to absolve ourselves from our responsibilities in Syria, but it is a reason to exercise caution, invoke clarity and define a conclusion. This Government seek a blank cheque to use British armed forces in Syria without convincingly and coherently answering the most crucial questions. What constitutes success for a military intervention? If a negotiated settlement is the goal, will military intervention make it more or less likely? Are we comfortable that our intervention is limited to punishing the use of chemical weapons, rather than explicitly to protecting the lives of the Syrian people?

Is it fair for the Prime Minister to imply, as he did today, that this is a humanitarian intervention, when his only ambition is for Britain to be the dispassionate referee of a brutal civil war? If a short and limited military intervention leads not to the cessation of the use of chemical weapons but to an escalation of hostilities or, even worse, retaliation, do we further escalate our involvement or back away entirely? If we escalate, are we comfortable with the slow creep that will place the lives of more war-wary members of our armed services at risk? We need to know the scale of our intervention, the limit of our commitment and the nature of our involvement before we can be asked to affirm it. Parliament cannot be expected to vote on pure sentiment; it needs to vote on specifics.

Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op): My right hon. Friend, like me, is sickened by the number of times we have voted for war, sometimes to my great shame. What is the hurry? The civil war has been going on for two years. Is it not time that we got on with negotiation and diplomacy?

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo): Order. I know that hon. Members turn away because they think I might not stop them if their intervention is too long. I remind Members that they should address their comments through the Chair so that I can sit them down if they go on too long.

Mr Lammy: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who is precisely right: there is nothing in the motion that could not have been debated next week. We should be very concerned about the speed and haste that is indicated beyond this place.

We should remember that conflicts do not take place without context. This conflict will not take place without history, without suspicion of our intentions or outright hostility to our presence. Syrian Government assertions that French, British and American agents launched the chemical attacks to pave the way for intervention might attract ridicule in this Chamber, but let us not be so naive as to think that there will not be many willing subscribers to this conspiracy theory across the middle east. We must never under-estimate the cynicism that surrounds our motives and those of our allies. We must never under-estimate the fact that even the most humanitarian of objectives can be misconstrued as a nefarious attempt by the west to project its power. We must never under-estimate the fact that we must first win the battle of perception above all else.

Any intervention needs to be demonstrably scrupulous, must involve more than just the usual suspects and must be the last resort of a process that has visibly exhausted all diplomatic means. The recent ratcheting up of rhetoric has come at the expense of reason and has eschewed responsibility. The cacophony of tough words and the insidious indication that attacks could take place as early as this weekend have not facilitated diplomacy or the forging of alliances.