Conservative and Unionist Party MP for Tonbridge since (elected).
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| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | MP | Tonbridge | – present | elected | — | Party history |
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Mr Speaker, I hope you will indulge me as I say a very quick thank you to the Clerk of the House, who is in his place and who was my Clerk on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is probably more to blame for me standing here today than many other people in the House.<span id="169" class="column-number" data-column-number="169"></span> May I ask the Foreign Secretary whether he now accepts the Bill in the name of Lord Weir that has passed in the Lords?
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his comments. The reason I asked about the vote in the Lords is this: there seems to be a real problem with the way that we approach this debate. The will of Parliament, as expressed in the Lords only last week and in treaties signed in the ’60s and ’80s, is being superseded by courts that have no mandate over the issues that are being debated. I ask him again: does he accept the will of this Parliament—the elected will of the British people—or does he instead seek to accept the now politicised will of courts that have Russian and Chinese judges, and are fundamentally mis-shaping and distorting agreements that were signed decades ago? We have seen what China has done, from locking up Jimmy Lai to threatening the Marine reserves that he claims to champion. Whose side is the Foreign Secretary on?
<em>(Urgent Question:)</em> To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the deployment of RAF Typhoon aircraft to defend Saudi Arabia, and the extension of air-to-air refuelling support for the Saudi air operations, including those against Houthi targets in Yemen.
Thank you for granting this UQ, Mr Speaker. I am sorry that it was necessary, as there is a long-standing convention in this place that shadow Ministers—and, in fact, spokespeople from other parties—are briefed on a Privy Council basis in order to understand what is going on before there are military deployments overseas, but that seems to have fallen out of practice. Those of us—including my friend, the hon. and gallant Minister sitting across the Dispatch Box from me—who <span id="1282" class="column-number" data-column-number="1282"></span>have served in uniform and have briefed members of the Opposition should remember that we may find ourselves on the opposite Benches in a few years’ time, and it is good to get back into these habits. I will just say briefly why this is so important, and why I am asking this question and not my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), sitting beside me. This is a political decision and a political judgment. This is not purely a military deployment; it is a judgment on how to use the defensive arm of His Majesty’s Government and where it should go. It is a question that the Foreign Office is best placed to co-ordinate. The reality is that what we are getting is a parcelled-off process, and not a strategy for success. Where is, for example, the action in the United Nations? Where are the sanctions on the Houthis, who should be designated as a terrorist group? Where are the co-ordinating actions with others in the region? We have the state visit of the Sultan of Oman—one of Britain’s most important regional partners—but where are the voices co-ordinating our actions around not just Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but the whole of the Arabian peninsula in response to Iran’s hostility? We have seen the regime in Tehran killing hundreds of thousands—perhaps even millions—of Sunni Muslims over the past half century since the poisonous creed of Khomeinism infected Tehran. This recent incident is not an isolated one; it is part of a pattern of violence. We have seen it pushing up energy prices in the United Kingdom, leaving us with our energy low and our storage short as winter approaches. Although the Jackdaw decision is the right one, it is a bit late, and it will not make a huge difference this winter, making Rosebank all the more urgent. Let me just ask a few direct questions. First, what actions have the Minister or his Cabinet colleagues taken to co-ordinate actions with allies in the region? Secondly, what support has been given to the defence of Cyprus, given Iran’s proxy Hezbollah’s attack on our bases recently? Thirdly, what plans are there to designate the Houthis as a terrorist organisation? Fourthly, what actions are planned at the UN to call out Iranian aggression, alongside its Russian and Chinese neighbours? Fifthly—<em>[</em><em>Interruption.</em><em>]</em> Last one, Mr Speaker. Fifthly, will the Secretary of State commit to giving briefings before deployments? Finally, will the Secretary of State confirm that despite his predecessor saying—
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I seek your guidance and advice on ensuring that the Government inform this House before military operations, and that they do not have to be dragged here with your indulgence for an urgent question when there is a clear need for this House to be able to debate the actions of His Majesty’s Government in order to support our forces? We all support our forces. I respect the Minister’s service and I am sure that he respects all those on the Opposition Benches as well.
Shame!
<em>(Urgent Question):</em> To ask the Foreign Secretary if he will make a statement on the threats posed by Iran to British interests. I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting me an urgent question in this role for the first time. I fear that it will not be the last, but I am grateful to you for doing so.
I am grateful to the Minister, whom I call a friend, for his response today. However, after almost a decade of consistent Foreign Office advice to reject photographs with Iranian officials, and particularly handshake photographs, because of the propaganda tool that it gives the regime, it seems that our Foreign Secretary has just been ambushed in New York. Either he was ambushed by a snapper, or there has been a change of policy. It is important that we understand which, because although it is certainly clear that the Foreign Secretary did not look happy, Araghchi was absolutely beaming. If that was not deliberate, has the Foreign Office changed its advice, and if so, why? Frankly, following the Iranians’ threats against UK airbases that both the Minister and the Prime Minister have mentioned, the state threats that the head of MI5 has listed, which have been reported today, the murder of 40,000 of their own people, their expansion of violence in Yemen by using the Houthis to target civilians in Riyadh, and their attacks on Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, I would be very grateful to know what made the Foreign Secretary believe that it was worth giving them a propaganda win. Perhaps the Minister will tell me that this does not matter, but he knows better than that. He knows that images project a message, and in this case they project the message that the Iranian regime is equal to the moment. Well, it is not. The reality is that the Iranian regime—and, in fact, Mr Araghchi himself—is merely a front for the IRGC, which is of course the terror group responsible for the murder of thousands in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq and elsewhere. I will finish by asking the Minister a few questions. Was the Foreign Secretary aware of his Iranian friend’s threats to the United Kingdom before he decided to shake hands with him and have it photographed? Was he aware that the US and Israel had given warning to the British Government that the Iranian regime’s threats to US airbases in the UK were credible? Lastly, has the policy of the UK now reverted to not giving propaganda wins to such a vile regime?
I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement. As we meet today, let me start with what we agree on. We agree that illegal settlements are wrong. We all agree that groups of settlers have been guilty of outrageous abuses of ordinary Palestinians and crimes against innocent civilians. We agree that some Israeli Ministers have indulged in hateful propaganda and incitement. We agree that the current path is leading Israelis and Palestinians <span id="885" class="column-number" data-column-number="885"></span>towards a darker, more dangerous future. We agree that Hamas’s terrorist atrocity of 7 October left many Jews in Israel and around the world afraid and vulnerable. We agree that the suffering in Gaza is horrific. But we also agree that those who praise Hamas and other terror groups or see them as legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people are wrong, that payments to those who are killed while attacking Israeli civilians are wrong, and that those who call for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state and the murder of its citizens with cries of, “From the river to the sea,” are wrong. Ignoring the victims on all sides and putting at risk the viability of the two-state solution is wrong. This is not about Israel alone, and it certainly is not about reducing the complexity of the region to a single sentence. Sadly, the Government are in the process of doing just that. When they recognised the state of Palestine, only recently, they did so against the laws we ourselves have defended since 1933, in contravention of the Montevideo convention and of the principles we have set out. When they sanctioned Israeli Ministers, they failed to make the case to many others, including the European Union, and today they are enacting a policy that the Foreign Office knows will not work. The Government also know that this policy will harm innocents. Just 13 weeks ago, two Ministers of this Government—the right hon. Members for Lincoln (Mr Falconer) and for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant)—wrote to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), rejecting this very policy as the economies of Palestine and Israel are too interconnected—innocent Palestinians and Israelis will suffer. Still this Government are pressing on in haste, despite warnings from the Labour Benches from the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley) and from the Government’s own reviewer of terrorism legislation that turning Israel into a pariah risks sectarian division in our own country and a further rise in antisemitic violence on our streets. As the Foreign Secretary knows, others are waiting. The Israeli election is in just seven weeks, and many have correctly argued that this action will help the extreme candidates’ campaigns, not those who are making the moderate argument for a united Israel. In the week before Rosh Hashanah and the high holy days, the Government are acting without prudence, introducing sanctions that are both light and serious. They are light because they will not actually target settlers—as the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations has said—but will be stretched to include all Israeli and Palestinian businesses, leaving many without opportunity, including those who make the pharmaceuticals that keep many British patients alive. They are serious because they risk what the Foreign Secretary has himself condemned: encouraging sectarianism and antisemitism at home, and discouraging co-operation abroad. As such, I have six questions for the Foreign Secretary. First, on the coherence of the policy, can he confirm that the advice from his Department on the practicality of sanctions has changed so dramatically that these sanctions will in reality be targeted, not area as previously stated? Secondly, what conversations has he had with wider partners and allies to co-ordinate a full international action that might actually work, and why will he not <span id="886" class="column-number" data-column-number="886"></span>wait for the result? Thirdly, what assessment has he made of the impact on domestic security and community cohesion in the United Kingdom, barely a year since the first antisemitic murder in our country in generations? Fourthly, what assessment has he made of the impact on our security partnerships with both Israel and the United States, which have kept Iranian regime-backed murderers off our streets for the past few years? Fifthly, what instructions has he given to the enforcement bodies to ensure that Parkinson’s, myeloma and multiple sclerosis patients will still get the drugs that keep them alive? Finally, will he let us know now what instructions he has given to the Foreign Office for the accreditation of diplomats to the Palestinian embassy should Hamas win the elections in November and send their own envoys here under diplomatic immunity? We have seen growing antisemitism in the United Kingdom, and we have seen increasing violence against Jewish targets. The Conservative party will always reject the hate-filled sectarianism that we have seen on our streets. We can—and where appropriate, should—criticise the Israeli Government, and still defend the right of the Jewish people to a home. I place on record my and my party’s deep sadness at the violence we have seen in recent months and years, our commitment to the right of Palestinians and Israelis to live in dignity and peace, and our recognition of those who have been victims over generations. None of us here rejects the Government’s stated aim that we must do everything we can to end the cycle of violence, and we welcome the sanctions against Al-Qard Al-Hassan and the condemnation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. However, I am sorry to say that this Government are wrong. As the Foreign Office has previously stated, this policy will damage the interests of innocent Palestinians, Israelis who condemn settlements, and the British people. What we reject is not the intent, but the performative politics and acting without wide support that leaves our envoys weaker and their voices irrelevant. We know, from our own history, that we do not make peace from just one side, and nor do we make it alone.
The real reason for the rise in the steel problem is the energy price—the input price. Has the Minister had any challenging conversations with his colleague the Secretary of State, and will he consider exemptions for the defence industry as well? As he knows, the new Defence Secretary is now trying to balance a very difficult budget, and I am sure he would be happy to do what he can to help.