Britain and International Security

Alex Salmond Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We do not want to give any succour to Assad. I do not think that anybody in this House wants the Assad regime to continue for a day longer than is necessary; we want Assad to go. But we are equally clear that ISIL operations in Iraq and elsewhere, probably including Libya, are being directed from northern Syria. We already have American air strikes being carried out in northern Syria and air strikes being carried out from other Gulf countries. We have air strikes being carried out by Canadian aircraft that are helping to keep our streets safe as well.

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

The Tunisian Government have today arrested 12 Daesh suspects whom they believe were trained, along with the gunman himself, in jihadist camps in Libya. Why, then, is the Secretary of State not proposing to bomb jihadist camps in Libya as opposed to extending the bombing campaign to Syria?

[Michael Fallon]

We have to deal with ISIL extremism right across the board. We are working with the Tunisian authorities to find out exactly how the outrage last Friday was carried out, how it was planned, and who was involved in it. Let the House be in absolutely no doubt: the people who perpetrated the murders of our constituents are going to be tracked down, whether they are in Libya, in Syria, or anywhere else.

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[Vernon Coaker]

My right hon. Friend’s well made point is crucial to the debates that we will have in the House. The decision about whether we should take action in 2013 was related to Assad and his use of chemical weapons. The House as a whole took the view that it was not convinced that the motion before it would help us deal with that problem.

The Defence Secretary has not put a proposal before the House today, but he suggested that we may need to consider what further action can be taken, and how we should deal with Islamic extremism and with Daesh or ISIL. The situation is totally different today compared with 2013, and we do no service to the country—or to anyone—if we are not clear about the difference between 2013 and 2015. We must all consider how we tackle Islamic extremism and terrorism, and keep our country and citizens safe. There will be debate and discussion on that, and people will have different views, but if we conflate 2013 with 2015, or whenever, we will not do the country a service, let alone anyone else.

[Alex Salmond]

Unless I am very much mistaken, the hon. Gentleman is preparing the ground to move the Labour party’s position potentially to support air strikes in Syria. Given the complexities of the Syrian situation that he has described, and given that terrorist targets in Syria are already being bombed by our allies, what exactly can he or the Government identify regarding the participation of UK forces that will make any vital difference in this situation?

[Vernon Coaker]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a fair question, but he should also reflect on what I have tried to say, which is that we will consider the Government’s proposals. As yet, the Government have made no proposals. This is not about preparing the ground; it is about saying what action we will take. The right hon. Gentleman will unite with everyone in the House in asking what we must do to tackle extremism and terrorism, and we must consider any proposals that the Government may bring forward.

Neither the right hon. Gentleman nor I have access to the intelligence or military advice that is available to the Defence Secretary, and we must consider what that advice might include. If military or intelligence advice suggests that a headquarters is directing terrorism across the world from parts of Syria, and that those who are conducting terrorist activities and killing British citizens who are on holiday do so on the directions of people in northern Syria—[Interruption.] UK citizens—English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish or whatever: all citizens who are under threat from terrorism. All I say is that it would be right and proper to consider that information, and take whatever action is felt appropriate to deal with it. That is not the same as saying to the Government, “It does not matter what you say. We will support you”. It means that we will be responsible—as will the right hon. Gentleman—and consider what advice the Government have received and what action we should or should not take.

[Alex Salmond]

We both know that the Defence Secretary, for some considerable time—as long as he has been Secretary of State—has wanted to extend the bombing campaign into Syria. If we examine the anguished debate that is taking place in America, does the hon. Gentleman agree that in Syria it is difficult to define targets, and to know who is who, which organisation is being struck, and what the effect will be of such airstrikes? Syria provides incredible complexity in such a campaign.

[Vernon Coaker]

I accept that point. Of course the situation in Syria is complex, as I stated earlier. All I say to the House is that we will consider any proposals that the Defence Secretary brings forward and, like the right hon. Gentleman, we are united in tackling Islamic extremism and terrorism. There is no difference between us on that. When the Defence Secretary comes forward with proposals—if he does—we must consider them and see whether we can support any such action. That is all I am saying.

I was speaking about Britain’s global role and how we cannot remove ourselves from that responsibility. We are uniquely placed: a P5 member, a leading EU country, the second largest contributor to NATO, a founding member of the G7 and—this is often missed out—a central partner in the Commonwealth. We are the only country that is part of all those things. That is not overblown rhetoric, jingoism or national chauvinism. We must be confident in the role that we could, should and will play. By the end of the decade we will have taken the decision to renew the nuclear deterrent, which we support, delivered new attack submarines, and be close to the regeneration of carrier strike. We are still a significant military force, and that is allied to our considerable political influence in the decision-making bodies of the world, and the defence engagement that we undertake in all regions by advising, supporting and training our friends. Such work is often unrecognised but it is crucial none the less. We must also accept that our armed forces have been shaped by more than a decade of conflict, and the British public have become far more sceptical about the use of military force. The case for our military must be made by us all.

Our highly capable armed forces are vital to the UK and its interests. Indeed, military power is not an alternative to, but acts as a support for, political solutions. Our armed forces project power on a global scale and deter potential enemies. The lesson of history is that deterrence, alongside politics, is the best course of action. In the modern world we must treat defence and security as separate sides of the same coin because we must do all we can to prevent a latent threat from becoming a patent one. We must ensure that we have responsive, high-tech armed forces with the capability to respond to emerging interconnected threats in an unpredictable security landscape, including hybrid warfare.

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[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is, in my eyes, as gallant as they come.

In my hon. Friend’s intervention, he drew attention—he was kind enough to give me the copy of the news article to which he referred—to what the head of the BBC had said. According to today’s edition of The Times:

“The head of the BBC has refused demands from 120 MPs to drop the term Islamic State on the ground that its coverage of the terrorist group must be impartial. Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the director-general, warned that an alternative name for the militants was ‘pejorative’ and said that the broadcaster needed to ‘preserve the BBC’s impartiality’.”

I have news for Lord Hall. I am well familiar with the concept of impartiality that applies to the BBC and independent television. I used to look into it decades ago. It is not absolute impartiality. The example that is always given is that there is no need for the media to be impartial between the arsonist and the fire brigade. The BBC is required to show due impartiality, which does not mean that it has to be impartial between terrorists and constitutionally constituted Governments and their armed forces. Lord Hall would do well to reflect on how he would react if somebody from his ranks of well-paid BBC executives said that the corporation needs to be impartial between the Nazis and the forces that fought them. He would not stand up for that suggestion for a moment.

[Alex Salmond]

Far be it for me to defend the BBC, since it has done so little in Scotland recently to merit defence, but does the right hon. Gentleman not allow that perhaps we should unite across the Chamber in the expression of the term Daesh and the wisdom of using it? Once we do that, we can then reflect on whether the broadcasting organisations would follow, as opposed to just turning this into a bash the BBC session.

[Dr Lewis]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who anticipates the very next point I was going to make. If we use the term Daesh, eventually, with luck, the BBC will be the only organisation left not doing so. At that point, even the BBC might see sense.

I wish to paint a brief picture of the sort of problems we face that lead to the strange paradox that I alluded to when I intervened briefly on the Secretary of State. As I said, two years ago we were proposing to intervene on behalf of one side in a civil war and against the other. Now, it is being proposed that we do exactly the opposite. There are people in the House who are far more expert in these matters than I—

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[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. You have no idea how joyful it is to hear those words spoken and, after so many years in this House, to be in a position where those time strictures do not apply. I know it is not democratic and is unfair to other Members, but I must confess a feeling of real joy and anticipation. You will be delighted to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that despite the invitation to proceed at some considerable length, I intend to be quite brief. I have enough feeling regarding previous occasions to remember just how frustrating it is to Members not to be able to avail themselves of an opportunity to speak.

I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the new Chairman of the Select Committee. I have a fellow feeling for much of what he said, although perhaps not the last part. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman), who represents Rosyth, is looking forward to serving under his chairmanship.

I want to re-emphasise my condolences and those of my hon. Friends and our allies in Plaid Cymru, the Green party and the Social and Democratic Labour party to the friends and relatives of those who suffered in the atrocity in Tunisia. It is really important that we emphasise that point across the Chamber—without any ambiguity whatever.

My own feeling is that we did the House a disservice last Monday by combining the statement on Tunisia with the statement on the European Council. If we look at Monday’s Hansard, we see that hon. Members were alternating between asking questions about their potentially dead or missing constituents in Tunisia and asking questions, which were legitimate in themselves, about the Prime Minister’s renegotiation stance on the European Union. When something such as the Tunisia outrage happens, I feel it is worthy of a statement on its own to be considered on its own. As I say, we did a disservice in not doing that.

There is some element of a disservice, albeit not to the same extent, in the Secretary of State for Defence claiming in his advance publicity that this afternoon’s debate relates to extending military action into Syria. If there were a military reaction to the atrocity in Tunisia, it would be important for it to be considered on its own merits and to be judged on that line of responsibility in terms of the justification and efficacy of such military action.

I have known the Secretary of State for Defence for a long time—perhaps too long for both of us—but I was struck by an interview he gave which said:

“The Ministry of Defence is like a sauna on Sunday. The air circulation system has been switched off and the place is hot—and deserted. Yet when you reach the Secretary of State’s floor, a small team is hard at work. As you enter Michael Fallon’s office, you see the reason why. On an easel sits a map of Iraq and Syria.”

Despite the weather conditions, this interview was conducted not last week but on 23 September last year. The Secretary of State has always believed—it is a perfectly honourable belief—that the United Kingdom should participate in the air actions in Syria. That has been his belief and statement. I do not think it is correct, however, to suggest, without specific understanding and without revealing to the House the reasons why—and in more than vague and general terms—that we should frame and publicise this afternoon’s debate in relation to extending military action into Syria.

As I mentioned in an intervention, the Tunisian Government have conducted a number of arrests today. They claim and believe that the terrorist cell responsible for the atrocity was trained in a terrorist camp in Libya. Logically, if there were a military response, people would understandably ask why it did not extend to where the Tunisian Government believe the responsible gunman was trained.

[Mr James Gray]

I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman that if there were to be a military strike against Syria, the matter would have to come back to this House. I commend to him my recently published book “Who Takes Britain to War?” on this very subject. If ISIL or Daesh is operating from Syria as well as from Iraq—there is no real border between the two countries; the border is entirely porous—does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be perfectly logical to strike against Daesh in Syria as well as in Iraq?

[Alex Salmond]

I am coming on to explain exactly why I am sceptical about that argument. I would be delighted, however, to receive a signed copy of the hon. Gentleman’s book if he would care to provide one; in return, I shall give him a copy of my recently published book, which is nothing like as useful or informed as the hon. Gentleman’s. None the less, he might find it of some interest.

I particularly support the words of the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee on the question of the description of the terrorist organisation as Daesh, as opposed to the variety of other acronyms and descriptions that have been widely used. It is fundamental. It is not a matter just of semantics or language; it is fundamental to the campaign of ideas that we should be conducting. This is, fundamentally, a campaign that is going to be decided by whose ideas and whose vision of society and the world have the most attraction to generations of young people across the planet.

I would like to compliment both my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh) and the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) who have been taking this matter forward so avidly over recent days. I have done a lot more thinking about this over the last few weeks than I have previously, and the more one looks at the arguments, the more sensible, rational and substantial they become.

There is in the Library an article written by Alice Guthrie, who is an expert on these matters and a translator of Arabic. I was struck by the logic and the coherence of the argument she advanced in the article. As I say, it is available in the Library and it is entitled “Decoding Daesh: Why is the new name for ISIS so hard to understand?”. She quotes a number of important sources—for example, al-Haj Saleh, the Syrian activist, writer and influential figure, who impressively said:

“If an organisation wants to call itself ‘the light’, but in fact they are ‘the darkness’, would you comply and call them ‘the light’”?

Clearly, the answer is no. Alice Guthrie herself goes on to say:

“All of this is why some Syrian activists therefore see it as so important that use of the word 'Daesh' spreads, and have been working hard to make that happen – so effectively in fact, as we know, that the word has been taken on by several global heads of state and their associated media, who have a limited grasp of the specifics behind the term. Originally hailing from the city of Raqqa, Daesh’s current Syrian headquarters, al-Haj Salih says his main goal in making a new name for Daesh was to avoid people getting used to referring to a tyrannical and despotic movement as a ‘state’… In terms of its use by global heads of state and media, he feels that this is only natural, and right, as ‘The people who suffer most at the hands of Daesh should decide what they are called’.”

This is much more than a matter of semantics. It is at the very heart of the need to remove from a terrorist organisation the legitimacy of its aspiration to statehood and a new caliphate, and of its claim—a misleading, wrongful and hurtful claim—to represent one of the world’s great religions. I think that that is absolutely fundamental to the question of how we deal with this matter.

I intervened on the right hon. Member for New Forest East to make the point that, as he later acknowledged, it is crucial for us to unite as a Chamber if we believe this issue to be important, as I do, and as my hon. Friends do. I think that the Secretary of State himself was sympathetic to that when, in response to an intervention, he said it was something that we must reflect on. I think we should reflect on it very soon. I am sure that if we unite, as a Chamber and as a House, in recognising the importance of the war of ideas behind the words, then the broadcasting organisations in this country will follow, as broadcasting organisations have followed in other countries. If we have the confidence to state something which is, at its heart, of fundamental importance, then let us do so. If the broadcasting organisations do not see the wisdom of it, then, and only then, will perhaps be the time for us to open up the full fusillade and barrage of gunfire against the BBC that the right hon. Member for New Forest East suggested.

My second major point is this. I am sceptical about the basis for the extension of the United Kingdom’s participation in an air campaign in Syria. There are questions that I think should be considered, and considered profoundly. The first relates to the legal basis. I have here a summary note which was presented by the Attorney General on 25 September last year and laid in the Library, and which provided the legal basis for the UK’s participation in the air campaign in Iraq. It is a one-page note, and it leans heavily—almost exclusively—on the argument that such action was beyond reproach in international law, because it constituted reaction to a request from a legitimate Government in Iraq.

The Secretary of State suggested that, by extension, it could be said that the Government in Iraq were requesting an intervention in Syria, but it is difficult to see how that could be justified on exactly the same legal basis as the one on which the Attorney General relied last September for participation in the air campaign in Iraq. Let me say to the Secretary of State, and to the Minister who will sum up the debate, that if that is to be the legal basis, we must be given, and presumably will be given, a further summary note explaining the legal basis for participation in Syria. Does the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) wish to intervene?

[Vernon Coaker]

No. I am just listening.

[Alex Salmond]

I am glad that I have captured the attention of the Labour Front Bench, and I hope what I have said will receive wide support in the House.

Another reason for my scepticism is my experience—an experience that I have shared with a number of Members over the last 12 years—of successive military interventions in a range of Islamic countries. At each stage it was argued, and we were assured, that the next intervention would be the absolute key, or at least would deliver progress towards the objectives of this country. I think it must be said that, on each and every occasion, exactly the reverse has come about.

According to the House of Commons Library, 2,047 days have passed since Sir John Chilcot made his opening statement in the Iraq inquiry. By contrast, the first world war lasted 1,561 days, and the second world war lasted only slightly longer than the Chilcot inquiry, at 2,075 days. I am told that a trip to Mars and back would take 520 days. We are also reminded that the Franks inquiry into the Falklands war took a little over six months.

I think it very important—and I would apply this, with great respect, to those who voted for intervention in Iraq, including the present Prime Minister, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer and the present Secretary of State for Defence—for us to reflect on the lessons of that intervention, and also the wider interventions which have, in my view, removed despotic tyrants only to create political vacuums from which unspeakable horrors have now emerged. I think that we should reflect on the wisdom of what we are doing before embarking on another extension of military intervention without at least establishing a specific line of causality between the latest atrocity carried out against United Kingdom citizens and the way in which military intervention would affect it. My view of this matter is tempered by experience, and that experience has not been helpful to those who advocate military intervention.

The third reason for my scepticism is one of practicality. I hope that I shall be able to type in my eight-numeral password so that I can find something that I read a few minutes ago on this iPad. I had looked up the derivation of the dictum “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” . I was once told that it had originated from Sandhurst—that it was the Sandhurst view of diplomacy—but further examination reveals that it is much, much more ancient than that. In fact, the original dictum came not from Sandhurst but from Sanskrit. It is as old as recorded history itself. Having consulted my iPad, I now understand that there is a Bedouin Arabic version of the proverb which reads “Me and my brother against my cousin, but me and my cousin against the stranger”.

The dictum about “my enemy’s enemy” no doubt applies to many situations in many countries in the world, but I think that one country where it certainly does not apply—or where it is not easy to fathom—is Syria. In Syria, your enemy’s enemy is just as likely, perhaps more likely, to be your enemy than to be your friend. It is a country of extraordinary complexity. We read of the anguished debates about Syria that are taking place in the United States at the moment about the wisdom of specific air strikes on specific targets, and whether the allied air force will end up bombing the wrong people in Syria and undercutting the aims that the campaign is meant to engender. For that third reason, practicality, we remain to be convinced that this is a wise course of action.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that the situation is extremely complex. Every Member who has spoken in the debate seems to have accepted the complex and ever-changing nature of the threat that we now face. The response to that threat must be flexible and innovative. Does my right hon. Friend agree that nuclear weapons cannot be used to combat terrorism, and are, in fact, useless at protecting citizens against sentence atrocities? Does he agree that the Government’s plan to spend £100,000 million on renewing Trident, while at the same time making swingeing cuts in the conventional forces on which we shall rely more and more, is an extremely worrying development?

[Alex Salmond]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. I could, if I wished, spend a great deal of time talking about Trident to Conservative Members, but I shall try to confine myself specifically to the issue that the Secretary of State has cast as the issue under discussion. Nevertheless, I think that there is a connection between these issues. The Secretary of State talked about a number of threats that the United Kingdom faced. To remarkably few of those threats would anyone present the Trident nuclear system or its renewal as an effective answer, and it could certainly not be presented as an answer to the threat that we face from terrorism.

In summary, I say to the House that we could achieve something together by accepting the wisdom of so many of our Arabic friends and so many of our allies that “Daesh” is the right term to describe terrorists. Is a terrorist by any other name still a terrorist? Most certainly. Does it matter that they are called “terrorist” and not accorded the respectability of being referred to as a state or representing a religion? I think it matters a very great deal, and I think we are on the point of a consensus on the matter—and I hope the Secretary of State for Defence will, perhaps, be able to go further in summing up this debate.

We are sceptical and opposed in the current circumstances to extending the air campaign into Syria. We would have to see the legal basis, and the practicality would have to be much better understood. In particular, a great deal of my experience in this House, and our experience collectively as a country over past years, tells us that interventions can have unforeseen consequences. Many of our interventions and extensions of military action could at best be described as counter-productive and at worst have helped to replenish the dark well from which terrorism is now springing.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) and to take part in this important debate. I say to the Government that the House will have to return to many of these issues in the coming months and years, and they would do well to secure a two-day debate on the next occasion so that they have the chance to hear the views of Members from across the House and answer their concerns. That would avoid the problems that have arisen in the past.

It is a truism to say that we face a very threatening international situation that is incomparably worse than it was five years ago. To the erudite list the Secretary of State for Defence gave at the beginning, I would add what is happening in the China sea and underline the catastrophe—the tide of human misery—that has taken place in the middle east, centred on Syria. When I first went to the Zaatari refugee camp as Secretary of State for International Development in 2012 and pledged a great deal of British money to help those fleeing Syria, I had no idea that the whole region would be convulsed by the subsequent refugee crisis and tragedy.

There is, however, some good news. The important innovation of the National Security Council is very valuable, representing a huge improvement in the way we weld together defence, diplomacy and development. After all, a third of the development budget now goes to conflict resolution and tackling conflict. We should not forget that the purpose of Britain’s intervention in Libya was to stop a bloody massacre in Benghazi in which thousands of people would have been killed.

In the election campaign, it was suggested that the Government had not learned the lessons of Iraq in respect of stabilisation. I was on the NSC at that time and we certainly learned the lessons of Iraq, but if we are to stabilise a country after a conflict, there must be some degree of stability. We had well co-ordinated international plans on stabilisation, which unfortunately were destroyed by the complete lack of stability and security in Libya at that time.

This autumn, the strategic defence and security review will be completed. That is the time when we will need to assess whether 2% is enough for defence, because we will then be able to match the resources to the tasks which we require of our great armed services. That is an important equation; there must be sufficient resources for those brave men and women to carry out their tasks.

I pay tribute to the exceptional work that is done by UK development in pursuing Britain’s national interests. I had the privilege of leading DFID in the first half of the last Parliament, and the men and women of that Department do an excellent job of boosting prosperity, tackling—often successfully—conflict and disorder, and building on the good foundations, I readily concede, of the Labour years. Although those three aspects should encourage us, there is much we can still do better.

On Daesh, or ISIL, we must have a strategy that splits off the hardliners from those who hear with some sympathy the drumbeat of the terrorist message. It is another truism that in Ireland at one point there were perhaps 200 active terrorists, but thousands of sympathisers. As Chairman Mao once said, fish need water to swim in. Splitting off the hardliners from those who are more biddable is extremely important and we do that in a number of ways. In the longer term, we need to support development. That is the way, over the longer term, that we will attack the desperate poverty and deep unfairness in the distribution of resources that we see, in particular, in north Africa and the middle east. By focusing on clean water, education, schools, health and family planning, and by offering desperately poor people those basic ingredients of life that we in the west take for granted, international development helps to bind people into a system and a country.

We need a long-term, coherent political strategy to defeat the brutal thugs and anarchists of Daesh that involves all the regional powers and is backed by the international powers outside the region that have influence. Those with influence over the protagonists must exert it for political progress to be made.

In the short term, there is great concern that a more coherent plan needs to emerge. There has been a dearth of leadership from the United States in the recent past; Europe is facing inwards, addressing substantial problems over Greece and migrants crossing the Mediterranean; and the UN, which ought to be the means of progress, is hamstrung by its structure. If there is to be greater military involvement by Britain, colleagues who were not convinced that there was an overarching strategy at the time of the Syria vote must be persuaded that this time there is.

We should also go after ISIL’s funding with greater vigour. We should seek to destroy the oil sales and the means of delivery. We should do more to train and arm the peshmerga, and we should do the same for other Gulf forces once they get their act together. We should also make far more co-ordinated use of international and Gulf special forces on the ground. There are good guys on the ground in Syria; we need to work more closely with them.

In north Africa, we need to give specific help to Tunisia. We need more public information campaigns to stop the very brave migrants coming across the sea in leaky boats, seeking a better life on a European shore. We need to consider the use of blockading and military action against the horrendous trafficker gangs, and we need to find all possible ways of diminishing and ending this huge humanitarian tragedy.

Longer-term economic progress in north Africa is essential. The southern European Mediterranean states need to understand that, in the end, they will either take the people or the goods and services that those people can produce in north Africa. I freely concede that that is a long-term objective, but it is essential nevertheless.

[Alex Salmond]

rose—

[Mr Mitchell]

I have almost finished.

May I end on this point? On Sunday night, I shall attend an Iftar at the Birmingham mosque—the biggest mosque in Europe, I think—with a community every bit as horrified by, and condemnatory of, what happened in Tunisia as all of us here. We in this country need to condemn Islamophobia with every bit as much force and conviction as we condemn anti-Semitism. We need to stand up for human rights, recognising that human rights are not just for nice middle-class people in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, but for some very unpleasant people who populate our world as well.

We must never compromise our standards of justice and integrity in this ideological battle. Again, I make a plea to the US Government to release for transfer from Guantanamo the last British detainee held there as rapidly as they can. We must not allow terrorists to bully us into abandoning the long-cherished liberties that Britain has stood by. This House eventually stopped the absurd idea of the Executive that we should incarcerate people for up to 90 days without charge. I cannot think of any better recruiting sergeant for terrorist fanatics than the colossal mistake that that would have been. We stopped identity cards. We are now wrestling with the issue of secret courts and the information that has come out of the first secret trial, which is enormously discouraging. This is a generational battle against a threat that is a clear and present danger not only to all of us in Britain, but to many of the poorest Muslim people in the world.

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[Mike Gapes]

I look forward to seeing the details. No doubt, as a Select Committee member in future, I will be able to question the Minister on those matters more directly.

Libya is partly our creation. Members of this House overwhelmingly—I was one of those Members—supported military intervention in 2011 to stop the prospect of mass slaughter in Benghazi. An indirect consequence was the downfall of the Gaddafi regime. There was a democratic process and an election, but it all went wrong, and the weaponry that left Libya can now be found throughout north Africa. I saw that myself when I went to Mali.

Libya has played a major role in the destabilisation of democratic, pluralist, modern Tunisia, and the Egyptians are also facing concerns. We have a responsibility to deal with the situation in Libya and to eliminate the potential for Daesh to use it as a safe area. The former leader of the Scottish National party, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), was absolutely right to say that we need to look at Libya. I am not sure whether he was advocating military intervention, but that is one interpretation of what he said. I agree that if we are going to do something in Syria, we should also be considering how we can combat Daesh in Libya.

[Alex Salmond]

As the hon. Gentleman suspected, I was not arguing for military action. I was merely saying that, to justify any such action, we have to identify and be sure about who we are taking action against, and to justify giving support—I am sympathetic to his points about the Kurdish forces—we need to identify and be confident about the people we are supporting.