NATO

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I, too, thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for a debate on NATO in the main Chamber.

My first real awareness of NATO came when I was interviewed to join the Royal Air Force in the 1980s. I was asked how many countries were in NATO and who was the Secretary-General. Of course, all Members will know that there were 16 member countries at that time and that the noble Lord Carrington was Secretary-General. NATO has now grown to 28 member nations, with former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Secretary-General. Like previous speakers, I now serve on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which brings together parliamentarians from the Atlantic alliance and contains 257 delegates from the 28 nations. I serve on one of the five committees, the defence and security committee. I am proud that a UK member, the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), is the current president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and is well into the first year of his two-year term. Congratulations, el Presidente.

NATO’s essential core tasks and principles are summed up in the strategic concept, and I will run through them. The cornerstone of the alliance, of course, is collective defence. NATO members will always assist each other against attack in accordance with article 5 of the Washington treaty. That commitment remains firm and binding.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I ask my hon. Friend’s opinion of whether French Guiana, in south America, might be defended under that collective security umbrella if it were attacked by Brazil?

[Jason McCartney]

My hon. and gallant Friend makes a good point. There are a number of anomalies, such as the situation of the dependency of the Falklands Islands and the tensions between Greece and Turkey, which of course are both member nations, in Cyprus. There are certain cases, of which he gave a prime example, in which article 5 perhaps has a little leeway.

Crisis management is another core task of NATO, and it has a unique and robust set of political and military capabilities to address the full spectrum of crises before, during and after conflicts. Of course, my hon. and gallant Friend was involved in one such conflict in Bosnia.

Another task is co-operative security. The alliance engages actively to enhance international security, through partnerships and by contributing actively to arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament. Other recently added facets of NATO’s work are cyber-security, which has been much in the news in the past fortnight, energy security and the threat posed by climate change.

NATO has been at the heart, and at the head, of command and control for current and recent western military interventions and operations. In many ways, it now delivers the military aspects of the United Nations’ work. I will highlight three examples. First, as we have heard, there is the international security assistance force, the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan that the UN Security Council established in December 2001 under resolution 1386. Secondly, there was Operation Unified Protector, the NATO operation enforcing UN Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973, concerning the Libyan civil war. Those resolutions imposed sanctions on key members of the Gaddafi Government and authorised NATO to implement an arms embargo and a no-fly zone and to use all necessary means, short of foreign occupation, to protect Libyan civilians and civilian-populated areas.

Thirdly, there is Operation Ocean Shield, which was referred to earlier. It is NATO’s contribution to the anti-piracy campaign off the coast of the horn of Africa, following the earlier Operation Allied Protector. Naval operations began early in 2009, having been approved by the North Atlantic Council, and primarily involve warships from the UK and the United States, although vessels from many other nations are also included.

That brings me to some of the challenges facing NATO, a big one of which is duplication. The operation against Somali piracy is a good example. I have been with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly to Djibouti, which is strategically placed on the horn of Africa, and there are clear signs of overlap and mission repeat. We have not only the NATO-led mission but an EU-led operation called Operation Atalanta, also known as European Union Naval Force Somalia. There is also an independent French air base, a US army camp and a Japanese air base. Time and time again, I ask the commanding officers how much liaison there is between the different operations, and I have never got a satisfactory answer.

[Mike Gapes]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that at Northwood, in this country, there is close co-operation between the NATO and EU activities, and there is also UN discussion about anti-piracy activity. I do not think we should be quite as pessimistic as he implies.

[Jason McCartney]

I guess that the hon. Gentleman is a bit more pro-EU than I am. That is probably what is behind his comments. I will give another example of what duplication does. It can confuse command and control, and further evidence of that is the EU force headquarters being set up in Belgium, in a similar location to NATO’s headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels. That is more costly duplication of command and control.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman should be celebrating the success of the anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia. I will mention unnecessary duplication in my speech, but the activities that he has mentioned are complementary, as are those of the Chinese and a number of other Asian countries. They are all operating together successfully to achieve a common goal. It is a success, not a problem as he is trying to make out.

[Jason McCartney]

I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. He will be well aware how confusing it can be to answer to two leaders—for example, the leader of one’s party and a union. As a serviceman myself, I believe it is important to have a clear command and control structure and for people to know whom they answer to.

[Mrs Moon]

The hon. Gentleman will remember that I was also a member of the delegation to Djibouti. I specifically remember the response that we received to our questions, which was that people found it helpful to move between the two different organisations, largely because of the different rules of engagement. They said that the European rules of engagement gave greater flexibility. We should bear that in mind.

[Jason McCartney]

And of course, as the hon. Lady will remember, another interesting aspect was the Japanese air base, which I think is the only place in the world where Japanese forces are operating militarily outside their own sovereign area.

Expansion is another area of concern. Ever more former Warsaw pact countries are joining. Poland, Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have already done so, and many more are waiting to join and are already acting as observers. It is sometimes asked whether even Russia will join NATO at some point. It already has observer status at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and I have chatted to the leader of the Russian Communist party in the Duma while on a NATO briefing. Having been a serviceman in the late 1980s and ’90s, I found that very strange indeed.

What would happen if Scotland were to go independent? How long would it have to wait in the long queue to join NATO? By the way, our NATO assets, including our Trident submarines, which I have visited on the Clyde, would have to be relocated.

My final area of concern is budgets, to which many Members have referred. There is an increasing balance of capabilities within NATO. Eighteen member nations are spending less on defence from their current budgets than they were four years ago, and as others have said, only three allies have spent the target of 2% or more of GDP on defence in the past couple of years—the United Kingdom, the United States and Greece. We have already heard about the situation in Greece because of its GDP. Would an independent Scotland be able to commit 2% of its GDP to defence spending? There is pressure on the United States, which now provides 77% of allied defence spending within NATO. Just a decade ago, it was 63%. The United States’ commitment to European defence as it shifts its focus to Asia is one of the biggest uncertainties.

NATO is at the heart of western defence and overseas operations. It is changing and adapting, and it has many challenges, but we on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will continue to scrutinise the Atlantic alliance, support it, celebrate its achievements and remember what is was set up for—keeping the peace in Europe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Spellar]

Interestingly, Government Members have got back to their default answer to every question being the so-called black hole, as these days Unite and Len McCluskey are normally the cause of all the problems. This is a ridiculous way for Government Members to continue, because many Conservative Members at the time of “Options for Change”—those who were involved very much on the military side—were concerned at the cuts that were taking place. They did recognise that they were not planned, that the Treasury was taking too much out of defence and that that was to the detriment of defence.

Unfortunately, the current Administration seem to be repeating that error with their policy of drastic retrenchment in our military capability. That is damaging not only in itself—we will have a debate on that—but in the message it sends to Washington, because there is a proper debate in Washington about the balance of military expenditure and its deployment. We need to get that into perspective, because it is undoubtedly true that, as President Obama says, America is still the indispensible power. We should recognise that US defence spending is twice as much as that of the other NATO countries combined, including Canada and Turkey. Furthermore, as we all know, the US spends its money, particularly in the equipment programme, more efficiently.

There have been exaggerated concerns about a US pivot towards the Pacific, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend mentioned. The move from an estimated 60% focus on the Atlantic and 40% focus on the Pacific to a 50:50 balance is a shift, but 50% of the US defence budget is still more than that of the rest of NATO put together; the US is still a formidably effective and overwhelming presence. Our real concern should therefore be voices on Capitol Hill, as people there may become weary of what they would see as carping criticisms from Europe. They may question whether, after the end of the cold war, the US still has that obligation to show such a commitment to European defence unless European countries, including ourselves, show a similar level of commitment.

Hon. Members have mentioned Secretary Gates’s comments about the need for Europe to pull its weight in NATO. Otherwise, he said, NATO will have little future. He has called for the European nations to step up to the bar.

We are either all in this together, committed to playing our full parts, or we are not an alliance that will last. We should also recognise that our public are becoming wary and weary and that there is public reticence about international military expedition. Mixed and impatient European public opinion on Libya demonstrated that, and I would say to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) that if he looks in Hansard he will see that at the time of the Libya situation, I was raising questions in this House about the fate of surface-to-air missiles—an issue that had been raised with me at a very senior level by concerned officials in the Russian administration; they had sold them to Libya in the first place, but they were concerned about their location.

We need to recognise that there is a danger that multilateralist proactive action will be hampered by public scepticism and reserve arising from the experience of recent conflicts and that that will be a problem in all our countries. I recognise that the percentage of GDP spent on defence by the UK is greater than that of other European nations whose defence spending, as a number of Members have mentioned, is at a level that is unsustainable if we are to continue to have an effective European component in the alliance. Those are significant issues with which Ministers and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will have to continue to deal.

I say to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney), regarding his remarks about Somalia, that I think it is unfortunate for us to start to pose NATO against the EU in that context. Somalia is a particularly bad example to pick. There is no uncertainty in the mind of a serving rating or officer about the chain of command—the person who is giving him the orders is above him in the chain of command. In fact, Somalia has been enormously effective in dealing with piracy—not one ship has been captured by the pirates this year and there has been a dramatic drop in piracy and in the number of people being held—and in integrating the international efforts of countries with different traditions, and perhaps even different objectives, but with a combined objective of trying to keep the sea lanes open and to protect seafarers, vessels and cargos. Those operations have been well synchronised between the various parties. It shows that where there is a properly organised European component that can play a useful part and is an encouragement to countries of the EU to step up their contribution to defence within that framework, rather than a cause for criticism.

[Jason McCartney]

Would the right hon. Gentleman be happy to know that there is an EU mission staffed with 80 people in Djibouti, duplicating the effort provided by our embassy, the French embassy and the German embassy? Or is he happy yet again to spend yet more money on more bureaucracy?

[Mr Spellar]

Again, the answer to everything is Europe. If efficiencies are needed, that is worth considering—and they would be welcome—but I notice that the hon. Gentleman in no way denied that this was an effective operation. There might be some surplus people, and let us have a look at that, but the integration of the NATO operation and Operation Atalanta has been very successful. We should be celebrating that, because other piracy problems are emerging in other parts of the world that will need to be dealt with and the United States will be neither able nor willing to participate in all of them. Issues might well arise in west Africa partly because of terrorism but partly because of the serious rise in the influence of organised crime.

[Jason McCartney]

Of course it is a successful mission in Somalia; there are so many people there doing so many things. Another example of the overlap came when we went to Northwood for a briefing: we had a briefing from the NATO admiral—a three-star—and had to have exactly the same briefing an hour later from an EU admiral. Too many three-stars and top brass—come on!

[Mr Spellar]

No doubt in the second world war, the hon. Gentleman would have complained if he had to meet both Montgomery and Eisenhower. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) has only just walked into the Chamber, but he seems to have a lot to say.

Iraq War (10th Anniversary)

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. Please excuse my croaky voice, but I was very keen to speak for two reasons. First, as a Royal Air Force officer I served in Operation Warden, the no-fly zone over Northern Iraq in the 1990s; and secondly, just a fortnight ago, I was honoured to return Iraq 18 years on from my military service there. I want to give my perspective on Iraq pre and post the war of 2003.

In the 1990s, Operation Warden was the no-fly zone over northern Iraq which operated from Incirlik airbase in Turkey. Aircraft from the UK, the US, France and Turkey prevented Saddam Hussein from waging his war against Iraq’s 5 million Kurds. Prior to the no-fly zone, Saddam Hussein’s forces slaughtered many thousands of Iraqi Kurds. This included chemical weapon attacks at Halabja and mass executions culminating in the Anfal campaigns of 1988.

In 1995, during my tour, I joined coalition officers from the military co-ordination centre in Zakho, northern Iraq. We toured Kurdish villages near Dohuk and Irbil. Meeting village elders, we spread the word that the only aircraft flying above were coalition ones and that we could help with medical supplies and other immediate necessities such as electricity generators. We were given a warm welcome. The no-fly zone saved lives and has meant that Iraq’s 5 million Kurds have experienced relative stability since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.

After the war of 2003, Iraq’s 2005 federal constitution gave the Kurdistan regional government an unprecedented level of self-government. Eighteen years on from my military service, I was back in northern Iraq two weeks ago as a guest of the Kurdistan regional government via the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq. I saw the peaceful and increasingly prosperous Erbil and its surrounding areas. This fairly secular region sees Christians, Jews and Muslims living side by side. In fact, over 2 million tourists visited the region last year. The Erbil citadel, 6,000 years old, is the world’s oldest continuously inhabited settlement and a big tourist attraction. Again, the welcome was warm and friendly.

For many years I have spoken of my opposition to the 2003 Iraq war. I come at it from a slightly different angle—a military angle. My view was that Saddam Hussein was a caged animal because the northern no-fly zone, like the one in the south, was preventing any repeat of his previous atrocities. However, it is clear that the dictator’s removal has allowed Kurdistan to move on. Weapons of mass destruction or oil are often cited as reasons for going to war, as they have been in this Chamber today, but it is the regime change that has made a huge difference in the north of the country.

Having been helped themselves, the Iraqi Kurds are now helping others. On this month’s trip we spent an emotional day at the Domiz refugee camp near the Iraq-Syria border. Some 130,000 Syrian Kurds have fled the fighting in Syria. I spoke with many refugees, including children, who continue to be educated in specially constructed schools. The Kurdistan regional government deserves praise for funding and arranging that.

As has been said, however, all is not well in Iraq. There are tensions and rifts between the Kurdistan regional government and Baghdad, the capital is plagued by violence—a post-2006 record of 1,000 people were killed in May alone—and there is a bitter dispute over revenue sharing, as a new oil pipeline from Kurdistan into Turkey nears completion. With an estimated 45 billion barrels of oil reserves—the fourth largest in the world—and a century’s worth of natural gas, the Kurdistan regional government has become a major player and its dispute with Baghdad is now based on the breakdown of revenue sharing. KRG is supposed to get 17% of national revenues and, by the same token, should pay 83% of whatever it earns into the national treasury.

Kurdistan’s relative stability is now a strong pull for foreign investors. It is not just about oil—hotel and leisure groups are investing there. I hope that this can be a model for the rest of Iraq. Given recent events in neighbouring Turkey, the violence and civil war in Syria and the upcoming elections in Iran, the region and western nations need a stable Iraq more than ever.

Ten years on from the Iraq war, the outlook for Iraq is mixed. The absence of the violent dictator Saddam Hussein has heralded peace and prosperity in the north, while the south and the capital face uncertainty and, potentially, an even more violent future.

As I come to the end of my brief speech, I want to pause to remember and pay tribute to those who died in the Iraq conflict, which started in 2003. There have been 179 UK military deaths and 43 UK civilians have died, as have, as we have heard, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. We must remember them all. With Syria in mind, perhaps these are the lessons we need to heed when pondering the removal of another murderous dictator.

Ukrainian Holodomor

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Riordan. Interestingly, this debate follows one about the first world war. The Minister came into the Chamber just after what was said about how we remember our past and how that is very important for our future.

The purpose of the debate is to call on the United Kingdom Government officially to recognise a dreadful and tragic part of Ukraine’s history as genocide. I have met the Ukrainian community in Derby, who are still distressed that we have never recognised the Ukrainian holodomor as genocide, even though other countries have, including some in the Commonwealth.

The Ukrainian holodomor refers most specifically to the brutal, artificial famine imposed on the Ukrainian people in 1932 and 1933 by Stalin’s regime. In its broadest sense, the holodomor refers to the Ukrainian genocide that began in 1929 with massive waves of deadly deportations of Ukraine’s prospering farmers, as well as the deportation and execution of its religious, academic and cultural leaders, which culminated in the devastating forced famine that killed millions of innocent men, women and children. Between 1932 and 1933, a man-made famine raged through Ukraine and Kuban, resulting in the deaths of between 7 million and 12 million people, mainly Ukrainians, and it was instigated by the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin.

There are of course deniers of the holodomor, as there are those who deny the existence of the holocaust. In fact, there is a division of opinion in Ukraine on the number who died—from 2 million or 3 million up to 12 million—but they agree that it was a man-made famine directed at Ukrainians in Ukraine and Kuban, and that it meets the criteria for the definition of genocide in the 1948 UN convention. It is hardly surprising that there is some confusion about the holodomor, because it is poorly documented, the records were manipulated and those who conducted the census were executed.

The main goal of the artificial famine was to break the spirit of Ukrainian farmers and force them into collectivism. It was used as an effective tool to break the resistance of Ukrainian culture. Moscow perceived it as a threat to Russo-centric Soviet rule, and therefore acted brutally and sadistically to crush cultural resistance. The goal of the artificial famine was to ethnically cleanse Ukrainians from vast areas.

In 1932, Stalin increased the basic grain procurement quota for Ukraine by 44%, knowing that such an extraordinarily high quota would result in a grain shortage and the inability of Ukrainian peasants to feed themselves. Such a goal would not have been achievable had the communists not already ruined the nation’s productivity by eliminating the best farmers.

That year, not a single village was able to meet the impossible quota, which far exceeded Ukraine’s best output in previous years. Soviet law was quite clear that no grain could be given to feed the peasants until the quota was met. Stalin then issued one of the cruellest orders of his career: if quotas were not met, all grain was to be confiscated. As one Soviet author wrote much later:

“All the grain without exception was requisitioned for the fulfilment of the Plan, including that set aside for sowing, fodder, and even that previously issued to the kolkhozniki”—

the collectivised peasants—

“as payment for their work.”

The authorisation included seizure of all food from all households, and any home that did not turn over all its grain was accused of hoarding state property.

With the aid of military troops, USSR Government secret police and the USSR law enforcement agency, Communist party officials moved against peasants who might have been hiding grain from the Soviet Government. Of course, to try to avoid starvation, nearly every family attempted to conceal food, as we would expect: if people’s children were dying, they would not want to let their children die, never mind themselves. Experience soon made the brigades proficient at detecting even the cleverest hiding places. The result was mass starvation that took millions of lives during the terrible winter of 1932-33. Food was nearly impossible to find anywhere. Unable to get food, many ate whatever passed for it—weeds, leaves, tree bark and insects; some were lucky enough to be able to live on small woodland animals.

In August 1932, the Communist party of the USSR passed a law mandating the death penalty for theft of social property. Watchtowers were built and were manned by trigger-happy young communists. Thousands of peasants were shot for attempting to take a handful of grain or a few beets from the kolkhozes to feed their starving families.

To put that into perspective, at the height of the genocide, Ukrainians died at a rate of 25,000 per day, and nearly one in four rural Ukrainians perished as a direct result. At the same time, the Soviet Union dumped 1.7 million tonnes of grain on western markets. Nearly a fifth of a tonne of grain was exported for each person who died of starvation, and more than 3 million children born in 1932 and 1933 died of starvation.

Many peasants attempted to reach Ukraine’s cities, such as Kiev, where factory workers were still allowed a little pay and food. However, in December 1932, the communists introduced internal passports. That made it impossible for a villager to get a city job without the party’s permission, which was almost universally denied. The internal passport system was implemented to restrict the movements of Ukrainian peasants so that they could not travel in search of food. Ukrainian grain was collected and stored in grain elevators guarded by military and secret police units, while Ukrainians starved in the immediate area. That Moscow-instigated action was a deliberate act of genocide against the Ukrainian peasants.

Peasants hoped to get to Poland, Romania or even Russia, where there was no famine, but emigration was strictly forbidden. Ukrainian train stations were swamped with the starving who hoped to sneak aboard a train or to beg in the hope that a passenger on a passing train might throw them a bread crust. They were repelled by guards, who found themselves faced with the problem of removing the countless corpses of those who had starved and which littered the stations.

As I said, at the famine’s height, 25,000 people died per day. As the winter of 1932-33 wore on, Ukraine became a panorama of horror. The roadsides were filled with the corpses of those who had died seeking food. The bodies, many of which snow concealed until the spring thaw, were unceremoniously dumped into mass graves by the communists. Many others died of starvation in their homes, with some choosing to end the process by suicide, commonly by hanging—if they had the strength to do it. One American correspondent reported:

“The bodies of some were reduced to skeletons, with their skin hanging grayish-yellow and loose over their bones. Their faces looked like rubber masks with large, bulging, immobile eyes. Their necks seemed to have shrunk onto their shoulders. The look in their eyes was glassy, heralding their approaching death.”

The worst paradox is that much of the confiscated grain was exported to the west, and large portions were simply dumped in the sea or allowed to rot by the Soviets. For example, a huge supply of grain lay decaying under guard at a station in Poltava province. Passing it in a train, an American correspondent saw

“huge pyramids of grain, piled high, and smoking from internal combustion.”

In the Lubotino region, thousands of tonnes of confiscated potatoes were allowed to rot, surrounded by barbed wire.

News of this act of brutality was got out to the west, including to Germany in observations from its consulate in Kharkiv, and to Britain by various journalists, such as Gareth Jones—I have just heard that a book about him is to be published imminently—and Malcolm Muggeridge, who never forgot what he saw. In Canada and the United States, the Ukrainian community explained what was happening.

The genocide continued for several years with further destruction of Ukraine’s political leadership, resettlement of its depopulated areas with other ethnic groups, blatant public denial of famine and prosecution of those who dared to speak of it publicly. It was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of a famine and therefore to refuse any outside assistance. Anyone claiming that there was in fact a famine was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Inside the Soviet Union, a person could be arrested for even using the words “famine”, “hunger” or “starvation” in a sentence.

The holodomor was kept out of official history until 1991, when Ukraine—a country of 47 million people—finally won its independence. As James Perloff wrote:

“The Holodomor stands as a permanent warning of what happens when unlimited state power destroys God-given rights. A cursory review of America’s Bill of Rights demonstrates that virtually every right mentioned was trampled on by Stalin in Ukraine. Yet although the dictator used every means to eradicate the people’s will, the national spirit lived on unbreakably, until Ukraine gained its independence.”

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. There is a vibrant Ukrainian community in Huddersfield and Colne Valley, and I celebrated Christmas with them in January earlier this year. Four years ago, following an exhibition on the holodomor in the Kalyna community centre in Huddersfield, Kirklees council, my local council, voted to accept that the holodomor was genocide. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is now time for the United Kingdom to recognise formally that these horrific events were in fact genocide?

GCHQ

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Having earlier set myself the rule of not attacking the conduct of other nations, I am not going to break that rule now, but other people will be able to comment on this particular individual and his role. It is, of course, important for everyone who works for the agencies to remember that part of their responsibility is to uphold the laws of their country, and that in the case of the United States and the United Kingdom, those laws are designed to protect the lives and liberty of the citizens of those countries. That seems to have been too easily forgotten over the last few days.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

NATO suffered a suspected 2,500 cyber-attacks on its network last year. Can my right hon. Friend tell us whether there is a similar level of suspected cyber-attacks on GCHQ ?

Syria

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Many of those factions have come together in the National Coalition. We have been working on that and we have a special representative to the opposition at ambassador level who works with them daily on all the issues and encourages them to come together. Further meetings are taking place about broadening support, particularly with more Kurdish involvement, and that work is going on.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I served as part of a very effective no-fly zone over northern Iraq in the 1990s in Operation Warden. Did my right hon. Friend notice the television pictures last week of the alleged use of chemical gas weapons, which were delivered by helicopter, rather than by artillery shells?

[Mr Hague]

Yes. I was not implying, in my answer to an earlier question, that there is no regime air activity, but a huge amount of its activity is through shelling and mortars, and if chemical weapons are used, they can be fired from artillery. Air activity is one factor, and that is the complication when it comes to advocating a no-fly zone.

Syria

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes, they are. We have done specific work on this on the borders of Jordan. I have now assembled a team of 70 experts to work globally on an initiative to prevent sexual violence, including doctors, lawyers, people skilled in documenting such abuses, psychologists and so on. Last month we deployed part of the team to the Syrian borders; I did not announce their location for their own safety. There will be further such deployments of British experts. Following that first trial deployment, I expect to be able to deploy them further in the region in the coming months.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Will the Foreign Secretary tell me whether the United Kingdom is able to supply body armour, not necessarily to the armed groups but to the innocent Syrian civilians who are being caught in the crossfire?

[Mr Hague]

This is another very relevant point in our discussions about the arms embargo. We are not able to supply body armour at the moment. We supply the equipment that I set out in the statement, but body armour is another item that is caught by most definitions of the arms embargo as it stands. When we talk about flexibility in future, we have to bear it in mind that an arms embargo on the opposition covers equipment of this nature as well as lethal equipment.

Middle East

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

That is a constant part of discussions with Israeli leaders. Of course we have put the case for that, and indeed more than that, by saying not only that humanitarian relief is required, but that a different and more open approach is required. In fact, tight restrictions often serve the purposes of Hamas, rather than directly the purposes of Israel, and sometimes help to fund Hamas through its operation of smuggling and the use of tunnels into Gaza, for example. We will continue to have those conversations, I hope more successfully, in future.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

The civilian populations of southern Israel and Gaza desperately need an immediate and effective ceasefire: that means no rockets, no air strikes and no land invasion. What hopes does my right hon. Friend have of the US Secretary of State being able to broker that immediate and lasting ceasefire?

[Mr Hague]

There are some hopes. I do not want to overstate them, because of course these things can go wrong. Anything at any moment can go wrong, endangering the process through some event on the ground or breakdown in what either side seeks from a ceasefire, but the UN Secretary-General has put energy behind this; Egypt is playing a strong role, which the visit of Secretary Clinton will bolster; and all of us in the EU countries are determined—a lot of effort is being put behind the ceasefire proposal.

Human Rights (Kashmir)

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Browne]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney).

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I was pleased to visit Azad Jammu and Kashmir on a private visit—Mirpur and Dadyal. I met the press club of Mirpur. Does the Minister agree that it is important that the free press of Azad Jammu and Kashmir should be able to report freely any human rights abuses, so that we get accurate reporting and information? That is what is keeping Syria on the news agenda. We need more such good-quality journalism from Kashmir.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

6. What the outcomes were of the Istanbul conference on the future of Afghanistan.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)]

The principal outcome of the conference, which I attended on behalf of the United Kingdom, was an agreement by Afghanistan’s regional partners on the future of Afghanistan, involving commitments to non-intervention, to the inviolability of its borders and to support Afghan-led efforts on reconciliation and the political process. The group has agreed to meet again in June next year.

[Jason McCartney]

Given that Pakistan is vital to Afghanistan’s security, how will the Government assess the impact on relationships between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States, bearing in mind the tragic incident over the weekend involving NATO forces?

[Alistair Burt]

It was tragic indeed. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke with the Foreign Secretary of Pakistan on 26 November to convey the United Kingdom’s condolences to the families of those involved and to the armed forces and people of Pakistan. We support an urgent inquiry by the international security assistance force into the circumstances and encourage Pakistan to take part. In the meantime, all parties should do their utmost to rebuild trust and confidence between them and take no action that would make that more difficult.

Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I start by paying tribute to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), a fellow former Royal Air Force officer. I joined him and many other Members from both sides of the House in helping to secure the debate from the Backbench Business Committee, to which we are very grateful.

I shall focus on Kashmir. I have spoken in Westminster Hall debates on Kashmir and at meetings of the all-party group for Kashmir, but this is the first time I have had the opportunity to speak on human rights in Kashmir in this Chamber, and I am very grateful for it. My constituency in west Yorkshire has thousands of Kashmiris living in Thornton Lodge, Crosland Moor and Lockwood. They raise the situation in their homeland with me weekly, so I am proud to be speaking on their behalf.

I fully understand that international issues are never straightforward, so to try to understand the dynamic of the region I undertook a private visit to Azad Jammu and Kashmir last November. I flew into Islamabad in Pakistan, and after delivering blankets, clothing and tents donated by the good folk of Huddersfield and Colne Valley to some of the flood-hit villages in the area of Nowshera in Pakistan, we crossed the border into AJK. I was based in the vibrant city of Mirpur—a fantastic place, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) rightly said—on the beautiful Mangla Dam lake. I was honoured to be invited for tea at the homes of families with loved ones who live in my constituency, but their love of tea is not the only close cultural link that the Kashmiris have with the UK. When I was invited to meet the Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Sardar Attique Khan, in Dadyal, I was welcomed by their military band, complete with bagpipes and kilts.

I saw a beautiful and peaceful Pakistan-administered region of Kashmir, but time and again I have been told of human rights abuses in Indian-controlled Kashmir, some of which we have heard about in this Chamber in the past hour, so I fully appreciate that this is a region where terrorism and security concerns are rife. Of course our own previous Government have been accused of being implicated in activities such as rendition in the wider region. The position is not always black and white.

An hour ago in Central Lobby, I bumped into a Kashmir-based journalist I met over there. As a former journalist, while I was in Kashmir I addressed a group of 50 Kashmiri journalists at the Press Club in Mirpur, and I stressed to them the importance of factual reporting. Wild accusations and the emotionally charged inflating of casualty figures do not help the cause of those campaigning for peace in the region. For example, yesterday I received an e-mail telling me of hundreds of unidentified graves, with the accusation that they contain the bodies of victims of unlawful killings and torture. I have no idea whether that is true; we must be wary of propaganda and deal in facts.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many Kashmiri journalists simply cannot report facts, because they cannot get press accreditation that will enable them to go into areas where the police are in control?

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[Jason McCartney]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. I made that point myself, but journalists must not over-compensate for their inability to go to those areas by wildly inflating reports; they must stick to the facts. As a journalist I was sometimes frustrated by similar situations, which can be very difficult.

[Lyn Brown]

Mass graves should be investigated. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if India agreed to a commission, we could see the truth of the claims that are being made and end the torturous anxieties of many people in Kashmir, who are worried that their relatives may be languishing in such places and that they have no rest?

[Jason McCartney]

The hon. Lady must have had a sneaky peek at my speech because I will come to that in about 20 seconds.

I welcome Amnesty International’s report on Kashmir, “A Lawless Law”, and want to highlight some of its conclusions, which I fully support. I call for a repeal of the Public Safety Act, which results in the long-term detention of people in cases where there is insufficient evidence for trial. I call on Indian-administered Kashmir to allow peaceful protests and exercise proper crowd control, and to carry out an independent, impartial and comprehensive investigation into all allegations of abuses, including the unmarked graves and allegations of torture. I call on the UK Government to keep Kashmir on their agenda and raise these issues with the Governments of Pakistan and India whenever they meet.

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful and well-informed speech. Does he agree that we must seek as a matter of urgency to improve the lives of Kashmiris by improving cross-border trade between Pakistan and India and into Kashmir and by allowing travel, particularly to enable family and loved ones to visit?

[Jason McCartney]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There already have been some cross-border relations on opening up the border for trade. I was impressed by Prime Minister Khan’s attitude towards commerce, jobs and green technologies—he talked about wind turbines, which massively impressed me.

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

Does the hon. Gentleman support and appreciate initiatives taken by the Pakistan and Indian Governments, with meetings at ministerial level, to find a peaceful formula to resolve the issue of Kashmir and related issues?

[Jason McCartney]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. His office is on my corridor, so we will probably bump into each other and talk about this many more times. Yes, we want a peaceful solution and the best way to end war-war is to jaw-jaw and talk about these things, and I hope that the UK Government can be part of that.

Some eagle-eyed Members might have noticed the little green badge that I am wearing—[Interruption.] I thank the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane). It was given to me by the Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and it says, “Kashmir Seeks Attention”. Today, Kashmir has our attention, and all hon. Members in the Chamber should be very proud of that.