Fuel Prices
Debate between John Baron and Robert Halfon(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend is a great campaigner against high petrol and diesel prices. Her constituents are very lucky indeed. She will hear me make exactly the same observations later.
Mr Baron
I congratulate my hon. Friend, and support his motion. He mentioned the freezing of fuel tax. May I suggest that the Government should think more about extending the freeze for the foreseeable future and, if necessary, taking funds from areas in which money is being spent unwisely? I am thinking of, for example, aid for India, a country that has its own aid programme. That would help many hard-pressed families and businesses up and down the country.
Robert Halfon
While I strongly believe that we should cut fuel duty as much as possible, I have to say that I am a passionate believer in overseas aid, and I am very proud that we have the overseas aid policies that we have.
Iran
Debate between John Baron and Robert Halfon(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the use of force against Iran would be wholly counterproductive and would serve only to encourage any development of nuclear weapons; and calls upon the Government to rule out the use of force against Iran and reduce tensions by redoubling diplomatic efforts.
May I start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for supporting my application to debate this subject today? Statements by the Government allow opportunities to ask a question, but rarely allow a thorough examination of the issue. I also thank those Members who supported me in calling for this debate. Many did not agree with the motion, but all felt that such a debate was long overdue, as is borne out by the number of people who have put in to speak this evening.
The debate is urgently required. With tough new sanctions in place and further ones threatened by Iran, with naval forces mustering in the Persian gulf and with state-sponsored terrorism ongoing inside and outside Iran, this might be the only opportunity for Back Benchers to discuss the topic before hostilities begin. Israel is contemplating an air strike, and we could be on the brink of a regional war. I called for today’s debate because I believe that we need a fresh approach. The sanctions and the sabre-rattling are yesterday’s failed policies, and the fact that we are once again on the brink of military conflict is testament to that failure. My motion calls on the Government—and, by implication, the west—to rule out the use of force in order to reduce tensions and bring us back from the brink of war and military conflict, and to redouble diplomatic efforts. That would give us time to reflect on some of the inconvenient truths that the west chooses to ignore, and on the need for a fresh approach.
I shall start by outlining some of the inconvenient truths. The catalyst for the latest round of condemnation was the report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency last November. The United States and the United Kingdom chose to see the report as evidence that Iran was building nuclear weapons, and further financial sanctions followed, which led directly to the storming of the British embassy in Tehran, inexcusable though that was. We should be careful about accepting such reports at face value, however. Close reading of the report reveals no smoking gun: there is no evidence of attempts to produce nuclear weapons, or of a decision to do so.
Mr Baron
I want to make some progress, then I will try to accommodate all colleagues who wish to intervene.
The fact that there is no evidence of attempts to produce nuclear weapons or of a decision to do so was confirmed by Peter Jenkins, the UK’s former permanent representative to the IAEA. Robert Kelley, a former director of the agency, highlighted the fact that the report contained only three items that referred to developments after 2004—the year in which the American intelligence services concluded that Iran had ceased its nuclear programme. Indeed, the agency spends 96% of a 14-page annexe reprising what was already known. I therefore ask the Foreign Secretary to highlight for the House today the paragraphs in the report that provide evidence of a nuclear weapons programme. He has referred to this matter many times, but I can see no such evidence in the report. Is he willing to highlight those paragraphs for the benefit of the House now? I am willing to take an intervention from him.
Robert Halfon
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Is he aware that paragraph 43 of the IAEA report states that Iran worked
“on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon including the testing of components”?
Prevention of Nuclear Proliferation
Debate between John Baron and Robert Halfon(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I rise to suggest to the Minister not only that it is questionable whether sanctions are working but that they may be counter-productive. I also suggest that the west underestimates its ability to influence Iran. It is a complex society with multiple centres of authority and constant power struggles. I hope that our Government will recognise that better in our diplomatic efforts.
Iran is a very wealthy country when it comes to minerals; other major powers are queuing up to gain access to its oil. That lessens the impact of sanctions from the west. Anyway, if Iran has set herself on nuclear weapons, she will not be scared away; if she has not, sanctions will, in my view, serve only to encourage her to get them.
In our discussions on Iran, we tend to forget too easily that it is a complex society justifiably proud of its history. As we have heard, the Parliament has protected rights for minorities; Iran’s 25,000 Jews are represented by a Jewish MP. We forget that there is no desecration of synagogues, which is more of a problem in Europe. We also forget that there is a well developed middle class in Iran that often disagrees with Ahmadinejad, as recent protests have illustrated.
My concern is that sanctions are counter-productive. Support for the current hardliners in Iran probably increases as a result of sanctions—Iranians responded to Bush’s talk of an axis of evil in 2002 by removing the reformist President Khatami. I suggest that the only sensible course of action is calm yet vigorous diplomacy.
Robert Halfon
I am incredibly grateful for my hon. Friend’s thoughtful remarks, although I come from a completely different perspective. He said that sanctions have made the regime more extreme, but some years ago there were no sanctions yet the regime became more and more extreme. Can he explain that?
Mr Baron
I am afraid that my hon. Friend was not listening. I did not say that sanctions made the regime more extreme, but that they reinforced the position of the hardliners within Iran, itself being a complex society. There is a difference. The only sensible option is calm yet vigorous diplomacy. We need to offer implicit recognition of Iran’s status as a major power in the region—a status that we created ourselves by castrating Iraq. There is a precedent for recognising a new status. In the 1960s, when the US presence in Asia was waning and China was beginning to flex her muscles, Nixon did not respond by denying the reality of Chinese power.
As I said, the west underestimates the opportunity to influence Iran. She is a state in transition with multiple centres of authority and constant power struggles. The challenge for the west is to influence those struggles. Crude sanctions or appeals for regime change undermine local proponents of reform by making them look like imperialist lackeys. Offering Iran a new relationship with the west could strengthen the pragmatists at the expense of the hard-liners. We can, and should, go the extra mile for peace. Much greater emphasis needs to be placed on quiet diplomacy between Iran and the west.