Russia

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, matters relating to state visits are decided by a committee whose members come from across Whitehall, including of course from No. 10 Downing Street. I am sure that all departments reflect on the success of every single state visit.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the things that international diplomacy should seek is common ground between all these countries? In the case of the United States and Russia—and of course us—one important bit of common ground is fighting ISIS. We can also bring in the other two permanent members of the Security Council, France and China, on that. But apart from the military aspect, the aim should be to ensure secular rather than theocratic Governments. That is the only long-term route to peace.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we of course work towards the principle that it is for the people of the country to decide the status of any Government in free and fair elections, which should include votes for every single person qualifying and involve no duress. I would not say that I would ban one particular type of democratic government, if properly chosen. With regard to the unity of the strongest powers in the world—as the P5 at the UN may be defined—it is essential that we find common ground to resolve conflicts. I am delighted that Russia, Turkey and Iran all recognised, at the Astana talks on Syria, the primacy of the UN in resolving those issues.

Turkey: Zaman Newspaper

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I am very sorry that the House requires me to take up valuable time to adjudicate. It is the turn of the Labour Benches and, therefore, of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

Daesh in Syria and Iraq

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

We continue to receive reports on the removal of chemical weapons. I answered a Question about this a little while ago and have also answered a Written Question. We continue to keep that under review, although I am concerned by reports that, in some circumstances, chemical weapons have been used in Syria. It is, therefore, even more important that we have regular inspections and reports. The specific stockpiles to which my noble friend referred have, we are told, been reduced.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

Given the importance attached by the Government to the International Syria Support Group, which, according to the Foreign Secretary, comprises the major international players, I was rather surprised that there has been no reference to Egypt. Do the Government recognise that Egypt not only is the largest Arab country but has the largest Arab army? President al-Sisi is attempting to introduce into Egypt a secular Government, based on a path to democracy, which is exactly what we would like to see in Syria. What role do the Government see for Egypt in the resolution of these conflicts?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, when I met Foreign Minister Shoukry in New York earlier this autumn, my opening words to him were to describe Egypt as a major regional player. It is because of that that the Government take very seriously the importance of engaging with Egypt on how it can play its part in ensuring that Daesh is defeated. All those who take a stand against extremism, or against Daesh, need to work together and that is what we will do.

Migration: Trafficking

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is clear that we must focus our work on being able to provide some form of humanitarian effort. As I said in my original Answer, we are seeing whether we can use the example of the systems that we have in place in Syria to be able to provide that kind of haven—not a haven from which people then move across the Mediterranean, on that hazardous journey, with an uncertain future, but one where perhaps they can have some education and training towards employment, so that they can have a future, which is what all of us deserve.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is more efficient and practical to assess the claims of would-be migrants, whether on the grounds of asylum, refugee status, economic migration or merely, understandably, that of wanting a better life, before they arrive in Europe? Assessing claims and then removing those who have no valid claim is almost impossible once they have arrived in Europe, which therefore means that those who have the greatest claim do not get permission to stay. Would it not therefore be better that those who are rightly rescued from peril on the sea are returned to the mainland from which they came?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is a matter of fact that asylum claims may only be processed and granted once people have reached the United Kingdom. That is how our legislation lies. There is a danger that if one has processing areas—I hate the word “processing”, but noble Lords know what I mean —for asylum across the north African shore, say, those areas would act as a magnet in persuading people to go there. The most important thing is to disrupt the smuggling and trafficking networks to get at this business model which has no moral authority.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I shall get going pretty quick. I very much agree with what my noble friend Lord Lothian said. I hope that now we have another five years, we will have a foreign policy so that our influence on international affairs is more perceptive, subtle and creative than it has been in the last five years. We have in this country the history, experience and wisdom—and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was emphasising, as a P5 member of the Security Council we have the power to make it so.

I am sure that the greatest challenge to world stability at the moment, and indeed to our own national security, is the deadly threat from political Islam and its Islamist warriors with their weapons of jihad. By “political Islam”, I do not for one moment suggest that the great majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are in any way a threat. Political Islam no more speaks for them than the IRA did for the Catholic people of Ireland. Despite claiming the authority of God for all that they do, in one sense the Islamists are really very secular. Like Marxists, political Islam is convinced that it has the whole and complete answer, and that any other view should be dismissed and indeed suppressed. It therefore rejects not just pluralism and the dialogue that democracy provides but even the nation state.

I want to focus particularly on the present surge in the volume of refugees, which is one consequence of the instability that has developed since the start of the Arab spring, which we and many other countries welcomed when in January 2011 Tunisia’s jasmine revolution overthrew a 23 year-old dictatorship and replaced it with something better. Sadly, that swallow did not herald further good news. Far from a flowering of democracy, we have seen one secular Government after another threatened or replaced with theocracies that epitomise intolerance, are medieval in their cruelty and fascist in their brutality, and seek to designate half the human race as inferior to the other half.

Western naivety in believing that any ruler who does not meet the standards of democracy that we expect should be removed has trapped us in this Sunni/Shia conflict. From this conflict springs the Sunni-based political Islam, which for nearly a century has been manifested mainly by the Muslim Brotherhood founded in 1928 in Egypt.

If the Muslim Brotherhood is the trunk of political Islam, its roots are the extreme Sunni doctrine of Wahhabism, and the various jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the rest are the branches. When, in April last year, apparently to the surprise of western intelligence, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—ISIS—was formed, it created a canopy for the whole tree of political Islam. ISIS is now a threat to every state in the Middle East, and presently it has a free run. Saudi Arabia is under pressure, both from the ISIS threat to the royal House of Saud and from the Wahhabi clerics by whose consent it rules. The new king, Salman, seems to be relying more rather than less on those clerics.

The UK seems still to look for the removal of the Assad regime in Syria. Does HMG believe that this is inevitable, and if so, are they really prepared to contemplate Syria being run by ISIS? The British Foreign Office line was from the start a serious mistake, which both Russia and Israel recognised. To comment on what the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, said, it is not so much the lack of diplomacy, but the ill-conceived and ill-informed diplomacy that has been the problem. What is the strategy of the UK towards ISIS? It appears that the US has no strategy at all other than to keep boots off the ground. What the US needs is sound advice.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken up arms in Sinai, where it is killing judges in an attempt to neutralise the judiciary. I suggest that HMG invite President Sisi, whose country is under attack from Islamist terrorism, to come to Britain to discuss how the West could, perhaps in collaboration with countries such as Egypt and Jordan, deal with the threat.

In recent months, the refugee crisis has been manifested in the Mediterranean by the vast numbers seeking to reach Europe by sea from Libya. Nearly 40,000 boat people have already landed in Italy this year. Rightly, the EU, including the UK, has responded to the tragic drowning of some thousands of these refugees. There is a moral as well as a legal obligation to save those in peril on the sea. However, as under the present arrangements this involves conveying those rescued to Italy, this in practice means offering a safe passage to Europe for all those who embark on the voyage. I do not believe this is sustainable.

The EU quota proposals are not only politically unacceptable to a number of EU states, including the UK, but are not viable under the Schengen arrangements, because those accepted into one country under a quota system can go to another. Indeed, these Commission proposals show how out of touch with its ultimate electorate the EU Commission can be. The quotas would in any case amount only to the tiniest proportion of those waiting to move to Europe. There are already some 4 million refugees from Syria in other parts of the Middle East. There are millions more, including those from African countries—a mixture of asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants and certainly some Islamist jihadists—ready to take ship from Libya to Europe.

The only way forward is to set up, with a United Nations Security Council resolution, a transit camp in Libya where all would-be migrants could be screened and assessed and to which those rescued at sea could be transferred. Given that Libya is a failing state, it might even be necessary to create a UN protectorate. The cost of all this, including the military requirement to protect and guard the camp, which would involve feeding people and providing healthcare and, for children, education facilities, would have to be paid by the EU. Britain would have to both play and pay its full part, which could come from our well-funded overseas budget. It would of course be far more cost-effective because the resources available would help a far greater number in the camps than those who entered Europe before they were properly assessed.

The growing use of rubber dinghies with outboard motors, with only sufficient fuel to get them to sea and into a disabled and thus in-peril situation, from which they have to be rescued, also poses a more sinister threat. Suicide jihadists could fill a dinghy with explosive, which they could then detonate when alongside a rescue vessel—even HMS “Bulwark” could be at risk.