CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

We have said before—I certainly have at the Dispatch Box—that we have no quarrel with the Russian people. I am happy to restate that. We will support our Ukrainian friends so that they do not have to suffer in the way that they have, and we will work with President Zelensky to achieve the outcome he wants.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, President Putin has more than once suggested that he stands ready, if he thinks it necessary, to use nuclear weapons in pursuit of the Ukrainian war. Has it been made clear to him that the first use of any such weapons, whether tactical or strategic, is out of bounds, and that any nation taking that step would meet retribution—which in the case of Russia could be terminal?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, we are already in a very fraught situation and I do not think that speculating on such things helps at this point. What we want to do is work with our allies to support the Ukrainians and continue to point out the fallacy and wrongness of what President Putin is currently doing.

Afghanistan

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, whatever history’s verdict on the wisdom, conduct or shambolic conclusion of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, it is hard to overstate the consequences of the victory of the Taliban over the modern military might of the West.

The lightning speed of the Taliban advance may have had two causes. The first is the failure of the West to win the hearts and minds of the rural communities of Afghanistan. This was apparent 12 years ago, in July 2009, when the coalition launched Operation Panther’s Claw to clear the Taliban from Helmand province. Although by that time the coalition claimed to have trained over 90,000 Afghan troops, only some 600 Afghans could be persuaded to join the coalition force of some 15,000. Many of the others just melted away.

Secondly, once President Trump had done his February 2020 deal with the Taliban, the Taliban used the next 17 months for secret negotiations with many provinces to surrender without contest.

During our debate on the Queen’s Speech in May, I suggested that political Islam was one of the most far-reaching threats to global political stability and economic prosperity. Political Islam is that assembly of entities ranging from IS and al-Qaeda to the Taliban, largely schooled in the madrassas of Pakistan, which, in the shade of the Muslim Brotherhood, has hijacked the great Abrahamic religion of Islam to promote and justify jihad for a world caliphate with theocratic government under sharia law. Another Islamist Government in Afghanistan will surely be seen as a further step towards a global caliphate. Britain is now in a much greater danger.

Finally, may I say that I view with concern the proposal of the National Muslim War Memorial Trust to erect in the grounds of the Imperial War Museum a memorial to the Muslims who fell in both world wars? Both were wars between nations, not religions or races. That is why such care was taken to make the Cenotaph in Whitehall so secular and so neutral. There may be separate memorials to the fallen from different nations, regions or even villages; that is different from one to the fallen of one religion. Surely this is not the time to erect on an important publicly owned site a potential shrine to Muslims who have died fighting. Can we risk something which could become a shrine to jihadists?

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, when asked what the House of Lords is for, I explain that we are a diverse group with an amalgam of knowledge, skill, experience, achievement, imagination, altruism and compassion, which can—with the support of our brilliant staff—come together to contribute wise judgment in the analysis and discussion of public policy and legislation.

One of the most ill-conceived changes during the Covid period slipped through with barely 30 minutes of discussion on 3 November last year. It was to make it compulsory for all Peers to attend two-hour Valuing Everyone training. After talking to many colleagues, I believe that it has been a humiliating and expensive failure. To ask the taxpayer to pay over £1,000 for each of us to be subjected to a syllabus more suited to a secondary school is a rip-off. For example, to try to teach a former Foreign Secretary or Cabinet Secretary how to draft an email is a bad joke. The decree that the failure of any Peer to take the course by 1 April this year would be a breach of conduct, with the threat of expulsion from the House of Lords as a penalty for non-compliance, is a presumptuous absurdity, comparable to Prince Harry telling the Americans that their constitution is “bonkers”. The House was brought into public ridicule, and indeed contempt, when it was revealed that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd—perhaps our most widely revered colleague—was being investigated for not having taken the course. She had in fact been recovering from heart surgery.

My main concern is the composition of the Conduct Committee that produces this nonsense. Our Select Committees are one of the most valuable features of the House—many people have referred to them today. Their reports are highly respected. Thirty of the 31 committees are composed only of Members of Parliament. Committees are brilliantly serviced by our very able clerks and, where necessary, they will employ specialist advisers to provide expertise. The Conduct Committee has nine members, of whom only five are Members of the House; four are outsiders. I understand that the committee advertised for candidates to fill this role of supervising the personal behaviour of your Lordships. I see little that qualifies those four to be advisers in such a role and nothing that justifies their having the great privilege of membership of a Select Committee. I hope that the Commission, or whoever it may be, will review and reverse that innovation. I fear that, along with Covid, the virus of woke has infiltrated Westminster. I call its arrogant intolerance social fascism.