GCHQ

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I go back to what I have said about being unable to confirm or deny leaked information. I am not commenting at all on information that has appeared in the newspapers. There might be leaks in the future from who knows what agency, and I would take the same view in such circumstances. We cannot conduct ourselves in these matters by commenting on every leak that takes place. The Intelligence and Security Committee will be able to look at these questions, but I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman in public the answers to the questions that he is raising.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Because this type of secret operation involves not just a legal problem but a difficult balancing of security and liberty, we should do more to explain what we are doing. An American citizen would have the right to an answer to the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) asked about location information being offered for American drone strikes. Unless we begin to explain more to the public, secret operations will not be sustainable in the long term. The public must understand and, through understanding, consent.

[Mr Hague]

I go a certain way with my hon. Friend on this. There is a need to explain to the public in this country more than we have done for decades about the role of secret intelligence, its purpose and what it achieves. However, I do not think that will mean that we are able to describe in detail how our co-operation with other countries works on operational matters, for many obvious reasons. It would make it more difficult for us to protect this country if other people knew the exact techniques that we used. Also, other countries would be less willing to share their intelligence with the UK if they thought that we were not good at keeping it to ourselves. But we certainly need to raise public awareness of the need for what we do, and I started to do that in my speech on this subject in 2011. Perhaps today’s statement will also have that effect.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

In return, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his unfailing attention to this, his courtesy in dealing with us and our officials, and the work of his all-party group.

The circumstances in the south continue to cause great concern. I am aware of the Amnesty International report, and we will continue to work in the south to bring the parties together and resolve the political difficulties that are now part of the national political dialogue. However, the re-entry into the area of such an unpleasant and dangerous group will be a focus of a visit to Yemen that I hope to make in the not-too-distant future, when I hope to be able to raise the subject directly with the authorities there.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Will the Minister please ensure that the political settlement process remains as genuinely inclusive as possible? In particular, will he ensure that the temptation to exclude the Houthi group, for being pro-Iranian, or parts of the Hirak, because of their extremism, is resisted and that as many people as possible are at the table?

[Alistair Burt]

As my hon. Friend knows from his own recent activities there, the Yemeni process manages to bring together people who, in other circumstances, it might be difficult to get round the table. I have not yet experienced a sense of exclusion of certain parties, but it is always a danger. If there is to be an answer in Yemen—among the many difficulties in the region, the process in Yemen towards a political transition has been more successful than most—it is essential that it comprises all those with a role to play. Certainly, his concerns will be borne in mind by the ambassador and all the rest of us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

There is certainly a vigorous election campaign going on in Venezuela; there is no doubt about it. We support a democratic process in Venezuela, and of course want the elections to adhere to the highest standards. Everyone will have to make their own judgment about the elections at the time, but we certainly hope that they are elections whose outcome everyone can respect.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

T6. Will the Foreign Secretary please update us on the long-term vision for Afghanistan? What sort of presence is Britain likely to have in Afghanistan in, say, 2020 and what will we be doing there at that date?

[Mr Hague]

As my hon. Friend knows, our troops will not be in a combat role after the end of 2014 and will not be there in anything like the numbers they are now, but we have gone out of our way over the past couple of years to stress our long-term commitment to Afghanistan. That will include, on the military side, leading the officer training academy. Decisions will be made in due course about any other military support. Of course, our prime contribution will be an economic and diplomatic one, and the Secretary of State for International Development has announced large-scale development aid for Afghanistan for the future, so I hope that our role will be one of encouraging regional support for Afghanistan and working with a democratically elected Government on the country’s future.

UK-Turkey Relations

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

One of the reasons why Turkey is such an exciting subject is that it is an exemplar not just for the whole middle east, but for British foreign policy. Turkey is a strange place for us. We have a huge great embassy—now the consulate general—in Istanbul, and it would impress hon. Members. It is more magnificent than this Chamber and even than the other place, with wooden parquet floors and beautiful marble courtyards.

Only 20 years ago, that all seemed a bit out of date and out of proportion. For all the reasons my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) pointed out, the embassy was conceived when the Ottoman empire was at its height and when Lord Palmerston, based in this House, was charging around frenetically, shelling the coast of what was then part of the Ottoman empire to seize Acre and play incredibly complicated games with Russia and France—and, indeed, Afghanistan and Persia on the Turkish borders.

By a decade ago, we could see that the Foreign Office had almost given up, and that is a real parable in what goes wrong in long-term British foreign policy planning. Ten years ago, the desk officer for Turkey, in London, said very confidently that there was absolutely no point in the Islamic department of the Foreign Office doing Islamic communication or anything in Turkey because in 2001 we were absolutely confident that Turkey was a secular state and that in Turkey there was absolutely no interest in Islam. Almost immediately after the desk officer made that comment, a Government with strong conservative Muslim roots, and a leadership with a history of political Islam, were elected to office in Turkey.

Even two years ago, the situation in our embassy in Turkey was still one of pretty extreme crisis. As the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee has pointed out, we were shifting towards the system that eventually came about, involving the closing down of the BBC Turkish service and the British Council in Turkey hiding at the back of a large shopping mall with almost no evidence of Britain on display. It has an energetic, dynamic and dedicated Turkish staff who, understandably, struggle to communicate British culture to a Turkish audience, given that a significant number of them have never visited the United Kingdom.

As the report makes clear—last year the Foreign Office gave us the figures—we have 25 extensive Turkish speakers in the British diplomatic network, of whom exactly one was in the embassy in Turkey. That is the top level of Turkish language. We also had 23 operational Turkish speakers—and again, exactly one of them was to be found in Turkey. That is comparable with having 46 fast-jet pilots trained at great expense to the UK taxpayer and only two of them flying aeroplanes.

In addition, the focus has been taken from political work towards other forms of work. Why does that matter? It matters for all the reasons on which others in the Chamber have so eloquently held forth. Turkey is now a major exemplar for the region, a place of interest and importance to the United Kingdom and somewhere we ought to be able to exercise some influence.

Politically, of course, Turkey represents something that confounded our fears and predictions. Many commentators, looking at Turkey in 2001, were terrified, just as we were terrified about Islamic movements in Egypt, by the possibility of some kind of Islamist movement in Turkey which reliable commentators described in 2001 and 2002 as some form of new Taliban or even new al-Qaeda. Indeed, that was swept up by secular voices in Turkey, that focused on the worst-case scenario in terms of what the AKP would be. The reality is that those fears were not confirmed; in fact, that change is perhaps the strongest example worldwide of a democratic transition from a military Government—considerably more impressive even than the transition achieved in Indonesia.

As others have so eloquently pointed out, on the economic side the Turkish economy, in per capita GDP terms, is now larger than that of Bulgaria or Romania. It has grown considerably faster in the past decade, and the Istanbul littoral—the 20 million people around Istanbul—have a GDP per capita larger than that of Poland.

As regards the AKP’s conduct of foreign affairs, despite the opposition party complaining that it would be an unruly, destabilising force, we have found that although it has taken an independent policy on Israel and an unexpected policy on Syria and on Iran, it has not proved to be a dangerous force in the region at all. In fact, in Libya the AKP has proved to be an extraordinary example in being more generous and flexible than many other NATO members, and it has got considerably more credit from the Libyan people as a result.

Of course, this does not mean that everything is sunny in Turkey. As many people have pointed out, there are serious problems. From a foreign policy point of view, there is no point in our treating Turkey as though it were a superpower, because it remains a middle-ranking power. We cannot vest in it all responsibility for the middle east. We cannot imagine that it has the key to the solution in Afghanistan or in Syria. Despite Turkey’s extraordinary development over the past 30 years, there remains a significant gap in terms of human, financial and institutional capital that prevents it from occupying that kind of role. Economically, as the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) pointed out, there are considerable problems in eastern Turkey, where people have a GDP per capita that is one sixth that of people in Istanbul; in other words, they often have per capita incomes of about $4,000 to $5,000 a year. Turkey is not a wealthy country.

In terms of politics, we need seriously to consider the fact that despite the great advances and the extraordinary tightrope action of the AKP Government in the way that they improvised with the constitution, negotiated challenges with the judiciary, and took certain moves that were on the risky side, we have ended up—despite all the progress made with the military—with the scandal of what is happening with the terror laws. Turkey should, and can, be an example to the region, but that ought not to involve locking up peaceful dissidents, journalists and academics. That is not a necessary part of a counter-terrorism policy.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I think that 10% or more of the cases in the European Court of Human Rights emanate from Turkey. My hon. Friend and others have spoken about the steps that Turkey has managed to take in improving human rights. Will he tell the House what further measures he thinks necessary? The Minister could then tell us what steps the Government are taking to encourage those measures.

[Rory Stewart]

The central element is to focus on making sure—we in Britain have experienced this and people have gone through it in Spain—that the terror laws are not applied to peaceful protesters such as academics and journalists but targeted at people who are genuinely involved in armed struggle. Perhaps Britain, which has built up a good relationship with Turkey through taking a friendly attitude towards EU accession, has more leverage over that issue than countries such as France.

What can Britain do, though? The core question is not “Whither Turkey?” but “Whither Britain in Turkey?” What is the Foreign Office supposed to do? What sort of reforms are we supposed to introduce? How are we supposed to change our attitude towards the country to get more out of the relationship? The first thing we need to do is very difficult. It is all very well the Foreign Office saying that it has designated more speaker slots in Turkey, but the unfortunate reality is that if a slot has been designated for a Turkish speaker, there is no way of compelling anyone to fill it. Therefore, across the diplomatic network we have a number of slots designated for Arabic speakers or Turkish speakers that remain unfilled. If we are serious about making sure that out of 25 Turkish speakers a quarter, say, are in Turkey, we have to change the human resources procedures of the Foreign Office. We have to move from a situation where everybody is allowed to bid for posts towards one in which a manager can tell people that they should be going to Turkey given that the taxpayer has invested considerably in training them in the language.

That also necessitates difficult HR changes to the core competency framework that governs promotion within the Foreign Office. Currently, the second secretary for political affairs at the embassy in Ankara does not have a direct interest in continuing in political work. Despite good sounds coming from the Minister and the Foreign Secretary, saying that political work is increasingly important, and despite all the good messages about the diplomatic excellence initiative, the brutal reality remains that one’s career in the Foreign Office is determined by management expertise.

All the incentives are driving ambitious young people out of political work and into getting management experience. I can name two cases in the diplomatic network in Turkey of people who have chosen to go into UK Trade and Investment management roles because they do not believe that they will be promoted on the basis of political roles. The core competency framework, which governs promotion, does not take into account linguistic expertise or deep country knowledge in any way; it measures people purely—and is only allowed to measure people—on the basis of their management skills. That must be changed if we are fundamentally to change the culture of the Foreign Office. It is not enough for us to say that these things matter; we must promote people on the basis of them.

To deepen this further, we might need to change the criteria on which people are rewarded. We should have indicators of how many Turks, for example, somebody in the embassy meets. We should have indicators of how often they get outside Ankara and Istanbul to remote areas of the country. That should be part of the criteria for their assessment and promotion.

Finally, on commercial opportunities and UKTI, it is all very well our saying that we want to double UK trade and investment with Turkey, but how is that going to happen? Where are the people and where is the drive? It is difficult to make that happen. Italy is currently outperforming us twofold in Turkey—Italian trade to Turkey is nearly twice that of British. Sixteen flights a day go from Italy to Turkey, almost all of them from Milan. Big Italian infrastructure companies are building roads and getting involved in dams, and small and medium-sized Italian companies are outperforming British small and medium-sized enterprises on the ground.

I propose, modestly, that it might be worth looking at seconding 25-year-olds from major UK financial and consultancy companies, with proper incentive structures and targets, to try to achieve the difficult aim of boosting UK trade and investment. I do not want to pick out a particular company, but I would imagine that McKinsey would be quite happy to second somebody at the age of 25 to UKTI for two or three years, with a decent incentive structure, to see whether they could meet those targets.

All this is necessary because Turkey matters. It matters to Britain, and Britain’s leverage in Turkey is still potentially large. If we introduced those kinds of reforms in Turkey and other countries, we could achieve something extraordinary. The danger is that, having been worried 20 years ago that the great palace on a hill that we occupy was too large for Turkey and that Britain’s interests were elsewhere, we run the risk of being that other great building in Istanbul, which is of course the great representation of Venice—a palace even larger than ours, stuck up on the hill. That now seems out of date for a different reason—because Turkey is too big for Venice. Let us make sure that that does not happen to us.

Piracy (Somalia)

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) and his Committee on securing this timely and important debate and the whole Committee on the report, which is an authoritative and important contribution to British policy making in the context.

The problems associated with piracy are well understood by everyone here. It is conducted on a staggering scale in the Indian ocean, and I think that the report suggests that between 1,500 and 3,000 pirates are operating there. It affects trade through the Gulf of Aden worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars to the global economy. Any disruption of that trade certainly affects not just British companies, but companies all over the world, and the insurance and other markets that support it. There are disturbing trends, which the Select Committee drew attention to, including—and probably most worryingly—increasing violence against hostages, which was not a particular characteristic of Somali piracy a few years ago. On top of that, there is the fact that such piracy has been going on for decades. The international community despite, I think, nine United Nations Security Council resolutions and three multinational naval operations, has not remotely cracked the problem. As we have heard, the amount of ransom that is being paid is on the increase.

That is not to say, however, that there are not some positive signals. In Somalia, the situation on the ground seems more promising than for many years. That is partly due to the courage of African Union and other international forces, which have secured more territory than for many years. There is some evidence that progress is being made against forces such as al-Shabaab, although it continues to control huge swathes of the country.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on how serious or sustainable the progress in Somalia is? Is he confident that in three years’ time Somalia will be significantly better than it is today?

[Martin Horwood]

I cannot predict the future, but the fact that Mogadishu is now an overwhelmingly secure city, which was far from true only a few years ago, and that the Foreign Secretary and International Development Secretary can visit cities such as Mogadishu with a degree of confidence about their personal security is a quite dramatic shift, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge. I do not say that securing a military solution is the only path forward, but the fact that African Union troops and others have made enormous sacrifices, displayed great courage and secured a large amount of territory should not go unnoticed.

There is also progress in the sense that areas of the internationally recognised territory of Somalia—mainly, in practice, self-governing areas such as Somaliland and Puntland—have achieved a reasonable degree of peace and security. The Government have shown wisdom in promoting a flexible attitude to territories such as Somaliland. The creation of the Somaliland Development Corporation, which the Government supported earlier this year, is a positive development. Trying to exploit the economic potential of the relative peace of areas such as Somaliland is a practical contribution to the provision of an alternative economic model to the chaos and piracy prevalent in other parts of the Somali territory. It is exactly right that the Department for International Development is prioritising development on the ground and the provision of economic alternatives to people in Somalia.

The convening of the London conference earlier this year was an important step, not just in relation to tackling war and conflict in Somalia and getting a co-ordinated regional approach, which the Select Committee asked for, but in making concrete contributions to progress on anti-piracy initiatives, including some things that have been mentioned: the taskforces on ransoms and the wonderfully named—let me get it right—Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions Intelligence Co-ordination Centre. I am sure that Hansard will report that I got that fluently right. The substantial financial commitment that the Government have made to RAPPICC is welcome, and we have provided its first director, Garry Crone. That support is welcome and exactly the kind of lead in international co-ordination that the Select Committee asked for.

On ransoms, Her Majesty’s Government’s instinct is exactly right. Briefings from non-governmental organisations such as Saferworld, which has talked to civil society in Somalia, make it clear that the economic model of piracy brings, in some cases, the most effective wealth provision into the local economy. If we can disrupt that business model and suggest that a peaceful, normal economy and society would be a more profitable way to develop—as we would obviously hope—we will have some chance of defeating the root causes of piracy. If we continue to fuel the ransom economy and pay money, that will be a massive incentive for Somalis to continue with piracy and to allow it to spread. If, as the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) said, risk and reward are so imbalanced, why would piracy not spread down the coast of Africa? Why would not that model be emulated in other parts of the world?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

The whole debate is a tribute to the astonishing attention currently being paid to Somalia. In fact, the increase in African Union troops from 12,000 to 17,730, and indeed this whole discussion, show how important Somali piracy is. I would like to sound a note of caution, however. The most important thing in the debate is not to get dragged in too deeply, or to be too ambitious in what we feel we can achieve on the ground in Somalia.

There are very grand theories going around about the importance of Somali piracy and linking it to theories of state building, economic development, regional stability and terrorism. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) made a number of those arguments. They are powerful, partly because a powerful industry supports them, trying to draw us ever deeper into Somalia. The components of that industry are various, but there are four.

The first is what I call the “forward school”, represented by people like my father, who quite like the idea of grand naval operations and keep talking about sending out Q-boats and remembering Julius Caesar attacking the shoreline. That is the naval “use it or lose it” approach, where a military complex likes to expand its area of operations to justify its existence.

The second is, of course, the Somali Government themselves, who find it very convenient to use Somali piracy to attract international attention and resources. They are increasingly adept at manipulating international sentiment on human rights and terrorism to attract more resources into their Government.

The third component is think-tanks. There is now a major industry, particularly focused on Islamic radicalisation and counter-terrorism, that is keen to connect Somali piracy with the obsessions of Washington think-tanks with the proliferation of al-Qaeda.

Finally, as the previous speaker pointed out, there are the aid agencies, which find it extremely convenient to use Somali piracy to argue for more investment in development operations in Somalia. Connections are perpetually made, and were made by the hon. Gentleman, with governance, failed states, economic development and alternative livelihoods, as they are in Yemen, Congo, Chad, Afghanistan and Sudan.

[Martin Horwood]

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s long and genuine experience in the field, but having worked for a development NGO I think the suggestion that the NGOs are in some way fostering an image of Somalia in particular for the benefit of their business model and to encourage spending on development is rather extraordinary and, indeed, really offensive.

[Rory Stewart]

I am very happy to share endless statements from almost every major NGO and development agency that has attempted to draw links between their programmes on the ground in all the areas the hon. Gentleman and I mentioned and state instability, and indeed piracy itself. It is entirely normal. We have seen it all the way from Congo to Afghanistan. Somalia is absolutely no exception.

The problem with that kind of argument is twofold. First, there is a theoretical problem: the strong link between state instability, governance and developmental poverty and piracy is yet to be proven at any theoretical level. Secondly, the actual links, as Anja Shortland argued in a recent academic paper, are very fragile indeed. No link has so far been effectively established between the piracy and al-Qaeda, and very few substantial links have been established between piracy and the al-Shabaab movement itself. As for statements about development and state building, Anja Shortland argued that it is very doubtful whether the contribution of piracy to the Somali economy is anything other than marginally positive at the moment.

I am not saying that Somali piracy is not an evil in itself, or that poverty in Somalia is anything other evil. Both those things are true and important. Attempting to connect the two, however, draws us into a dangerous policy position. The solution is humility and context. Instead of endlessly inflating the problem of Somali piracy in order to draw in more resources, we need to acknowledge the reality of our situation.

We need to acknowledge first that, as many hon. Members have pointed out, we have made little progress on Somali piracy over the past five years. We have invested surprisingly little in the issue, despite an enormous amount of rhetoric. Despite nine UN resolutions and three multinational task forces, the reality on the ground is that there has been an increase in both the number of attacks and the amount of ransom money being paid. Moreover, despite an enormous amount of rhetoric and the idea that people read in The Daily Telegraph that this is the No. 1 priority of the British Navy, we have often only one ship or perhaps none at all in the region; in fact the matter does not actually classify at the highest priority level for our naval operations. Part of that may be due to mixed signals, influenced by the fact that the majority of the crews, unfortunately, are not citizens of OECD countries, and the majority of the ships involved have nothing to do with Britain itself.

However, there are much more fundamental limits constraining us and, unless we acknowledge those limits, we are going to get ourselves in trouble. Those limits are threefold. First, there is a limit of abstraction. Statements about governance, rule of law and economic development in Somalia are extremely vague and ill-focused. We have a poor understanding of governance and rule of law structures on the ground in Somalia, very little idea of what kind of country the international community could turn Somalia into, and few models to put forward. The isolated lives of our diplomats and other international officials, because of security issues and short tour lengths, and lack of linguistic expertise means that their understanding of what is happening at rural level in Somalia is extremely limited. All of that is disguised within a very optimistic language, which talks about a land-based solution, without any evidence that we have the knowledge, the power or the legitimacy to achieve that kind of solution.

[Martin Horwood]

I will resist the temptation to debate Anja Shortland’s conclusions, which I think demonstrate exactly the opposite of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but on the specific point about the lack of a positive model, what about the example of Somaliland—he may regard it as a different territory, I suppose—and the British Government’s support of the Somaliland Development Corporation? Does not that look like a positive alternative model of development?

[Rory Stewart]

The problems in the al-Shabaab-controlled areas and in Puntland are completely different from those in Somaliland, and attempting to read from one across the other is highly misleading.

To conclude, the context needs to be put in place. The limited obligation that we have needs to be asserted: in other words, we do indeed have an obligation to the Somali people, as we have an obligation to the people of Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan and our own people, but the threat posed by Somali piracy and by Somali state instability to UK national interests is limited. It is a threat but it is one threat among many. Somalia is one of perhaps 40 countries in the world with which the United Kingdom and the international community needs to be concerned. We should not be raising the expectations of the Somali people through talk of our ability to deliver solutions that we cannot deliver.

This is not a recipe for pessimism. It is instead to suggest that we can make developmental progress, but we will not be able to achieve governance, rule of law, or state stability. We may be able to contain Somali piracy, but we are extremely unlikely to be able to eliminate it. Our objectives should be limited to ongoing counter-piracy operations, some development operations and an attempt to increase the likelihood of a political settlement and decrease the likelihood of civil war. Any attempt to claim that we can do more is likely to mislead the British people, disappoint the Somali people and draw us into a situation into which we should not be drawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bellingham]

My right hon. Friend was a senior Minister and had a distinguished military career, and he has stayed in many embassies and high commissions. He will know the work done by the armed guards, who we often employ from companies such as G4S. I will certainly consider whether the document can be made available.

I want to make a few additional points. I think that the Committee was looking for clear but comprehensive rules of engagement, and we have not gone as far as it would have liked. That is, first, because companies must seek independent legal advice. Furthermore, merchant shipping can be subject to multiple jurisdictions. On board a UK flagged vessel, persons are subject to UK domestic laws; they may also be subject to different domestic jurisdictions and equivalent laws depending on the offence committed, the nationality of the person taking the action, the person against whom the action is taken, and whether such an action takes place in international or territorial waters. It is not straightforward, and it can be incredibly complicated. I do not like to see advice saying that it is up to the court to decide, because it brings to mind the debate in the previous Parliament on what force a household can use to defend its property: time and again Ministers would say that it was up to the court to decide, but actually we did not want householders dragged into court. However, in the unfortunate event of such a case going to court, it is up to the law of the land in that particular state or jurisdiction to determine whether the force used in the unique circumstances of the case was lawful.

That is why we have not gone into the level of detail that the Chairman of the Committee would perhaps like to have seen. We have not laid out rules of engagement and rules on the use of force that cover every single eventuality. There has to be a graduated approach, and we must take the realpolitik view that every single circumstance and occasion will be unique. To be too prescriptive would be a mistake.

In addition to producing our national guidance, we—I say “we”, but it is more or less my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister—have played a leading role in the development of international guidance on the use of private armed security personnel for our leading role in the contact group. After detailed work within that body, the contact group has handed its conclusions to the IMO to develop further, and such international guidance will be made available. As I said, this is work in progress and further work is going on, first, on the national guidance that I mentioned and, secondly, on the accreditation process. That is very important. I congratulate my hon. Friend on that work and I hope that he carries on working tirelessly on this agenda.

I think it has been widely accepted that a combination of more robust naval activity, industry self-protection measures and the use of private arms security personnel have all contributed to the reduction in the number of successful hijackings in the Indian ocean, but such activities at sea are only part of the answer. We should not lose sight of the fact that the way to combat piracy is obviously on the land. That point was made by the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Cheltenham and the right hon. Member for Warley. We must look at the political strand, and I will come on to that in a moment in response to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), but in terms of sustainable solutions on the land, one of the things I was very keen to discuss with the shipping industry—it also featured in the London conference on Somalia—was what we can do to reward those communities, villages and small towns that have driven the pirates out. For example, in Puntland and Galmudug, the local militia have taken control of coastal communities that have previously been subjected to pirate activities. Those communities need to be rewarded, and rewarded quickly. That is why we have worked very hard indeed with the shipping industry, which I am pleased to say has been very proactive on that score, and been able to make some progress.

I am very pleased to say that when the Secretary of State for International Development was in Garowe, he was able to open a new fish market for which money was provided by his Department. We have also, for example, established new youth club facilities in parts of Puntland and looked at projects to increase existing capacity for vocational training and help similar training facilities in parts of Puntland and Galmudug. I am delighted that the UK Government have come up with £2 million for those projects, which has been matched by a $2 million pledge by the four shipping companies that are also very concerned and interested in that agenda. We are very keen to ensure that money goes into those communities that have successfully driven away the pirates.

I should also point out that as well as those fast impact schemes on the land, it is incredibly important that those pirates who are caught are taken for detention, prosecution and then imprisonment. Part of the problem with catch and release was, first, the difficulty of getting a robust prosecution package and, secondly, the question of where to take the pirates. In answer to the point made by the right hon. Member for Warley about whether we would take pirates to the UK, yes, of course we would. If UK citizens or service personnel were injured by pirates, of course, we would look at the evidence and we would consider bringing them to the UK for detention and prosecution.

The most important thing is to ensure that we build up regional capacity for detention, prosecution and imprisonment. I am absolutely delighted that more pirates are now being brought to justice. We recently agreed a new memorandum of understanding with the Government of Tanzania, under which UK naval assets will be able to transfer suspected pirates caught at sea for prosecution in the Tanzanian courts. That has been followed as recently as last Friday with the signature of our Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of Mauritius on a new MOU between us and the Government of Mauritius, which will put UK money into Mauritian prisons and ensure that the Mauritian Government will be able to take more suspected pirates for detention and prosecution. Most important of all, the point being put to us by all these countries is that they will detain pirates and prosecute them, but they do not want to go to the expense of imprisoning them; they believe that those convicted should be imprisoned in Somalia or Somaliland.

[Rory Stewart]

Will the Minister reflect a bit on the gap that has emerged between the objective—governance, rule of law and state stability—and the programmes we are implementing, which are relatively small-scale development programmes, such as fish markets and youth clubs? There is a danger in trying to connect £2 million development projects to the much grander objectives of creating a stable Somali state.

[Mr Bellingham]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for intervening. I was referring specifically to those fast impact schemes in the coastal communities. Of course, DFID has a very large development programme in Somaliland. It has also committed a lot of money to south and central Somalia. Much of the money in Somaliland will go into big ticket items around education, health and infrastructure. In Somalia itself—the south and central regions—one of the tragedies is that so much money has had to be spent on relieving famine and on humanitarian relief. If a fraction of that money had been put into building communities, infrastructure and public services, a lot of those services would be far more advanced.

I take on board what my hon. Friend said just now and in his excellent contribution about diplomats having limited reach, the shortage of language skills, the lack of attention being applied and, indeed, the fact that perhaps we are getting a bit too over-optimistic and giddy about what might be achievable. However, I say to him that throughout the work done since I took over this brief in May 2010—I have worked with the Foreign Secretary and received a lot of encouragement from our Prime Minister—I think we have been realistic about our expectations and we have been careful not to raise expectations.

On the other hand, the reason the London conference was well timed is that for the first time for a generation—almost since the events of “Black Hawk Down”—we are seeing areas of relative stability throughout Somalia. In Somaliland, a functioning Government, who were elected in a free and fair election, are becoming a positive development partner. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham pointed out, the African Union Mission in Somalia is making substantial strides in freeing Mogadishu from the curse of al-Shabaab. Progress is being made by Ethiopians in the west of the country around Beledweyne and Baidoa—indeed, AMISOM will soon be sending forces into the west of the country. We are also seeing progress by the Kenyans in the south, and they are about to re-hat as AMISOM troops, as soon as they sign an MOU with the UN.

We have got those areas of relative stability. The key now is to try to win the peace. We do have diplomats—in fact, our new ambassador to Somalia, Matt Baugh, is a brilliant linguist—so we are intensifying our engagement and involvement. When I was recently in Mogadishu, I had a chance to select the site for our new embassy. It is still just a building plot, but our plan is to build an embassy and to have more activity and presence on the ground, as security allows. Again, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for International Development and I have been to Mogadishu. We are sending people in regularly and they stay overnight in the UN compound.

I also point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border that it is all very well the international community doing its bit, but it is crucial that the Somalis also accept the scale of the challenge and make the most of the opportunities. That is why we must have an ongoing political process. The transition period of the Transitional Federal Government comes to an end in August. It is essential that we get new political structures in place that are more inclusive and more representative. We have recently had the international conference in Istanbul, which the Foreign Secretary and I attended, and there will be another international contact group meeting in Rome in about a month’s time. The whole international community is agreed that the transition will come to an end. The new constituent assembly will soon be in place and it will elect a new parliament and appoint a new Government. I suggest to my hon. Friend that when we have a new Government and a new parliament who are more representative and inclusive, and who carry more support among those areas of stability within Somalia, we will have an opportunity to move the whole process forward. If that is combined with the international community’s weight and effort in development and assistance on the ground, there will be grounds, not for getting carried away, but for cautious optimism and for confidence that it is worth our while to continue the investment and efforts we put in.

Returning to burden sharing in the region, we recently signed a statement of burden-sharing principles with the Governments of Tanzania and Mauritius, with whom, as I mentioned, we have new arrangements; the Seychelles, with whom we have an effective MOU; and Kenya, with whom we continue to work closely to discuss the prospects for a resumption of our bilateral arrangements.

I understand that when the Foreign Affairs Committee recently visited Kenya, it had discussions with Kenya’s Foreign Minister and, probably, Professor George Saitoti, who was tragically killed in a helicopter crash a few days ago, about whether we could get the bilateral arrangement for the transfer of pirates back on track. I am grateful to the Chairman of the Committee for the work that he has done, and I hope that Kenya will not only carry on accepting pirates, but reactivate the MOU, because it is incredibly important. Kenya is a big regional player and it is important that it does that.

Another positive development to come out of the London conference was the agreement between the Seychelles and Somaliland to start the process of post-trial transfers of prisoners, whereby pirates convicted in the Seychelles can be transferred to Somaliland to serve their sentences. The first such transfer of 17 prisoners took place in late March, and we understand that further exchanges are being planned for the coming months. Puntland is also in the process of agreeing similar arrangements with the Seychelles, and we are pleased that Mauritius has recently made progress in setting up a similar scheme with both Puntland and the Transitional Federal Government. All that important work means that pirates will be able to be taken to those areas for the purposes of detention and prosecution, and they will then be sent to either Puntland or Somaliland to serve their sentences.

The main criticism from countries in the region was that they did not want to bear the cost of imprisoning such people—many of whom are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment—and that they should serve their sentence in Somalia, so that problem is being addressed. I am very pleased that the UK Government have been able to put a lot of money into building up the judicial capacity. I thank the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is one of our key partners on that agenda.

This work must continue. Obviously, it will cost money and a number of countries have made a few contributions. So far, we have been the single largest bilateral donor to the programme, and we are calling on other countries to step up to the plate. A number of commitments were made at the London conference, with the promise of money to go into such work. We hope that that money will be forthcoming, particularly from those larger countries that have made such commitments.

As has been pointed out, the piracy business model is incredibly lucrative. The risk-reward ratio shows that the risks to the pirates have been minimal hitherto, but the rewards have been absolutely huge. We think that the figure that I gave of £200 million-plus paid out in ransom so far is very conservative and that the true figure could be far higher. It is important that we bear down on the kingpins of piracy. The London conference saw two developments in that area, and they complement our existing work on tracking the financial flows of piracy.

First, the Prime Minister announced the international taskforce on piracy ransom payments, which brings together experts from a number of countries with different experiences involving the payment of ransoms. It will look at what more could be done to tackle the growing size and use of ransom payments. The taskforce will consider the views of a wide range of key organisations, particularly our partners in the shipping industry, and will form recommendations that will then be put to the international community. We expect the taskforce to conclude its work by the autumn.

I say to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee that nothing is predetermined and to the hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce) that we do not have any set, predetermined ideas. We hope to work with the shipping industry and carry it with us. Countries face dilemmas when addressing ransom payments, and we have heard today some powerful speeches outlining the arguments for and against. The bottom line is that the UK Government’s position is strong and consistent: we do not outlaw ransom payments—we have not banned them—but neither do we facilitate or encourage them.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that most countries that do facilitate the payment of ransoms have had more personnel kidnapped in Africa, more smaller vessels pirated and more people taken hostage than the UK. I do not think that it is an accident that we have a robust line on this. We as a Government will not facilitate it. If pirates or hostage-takers take a Brit hostage, they will know that the UK Government will not come up with a cheque, unlike some countries.

I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Cheltenham that if a Government condone and facilitate the payment of ransoms, that will only encourage more pirates and hostage takers. However, I entirely take on board the point made by the hon. Member for Falkirk, who touched on the tragic case of a merchant vessel that has been pirated and the ransom not paid. The crew members are rotting in hell, which is an appalling situation.

I assure Members that what has been said in this debate will be fed through to the taskforce. Nothing has been predetermined, and this is very much a work in progress. We will work with and listen to the industry. I have read the brief sent to the House by the Chamber of Shipping. It is a powerful set of representations, which, of course, we will not ignore. We are a great maritime nation and the last thing we want is for those companies in our shipping industry, which plays a vital part in our economy and is part of our growth programme, to go offshore, away from the UK.

Secondly, the Prime Minister signed an agreement with the Government of the Seychelles to work together to create the Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions Intelligence Co-ordination Centre, or RAPPICC—what an appalling acronym—in the Seychelles. The project will bring together a number of international partners to pull together the material that we have to create evidence packages to bring those behind the piracy business model—the negotiators, the financiers, the co-ordinators and the kingpins—to justice.

At the London conference, Holland announced that it would provide €300,000 and two members of staff to RAPPICC. Other countries have also promised money, and we hope that the United States will go firm on its promise to commit. Furthermore, as I think the hon. Member for Cheltenham pointed out, we have seconded a director to RAPPICC from the Serious Organised Crime Agency. While the new building is being built, the centre will start its work in temporary offices in the Seychelles from this week. We hope that the new building will be finished by the end of the year and that my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister will be able to open it.

The new initiatives will complement what we already do with our partners to track and tackle the financial flows of piracy. We are keen supporters of working group 5 of the contact Group on Piracy off the coast of Somalia—the working group is chaired by Italy—which is charged with co-ordinating and driving forward international activity to track and stop the money.

We are committed to the work of the financial action taskforce, in which we work with regional partners to establish effective regimes against money laundering and illicit financing. We continue to encourage a greater flow of information from our partners in industry to ensure that all possible levers can be utilised to follow and stop the money, and stop those behind the practice of piracy. We need to do more to understand those flows, to interpret them better, to intercept and disrupt them, and to use all mechanisms at our disposal, including examining money laundering laws in many different countries and the work of Interpol. I hope that RAPPICC will help us raise our game substantially.

In conclusion—I have probably spoken for too long already—Her Majesty’s Government will continue our multi-dimensional approach to tackling and undermining the different parts of the piracy model. Progress is being made. There is no question but that pirates have had a very tough time, because while the number of attacks has not been reduced, the number of successful attacks has reduced substantially. Navies have become more robust in their response and, as I have mentioned, action and logistics on land have sent a very strong signal. The industry is now incredibly professional, and the fact that not one single vessel with private armed guards on board has been successfully hijacked is a very strong and good sign of why we changed the guidelines and of our ongoing work.

As so many hon. and right hon. Members have pointed out, the problem is the result of a failed state. It is one of the symptoms of a country, Somalia, which has gone from bad to worse. On the other hand, as I have said, a number of strong indicators mean that we can be, not ridiculously, but cautiously optimistic that we can look forward to progress on the ground in Somalia. Indeed, if places such as Puntland have proper local government in place and their militias and police are able to drive pirates out of those communities, and if the same happens in Galmudug, the solution lies on the land. The African Union Mission In Somalia has taken control of Afgooye, which is north of Mogadishu; it is looking, through new consulate operations, to head south to Kismayo, and on the way, hopefully, take a number of villages and towns that have currently hosted pirates. If we can then reinforce that by building up stability and putting in substantial amounts of money—not penny-packet sums, which obviously are needed in some places to reward communities who have driven away the pirates, but substantial development—into services, infrastructure and building that community, the Somalis deserve nothing less, and by working with them we can give them a better future.

The Committee can be proud of its work in contributing impressively to the debate. We will go on working with it to find solutions to this scourge, this problem, this evil. I look forward to further exchanges with the Chairman and the members of his Committee; I thank them again for their work.

Falkland Islands Referendum

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister told the House a short while ago, British taxpayers’ money is not going to Argentina through World Bank loans. Our position is that any bid by any country for a World Bank loan must be considered on a case-by-case basis, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, who leads on such policy decisions, will have careful regard to the hon. Lady’s comments.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

As a number of Members have mentioned, the Government of Argentina will inevitably try to portray the result of the referendum as somehow rigged. May I say, in support of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), that in addition to having representatives from Latin America look at the elections, we should focus on observers from Commonwealth countries, a large number of which have not been fully supportive of the position of the Falkland Islands, because that will send a firm, credible message to the world?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I think that it is important that, if at all possible, the observers include people from countries whose Governments have perhaps been sceptical in the way he describes.

North Africa and the Near and Middle East

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Only two countries in the world have gone back to having a monarchy—I am sure that my hon. Friend knows which. One is Spain, as you rightly mouthed just now, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the other is Cambodia, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) indicates.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

What about Great Britain?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I meant foreign countries. Spain and Cambodia are the two I was told about. To answer my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), it is not necessarily probable that the Libyan people would vote for a constitutional monarch—it is a possibility, but not a probability—but none the less they should be consulted, rather than the national transitional council stating unilaterally that there should be a presidential system.

I move on now to the trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. I would never dream of defending Gaddafi or any of his family, sycophants or supporters, but I think it is very important that this man gets a fair trial. Some of the Sunday newspapers have reported that people were saying that, if he was not found guilty and hanged, they would leave the country. Our newspapers must do everything possible not to prejudice the trial, because no matter what the individual may be guilty of, it is extremely important that he is given a fair trial. I very much hope that the Libyan authorities—I make this point to the Minister—will allow International Criminal Court lawyers to be present throughout the trial.

I was glad to hear from the Foreign Secretary that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), has raised with Niger the importance of its acquiescing in international standards and handing over remnants of the Gaddafi regime and family members who have sought sanctuary in that country, as they have done in Algeria.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I agree; I said merely that I hoped ICC lawyers would be able to observe the proceedings.

I have received disturbing evidence about the equipment that some of our European partners sold to the Gaddafi regime. I will not go into too many details, but it helped Colonel Gaddafi to eavesdrop on his citizens and on citizens of this country. That is something that will come out in the coming days and weeks, but I should be interested to find out from the Minister everything that was exported to Gaddafi over those 13 years and might have assisted him in oppressing his own people. Mr Blair told us that the great rapprochement and engagement in the tent in the desert were to ensure that that man gave up his weapons of mass destruction, but from recent newspaper articles we see that vast stocks of chemical weapons have been found in Libya, so Colonel Gaddafi was really just playing a game of cat and mouse with the previous Government.

I very much hope to see progress on Lockerbie now. We all know that Mr Megrahi is not solely culpable of the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil since the second world war, so I very much hope that the Minister and the Foreign Office will do everything possible to ensure that the Libyan authorities comply fully in helping us to get to the bottom of that case—and the case of PC Yvonne Fletcher.

I turn now to Mauritania. I alluded to the fact that on a recent visit to the country, as well as meeting politicians I spent a little time standing on the coast, watching the fishermen bring in their fish. It was quite extraordinarily difficult for them to drag—literally drag—their small boats on to the sand to get their catch.

The European Union and, in particular, Spanish vessels are pillaging the waters off the coast of Mauritania, sucking out all the fish and impoverishing the lives of local fishermen. Many promises that the EU made as a result of the agreement to which I referred earlier have not been fulfilled. One was that a pier or jetty would be built near Nouakchott for the local fishermen, but that has still not been put in place, 10 years on. I raise the issue with the Minister, as I very much hope that he will use his good offices to find out what the European Union’s promise of assistance was to the local fishermen, and that he will do everything he possibly can to help them.

My trip to Mauritania was the first by a British Member of Parliament since one by the Father of the House in 1960, and the Mauritanians were so amazed by this that they laid out the red carpet. I had more than two hours with the President—[Laughter.] My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) laughs but this is a serious matter, because the people there feel neglected by the United Kingdom and wish to engage far more with us. The problem is that Governments of various political colours have neglected the whole of Francophone north Africa over the decades, and that has led to a lack of engagement in terms of trade and co-operation. Luckily, I studied French—that was my degree—at university, so I could converse quite happily with the Mauritanians in French and had to translate for the rest of my delegation, but we need more engagement.

On my other visit, to Tunisia, I found when I met representatives of its chambers of commerce that only 52 British companies trade there, in contrast with 1,700 French companies—52 to 1,700. There are very similar statistics regarding Morocco. I have met Lord Green, the new Minister for Trade and Investment, who does an excellent job, but I very much hope that somebody who is a fluent French speaker will be appointed to lead a massive export drive to the Francophone countries.

[Rory Stewart]

Would my hon. Friend perhaps consider himself for that job?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am far too junior and inexperienced, but I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comment.

I feel passionately about Saudi Arabia. As chairman of the all-party group on Saudi Arabia, I am pleased to inform the House that next month I will lead the largest ever parliamentary delegation to the kingdom, with 16 Members of Parliament, including many Labour MPs, as well as Conservatives. I am looking forward to that trip immensely. I have been battling against extraordinary ignorance about and prejudice against Saudi Arabia for many years, and that includes ignorance and prejudice from British Members of Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

How very jealous George Canning would have been in 1823 to see the scope and ambition of this debate. Triumphant from Waterloo and Trafalgar, with the greatest economy and Navy in the world, he hesitated to get involved in affairs in France and Spain, whereas we have skipped in this debate from toxic waste in Somalia to minorities in Sudan, the situation in Yemen and the Baha’is in Iran. We have touched elegantly on the military in Syria and in Egypt, on elections in Morocco, on Islamists in Libya and in Tunisia, on refugees in Niger and on the fishermen of Mauritania. How jealous he would have been.

Given that we can pack the House for a debate on the fair fuel tariff, one would imagine that we would now find the journalists leaning over the railings, the Gallery packed and the House stuffed, with everyone desperate to get involved at this moment of deep crisis when the middle east and north Africa are teetering on the edge, and Europe is in trouble—but no. Why not? It is because at the heart of our problems in the middle east and north Africa is the situation of Britain for the past few decades. As our relative economic power declines, our ambitions become ever greater and our rhetoric becomes ever more inflated. We wish to get involved in countries that would have been obscure to us at the time of our greatest power, yet at the same time we hollow out the institutions on which we depend to deliver our policy.

Let us consider the middle east and north Africa and what we have done in this Arab spring. On Tunisia, the reality is that we had abandoned not just Mauritania but Tunisia itself to French diplomacy and French policy. In Libya, we contented ourselves with kissing Gaddafi on the cheeks and handing out a doctorate to his son at the London School of Economics and our connection with Egypt was contained to snorkelling as guests of Mubarak in Sharm el Sheikh.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

This is not a point about snorkelling. My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) is making an impassioned and eloquent speech, but surely he must recognise that the reason why we are more committed to intervention in such areas—more so than in imperial times—is that we are part of a wider comity of nations. We are part of the UN and of NATO and as part of that joint venture we are committing and projecting ourselves in the region. In imperial times, such circumstances did not prevail. We acted unilaterally and, as he is right to say, in many instances we chose not to intervene and interfere in the internal politics of other countries.

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, but the problem is not our desire or our commitment to the multilateral system but our capacity and what we can actually do. Our engagement with the United Nations and NATO and our various grand views about globalisation and economics lead us to believe that we should be involved in all those areas, but what capacity do we have to deliver, what understanding do we have of those specific countries and what power do we have in our hands to do one half of the things that have been discussed in the Chamber today?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Surely my hon. Friend must acknowledge and accept that the recent intervention in Libya was a great success. If it were not for our Prime Minister getting that resolution and pushing it through the UN and past President Obama’s reticence, the bloodbath that Gaddafi would have pursued would not have been avoided.

[Rory Stewart]

I agree absolutely, yet it was, to quote the Duke of Wellington, a “damn close run thing”. We stretched our military sinews and our diplomatic resources hard to achieve that success in Libya. We did it by pulling Dominic Asquith in from Egypt and John Jenkins; we gathered almost all the Arabists at our command to deal with one single country of 6 million people in north Africa.

[Mike Gapes]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about the overstretch in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Does he also recognise that we did what we did in Libya in conjunction with France, that the lead was taken by a number of European countries, working together, and that his vision, which goes back 150 to 200 years, is of a very different world? The future for British foreign policy is not just in the United Nations but in co-operation with our European partners.

[Rory Stewart]

I would agree absolutely if I did not fear that Europe itself is hollowing out its foreign services in exactly the same way as we have hollowed out ours. German diplomats, French diplomats and Italian diplomats recognise that they are pinned in their offices with 400 e-mails in their in-tray, unable to study languages, unable to get out into the rural areas or to collect the political intelligence on which their Governments depend. They are looking in dismay at an External Action Service that is clearly not delivering and they are looking to countries such as Britain for the inspiration and leadership that they might find it increasingly difficult to receive.

Look at what we face. So far, we have dealt with just the second division but we are now entering the premier league. We are looking at countries such as Syria, countries of astonishing complexity with Orthodox Christians, Catholic Christians, Druze, Sunni groups, Alawite groups, orthodox Shi’a groups, Yazidis on the border and Kurds in the north. We are looking at a country such as Egypt that is set fair to become a modern Pakistan on the edge of Europe: a country where the economy is faltering, the military is grabbing on to power and terrorism is appearing on the fringes. We look, too, at Iran, split between its rural and urban populations, with nuclear weapons being developed.

What do we have to put against that? What will happen when we move with our team from the second division into the premier league? Are we up to the job? The answer is that, in many ways we are not. We are in a bad situation. Due to duty of care regulations, our diplomats have become increasingly isolated and imprisoned in embassy compounds. It is increasingly difficult for a British diplomat in a country such as Afghanistan to spend a night in an Afghan village house and even to travel outside the embassy walls without booking a security team in advance. When we attempt to compensate for that, as we did in Iraq by relying on Iraqi local translators or employing Iraqi staff to perform the jobs that our diplomats were not permitted to do, we find ourselves the subject of a class action suit from a British law firm, arguing that we owe exactly the same duty of care to our Iraqi locally engaged staff that we owe to our British staff, thereby tying us up absolutely.

[Laura Sandys]

Let us think about what we used to do under the colonial service, although that has lots of negative connotations: people lived in those countries for years—perhaps 10 years—and spent time travelling the country, getting to know all the different levers, whether they were economic, political or otherwise. Does my hon. Friend think that the structure in our FCO, which involves postings of two to three years, is fit for purpose when we consider the more complex and dynamic environments in which we and those diplomats must operate?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good point. The analogy with the colonial period is a very dangerous one and we do not want to recreate some form of colonial service. The structures of imperial control are no longer relevant, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right about the complexity and unpredictability of the modern global world. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) misleads himself, perhaps, in that he imagines the modern global world as some uniform space in which the fundamental language is English and the fundamental symbol is the mathematics of the banker. In fact, the modern globalised world is defined by complexity and by specificity. The very failed states that we consider tend to be among the most isolated and most alien societies with which we have to engage. That brings us to the problem of the Michael Jay reforms.

Those reforms are the second problem that our Foreign Office has inherited. Since 2001, a consecutive series of permanent under-secretaries have shifted the balance at the Foreign Office from languages and area expertise towards management jargon and an increasing insistence on the “best practices” of the corporate world. All that has meant that because of the very precise details of the “core competences” required for promotion to the senior grades and the appointment procedures, the Foreign Office, instead of giving linguistic and political experts that sense of status and pride, is rewarding people for their ability to deal not with people outside the embassy walls but those within the embassy itself.

That all takes place within a broad context. As the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) suggested, we operate in a multilateral world in which we are very dependent on other partners. Those partners, too, are being hollowed out. We hope that we can depend, as our political service collapses, on journalists, but the newspapers are collapsing and their foreign correspondents are being drawn back to their capitals. There is less and less capacity on the ground.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend knows, probably better than anyone in this House, the extent to which modern media and modern technology have completely revolutionised the way in which we gather information and deploy our authority. I have listened to the debate for a number of hours now and I was intrigued to discover that people were harking back to colonial times, the empire and that sort of thing. They had nothing like the technology we have today and although I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the need for languages and cultural expertise in the Foreign Office, it is not remotely apparent to me that we should have exactly the same infrastructure today as we had in 1930 or 1880. That model is completely false in today’s environment.

[Rory Stewart]

This is a very tantalising and attractive argument and I can see exactly why it is made. Of course, we should not have the same structure as we had in 1880 or 1930—and nor do we—but the notion that technology and the related aspects of the 21st century have somehow transformed our relationship with a country such as Afghanistan is fundamentally misguided. In the recent Helmand police intake, eight out of 100 people could write their name or recognise numbers up to 10. There is no electricity between Herat and Kandahar. The notion of a Facebook revolution in Afghanistan, Somalia or South Sudan is a distant fantasy. The fact that in the British embassy in Kabul two years ago, there were exactly two people who had passed a Dari exam at an operational level and that there was not a single Pashto speaker is testimony to the fact that we believe we live in a globalised world in which it is unnecessary for us to study other people’s languages or understand their culture.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

With respect to my hon. Friend and the House, I have always said in relation to these issues that linguistic competence is absolutely vital, and it is a scandal that the Foreign Office should have turned its back on that. He must acknowledge, as I think he is doing, that the technological environment in which we operate allows us to have certain levers and information that we did not have 15 or 20 years ago.

[Rory Stewart]

I could not agree more—it certainly allows us to have a great deal of information. However, at the fundamental core of the Foreign Office’s work, which concerns politics and power, there appears to be a problem. The same problem was apparent when nobody challenged the Government’s policy on Iraq, which is the single most humiliating mess into which the British Government have got themselves since Suez. Not a single senior British diplomat publicly or even privately challenged the Prime Minister on that issue. Why? Because at the same time as we imagine that everything is manipulable through technocratic processes and technology, the knowledge and the confidence that came from country immersion and language is lacking, as is the confidence that would allow one to challenge power.

[Laura Sandys]

I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous with his time. Let us look at what the Pentagon did about four or five years ago. It put a huge amount of investment into technology and the technological retrieval of data, and then it decided that many of its decisions, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or internationally, had failed because the system did not have enough human intelligence. Technology can deliver a certain level of intelligence, but ultimately we need people who really understand the area to interpret that information and to add that human dimension.

[Rory Stewart]

I could not agree more. This is not an either/or situation. I am deliberately being somewhat, or even intensely, polemical, so let me try to be more reasonable. Technology is not irrelevant and nor is it the case that the world has not changed since the 19th century, but it is important to recognise that the countries that pose the most trouble for us are often those we find the most difficult to understand. It is in precisely those contexts that deep knowledge of those countries and their power structures and relationships is required, and I think the same would almost certainly be true if one was trying to run a business selling into those markets. That applies not only to our diplomats’ relationships with politicians and a Cabinet but to their relationships with rural populations and opposition groups. All of that would put Britain into the state of grace and provide the insurance policy on which this country depends.

Moving towards a solution and a conclusion, the solution must lie in pushing ahead with the very reforms that the Minister and the Foreign Secretary have undertaken, but to push them harder and faster. The diplomatic excellence initiative that the Foreign Secretary has launched is a very good beginning. Even today, however, one still meets political officers in embassies who say that they cannot see how that will help them with promotion. They say, “Focusing on policy work is not going to get me promoted because you haven’t changed the core competences. It’s management of two people and the DTI staff that will get me my next job.” Those are the things we need to address.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

In Afghanistan and, indeed, Iraq, I felt very sorry for the previous Government because one often had the feeling that they were not being told the truth at every opportunity. On a Defence Select Committee trip to Afghanistan, I remember being briefed by a guy in the Foreign Office who gave us the normal line that everything was going terribly well but that there were challenges. Six weeks later, he sidled up to me in a restaurant and said, “Adam, I’m really sorry about that briefing I gave you, but the problem is that no one gets promoted for telling it how it is.”

[Rory Stewart]

This is fundamental because we live in a world in which there is not enough challenge in the system. There are not enough checks or balances. I have mentioned that our newspapers have fewer and fewer foreign correspondents. The quality of foreign reporting in Britain is not as good today as it was 20 years ago because we simply are not investing as much in foreign reporting. At the same time, the military is increasingly preponderant in the United States, and brings with it the inherent optimism and determination to say, “We’ve inherited a dismal situation but we have the resources and the mission to deliver a decisive year,” pushing aside the civilian advice. We are flattered by English-speaking, upper-class Afghans, Iraqis and Libyans who feed our fantasies and tell us what we want to hear.

In that context, and in the context of the temptation across Europe and the United States to have more and more centralised power, we need our Foreign Office to act as a check and balance. We need it to challenge policy and to speak truth to power. Above all, we need it to say not just what the UK interest is, what our ethical limits are or what we are not prepared to do morally, but, most fundamentally of all, what we cannot do. When somebody comes forward and says, in country X, “In this failed state, we will create governance, the rule of law and civil society,” it should be the job of our Foreign Office to ask “How?”, “With whom?” and “With what money?” It should ask, “What possible reason have you to believe that you can achieve this grandiloquent objective you have established?”

We also need to explain matters to the public, because this entire rhetoric is the rhetoric of a poker game. It is the rhetoric, perpetually, of “raise” or “fold”, and of driving people to ask, “Have you met your $3 billion objective on trade this year?” or “Have you or have you not set up the rule of law and civil society?” and if not, “Why have we got an embassy in Mongolia? Why have we got to bother having any representation in Peru? Why don’t we drag it all back to London and do it down the internet?” The way to cease that is to be honest—not just internally but with the British public as well.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend raises a particularly pertinent point about the operations of the Foreign Office. He will remember that in times gone by, that was the Foreign Office’s job and it consistently said no. If we are to believe the memoirs of politicians, it consistently set itself as a roadblock to ministerial action and said, “No you can’t do that,” to Ministers who wanted to intervene or act purposively. He will also remember that a former Conservative Prime Minister once commented that she understood that the Agriculture Department looked after farmers, that the Labour Department looked after workers and that the Foreign Office looked after foreigners. It is well known that the Foreign Office has been the check that my hon. Friend describes.

[Rory Stewart]

The Foreign Office has a very distinguished tradition of doing that. With many of the things it challenged, it did so correctly. It challenged Lord Salisbury’s insane idea of launching an invasion into Afghanistan in 1879, it challenged Lord Grey’s absurd ideas about secret treaties with France in 1912 and 1913, and it challenged the absurdity of Suez. In all those ways it acted responsibly, but increasingly it is no longer performing that role.

Of course the politicians can, when they want, overwhelm the Foreign Office, push it aside and push ahead, and that is fine, but—on this, I think, we should conclude—we are now in a very strange position in this country. We are hollowed out. We are facing an enormous crisis. Europe is teetering on the edge. The German Chancellor is invoking ghosts of European destruction. The middle east and north Africa have seen more tottering regimes and dynasties than in any period since the end of the first world war. At this time we need to remember that that very modest investment in the Foreign Office—only £1 billion a year on its core costs, if we exclude the British Council and the World Service—is an extremely wise insurance and investment.

We need to remember at times like this how vital is the ability to set out our limits, to set out a strategy and vision, to explain exactly, as this Government are doing, and to continue to explain more clearly to the public, exactly what Britain believes and what our strategy is—that peculiar mixture of pragmatism and belief in rights, a belief not just in ideals but in common sense, expressed in a world that understands that today of all times a residence can be much more powerful than a regiment, a Tuareg specialist than a Tornado, an Arabist than an aircraft carrier, and that the Foreign Office is our strength, our nation, and our defence.

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

We are leaving, and that is a very difficult and painful fact. We are not leaving entirely, but we are leaving combat operations, as the Prime Minister has made clear. It is the correct decision, but it has troubling implications, because the underlying logic is that we will cease combat operations by the end of 2014 even if human rights are not established, even if al-Qaeda is not defeated and even if the Taliban are not defeated. Why is this difficult? It is difficult because the military, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, fundamentally do not agree.

I have calculated that I have been in and out of Afghanistan 57 times since 2001, and consistently every general has said, “It’s been a tough situation but we have a new strategic plan requiring new resources, and this year will be the decisive year.” It was said in 2003 by General McNeill; General Barno said in 2004 said that that would be the decisive year; General Abizaid also said 2004 would be the decisive year; 2005 was described by General Richards, now Chief of the Defence Staff, as the crunch year for the Taliban; 2006 was described by General McNeill, returning, as the decisive year; 2007 was described by General McKiernan as the decisive year; at the end of 2008, General Stanley McChrystal said that they were knee-deep into the decisive year, and this was echoed by General Petraeus in 2009; our former Foreign Secretary described 2010 as the decisive year; and 2011 was described by Guido Westerwelle, the German Foreign Minister, as the decisive year.

Why is it difficult to challenge the military orthodoxy? It is difficult for real and moving reasons. It is difficult because we have lost a lot of people—we have lost a lot of lives and spent a lot of money; it is difficult because we have made promises to the Afghan people; and it is difficult because we have developed great fears about Afghanistan, fears about our own national security, fears about Pakistan and fears about our credibility and reputation in the world.

Therefore, when a politician meets a general with a row of medals on his chest, coming in and saying, “Just give me another two years”—exactly what General Petraeus is saying at the moment—“don’t drop the troop levels, and we can guarantee that we will reach a situation where the Taliban will never be able to come back,” it is very difficult to disagree.

Withdrawing is the most difficult thing. In Vietnam, and in Afghanistan for the Soviet Union, more troops were lost after the decision to withdraw than in the entire period leading up to the decision. By 1968, the United States had come out of an election determined to withdraw from Vietnam, and Henry Kissinger was obsessed, as we are now, with a political settlement with the enemy. He begged the North Vietnamese to give him the political terms that would allow him to withdraw with honour.

After Gorbachev made the decision to leave Afghanistan in 1986, more Soviet troops were committed to a surge and more Soviet troops were killed, because of the real problems of fear, credibility and loss. So the Prime Minister is absolutely right to set a firm date for withdrawal.

Let us hope that by the end of 2014 we have achieved the things that we are looking for. Let us hope—I, too, join in this hope—that the Taliban have been defeated, that al-Qaeda can never again come back, that human rights have been established, that the Afghan Government are credible, effective and legitimate, that the Afghan national army and police are able to look after themselves, and that there is no risk from Pakistan.

Let us hope. I fear that those things may not be achievable, but we need to have the courage to go ahead regardless at the end of 2014. We need to have the courage to say that we must leave at the end of 2014 regardless because—this is the very difficult thing to say—we no longer believe that we are likely to achieve those objectives. If we have not achieved those objectives by the end of 2014 and the general comes back, as the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) suggests, and says, “Just give me another two weeks,” or, “Just give me another two months, it’s all going to be fine,” in the end we have to say no.

Why do we not say no? We do not say no because it is horrible—because if I were to stand up in this House, for example, and say, “Afghanistan matters, but there are other countries that matter more,” that, “If we are worried about terrorism, Pakistan is more important,” and that, “If we are worried about regional stability, Egypt is more important,” there would immediately be a headline, perhaps in The Sun, declaring “MP says Afghanistan doesn’t matter.” A flag-draped coffin would be produced, and the mother of a veteran would step forward and say, “The suggestion is that they died in vain.”

I met the same situation last week, talking to Afghanistan veterans. A man sitting in the front row was missing both his legs, and somebody in the audience said, “Are you suggesting that we have made no progress? Have you not acknowledged what we have done in Helmand? Have you not seen that the bazaar is now open? Are you suggesting that people died in vain?” We have to learn to say that no single soldier dies in vain, regardless. The courage, commitment and honour of our soldiers is connected to their unit and their regiment, not to the fantasies of politicians. We must pay them every form of honour and respect, but we do not honour dead soldiers by piling more corpses on top of them.

To conclude, it is difficult for Britain to lead a withdrawal from Afghanistan. We need to make it something that acknowledges that Britain’s pride and reputation has never been connected with extreme ideological projects. We are not a nation of crusades or great ideological wars, but a nation characterised by scepticism, pragmatism and deep country knowledge. If we get the withdrawal right, it will not go down in history as a symbol of ignorance or cowardice, but will represent our wisdom and our courage in sticking to the decision. There should be a realisation that our motto should be and must remain, “Passionate moderation”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gilbert]

As always, my hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point. I have spoken in the House several times about the hope that the Arab spring is delivering to generations of people who have been excluded from the rights that we take for granted.

As the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) disappeared into Vietnam, you might forgive me for mentioning Iraq briefly, Madam Deputy Speaker. We failed in Iraq; we made fundamental mistakes: de-Ba’athification, disarmament of the local militia and army, and demobilisation of a civic society. They were the wrong choices to take, and it took Iraqi society years to recover from them. To get Afghanistan right we need to learn those lessons. We need to ensure that we do not undermine Afghanistan’s society as it stands.

[Rory Stewart]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman might like to reflect on whether US expenditure of $125 billion a year and the presence of nearly 150,000 foreign troops are not likely to undermine local capacity and Afghan society in exactly the ways that he is warning against.

[Stephen Gilbert]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point, which is why I was encouraged by what our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said earlier today. For every member of our forces leaving, there will be two local people taking those responsibilities forward. If I may touch briefly on recommendation 35 in the report—

Africa and the Middle East

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The right hon. Gentleman has made an important point. We have stepped up our diplomatic contacts with Somaliland. None the less, we must not let that distract us from our efforts and those of other African nations to create greater stability in Somalia overall or threaten the future territorial integrity of Somalia. We are doing what he has described and ensuring that we work with the authorities there, and we will increase the emphasis that we place on that.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

Egypt is clearly far more important to regional stability than Tunisia, but it is a place where, because of its scale, British influence is likely to be quite limited. Tunisia, however, is a place where, with some focus and resources, we could make a symbolic and sustainable difference. Will the Foreign Secretary please explain the principles on which our priorities are determined and our resources allocated between the two?

[Mr Hague]

That is a legitimate question, to which there is no fixed or dogmatic answer. The future of both countries in the light of the Arab spring will be important, and my hon. Friend is right to imply that Tunisia, a much smaller country than Egypt, might find many of the necessary reforms easier to accomplish—certainly, one gets that feeling on visiting Tunisia. So far, Tunisia’s progress towards elections for its constituent assembly and so on have been more pain-free. Nevertheless, in assessing priorities, given the scale of Egypt’s population and influence in the Arab world, and its absolutely vital strategic position in the middle east, we must devote a great deal of our attention and support to Egypt. There is no escape from doing that. Success in the Arab spring—open political institutions and an open economy in Tunisia, but failure in Egypt—would still be a massive failure overall, so we must devote a large proportion of our time and resources to Egypt.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rory Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

Yes, I intend to visit Italy in the next week and this is certainly one of the items that will be on the agenda for discussion.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

T7. Will the Foreign Secretary please confirm the UK’s policy on the use of Predator drones and, in particular, its legal and moral basis?

[Mr Hague]

Our policy is that the use of drones is a matter for the Governments of the United States and Pakistan.