nor under article 51 of the UN charter, which permits a right of self-defence, but that clearly does not apply to a chemical gas attack in eastern Damascus, as that is obviously not an attack on another state. That is why the Prime Minister switched today to quoting long-standing international conventions that prohibit the use of chemical weapons. However, nothing in those conventions inherently allows other nations to take military action against such a state just because it has used chemical weapons—certainly not without wider international sanctions.
There is a second argument: what exactly—I have listened all day—is the aim of the military strike? Will it realistically succeed in achieving those goals? The stated aim is to hit Assad’s military targets, but not the chemical weapons, obviously, for fear of releasing poison gas into the atmosphere. Whatever else, this will certainly not be a short, surgical strike. I remind the House that it took 78 days of continuous bombing of Serbia before the Milosevic regime could be shifted from Kosovo, and only then when the US and UK threatened a land invasion. Even leaving that aside, no one has answered the question what will happen if the attack is made and Assad retaliates by using chemical weapon attacks on perhaps a greater scale, as his sites are all over Syria.
Let us not forget that Syria is no Libya. It is far stronger than Libya, with far more disciplined and larger armed forces, and it is still powerfully backed and reinforced by Russia. At worst, there is a very real danger of the west being sucked into a long-term war that it cannot win and that will only expose its impotence, as has happened already in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
None of that is to say that we should do nothing. We should press to have Assad arraigned before the International Criminal Court. We should freeze Syrian assets throughout the west. We should impose travel bans on all members of the Syrian leadership deemed responsible for the atrocities. Above all, we should press much harder for a regional peace conference, to achieve a settlement involving all the relevant parties, including the Russians. That is the only way to settle this conflict.
8.38 pm
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con): It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher). He made a powerful point, to which I want to return a little later.
May I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Prime Minister for recalling Parliament? Today’s debate was absolutely necessary. It has been a very good debate. Party politics have not been involved. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have argued different points of view. That is what is good about today.
I have been under no pressure from my Whip to vote one way or the other. That is a really good sign. Hon. Members are wrestling today with a very difficult issue. I find these occasions, when we have to decide what is morally right and whether or not we will kill people and whether, by killing them, we save other people in the long run, immensely difficult. I have made it clear to the Prime Minister that I have not made up my mind tonight, and that my decision will rely entirely on the summing up by the Deputy Prime Minister—[Interruption.] I would like to thank the Deputy Prime Minister for spending much of the afternoon listening to the debate.
Thank goodness we have a British parliamentary democracy. We MPs can come here and influence the decision of the Executive. Everybody knows that MPs from both sides of the House have influenced the Prime Minister to change the position of the Executive. In the States, there are 100 Congressmen begging the President to let them debate the issue. We are so much better off in this House.
In response to what the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton said, the question is indeed what we should do to solve this exceptionally difficult problem, because just bombing will not solve it. There needs to be a disproportionate response. What I think President Obama has done is to have got out “The West Wing” series and looked at what President Bartlet would have done under the circumstances. There is exactly that episode: “If we bomb Damascus airport, we are going to kill thousands of people, but they will never do it again.” Of course, the expert then says, “If you do that, the whole world will be against you.” The President asks “Well, what do we do?” and the reply is, “You just bomb a few buildings, which have been emptied because everybody knows which buildings are going to be bombed.” The President says, “That will have no effect,” but the experts say, “Yes, but that is actually what you have to do. You have to have a response.” That may be how it works in America, but it does not work like that here.
I am very interested in one point that I hope the Deputy Prime Minister will help us with tonight. If we vote against the motion and both motions happen to be lost, does it mean that there is no guarantee that there will be a second vote in this House?
8.41 pm
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab): I shall be brief. My principal question to pose to the Treasury Bench is, what happens next if Assad does not stop his outrages? My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) posed that question to the Prime Minister and got no satisfactory answer, so let me pose it to the Deputy Prime Minister.
I refer tangentially to the sensible comments of the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who I see in his place. I also think it important for the Security and Intelligence Committee or an appropriate group of parliamentary colleagues to be apprised of some of the intelligence information. It is hugely important that we understand where the weapons are, whether they are mobile and what volumes we are talking about. We appreciate that a lot of people are working on that.
When we hear the advice coming from such an august body of colleagues, I believe that we will conclude that the guidance in the Attorney-General’s report is almost unachievable; indeed, it will be unachievable. The problem we must face—the House must be mature about it—is that if we are to achieve either the goals set out in the Government’s motion or the programme of events set out in the Opposition amendment, that will almost inevitably mean putting boots on the ground. Now everyone is saying that we are not in favour of that, and I am certain that that is the view across the country. Before we get to a debate next week, it is hugely important that the analysis is done and that the House is apprised of it in a mature way, recognising the need for security considerations.
