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> Armed Forces (Parliamentary Approval for participation in
Armed Conflict) Bill
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From House of Commons
Hansard 21st October 2005
Mr. Sadiq Khan (Tooting):
I rise with some nervousness following the reference by my
hon. Friend the. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) to
assassins. I am not sure whether the alleged victim would be
the Bill, or any Member who spoke in favour of it.
Nevertheless, I think that the debate is important, and I
welcomed what was said about trying to avoid party politics.
I do not see the Bill as an anti-war bandwagon on to which
people are jumping. As I said, I think that this debate is
important, and it is important to me for a specific reason.
Until recently, I had a proper job. Before I became a
parliamentary candidate, I did not understand the public's
distrust of politicians. The lack of trust in politicians,
and in the legitimacy of the House and Parliament generally,
is a real issue. I see the Bill, imperfect though it may be,
as a way of reconnecting our constitution with those
outside, and helping to restore trust in politics among a
sceptical public.
We hear allegations about Parliament being treated with
contempt, or about a blurring of the separation of powers.
Ironically, once perfected, the Bill could well help to
rebut those allegations. I do not see the Iraq war debates
as an excuse for the Bill, but I do think that they set a
precedent. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray)
mentioned other precedents. As we heard again a few minutes
ago, in 1939 the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain,
reported the declaration of war to Members of Parliament as
an accomplished fact. Members have also mentioned the Korean
war in the 1950s and the Gulf war of 1992. Having read a
Library research paper, I understand that Members had a
chance to vote on substantive motions only after troops had
been deployed and hostilities begun. There may be some who
say things have always been this way and we have always had
the royal prerogative, so there is no reason to change it.
We had slavery for a while as well, and we abolished that
although things had been done that way for a long time.
Notwithstanding what people say about our stance on child
poverty, the fact that we have always had it is no reason
why we should not try to battle it.
Mr. Gray: Will the hon. Gentleman give
way?
Mr. Khan: I will later, but I want to
make some progress first.
I do not necessarily see the Iraq debates and motions as an
example of system failure that therefore justifies change,
as some have argued. I see the war as an example of how the
Bill will, in practice, not stop the Executive going to war
if they want to. That is the irony in my contribution. I see
in the debates around the war some examples of good
practice, and by that I mean that between the recall of
Parliament in September 2002 and the commencement of
military action on 9 March 2003, there were four debates on
Iraq and three substantive motions, although I hear the
differences expressed about whether two of those motions
were directly related to armed conflict. There were also 11
statements and a general debate on global defence. I do not
necessarily say that the decision of the House would have
been different had the Bill been passed before then, but the
key players would have known at the outset what was required
of them, and that clarity would have led to the transparency
that the public deserve in the United Kingdom in 2005.
At the moment, there is no requirement on Ministers to let
elected Members from all parts of the UK have a say in this
House on deciding whether British armed forces should be
deployed. The Bill makes explicit what was implicit in the
2003 decision by removing the war-making decision from
prerogative powers and vesting the power in Parliament
instead. Doing so will, incidentally, have even more
legitimacy once we reform the House of Lords, and I ask
colleagues on both sides to use their influence to ensure
that the Joint Committee to do that is set up as soon as
possible.
I accept that the Bill is not perfect, and flaws have
already been identified. I am concerned about what will
happen when special deployment forces are required. I am
concerned about some definitions, about how we resolve
conflicts between the Executive and the Commons and about
the content of the report that will come to Parliament. I
believe, with the greatest of respect to my hon. Friend the
Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), that clause 8 needs to
be considered in respect of self-defence issues, because
some concerns can be dealt with in Committee.
David Wright
: Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to think about
other areas, such as our commitment to fellow NATO
countries? The NATO stipulation is that if one of us is
attacked, we are all attacked. That was the basis on which
we took action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan—one
of our NATO allies was attacked by a group of terrorists
sponsored by the regime in power in Afghanistan. There are
difficult technical issues around what constitutes
self-defence, particularly in the NATO context.
Mr. Khan: My hon. Friend makes a good
point, and I draw his attention to clause 10, dealing with
interpretation, which seeks to define armed conflict. I
agree that clause 8 is worthy of more discussion and debate
in Committee because there is real concern, not just about
multinational forces, such as NATO, but about peacekeeping
forces and the role that they play. That will be worth
considering in Committee once the Bill's drafters have the
expert advice that has been so useful on other Bills.
The objection has been made that we will lose the element of
surprise. I hope that that has been rebutted by examples of
previous conflicts in which there clearly has been no
element of surprise, but it is also rebutted by the Bill's
retrospective provisions. Other concerns have been expressed
by colleagues. I hope that as a new Member I am not being
too arrogant by making this point, but the House of Commons
is not equipped to make decisions as important as whether we
should go to war.
The third main objection to the Bill, with which I disagree
profoundly, is that it might encourage our Prime Minister or
a Secretary of State to mislead the House because they would
have to come here to justify their actions. Another
objection to the Bill was that it could have an impact on
advice given by an Attorney-General.
Mr. Gray: Does the hon. Gentleman
agree with the broad principle that the distrust and
disaffection in the political process that he described
earlier has come about as a result of the activities leading
up to the Iraq war—the dossier and all the misleading that
occurred—when there was a vote, but that in previous wars
such as Afghanistan, nobody distrusted what the Prime
Minister was doing? They trusted him, or her, and went along
with the decision. It is only because the Prime Minister had
to come to the House and ask for a vote that he got involved
in the dossiers, the spinning and deceit that have led to
the disaffection that the hon. Gentleman described.
Mr. Khan: No, I do not agree at all.
The public question the role of the House and they question
what the people they elect to Parliament do. If they see
their elected representatives deciding how the armed forces
are to be deployed, that may help to make us more
legitimate.
A fifth objection to the Bill relates to self-defence. I
agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David
Wright) that the issue needs to be considered in Committee.
Recently, I had the joy of re-reading Robin Cook's diary,
"The Point of Departure". One of the reasons that it is
crucial for statutory force to be given to the precedent
established by the Iraq war is that, although on that
occasion members of the Cabinet and a principled Leader of
the House were determined to allow democratically elected
representatives an active role in deciding whether our armed
forces should be involved in the conflict, that may not
always be the case. The Bill would enshrine constitutional
safeguards leading to transparency, which would mean that we
would not need to be dependent on the generosity or beliefs
of those occupying the top positions in the Executive, but
that irrespective of their personalities and beliefs, we and
the other place—to be reformed, I hope, before too
long—would have the right to debate and decide on the
declaration of war and the use of our armed forces in an
armed conflict. That must be a good thing, which is why I
shall support Second Reading.
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