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Terrorism (Foreign Policy Aspects)

I start by bringing our attention back to the Select Committee report. A lot hinges on the first sentence of the summary, which states:"““We recommend that in its response to this Report the Government make a statement of how it ensures that it pursues its various foreign policy priorities in ways which take into account their inter-connectedness””." I was struck by the slightly clumsy word ““inter-connectedness”” and I wondered what it meant in this context. To begin with, I feared that it alluded to an excessive attachment to policy tidiness and that policies would need to conform to a degree of consistency just for the sake of it. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realised that coherence is essential if, to quote the excellent words of the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope), we are to win not only the war on terrorism, but the war for human rights. My fear, which the report sets out in great detail, is that if we are too inconsistent and erratic in prosecuting our war for human rights—as he rightly said, it is an indispensable component of our war against terrorism—we risk feeding precisely those forces of anger, radicalism and public alienation that have done so much in other parts of the world to provide the seedbed in which terrorism has been allowed to flourish. I therefore want to highlight two obvious areas in which an inconsistent approach by the Government and the United Kingdom will risk inflaming the public debate and the feeling that seems to propel young Arabs, in particular, towards terrorism. First, I want to talk about extraordinary rendition.