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Terrorism (Foreign Policy Aspects)

: As ever, Sir Nicholas, it is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship. I am pleased that the Foreign Affairs Committee has chosen to hold this debate, which has been of a high quality, into the sixth report of its inquiry into the foreign policy aspects of what it calls the war against terrorism. Before I reply to the many important and insightful points raised by hon. Members in the debate, I welcome the new members of the Committee, including the recently arrived Chairman. The primary role of the Committee is, of course, to scrutinise the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but in performing that task, its members serve—I am sure that you will agree, Sir Nicholas—as unpaid ambassadors for the UK in their many contacts with foreign Governments. Those contacts not only help, I hope, to deepen the Committee's understanding of the challenges facing us in countering terrorism, but build powerful bridges of understanding with the many countries with which we co-operate to reduce the terrorist threat. I was glad to hear comments such as those made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton), who has left the Chamber for the moment, about the sterling work done by many of our diplomats abroad under difficult circumstances. As many hon. Members have said, the threat that we currently face from terrorism is different in many respects from the appalling Irish republican terrorism that we experienced in this country after 1969. The hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) drew our attention to the terrible atrocity at Enniskillen, which was as bad as anything that we could ever imagine being perpetrated in this country. The ferocious and indiscriminate suicide bombing by terrorists in London in July illustrated graphically and tragically that we face a new terrorism. The geographical spread of the terrorist threat is very wide. There were bombings in Sharm al-Sheikh and Bali. I went to look at the monument in Bali. No one could fail to be moved by such an appalling waste of human life, especially young life. There have also been bomb attacks in Bangladesh. That country was not mentioned in today's debate, but I was there about three weeks ago and am probably more worried about it than any other country that I have visited. It is prone to terrorism and gangsters—currently the judiciary are being targeted. Bangladesh could easily become a substitute for Afghanistan, in that it could be open season for all kinds of fundamentalist terrorist organisations. Indeed, it is rapidly heading that way. We need to pay a great deal of attention to that country. In addition, there have been kidnappings in Iraq and Afghanistan. I fervently hope that Mr. Kember and his colleagues will be released. There has been unprecedented and wide-ranging demand that they should be, and I hope that the people who have kidnapped them will see reason and release them. Those attacks, and others that I do not have time to list, do not weaken our resolve or stem our determination. We will not place our enemies on a pedestal. On the contrary, their murderous activities have served to reinforce our commitment to protect our people and prevent the terrorists from achieving their aims. The terrorists who now seek to bring death to our streets have no positive vision of the future. They trade in human misery, but our values, including the strength of our diverse society, are stronger than the values of those who glory in destruction. We heard something about those values in our debate this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) rightly talked about the absolute centrality of not taking our eye off the ball for one moment, and other hon. Members have rightly said that we cannot win the war by military means. I am old enough to remember many, many guerrilla wars. It was fascinating to listen to the hon. Member for New Forest, East talking about the war in Malaysia. I join him in saying that I am not sure what we in this country would have made of that war if it had been transmitted live 24 hours a day. Every British soldier who died and every atrocity that was committed, and it was a war that was marked by atrocities, would have been headline news. We must think about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) remarked that perhaps this is a very different time and that comparisons are difficult to make, but I was very glad that the hon. Gentleman made that comparison. I heard in Afghanistan a few days ago that there is great respect for British troops, for Customs and Excise officials and for all the other people in Afghanistan who are working to train the Afghanis to build capacity in their departments so that they can take on roles in security and elsewhere. The biggest fight of all, to which the Liberal spokesman the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) drew attention, is to inculcate a sense that one cannot have democracy without respect for human rights. That is sometimes difficult to understand. We have heard about some of the fears hon. Members have about southern Iraq, the politicisation of the police, and the factions that are using parts of the police force to carry out their vendettas and some very cruel acts. We must, without question, challenge that every step of the way. We will have real problems if we do not adhere to those values and basic human rights. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn must catch a plane, but I hope that I shall be able to address some of the points that he made about Guantanamo Bay and other places before he leaves. I know that he feels strongly about it and he is right to use the term ““double standards””. We cannot be seen to be committing troops and our brave young people who work for the Department for International Development in difficult circumstances if at the same time we are seen to be complicit in denying people their basic human rights. That is crucial. The argument is complex. I am not saying that there are not people in Guantanamo Bay and other places who are extremely dangerous. We have them in this country. I worry a great deal, as the hon. Member for New Forest, East does, about where we go in this debate. I have been trying to negotiate my way around the problem of the Maghreb and thinking about how we may return some of those people. Not all of them are terrorists, by the way; some of them are simply gangsters. We know of one man from Morocco who has political asylum in this country and has swindled thousands of Moroccan families out of their life savings. The Moroccans cannot understand why we cannot return this guy. We have to say that we must satisfy our courts that Morocco is not going to abuse his human rights if he is sent back. That is a key question. Libya is one of the most remarkable stories about which I have heard. It appears to want to rejoin the family of nations, but it is difficult to find a monitoring group, such as a non-governmental organisation or a human rights organisation, in Libya, which is emerging from a very different period of its history, that could check on and be seen to be checking properly on prisoners whom we might return there, to ensure that their human rights are not abused. That is a difficult issue and there is no question that it will consume court time and make a lot of lawyers rich in the next few months. Perhaps the Foreign Affairs Committee can consider that subject in the near future.