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International Affairs

I am grateful for the Foreign Secretary’s speech and to the Leader of the House for arranging today’s debate, albeit a shorter one than would have been ideal. I put it to the Foreign Secretary that there may be a strong case for a further report to the House next Tuesday after Foreign Office questions and before the House adjourns. The House should take as much time as possible to discuss a matter of central concern to us all before the summer recess—the tragic situation of Lebanon, the heavy and daily loss of life in Israel and Lebanon and the ominous portents for the middle east of the outbreak of fighting of which she has spoken. I want to pull off the perhaps impossible trick of ranging a little more widely than the Foreign Secretary did, while keeping my remarks briefer, as she generously turned her speech into a debate by taking so many interventions. I start, as she did, with the immediate situation. The immediate origins of today’s crisis are clear. She has been clear about where the responsibility lies, and we agree with her about that. One of the first concerns of all of us in the House, as reflected in many interventions, has been the safety of British citizens caught up in the conflict. I join in congratulating our embassy, consular staff and members of the armed forces who have been working around the clock to evacuate those people. We trust that that will continue to gain momentum and that British citizens will be removed from harm’s way. There have been some criticisms of the transmission and quality of the information provided by our embassy in Beirut. If there have been any deficiencies, I hope that the Foreign Office has taken steps to rectify them and to learn any appropriate lessons for the future, including whether other nations were able to act more quickly by chartering passenger ships immediately. There may be lessons to be learned. I hope that the Minister who winds up the debate will be able to say how many British citizens are trapped in areas that have been put out of reach, and what discussions are taking place with the Israeli Government about ensuring their safety. While our first concern is of course British citizens, we must not forget the plight of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people trapped between the incapacity of their Government to tackle the terrorist threat in their midst and the resolve of Israel to attack. It is fair to assume that imminently there will be a serious humanitarian crisis in parts of Lebanon. The Lebanese ambassador told me earlier of potentially half a million displaced people and a serious law and order problem when many of them arrive in Beirut, added to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the occupied territories in the aftermath of the election of Hamas. As Lebanon has only recently begun to emerge from nearly 30 years of the devastation of civil war and to remove a little of the instability that lurks behind its recent transition to democracy, that situation represents the most desperate tragedy for the people of Lebanon. One of the most dangerous outcomes of the crisis would be civil war breaking out again and a democratically accepted Government in Lebanon collapsing. If that happens, Israel could be left with an even worse situation than the one that it currently faces—a possibility that surely underlines the need to take urgent international action now.