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Middle East

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) on securing this broad-brush debate on developments in the middle east. In applying for it before the summer recess, he was shrewd enough to recognise that events might have moved on and that if he had concentrated on just one area, he might have found the issue resolved. Unfortunately, it was not. However, he opened up a debate in which, as is usual in these debates on the middle east, there is a tremendous amount of passion, and we have advocates speaking on both sides, particularly about Israel and Palestine, and strongly articulating their views. I suppose that I must say that the Liberal Democrat spokesman lived up to the highest reputation of the Liberal Democrats that many of us are used to in these kinds of debates. I shall comment in broad terms on developments in the middle east. When the House adjourned for the summer recess in July, there was great concern across the board about the conflict involving Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, which had dragged Lebanon in, and about wider issues such as the situation in Iraq and the open defiance of Iran. It is impossible for us not to see that those situations are, at different levels, connected, and that Britain has a role to play, although I suspect that that role is limited. There was a feeling in the House—I choose my words carefully—that there appeared to be some drift on the Government’s behalf in July. Indeed, many of us felt that they were reluctant to have the middle east debated on the Floor of the House, and some pressure had to be brought to bear to get such a debate. Over the summer, there have been efforts from the international community to set up some form of stability in southern Lebanon, there has been a lot of commentary about what continues to be a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and there has, of course, been an attempt to persuade the Iranians not to go ahead with the development of nuclear weapons, but that international commitment appears to have been half-hearted, to say the least, and often counter-productive. The question that we must ask about the overarching problem in the middle east is: what role can the British Government play? It is always embarrassing to any British Government, but particularly so to this Government, that while we stand always four-square alongside our major ally, the United States of America, we are the junior partner. There is nothing wrong with being the junior partner, but it would be nice if at times we were told what we are supposed to do before reading about it in the press or hearing about it in the media.