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Foreign Affairs and Defence

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I welcome you to your place? It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick). I hope that I shall not detain the House for long, and I am sure the House does too. I wish to talk a little about the details of the recent attack in Mumbai and its implications for our foreign affairs and, consequently, for how we are going to deal with a similar attack in the future—such an attack is not inevitable, but it is highly likely. First, it is worth mentioning that the attack was thought to have been carried out by about 10 or 12 terrorists, but I believe that is wrong—I believe that we will find that many more terrorists were involved. It might be worth dwelling for a moment on the British experience of this sort of thing. For what they were worth, my comments immediately afterwards were that we are not necessarily terribly well prepared to deal with this sort of attack. They were immediately shot down by a number of different individuals—I shall return to that in a moment—but we are not strangers to this form of attack inside this country. It will have been forgotten, but in December 1989, 16 gunmen in an improvised armoured vehicle used automatic weapons, flame-throwers and rocket-propelled grenades to attack a Regular British Army post on the Fermanagh border. They drove off that Regular Army garrison—they were not from my regiment, I hasten to add—killing two of them and capturing a Regular British Army base. When I have said to police sources that it is possible that such an attack could take place, they have replied, ““No, it won't, because they can't get the weaponry to operate inside this country.”” It is worth bearing in mind that No. 10 Downing street was attacked with weapons that were much more powerful than their commercial equivalents. How have we dealt with evolving terrorist tactics in the past? After the Mumbai attacks, a number of voices have been raised up in lamentation saying, ““Actually, things are just fine.”” But are they? We must bear in mind that not much more than 25 years ago, when the terrorist threat to our oil and gas fields in the North sea developed, we were pretty quick to develop the Comacchio group. I do not need to tell the Ministers sitting opposite of the excellence of that organisation, which is still in existence. It is based in Arbroath and, to the best of my knowledge, it has never had to fire a shot in anger. It is difficult to say what has stopped those targets being attacked, but I suggest that a powerful, capable, properly resourced and armed organisation such as the Comacchio group has probably deterred—deterrence being the important point—attacks on those sorts of targets. I turn to the question of whether British terrorists or British-groomed terrorists have been involved in the Mumbai attack. I have no doubt that such an involvement will emerge, but two important questions need to be addressed. If these gunmen have recently been resident in this country or if the plot was partially or wholly hatched in this country, we need to be terribly alarmed. I do not believe that that necessarily was the case, but I am sure that there were British connections and that many of the individuals will prove to have been British residents, to have been born in this country or to have been British passport holders. If they are found to have been resident abroad for five or 10 years living, let us say, in Pakistan, it will be slightly less alarming, but it will none the less be very concerning. This incident is highly likely to lead to further friction between India and Pakistan. Despite the fact that Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for this attack, I have no doubt that the core planning of it was carried out by al-Qaeda. That is why rather than the targets just being Kashmiri, Indian or Pakistan-focused friction targets, British and American passport holders were targeted, as were Israelis and Jews, as has been mentioned. If that is not the hallmark of a core al-Qaeda operation, I do not know what is. Therefore, when we hark back to events such as the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, the subsequent arrests in Pakistan and the arrests there in the past few days, it is crucial to ensure that the tension between those two nuclear-armed countries is defused as far as possible. Those arrests must be seen to be proper arrests, and the individuals must continue to be kept under lock and key and, eventually, brought to justice. I ask Ministers to think carefully about the prominence of LET inside this country and the implications of the enemy operations in India. We must consider just how significant and sinister this organisation is, and how far it has penetrated inside this country. For example, I bring the case of Mr. Rashid Rauf into focus. He was a citizen of Birmingham and a British passport holder, and he was heavily involved in LET in its initial stage. Later, he was a very highly placed al-Qaeda operative. I will not dwell on the rights or wrongs of his death. If terrorists are to be killed, well and good, but we should ensure that they have been tried in front of proper court of law and condemned by the appropriate authority. I ask Ministers to think very carefully about British involvement in that style of operation. I understand the sensitivities involved, and how difficult it is to draw the boundaries correctly on such operations. However, if terrorism is to be defeated, it must be defeated within the letter of the law. If we are reflecting on organisations such as LET, I ask the Secretary of State also to think carefully about Tablighi Jamaat. Although it has denied any involvement in terrorism, a leaked FBI memo, obtained by US media in 2005, raised fears that al-Qaeda was using membership of that organisation"““as cover…to network with other extremists in the US””—" and in the UK. I accept the word of Tablighi Jamaat that it is not involved in terrorism, but—with the Olympic games in the not too distant future and its plans to develop a mosque alongside a maritime access route to the Olympic site—I would like Ministers' assurance that it is being examined, watched and scrutinised to ensure that its wholly legitimate aims are not in some way being suborned. I wonder how well prepared we are for a similar attack. Why was it different? The answer is that it was not, it is just that more enemy gunmen were involved than we have seen for many years. Do we have the forces to deal with a similar incident? When I asked that question in the media 10 days ago, the Home Secretary and others immediately reassured me that we did. I was extremely interested to see an interview with the Mayor of London in which he said that a combination of the maritime support unit of the Metropolitan police and the Special Boat Service is poised and sufficiently numerous to deal with such an attack on the Thames. What about the Humber or the Severn? What about our other great rivers and maritime targets? Can the Ministers honestly tell me that Milford Haven, for instance, which has been right at the top of the terrorist attack list for the past five years to the best of my knowledge—that comes straight from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—is properly defended against that style of attack? We must clearly not become mesmerised merely by the maritime threat that our enemies pose.