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United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

I entirely agree. On Friday I asked whether the aims of resolution 1973 were impossible to reach unless Gaddafi were gone. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, however, said that the resolution was about giving protection to the civilians, with which I entirely agree. He went on to say that it was about giving the Libyan people the chance to determine their own future. I do not see anything in the resolution that says that, but I think we need to be clear about it. Thirdly, will further resolutions from the United Nations be needed or sought as a result of some of the questions that will arise during this debate? The fourth question is about exactly how far the advice of the Attorney-General takes us. We must be absolutely clear about what is sanctioned by the resolution and what is not. The summary of the Attorney-General's advice is clear, because enforcing the no-fly zone is clearly allowed by the UN resolution. However, we need to know not only that what we are doing is legal but how far, legally, we are entitled to go. We must not leave a chink that will let people say, ““The resolution allowed some things, true, but not this.”” Fifthly, will the Treasury be generous? Will my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer allow the Ministry of Defence to concentrate, at least for the next few months, on these operations rather than on its desperate scrabble to find the extra £1 billion, for this year alone, to which it was committed in the strategic defence and security review but which it still has not identified? Sixthly, does my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary agree that ruling out the use of occupation forces does not rule out the use of ground forces? I am talking not just about search and rescue helicopters, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) mentioned during the Prime Minister's speech, but about identifying targets that are free of civilians. Seventhly, there is the difficult question of whether the ceasefire applies to the rebels. If the rebels try, in response to breaches of the ceasefire by Gaddafi, to retake areas that he has taken, should we use military force to stop them? That would seem a bit strange, but does the UN resolution permit the facilitation of arms supplies to the alternative Government, and if so should the United Kingdom be helping to provide that? These are things that we do not know, as a result of the UN resolution, and we might need a further resolution to clarify things. Many more issues will arise, but I support this action. The House will not give a blank cheque to this action, so I welcome the Prime Minister's willingness to return to the House to keep us updated on something that is moving very fast.