Iran: Nuclear Issues — House of Commons, 2015-11-24
Topic: International Affairs
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): I must finish my point on this crucial issue because it is appalling of the Government to take this high-handed line with scrutiny in the House of Commons. It may be that the Minister did not know that this debate was asked for, but if he cared to read, daily, the daily agenda and the requirements for debates, he would have seen that this debate appeared day in, day out. If the Minister has not heard that from his officials, or read it for himself or been told it by the Whips, that is not the fault of the European Scrutiny Committee; it is that the Government are deliberately obstructing debate in this House. They always have time I will finish on this point shortly, Mr Deputy Speaker, but it is so important because we need to have these debates scheduled properly and quickly. The time that we have now is outside the normal sitting hours, so the argument that there was no day previously when it could have been held is false. We could have an extra 90-minute debate on any day since the request was made by the European Scrutiny Committee two months ago. And that is not the worst of the Government’s treatment of debate in the House. It is quite wrong that the Government should shy away from democratic accountability. I shall say no more on that today, but it is a subject that I will come back to if the Government do not treat the Chamber of the House of Commons properly To come on to the documents, I am afraid that I am going to change tack because the Government find me in support of what they are trying to do and, indeed, accepting of the override of scrutiny. When it comes to sanctions on individuals and the lifting of those sanctions, they cannot necessarily go through the full scrutiny process prior to the decision being reported to the House because, particularly when sanctions are being imposed, people would have the opportunity to avoid them in advance. There is a natural understanding of the confidentiality in relation to imposing and lifting sanctions and of the sensitivity with which this was being discussed with Iran. That is completely reasonable The second point that is worth making is that most of this was agreed under article 29 of the treaties on the European Union, which operates under unanimity. That is relevant because it shows that the European Union can work on a unanimous basis without any sacrifice of sovereignty by the individual member states. That is a model for future European activity—that we should take action when everybody is agreed because it is then much more powerful That is the next point: what has been done has succeeded and what was being aimed for was of the greatest importance. Trying to ensure that Iran did not become a nuclear state in the broad perspective of global security must have been a pre-eminent interest. It is worth noting that the most rogue of rogue states, which I think is North Korea, is secure in its wrongdoing and its internal oppression and is cocking a snook at the rest of the world because Kim Jong-un has a nuclear weapon. Those of us who wish to see a sensible world order want a limit on the number of states with nuclear weapons, and want to try to stop states that are on the margins of the international order getting hold of nuclear weapons. This is a successful policy that has had great advantages for security, but in the process that the Government have undertaken with other states and with the United Nations an important step has been taken in bringing Iran back into the global community. I slightly disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) and, indeed, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I think it is a great advantage that Iran is back in the community of nations It has long been the case that the best way of achieving international security is dealing with nation states, but all nation states have an inherent interest in their own stability. They wish to maintain law and order within their own nation because it threatens their rule if they do not do so. That makes most nation states in most circumstances the enemy of the terrorist. The terrorist is a greater threat to the United Kingdom than the rogue nation state is likely to be. Equally, the rogue nation state is easier to deal with, because it has a structure that can be attacked from outside if fundamental national interests are offended. Terrorists cannot be attacked in that way, because they are harder to pin down We have come to the point in British foreign policy—and, perhaps more importantly, US foreign policy—at which Iran is being brought back into the family of nations. That could be a significant boost to our ability to ensure security in the middle east but also more broadly because it goes back to a fundamental principle that has generally been accepted by most countries since the peace treaty of Westphalia in 1648: the principle that it is the nation state that underpins that security. It is what went wrong from the late 1990s onwards, when it was thought better to interfere in the internal activities of nation states to make them better nation states. That policy turned out to be fundamentally wrong-headed We have gained three very good things from the suspension of sanctions. First, it has been shown that the EU can work on the basis of unanimity. Secondly, it has reduced the likelihood of Iran having a nuclear bomb, and, thirdly—this is overwhelmingly the most important—there has been a change of attitude back to treating the nation state as the building block of global security. I very much hope that the Government will apply that in other cases.