Mr. Speaker, may I begin, on behalf of the Foreign Secretary, by extending his apologies to the House for his absence today? He is in the middle east undertaking visits in relation to Iraq and the middle east peace process.

In the past year, the Government have set out their forward thinking on foreign affairs and defence. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has published the Foreign and Commonwealth Office strategy, "UK International Priorities", and I have published two White Papers, "Delivering Security in a Changing World" and, most recently, the "Future Capabilities" paper. Each of these papers analyses the rapidly changing security environment, setting out how the United Kingdom should face the challenges that confront the world at the start of this new century.

Threats to our security—and to the security of our allies and partners—that have emerged since the end of the cold war are now more disparate and more diverse, but they remain just as real, just as immediate and just as dangerous. The sheer scale of the ruthless, fanatical violence of international terrorist groups across the world is without precedent. Since the attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, there have been appalling atrocities in places as far apart as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Morocco, Spain and Russia. Their common thread is their appalling barbarity: the deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of innocent people to cause the maximum loss of life and suffering.Nor must we forget the individual victims of terror. We are saddened and appalled by the murder of Margaret Hassan, who had devoted her life to helping the people of Iraq.

In addition, we must deal with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the technology associated with their means of delivery. The ambitions of some states to acquire such weaponry is profoundly disturbing; the ambition of terrorist groups to do so is simply terrifying. We believe that these are the greatest threats to our security, and confronting them is the perhaps the single most important challenge that the civilised world faces today.

I agree with the Secretary of State wholeheartedly about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. Will he have an opportunity during his speech to set out the Government's position on the non-proliferation treaty conference next year, and on the possibility of Britain developing a new generation of nuclear weapons when Trident submarines have come to the end of their life?

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade and Investment, who will wind up this debate on behalf of the Foreign Office, will deal with the first part of my hon. Friend's question. That is the traditional role of those who wind up in these debates, as right hon. and hon. Members will be aware. On the second matter, my hon. Friend has asked me this question on a number of occasions, and I am delighted to give him the same answer: this is not a matter for this Parliament, but it obviously will be a matter for a future Parliament to debate.

There are further challenges posed by weak and failing states, where all too often political mismanagement, ethnic and religious tensions or economic collapse can lead to humanitarian crises. Climate change is beginning to threaten the long-term supply of food and water, forcing migration and dislocation. All too often, the misery and injustice of poverty, hunger and disease are exacerbated by weak and corrupt government and the breakdown of law and order.

Terrorists feed on such lawlessness. Failing states, with territory that cannot be governed, provide the ideal haven from which terrorist groups can plan, train and operate. There are, of course, no purely military solutions to those challenges. There is a vital role for the armed forces, but that must be seen in a wider context—the diplomatic, political, economic, developmental and, indeed, cultural solutions that are also required.

The United Kingdom must not fail in the responsibility we share with our partners in the international community to ensure that we address the causes, not just the consequences, of failing states.

I am certain that the Secretary of State and many Members of the House will be deeply concerned about the ongoing events in Ukraine. In the light of the Government's support of democracy and human rights, will they join the European Union and the United States Administration in calling on the Ukrainian authorities not to certify the election result until fraud allegations have been fully investigated?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. A passage of my speech will set out the Government's response to the situation in Ukraine.

We have to resolve conflict, build security and tackle the causes of poverty, creating the foundations for democracy around the world. In that context, we cannot have a debate on foreign policy without addressing the recent elections in Ukraine. The Government are deeply concerned that the international observer mission—the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe—has reported serious irregularities in the voting on 21 November and that the election did not meet Council of Europe standards.

Given the questions that hang over the elections in Ukraine, we have urged the Ukrainian authorities to co-operate with the OSCE to ensure that all proper procedures, including legal challenges to the results, are followed before a final result is declared. The Ukrainian authorities should investigate all allegations of fraud to ensure that the result reflects the democratic will of the people of Ukraine. With large numbers of people on the streets protesting about the election, we have also called on the Ukrainian authorities to show restraint, and urge all sides to avoid violence.

To succeed in our wider objectives, we must work in partnership with our allies in the G8, in Europe, in NATO and, indeed, at the United Nations. In 2005, the United Kingdom will be in a unique position to shape the debate in the European Union, the G8 and the United Nations on the international response to the challenges that threaten our security. Poverty reduction will be at the heart of that debate.

The right hon. Gentleman speaks of security and co-operation. Are we right to let off the hook members of the Security Council that, at times, are not helping to deal with international security? I am thinking of the recent decision of France and Germany, and of ourselves, to take at face value the promises of Iran. Are we acting wisely?

I believe that we are. Clearly, it is important for the Security Council to live up to its responsibilities on behalf of the wider international community. It is equally important when important members of that Security Council take a diplomatic initiative that they should be given the opportunity to do so. I am confident that the efforts of, in particular, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary in this respect are leading to a positive engagement with Iran, which I hope and believe will lead to a positive conclusion from that country.

In September 2005, the United Nations will hold a summit to review progress in reaching the millennium development goals—to halve absolute poverty, ensure that all children receive primary education, and reduce maternal and infant mortality by 2015—but Africa is not on track for even the 2005 goals, let alone the 2015 targets. That is why Africa is at the top of our list of priorities for our chairmanship of the G8 and the European Union next year. It is also why the Prime Minister has asked the Commission for Africa to take a fresh look at what is holding back Africa's progress and put forward a strategy for Africa's development.

The United Kingdom's aid to Africa will reach £1 billion in 2005. We are on track to reach the United Nations 0.7 per cent. target for our total overseas development assistance in less than a decade.

This Government's record is tremendous in terms of what we are doing to wipe out debt and help with the millennium objectives, especially in Africa, but is that not offset by the particular problems in Zimbabwe and Sudan? Everything that has been done to assist those countries is offset by their Governments and regimes.

There are obviously concerns in both places, which is why it is important that the Government continue their determined diplomatic effort to improve the situation there. In addition, on Sudan, we have offered practical military advice to the African Union. We consider that a sensible way forward in dealing with the crisis in Sudan.

We have led the fight for debt relief, writing off bilateral debt owed to the United Kingdom. We have provided $70 billion of debt relief for the world's poorest countries. We are now taking the lead on multilateral debt. We have made it clear that we will fund our share of multilateral debt relief; and we will now press others to take up the challenge.

Within the G8, we will also take forward work on counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and support for change and development throughout the broad middle east region.

Climate change will also be at the top of our agenda. We will aim to get agreement on the basic science of climate change and the need to accelerate the development of new technology to meet the threat it poses.

When we hold the EU presidency, we will focus on economic reform and the further liberalisation of trade within Europe. We will take forward the agreement reached between World Trade Organisation members to begin reducing agricultural subsidies—a key goal of the Doha development agenda.

At the UN millennium review summit, we will seek a stronger consensus on the relationship between threats and development, and work to strengthen the power of the United Nations partners to deliver peace and security.

As I have indicated, my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade and Investment will deal in more detail with a number of issues, including the middle east peace process, when he winds up the debate. I will now deal with our specific policies in relation to Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

On the assumption that the Secretary of State will focus on those three points, may I ask him about a domestic issue relating to defence? He will know that for some time I have been calling for a full independent inquiry into the deaths at Deepcut barracks, because I feel that there are unanswered questions, which the parents rightly have a reason to carry on asking. What steps should I take to try to get the closure that those parents want, because the more I see, as proceedings continue regarding the Deepcut barracks, the more concerned I am that we have not got to the heart of what caused those deaths?

The hon. Gentleman has raised this issue with me on a number of occasions, and I congratulate him on his determination. May I make the point, of which I am sure he is aware, that a further coroner's inquest is still to be held, and it is important that that should have the opportunity of reaching whatever conclusions it does thereafter? If I may invite him to raise the issue with me again in the future, obviously I will give it proper consideration.

In passing, the Secretary of State said that the winding-up speech would deal with the middle east peace process. Will it reflect some evidence-based policy making, which considers the fact that we have supported a process over the past decade that has entrapped the Palestinian people in a situation in which their supposed homeland is criss-crossed by roads used only by the occupying forces of Israel, settlements have encroached more and more on their territories, and the wall is now going to ghettoise them?

I would not be as pessimistic as my hon. Friend. I have visited that area of the world on several occasions, both in my present position and in my previous position in the Foreign Office, as he has. What is important about our current opportunity is that whatever conclusions are reached, they must be agreed by a democratically elected Administration who represent the Palestinian people. That is the first stage in this process, which we are now strongly supporting. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is currently in the middle east having discussions with both sides to facilitate a resumption of the process. I accept that there has been difficulty in recent times. This is an opportunity to overcome those difficulties and make the kind of progress that I am sure my hon. Friend, and certainly the Government, would want to see.

Before my right hon. Friend leaves the issue of the middle east, while recognising that there are innocent casualties on both sides, has he seen a report in today's newspaper that an Israeli army officer repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian female? He is being charged, but not with murder. Is there not the gravest concern about such incidents and tragedies occurring in the occupied territories and the feeling that the Israeli army is simply out of control?

I have seen the report, and it is obviously important that a full investigation and thorough judicial process should proceed where appropriate. Since I understand that the Israeli authorities are pursuing the matter, it is best left to them for the moment.

If I may make progress in relation to Iraq, it is important that we assist the Iraqi people to build a better, democratic future for themselves. Clearly, there is much still to be done. We made a commitment to the Iraqi people, and we will see that through. As the Prime Minister has made clear, this is not a time to "cut and run".

Following the question from the hon. Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick), will the Secretary of State again pay tribute to our armed forces, wherever they are operating, for their courage and professionalism and for the compassion they have shown to civilians and prisoners in particular, when that is appropriate? Will he also tell us whether he can commit himself to retaining the Black Watch?

I think that it is always appropriate for the armed forces to show compassion, and I am sure that they do.

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I will let the hon. Gentleman intervene again in due course, when I reach the relevant part of my speech.

I recognise that opinions on Iraq in the House and our country are divided. Nevertheless, the House and the country are united in the pride that they take in the courage and professionalism of all the men and women of our armed forces, the diplomats and civilians who have served in Iraq and all who continue to serve bravely and with distinction. The focus of our armed forces is now on helping and supporting the developing Iraqi security forces. There are more than 220,000 trained Iraqi security personnel. They are becoming more capable, but they need to develop command and leadership qualities as well as basic weapon-handling skills. That is particularly important as the 30 January elections draw nearer.

As the Secretary of State is well aware, those elections are being fought under a proportional representation system. How did he reach the conclusion that that was the best method, and does he think it will promote cohesion, rather than a lack of cohesion, in the future assembly?

I did not reach that conclusion. The election process was a matter for agreement by the Iraqi Government, and they agreed that PR was the most representative form of election for their country.

Reports from Falluja claim that United States marines have killed and injured many innocent civilians. Dr. Ali Abbas, whose comments have been quoted, worked at a clinic where five people were killed when it was bombed. He later went from house to house with surviving workers, and found many more wounded people. Some died because the materials with which to treat them were not available. Other doctors at another hospital claim that when they wanted to evacuate seriously injured patients, the US would not let them.

When will we have a report on exactly what happened in Falluja? We are part of the coalition, and as an occupying force we must take responsibility for civilians. People wonder why we do not know exactly what has been going on.

Each day as I have received reports from Falluja and the wider theatre in Iraq, I have asked precisely the questions raised by my hon. Friend about the impact on civilians. Immediately before coming here, I was given a briefing that covered the position in Falluja. I must tell my hon. Friend that the briefings I have received consistently for many days suggest that there have been no significant civilian casualties there, not least because there is not a significant number of civilians there. All the evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority—bar a handful of individuals—left the city well before military action began. The large amount of aid that is available for the civilian population has not yet been distributed simply because there is currently no one in Falluja to give it to. Obviously it is important to establish where people are, and efforts are being made to do that. It appears that many people have stayed with relatives or friends in the outlying towns and villages away from Falluja, but there does not appear to have been a significant threat to the civilian population of that city.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.

What provision has been made to ensure that the refugees who fled Falluja are registered to vote in January, given that it is unlikely that they will be able to return to their homes yet?

Actually, there is every prospect of their being able to return to their homes. By and large, the situation in Falluja has been resolved. There are some pockets of resistance still, but I expect people to start returning in due course. We know that across Iraq there is a basis for an electoral register in the form of names identified by the regime for receipt of UN food assistance. That is being used as the core for an electoral register, and it is obviously important that it be added to where there is a deficiency. That will apply to Falluja just as it applies elsewhere.

As my right hon. Friend said before several interventions interrupted him, the elections will be held on 30 January. [Interruption.] I was referring to the number of interventions, not their substance. A member of the US military has announced that a greater US military presence is needed to secure peaceful elections. Is it part of the thinking of this country's military that an increase in the British military presence is needed in the run-up to the elections, and has my right hon. Friend had discussions with other countries about their contribution to keeping the peace during that important period?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend—I should of course have realised that his intervention would be not an interruption, but a helpful contribution to the debate. He is right: it is important that we ensure the right level of security for those elections to take place, and as I have told the House before, we keep troop numbers under constant review, as do our partners in the multinational force. But I should emphasise that the key issue is training Iraqi security forces, so that they are capable of taking on these responsibilities for themselves. The situation is improving—indeed, each week more people are available to take on such responsibilities. I hope that my hon. Friend will take that into account when he considers the security situation in Iraq.

Does the Secretary of State think that first depopulating a city and then flattening it is likely to be the best way to bring democracy to it?

That is a rather extravagant description of what has taken place. Had the civilian population—who are no friends of the terrorists and fanatics who are using Falluja as a base for terrorist operations—not departed, the hon. Gentleman would doubtless have raised the question of the threat to the civilian population. It is important that the civilians be able to return to Falluja—it is increasingly likely that an Iraqi civilian administration will be responsible for the future governance of the city—and it is equally important that they are not then intimidated by such fanatics. I would have expected the hon. Gentleman to welcome the progress that has been made in Falluja, not least because it prevents terrorists from using it as a haven and as a base for their appalling operations.

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The year 2005 will mark a critical point for the Iraqi people, and the elections will represent a key step forward in the political process. The Iraqi people want elections, as has been demonstrated in every Iraqi opinion poll. Up to 87 per cent. of Iraqis questioned in a recent poll said that they would vote in the forthcoming elections.

We welcome the United Nations' role in helping Iraq to prepare for the elections. The United Kingdom will continue to support the independent electoral commission of Iraq and the UN itself. The Department for International Development is providing £10 million through the UN trust fund to assist the electoral commission, and a further £5 million for the political participation fund, which is used to assist in increasing awareness of the electoral process. We are also assisting with the provision of security.

The United Nations team in Baghdad is confident that preparations for the elections in January remain on schedule. Voter registration started at the beginning of this month and will run until 15 December. The registration of political parties also began on 1 November.

As I said, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary attended the international conference on Iraq at Sharm el-Sheikh, looking to strengthen international support for the Iraqi Interim Government and their efforts to hold elections in January, and to increase regional co-operation in tackling the insurgency. I am pleased to say that the conference recognised the importance of keeping to the January election date, and it agreed that all political parties in Iraq must renounce violence as Iraq makes progress towards those elections.

As I have mentioned, security for the elections is vital. Terrorists and insurgents have been stepping up their attacks, but Prime Minister Allawi is determined that as many Iraqis as possible be able to cast their vote. That is why Iraq's security forces and the coalition cleared insurgents from Falluja. Prime Minister Allawi also wants the political and electoral process to be as inclusive as possible, and to make a huge effort to encourage Sunni and Shi'a leaders to participate.

Two weeks ago, when I visited British troops serving in Afghanistan, there was a real sense of optimism about the progress that had been made. The recent presidential elections were a huge achievement. We expected 6 million people to register to vote, but 11 million actually took part in an 80 per cent. turn-out. The foundations are now in place for the country to become peaceful, stable, democratic and free from terrorism. Great credit is due to the Afghan authorities, the United Nations and, of course, to the Afghan people themselves.

Would the right hon. Gentleman comment on what role the economy played in the Afghan elections, particularly in view of the country's utter dependence on the production of the poppy? It provides the largest source of opium in this country.

The hon. Lady is right to discuss the drugs industry. The UK is in the lead in tackling the problem. When I was in Afghanistan, I had significant discussions with the interior Minister and others who are developing proposals to deal with the threat of destabilisation that the industry could cause. It is important to put the problem in context, however, and not to talk down the remarkable success achieved in Afghanistan. Elections were held across the country and we all saw television pictures of people queuing for hours in order to vote. Once that new Administration are in post, Cabinet and other Ministers will be appointed and we can then look to deal specifically with the opium industry.

My right hon. Friend is generous in giving way. On the issue of eradication of that harvest, what progress has been made in persuading our NATO allies that such eradication should be a central part of core NATO activity, as reaffirmed to the House by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister following the Istanbul summit in June?

Discussions are taking place about the way in which forces committed under NATO should exercise that responsibility. We have to resolve the issue as we take forward determined plans to deal with drugs. I would stress to my hon. Friend, however, that it is not simply a question of eradication; there is also the matter of providing alternative livelihoods. There would be little purpose in eradicating this year's crop if farmers simply went back to growing opium in the following year. We need a sustained and comprehensive programme for dealing with the opium industry.

The Secretary of State will know from his visits that there is great concern about security beyond Kabul and about the shortage of resources for NATO and others to extend that security. It is all very well to point to the success of the presidential elections, but there is a general election to come and until such time as we have the resources in place to ensure the safety and security of the population, the overall security aims will remain in jeopardy. What discussions has the right hon. Gentleman had with our American counterparts about recovering for Afghanistan some of the resources that have been diverted to Iraq?

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman takes such a negative and pessimistic view. I heard similar comments about the prospect of holding the presidential elections, yet they were an outstanding success. He should be a little more optimistic as he is supposed to represent an optimistic party. [Interruption.] Unfortunately, he is talking down the real achievements not only of the international community, but of the Afghan people.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the way to deal with poppy cultivation in the long term is to build a viable economy and new institutions and to provide farmers with an opportunity to earn income from alternative sources? Does he disagree with those who are now suggesting aerial spraying as a means of poppy eradication, which is likely to undermine much of what has been achieved in Afghanistan, particularly as we are now talking about rolling out the provincial reconstruction teams?

I certainly agree with the first part of my hon. Friend's observation. It is important, as I said in reply to an earlier question, that any efforts at eradication are put in the context of an overall process. All the evidence from other countries where tackling the opium industry has been relatively successful suggests that it is not sensible to concentrate on any one aspect of the problem. It requires a comprehensive approach.

On the question of security, the Secretary-General of NATO, Mr. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has been calling firmly for increases in contributions and extensions to the provincial reconstruction teams. Can my right hon. Friend give us an assurance that NATO partners will take up those issues, which were pressed very strongly in the NATO parliamentary assembly last week, and that there will be support for making Afghanistan a priority in the next few weeks?

My hon. Friend tempts me to speak on behalf of a considerable number of other defence Ministers. Sometimes it is difficult enough to speak as the UK's Defence Minister. I shall not commit my colleagues in quite the way that my hon. Friend suggests, but I can assure him that the UK will use its influence in NATO to ensure that the very clear plans for the development of NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, and for a comprehensive approach to that country's problems, will be resolved.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

I apologise to my hon. Friend but I really need to make progress. I did give way to him earlier.

President Karzai has gained a clear mandate to press on with the political and economic reform needed to deliver a stable Afghanistan. It is vital that the international community remains engaged in that country's development. Important lessons learned from the presidential elections need to be implemented for the parliamentary elections scheduled for spring 2005. The UK will be working closely with the Afghan Government and the UN to make these further elections a success.

Security during the presidential elections, provided by the Afghan authorities, by the NATO-led international security assistance force and by coalition forces, was a major factor in ensuring the success of the election process—and it was a blow to the efforts of terrorists that they failed to prevent them from taking place.

The UK has some 860 personnel deployed in Afghanistan. Most serve with the international security assistance force, either in Kabul or with our two provincial reconstruction teams in the north of the country. Others serve with the RAF Harrier detachment in Kandahar, under coalition command. I had the privilege of meeting each of those units in the course of my visit.

ISAF has long been instrumental in ensuring stability in Kabul. Our PRTs, together with those of our allies throughout the rest of Afghanistan, have helped the Afghan transitional authority progressively to extend its influence across the country. They are a remarkable success story. The UK is working with NATO to make ISAF operations as effective as possible, and to make its expansion a reality. ISAF now has some 9,200 troops deployed from 37 NATO and non-NATO countries.

We are playing a leading role in building up Afghan capability in law and order. The effective enforcement of the rule of law is vital for Afghanistan's reconstruction and long-term stability, as it is for tackling the hugely complex issue of the opium industry.

However, I should not finish my remarks on Afghanistan without expressing our delight that Annetta Flanigan and her two fellow hostages were released yesterday. I am grateful to the Afghan Government and our international partners for all their work to resolve this crisis over the past couple of weeks. I would like to pay my personal tribute to all the individuals involved, many of whom I met on my recent visit to Afghanistan.

I turn now to the Balkans. In recent years, the countries of the Balkans have made huge strides forward in their aspirations to join the Euro-Atlantic community, not least thanks to the deployment of our armed forces as part of international peace support efforts.

NATO has played a vital role in moving the region towards this more stable condition. Its success can be seen from the reduction in troop levels in the Balkans. In Bosnia, the original level of 60,000 troops has been reduced to 7,000, and in Kosovo NATO troop levels have been reduced from 55,000 in 1999 to the current 17,500.

NATO has taken the decision to end its stabilisation force mission in Bosnia. That is the right decision for Bosnia, which is ready to take its next steps towards self-sustaining peace and stability. The EU will support Bosnia in taking those next steps. The EU mission, which takes over on 2 December, will include a robust military element, involving numbers initially similar to those provided by SFOR.

The EU mission will take on the main peace stabilisation role in Bosnia, working in support of Lord Ashdown's mission implementation plan. The residual NATO headquarters will concentrate on defence reform and partnership for peace, and will also, together with the EU, carry out certain operational tasks, such as support for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

The UK will lead the first military element of the EU mission, and provide the force commander, Major-General David Leakey. This NATO-EU partnership will be good for Bosnia, and will help that country further along the road towards membership of the EU and NATO.

This will be by far the largest military mission under EU leadership. It will also be the most extensive test of the Berlin-plus arrangements, which provide for the EU to draw on NATO assets and capabilities in support of an operation. The UK believes that the mission will be an important milestone in proving the capability of an EU defence and security policy that complements, rather than competes with, NATO. However, despite progress, the Balkans region remains volatile, as the violence in Kosovo during March demonstrated. We cannot afford to be complacent. NATO remains determined to ensure peace and stability in Kosovo.

Nearly 200,000 people were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo, including the minority Serb Roma and other members of the population, and those who are left live in enclaves and are subject to daily racial harassment. Sometimes, children cannot even get to school. What is the Government's strategy for getting the refugees back into Kosovo and making it a safe and democratic state where everybody can live?

My hon. Friend is right to raise the reason why we intervened militarily in Kosovo: it was to prevent ethnic cleansing and ensure that the country was multi-ethnic. My hon. Friend rightly points out that the current challenge for multi-ethnicity in Kosovo is to protect Serbs. When I have been to visit British troops there, they have mostly been protecting Serbs in their villages around Pristina and in other parts of the country. To preserve that multi-ethnicity, we have to establish robust security arrangements for Kosovo and, crucially—I made this point earlier and I hope that my hon. Friend agrees—we need to take forward a political process to ensure confidence among what is now the Serb minority that they can live safely in their historic and traditional homes.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I need to make a little more progress.

A strong Euro-Atlantic relationship, founded on NATO, remains the basis of the United Kingdom's security policy. The continued strength of the alliance depends on delivering when and where it matters. NATO must maintain its ability to react flexibly beyond its borders, to deter and disrupt threats before they reach us. It must keep up the pace of its transformation, to ensure that it can provide modern structures and forces that are ready to deliver the right military responses. It also means improved mechanisms for generating such forces, with a strengthened commitment from our allies to providing them.

Against that background, we are working with our EU partners to improve European military capabilities. As the new constitutional treaty makes explicit for the first time, NATO remains the foundation of our collective defence. Our aim is to develop European military forces that enhance NATO as well as the European Union. The EU Battlegroups initiative, for which Defence Ministers committed forces at Monday's European Council meeting, will allow the EU rapidly to deploy troops, trained and evaluated to agreed standards. Open and transparent liaison will ensure that these battlegroups are fully compatible with the NATO response force. And in driving the development of the right capabilities by our EU allies, the battlegroups concept will be central to our efforts to manage overstretch.

The Secretary of State will be aware that in Iraq at the moment soldiers from Commonwealth countries are serving with the Black Watch. However, the EU constitution will make it difficult for us to recruit from Commonwealth countries and would not allow us to give preferential treatment to those nationals.

The hon. Gentleman is simply and absolutely wrong. He raises yet again a scare story about the European Union that has no foundation in fact. I am sorry if Central Office has given him that line to take, but he should go back to the researcher who provided it and tell him that he has got it completely, absolutely and hopelessly wrong.

European defence complements NATO. The EU can bring together a range of crisis management responses—diplomatic, military, civilian, judicial, as well as economic. Its new civilian-military cell is an example of that potential. Such capabilities will fill crucial gaps in the mechanisms now available for handling the current complex security environment.

Our success in driving the agenda is a vindication of this Labour Government's approach to Europe. We are leading the debate and winning the argument, not sitting sulking on the sidelines, neglecting our national interest. If the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) has anything serious to say about military capabilities, he needs to explain to the House and the country how his half-baked ideas on Europe would in any way increase the number of military forces available. That is what this Government have achieved through European defence, and he needs to face up to that.

At the start of this speech I set out our recognition that the strategic environment has changed, and now we need to ask what that means for the armed forces. The international community must confront the threats from international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But there is also an imperative to intervene for humanitarian or peacekeeping reasons in places such as Kosovo, Macedonia, East Timor and Sierra Leone. Even if the territory of the United Kingdom is not directly threatened, our interests and ambitions are increasingly interrelated with those of others: seldom will conflict in one area not spread to contaminate another. As a result, our armed forces are facing a wider range, frequency and duration of tasks than ever before. We need armed forces that are structured and equipped to deploy rapidly on multiple, concurrent small and medium-scale operations; armed forces that optimise platforms and units so that they have increased effectiveness across the full range of military effects—from war deterrence, to war fighting, to peace support.

The changed nature of the security environment demands that the shape and structure of the armed forces, and their equipment and doctrine, will have to adapt accordingly. To propose that we should do otherwise—in effect, to leave our armed forces structured and equipped to match an enemy and a threat that is no longer apparent—would be a grave misjudgment. The Conservatives risk turning our armed forces into a museum piece—an excellent display, but never taken out of their case for operational use. That would be a complete failure of our duty to the people of the United Kingdom, to our international allies and partners and to the men and women in our armed forces, of whom we ask so much. Not to engage in the modernisation of our armed forces would weaken our nation's defence, at precisely the time when it needs to be strong.

We have, therefore, embraced change. The armed forces themselves, under the leadership of the service chiefs, recognise the need for change; and that is why we have embarked on the process of modernisation set out in the future capabilities paper, published in July—modernisation backed by extra investment from a Labour Government committed to strong defence. The next three years will see the defence budget rising by £3.7 billion—an average annual increase of 1.4 per cent. in real terms and a continuation of the longest sustained period of increased spending on defence for 20 years.

The Government are investing in defence, and Labour's commitment to defence stands in stark contrast to the Conservatives' proposals. The shadow Chancellor has said that he will freeze defence spending—in effect, cutting defence spending by £2.6 billion, which is the equivalent of 70,000 armed forces personnel, or cancelling our two new aircraft carriers. To fill the gaps in their spending plans, the Conservatives claim that they could find £1.6 billion in efficiency savings on top of the £2.8 billion that the Government have already earmarked.

Tory proposals would mean drastic cuts in our logistics and procurement budgets. Are they seriously suggesting that £4.4 billion can be taken out of defence spending without some implications for the front line? Without logistics there would be no front line. Cuts in procurement spending would mean that our troops would not be getting the right equipment—never mind the implications for British industry and British jobs. Instead, we have drawn on our experience of operational commitments since the 1998 strategic defence review to identify those parts of the armed forces that are in the highest demand, and those that are less well used. As a result, we have developed new plans to ensure that our armed forces can remain effective. With modern communications and the fusion of intelligence, target acquisition and precision weaponry, the capability of our armed forces is improving exponentially.

The Royal Navy of the future will be a highly versatile, expeditionary force, with the emphasis on the delivery of military effect on to land at a time and place of our choosing. Two new aircraft carriers deploying the joint strike fighter, and new ships to support amphibious operations, will provide a step change in our ability to launch and support forces ashore. Let me highlight the fact that those aircraft carriers will be built in the United Kingdom, employing British workers, despite the best efforts of the Liberal Democrats who want us to buy them abroad. Taken together with the additional investment in new submarines and the Type 45 destroyers, those developments will ensure that the fleet remains a formidable fighting force for many years to come.

The Royal Air Force will be equipped with modern, highly capable, multi-role, fast jet aircraft, such as the Typhoon, which are able to deliver the offensive and defensive capabilities currently delivered by single-role aircraft. It will increasingly be able to exploit networked capabilities and will be equipped with a range of modern stand-off weapons.

The rebalancing of the Army will be vital as we optimise our force structures to respond to the challenge posed by today's strategic environment. The intention is to provide the Army with a better balanced mix of capabilities—from tanks and artillery at the heavy end, through enhanced medium and light-weight capabilities to increase the deployability of our land forces.

What is the Government's intention towards the third tranche of the Typhoon? Does he intend to place an order?

Since we have yet to sign the contract for the second tranche, which we have been negotiating over the past few weeks, it is important that we take our fences as they arise. I hope to be able to set out the position to the House in due course, but until we have solved the problem with the second tranche, both the financial and other implications, it is right that I should not speculate about the third tranche. I will give way again to the right hon. and learned Gentleman if he would like to give an absolute commitment that the Liberal Democrats would sign a contract for the tranche, with all the costs involved, but he does not want to do so.

The Secretary of State knows perfectly well that the Royal Air Force will not have the pilots, even if he does buy the third tranche—which is a bit of a give away.

Since the third tranche is not due to come into service for many years, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we can adjust the number of pilots who will be required to fly those highly capable aircraft.

At the heart of those changes is the restructuring of the infantry, made possible by progress towards a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. The requirement for infantry in the Province has reduced by four battalions. The manpower freed up will be redistributed across the Army, not only to develop more robust and resilient unit establishments in the remaining infantry, but to bolster the most heavily committed specialists, such as logisticians, engineers and intelligence personnel. The argument is straightforward: some parts of the Army are still harder pressed than the infantry. So if we retained the four infantry battalions, how would we explain such an approach to hard-pressed logisticians, engineers and intelligence personnel, without whom the infantry simply cannot deploy?

We all hope that the normalisation of security in Northern Ireland will allow the Regular Army to be used with the other armed forces in the international fight against terrorism, thus relieving the pressure on the manpower of the Army. That manpower relief will be helped if the Secretary of State will give a commitment to retain our three home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment for home defence in Northern Ireland, backing up the civil powers.

I had, by chance, a meeting this morning with a number of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues who represent constituencies in Northern Ireland. We had a very good discussion about the way forward, but I hope that they will accept that we agreed that any decisions in anticipation of normalisation and what we hope will be a long-term political settlement in the north of Ireland would then lead to further discussions about how we best deal with the situation there.

The arms plot has tied up seven or eight infantry battalions at any one time with moving, re-roling and retraining. By removing arms plotting, most if not all the eventual 36 battalions of infantry will be available to deploy—a significant increase in deployable battalions. The changes that we are introducing will ensure that we have more forces available for operations, while reducing the burden of operational commitments for both our people and their families. Those changes will produce a new structure for the infantry. We want to retain the best of the regimental system—continuity, regional identity, esprit de corps and tradition—while losing the worst: instability, inflexibility and undermanning. We believe that we can do that and create a more efficient and flexible Army.

The world is going through a period of major strategic change. The challenges posed by international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and failed states are global challenges that will require an international response. In dealing with them, we must work in partnership with our allies in Europe, NATO and the United Nations to resolve conflict, build peace and democracy and tackle the causes of poverty and instability. Where necessary, the international community must be prepared to intervene and take action.

The men and women of our armed forces, diplomats and civil servants are already playing their part. They are supporting the Iraqi and Afghan people as they build a new, democratic future, and they are doing so in difficult and dangerous circumstances. They are at the very sharp end of our desire to be a force of good in the world. I pay tribute to them.

Although we understand the need for the Foreign Secretary to attend the Iraq conference at Sharm el-Sheikh and his consequent absence from the debate, we regret, contrary to the original discussions between my right hon. and learned Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Secretary, the deliberate downgrading of the foreign affairs aspect of the debate by the leaving of the Government's contribution on foreign policy to the very end.

The House has enjoyed several full debates on defence recently but has had little or no chance to debate foreign affairs and the international situation. It is time that the Foreign Secretary addressed the House on what is becoming an increasingly difficult and turbulent world. We therefore demand a full debate in Government time, led by the Foreign Secretary, before Christmas. Failure to provide time for such a debate, particularly in the light of the Foreign Secretary's absence from the debate, can only be regarded as an admission that the Government have no comprehensive foreign policy in which they have sufficient confidence to face the House of Commons.

It is well known that the order, nature and days on which these debates take place are matters for the Opposition. If the hon. Gentleman were so keen to have the debate on foreign affairs and defence in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, he could have chosen a different date. He knows that. Why is he misleading the House?

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Order. No one is misleading the House. Perhaps that remark will be withdrawn.

I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I should have said inadvertently misleading the House.

It would be best if the Secretary of State withdrew the remark.

I will certainly do that, Mr. Speaker.

Another magnificent intervention by Mogadon Geoff. The whole House will be glad to see that he has woken up after a distressingly tiresome—[Hon. Members: "Get on with it."] We would like to get on with it.

The House will be aware of events in Ukraine. Yesterday, 100,000 people gathered in central Kiev in support of Viktor Yushchenko. I know that I speak for the whole House when I say that the message from this place is one of support for the people of Ukraine. The electoral process has been condemned for its irregularities and its serious flaws and I know that, were he here, the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George)—an observer to the elections—would provide a vivid account of how an election should not have been run. The international community must put pressure on the outgoing Government to exit peacefully.

In recent months, we have been reminded of the dedication, skill and determination of our armed forces as they are deployed around the world. Our country has made an outstanding contribution to the war on terror. Following the liberation of Iraq, more than 8,000 troops remain in the southern part of the country where they have maintained peace and security with great success and skill. They have performed a critical role in laying the foundations for democracy in the Shi'a-dominated south, making the sector a role model for much of the country. The recent redeployment of the Black Watch to Babil province is a reflection of the great esteem in which the British Army is held. It has done a remarkable and highly effective job. Away from the war on terror, in a week's time, our armed forces will provide the lead nation in securing continuing stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Government also have the most serious responsibilities. They have to ensure that our troops are trained, equipped and thoroughly well prepared for the tasks that we ask of them. The Secretary of State is obliged to pay the closest attention to the overall well-being of our armed forces and their families. With that in mind, the Government must continually reassess the needs of the armed forces and their families both now and for the long term.

However, official reports published in the last year show that the Secretary of State has failed seriously to honour these grave responsibilities. He and his Department have been severely, rightly and frequently criticised by the all-party Select Committee on Defence, the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office for fundamental and unacceptable shortcomings in the Ministry of Defence's dismal ability to learn and act upon the hard lessons of previous operations. The Ministry is criticised for equipment shortages for the front line, leading to our troops being exposed to increased and serious risk. The criticisms refer to an inexcusable failure to supply body armour and the inability to locate it; the failure to supply nuclear, biological and chemical equipment for men and vehicles; the shameful failure to provide even the right clothing for the tasks that we ask of them; and the lack of confidence in the ability of the logistics system to meet units' needs in theatre and on operations.

Furthermore, the Public Accounts Committee has found that, despite investing more than £550 million since the first Gulf war in new computerised systems that include an asset management capability, the Ministry of Defence still inexplicably, disgracefully and inexcusably lacks a credible consignment-tracking system. Although the National Audit Office report on research and technology warns that

"defence capability critically dependent on the effective exploitation of advances in technology, as emphasised in the recent Defence White Paper, has also stalled",

funding has been reduced by 30 per cent. since the mid 1990s. All of that has happened while the cost overruns and schedule slippages recorded in the major projects report mean that the services will not receive the equipment that they need in the time that they need it. Thus the costs of the Ministry of Defence's 20 biggest equipment projects have increased by £1.7 billion and the projects have been delayed by an average of three months each.

The Government have made a dangerous assumption that it is safe to dispense with today's capabilities before new ones come into service. Thus the Royal Navy is losing the long-range air defence cover provided by the Sea Harriers three years before the new Type 45 destroyers, with their air defence capability, come into service; they are now delayed by 18 months. The Royal Air Force is to lose its battle-proven and recently upgraded Jaguar strike aircraft long before the ground attack variant of the Eurofighter Typhoon enters service. The in-service date for the future rapid effects system has already slipped and there is not yet even a concept of operations for the system. How is the Army to cope with that serious credibility gap? What of the recently published winter supplementary estimates? What effect will the recent decision to make a £1 billion reduction from the front line have on our armed forces' capabilities?

What does that lengthy charge sheet say about the Secretary of State, and the Ministry of Defence, as he fails to fulfil his responsibilities towards our armed forces? Let us consider his response to the House of Commons Defence Committee's report on the White Paper. Paragraph 72 of the Committee's report says:

"We are not convinced that mass 'effect' alone will be enough in meeting the challenges faced by UK, since in many situations we will still require the capacity for mass 'presence' as well."

The Government's response states:

"We agree that sometimes the presence of substantial forces is necessary to achieve the desired effect, for example, deterrence or stabilisation".

Yet, for reasons that remain beyond mortal comprehension, except to the baleful influence of the Chancellor, whose deep and abiding lack of enthusiasm for the armed forces is well known, the Secretary of State seems determined to cut the battalions that are necessary to achieve deterrence or stabilisation.

Let the House be under no illusion; the cutting of four infantry battalions is a political decision. It is driven entirely by the Chancellor and accepted in a bovine and supine manner by the Secretary of State. He will pay a hard price for it, as could the country and the Army. It is a disgraceful and rotten decision. Yes, there is a need to make the Army more useable, and we broadly support the ending of the arms plot. However, we truly believe that the size and nature of the cuts to the infantry make absolutely no sense. When we come to power, we will reinstate the battalions in the interests of our country's security and our ability to prosecute our interests where required. The same applies to the Royal Navy. The Government's decision today to do away with six frigates or destroyers is a dangerous folly. We will restore the three Type 23 frigates Grafton, Marlborough and Norfolk.

How will the infantry sustain its current level of operations with four fewer battalions, let alone take on as yet unforeseen commitments? Even our thoroughly complacent Secretary of State must agree that our forces have never been so busy. Deployments come thick and fast, yet the overall size of the armed forces and, indeed, the quality of some of their capabilities is in worrying decline. The Secretary of State's announcement earlier this year in pursuit of

"radical change in the future force structure"

will result in the reduction of the Army trained establishment from the current level of 108,500 to a target of 102,000 by 2008.

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that the current size of the Army is not 108,000, but in the order of 102,000. The figures that we propose for the future will remain in that sort of area. Will he tell the House the size of the Army when he left his post as Minister of State for the Armed Forces in 1997?

Unfortunately, I was in office so long ago I cannot remember. However, the current trained establishment is set at 108,500 and the target is just over 102,000 by 2008. The strategic defence review, presented to Parliament in July 1998, said:

"we shall be adding some 3300 additional Regular personnel to the Army orbat."

What exactly has happened since then to convince the Secretary of State not only to reverse that plan but to introduce further cuts, even in the light of a heightened threat and increased operational tempo?

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I have had enough of the right hon. Gentleman. He has had nothing sensible to say so far. Indeed, he is on indefensible ground.

Has the security situation changed for the better since the strategic defence review? Have Afghanistan, Iraq and Sierra Leone never happened? Are our armed forces today experiencing a smaller and less frequent range of operational demands than they did in the early 1990s? Has the average interval of 24 months between tours been achieved, or is it not the case that the actual intervals have been as low as three and five months in some cases?

At this time of considerable danger from terrorism at home and abroad and of major military deployments overseas, with no sign of any let-up, the cuts by amalgamation or disbandment of any battalion are wholly and utterly unjustified. The way in which the cuts have been handled shows the complete shambles to which the Government have been reduced. In the space of the last month, the position has changed on a daily basis.

First, the Defence Secretary said that the only option was the disbanding of the Scottish regiments and their merger into one or two super-regiments. Then the Prime Minister said that no decision had been made. The Secretary of State for Scotland told my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) that it was important to take account of public opinion. Scotland's First Minister said that he supported the retention of the regiments.

Downing street then told the Scottish press that four of our regiments would be saved in their current form, which lasted just long enough for the Prime Minister to have an interview without coffee with the Chief of the General Staff, who will have, I assume, put the Prime Minister firmly back in his place. That lasted all of 12 hours until the Prime Minister said once again that no final decision had been made. So who is making policy? Is it Downing street or the Ministry of Defence? The answer would be welcome, particularly by the regiments.

We welcome the acknowledgement of the absolute need to continue robust and collective military training at all levels. That is one of the issues that the Select Committee report "Lessons of Iraq" raised, saying:

"The high number of operations which UK service personnel have been involved in has had an adverse impact on their training."

Does it concern my hon. Friend that a number of Norfolk farmers have said that they will withdraw permission for the MOD to train on their land as a protest against the Hunting Act 2004? Does he think that it would be much better if the Secretary of State had joined the Prime Minister and his Minister of State in the Lobby to vote for the licensing proposal?

I am always grateful to my hon. Friend for his helpful interventions. Some farmers and landowners have decided that they will no longer accord facilities to the armed forces for military training. Strongly though I and they feel, I hope very much that they will reconsider that, purely and solely because it is important that our armed forces have the best possible training facilities available to them; the general sense of what my hon. Friend says is, of course, correct.

Reductions in training have a progressively damaging effect on fighting power. At the highest level—joint, combined-arms collective training at formation level and above—it may take years to recover fully the standards and capabilities that have been degraded and in some cases even lost. As I explained earlier this year, although our armed forces continue to give a remarkable account of themselves, it is by general consent a profound worry that we are beginning to take risks which, if not dealt with, will lead to a disaster sooner or later.

I turn to the latest initiative of the European Union's involvement in defence matters, an involvement that will create complications and at the end of the day will be of little added value. In Brussels on Monday, there was further agreement on the battlegroups concept. I wish to make it clear, as I always have at the Opposition Dispatch Box, that we always will welcome initiatives that genuinely produce additional military capabilities from our European allies. However, what is proposed is something entirely different. The reality is that the European allies have not been able to meet the over-ambitious, grandiose targets for the so-called European rapid reaction force, which was supposed to generate a headline deployable capability of 60,000 troops by December 2003. You will not be surprised to hear, Mr. Speaker, that this did not materialise. It did not happen and it could not happen. I cannot say that any of us are remotely surprised. Indeed, it never could have happened because the capabilities of our European allies have, very regrettably, continued to decline.

Without taking specific issue with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, which I shall leave to others, will he accept that there is a degree of benefit, especially to some of the smaller countries—such as, for example, Estonia, one of those countries which I know best—from joint working, if only to secure the border between ourselves and other countries that may become aggressive in future?

I unreservedly agree with the hon. Gentleman, but all that is perfectly possible and has been taking place for many years through NATO, through the partnership for peace operations and through those of its successor. These have been extremely successful operations. To go outside that will cause real confusion, and I propose to come on to that.

The European countries are merely putting on the table military forces—in some instances, entirely inadequate military forces—that already exist and are already, in theory, highly committed to other tasks. Britain, for example, already has a range of stand-by forces, including the Spearhead battalion. There is a limit to the number of different labels that can be put on the same forces that are already earmarked for a range of NATO and national tasks. I think that the Secretary of State should be more honest and straightforward in explaining this.

Nothing new is being created. Not one extra man, weapon, capability or other item of military use is being created, except the involvement of the European Union. This is a political gesture of the most dangerous sort and its consequences for NATO could well be serious and far-reaching. It will bring confusion and potentially dangerous complications. If the EU wants to command a military operation, it now has to establish complex arrangements within the NATO structures, which would be entirely unnecessary if NATO were to remain in control.

Operation Althea is due to start in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 2 December. The EU will take over from NATO. As a result, alongside the new EUFOR mission, NATO will remain with a small headquarters in Sarajevo. In the meantime, there are truly serious overlaps and real frictions between the two. Are the two missions meant to have a parallel or hierarchical relationship? Are they clearly separated? Will the new NATO mission hold a superior mission in relation to EUFOR? What are their respective responsibilities? Some would say that the motives of the EU have less to do with the real security situation in that country rather than with the EU's eagerness to bolster its credibility as a military player.

The hon. Gentleman raises a number of interesting issues about when EUFOR takes over from KFOR on 2 December. All these matters would be resolved for him if he had a word with General Leakey, who will be taking over on 2 December. All these matters are being resolved with the US commander of KFOR. Why is the hon. Gentleman raising issues that are in the course of being resolved?

I have the highest regard for General Leakey and I am sure he will do his very best to resolve these matters, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that in all military operations the single most important thing in command is clarity. The worry about these EU operations is the lack of clarity in the chain of command. General Leakey will, I am sure, do his best to resolve them, but there are great frictions and real difficulties; 2005 could see the conjunction of several potentially destabilising events in the Balkans. To test European defence ambitions as if Bosnia were some kind of laboratory is not a good idea.

To return to the subject of the battlegroups, I understand that the Dutch Defence Minister confirmed to the European Parliament two days ago that the battlegroups create no new troops, will use the same forces as are in service now—they are already declared for use on a variety of tasks by the sovereign nations and by NATO—and are already assigned many tasks. As has been the case throughout the whole of this dubious EU defence project, we are talking merely about a change in political command, without the will to carry it through in a serious and coherent manner.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I will not.

The project is a typical new Labour one. The British public would be forgiven for thinking that our continental allies were positively overflowing with highly trained, well equipped, deployable troops. They are not. The Secretary of State knows that. While our very professional British forces are so dangerously overstretched, many of our European partners continue to cut their defence budgets—

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—and look increasingly unserious about their commitment to hard military issues. What effect will that have on the transatlantic relationship?

The transatlantic relationship is going through an important period of trying to create a new framework in which to tackle challenges of a profoundly different nature from those with which it has previously been occupied. The Secretary of State correctly referred to transformation. It is right that that should be pushed ahead with all possible vigour.

There are issues that bring us closer, but there are others that divide us. The harsh realities of today are an important reminder of why we ought to be working together, and I hope that all hon. Members realise what a chilly and frightening place the world would be without an internationally active America. Terrorism is a global problem. The worldwide reach of terrorist networks implies that global terrorism cannot be fought effectively solely by military means, or only on one's home soil or by one country alone.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to dissociate himself from the pathetic and deeply offensive suggestion from the Leader of the House, in one of his increasingly extravagant and eccentric outbursts, that the country can be safe from terrorism only with a Labour Government in power. Terrorism is a long-term challenge. We look forward to hearing the hon. baby—the Minister for Trade and Investment (Mr. Alexander)—renounce the words of the Leader of the House.

Terrorism is a long-term challenge. There are no quick or easy solutions, but one thing is certain; close international co-operation, including across the Atlantic, remains crucial to our task. Living away from regions of instability does not guarantee our security. In a globalised, interlinked world, people and ideas flow freely around the globe. A Government have no higher duty than to provide security for their people, both at home and abroad. Foreign policy is central to that; yet, regrettably, the Government's policies are often unplanned, ill considered and at the mercy and drift of the whims and tides of events, whereas a clear and coherent approach linking analysis of problems to the proposed solutions and the resources to carry them out is vital.

The Government disastrously failed to prepare for the post-conflict period in Iraq. There was no plan for post-Saddam Iraq. Worse still, the Government ignored the well tried and proven norms that our people have learned over many years of experience on peacekeeping missions; to send the army back to barracks to await further orders, to keep the police policing, to leave the civil service in post until otherwise directed, to control the borders to hinder insurgency and to have a real plan in place for job creation and economic reconstruction.

Amid political instability and violence, Iraq's economic problems have been viewed as secondary and unrelated. They are not. United States and Iraqi institutions have systematically lost, and the insurgency gained momentum, as living conditions failed to improve, and the Government have failed adequately to act upon the link between economics and security. I hope that the Secretary of State will reassure the House that they are better prepared for the January elections, which are central and vital to establishing the democratic legitimacy of the new Iraqi Government. With much territory beyond the Interim Government's control and sectarian and ethnic forces threatening to pull the country apart, there is a profoundly difficult task ahead. The period between now and the elections will be hard going and will require the greatest of skill.

In Afghanistan we are in charge of controlling opium production. The UN's annual opium survey reveals that poppy cultivation increased by two thirds this year. Last year, Afghanistan exported 87 per cent. of the world's supply. Once again, the Government have failed to plan adequately. The UN report for 2003 found that one in 10 Afghans, many of them unemployed returned refugees, is involved in the drugs trade, which last year employed 2.3 million people and made up 60 per cent. of the gross national product. Is that what the Prime Minister meant when in 2001 he pledged to eradicate the scourge of opium along with the Taliban? In his own words,

"90 per cent. of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan . . . the arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of people buying their drugs on British streets. That is another part of their regime we should seek to destroy."

The most fundamental challenge inherent in international terrorism that we are fighting today is ideology. Military pressure is but one way of defeating al-Qaeda and its franchises, which could in the future become more widespread, extreme, international and autonomous. But just as important are sound intelligence, political dialogue and diplomatic, political and economic engagement, to remove from the terrorists the havens where they would seek shelter or a passive support that they might enjoy. Looking back on the cold war, we should take confidence from the fact that the enduring values of freedom and democracy, just as much as economic power and military muscle, triumphed. We must have a dialogue with those who do not support terrorism; with those who are free from its influence and find its teachings abhorrent. That means political dialogue, economic help, educational and aid programmes, encouraging democracy reform and education.

Poverty combined with unemployment creates a social climate in which extremists and various populist and religious sects flourish; these in turn provide some of the recruits for violent groups in internal conflicts. According to some projections, the number of young unemployed in the Arab world and north Africa could reach 50 million in two decades. Such a situation will not be conducive to political stability. We must do all that we can to address these issues that have become a breeding ground for terrorists. We must try to help to solve those concerns that some in the Arab world might use to justify supporting and financing violent extremists. We must engage in a planned participation in the resolution of those combustible conflicts where we have a particular knowledge, experience or input that will be valuable.

No conflict lends itself more to that than the Palestinian-Israeli dispute; a conflict that has for too long acted as a poisonous backdrop to regional tensions. Any durable settlement between Israel and the Palestinians cannot be imposed, let alone arrived at under duress. It must result from freely given consent on both sides if it is to take root in the communities who must live with the consequences.

The way ahead is already clear. There can only be a two-state solution; two states west of the Jordan living co-operatively at peace with each other, an Israel secure within guaranteed and acceptable borders and a viable and independent Palestinian state. Like so many other such comprehensive and final status solutions, it is easy to envisage but the devil to deliver. It cannot be imposed and can be achieved only in a lasting way through dialogue, hard work and agreement.

What proposals did the Prime Minister make when he last met the President of the United States? Is there an initiative to appoint a special envoy for the middle east to push the process forward with the vigour that it needs? Is there not a strong case for international peacekeeping monitors within the occupied territories and Gaza to promote security and to help to suppress the roots of terrorist violence? The Government are strong on "save the world" rhetoric but weak on action, as in so many other areas.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, post-Arafat, an international commission or special envoy should put as a priority the proper use of international funds in Palestine, funds which up to now have been totally misused, corruptly, by the former head of that region? Does he agree that, for the good of the people of Palestine, it is important that all the international backing and finances necessary to establish an independent state in Palestine are administered honestly and correctly and without the corruption that has taken place in the past?

My hon. Friend is right. There is a real need, above all, to bring to the Palestinian people, for their own good, benefit and future success in the world, good governance and good order; clearly, that is important. But more than any particular criticism of anyone—legions of legitimate criticisms can be made of both sides—there needs to be a dialogue, and it needs to be pushed ahead. It will be hard pounding and hard work. Our country has a major role to play but, so far, we have seen very little of it.

The Prime Minister speaks of saving Africa—except, apparently, Zimbabwe. We all agree with the Prime Minister on the need to make progress on Africa. But how is Zimbabwe advancing, except into a quagmire of dictatorship and xenophobia, as instanced by the latest frenzied assault on all foreign assistance agencies? Or has the killing stopped in Darfur? Here, the Government have taken a firm line, but with what results? On 8 October 2004, while in Addis Ababa, the Prime Minister announced a military force

"to deal with African genocides",

the day after his Defence Secretary decreed the reduction in infantry numbers. A hollow laugh could be heard all over the land from the armed forces.

The threats posed by rogue and failed states and international terrorism when combined with a backdrop of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction could have truly terrifying consequences. The proliferation of WMD poses the most serious danger to the peace of the world. Chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists or outlaw regimes could bring catastrophic harm. There is an urgent need to improve and modernise non-proliferation laws to address new and changing threats; to restrict the sale and transport of nuclear technologies and equipment; to close a loophole in the nuclear non-proliferation regimes that allow states to pursue weapons of mass destruction under the false cloak of legitimacy; and to expand efforts to secure and destroy nuclear weapons and matériel. Finally, given the importance of intelligence in fighting the war on terror, we hope that the Minister will assure the House when he winds up tonight that the important recommendations made by the Butler inquiry regarding the co-ordination between the intelligence services will be and have been implemented.

The Government have inflicted upon this country a foreign policy without shape and without agenda. It is little wonder that it is so regularly, so often and so badly derailed. But worse still, it is no wonder that our stock has fallen in the rest of the world, and the contents of the Queen's Speech do nothing to remedy that.

It was a bold assertion of the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) that the British Government and the British Government alone appear responsible for the lack of post-war planning in Iraq and for the growth in poppy production in Afghanistan. I was interested in what he had to say about Bosnia. Clearly, that can be paraded by the Opposition with their anti-EU credentials but, over the past few weeks, I have had the privilege of discussing that very problem with both General Leakey, who will take up his position on 2 December, and his American opposite number, the commander of KFOR, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that neither of them sees the problems that he mentioned.

I should also like to make the interesting observation that the hon. Gentleman criticised my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for not leading this debate, but that that was entirely in the hands of the Opposition in terms of the day that they chose for it. Yes, his points were interesting and fortissimo, but wholly irrelevant to the issues facing our country.

I found the Gracious Speech very challenging. It set out a programme that would probably take at least 18 months to implement. Perhaps on this occasion, the pregnant phrase,

"Other measures will be laid before you."—[Official Report, 23 November 2004; Voluntary 428, c. 6.],

has special significance, in that, if there is a settlement in Northern Ireland—as we desperately hope that there will be; we give today's talks on that matter every good wish—at least six more Bills will be brought before the House. There would then be even more on the table than there is now. Perhaps we should regard the Queen's Speech as a shop window of aspirations rather than as having the serious expectation that all, or at least part, of it will become law by Maundy Thursday, when the House may adjourn and we shall face elections.

Turning to foreign policy, we have a crowded agenda before us—perhaps more crowded than any that I can recall in all my years in Parliament. The starting point is that the old distinctions between foreign and domestic policy are less clear than they were in the past. I join the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex in his views on the problems of Afghanistan today and the drug problems that we face on our streets. As he rightly said, the United Nations report published on 18 November states that Afghanistan now supplies 87 per cent. of the world's opium. In 2003, the trade was worth $2.8 billion—more than 60 per cent. of the country's gross domestic product—and one in 10 Afghans are estimated to be involved in the business. A farmer can earn more than 10 times as much by growing poppies as he can by cultivating wheat, so when we talk airily about alternatives to poppies, such as onions or wheat, we must remember that nothing can give the ordinary farmer nearly the same returns as poppies, particularly if the gangs are holding a gun to his head to make him produce them. Opium cultivation has increased by 64 per cent. compared with 2003.

Linked to that is what I see in my local newspaper, the South Wales Evening Post, which on 13 November carried photographs of 20 local people who had been imprisoned for a total of about 60 years. They are ordinary folk who were involved in the business of selling hard drugs on the streets of my city and devastating the lives of so many young people there. The trail that begins in the poppy fields of Afghanistan leads inexorably to those people who are now, quite properly, in prison for destroying my constituent's lives.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that other elements in the Queen's Speech that might address the demand side of the drugs trade are likely to be far more effective than trying to address the supply side in Afghanistan or elsewhere?

We have to attack the problem at each link of the chain, from production in Afghanistan—where 95 per cent. of the heroin on our streets comes from—through each country on the trail from Afghanistan to the UK, to the criminal penalties, education and the range of other measures relevant to our country that are within the direct responsibility of our Government and civil society here. My point is to highlight the clear nexus between foreign and domestic policy, which is illustrated particularly dramatically by the drugs problem. One could also identify that nexus in regard to terrorism.

Clearly we need not only the range of measures to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones) alluded, but a most serious effort by the international community. The United Kingdom has a particular role to play in that, because of our leadership in the Afghan national drugs control strategy. For those colleagues who might be interested, that is detailed in paragraphs 193 to 204 of the Foreign Affairs Committee report on the war on terrorism, which we published last July. Links are identified in the Queen's Speech between drugs, crime and security that involve international problems that cut across our borders and that require international co-operation to tackle them.

The war against terrorism is also partly international and partly domestic. It might seem remote at one level, but we saw the newspaper headlines over the weekend suggesting that a number of those people released from Guantanamo Bay were still involved in terrorism and had reoffended. Yesterday's headline in The Independent said that the Government were seeking to create the politics of fear. On the same day, in an interesting juxtaposition, the Daily Mail reported a story about Canary wharf. In the mid-1990s, we let into this country several hundred Algerian refugees, who were members of the FIS, after the election there. Many of them have gone to ground. However, it is from Pakistan that the greatest terrorist threat arises, and I pay tribute to President Musharraf for the courageous way in which he is dealing with that issue at home.

I am sure that the Government are sincere in saying that they are not trying to create a climate of fear, but does the right hon. Gentleman believe that it was entirely coincidental that that two-year-old story should emerge only a couple of days before the Queen's Speech?

I do not know whether it was a coincidence. All I know is that, if the Government had not shown themselves ready to tackle that issue, they would quite properly have been accused of complacency by many hon. Members. From the briefings that I have received, I have no problem in acknowledging the enormous threat to this country and the security of our people that international terrorism presents, especially those involved in international terrorism who are seeking to gain weapons of mass destruction. At the moment, there is no evidence that they have done so, but the threat is appalling, and the Government would be failing our own people if they did not seek to alert the public to it. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that moral and political problems arise over the conflict between the civil liberties that we value and the threat from international terrorism.

Whatever differences there might be over identity cards—my views on that are known to some hon. Members—is it not a fact that those who want to inflict the gravest damage on western democracies have not changed their minds in any way whatever? If terrorists could inflict an atrocity on Britain, they would certainly do so without the slightest hesitation.

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend, but the kind of issues that I am thinking of include Uzbekistan, for example, and how we should respond to evidence that has been obtained by torture or to countries whose support we need in other areas. How should we deal with the Russian Federation over Chechnya, for example? How should we deal with Belmarsh? These important issues challenge us as democrats as we seek to face the problems of international terrorism. In terms of dealing with the Arab world, this involves a major task of public diplomacy, as the Foreign Office seeks to bring the various elements together. The United States has the so-called greater middle east initiative. I am somewhat sceptical about that, first because it is so comprehensive and, secondly, because it seeks to take a top-down position and has not taken the countries involved fully into the discussion. However, it is most important that we encourage good governance in the Arab countries and seek to build every possible bridge of understanding there.

What are the prospects, broadly, of those areas covered in the Gracious Speech in terms of foreign affairs? On transatlantic relations, we have to accept that the election is over and that President Bush is there for another four years. Perhaps some in the United States Administration are confident that the election confirmed popular support for their international relations policies.

We will have to work with the Administration for the next four years. The new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is, happily, well known to this country and has a very close working relationship with Sir David Manning, our ambassador. Indeed, the change from Mr. Colin Powell could be positive in that it is clear that he was somewhat marginalised over his latter years in office and that Ms Rice is clearly an insider and has more clout in the White House, where it matters.

We face strains between a number of our key European allies and the United States, particularly over Iraq, although it is significant that, in yesterday's talks at Sharm el-Sheikh, the French leader, Michel Barnier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and other French officials were apparently far more conciliatory and started off far more co-operatively over Iraq. That emphasises the role of the United Kingdom, for which we are often criticised, of seeking to build a bridge between the United States and Europe. There will be key areas where we take a very different view from our US allies, such as Kyoto, the World Trade Organisation and Iran, but is important that we have this special relationship while trying to ensure that the US learns multilateralism and that the sheriff, reluctant or not, needs allies and accepts that he cannot manage on his own.

Another such example is the western Balkans, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex. That relatively small part of Europe is manageable and it should be managed by the European Union, so it is wholly proper that the US, which two years or so ago was highly sceptical of an EU military presence following the initiative taken by Britain and France, is now totally supportive of a Berlin-plus initiative with the European Union force—EUFOR—taking over in the western Balkans on 2 December. That is important in showing not only the transformation in US policies, but what we as Europeans must do in an area that so much affects our own interests and security. Equally, with our US partners, we have to get over those stereotypes of Mars and Venus—hard power and soft power, with the US doing the cooking and the Europeans doing the washing up.

I turn to what the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex said—he said it rather well, I thought—about the middle east peace process. The role of the US is vital if there is to be progress. I recall the point made by President Bush in Belfast when he undertook to give the same commitment to the middle east peace process as the Prime Minister had given to Northern Ireland. We have seen that commitment from the Prime Minister—indeed, it may be one of the great achievements of this Administration, although I conceded that it is built on many foundations that John Major laid earlier—but we have not seen that same commitment from the US. We may have seen at least the start of it with Monday's visit by Colin Powell, but the key aspect is that such a visit by the US Secretary of State had not taken place for 18 months, which hardly shows the promised commitment and engagement.

It is clearly very important that the US should appoint a senior envoy—which, I say in passing, was recommended by the Foreign Affairs Committee and has been so recommended on a number of occasions—analogous to the James Baker initiative during the early '90s. The points of movement have been set out already—ensuring that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza goes ahead and seeking to assure the Israelis on the security issue, because it is absolutely clear that the Palestinians could do more on the security side to prevent suicide attacks on Israel—but we can only hope that there is now a moment of opportunity because of the Palestinian elections and because the US has a President who does not face re-election due to the assurance of a second four-year term. Also, we have the elections in Iraq on 30 January, so the new leadership gives an opportunity that should not be missed.

Turning to Iran and Iraq, we were unaware of the extent of Iran's development of a nuclear capability. By contrast, there was a massive exaggeration of the weapons of mass destruction available to Iraq, whereas we were unaware of the extent of Libya's development arising from the A.Q. Khan network. Libya, however, has proved a model case in co-operation and non-proliferation since last October. On Iran, we know of the EU 3 agreement in October last year, that the International Atomic Energy Agency will discuss Iran tomorrow and that there have been last-minute hitches in terms of the nature of the suspension and the monitoring of Iran's compliance with its undertakings to the EU 3.

Who is right: the US to be very sceptical or Europe to be perhaps a little too naive about the development? History will tell.

Is my right hon. Friend concerned about the sometimes nefarious activities of the National Council of Resistance of Iran? Does not that have unhealthy echoes of propaganda of the kind that was exercised before the Iraq war by the expatriate Iraqi opposition parties? Is he not concerned that such people have a ready audience in some quarters among the neo-conservatives in Washington?

It is clear that the Mujaheddin and the National Council of Resistance of Iran are on our terrorist list. It is also clear that they have excellent sources in Iran. Had it not been for the clear intelligence that they gave us, we would have been unaware of that history of concealment on the part of the Iranian Government. Even latterly, there has been useful evidence given in that respect, so it is absolutely right that we in the EU work closely with the Iranians, but, given that history of concealment, we must do so with some scepticism while also rejecting the US policy of going immediately to the Security Council.

One thing is absolutely clear: there is no mileage in going to the UN Security Council. If we did so, such a resolution in relation to sanctions would be vetoed by Russia and China. There is no useful development in that respect.

Is it not true—this is the case in almost every example I can think of—that when a country wishes to avail itself of nuclear power its motivation, whether justified or not, is almost always that another country in the same theatre has nuclear power and that it is trying to protect itself from that? Is not that line of argument one that should be developed in relation to Iran's desire to have nuclear power?

That is a very plausible reason. Indeed, it might be argued that we could not have invaded Iraq if that country had developed its nuclear capability, which it clearly intended to do. We could therefore reach a conclusion either way as to whether, as it was aiming to do that, a pre-emptive strike was justified. However, I shall not follow my hon. Friend down that road. The only way that we can therefore respond to Iran's concern is by giving guarantees to Iran, and by providing sufficient incentives in commercial links and through civil nuclear know-how from Europe. That, I believe, is part of the package.

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The only colleague whom I have not given way to is my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn).

Before my right hon. Friend leaves the subject of Iran and the dangers of nuclear weapons there, would he care to comment on the presence of known nuclear missiles in Israel and the build-up to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty conference next year, when it is essential that we get some sort of worldwide agreement? That will not be helped if Britain and the United States are busy developing a new generation of nuclear missiles at the same time.

I have heard what my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary said today in relation to the next generation of nuclear missiles. Certainly, I hope that we will play a positive role in the coming NPT conference. That is an interesting debate, but it is one to come.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I have already given way to my hon. Friend, and it would be unfair to other colleagues if I did not make progress.

As far as Iraq is concerned, it is most important that the elections set for 30 January proceed. They will be the first democratic elections in Iraq for more than 50 years, and it is vital that the Government there are given legitimacy in their country and region. If the Shi'a community gain the majority, we urge them to try to be as inclusive as possible in their country. It would be wholly inconceivable for us to allow Iraq to degenerate into chaos—it would have implications for the entire region were it to become a failed state. Certainly, the indications from the Sharm el-Sheikh conference have so far been quite positive.

I have mentioned a few points in relation to proliferation. I have mentioned the linkage with terrorist groups, and we have no evidence thus far that terrorist groups, although they have tried hard, have such a capacity. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency, led by Dr. el-Baradei, recently warned about a "race against time" to stop a nuclear terrorist outrage. Clearly, we need to engage with North Korea and Iran. Either regime could pass fissile material to terrorists or provide the tipping point for its region. As I said earlier, we must offer incentives and security assurances.

Our great worry is the former Soviet nuclear stock, which was highlighted by the Foreign Affairs Committee report of July 2004. Russia's record since 1991 has raised major concerns in relation to non-proliferation efforts associated with the war against terrorism. For example, the nuclear sector still produces large quantities of weapons-grade plutonium and no comprehensive inventories of fissile stockpiles exist. Clearly, many in Russia, as the Committee's report showed, benefit greatly from the trade in weapons of mass destruction. The Committee concluded that the Co-operative Threat Reduction Initiative, with massive funds at its disposal to deal with the proliferation of the Soviet Union's weapons of mass destruction legacy, is essential. Within that, the Nunn-Lugar initiative deals not only with centralising and guarding stockpiles, which in the past were the responsibility of the KGB, but decommissioning nuclear submarines in Murmansk and elsewhere. That is vital.

I only mention in passing the crowded agenda in terms of Africa, where there at least seems to be some progress in Darfur and in the north-south peace initiatives, which I have charted since 1965 and before. Some Members will no doubt raise climate change and UN reform, but I will turn finally to the European Union.

Over the period covered by the Queen's Speech, key developments are likely in preparing for the referendum on the constitution. In deciding next month on the candidate status of Turkey, we must recognise how far Turkey has come in changing its internal policies and consider the importance of implementation. We must also recognise that the internal dynamics of the European Union are changing with enlargement. No longer can France and Germany be the key motor of the European Union. It will be a far more diffuse, disparate power structure, in which we can make an important contribution.

All the factors that I have mentioned, such as terrorism and drugs, are linked by the fact that we in the United Kingdom and our Government can make a difference to them. We make a difference through our series of alliances and membership of international organisations, derived from our proud history as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and as members of the European Union, NATO, the Commonwealth and the G8. We can also make that contribution because of the unique personal relationship that the Prime Minister has with President Bush, as the United States is the only remaining superpower. Finally and more immediately, over the next year, we shall head the G8, and will to some extent be able to set its agenda, and in the second half of next year, we shall have the presidency of the European Union, at a time when key decisions will be made. It is an exciting time to contribute to a debate on foreign affairs.

Years ago, a former Foreign Secretary, Michael Stewart, told me that for him—he looked extremely tired in saying this—the matter of concern was that at any one moment of the day, two thirds of the world were awake and capable of causing mischief. That was never more so than today.

I have no doubt whatever that foreign affairs will form a major part of this Government's agenda between now and the general election, which is generally accepted as being likely to take place on the first Thursday in May next year.

Darfur, the middle east, Iran, United Nations reform, Ukraine, Russia, Europe, Zimbabwe and the transatlantic relationship—all are issues that will be on the foreign policy agenda. Over all of those hangs the long, dark shadow of Iraq. The Defence Secretary, in opening the debate, acknowledged that that issue was divisive in the House and in the country. Nothing that has occurred has caused me to alter my view that the military action that was taken in March 2003 was illegal, and taken on a flawed prospectus. That military action has imposed on us all, whether supporters or opponents, a moral obligation to the people of Iraq, which is painful, expensive and dangerous to fulfil.

The background of that obligation is that we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no serious and current threat; there was no real and present danger; and at least 12 months before the war, there was an overt acceptance, between the White House and No. 10 Downing street, that regime change was in contemplation and, on the United Kingdom's side, an explicit understanding that regime change would be illegal.

Like everyone else, I welcome the announcement that elections for a transitional national assembly will take place in January, but we should not underestimate the difficulty of keeping that commitment, and the costs that may be incurred. The United States-led strategy of using overwhelming force in Falluja seems to me to be highly questionable and likely to prove counter-productive. A devastating military victory may have been won, but I question how many hearts and minds have been won at the same time.

I have no doubt that much more must be done, urgently, to train, equip and motivate Iraqi military and police forces. The continued presence of multinational forces in such large numbers would not have been required if concerted efforts had been made much earlier to establish effective Iraqi security forces, and the wholesale disbandment of the Iraqi army can now be seen as a grievous error. On that I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames).

The difficulty is that without greater security, the humanitarian situation cannot be improved. In fact, as the security situation has deteriorated, an increasing number of aid agencies have left the country, not wishing to subject even their most dedicated workers to the risks of kidnap or worse. It is essential for the humanitarian consequences of their withdrawal to be met. Not the least important task is to deal with the tens of thousands of people who were displaced by recent fighting, and to ensure that they have access to food, water, shelter, electricity and medicines.

As I have said, my colleagues and I still believe that the military action was both illegal and unnecessary. We believe that questions of political accountability remain unanswered. That is why we tabled to the Gracious Speech an amendment that regrets the absence of any legislative measure

"to clarify the responsibility of the Prime Minister to Parliament, particularly in relation to the prerogative powers and the role of Parliament in matters of war and peace; and calls for a special Select Committee of the House to consider these matters."

The Hutton inquiry was established to investigate the death of David Kelly. The remit of our own Intelligence and Security Committee and Butler inquiries was to examine the adequacy, assessment and use of intelligence. None of those inquiries, however, has examined or assessed the full political, legal and strategic advice given to the Prime Minister before the war; nor, indeed, has the Prime Minister's competence and judgment in the light of that advice been the subject of review. I hold it to be fundamental that the British Parliament has every right to hold the Prime Minister to account on Iraq, and fundamental for constitutional matters of war and peace to be addressed in full.

I am sure the right hon. and learned Gentleman agrees that if we are ever to arrive at the truth of what happened in the build-up to the war, we must dispose of some of the myths. Will he comment on the statement by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee not long ago that Iraq was still in pursuit of a nuclear weapon? Does he accept that that was disposed of by the inspectors and monitors and, indeed, by the Iraq survey group itself?

My recollection is that at the famous meeting of the Security Council, which Mr. Colin Powell has had considerable reason to regret, Dr. el-Baradei gave it as his considered opinion that there was no programme to acquire nuclear capability. That was an interesting meeting, as history has demonstrated, because it now appears that the intelligence on which Mr. Powell gave the strongest assurances of the risk that Iraq presented was of little or no substance.

I hope that my memory of the work of the Iraq survey group is correct. I seem to recall it being said that the recipe was still there and that, as with cookery, a recipe could not be unlearnt. Two scientists who were present were encouraged to continue their researches. It was said that there was every indication that the infrastructure was intact and that, had that not been contained, the Saddam Hussein Government would have taken substantial action. The intention was there.

The right hon. Gentleman might take that up with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), but I am bound to say that the argument, or assertion, that yellowcake was being obtained from Niger—

That is a detail.

It seems to me to be a bit more than a detail, as it involves the very material whereby capability could be achieved. Moreover, it could not be verified that the aluminium tubes that were seen as being so important were of sufficient quality to provide the necessary equipment for—I think—the operation of a centrifuge. There may have been an intention, but we do not go to war on the basis of intentions. If we did, we would go to war on a remarkable number of occasions. Even the Defence Secretary might be forced to concede that the British armed forces were subject to overstretch in such circumstances.

May I return my right hon. and learned Friend to the issue of legal justification for the invasion? Both he and I have pressed the Government to present to the House the full judgment and advice of the Attorney-General. The Government have responded that that would be unprecedented. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that as the House was asked in an unprecedented fashion to take a view on the matter, and was given an unprecedented amount of what we now know to have been dodgy intelligence, it would be right for us to see the full advice given to the Prime Minister by the Attorney-General?

My hon. Friend makes two very sound points. We shall see the legal advice eventually—it will eventually reach the public domain. I am in no doubt about that. Had the Defence Secretary been present, I would have been willing to make a modest wager with him—in the sum of, let us say, £100, to be paid to a service charity—that the legal advice will contain reference to issues of last resort and proportionality. Such issues did not feature in the legal advice as published by the Government. It is perfectly clear now to those who have looked at the matter in the round that the Attorney-General's approach was, shall we say, on a rather more qualified basis than has been asserted on his behalf.

I have no doubt that Parliament has every right to hold the Prime Minister to account. That is why legislation of the kind envisaged in our amendment would, in my judgment, be in the public interest.

It is inevitable on occasions such as this, because of the wide range of subjects covered, that there will be a certain amount of selection; but I do not think that a debate on foreign affairs at this time could do other than give some consideration to the possibility of progress in the middle east. The change in leadership of the Palestinians—along with, it could be argued, President Bush's second and final term—seems to offer unprecedented opportunities for progress, but that will require strong and even-handed re-engagement with the conflict. President Bush recently reaffirmed his commitment to a democratic, independent and viable Palestinian state. We in the House of Commons are entitled to request and require the Prime Minister to hold him to his word.

The bombings must stop, but so must the building of the wall and the building of settlements on Palestinian land. All are forbidden under international law, and international law is most often respected when it is applied without discrimination. I have no doubt—here I echo what was said by the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex—that enduring peace will be built only on dialogue. A settlement that is unilaterally imposed by Israel, of which disengagement from Gaza is only one component, will not resemble the road map, will not bring stability to the region and will further radicalise Palestinian opinion. Lasting solutions cannot be imposed; they can only be agreed.

I take issue with the Government on Darfur. Last week, to the disappointment of many, the Security Council once again failed to take decisive action. The situation has deteriorated over the past few weeks: violence has increased again, and more than 150,000 people are short of food, water and medicines. Yet the United Nations Security Council can only agree to "monitor compliance" with previous resolutions. We should be arguing with far greater vigour for action to force all the warring parties in Darfur to adhere to their ceasefire commitments. When will this country take that crisis seriously? Some 100,000 lives may already have been lost.

We should not allow ourselves to get hung up on the question of whether this is or is not genocide. I understand that certain legal obligations might spring from a determination that what has taken place is indeed genocide, but let us leave that to one side for the moment. Let us look at the nature of the tragedy. Rape, disengagement, expulsion and ethnic cleansing have taken place under the nose of the international community, yet what the Security Council can best do is to "monitor compliance" with previous resolutions. It is shameful, and our Government should be robust in persuading the international community and those responsible for such matters to be far more engaged than hitherto. Robust and targeted sanctions are urgently required. There should be an arms embargo, an assets freeze and a travel ban on the leaders of the Sudanese Government. The no-fly zone should be strictly enforced, the peacekeeping forces offered by the African Union should be strengthened, and deadlines for progress should be imposed.

Let me turn to Iran. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, has to be dealt with through a variety of strategies, including counter-proliferation, containment and, yes, hard-edged engagement as well. That is why I welcome the progress made by the so-called EU 3, and in this regard the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and his French and German colleagues deserve congratulation on their efforts. There are some questions about the agreement to suspend uranium enrichment; none the less, it is a step in the right direction. When these long-term negotiations begin next month, the EU 3 should press hard for a permanent end to enrichment and reprocessing activities, and for much closer monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

As I said, there must be hard-edged engagement, but it must be accompanied by economic and political incentives. I welcome the Foreign Secretary's saying that any military strike against Iran is inconceivable. He is perfectly correct, of course, because any such strike would provoke fierce retaliation and could generate dangerous instability in the middle east and, indeed, in Iraq. However, I cannot rid myself of some apprehension at the suggestion percolating down from Washington that Israel might be seen as a surrogate for military action on behalf of the United States.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right about the dangers that exist. What action does he think should be taken in respect of Israel's holding of nuclear weapons and its failure to comply with, or endorse, the non-proliferation treaty? Does he see any way forward in next year's conference?

Israel has of course refused to become a signatory. There is a very strong argument in favour of a WMD-free zone in the middle east, but that can be achieved only if the two-state solution is achieved. I hold no brief for Mr. Sharon's Government, but at the moment I would be unlikely to advise them to rid themselves unilaterally of their nuclear weapons in the absence of a comprehensive settlement. Issues such as those referred to by the hon. Gentleman are germane, of that there is no doubt. But they can form only part of a comprehensive settlement that deals with all the issues, and which is based on—as the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex rightly said—an acceptance of Israel within secure, recognised and guaranteed borders, and on a viable homeland and justice for the Palestinians.

Given that this debate also embraces defence, let me make some observations on it. I do note, however, that, as has been pointed out, there have been a number of recent whole-day debates on the armed services and on procurement. It is conventional to mention with gratitude and pride our servicemen and women, but on an occasion such as this, when we know that so many of them are actively engaged in dangerous operations, we have a duty to recognise yet again their courage and distinction, and to acknowledge that soldiers have given their lives in Iraq or suffered severe injuries. We should pay tribute to their bravery and their continuing service on behalf of our country.

As the Defence Committee has been at pains to point out, there are strains on defence. The Government have to take this issue more seriously, because it is hard to see that our commitments will reduce. More United Kingdom troops may well be required in Afghanistan, and we may have to take on more responsibility in the Balkans as NATO hands over to the European Union. Indeed, further commitments may arise as a result of the new EU rapid reaction force.

It is right for the Government to argue that we should move to network-enabled capabilities and effects-based warfare, although I wish that we could find a vocabulary that conveys more lucidly exactly what those terms mean. In essence, the Government are saying that our forces need to be modernised and to have the capacity to fight high-intensity wars. Of course that is true, but we must also retain a capacity for conventional warfare, and for conflict prevention and peacekeeping duties.

There can be no question of the Army's standing still, but I argue the case for reform, not reduction. A few weeks ago in Westminster Hall, the Defence Secretary made a powerful case for reform of the Army. Anyone who heard it could not but be impressed and persuaded by it, but what he did not make was a case for reducing the number of infantry battalions from 40 to 36. I do not believe that the necessary reform, which we would all in general accept, can be achieved only through the subordination of existing Scottish regiments and their combining into one super-regiment. I cannot believe that it is impossible to effect necessary reform without breaking the traditions, geographical connections and community relations that have been enormously important to those regiments.

Perhaps it is an improper thing to do, but I have a special case to make on behalf of the Black Watch, which recruits within my constituency. It is being asked to do a difficult and dangerous task, yet in the process of carrying it out, its very future as an independent regiment is under scrutiny. It says a great deal for the morale and professionalism of the Black Watch that it went to do its duty, and that it did so with the distinction and commitment that it has demonstrated in the circumstances. The Government should not abuse that morale or take advantage of that professionalism and commitment. There surely is a solution that would allow the reforms that the Chief of the General Staff thinks essential, and which most of us accept are necessary, without destroying a regimental system in Scotland—I make no apology for this partial, special plea—that has been of enormous importance not only to the Army itself, but to the communities with whom these regiments are associated.

I wholly agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but does he agree with me that what applies to the Scottish regiments definitely applies to the English ones, and that there are ways of doing what the Chief of the General Staff rightly wants to do without resorting to the super-regiment concept?

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pulling me up and he is right to do so. I did admit that I was making a special case, and he will understand that.

indicated assent.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: what is good for Scotland should be good for the whole of the United Kingdom.

My right hon. and learned Friend has made a powerful case for the Black Watch; will he endorse the case for the regiments in the south of Scotland? A particularly insensitive and nonsensical suggestion has been made that the King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Royal Scots should be merged into one of the new battalions within that super-regiment.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which is consistent with my general case that we should maintain these connections because of the tremendous contribution that they have made in the past. This is not an argument about nostalgia or an argument for the old comrades. It is an argument for ensuring that what we retain is effective and continues to make the contribution to the Army in the future that it has made in the past.

I would like to say a few words about reform of the United Nations. The Secretary-General's high-level panel is due to report on 1 December. The UN's institutional framework inevitably reflects the political and strategic thinking of the time of its formation—now more than 50 years ago. No one could argue against the proposition that the UN needs to be modernised and made more effective and representative. The Security Council has to be expanded in a way that reflects the new political realities, but there must also be clear rules about the use of force.

In a speech in Chicago in 1999—it is, in my view, not sufficiently well regarded or referred to—the Prime Minister made a powerful case for the right of intervention where there was systematic abuse of human rights. It was consistent with his approach to Kosovo—an approach that I and my colleagues wholly supported. The Secretary-General of the UN himself said in a telling phrase that we should somehow be less concerned with the sovereignty of nations and more concerned with the sovereignty of individuals.

The argument for a right of intervention will undoubtedly run and be embraced: references will be made to it in the high-level panel's report. The criteria that need to be taken into account are the seriousness of what is taking place; the absence of alternatives; whether intervention is truly a last resort; the primary purpose; the proportionality of the means; the likely outcome; and the authority required. I offer those criteria in the clear understanding that they were not taken into account when the decision was made to take military action against Iraq.

Two relationships will dominate foreign affairs for the foreseeable future: our relationship with Europe and our relationship with the United States. I want to reaffirm that we should understand and appreciate that the European Union has promoted and reinforced peace and prosperity, stability and democracy throughout Europe. We too often forget that in recent history, eight of the EU's new members were Soviet satellites, and three of its older members—Spain, Portugal and Greece—were ruled by dictatorships. I have no doubt whatever that our prosperity is underpinned by membership of what is now the largest internal market in the world, with some 450 million people and 20 per cent. of the world's gross domestic product.

The constitution—or, more correctly, the treaty—that the Prime Minister signed a few weeks ago in Rome is an important step to facilitate the operation of an enlarged European Union. We should also acknowledge that the most recent wave of enlargement is an extraordinary achievement. Through the rigorous application of the Copenhagen criteria on social, economic and political concerns, the Union has helped national Governments extend to many millions more people the benefits of democracy, free trade, good governance, human rights and civil liberties. We will support the Bill that the Government intend to introduce to give effect to their obligations under that treaty. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy) said yesterday, we are disappointed that there is no clear timetable for a referendum. We have heard the Foreign Secretary opining that a referendum might be held in 2006, but nothing firm has been stated.

Having introduced the Bill, the Government should then argue the case. It is certainly true that the case for a negative vote has already begun, but the case for an affirmative vote will begin to be effective only when the Government put their shoulders to the wheel and encourage, perhaps even instruct, all Ministers at all levels to show an enthusiasm for Europe, which has not been notable, shall we say, in recent weeks and months.

I wonder how it is, when Europe and America have so much in common both culturally and politically, that transatlantic relations have become so fragile. The explanation probably lies in the fact that as the US has grown in military and economic power, Europe has struggled to keep up. For America, NATO and other alliances are a matter of choice, but for Europe and the UK, multilateralism remains a necessity.

On this side of the Atlantic, we have failed to acknowledge the profound shift in American psychology that has taken place since 9/11. A hard-edged crusading America has recently been endorsed by its citizens. President Bush is not an aberration: the attitude and outlook of America have been transformed. But that does not deflect me from the overwhelming belief that Europe must maintain a strong alliance with the US. For the UK, too, it is not a simple choice between one or the other.

We must fully acknowledge the fundamental importance of Europe to our modern-day prosperity, stability and security. Equally, we should be under no illusion as to the force of American pragmatism and the determined pursuit of its own national interest. I believe that, unless we are fully engaged with Europe, our influence in America will inevitably be diminished. A Europe that presents a united front will be far more influential than an "old friend"—even one to whom the award of the congressional medal has been made—trying to call in favours.

I am in no doubt that it is in the strategic and economic interest of Britain to build a Europe that is constructively Atlanticist. We must have a genuine US-European partnership of influence and we must try to persuade America to re-engage with the international community. We must try to convince the White House that American security will be not enhanced, but undermined, by unilateralism, the exercise of crusading power and the doctrine of preventive war.

We should call on the US to reinvigorate its support for the framework of international law and human rights that it was so instrumental in creating. The war against Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib have all undermined America's international standing. We expect America to adhere to the principles on which it was founded: liberty, justice and the rule of law. We should miss no opportunity, working within a frank and candid relationship, to say that as often as we can.

I want to conclude by making a brief reference to remarks reported as having been made by the Leader of the House about the country being "safer under Labour" and, by implication, not safe under any other political party. To put it most charitably, I would have to say that those remarks were ill judged and should be withdrawn at the first available opportunity. I believe that they are offensive and provide a hostage to fortune. If, God forbid, some terrorist action takes place with loss of life, an assertion that Britain can be safe only under one political party may come to haunt anyone who has made it.

I also want to say, with some sensitivity, that it is not that long ago that some Labour Members of Parliament refused to support—either through abstention or by voting against them—the renewal of prevention against terrorism provisions for Northern Ireland. They thought that they had good reasons for doing so. I, for one, and many others, never accused them of being soft on terrorism. Those of us who regard it as our duty to challenge any legislation that may have the effect of detracting from the civil rights and individual liberties of any citizen of the UK do not view it as acceptable to be traduced in this way.

We will examine every Government proposal on its own merits. We will exercise our judgment and scrutinise the Government. That, after all, is why our constituents send us here. It is what they invite us to carry out in their name. Any legislative proposals to deal with the problem of terrorism will be examined in that spirit, as will any proposals relating to foreign affairs and defence.

We must all be concerned about the threat of international terrorism and about the defence of our civil liberties. I do not believe that there is a contradiction between those two things.

Before I deal with some aspects of foreign affairs, I want to preface my remarks by saying that it is unfortunate that the ceremonial state opening of Parliament has not changed for such a long time. Certain other changes have taken place recently, as Mr. Speaker reminded the House yesterday. For example, we no longer have the Sessional Orders, which were pretty meaningless anyway. It was about time that they went, and the statement made by Mr. Speaker was far more appropriate. I remember that when I first came here, the Commons was interrupted from time to time because hon. Members had to go to the House of Lords for Royal Assent to be given. That was done away with quite a long time ago, and parliamentary democracy was not undermined as a result.

When I watch some of the proceedings involved in the state opening, it seems to me that although we are always lecturing the country with familiar words about modernisation and ending restrictive practices on both sides of industry, our own ceremonies and procedures are no longer necessary in this modern age—and certainly not in the 21st century. Needless to say, that is no reflection on the monarch, and should not be taken as such.

The hon. Gentleman is an extraordinary killjoy and his anti-cultural view would enrage my constituents. No one who comes to this wonderfully historic building fails to express great sympathy for its traditions and rich cultural history. I do not know why the hon. Gentleman is so uncomfortable with his history, but I can tell him that my constituents—young or old, schoolchildren or old-age pensioners—all take great pride in the institutions that we have here. As long as tradition does not undermine our work, I believe that it serves as a quaint reminder of all that has gone before.

The hon. Gentleman expresses his point of view, which is quite likely to be held by a number of his colleagues. That is fair enough, but if that approach had always been adopted in the past, we would never have changed anything. We should not be ashamed to say that one of this country's greatest blessings is Parliament, and everything that flows from the House of Commons and our parliamentary democracy. That is what I am concerned about. When I show people around, I take as much pride as anyone else would in emphasising what I have just said about the great benefit to the country that this House provides, but that does not mean that every form of tradition and ceremony should be retained for ever, as the hon. Gentleman clearly believes.

Before my hon. Friend leaves this point, he should be aware that what he has described is not a pageant of history, but a demonstration of the shortage of democracy in our society. Ours is an elected Chamber, but hon. Members are commanded to go to an unelected House to listen to an address. That does not seem very democratic to me.

Again, that is a point of view. There may be a case for using the word "request" rather than "command", but I did not intend to be particularly controversial in this preface to my remarks, although some of my colleagues know that I am not very keen on too much dressing up and all the rest of it.

I come now to foreign affairs. I make no apology for having supported the overthrow of Saddam's tyranny, but it was never my view that the foreign occupation—and especially western foreign occupation—should be indefinite. That is why I hope that it will be possible to hold elections on 30 January. Whatever one may say about the Government who have been appointed in Iraq, one thing is certain: they have no electoral legitimacy at all. As was noted earlier, the controversy between those who were in favour of the war and those who were not will last for a very long time, but those who opposed the war must face up to the fact that Saddam would have remained in power indefinitely—

indicated assent.

I see that the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) agrees with that, as he is nodding in approval. It is also certain, and should be borne in mind, that when Saddam finally went, he would have been succeeded by one of his murderous sons.

However, the longer the occupation lasts, the more it becomes part of the problem and not the solution. The vast majority of Iraqis are not involved in terrorist violence. I am sure that most of them oppose what is being done, allegedly in their name, but the events of the past few months have meant that we are losing the hearts and minds of those non-violent people. I think that most Iraqis were very pleased that Saddam was overthrown, but they are very unhappy about what has happened in the past four to six months.

Of course, the situation is difficult. Many American soldiers have lost their lives, as have some of our troops. The fact remains, however, that the sooner we find a way to end the occupation—particularly the western occupation—the better. Iraq has a proud tradition, and Iraqis are a proud people. They no more want to be occupied indefinitely than would UK or US citizens. I am sure that that is the view of the British Government.

I want to pay particular attention to the middle east and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It is very good news that the outgoing US Secretary of State is visiting the region and meeting both Israelis and Palestinians. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is also there, which is why, as we have been told, he is not in the House today.

The planned evacuation from Gaza is welcome, of course, but the unilateral manner of its inception was not. Moreover, it has been stated that the Gaza evacuation was going to be the end of the matter. Instead of being the beginning of the evacuation of Israeli forces from the post-1967 territories, it was assumed that the Gaza evacuation over the next 12 to 18 months would be the end of the story. Unfortunately, that assumption was endorsed by President Bush.

The House should bear it in mind that the population of the Gaza strip totals about 7,500, whereas the population of the illegal settlements—and the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife reminded the House that the settlements were indeed illegal—totals about 400,000 settlers. The strong impression is that they will remain.

Dov Weisglass, the Israeli Government's senior adviser, has stated:

"When you freeze (the peace) process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the (Palestinian) refugees".

He went on to say that all that had been done

"with a (US) presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."

Inevitably, the suspicion is that it is the aim of the present Israeli Government to go no further than the evacuation of Gaza.

My hon. Friend referred to the statement by Dov Wiesglass, who I believe is Mr. Sharon's personal lawyer and was not speaking in any official capacity. Even if his statement reflects the views of Ariel Sharon—and I do not believe that they do—does my hon. Friend agree that it is a very short-term view? The momentum of withdrawal from Gaza will create a degree of expectation among the majority of Israeli citizens, who also want there to be a withdrawal from the west bank. Irrespective of Mr. Wiesglass' view, once the genie is out of the bottle, it will be very hard to contain.

Well, that would be more persuasive if the Israeli Prime Minister had dissociated himself from the remarks made by his senior adviser. The expectation among the Israelis may be as my hon. Friend suggests, but what is the expectation among the Palestinians? They expect that the Gaza strip will be evacuated, but that the rest will not be. No one could condemn terrorism more than I do. The suicide bombings are a blot on humanity, as I have said time and again, but what should those Palestinian representatives who are opposed to violence say to Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Should they say, "Stop your violence and we will use political means"? Those Palestinian representatives who are against violence and who want a dialogue with the Israelis—who want to find a way out of the impasse and to negotiate a Palestinian state—are undermined time and again by Sharon's Government. Of course, Sharon has an appalling record. We cannot forget what happened in the refugee camps in 1982. We should not forget that General Sharon, as he was then, was condemned by an Israeli commission of inquiry for what happened, although of course the actual atrocities were not carried out by Israelis.

I have not changed the view that I had in 1948, when I was some 15 years old, that, given what had happened to the Jews—not only during the second world war, when 6 million lives were lost simply because of race and for no other reason, but over 2,000 years in which Jews were demonised and persecuted—it was just and right for the international community to bring Israel into existence. I say that without being a Zionist. I have not changed my mind in the past 56 years.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the peace process and the possibility of a settlement in the new year between Israel and Palestine would be greatly enhanced if Israel released Marwan Barghouti from prison, so that he could play the valuable and constructive role that he has always played in Palestinian politics and try to bring about a peaceful future?

I do not know whether that person would wish to do that, but if my hon. Friend is asking whether he should be released and allowed to leave the country—

I am not talking about Vanunu; I am talking about Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader who was imprisoned by Israel last year.

I apologise to my hon. Friend. I agree that it would be useful if that person, who is clearly held in high esteem by Palestinians, were released and could play his part in the peace process.

The price for Israel's creation has been paid by the Palestinians, and it has been heavy indeed. They were not responsible for what happened to the Jews and one can therefore understand the plight of people who have been dispossessed over half a century. They live in refugee camps and their existence is abysmal. Day by day, they recognise that life for them and their children will not get any better. We understand why Israel came into existence. Should we no less try to understand the position of the Palestinians and the heavy price that they have paid? Justice cries out for a sovereign Palestinian state in the occupied territories. That means that Israel must content itself within the pre-1967 borders. Within those borders, of course, it should have as much right as any other sovereign state to defend itself.

The settlements in the west bank must go, like those in Gaza. We must move away from the feeling in negotiations that the Palestinians can be given a piece of land here and there and should feel grateful. When we talk about a viable sovereign Palestinian state, we mean precisely that. The Palestinians cannot be expected to be grateful for anything less. They argue that even if they were given the occupied territories, Israel would still have 78 per cent. of the original Palestine, leaving 22 per cent. for a sovereign state.

Much is made of the fact that the Palestinians should accept the right of Israel to exist. Of course that is true, and the PLO has done so. However, Israel also has a responsibility—and we hope that this will emerge from future negotiations—not necessarily to encourage Jews to go to Israel. Common sense dictates that if Jews were actively encouraged to go to Israel, there would be even greater pressure on land, although I do not know how many Jews living in the free world in democracies would want to go and live in Israel, even if there was a peaceful outcome. A balance must be struck. If we have justice for Jews in the form of the state of Israel, it is essential that we have justice for the Palestinians.

If there is one country above all that can apply effective pressure on Israel it is the United States. That is why so many of us were disappointed recently by some of President Bush's remarks. If, in his second term, there is a change of mind in the White House, it will need a genuine wish to work with other countries to achieve a settlement—as we saw when his father was president and also under President Clinton—and to bring about a viable sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel. That would be for the benefit not only of the Palestinians, but of the world order itself.

This was one of the most cynical Queen's Speeches that I have heard presented to Parliament since I have been here, and that is in a competitive field. It was plainly intended to be a pre-election Queen's Speech and is loaded with huge numbers of Bills on crime and security, to add to the vast amount of legislation that we have passed on that subject in this Parliament. Indeed, many of the titles of those promised Bills seem to repeat the content of previous legislation. It is clearly a chosen political strategy to play on the fears of crime and security in this country and to present a huge programme of legislation in response.

That strategy was expressed most disreputably by the Leader of the House when he tried to suggest that if anybody had reservations about key parts of the Queen's Speech, they were being soft on terrorism and, therefore, people could feel safer with a Labour Government. That is a half-baked imitation of the successful presidential campaign by George W. Bush in the United States, but it is only the Government's latest attempt to try to change the subject matter of the debate in the run up to the election.

The Government are trying to change the subject matter from Iraq and the associated international problems. It is not the first time that they have tried to do so. They tried to change the subject for most of the summer. Over that period, we were treated to a series of initiatives to reform public services, which was supposed to be the agenda that would make the British look to home and away from the problems of abroad in the run up to the election. Sadly for the Government, that theme has played very badly with the Labour party, so it vanished as a subject from the Labour party conference and also as a subject for the Queen's Speech for this winter. Now the British public are expected to be afraid of terrorism and look to the Labour party to tackle that domestic problem. The Government hope that the British people will thus look away from the problems in Iraq and elsewhere, although many of us feel that those problems might be feeding the terrorism that we face.

I think that the Government may get it wrong—and they are not the only politicians who hope that the next election will not be about Iraq. The next election could still be quite dominated by Iraq, because we do not know what fresh, horrific events could emerge from the middle east, affecting our troops and drawing our attention, between now and next May. Iraq keeps forcing itself back on to the agenda because it is such a huge and horrendous problem.

We are all assuming that the election will be on 5 May—indeed, the date has practically been announced and put on the Order Paper—so we know that a large number of the Bills in the Queen's Speech have not the slightest prospect of becoming law before we go into the election; they are mere decoration, designed to occupy the Chamber between now and the campaign next May. The horrific events that may occur—I hope not—between now and next May, and the continued damage to the Prime Minister's reputation and to the British public's trust in the Prime Minister, could still force him away from his chosen date of 5 May, and he may be driven into a further year in the hope that he can get the agenda back where he wishes.

I want to discuss Iraq, however, as I think that it will dominate our affairs—

rose—

But first I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way, but I cannot agree that the Government will be extremely vulnerable on Iraq in the lead-up to an election. My Government certainly would have been vulnerable if he had been elected leader of his party. In those circumstances, we would have been extremely vulnerable, but as that is not the case—perhaps it should have been—we are not vulnerable at all.

The issue does not depend on particular personalities. Plenty of Members, from all three parties, are strongly opposed to Iraq and they have struck a chord with the majority of the public; every time a fresh step occurs in Iraq, it reminds them of the circumstances in which the invasion was launched.

Like everybody else, I shall not go back over my reasons for having been so bitterly opposed to the war. I remain as strongly opposed to that decision as I was; it is one of the worst mistakes that any British Government have made in such a field since the Suez adventure, and its consequences could be far more damaging than the damage that flowed to British interests from the mistaken attempt to invade the Suez canal zone. However, we must all now accept that the argument has moved on from whether it was justified to invade Iraq and that, when a general election comes, we shall all have difficulty in addressing precisely what should happen to produce a satisfactory, or the least damaging, outcome to the problem that we have created.

By May next year, we shall still be deep in a political quagmire in Iraq and the middle east. Whoever wins the next election will have to deal with a situation that could last for several years, in which British troops and British interests are committed to a continuing attempt to resolve the problem in Iraq and to avoid the worst possible outcome—a deep fissure between the Muslim world and the west, where the British would be cast as one of the villains of the piece for having got into that situation. It is extremely difficult for anyone to set out with even the slightest clarity what is likely to happen to lead us to that successful outcome.

As one of the most bitter opponents of the invasion, I do not think that the British can simply concentrate on getting our troops out. We cannot set a deadline. Indeed, it would not be reputable, having got ourselves into this chaos, to say that because we do not know what to do next, we shall simply contrive an opportunity to bring the troops home. We all realise that it is in our interests, and the interests of all our allies, that we continue to provide—as best we can—security in Iraq until some stable and satisfactory outcome is reached, but that could take us a very long time.

From listening to the Government, I have not received the slightest impression that they have really thought through how they are going to reach that outcome. I do not criticise the brevity of the reference to Iraq in the Queen's Speech, because it is largely a ritual document; it merely talks about our need to maintain security and to help to ensure that the elections are held in January. I listened to the Secretary of State for Defence read his speech. It might have contained something; he gave the impression that he read it with perfect clarity, but I do not think that he had read it before he regaled the House with it. It contained nothing whatever about precisely where we were going in Iraq and what the Government thought would happen when we get to the elections.

In the United States and in the United Kingdom, we are continually offered the promise of false dawn—an end to the difficulties that are going on. First, the arrest of Saddam Hussein was to launch the denouement and the move towards success. Then the appointment of the Interim Government of Mr. Allawi was a watershed, after which the whole situation was to improve. The danger is that all we are being told by the British Government, and, as far as I can see, by the American Government, too, is that on 30 January there will be an election and that a new Iraqi Government will emerge. Thereafter, presumably, a more satisfactory denouement will begin.

I hope that is true. I hope that the third thing proves correct, but I have absolutely no confidence that anything of that kind will occur. I hope that the election is held in reasonable and satisfactory circumstances, but that must still be very, very doubtful. I have no idea—nor does anybody else—what kind of Government are supposed to emerge from the election in January, and I have no confident expectation that a peaceful debate about a new constitution for the independent Iraq will be satisfactorily progressed by a new Iraqi Government once they are in power, if indeed they succeed in taking power after the election.

When I ask myself where we are going and what we should be doing to reach a satisfactory outcome, I am extremely cautious about my own forecasts. If anybody knows how to move from where we are now to a stable, reasonably democratic and liberal Iraq, which might live in peace with its neighbours, that man or woman is the best qualified person to take the Nobel peace prize with bar. The problem is almost impenetrable, but what I am sure of is that our policy so far cannot continue, because it is making little progress.

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, said about the woeful lack of planning and the appalling errors that we made when we first took over. I also agree with all the criticisms that have been made, and which should certainly be made again, about where we have got so far. We are preparing for that election with a series of battles to achieve control of key cities, in the belief, as we heard from the Secretary of State in one of his few unscripted moments, that the grateful civilians will stream back to Falluja to take part in the election at the end of January. No doubt other cities will be conquered in the same way. The methods being used are heavy-handed and not calculated to win the automatic adherence of the population to supporting acceptable people.

Let us recall the real policy when the invasion was launched; it is now reasonably clear. I said at the time that it had nothing whatever to do with weapons of mass destruction. That claim was bogus and anyone fortunate enough to have had contact with neo-conservative Americans knew that weapons of mass destruction and UN resolutions had absolutely nothing to do with it. The purpose of the invasion was to change the regime in the belief that, democratically, an election would result that would produce a pro-American and pro-Israeli Government, preferably led by Mr. Ahmad Chalabi, or someone very like him, who had been in exile in the United States. I do not think that an election will produce that, and I hope that we are braced for it.

I hope that there is a new flexibility in our political policy that will enable us to respond to whatever happens when the election comes, when the Government will certainly have more legitimacy, because it will be elected, than the present Interim Government, which still contains far too many people who were living in exile before the invasion took place and does not contain any significant member who was opposed to the invasion or represents more hostile elements. We must have a policy that prepares for the election producing a much wider spread of opinion. It will produce people who are probably not regarded as terribly sympathetic to western interests, and there will be a strong clerical element in some parts of the elected representatives.

Far more than hitherto, we must be prepared to embrace, in our contemplation of the kind of Iraq that we will accept and protect until it is truly independent, a collection of people who are not the kind of people whom we would have voted for. For the first time, our politics will have to embrace serious dialogue and seriously take on board the views of those who are anti-American, probably more than they were, and anti-western, those who are clerical and have links with the world around Iraq, and those who will be slightly troublesome. I hope that we are prepared to take on board the fact that we must consider those people in our politics, and we must accept an outcome in Iraq that will probably be second best in the opinion of most hon. Members and would certainly be regarded as unacceptable by American neo-conservatives if they had known that that would happen when they embarked on their course.

The solution must come from the Iraqis—we all agree that now—and I look forward to the debates where the Kurds, the Sunni and the Shi'a talk about a constitution that is mutually acceptable to them all. Any attempt to impose a solution by the Americans—or the alliance, if we prefer to call it that—would be extremely counter-productive. We must accept that we must try to eliminate violence and maintain security in what is a confused and worrying situation, as the different Iraqi elements try to produce what they have to achieve if they are to keep the country in one piece at all.

This parliamentary Session will certainly go beyond the key date of 30 January. I trust that, between now and 30 January, the Government will give more thought to what they are doing than the Secretary of State betrayed in what he said today. Before we get to our election in May, we will see the newly elected Iraqi Parliament in action, and we will see what the behaviour of the Americans, ourselves and our allies is around them. That will call for far more flexibility and far less intent to support certain elements in the Iraqi community than we have shown so far. As for our military activity, I will repeat what I have said on previous occasions: we will require a far more politically intelligent approach to the use of the military in support of whatever happens that is positive and against whatever happens that is negative, while that constitutional debate goes on.

We still seem locked in a belief, certainly on the other side of the Atlantic, that by military power alone we can impose a democracy of the kind that seems desirable and that, if there are setbacks, we need to have a battle in which we are the victors. It is beyond doubt that the coalition forces in Iraq could be the victors in any battle against any organised military force that could be mustered by anyone in the entire middle east. So far, we have emerged from most of those battle honours with political defeat, and we will continue to do so unless we improve our approach. As I have said before, that is one British contribution that we could make. The British have a longer history of dealing with the politics and sensitivities of terrorism that arises out of support from a hostile population, and our approach to things should be given altogether much greater weight in what the alliance does than has been the case so far.

The differences about Iraq will last a long time, as I said, but does the right hon. and learned Gentleman not accept that what was done in Kosovo and Afghanistan was justified and that, with all its setbacks, military action nevertheless did away with ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and dealt a blow in overthrowing a gangster regime in Afghanistan that all hon. Members surely wanted to be destroyed?

I have been a supporter of every military action engaged in by every British Government of any kind since I have been a Member, until we reached the invasion of Iraq. I was a supporter of what we did in Bosnia and Herzegovina, although I had some doubts about it at the time. I was certainly a supporter of what we did in Kosovo, although the legality of such action should be improved, as was said by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). I was a supporter of the invasion of Afghanistan because we were attacking the place where the people who had organised the 9/11disaster were located. However, we are not out of the woods in any of those cases. If we think that just the military action produces an answer, let us remember that it has not done so in any of those cases.

We are all talking about our continued involvement in Bosnia, which is no nearer being a completely viable independent state than when we arrived. The state of affairs in Kosovo is fairly dire, and people are only being saved from murder by the fact that we continue to have troops there, partly because we went into Kosovo in alliance with the Kosovo Liberation Army, who we knew were rather dodgy people to be allied with before we went in, but we were reluctant to commit troops on the ground and they had troops who were willing to go. We went into Afghanistan in alliance with the Northern Alliance, which was well known to have some connections with the drugs trade. We are now presiding over a democratically elected regime, but the democratically elected people still have a hint of warlordism about them. There is no proper control in parts of the country, and we have made the country a haven for the production of opium, which is in part flowing through Bosnia, no doubt, to this country.

We have a record of intervening; we do not have a record of political triumph in the places that may have been occupied as a result. Although all those cases were justified, the invasion of Iraq was neither justified nor legal. We have created an even bigger mess in Iraq, and it will take a very long time to get out.

I have given my tentative thoughts, which anyone's thoughts are bound to be, on what will happen in Iraq next, but hardly anyone discusses that on either side of the Atlantic, and the Government's contribution to thoughts about what will happen next in Iraq are about the most limited that I usually hear on the subject. My biggest regret on post-war Iraq—where we are now—is what it tells us about the state of the American alliance and the British role in it. I am strong supporter of the Atlantic alliance, which must be at the heart of our foreign policy. I believe that, in return for our adherence to the Atlantic alliance, we expect to have some influence on the policy, events and conduct of affairs because we make a valuable contribution.

So far as I can see, the fact is that the British Government have had next to no influence of any kind since the occupation of Iraq was completed. I cannot believe that any very serious attention has been paid to the contribution of our Prime Minister. We are there as apparently willing supporters and we provide extremely valuable troops, who are doing an outstanding job in impossible circumstances, but I detect no input of British diplomatic experience, British political skill or any particularly British contribution to the political evolution of that country.

What that tells us about the Atlantic alliance—this brings me to the other subjects that I will touch on more briefly—is that an Atlantic alliance that is just dependent on an American arm and a British arm, so far as we are concerned, is not sufficient. The Atlantic alliance is a US-European alliance, and if we wish to have influence in future, there is absolutely no doubt that, unless we have closer foreign policy and security co-operation between the members of the European Union, so that there can be a coherent European voice and contribution to the Atlantic alliance, we simply will not have the influence on the world's superpower that we would wish.

That takes me on to the other subject in the Queen's Speech that I want to touch on. I welcome the fact that a Bill has appeared to allow us to legislate to ratify the new constitutional treaty and to pave the way for the referendum that will eventually decide the matter. Fairly well founded leaks suggest that there was a huge argument in the Government about whether they wished to put the Bill into the programme at all. So far, the leaks have not been good enough—they soon will be, given the way that this Government brief the press—to let us know how they intend to handle the issue now that they have put it in the legislative programme. Will the Bill have its Second Reading before Christmas and will there be a serious attempt to put it into law, or will we just have a day's debate sometime after Christmas with the whole thing falling in the May election? I imagine that the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will argue that whenever they next get the chance to meet in the same country and the same room and get on to talking about it.

I hope that, once the Bill is introduced, we will get on to deciding on it and giving it parliamentary approval before the election is held. We can then move on, as everybody in the House claims to want to do, to a referendum that will endorse or not endorse what Parliament has decided. I realise that it is pointless, but I wish to put on record my total hostility to referendums of all kinds in a parliamentary democracy. I have against my record the fact that I was persuaded—I very much regret it—to agree to a referendum on the single currency. In a competitive field, I think that it is one of the worst mistakes, if not the worst mistake, that I have ever made in politics.

Come, come.

This is not the opportunity to think of better claims.

The Prime Minister's decision to call a referendum was one of the weakest decisions that he has ever made. He publicly made it clear that he was totally hostile to the whole idea of holding a referendum on the issue. He was persuaded to hold one, and I fear that it will be a lottery. However, the debate might be improved if Parliament has at least debated the issue and decided that, in the normal course of events, it would have ratified the treaty.

I will support the new treaty. If we ever get to the referendum, I will no doubt campaign for a yes vote. It is a matter of huge importance so, if we are to have a debate here and a referendum, I trust that people will realise the crucial importance that the treaty has in giving this country a satisfactory role at all.

I always expected—I thought everybody did—that we would have a new constitutional treaty if we could successfully complete the enlargement of the European Union. Its enlargement is one of the most historic events we have experienced in recent times. The EU remains a political undertaking even though the politics have somewhat changed. It started with the intention of making sure that the old European wars never reoccurred and that we never went to war with each other again. Thank God, those wars are now a long way behind us. The EU is now creating, however, a democratic, liberal political cohesion across the whole continent. That is a huge achievement.

Someone has already said that fascist Spain was made democratic and liberal by being brought into the EU, and a similar process occurred in Portugal after Salazar and in Greece after the colonels. The cold war is over and eight former totalitarian states, plus the two Mediterranean ones, are now being brought from totalitarian rule into a liberal democracy on a European agenda. Even the debates about Ukraine, which form the background to this debate, are in part about the division in Ukraine and whether the election has actually been won by liberal, parliamentary, pro-western democrats who look to the EU as their aspiration to try to create the foundation for the state that they want. All that is a huge achievement for the EU and underlines the wisdom of our involvement in it as it tackles all the issues well beyond the capacity of the individual nation state to solve itself. When nation states pool their sovereignty with each other in the common interest, they can help to create a whole new polity across the continent of Europe.

The EU has moved from 15 to 25 member states, and the old constitutional treaties never worked very well for 15. That means that we need to make the great leap forward to make sure that we have a workable constitution for the new enlarged European Union.

The treaty would be welcomed by British politicians on all sides if only they adhered to the sentiments that most of them used to express until about five or 10 years ago. The treaty makes it clearer than ever before that the Union is a union of nation states. I was never federalist, and I think that this is the end of federalist ambitions in the Union. More power is put in the hands of the Council of Ministers and the Governments of the nation states, who are the principal gainers from what is set out. The treaty makes clearer than ever before the division between European competence, covering those areas in which one nation state on its own cannot achieve as much as it can by acting in co-operation with others, and purely national competence, which remains within the sovereignty of each parliament.

I find the debate in this country rather bewildering. Some 25 nation states have just agreed on the new constitution, but there is the suggestion that we should perhaps take this moment to step away from this and say to the other 24 that we might start renegotiating other issues involving the repatriation of powers going back to the original foundation of the Union. That strikes me as a somewhat uncertain undertaking that is unlikely to achieve success.

Those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are Eurosceptic find themselves with some curious allies. One or two leading members of my party went out of their way to say how much they agreed with Robert Kilroy-Silk. They could not understand why he was causing so much disruption shortly after the European elections. More embarrassingly, they find themselves in alliance with the more breakaway factions of the French socialists, who have decided to go hostile in their referendum for totally different reasons.

I met Mr. Laurent Fabius recently and asked him why he was causing so much difficulty. He is an extremely distinguished French socialist and makes me look like a Eurosceptic. He is a very pro-European French former Prime Minister, and he told me that the treaty was not European enough. Indeed, in France, it is known as "la britannique", because it puts in place a form of the EU that has been long argued for by the British and the Scandinavians and is now argued for by the new central and eastern European members. As someone has already said, it marks the end of any dreams of Franco-German hegemony or of a federalist superstate that anybody once harboured. I hope that we will make progress, have a proper and sensible debate, produce a workable solution and settle our destiny in Europe for all times. I think that I have made it clear that I will vote in favour of the Bill if and when the Government ever have the courage to bring it to the Floor of the House.

I end on a note of discomfort with a Government who, it seems, have failed to give us any sensible lead in Iraq and certainly, to a pro-European, any sensible lead on Europe over the past few years. It is an irony that the most pro-European Prime Minister that this country has had since Edward Heath has, through fear, indecision and hedging about, so totally mismanaged the European issue from the moment he took office. I hope that he does not continue to do so. If we are to settle the constitutional problem and our role in Europe so that we can start to build a proper relationship in the north Atlantic alliance, people of other parties and members of the Labour party other than the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister should take a hand both in the House and in the referendum. I trust that we shall reach a satisfactory outcome.

I conclude as I started. The subjects of Iraq and Europe have been tucked away in the Queen's Speech, because the Government did not want to slip them in and do not want to talk about them sensibly at all. Between now and next May, we are to be subjected to a whole lot of second-rate rubbish that tries to pretend to the public that it is all necessary to save them from the wave of crime and the wave of terrorist attacks to which Conservatives and Liberal Democrats might otherwise leave them vulnerable. That is not worthy of the great events with which we are struggling. I deeply hope that, come next May, somebody with more purpose is put in charge of events in this country and abroad.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). I admired the laudable and stoic way in which he ploughed on through all the Tory cheers for his policies on Europe. I agreed with most of what he said about Iraq and I cannot forget the valuable contribution that he made to the debate on 18 March 2003 in the run-up to the war on Iraq. He showed in that speech that he understood the issues facing the middle east and the world, which have not been made safer or better by policies followed on Iraq, but considerably worse. I sadly did not agree with several other points that he made, but they will have to wait for another day.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman was right that we have been presented with a Queen's Speech that talks heavily about security in the run-up to a general election. Security and people's rights to live in peace are obviously important, but have the policies of the United States and Britain since September 2001 made the world safer and better, or more dangerous and insecure? The invasion of Afghanistan—I did not support it, although many of my colleagues who subsequently opposed the war in Iraq did—removed the Taliban regime, but it did not capture bin Laden or stop drug production. Indeed, drug production has increased a great deal since then and the warlords in Afghanistan are pretty powerful. Will that be a place from which concord, peace and safety will emanate, or a likely source of future problems? I suspect that it will be the latter.

We have failed to engage with and understand the feelings of many poor people throughout the middle east and the wider globe, and have instead gone down the road of following narrow-minded and ignorant American policies. If anyone has read documents from the Project for a New American Century, which is made up of the people who surround George Bush, they will know that those people's arrogance and ignorance are terrifying, as are the dangers that that will bring to the world.

We were told that the reason for the invasion of Iraq was to remove weapons of mass destruction, but that was altered to regime change and later changed to developing a new society and democracy in Iraq. There will obviously be a new society in Iraq and I hope that there will be a form of democracy there in the future. However, many people who opposed Saddam Hussein's regime for many years were also sceptical, if not outright opponents, of the American and British invasion because of its illegal nature. They are also hostile to the current US presence in Iraq.

Although the Prime Minister seems to be unwilling to engage in debate on the article in The Lancet, the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross or other reports about the extent of the death rate in Iraq and the mayhem caused since the invasion, it is time that we had some openness. How many people have died? How many children have been killed due to unexploded cluster bombs? How many people are suffering the effects of depleted uranium and how many civilians died in Falluja and the other cities?

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe is absolutely right that peace and democracy will not be brought about by militarily bombing one city after another into submission. Many people do not support the political or religious views of those who are termed insurgents, but they are being driven into their arms by the policies followed in Iraq by Britain and the United States. Surely we need a national exit strategy and an inward strategy for reputable forces under United Nations command to help future developments in Iraq. I suspect that we have not heard the end of Iraq by any manner of means. We will rue the day that we invaded the country. Unless a clear exit strategy is put forward, I suspect that the reported comments from British high command that British troops will remain there for decades are, unfortunately, probably true. That will not have a good effect throughout the world.

Every time that things go badly in Iraq, an announcement is made in the White House or somewhere else around the world that a peace process and policy for the middle east should be developed. Everyone wants and signs up to that, and I was pleased that the Prime Minister and the President were prepared to discuss a policy to bring about peace in the middle east. However, that will not be achieved without serious criticism of the way in which Israel has behaved—and behaves—towards the Palestinians and some understanding of the feelings of ordinary Palestinians and people throughout the middle east about what is going on. The situation is not a war of equals between Israeli and Palestinian states, but a conflict between the first-world state of Israel and people living in Palestine with a third-world standard of living and outlook.

I have visited Israel and Palestine several times and talked to Palestinians who are not anti-Jewish and not necessarily against the state of Israel. However, they are certainly opposed to the way in which their parents or grandparents were thrown out of their houses at the time at which Israel was founded, and to the use of road blocks, the humiliation, the occupation, the invasion, the settlements and everything that goes with that. If one asks them the hard question of whether they think that suicide bombing is a good thing, most say, "No, it is not." They oppose it as wrong because it kills innocent civilians, causes many problems and leads to retribution. However, if one presses them further, they all say that they understand why people are driven to take such desperate action.

If we are to bring about peace in the region, as I really hope that we can, we could begin by asking Israel to start obeying international law. Rafts of UN resolutions condemn Israel, and the United States has used its veto against other resolutions to prevent them from being carried. The International Court of Justice has made a decision against the construction of the wall. Israel is undertaking the illegal construction of a nuclear reactor and the development of nuclear weapons. Although I was glad when Mordecai Vanunu was eventually released, he is still effectively under house arrest and denied the right to travel because of Israel's strange behaviour towards people who tell the truth about what is going on in the country. If we are to bring about peace, I hope that we can start to develop an understanding of the needs of the Palestinian people and the way in which such peace could come about.

When I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick), I made the point that Marwan Barghouti, an important leader of the Fatah movement, is still in prison in Israel. It is symbolic of the country's whole approach towards an electoral process or change that it will not allow him to leave. I, like most Palestinians, want elections to take place in Palestine, but it is difficult to understand how an election could take place given that the area is divided between Gaza and the west bank; that Gaza is bisected by military roads and settlements, so it is impossible to move freely around it; that the west bank is scattered with settlements joined by military roads, meaning that movement is impossible; and that Israel controls all ingress and exits from Palestine. Real international pressure must be put on Israel merely to allow an electoral process to take place because there will otherwise be no solution or peace in the region.

Our debate is taking place in the year before the non-proliferation treaty review conference, which is due next summer. The conference is important by any stretch of the imagination. We are rightly worried about nuclear proliferation and what has happened in Iran and North Korea, and everyone is apparently keen for India and Pakistan to sign up to the non-proliferation treaty, the test ban treaty and all other controls on the proliferation and spread of nuclear weapons—fine. The problem is that the non-proliferation treaty requires—it is not an option—the five declared nuclear weapons states of Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States to divest themselves ultimately of their nuclear weapons. What we have instead is the development of star wars by the United States and the active consideration by our Ministry of Defence of the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. Small wonder that other countries around the world say, "If the five permanent members of the Security Council, which are also the five declared nuclear weapons states, continue to develop or to hold nuclear weapons themselves, is it any wonder that we want to develop them as well?"

It would be wonderful if we could go to the NPT conference with a declaration that there will be no new generation of British nuclear weapons and that instead we will lead the way in bringing about peace and disarmament. The problems that face the world are insecurity, poverty and all the problems that go with them. Nuclear weapons were not much help to the United States when the World Trade Centre was attacked. They are not much use in alleviating poverty and insecurity. I hope that there is a change of heart and direction.

There is much else that I could say, but I want to mention just two other things. The debate has been dominated by Iraq, the middle east and, to some extent, arms issues and defence procurement. The Prime Minister makes much of the problems facing Africa and the need for his Commission for Africa to be successful in bringing about hope and changes in the world. We live on a small island as part of a very rich continent that uses up a lot of natural resources. Generally speaking, the population of Europe has a far higher standard of living than most people in most parts of the world. The United States uses up far more natural resources than anyone else and has a deeply divided nation in which a proportion of its population live in appalling poverty while some live in enormous wealth. When one looks beyond that to Latin America, Africa and parts of south Asia, although great changes and improvements are undoubtedly going on, desperate poverty exists, and causes the insecurity of tomorrow and the misery that that brings.

I had the good fortune to visit Angola a month ago as part of an Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation. I read all the statistics before I went. Indeed, I have read dozens of statistics on lots of things relating to Africa. The situation in Angola is appalling. One quarter of all children die before reaching their fifth birthday. Half the population have no access to clean water. More than half have no access to sewage and drainage facilities. Being paid a dollar a day would be a massive pay rise for many people. I understand all the problems that Angola has been through, including the 30 years of various wars, funded by oil, diamonds, South Africa and the United States, and all the horrors that went with that, but to go into towns where every building has either been destroyed or damaged by recent conflict makes one wonder what we are doing to allow that much poverty to exist between the north and the south.

I hope that Angola has a donor conference in the near future. I hope that the small but effective British aid programme to Angola, administered through the Luanda urban poverty programme, not just continues but expands because it clearly has a good effect. Above all, however, I hope that we recognise that if we are to deal with malnutrition, infant mortality and premature death—life expectancy in Angola is 41, so that counts out just about everyone in the Chamber with the exception of the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) and one or two of my hon. Friends—we must think about what we are doing in this world.

Angola is not an isolated example of African poverty, but is the solution to demand that Africa follows an International Monetary Fund-imposed World Bank-led programme, which often involves cuts in public expenditure and draconian structural adjustment programmes, or is it to bring a sense of fairness and justice in trade, aid and environmental protection to the poorest people in the poorest parts of the world?

The direction in which we are going—the direction in which the United States is leading us—will not bring about a world of equality. Instead, we will spend more and more of our resources on more and more terrifying weaponry. There will be more and more wars. Afghanistan and Iraq have been mentioned, and plenty of others are on the agenda. Does that bring about peace, justice and a sense of equality? No. The Project for a New American Century and its selfish attention to American corporate commercial interests are very dangerous for the world as a whole. Instead of slavishly following what Bush and his cronies in the White House want us to do, it is time that we actively followed the path of the United Nations and international law and, above all, the path that brings about justice.

We want a decent standard of living for ourselves and some security for our children. If we cannot help to bring that about in other parts of the world, their insecurity becomes our insecurity. If we want a peaceful world in the future we have to work hard for it. We cannot be complacent or myopic. We have to try to achieve that. Otherwise, what do we bequeath to our children except a world of conflict and endless wars, as predicted by great writers in the past? We have a chance to make a difference, but we are missing the opportunity.

To my surprise, I agree with the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) on a good number of things. Although we agree that the United States is mistaken, one of the basic differences between us is that he sees the need to construct justice as the essential building block for securing peace, whereas I see order as even more important than justice. Without order there can be no justice. It is what the United States is doing to make the world a more disorderly place that has led me to oppose American foreign policy so strongly. That is mainly what I want to talk about, but first I shall say a few words about Ukraine.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) described as a great success the fact that Ukraine was at least looking towards the west, partly because of European Union enlargement, but it could equally well be described as an appalling failure that the EU dragged its feet for 15 years before getting around to enlargement. What would have been the effect on Ukraine if Poland had been a member 10 years ago? I think that Ukrainian policy and its history would have been fundamentally different had the neighbouring country watched Poland integrate with the EU. The foot-dragging on enlargement was one of the great scandals of our continent.

My second point about Ukraine is to reinforce how what is going on there is part of a wider attempt to reverse aspects of the collapse of the Soviet Union. What we are seeing is not a reconstruction of Soviet totalitarianism, but it is still the creation of a pernicious soft dictatorship by a former KGB officer. In 1946, Churchill talked about an iron curtain falling from Stettin to Trieste. Perhaps it is not fanciful to suggest that a more modest form of curtain is falling from Murmansk to Odessa, at least if Ukrainian attempts at peaceful street revolution fail over the next few days.

It is not just the rigged elections and the intimidation in Ukraine. Behind that is President Putin's active support for such tactics. Domestically, he is taking powers to control the judiciary. He is crushing democracy in the provinces by removing elections for provincial governors, confiscating assets and eroding property rights. Free speech is being suppressed in parts of Russia and, in the name of anti-terrorist measures, we now have a sanction for the widespread and systematic use of torture, particularly in Dagestan and Chechnya.

When Churchill made his speech in 1946, he wanted to shake America away from drifting towards isolationism, but he was also attacking an equally dangerous utopian internationalism that was gripping parts of the United States. Isolationists in the United States were arguing that the US should use its nuclear monopoly to impose values on the rest of the world, while idealists and Wilsonians wanted to share nuclear weapons with Russia. They said openly that the Russians should be given this technology immediately because that would be the price for getting them into an active, working UN Security Council. Both of those extreme policies were, in a sense, mistaken. It was not until George Kennan mapped out what became the foreign policy that we had for the following 50 years, which we have only recently discarded, that American foreign policy stabilised.

In a famous telegram that he sent from Moscow, George Kennan made three points, which I think are still pertinent, that had huge influence throughout the west, especially in Washington. First, he said that we must look dispassionately at both the nature of the Soviet threat and the limits to it, and that we must not get panicky about it. Secondly, he said that we must respond to that threat not by trying to take it head on, but by military containment. Thirdly, he said that even if the Soviet Union was trying to overthrow the whole of the state system—in that sense, a revolutionary power—we must engage with it actively and try to get it to play a part in the international community.

Today, United States foreign policy is again in flux. We desperately need common sense like that of George Kennan 50 years ago. With the end of the cold war, some in the US have argued that military preponderance can underpin a new form of muscular isolationism. The idealists have been hard at it too, arguing that force—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe referred to this—can be used to spread democracy and that a democratic world will necessarily be a peaceful one. They argue that the great enduring problems of international relations and conflict between states can somehow finally be solved by spreading democracy.

Part of the great illusion that has always existed in American policy is that absolute security can be achieved. We live in an age of relative security and have done so since the invention of nuclear weapons. Nothing that America will do can change that.

In the late 1940s, America listened to Kennan, Acheson, Churchill and others. It rejected the isolationists and the idealists. The great danger that I see is that America is now locked into a policy that will take us into extremely dangerous waters. It is looking for a permanent fix to the problems of international relations.

The mainstream of foreign policy opinion in Washington has been set aside. It might be thought that what is happening in America is representative of opinion in Washington, but it is not. The overwhelming majority of Democrats oppose it, and a large chunk of the Republican party vigorously opposes George W. Bush's foreign policy. A small group has taken over. It has captured a President, and that President has captured our Prime Minister.

Both the Prime Minister and the President seem to have convinced themselves that it is not only morally right to try to export democracy at the barrel of a gun, but that that will in itself necessarily make the world more peaceful. That is nothing more than a pernicious delusion. Of course we should do everything that we can to encourage democracy, but any political system, even democracy imposed by others, will often make our military action appear to be not liberation, but occupation.

I regret to say that British policy seems to have surrendered to the simplicity of the idea that everything can be solved if only we can impose our own values on others. We are witnessing and actively participating in a mixture of the ruthless application of force, exemplified by Rumsfeld, and a misplaced messianic idealism that comes from Wolfowitz and others. That is what has taken us into Iraq, and it is what has led us to participate in the absurdity, as I mentioned a short while ago in an intervention, of flattening and depopulating a city in the name of democracy.

The hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber when I asked the Secretary of State whether we could have a report and a full debate in the House on exactly what has happened in Falluja. Does he agree that merely saying that the city was emptied is nonsensical? Certainly many people left, but there must have been thousands who remained and suffered the onslaught of the mightiest military machine in the world. Is it not time that we had a debate about what happened to civilians and what might happen if the Americans try to flatten another city that resists the occupation?

I sympathised with the Secretary of State when he said that there was a group of hardened terrorists in the city who somehow would prevent any form of democracy from being developed in Falluja. However, I question whether the policy which we recently embarked on and implemented was the best way of dealing with the situation. That is why I agree with the hon. Lady: it would be helpful if we could have a proper and full debate, preceded by a full investigation by, at the very least, a Select Committee that was given the opportunity to see all the available papers, including confidential papers.

I shall describe shortly just how wrong I think that British policy is and then, in the final part of my remarks, outline what I think an alternative foreign policy might be. I think that we have, quite simply, the wrong foreign policy. I agree with the hon. Member for Islington, North that it is making the world a less safe place. It is making Britain less secure, and it is costing the lives of our soldiers and of thousands of others. Far from suppressing terrorism, it is creating the conditions that encourage it. It has also disturbed the regional balance of power in the middle east, and that will be to our cost.

It is a curious irony that the west may shortly be faced either with offering indefinite security guarantees to Iraq and other parts of the middle east, or with the consequences of not doing so, with an increasing Iranian regional preponderance. The potential regional power in the middle east is Iran.

As I have said in this place on numerous occasions, the twin pillars of what could be called the Bush-Blair doctrine—regime change and pre-emptive action—corrode the very basis of stability. Who decides which regime should be changed? The regionally strong, such as Russia and China, will exploit the situation—Russia is already doing so in the Caucasus and elsewhere. The weaker countries will find ways of defending themselves with whatever measures they can use, including trying to obtain a nuclear deterrent. That is exactly what is going on now. The doctrine provides a massive incentive for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The military intervention in Iraq was not the first to be justified on the grounds of the new policy, but it is the biggest. Many people agree that the Iraq expedition has gone wrong. Many say that that is perhaps because we disbanded the Iraqi army, or because not enough troops were sent in at the beginning, or because the border had not been properly policed.

All those are second-order arguments. Our problem is that it is the policy that led us to go in at the beginning and which we articulated to justify what we did that is causing our difficulties now. It is the blunder of trying to rewrite foreign policy from scratch. It is the blunder of tearing up multilateral foreign policy agreements that we had for decades with allies, which have made the west ascendant for half a century. It is these blunders that are frightening others and leading them to try to obtain nuclear weapons. It is these blunders that are empowering others to intimidate their neighbours.

Above all, these are dreadful blunders because they have eroded the sense of trust that has existed between our electorates—particularly the British electorate—and our leaders. If the Prime Minister comes before the House next week and says, "The House must take action; I cannot explain the detail of the threat to us but we must take military action, believe me", I do not think that the country would go with him. This country is weaker and more vulnerable as a consequence and we have paid a huge price for that.

The scale of this mistake in the long term could be measured in decades. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe about what happened in Suez. That united Arab nationalism with other forms of extremism. What is happening now is uniting Arab nationalism with Muslim fundamentalism. Suez aroused anti-western sentiment, divided the west and eventually exposed a Prime Minister as having lied to the House, which is why, 50 years ago, a Prime Minister resigned and why a furious debate is still taking place as a consequence of the Butler report.

I also agree with my right hon. and learned Friend that we must stay with the US now that we are in Iraq. But at the same time we must contest vigorously and remorselessly the foreign policy that brought about that calamity—the foreign policy which, even now, is causing us to be detested by many of those we most need around the world if we are to suppress terrorism.

I said we had the wrong foreign policy; let me end by outlining what might be a better one. What are the basic building blocks that might make us more secure? First, we must recognise that stability and order in the world must be based on the common-sense principle of non-interference in other countries. That means rejecting pre-emption and regime change. There is a place for humanitarian intervention, but only when an overwhelming majority of the international community supports it. The alternative is anarchy—any country deciding to make a humanitarian intervention in an attempt to further its own interests, justifying it on the grounds of the need for that humanitarian intervention.

A second basic principle is that we must make it clear that we will use force primarily for our defence, not for the export of our values. That is the best means, in the long run, of enhancing our security.

Thirdly, we must encourage the United States to have a higher regard for international law. It seems not to have occurred to the American Administration that there is a contradiction between pressurising countries to sign and keep international agreements to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and America's own revocation of its treaties and agreements. A couple of years ago America withdrew from the anti-ballistic missile treaty. It has not ratified the comprehensive test ban treaty. It withdrew from negotiations to renew and bolster the biological weapons convention. I could go on. Yet America is putting enormous pressure on Iran, Libya and others to sign and adhere to agreements limiting those countries' access to the same technology. The contradiction should be screaming at the United States. If the Americans want the agreements, which they are getting those countries to sign, to have any durability, they must recognise that they too must have greater respect for international law.

The fourth and axiomatic part of our foreign policy must be to do now what we can to reconstruct the damaged western alliance. Our security depends heavily on sticking together. It is by sticking together that the west effectively won the cold war.

Fifthly, we must not allow anything that we say or do, including what I have said today, to be mistaken for crude anti-Americanism. I am an out-and-out Atlanticist. Our security is intimately and inexorably bound up with the United States. They share most of our values, and we must stick together. It does not follow, however, that because America has taken a particular course of action, we must stay silent in every case and hope we can obtain influence by the back door. We know from Sir Christopher Meyer and other ambassadors' records of what takes place between the Prime Minister and George Bush that our influence is extremely limited. We must be prepared to speak up publicly.

Finally—there are many other points that I could make, but I shall end here—we must recognise the limits of military power in the face of the type of threat that we now face, and educate our electorates accordingly. Terrorism will not be suppressed entirely, and probably not even mainly, by military means. Inasmuch as there is a battle, as many others have said, it is a battle for the hearts and minds of moderates, particularly moderate Muslim opinion. We must never lose sight of that.

The American Administration's foreign policy, to which we have so closely bound ourselves, is a radical and dangerous departure. It is a profoundly destabilising and un-Conservative foreign policy. The sooner we have the courage as a country to say so, the better.

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) and his thoughtful and eloquent exposition of the nature of American foreign policy and how that has affected UK foreign policy. I agree with him inasmuch as I, too, am a strong supporter of the North Atlantic Alliance and a strong Atlanticist. I agree with his critique of some of the first principles, and some of his critique of the neo-conservative world view, but I cannot go along with everything he said about American foreign policy. I do not agree with anything he said about British foreign policy.

On American foreign policy, the hon. Gentleman spoke about the desire for absolute security. I have never detected any American who believes that absolute security is possible. They are in pursuit of relative security and of greater relative security. After the events of 9/11, who can blame them? With the threats regularly made against Americans around the world before 9/11 and afterwards, who can blame them if they wish to create a more secure world for themselves and their citizens around the world? One may criticise the way they are going about it, and one may argue that that is not making the world a safer place.

If I have criticism of American foreign policy as it is currently conducted, it is that they have not grasped sufficiently the strength of America's "soft power". I think it was Joseph Nye who coined that phrase, and it is an excellent one. It is bizarre that in any anti-American or anti-globalisation riots on the streets of almost any city in the world, no self-respecting rioter goes out without his Nikes and baseball cap. The strength of America's "soft power" and of its influence have made that country tremendously attractive. The values that have made America the strong and prosperous country that it is are enduring human values to which people aspire.

I do not accept that we should impose democracy at the point of a gun, but nor do I accept that we should suppress democracy at the point of a gun. All too often around the world we have seen people's legitimate democratic aspirations repressed at the point of a gun. It is a relatively recent argument that we are enforcing democracy at the point of a gun. I prefer to see the threat being removed and democracy being allowed to flourish without the threat of military action against those whose vested interest is in preventing democracy.

I want to use the occasion of responding to the Queen's Speech to focus on one aspect that was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence and from both Opposition Front Benches. I return to a subject that I have raised in the House on many occasions, and regretfully have to do so again—the ongoing scandal of the Afghanistan opium poppy trade and the devastating misery that the heroin it produces causes in the streets of my constituency and every other constituency represented in the House today. This trade is a chain of misery and degradation. It begins with the exploitation of desperately poor farmers in some of the most inhospitable corners of the globe, progresses via grotesque profiteering by international drug traffickers and their vile associates, and results in the abject misery and suffering of wretched addicts, blighting the quality of life of innocents who live beside the seedy reality of petty drug dealing on the streets of the United Kingdom. The evil business does not end there. The circle is complete. It returns whence it came in the form of narco-terrorist funding. No one who has been listening to President Karzai in the past 12 months can be in any doubt that international terrorists are directly and financially funding their murderous activity with drugs money. I cannot conceive of a more vicious, vicious circle.

Before I address what must be done to tackle the trade at source, I should say that I am perfectly well aware of the basic laws of human commerce, and they apply here as they do elsewhere. Where there is a demand there will be a supply. Cutting off the flow of heroin that comes from Afghanistan will not end the problem of addiction, but I make no apologies today for focusing on the supply-side regime. Markets must operate within social, human and international legal boundaries. The trade in heroin is as immoral, corrupt, violent and destructive as it gets. Supply feeds demand. The more heroin there is, the cheaper it is; the cheaper it gets, the more people use; the more people use, the more addicts are created; and more addicts mean more crime, more sickness, more heartbreak for families and more tragic early deaths.

We have heard it quoted many times in the course of this afternoon's debate that 95 per cent. of the heroin on Britain's streets begins life as poppies in Afghanistan. My right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Donald Anderson) made a compelling case highlighting the connection between the foreign affairs and security aspects of the Queen's Speech and the domestic crime-related aspects. Many people say that that is all creating one huge climate of fear, but those two are intrinsically connected, and the Queen's Speech recognises that.

To take the matter further in the vicious cycle, Ballymena in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, is seen by the Police Service of Northern Ireland as the heroin capital of Northern Ireland, our part of the United Kingdom. The heroin trade is run by mafia criminal gangs linked to so-called loyalist paramilitary organisations, and other parts of the United Kingdom are linked into the same mafia criminal organisations. Is not the international network of mafian criminal organisations, stretching from my little part of the United Kingdom to FARC in Colombia in South America, the challenge for the international community? We have to put out of business the international front terrorist organisations who are masquerading as terrorist organisations but are drug criminals.

Yes, I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. My constituency earned the sobriquet, entirely unmerited I may say, of being the heroin capital of Scotland. It was not true, but it is hard to shake off such labels, so I understand what it must be like for the people in Ballymena. I am talking today about the supply side, but the entire chain needs to be attacked. Some of the measures in the Queen's Speech, such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the establishment of cross-European co-operation, such as the common European arrest warrant, are central to tackling the trade throughout Europe, as is the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, confiscating the assets of convicted criminals, or making them prove that their assets did not come from illegal criminal activity. There is no one magic bullet, but all those measures help directly to address the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.

This is a lucrative trade. In 2003, the combined income of Afghan opium farmers and traffickers was about $2.3 billion, roughly equivalent to half the legitimate gross domestic product of that country. We are entitled to ask how that came to pass. Was not one of the reasons for toppling the Taliban that it had, in part, been funded by the opium trade? That was certainly the view expressed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in his statement of 7 October 2001. As the conflict in Afghanistan, precipitated by the attacks of the previous month in New York, began, he said:

"We act also because the Al-Qaeda network and the Taliban regime are funded in large part on the drugs trade . . . stopping that trade is, again, directly in our interests."

The following day, speaking in the House, the Prime Minister said:

"We in Britain have the most direct interest in defeating such terror . . . We know that the Taliban regime is largely funded by the drugs trade and that 90 per cent. of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan."—[Official Report, 8 October 2001; Vol. 372, c. 814.]

Again, that is closely equating terror with the drugs trade.

After the conflict was over, the Prime Minister returned to the topic in an interview with the BBC World Service, in which he praised President Karzai's recent initiative

"to issue instructions to destroy the poppy crop in Afghanistan for this year"—

that is, 2001.

He continued:

"We are giving every support to this. This is very, very important indeed."

I agree wholeheartedly with the Prime Minister. This was one of the reasons why I strongly supported the overthrow of the Taliban regime.

The problem is that the situation is getting worse. In 2002, the year in which the Prime Minister was speaking, about 74,000 hectares were given over to poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. Last year, the figure had grown to 80,000 hectares, and this year it has risen to 131,000 hectares—a 64 per cent. increase year on year. I understand that unofficial figures from the United States State Department suggest that the figure is even higher—perhaps even twice as high, at somewhere in the region of 250,000 hectares. If that turned out to be the case, it would be truly terrifying.

The practice is therefore spreading. In 1999, 18 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces reported poppy cultivation. In 2000, it had spread to 23 provinces, and by 2002 it was happening in 24. By last year, 28 of the provinces were reporting poppy cultivation, and it will come as no surprise to anyone to discover that this year's United Nations survey reports that poppy cultivation has now spread to every province in the country. The number of people involved is staggering. Last year, some 264,000 families were engaged in opium growing, with roughly 1.7 million people's livelihoods depending on the crop. This year, the figure has risen to 356,000 families, involving 2.3 million people. That is 10 per cent. of the entire population of Afghanistan.

How is it that, three years after military action was taken to end the trade, and more than two years after my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister spoke of destroying the harvest, things are moving so rapidly in the wrong direction? I know that Ministers are working tirelessly on this issue, and none more so than the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell), who is absolutely dedicated to reversing this tide. I have had the good fortune to discuss the issue with him on many occasions, and he has been very open and honest with me about it. I particularly commend the Government's initiative to convene the first international counter-narcotics conference in Afghanistan, which was held in February this year.

We have to begin from a point of honesty in this debate; we must not kid ourselves. The situation on the ground is deteriorating. President Karzai has warned of the risk that Afghanistan will

"again turn into a failed state—this time in the hands of the drugs cartels and the narco-terrorists."

In February, he also warned that poppy cultivation

"not only affects the economy of Afghanistan, but the money which is earned from the trafficking, production and business of heroin fuels terrorism. Terrorism and narcotic drugs are involved and co-operate in the destruction of Afghanistan, the region and the world."

That last claim might sound like hyperbole, but when President Karzai, a hugely respected figure, says that if these problems are left unchecked they will result in the destruction of Afghanistan, the region and the world, we have to take notice.

What can be done? All too often, the debate polarises and falls into two camps: those who say that we should actively seek and destroy the poppies and deal with the consequences afterwards; and those who wish to persuade opium growers that they should develop an alternative crop, and provide them with the wherewithal to do so. The way forward must surely lie somewhere in between. Enforcement must be accompanied by assistance—the stick of the military and the carrot of greater resources.

That is not what is happening at the moment, however. The risk to reward ratio in Afghanistan is completely unbalanced. The rewards for being involved in the opium poppy trade far outweigh the risk of being caught. That point has been made on many occasions by Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. It was in an attempt to strike a balance between those who favour a scorched-earth approach and those who favour gradualism that the United Kingdom convened the international conference that I mentioned earlier.

The time for talking has surely passed. We need action on law enforcement, including against corrupt Government officials who are hampering the counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan in return for a lucrative share of the profits. We need action on alternative livelihoods. I welcome the appointment of a UK-funded alternative livelihoods consultant and the work that the Department for International Development is doing with its alternative livelihoods section. I applaud the initiative of Dr. Iain Wright from Aberdeen university—who has gone out to Afghanistan today, funded by DFID's alternative livelihoods section—to try to persuade farmers in Afghanistan to move away from the poppy crop towards raising Kashmir goats, which could provide an alternative livelihood.

We have to be honest as well, however, and we have to be honest with the Afghan farmers: no crop that they can grow will produce the same income and any suggestion that we will discover a crop that provides them with an alternative livelihood as lucrative as that which they enjoy now is a chimera. We might wait to discover such a crop, but it does not exist. In Afghanistan, the climate will not lend itself, as it does in Thailand and Pakistan, to alternative crops that provide a high income for those people. We should not kid them.

We need action, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones) said, on drug demand reduction to deal with the growing problem of domestic drug addiction. We need action in Afghanistan—the UK Government have been in the lead on this as well—on public education, with the acknowledgement that opium production has become the cultural norm in many parts of that country, despite the fact that that is clearly against the tenets of mainstream Islam. We must do more to reinforce that message.

We also need action on eradication; we must not shy away from that. Now that the election is behind us and President Karzai has been returned with a strong mandate, we need far more steps to be taken on crop destruction. My view, which I have been advancing for the past two years, is that that eradication should be part of the core military objectives of NATO through the international security assistance force.

I am aware that that is not everyone's view, but I was tremendously heartened when the Prime Minister, in reply to a question that I put to him in the summer, agreed with me, saying:

"It is fair to say that there have been some successes in eradication, but for a long time under the Taliban this trade provided a main source of income for them. It would certainly help if this became part of the NATO tasks, but we shall have to continue to have that debate."—[Official Report, 30 June 2004; Vol. 423, c. 300.]

I was encouraged to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence say that those discussions with our NATO allies are under way. They are vital.

I close my remarks on Afghanistan by saying that we cannot afford to wait a generation to solve this problem. Antonio Maria Costa is predicting that it could take a generation, but we simply cannot afford to wait that long. I cannot tell the good people of Inverclyde that they may have to put up with the scumbag heroin dealers who blight our communities for another 30 years. I am not prepared to wait a generation for a significant decrease in the flow of cheap heroin on to our streets. I am not prepared to wag a finger at corrupt Afghan officials and to coax reluctant farmers into seeing the error of their ways without the threat of terrible reprisals if they do not. I am not prepared to return to this issue in another 12 months to report further setbacks. We need real progress.

I come briefly to another subject that has caused a great deal of debate today. I was not going to go into it, but the way in which the debate has progressed compels me to refer to the middle east peace process. I was in the region a couple of weeks ago, immediately before President Arafat's terminal illness. I have visited it on many occasions, but I have never known a time of such absolute despair and despondency over whether any progress will be made. I have never known the two sides to be so far apart with absolutely no trust whatever between them.

Distasteful though this may be, and tragic though it undoubtedly is for President Arafat and his family, his demise might provide an opportunity to break that logjam and move forward, although none of us would have wished that to happen in such a way. However, it has happened and the opportunity is here.

I said that I would not make many comments on this subject, but the way in which the debate has gone shows how such debates often go in the House: people pay lip service to acts of terrorism by the Palestinians and then devote the majority of their speech to attacking Israel and apportioning all the blame to it, with the honourable exception of the hon. Member for South Antrim (David Burnside), who put another point of view. I wish to join him in perhaps reflecting a more balanced view, which is, I think, that of the vast majority of Israeli citizens, who do not regard their Government as the source of all the problems and all the road blocks that are in the way of a move towards peace.

Just to address some of the points that have been made, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (David Winnick) said that whenever moderates on the Palestinian side attempt to crack down on terror, they are undermined by the Israeli Government. That is simply not the case. Whenever people such as Mohammad Dahlan and Jibril Rijoub attempted to crack down on terror in Gaza and the west bank, they were undermined by Yasser Arafat. That is why Mr. Dahlan resigned when Abu Mazen left—he despaired that every time he tried to crack down on terror, he was undermined by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority.

We have heard a lot of talk again today about the wall. I expect that I will convince nobody that the security barrier, fence or wall—call it what one will—is working to reduce terror and suicide attacks. People have long since made up their minds about that. However, let us be factual in our use of language. It is a wall in two places, Qalqilia and Abu Dis. I have been to both places, the wall there is a great, big, ugly thing, and I hope that it is torn down as soon as possible. But, in fact, 96 per cent. of the construction is a fence, which any of us could get through in about 10 minutes. It is designed for one function only—to provide the Israeli defence forces, by delaying people getting through it, with about a 15-minute window of opportunity to apprehend or at least follow them.

I do not agree with the route—the Israeli supreme court has ruled on that, and the Israeli Government are changing it—but continually referring to it as a wall, as if the entire length of it were a wall, on a par with the Berlin wall or perhaps some of the walls that the British government built in Belfast, is fundamentally misleading and deliberately conveys the impression that somehow the whole Palestinian Authority is being walled in by Israel. It is not. This barrier must be a temporary measure that can be pulled down as quickly as it has been put up, but it has had a dramatic impact on reducing the number of suicide bombings that have taken place inside Israel since it was erected.

The people to whom our delegation spoke, on the Israeli side, in Ramallah and in east Jerusalem, did not agree on anything except one matter—that the United Kingdom in general, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in particular, are perceived as being honest brokers. My right hon. Friend has the trust of both sides in the debate. The Palestinians genuinely see him as a moderating influence on the Americans. The Israelis genuinely see him as a strong and staunch supporter of Israel's right to exist. I sincerely hope that he makes good on his promises in this place and at the Labour party conference to use every sinew to drive forward the middle east peace process. It is excellent news that the Foreign Secretary is in the region today. This is an historic moment or a window of opportunity—whatever cliché or soundbite one may like to employ, we now have an opportunity to move the peace process forward.

Unlike in Northern Ireland, we know more or less what the end result will look like—a two-state solution, with Jerusalem divided, a deal on the Palestinian right of return, some land in Israel proper provided to keep some of the settlements near the green line, but the vast majority of the other settlements withdrawn. Everybody knows that—we have an outcome but no process, whereas in Northern Ireland we have a process but no outcome.

Now is the chance to put the process back on track and to work towards the outcome outlined in the road map, the Wye river agreement and umpteen other agreements that have set out the way in which the process will inevitably end. The Prime Minister is uniquely placed to bring that about, and he has my every encouragement and good will as he goes about that task.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns). On 4 July 2001, if memory serves me correctly, he delivered his maiden speech. On that occasion, too, I had the pleasure of following him. I congratulated him on an excellent speech that day, and I am delighted to congratulate him on an excellent and balanced speech on foreign affairs again today.

The Gracious Speech makes no reference to the promotion of human rights around the world, but it does focus on the need to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Equally important is its underlining of the need to work with the international community to strengthen the United Nations.

From November 2003 until September 2004 I was privileged to serve as shadow Secretary of State for International Development, and I shall always be grateful to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for giving me that opportunity. The observations that I shall make now are very much based on, and drawn from, my experience of visiting and studying a number of countries whose behaviour deeply perturbed me. I want to reflect on that behaviour, and to talk about the way in which the international community is or, as the case may be, is not addressing it; and about how we might improve public policy, both nationally and multilaterally, for the betterment of people around the world.

Let me begin with Burma. I visited the Thai-Burmese border earlier this year, and was immediately conscious—as, of course, one could be as a result of studying books—of the wanton and savage violation of human rights that takes place every day of the week. In respect of Burma—as with Darfur in western Sudan and North Korea, with which I shall deal shortly—there are many chronicles of that abuse of human rights. I think it safe to say that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Christian Solidarity Worldwide have done, and continue to do, a magnificent service in identifying the nature and extent of the abuse. It is certainly very clear in the case of Burma, particularly the violence that is visited on members of ethnic national groups in that beleaguered and failing state.

What we know is taking place in Burma is truly bestial conduct on the part of the so-called State Peace and Development Council—renamed on the advice of an American public relations company, but originally and more accurately known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council—on the one hand, and the Burma army—otherwise known as the Tatmadaw—on the other. What does it comprise? The use of rape as a weapon of war; compulsory relocation; forced labour; the use of child soldiers on a scale greater proportionately than in any other country in the world; the use of human minesweepers; water torture; and the continued incarceration of no fewer than 1,400 political prisoners, including the ongoing detention under house arrest of Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The situation is extraordinarily serious.

That is one factor in the equation: the ongoing abuse of human rights. The other factor is the Burmese Government's devotion of an enormous amount of resources—as we see in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes—to the military: 50 per cent. of public expenditure. I think I am right in saying that, by contrast, the Government spend 19p per person per year on health, notwithstanding the UN's recommended bare minimum of £10. It is also important to note that according to the verdict of the Monterey institute, a United States-based organisation, Burma probably has chemical and biological weapons. It is only the absence of television cameras from that country that causes the world's news media to pay such disproportionately small attention to it. That is a tragic state of affairs, not least for the blighted population, who have endured privations on an horrific scale for far too long.

What is the international community's response concerning Burma? The United States—of which there has been much criticism in this debate and a number of others—has actually taken the lead. It has imposed a ban on investment, imports and trade in financial services. It has taken its responsibilities seriously in respect of a country that is showing no regard at all for human rights.

What might be said of the United Nations' attitude? Its General Assembly issues an annual statement in which it laments the plight of Burma's population and the difficulties faced by the refugees on the Thai-Burmese border, and demands improvements. Better than that we have yet to see.

rose—

I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's giving way so graciously. I am following his argument, which I share, very carefully. He pays tribute to the United States and has mentioned North Korea and Sudan, among other nations. Does he agree that the real tragedy is that other Security Council members have not exercised their responsibility to advance world peace and understanding, and that they have often covered up the problems in those countries and supported Governments who continue to oppress their own people?

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Of course, Burma is never a minuted item on the agenda of Security Council meetings, principally because of a suspicion—no doubt well founded—that China will get in the way. It will always be an obstacle and will invariably say no to any effective action against that regime. Notwithstanding China's calculated and wilful obstructionism, we in the international community should continue to raise the plight of the people of Burma, and it is right in itself to do so. The State Peace and Development Council fears international attention and exposure and, to put it very politely, it has minimal skill in the field of international public relations.

The hon. Gentleman paints an accurate and harrowing picture of life in Burma and mentions the blocking of Security Council discussion. Does he know how many times Uzbekistan—an ally of the United States with a human rights record as horrendous as Burma's—has been discussed?

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I am happy to acknowledge it. I want to make it clear that I do not regard this as a contest to see which country gets the lesser or greater attention. I shall say something in due course about our relations with other states and the great importance of operating on an ethical basis now, not only because to do so is right in itself, but for fear of what might otherwise subsequently transpire for the security of our country.

The International Labour Organisation has highlighted the use of forced labour in Burma, and it has called for a review of the situation and for the identification of that activity as a crime against humanity that deserves the United Nations' attention and response. I am sorry to say that the Security Council has completely ignored that respected body's recommendation, so, frankly, the UN is not being effective.

What is the European Union doing? Well, there is a visa ban. It has to be said that it does not affect most members of the State Peace and Development Council, for the simple reason that most of the time, they are not greatly interested in travelling to EU countries. In the event that they have to do so for an international political gathering, the EU's pathetically limp-wristed response is to waive the ban in any case. So we can see that what is taking place is purely gesture politics.

The EU has imposed an asset freeze, which has thus far frozen £4,000 across the whole of the European Union. In any case, that freeze applies only to individuals and has no impact whatever on business activities, including the enormous military and industrial conglomerates that are wreaking such havoc in the country. That is pretty unsatisfactory, too. It is true that there is an EU arms embargo, but Amnesty International is concerned that a German firm is effectively circumventing it by routing weapons to Burma through the Ukraine. Once again, that is a very real concern. No substantial sanctions are being adopted at all.

Action has recently been taken against the pineapple juice sector, because there is a military-controlled pineapple juice operation in Burma. Forgive me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I, Christian Solidarity Worldwide and the Burma Campaign have always been under the rather strong impression that it was not pineapple juice that was driving the militaristic, fascistic and sadistic behaviour of the regime. We thought, in fact, that it was the oil, gas, telecommunications, gems and timber sectors instead. It would be good to think that the international community would be prepared to adopt a robust programme of sanctions to do something about it.

The hon. Gentleman is detailing, in his usual eloquent fashion, the suffering that is happening in Burma as well as in a number of other countries. Does he agree that the impotence among the international community is now having a real effect at home, with more of our constituents asking us why there has been such a lack of action to deal with this endless suffering? It has lasted not just for a few years but, in many countries, for decades.

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The situation in Darfur in the western Sudan is equally serious. We know from television pictures and electronic news media the scale of the human rights abuses that are taking place in Darfur: aerial bombing, mass shooting, rape as a weapon of war, poisoning of the water supply, destruction of crops, theft of livestock and bestial destruction of villages all on a daily basis.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has given way several times. I anticipated that he would deal with Darfur and that he would be as articulate as he persists in being. Does he agree that, in the light of the rather tepid discussions at the UN last Friday, the situation in Darfur calls for an even greater international focus and that one contribution that we could make here—I do not dismiss the debates in Westminster Hall—is to have a full-day debate, whether in Government or Opposition time, to address the terrible atrocities that the hon. Gentleman has described as taking place in Darfur?

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. He may be aware—if not, I shall tell him now—that I have regularly called for a debate in Government time on the situation in Darfur. I have appealed to the Leader of the House to provide time for such a debate, which would be of great interest to Members across the Chamber as well as to many people in the country at large. We should never underestimate the humanitarian instinct of the mass of the British people, who do not like to see their fellow human beings being slaughtered, as is happening in Darfur at present. Something like 200 people are dying there every day and there is an immense need for action.

Frankly, the level of activity to date on the part of the international community has been feeble. Yes, there has been an asset freeze and a trade embargo applied by the US, but what has the UN said? Resolutions 1556 and 1564 were passed respectively in July and September this year, but what did they do and how did they make a difference? In what way did they save lives and how was the human condition made better in that part of the world? The answer is that precious little by way of hope was offered to the people of Darfur. What those resolutions suggested was that the international community was writing an essay in timidity. They gave time for the Government of Sudan to do better. The July resolution spoke about "additional measures" being taken if no improvements were made. The September resolution said that "appropriate action" would be taken, but the term was left gloriously unspecified.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence is present on the Government Front Bench, and he should be aware that the most recent resolution has caused Amnesty International and other organisations great concern. They say that it is a big step backwards because it focuses overwhelmingly on the north-south peace accord. That accord is important, but the focus on it is not merely to the detriment but nearly to the exclusion of the continuing abuses taking place in Darfur.

A great deal more needs to be done. At the moment the EU has no robust policy on this matter. We need detailed, effective and perhaps even remorseless sanctions to try to bring about a change of behaviour. There is no sign at present of such sanctions being introduced.

There are some similarities with the situation in North Korea. Just as there are human rights abuses and a big weapons spend in Burma, and just as some $665 million was spent in 2002 on the military in Sudan, so there are terrible human rights abuses in North Korea. Those abuses take the form of idolatry of the Government of the day and of the religious persecution that is also evident in Burma and in parts of Sudan. There is also famine, and the forcible repatriation of refugees.

North Korea is one of the most closed states in the world, and one of the things that is most peculiarly sinister about it is that the Government divide the population into three categories when it comes to determining the distribution of basic services, including food. The three categories of people are core, wavering and hostile.

People who are onside get what the Government think that they should have. People who are unsound or uncertain get a rather rawer deal. People considered to be foes of the regime get nothing by way of the bare essentials on which continued existence depends, and are also likely to find that the full scale of what are truly vicious and unspeakable human rights abuses is visited upon them.

In all the countries to which I have referred, a cocktail of barbarity is evident that has genuinely shocked and disfigured the world. Of course, it is very difficult to engage with North Korea as an issue. For example, 23 per cent. of its budget is spent on defence. We know that the regime has nuclear and chemical weapons and that it is seeking to develop biological weapons as well. It is not easy to deal with what is going on there, but we need some answers because people are suffering grievously, as they have for a long time.

That causes me to ask the important question: what should the international community do? The issues with which we are grappling do not get as much attention as other matters, but that does not mean that they do not require it.

We certainly need action, because examples from the past show the danger of sitting on our hands. In that connection, we should remember what happened in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Argentina and Indonesia. It must be painfully apparent that cosying up to fundamentally unsavoury regimes in the hope of securing political co-operation or in the pursuit of filthy lucre ends up as a grave disservice to ourselves. We feed the monster and then the monster threatens to devour us.

I am not making any sort of party-political point. We all know that successive Administrations have made significant errors as well as scored foreign policy points successes. If we look back to the experience of dealing with these countries, we should realise that we need changes in policy. First, we need a broader definition of what constitutes national interest. Historically, my party has rightly regarded national interest as the first criterion for the conduct of foreign policy. I do not object to that, but it is time that we broadened the definition of national interest. As Chris Patten—soon to be Lord Patten—observed as long ago as May 2001, it is "bilge" to regard expedience and morality as being in different corners for the purposes of the long-term conduct of foreign policy. It must surely make sense to realise that those countries that will ultimately prove to be good neighbours, with which it is best to do business and in which it is easiest to invest, are also those countries that treat their citizens most decently. In developing a philosophical framework for the conduct of foreign policy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) did in his own way, let us recognise not the error of the definition, but the need for its updating and adaptation to the circumstances of the modern world.

Secondly, we need United Nations reform. I greatly respected what the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) said on that subject earlier. On 10 December 1948, when the United Nations universal declaration of human rights was issued, reference was made to the pursuit of a common standard of achievement for all peoples in terms of respect for and observance of human rights. I endorse that, but we all know that too often the UN has failed to live up to the standard that it set itself. Article 4 of the UN charter describes the proper behaviour to be expected of peace-loving peoples. Article 6 says that if a state persistently violates the terms of the charter it can, in certain circumstances, be expelled. That has happened far too rarely. It has happened, most notably in the case of South Africa, but it has not happened to Burma, Sudan or North Korea. Far too little attention is paid to the truly grotesque behaviour of many regimes that puff themselves up and take their seats at the table of that reputable body which fails to observe the principles that it set out so rightly and eloquently more than half a century ago.

Thirdly, the same goes for the UN Commission on Human Rights. I hope that I enjoy the support of the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde for the observation that it is absurd that in 2001 the United States, which—for all its faults—is a beacon of freedom, justice and commitment to the rule of law, was effectively kicked out of the commission, coming back only in 2003, while Libya, which is not a noted historical champion of the principles of political pluralism or respect for human rights, became chairman of the commission. I suggest to the Government, for their remaining months in office, to my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) and to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition—who I hope will shortly be the Conservative Prime Minister—that membership of the UNCHR should be determined on the basis of behaviour, not of geography. It is not acceptable to take a geographical approach or adopt the principle of Buggins' turn, which gives the reins to countries irrespective of whether they have shown contempt for the very principles that their membership of the organisation requires them to uphold. Is it any wonder that the councils of the international community are not held in high esteem if that is how we behave? That is the third point and it is an important one.

There is also an important point to make about diplomacy. My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, in an important speech last week, highlighted, as other hon. Members today have done, the immense opportunity that Britain has to exert influence through our strong economy, the fact that ours is the fourth largest economy in the world, and in particular, the fact that we are members of the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, the Security Council, the Commonwealth and the G8. Indeed, in 2005 we shall have the presidency of both the European Union and the G8, and that will be a real opportunity to exert diplomatic influence and to seek to persuade other people to behave in an acceptable way. Diplomacy is important.

The use of sanctions could be important, too. They might be targeted against particular sectors in given regimes for the achievement of human rights improvement and political benefit. In some cases, we might adopt a more subtle approach; we could have terms of business agreements with individual countries—a more carrot-and-stick approach—whereby we did business with a nation whose record was historically dodgy, or worse, if it was prepared to commit to, and abide by, strict and proper ethical rules of business engagement—the employment of citizens and so on.

In certain circumstances, the remaining alternative in the field of sanctions is simply to say, "Disinvest". I do not always go along with what The Independent says, but Johann Hari wrote an exceptionally interesting and thought-provoking article in that newspaper last Friday, in which, recalling how apartheid in South Africa was brought down, he asked why there should not be a campaign of disinvestment in relation to Sudan. Just as China behaves appallingly in relation to Burma, so the behaviour of the French Government in relation to policy towards Sudan is nothing to write home about either. Perhaps a disinvestment campaign would be a good thing.

The promotion of democracy is important, certainly through what Chris Patten, I think, described as an "insanely undervalued institution", the British Council, but also through extending the good work of the BBC World Service. I should like radio services to go into North Korea. If my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) thinks—although I hope that he does not—that that is an attempt to export our cultural values, the answer is that, yes it is. It is an unashamed belief that there is something rather noble about those values, which at least in some form—although not in absolutely replicated form—we should seek to engender in parts of the world where they would be greatly appreciated and have been too long denied.

An attack on the whole small weapons industry is critical. About 300,000 people a year are killed through small weapons. The Department for International Development supported international small weapons destruction day and I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for International Development for doing so, but much needs to be done. There is an EU code of conduct on small weapons, but it is rather weak and most observers think it needs to be strengthened. Trade in small weapons, and their trafficking and brokering, is taking place and if we are to confront and defeat that phenomenon, in the interests of the greater security of the developing world and beyond, multilateral activity, through the councils of the international community, and with a sense of urgency, is certainly needed.

Finally, let us briefly address the issue of humanitarian intervention. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester said that he favoured humanitarian intervention in certain circumstances, but that they would need to be clearly spelled out. I agree with quite a lot, although not all, that he said. There are good arguments for making humanitarian commitments, but we need the forces to make them credible so we should not rule out the dispatch of a substantial peacekeeping, as opposed to merely monitoring, force to Darfur, to try to bring to an end, as quickly as possible, the appalling suffering that is taking place there.

A wider argument can be made. If there is a vacuum, ultimately it is filled. Unless the United Nations accepts its responsibility to uphold human rights, to promote democracy and to ensure that national sovereignty cannot be used by totalitarian regimes as a cloak behind which to continue appalling abuse of human rights, someone else will occupy the field. So action must be taken by a reformed and responsible United Nations or, alternatively, a new community of democracies will have to sit down together, determine the criteria and thrash out whether humanitarian intervention is justified. There is a great deal to be said for that, and despite all the mistakes that have been made since, I still support the decision to fight the war in Iraq. We should not neglect other parts of the world. What is happening in Darfur, what is taking place in Burma and what is being done in North Korea should concern every hon. Member.

Of course, we cannot deal with everything militarily. We should use diplomacy; we should apply trade pressure; we should be prepared to impose sanctions; and in certain circumstances, yes, we are justified in intervening. The reality is that too many people around the world have suffered too much for too long with too little being done about it. The challenge to political parties and the international community is to ensure that the defenceless, the discriminated against, the weak, the suffering and the voiceless do not continue to experience their present plight. We need a better policy to help them, to advance their cause and to give them a chance, and we need that policy sooner, rather than later.

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow). Although we differ on how to define national interest in the context in which he implied it, he certainly struck me as a convert to the cause advocated by the former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook): the ethical foreign policy, which came to such an unhappy end during the first Labour Government after 1997. However, I want to speak about something rather different.

Commentators have characterised the Queen's Speech as being set in a context of fear and insecurity and I agree with those on both sides of that argument, believe it or not. Certainly in respect of domestic policy, many of those fears and insecurities are alive and well, particularly in the poorer parts of the country where crime is a very real pandemic, but it is not necessarily the case that we can extrapolate from those specific areas to other parts of the country and make the same case. We must distinguish between the legitimate fears of crime and antisocial behaviour in many forms and the fact that the fear of crime often overtakes the reality. I would argue that the converse is true in respect of foreign and defence policies. We are working in a climate of fear and much of it is misplaced. That is not to deny that there are real dangers and challenges, but to deny the all-pervading sense that, down the road, some cataclysm will be foisted on the people of the United Kingdom. That is just not the case, and I see no objective evidence to suggest that it is; neither do I see the merit in stoking up people's fears in the way in which they often are.

Where the effect of crime on domestic issues and foreign and defence policy most recently came to a conjunction was in Afghanistan. The Secretary of State for Defence referred to the drug trade in Afghanistan. Many figures have been bandied about in the House this afternoon, but they do not illuminate much. I hope that what would illuminate the point is a simple figure that we tend to forget: the year before the overthrow of the Taliban, for all their many and manifest failings as some kind of administration in Afghanistan, they reduced the export of heroin to 80 tonnes a year. They waged a war on heroin, so the price went up in western European cities, because Afghanistan is the main source for our drugs. I may have the figures slightly awry, but I understand that 3,600 tonnes were produced in Afghanistan last year, and one of the principal operators in the trade is Dostum, one of the chiefs of the Northern Alliance.

I happen to know that Dostum met one of the big heroin importers into this country, who told me from prison—where, happily, he is locked up for many years—that his contact in importing heroin into this country was, through his Turkish intermediaries, Dostum. It was a great success to put such a man in a position of responsibility in post-war Afghanistan. No one takes issue with the need to get at the viper's nest of al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan, but the failure to operate effectively afterwards meant that that man was able to ply his pernicious trade once more. Under the Taliban, he could not do so to the same extent.

May I correct my hon. Friend's figures slightly? The figure was 185 and not 80 tonnes. He is right about the figure of 3,600 but the peak, under the Taliban, was 4,600 tonnes. They stopped production in only one year and still had the stockpiles in which they proceeded to trade. We must not allow the myth to emerge that the Taliban were somehow cracking down on opium production. They were not; it was a tactical manoeuvre in one year and they continued to profit from it. That does not take anything away from what my hon. Friend said subsequently, but we must not allow the impression to be given that the Taliban were getting tough on this trade.

I defer to my hon. Friend's detailed knowledge of the figures. However, as he said, that does not take away from the argument that the people now in power can ply a pernicious trade that thoroughly infects the west.

I also want to refer to the so-called special relationship. Everything that has been said in the debate so far is, in one way or another, predicated on the special relationship. I have heard speaker after speaker say how important the transatlantic alliance is to them personally and, by that, they mean the special relationship. The transatlantic alliance is important to me, and it has been important to us for generations and will be for generations to come. It is not without end, but we should try to define what it means and how, to return to a point made by the hon. Member for Buckingham, it affects our national interests.

The issue is how we interpret our national interest and whether it is often subordinated to that of the United States. I take no issue with the United States for pursuing its national interest. When our national interest is not at one with theirs, it is up to us to decide whether we go with their interest or our own. To do that, we have to take a wee historical look at what the special relationship means and, as I said, we must define it.

Whenever I have mentioned the special relationship—from the Back Benches or from the Front Bench, in private or in public—I have asked what the quid pro quo is from the British perspective. I was told that it was intelligence, and I will come to that subject in a moment. I could no see no other overriding factor that suggested that we should have a special relationship ad aeternam because all sorts of goodies accrued to the British people as a result. As I see it, as part of the special relationship, we hand over the use of places such as Diego Garcia, Fylingdales and Menwith Hill and, in return, we receive intelligence.

Most of the time, we unquestioningly acquiesce in a whole variety of policies that emanate from within the beltway in Washington. They are not necessarily well thought out or in our national interest, but the acquiescence is there. In return, we have the British Prime Minister's totemic right to a hearing in Washington. What do we actually get out of that?

To understand the answer, we must look at what we have achieved over the past 50 years as a result of the special relationship. Let us dispose of some of myths while not, in any way, decrying the enormous efforts made for five or six decades by the United States under various Governments. They have determined western progress and western advancement. Let us consider the situation immediately after world war two. I know that it rankles with many old soldiers to talk about the wartime and who won the war—we have this in every Remembrance service—but the truth is that it was won due to a combination of factors. Within that crucible, however, our special relationship with the United States was forged. Historically, that was mostly due to family contacts, and especially Churchill and Roosevelt, the then leaders of the two great western democracies standing against fascism.

The relationship has moved on since that time, but that has not happened without a price. I remember going with my ration book to the shops when I was a young lad—I was a young lad once. One reason that rationing continued in this country for so long was the enormous cost of repaying the United States for the fantastic help and support that it lent us during and after the war. However, such help and support came at a tremendous cost to this country.

It has been said that the special relationship was not brought to bear at Suez because that did not suit the national interests of the United States. However, we must also consider smaller matters on the global scale, such as the invasion of Grenada, when we were not even informed that a Commonwealth country was to be invaded. I thought that the notion that the United Kingdom was always the prime base in Europe for American interests was laid to rest during the latter stages of the cold war, when Germany was far more important to the United States than the United Kingdom was. That does not diminish our relationship with the United States, but shows that it is in a state of flux. The United States will do whatever is in its interests—long may that be, if one is an American. I happen to be a citizen of the United Kingdom, so I sometimes take issue with that.

The situation has never been more obvious than during the illegal and immoral war against Iraq—I and many outside the Chamber maintain that that remains the case. We must consider the cost of the war to us. We have been associated with not only the prosecution of such a war, but with attempts at making peace that have included such phenomena as Abu Ghraib and the levelling of Falluja. I want no association with such peace making; it is not peace making at all because, as many hon. Members have eloquently said, it adds to the fires of extremism and terrorism not only in Iraq, but throughout the world.

We have become politically estranged from many of our older reliable allies throughout the world. Emerging countries in which we invested much political capital say that we are perhaps nothing more than a satrapy of the United States and, as such, should not be trusted. Our forces have been overstretched and put into such a situation that ex-Chiefs of the Defence Staff repeatedly advised the Government, as did the then Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Michael Boyce, that we should have had an acceptable exit strategy, although we still do not have one. The country will pay an economic cost not only now, but down the years, although we all know that America is advancing its economic interests in Iraq. The huge investment by the Foreign Office in good will throughout the whole of the middle east and the Arab world has been damaged considerably. We have paid those costs for our part in the special relationship, because no reason can explain why we joined the illegal and immoral war in Iraq, except advocating the special relationship.

I, like the Prime Minister and any sensible person, recognise that we must move on—the whole world wants to move on. However, what will we move on to? We must remember that we are moving towards a world in which there will not be only one superpower, because the emerging superpowers of China and India are making rapid strides. We do not know how the European Union will evolve and what that will mean for the United Kingdom's foreign and defence policy.

I know that the overwhelming opinion of the Government and, I assume, the House, is that we will continue to cherish the special relationship for many more years, even if people such as me think that it is something of a myth. We must accept that that is the majority view, but what sort of world will it lead us to? Let us consider what the present American Administration advocate. They are an Administration who instinctively reject diplomacy, multilateralism, collectivism and want to go it alone. They have kyboshed international treaties, not least the anti-ballistic missile treaty, which allows them to begin the first steps towards national missile defence. That approach extends into other areas, Kyoto being the obvious example. They are an Administration who are anti-United Nations. No matter what those with a different view might say, all the evidence has stacked up to suggest that there is a visceral antagonism towards the United Nations on the part of the Administration and their intellectual supporters among the neo-conservatives.

I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with interest and respect. Surely the problem is that the United Nations needs to become an instrument of necessary change rather than merely a symbol of passive acceptance of the status quo. Does he accept that the United States has often felt inclined to go it alone not because it wants to be in splendid isolation, but because the United Nations continues to abdicate its responsibility to stand up for what is right? Will he at least acknowledge that it needs to do that?

I acknowledge that the United Nations needs change and reform, as Kofi Annan has said more than once. Many others would also agree with the hon. Gentleman. However, that is not quite the same as saying that the United Nations as an imperfect instrument is an excuse for unilateralism on the part of the United States. Individuals in a number of American Administrations, but in particular the current Administration, have argued that. There is a school of thought that looks for reasons to distance the United States from the UN. It will go so far as to manufacture reasons that it can add to those that he rightly highlighted, which require remedy. It is not good enough, however, for one country's interests—even if it is the only superpower—to ride roughshod over the views of the world community.

The Administration also believe in pre-emptive warfare and regime change, which are illegal. They believe in militarising space. Their military doctrine uses the marvellous phrase "full-spectrum dominance". That is not about parity or balance. The word that is used is "dominance"—dominance of air, sea, land, space and information. This is megalomania. I do not know any other word to use when one country aspires to dominate the world in every theatre of operations.

They are also an Administration who are developing bunker buster A-bombs. I wonder what will happen next year with the review of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Renewal of mutual defence agreements is coming up. Many might argue—I would love to hear what the Secretary of State for Defence or his spokesperson has to say on this—that that violates the NPT. If it does, where does that leave us in terms of a consensus on controlling some of the things that are happening?

The easy answer, which I have half-answered, is that we have to think long term and those are long-term strategies. As the sage has said repeatedly, the only thing we know is that in the long term we are all dead. We have to get through the next four years of a particular Administration in Washington who have a particular world view.

To give an insight into that Administration, I want to quote from an article in "The Weekly Standard" on 22 November. For those who do not know "The Weekly Standard", it is an in-house journal for the neo-cons in the United States. Its contributing editor is a Dr. Strangelove character, Charles Krauthammer. The article is written by another interesting man, Irwin Stelzer. He has a formidable intellect and is amiable. I quite like him. His politics are off the scale as far as I am concerned, but they are at the heart of the neo-cons. He counts the members of the Bush family among his personal friends and also my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. He is often a dinner guest with the Prime Minister. His thoughts have some resonance in the two arms of the relationship as it currently holds. I was taken by Mr. Stelzer's article. It states:

"So close are the views of Tony Blair and George Bush that it is not unreasonable to say that we are all neoconservatives now."

I do not hold to that, and I am sure that many colleagues on both sides of the House would take a different view.

Mr. Stelzer wrote that Colin Powell

"made it clear last week that the president has no intention of abandoning his 'aggressive' foreign policy".

"Aggressive" is his word, not mine. He says that an aggressive view is being taken on how the United States deals with the world.

It would please some people to know how anti-European the American Administration are. Perhaps it accounts for the official Opposition taking the view that they have, which is rather like that of Janus. I used to think of the Liberal Democrats in that sense—looking both ways at once. In this instance, it is the Conservative party that is taking that approach.

Mr. Stelzer adds that

"the president's foreign policy team has come to understand that the united Europe that is taking shape intends to subvert American interests."

Another paragraph of the article reads:

"The positioning of the E.U. as an anti-American force has not been lost on Washington's policymakers, who now realise that this country's historic support for a united Europe is dangerously contrary to U.S. interests."

There we have it. It is a dilemma for the British Government in being a bridge between Europe and America when one of the two parties sees itself as diametrically opposed to the other.

My final quote is:

"when Blair is finally forced to choose between the Europe in which he so dearly wants to play a . . . leading part, and the special relationship with America."

There we have a neo-con house journal arguing the case that there is a choice to be made. It is saying that there is not a bridge and that a choice is to be made whether one's destiny lies with Europe or with, perhaps, the 51st or 52nd state or whatever of the United States. It is an extremely difficult dilemma for any Government. I hope that unlike their approach towards supporting America in the Iraq war, the Government will exercise a great deal of caution before committing themselves either way.

I shall be in Washington before Christmas meeting many of my neo-con friends. I shall pass on to them the views of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle).

Before the war, in conversation with some neo-cons in the United States, I expressed concern that I think reflected general feeling on both sides of the Chamber. I am concerned about the United States, with the United Kingdom, trying to roll out by force democracy throughout the world. Although all of us in this place believe in democracy, would defend democracy and would vote in the House to fight for democracy throughout the world, it is a dangerously naive and unsophisticated policy to pursue. To roll it out as part of foreign policy, which is the essence of much of neo-con thinking in Washington, is superficially naive and dangerous.

Did not the United States play a fairly positive role during the Clinton Administration in trying to bring about a settlement in Northern Ireland? I noticed that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle)—I missed the early part of his speech—did not mention that.

I will come later in my remarks to the past, present and future contributions of the United States Administration to the peace process to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

Iraq and the management of the war is now the Government's major foreign policy objective. We are where we are. The House voted, we went to war, we are in Iraq and we must manage it efficiently and effectively with as much all-party support in the House and as much co-operation with the traditional Atlantic alliance as possible.

I shall concentrate my remarks on two peace processes that are sometimes complementary. Although I am not in the conflict-resolution sector of politics, as many of my fellow countrymen are in Northern Ireland, there are some lessons to be learned. The Government have an opportunity coming up to make a major contribution to a long-term, stable solution for peace in the middle east. There are a number of circumstances moving in the right direction.

The re-election of President Bush is good for the peace process in the middle east. A second-term president is always good for the management of international affairs. I believe that the instinctive concerns that some have about Bush and his priorities in the middle east will be allayed. He will deal with the middle east conflict, the problem of Palestine and relations with Israel. A strong American President in his second term is a great advantage.

The demise of Yasser Arafat is good for the future of the Palestinian people and will contribute to a more united, stable leadership that does not have the long-term legacy of terrorism or the freedom fighter image—whatever one's position and whatever one thinks—of Yasser Arafat. We all have our interpretations of the international links with Arafat in the early days of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and we all have our past. Arafat did not manage the Palestinian people firmly, fairly and in an honest and open way. His financial management of the state or statelet or yet-to-be state should be open to a great deal of scrutiny, and the international community must see that his type of management is not allowed in the future. The demise of Arafat is another circumstance that is good for a middle east solution.

The third circumstance is that Prime Minister Sharon is showing considerably more flexibility than many had expected—flexibility on Gaza, the settlements and, hopefully, the Golan heights. He is a strong leader who will show flexibility at the right time.

The fourth circumstance that will help a solution in the middle east and be necessary in our allied relationship with the United States is the position of our own Prime Minister. He is a P45 Prime Minister: he has announced that he will stand for election and go some time after the next election. He is coming to the end. The Labour party is conspiring and working out who should be its next leader—and, it hopes, the next Prime Minister. Prime Minister Blair wants to have the hand of history on his shoulder in respect not only of Ireland but of the middle east, so he will make a major contribution, and his special relationship with President Bush is to the advantage of a solution in the middle east.

Those circumstances—President Bush, Arafat's demise, Sharon's flexibility, and our P45 Prime Minister going through for another one or two years until he is replaced—combine with other developments in the region. Syria has a new regime and there is reasonable peace in Lebanon, especially southern Lebanon. It is a stable country that has recovered from the worst times of the war. A new king in Jordan, King Abdullah, wants to play a major role in the middle east. In the long tradition of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I believe that Jordan will play a crucial role in working towards a peace settlement based on the two states in the middle east.

We have passed the stage in foreign affairs where people even question the continuation of the independent sovereign state of Israel. That will continue. It will be supported, and the international community will respect it. We have passed the stage where people question whether there should be a two-state solution. The international community accepts that. We have the basis, with the world leadership, the presidents, the prime ministers and the support of the European Union, to establish a sound and stable peace solution through politics in the middle east. I am optimistic that the British Government and the Prime Minister will play a considerable role in achieving that objective.

I sometimes wonder whether British-Irish relations come within foreign policy or some other strange relationship that has developed from the 1985 Anglo-Irish agreement or the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday agreement, but the management of the peace process in Ireland, which again is a political process, is very much the joint management of Her Majesty's Government and the Government of the Irish Republic. The British and Irish Governments have continually and abjectly failed to manage that process in a way that ends for ever the threat and continuation of terrorist organisations within Ireland, linked to the Irish republican movement and so-called loyalist paramilitaries.

The British and Irish Governments have played footsie with the republican Sinn Fein-IRA movement. They have compromised time and again. They have made it difficult for the democratic political parties within Northern Ireland—I include in that the Ulster Unionist party, the Democratic Unionist party and the SDLP, and one or two other small parties such as the Alliance—to play an active and continuing role in the political peace process because time and again they have appeased those who hold on to terrorist organisations and a vast criminal empire. That includes Sinn Fein-IRA led by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who are in and out of No. 10 Downing street with Jonathon Powell and other officials day in and day out, and never out of the Northern Ireland Office. They are still playing the double game of maintaining the terrorist threat without going the full route to becoming democrats and taking their place in a normal democratic society.

I read a statement earlier this week from the IRA president and Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams—that is what he is—saying that if we do not get the process moving ahead in the right direction, we should move to joint authority between the United Kingdom and the Irish Government. I fear such statements because they are deliberately provocative to those of us who are trying to stabilise and democratise politics in Northern Ireland for the long term and for ever. They are provoking Unionist people who feel that some form of British and Irish joint authority will be introduced over our heads, which would be against the so-called principle of consent that was meant to be in the Anglo-Irish agreement, and the so-called principle of consent that was meant to be in the Belfast agreement. We cannot have the principle of consent when some involved in the process are threatening a form of joint authority over us.

My hon. Friend was asked earlier about the role of President Clinton. Does he see a parallel between the recent acceptance of a promise from Iran not to proceed with a nuclear warhead and the Clinton era when there was peace, yet the bomb that blew up Canary wharf was being planned?

There should be no appeasement, domestically or internationally, in the fight against terrorism. The double standards that are sometimes expressed in the House, especially from the Government Front Bench, must end. If we are to win the fight against domestic and international terrorism, there is only one standard, one criterion, one end objective, and that is the defeat of terrorism, so I accept the hypocritical nature of that stand.

In moving on to the problem of concluding and finalising the peace and political process within Ireland, it is time that on foreign policy Her Majesty's Government started to re-establish who are the sovereign Government and Parliament of the United Kingdom. We continue to govern Northern Ireland in a consultative manner with the Government of the Irish Republic, as though there were some form of joint authority. The internal affairs of the United Kingdom are the internal affairs of the United Kingdom, and the institutions of government that may or may not be established at Stormont should be the institutions that are agreed by this Government and this Parliament. There should not be a form of joint authority. I worry about my own party in this regard, but I also worry about my friends and colleagues in the Democratic Unionist party, who appear to have been sucked into a negotiating position—whether at Leeds castle or at Weston Park—that has given the impression that the future of Northern Ireland is to be determined by a form of joint authority between the United Kingdom and the Irish Government.

Does my hon. Friend agree, therefore, that the recent discussions on criminal justice reforms, which seemed to settle on a type of criminal justice involving Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, should have brought Northern Ireland more into line with England and Wales? If there is a need to protect the Irish citizens in Great Britain or the British citizens in the Republic of Ireland, that could be achieved at international level rather than by placing Northern Ireland in a separate position from the rest of the judicial system here.

My hon. Friend makes an important point; I agree with him completely.

I should like to move on from the middle east and the Irish peace process to the second main subject of today's debate: defence. The international fight against terrorism will be won only when we have strong domestic defence—which the Americans call "homeland security"—and the co-ordination and strength internationally to defeat terrorism from whatever quarter. We can pick and choose our terrorist organisations and our historical analogies, but the international network organisation of terrorism—the historic post-war terrorist organisations with allegiances to the old Marxist system in eastern Europe, to bits of the middle east, to Gaddafi in the old days, to ETA, to FARC in south America, to Castro's Cuba, and to the Provisional IRA—still exists. That old left-wing terrorist element is still operating, and it is heavily financed by drugs and international crime.

Other elements today are called terrorists: Muslim fundamentalist terrorists, for example. We pick these terms, depending on where we are coming from and where we are going to. However, an international network involving drugs, crime and protection is helping to finance perhaps some middle eastern terrorists, and certainly FARC in Colombia, a lot of the terrorist criminal operations in eastern Europe, and many of the potential terrorist trouble spots around the world. The international community—the United Nations, the European Union, and the alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States—needs to examine how it can undermine the corruption and deal with the money that finances much of that terrorist-led activity.

The hon. Gentleman threw Cuba into his list of terrorist organisations. Will he clarify for me where he sees the connection between Cuba, drugs and organised crime?

I should be more than happy to. That was a simple question and I shall give the hon. Gentleman a clear answer. According to evidence given to the international relations committee in Congress, the Sinn Fein-IRA representatives who went to Colombia had received more than $1 million from FARC in Colombia from the illegal trafficking of drugs. Those representatives included the Sinn Fein representative in Havana, Cuba, who then went to Columbia with IRA representatives, who were part of the international network of terrorism that I was referring to. So the connection is clear.

I am still not clear about this. I understand the geography and the route involved—indeed, the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) and I were down in Colombia last year and we dealt with this subject in some detail—but is the hon. Gentleman implying that the Cuban Government were involved in some way?

I am not, but there is a long historical link between Governments such as the Government of Cuba and the international network of left-wing terrorist organisations, which all arose in their own countries because of different historical backgrounds but which are tied into an international network. The connection that I made was between the Provisional IRA, its representative in Havana, the home he was given there and the help that he was given in Cuba in its relationship with FARC, the anti-American, drug-financed terrorist organisation in Colombia. I think I have made the connection very clearly.

The domestic and the international fight against terrorism can be achieved only if we have a stronger, better, more efficient and, in my opinion, bigger Regular Army, Navy and Air Force, so some planned projections from Her Majesty's Government on the size of the infantry and of the Army cause me major concern. I have one point to make, and I do so with respect to a soldier for whom I have the highest personal regard—General Sir Michael Jackson, who is a paratrooper: great history, great regiment, great honour. I hope that the House will decide on the future of the British Army and the importance of its regimental system.

Even if General Sir Michael Jackson recommends that we have management within the Army and within companies, mergers and forming super-regiments will be so fundamentally harmful to the future of the British Army—this will end the British regimental system, which every other army in the world would give its eye-teeth for—that we must debate that in the House and fight it. If that reverses some of General Sir Michael Jackson's management decisions, so be it. I believe that we can gain cross-party support in the House and that the regimental system—with its strength, its honour, its past and its future—is something that we cannot give up. I hope that Labour Members, Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party will come together to save the British regimental system.

My hon. Friend will know that the Conservative party's official position is that we are determined to save the regiments, because we need the necessary number of troops to fulfil the obligations that are being imposed on them. We believe that it is not yet time to take a peace dividend from Northern Ireland.

I agree with my hon. Friend.

My concluding subject is normalisation in Ulster. In a recent exchange, the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, asked me whether I believe in normalisation. There is nothing that I and the vast majority of people want in Northern Ireland more than normalisation. We want our garrison strength, police on the streets, and the total and absolute end of terrorism. We want our Territorial Army regiments travelling throughout Ulster to train for the future role of the TA.

We do not want Regular Army back-up for our police service or the civil power for any longer than is necessary, but does anyone think that we can say that there is normalisation when the terrorist organisations continue to exist and do not disarm? The Provisional IRA has gone four years—almost five—beyond the Belfast agreement date for completing disarmament, but it still holds on to its arms, explosives and criminal empire.

On the so-called loyalist paramilitary side, again there are illegal weapons and much criminality, which should not live in a normal society. Therefore, I look forward to the peace dividend coming out of Northern Ireland. I believe it will help the deployment of our armed forces to meet national and international needs, but we are not there yet.

I want to make yet another appeal to the Secretary of State for Defence. We in Northern Ireland have always had an armed back-up to the civil power, which currently exists in the three home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment. One battalion is in Aldergrove in my constituency, one is in Omagh and one is in Armagh, comprising 3,300 men and women. One does not do away with the tradition of the Royal Irish and the Ulster Defence Regiment—the defence against future terrorism and future threats—give that up, and say that another few battalions have gone, we do not need them, and it looks reasonably peaceful at the moment. We must maintain those three home battalions within the Northern Ireland garrison—I believe that the Government are considering numbers of 5,000, although we are not at that stage yet. Will the Secretary of State therefore give us a commitment that even in a more peaceful society, we will maintain the three home battalions?

I am extremely optimistic on peace settlements around the world. We have the opportunity to establish a foundation for peace in the middle east, and we can make progress on the peace process in Northern Ireland, but we must not go too far, too fast. We must always make every judgment, every decision and every executive decision relating to our armed forces, police and home defences based on reality and not hope for peace. If we do that, we will have a more peaceful domestic and international society.

I have looked forward for a long time to an opportunity to take part in a foreign affairs debate with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary in his place, so that I could enter into dialogue with him. On this occasion, I am pleased that he is not in his place, because instead he is in the middle east pursuing the road map and the peace process, which is exactly where I would want him to be. I have the consolation of my hon. Friend the Minister for Europe being in his place. With modern technology, I am sure that it is possible for the Foreign Secretary to hear what is said in this Chamber in Sharm el-Sheikh or wherever, so that we can enter into dialogue with him while he is engaged in the peace process.

The point that I would most want to make to my right hon. Friend is that the biggest inhibition to peace in the middle east is not so much the problem of Palestinian terrorism, as territorial expansion by the Israeli Government in the west bank. I asked him recently about the case of an Israeli settlement called Ma'ale Adumim, which is halfway between Jerusalem and Jericho, in the middle of the west bank and a long way from Israel. The mayor of that settlement has said that he hopes to more than double the size of Ma'ale Adumim to provide homes for about 70,000 people. Indeed, the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, to whom the Foreign Secretary has made protests about this matter, is on record as saying that Jerusalem must grow to include Ma'ale Adumim.

A settlement right in the heart of the west bank is therefore to be incorporated into Israel, which to me demonstrates more clearly than anything the extent of continuing encroachment on Palestinian territory while the road map is supposed to be in progress. No wonder that even the United States Government have condemned the Israeli building in Ma'ale Adumim, although that seems to have made little difference. The Israeli Defence Minister has even said that this new expanded settlement in the middle of the west bank should be on the Israeli side of the security fence that Israel is building. Again, that demonstrates clearly the extent of the continuing territorial encroachment on the west bank by the Israelis while they are saying that they want a peace settlement.

Now that the International Court of Justice has established that the route of the security fence is contrary to international law, we must ask ourselves seriously what will happen if Israel fails to abide by its findings. What sanctions can the Foreign Secretary apply to Israel, given that it has already made it clear that it will not pay any attention to the court's findings? I should like to share the optimism of the hon. Member for South Antrim (David Burnside) about peace settlements in conflicts around the world, but if we are to achieve such settlements we must give careful consideration to the instruments that we, as a country, have in our hands. I urge my right hon. Friend to do that.

So far, dozens—indeed scores—of UN resolutions have been passed on the subject of Israel and Palestine. Israel is in contravention of nearly all of them, and they are all resolutions under chapter VI of the UN charter—that is, resolutions placing responsibility on both sides in the conflict, which are bilateral and mean that no single country must comply with them unless the other country involved does so as well.

The charter also contains chapter VII, under which it is possible to impose unilateral obligations on countries to abide by resolutions irrespective of what other countries do. That is the chapter under which the resolutions on Iraq were passed, and under which the UN alone can take international action. I have asked my right hon. Friend before now to accept that while the peace process requires action from both Israel and Palestine, the settlements in the occupied territories are illegal in and of themselves. If we do not take action against the illegal settlements with the same urgency and under the same chapter of the UN charter, we are effectively abandoning the moral high ground and undermining our own case on Iraq.

I have tabled a question asking my right hon. Friend if he would

"impose a duty on Israel to halt and withdraw illegal settlements in the occupied territories."

In his answer, the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), recited some of the Security Council resolutions that already state that all the settlements are illegal, and reiterated that

"an early settlement freeze is essential to the continuing viability of the two-state solution."

Indeed, that is part of the road map. He also said that the Government

"have no plans to table a UN Resolution on Israeli settlements in the occupied territories."—[Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 419W.]

It is understandable that we should pursue the chapter VI resolutions as far as we can, but at some stage we must convince Israel and the United States that overwhelming military power will not in itself be an answer to terrorism. John Glubb, the great authority on the middle east, says:

"I personally believe that the continuing use of force alone is a lack of political judgment. The continued use of violence raises up more violence against itself. Men and women who have nothing more to lose may well become dangerous. To drive an enemy to complete and utter despair may be unwise."

I think that that describes the point that we have now reached in the middle east. Another authority on the subject has said:

"Israel has no long-term future without the accord of the Arabs."

Those are the words not of a UN or western politician, but of Nahum Goldman, president of the World Jewish Congress.

All parties to the conflict must understand that a wrong done by force of arms can also be undone by force of arms. They are living in a fool's paradise if they think that Palestinians believe that 150 million Arabs will simply forget, or if they think that the 800 million Muslims throughout the world will abandon the ambition of an independent and viable state of Palestine. For them, it is a choice between peace with justice or perpetual war. The role of all members of the United Nations, with the help of the United States, should be to assist Israel in coming to the right conclusion.

The hon. Member for South Antrim said that the death of President Arafat creates an opportunity. It might in some ways, but he is wrong to imply that the President was the blockage to making progress with the road map. The opportunity that we are now presented with has far more to do with the re-election of a US President—who, being in his second term, will have nothing to fear—and with the elections in the Palestinian territories on 9 January, which will enable the Palestinians to give a fresh mandate to a new leader. Whoever that leader may be, it is clear that they will not have the same authority that President Arafat enjoyed by virtue of his experience and longevity; nevertheless, the election will give them a mandate to negotiate. If the Israelis and Americans are equally determined to reach a settlement, now is a good opportunity to do so.

We must be very careful to avoid doing things that strengthen the extremists and undermine the moderates. In my view, the moderate Palestinian politicians are in fact very moderate. When the British mandate in the Palestinian territories ended, the Jews constituted some 7 per cent. of the population and owned about 6 per cent. of the land. Now, Israel constitutes 78 per cent. of Palestinian mandate land. So those politicians who have accepted the scaling down of their ambitions from governing the whole territory to governing only 22 per cent. have already demonstrated that they are in every possible sense moderate. In fact, according to the detail of the offer made to them under the terms of the Oslo proposals, they would not even get the remaining 22 per cent. of the original Palestinian land.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what matters is not just the overall percentage of land but the area that supplies water, which is a particularly vital commodity in that region? As a result of the wall's construction, a huge part of the Palestinians' water source has been taken away from them, which has stretched their tolerance even further.

Indeed. Area and population are both very rough guides and I fully accept that viability owes much to economic factors, such as the water supply. However, whichever measure one uses, the Palestinians are now happy to negotiate on the basis of having a very small part of the land and its economic potential, and we should give them credit for that.

Of course there are Palestinian extremists, but there are extremists on both sides. We have all heard about Hamas and those Palestinians who would happily throw every Israeli into the sea, but we should also consider Israeli extremists such as the Gush Emunim. They talk about

"a second Palestinian holocaust in which Palestinians will flee or be made to flee Judea and Samaria",

in much the same way as 750,000 Palestinians—three quarters of the population—fled in 1948. Such talk is offensive and we must condemn it, but in doing so we must find ways to support those politicians in both communities who are prepared to seek a compromise and to take a moderate stance.

We might reach an agreement, given the favourable circumstances that are in place, but we must also ask ourselves what happens if we do not. The fact that both countries, Israel and the Palestinian territories, are democratic and are the only two true democracies in the middle east is, sadly, no guarantee that a resolution can be found. In fact, democracy sometimes makes it more difficult because the people have to be carried in a democratic regime, which does not apply in less democratic regimes. The distance between the expectations of the two sides is still huge. The Israeli Government have withdrawn, or are in the process of withdrawing, from their settlements in Gaza, but it affects only 7,000 people compared with 200,000 on the west bank.

We will need every ounce of American pressure to bring about a sufficient change of heart in the Israeli Government for a withdrawal from west bank settlements to take place. Even then, would that be a sufficient withdrawal to satisfy the expectations of the Palestinians? I cannot help thinking that, at the end of the day, it will not be sufficient to bring the Palestinians happily into negotiation. In the end, we may have to think of other ways of bringing that about. UN action is, of course, the one that should spring to mind.

This is no minor problem—it is probably the biggest problem in international relations that the world has ever known. Two peoples, not to mention three of the world's religions, all co-exist in the same small territory. The two peoples now living there, the Israelis and the Palestinians, both arrived 3,000 years ago as the Hebrews and the Philistines and have existed in that area ever since. Ironically, they have now settled in one another's heartlands, with the Israelis living in towns such as Ashkelon and Ashdod, which were Philistine towns even in Biblical times, and the Palestinians living in towns such Nablus and Hebron. As we find from reading the Bible, they were the heartlands of Hebrew settlements in Judea and Samaria. That results in the ironic position of those peoples living in one another's territories while having a legitimate claim on one another's land. A great leap of faith has to be made by both sides to understand that they must enter a dialogue that results in allowing the other side to have permanent security within the borders.

We need to be careful not to make it a precondition of progress on the road map that there should be a complete stop on acts of terrorism. It is not that we should not desire such a stop, but making it a precondition is to put a veto in the hands of suicide bombers. We should try to proceed with an unconditional withdrawal from settlements in the occupied territories. It has started in Gaza, but will be much more difficult to achieve in the west bank. Unless the withdrawal is unconditional, it can be halted at any stage by just a tiny minority of Palestinians, or even Palestinian sympathisers who might launch suicide bombs or some such act.

We must consider other means of achieving that end, which should include using chapter VII of the UN charter. I do not see how we could be certain of achieving that objective without it. It is all very well being optimistic in world affairs and hope that people will see sense, but we need an alternative strategy—a plan B—in case it does not happen. I believe that using chapter VII of the UN charter and the imposition of unilateral obligations on countries should be done to a greater extent in any case—to stop genocide, for example.

Born in such high hopes more than 50 years ago, the UN has, to my mind, proved a huge disappointment. Only twice in its longer than 50-year history has it ever agreed to take military action: once in Korea in 1950 and once in Kuwait in 1991. The rule against any interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states has paralysed the UN into inaction. For example, it could not act in Rwanda, even though the commander of the UN force there, Romeo Dallaire, pleaded with his superiors in New York to be allowed to stop the genocide that he knew was going to take place. The UN contingent stood helplessly by as 400,000 people were butchered. In the end, the commander was reprimanded for trying to disobey UN orders and stop the genocide.

A similar thing happened in Bosnia. No action was taken, even though it was known that the genocide of 250,000 people was taking place. The inquiry into what happened in Bosnia said that the UN was paralysed by the "institutional ideology of impartiality". That rendered it simply unable to take any action.

It was deplorable that no action was taken to stop the massacre, mainly of Muslims, in Bosnia. Was it not therefore all the more appropriate for the British Government, with the essential support of the US, to take the action that they did in Kosovo? Incidentally, that action gives the lie to claims that we are anti-Muslim. If we were anti-Muslim, why did we act as we did in 1999?