Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Richard Burgon Shadow Justice Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NIALL PATERSON: Let’s stick with the topic of Syria and head up the road to Leeds, an old stomping ground of mine in fact, where we can speak to Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary, Richard Burgon. Mr Burgon, a very good morning to you.

RICHARD BURGON: Good morning Neil.

NP: Was Theresa May wrong to carry out those air strikes against chemical weapons in Syria?

RICHARD BURGON: Taking a country to war is the most serious decision a Prime Minister can take and that’s why it’s very, very regrettable that she didn’t allow parliament to have a debate on it, didn’t allow parliament to have a vote on it before she took that action. What is clear is that from the opinion polls there isn’t widespread public support for this military action so if the test is on a Prime Minister to only go to war with parliamentary support and with public support, then in that sense the Prime Minister has failed both tests. I do remember Robin Cook, a great parliamentarian, when he spoke against the Iraq war. Sadly he wasn’t successful in persuading parliament not to back the invasion of Iraq but on his gravestone it actually says ‘I may not have stopped the war but I established the principle that parliament would always get to decide on whether we go to war or not.’ I think it’s very sad that it appears that this precedent has been put in place where the Prime Minister doesn’t think it is appropriate to wait two or three days to consult parliament and so I think it is very welcome that this morning Jeremy Corbyn talked about a War Powers Act which would mean that parliament would have to have a vote on whether or not our country takes military action, goes to war.

NP: I don’t want to underplay the significance of a Prime Minister taking a decision to send several jets carrying some very powerful munitions to bomb a foreign country but at the same time that is not an act of war. If Theresa May is right in her assessment that the strikes that were carried out by ourselves, by the French, by the Americans, were limited to chemical weapons sites and it can be shown that they have limited Bashar Al-Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons against his own population, what’s the problem?

RICHARD BURGON: Well first of all I would say with respect, we shouldn’t underplay the significance of what the Prime Minister has decided to do. The aeroplanes going to bomb these targets is an act of war, to bomb targets in another country is an act of war and the legality of this is highly questionable as has been said but there is going to be no military solution to this brutal and horrific civil war in Syria that has seen 400,000 killed, millions of refugees and what we need is Britain to use our standing in the world to ensure that it’s not about taking the side of Trump or taking the side of Putin, it’s about taking the side of the Syrian people and world peace and lobbying and putting pressure on through the UN for a peaceful diplomatic solution. Look for example in 2013 when through the UN the USA and Russia made an agreement about destroying chemical weapons capability over Assad and as a result, hundreds of millions of tons of chemical weapons were destroyed. In contrast, the United States bombed Syria last year in order to stop chemical weapons attacks and we’ve got these horrific videos showing a chemical weapons attack just the other week. So it seems to me that when there was an agreement between the United States and Russia in 2013 through the UN, that resulted in destroying hundreds of tons of chemical weapons which is far more effective.

NP: There is only one problem with that analysis, Mr Burgon, is that Bashar Al-Assad clearly didn’t destroy all of his chemical weapons despite the agreement of the Russians in all of this so I’ll ask the question again. If on Monday, if tomorrow when Theresa May comes to the House she can furnish you with evidence that there were no civilian casualties, that the sites that were struck by the weapons, American, French and our own, were targeted at chemical weapons installations and that this has led to less of a likelihood that Bashar Al-Assad will again poison children with chlorine. Surely that should be something that’s welcomed.

RICHARD BURGON: Well we need to see what the Prime Minister is going to say to parliament and this is why it should be the case that the Prime Minister comes to parliament before taking such action, because she could have presented her case to parliament before taking this decision, which as I say, is the biggest decision that any Prime Minister of any country can make but let’s not pretend there is any easy outcome to this horrific civil war. It’s been found out that both Assad and ISIL have used chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war, there is no easy outcome to this, so our priority has to be to minimise the number of casualties to save lives in Syria and that’s why it sticks in my throat when the Prime Minister has been so quick to take this action of questionable legality, without the approval of parliament, to bomb Syria yet at the same time was so resistant to accepting the Dubs Amendment which would have taken just 3000 Syrian refugees, children, rather than the 300 which the government admitted or 350 that they were going to take. We need to put the protection of Syrian civilians at the heart of this and we’ve also got to understand the international concern that this could escalate. I think it is really, really worrying that the Prime Minister of our country seems to pay more heed to the Twitter tantrums of Donald Trump than to the British parliament. That’s not good for our democracy and it creates a very dangerous precedent which is why the Secretary General of the UN has spoken out his concern about this step that’s been taken over the weekend.

NP: Mr Burgon, can we then focus on this idea that you have, are you honestly saying that you think for any British Prime Minister to take military action, not necessarily legally at the moment but in your mind at every opportunity that they need to take military action, they should first consult the House of Commons?

RICHARD BURGON: Parliament could have been recalled last week and the Prime Minister hasn’t presented any evidence …

NP: Let me stop you there, I’m sorry to interrupt but that’s not quite my question. Do you think that there are any circumstances in which a British Prime Minister should be allowed to take military action without coming to the House of Commons?

RICHARD BURGON: I do think that on this occasion it looks like parliament has been treated with contempt. It is actually Conservative MPs as well who counselled against Theresa May taking this step before she did so this isn’t a party political point by the Labour party but …

NP: Indeed not Mr Burgon, and I’m sorry to keep interrupting but this is a really important point. Is it the Labour party position that in the future, if you were in government there would be no military action taken by a Labour government without consulting parliament?

RICHARD BURGON: Well Jeremy Corbyn today talked about – and I think it’s very welcome – bringing in a War Powers Act which would mean that parliament would have to have a say on whether or not Britain goes to war. I think that’s the right thing to do, I think that’s in the interests of our democracy, it’s in the interests of our standing in the world. If we are going to uphold international law and insist that other people uphold their international obligations, it’s also correct that we do so and what I’m really worried about is the law of unintended consequences. A Conservative MP said on the radio only the other day that he was worried that if Theresa May took this action then unwittingly our brave pilots could end up being, unwittingly because of the Prime Minister’s instruction, in effect the air force of ISIL and related forces in Syria. They don’t want that to happen, no one wants that to happen and the law of unintended consequences also applies to escalation. Look at all the powers involved in the civil war in Syria, this brutal civil war, twelve powers involved there. It could easily spiral even further out of control with further loss of life in Syria, with further implications for the region and further implications for the wider world and at no point in my adult life have I been as worried about the future of peace in our world …

NP: With respect, there have been four instances of the OPCW identifying Bashar Al-Assad as having used chemical weapons, the very strong likelihood is that it was he who was responsible for the most recent attack. We know that he had killed hundreds and thousands of his own people using conventional weapons, I mean how much worse could it get? This law of unintended consequences of which you speak, an unintended consequence of the fact that we’ve been pushing the peaceful dialogue option is that hundreds of thousands of people have died.

RICHARD BURGON: Well we’re in a situation where the OPCW, who only arrived yesterday, need to be allowed to do the work. As you say, it’s been found that previously Assad has used chemical weapons. It’s also been found previously that ISIL and related forces in the Syrian civil war have used chemical weapons, that is abhorrent, it is a war crime and the perpetrators of that need to be brought to justice but we need to allow the OPCW to do their work. They only arrived yesterday, the bombing had already taken place before that happened and this isn’t going to end the Syrian civil war, this isn’t going to end the suffering and carnage of the Syrian people …

NP: Indeed and that is not the stated purpose according to Theresa May.

RICHARD BURGON: … we need to push for a peaceful solution for that.

NP: Just in terms of this though, the OPCW as I said before has identified Bashar Al-Assad as having used chemical weapons in the past. The combined intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and France identified him as responsible for the most recent incident. Are you saying that if you were given all of that intelligence, if Jeremy Corbyn was sitting in Number 10 and given all of this evidence by his own intelligence community, by the Americans, by the French, that he would still need to get clarification from the OPCW before taking action, action which almost certainly would not be military in nature?

RICHARD BURGON: Well I think we need to ensure that the important role of the Organisation of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons isn’t undermined. In one part of your question you refer positively to the work of the OPCW, saying it identified previously where chemical weapons had been used and by whom, then in the second part of your question you implied that there is no need to wait for them to draw their expert conclusions on this occasion. They arrived yesterday, I was concerned before the bombing took place of this push for Britain to get involved in this way in the Syrian civil war and I’m still very concerned about that. The action that was taken the other day, and I’m delighted that no British personnel were hurt, I’m delighted that as of yet we’ve had no evidence that Syrian civilians were harmed or killed as a result of these air strikes, but the consequences of this are not that the Syrian civil war is going to end. Donald Trump says in a tweet, ‘Mission accomplished’, it’s not as simple as that. You can’t just bomb your way to peace from above Cyprus, that’s not how this is working. What’s shown in the last seven years is that the Syrian civil war isn’t going to have a military solution, we need a peaceful negotiated solution and when we’ve got a Prime Minister who appears to be taking more heed of Donald Trump’s tweets than the British parliament or the UN or International law, that’s not going to help to get the peaceful resolution the people of Syria, the people of the wider region and indeed the people all round the world who feel very frightened at the moment, need.

NP: Richard Burgon, many thanks for joining us.

RICHARD BURGON: Thank you very much.