Comment: Syria shows MPs need independent analysis of intelligence
By Peter Flatters
Something remarkable happened in British politics last week when David Cameron reconvened parliament to request a mandate for military action.
With the prime minister claiming that intelligence findings were compelling enough to warrant action, the remarkable thing was parliament’s response – namely that it did not believe him, or rather that it insisted on seeing the evidence for itself.
When asked to act in good faith on the prime minister's word they said 'no'. Over the last ten years a momentous change has occurred. parlaiment no longer trusts in the word of the prime minister on matters of security and intelligence.
The spectre of Iraq looms so large that a dramatic change now needs to be made to the way MPs discuss security issues.
The ramifications of this are serious. If cases where quick military action needs to be undertaken in order to protect British lives, interests or sovereignty, the current political framework is no longer reliable.
In itself, this is a threat to national security. However, the most likely future scenario – as is the case with Syria – is that in some foreign land a situation arises in which international law is broken, human rights are violated and crimes against humanity are committed. As a member of the UN Security Council it is then beholden upon the UK to address and attempt to halt such crimes.
We now have a situation where if such war crimes are committed and military action is judged to be an effective means of halting them (as in Kosovo), then the current political framework is not just unreliable but actually incapable of dealing with it.
MPs should not be derided for their scepticism. In this post-Iraq, post-'dodgy dossier' world, they no longer have faith in a system where they are not party to intelligence reports and assessments yet are asked to act upon the recommendations and judgements of those who are.
This has been a situation waiting to happen. MPs' confidence in the intelligence community and the word of the PM on global security matters is now so tainted that they insist on being much more deeply involved in any judgement to take military action.
So how can they be accommodated? How should government and parliament adjust their mechanisms to reconcile with this new reality?
One solution is that MPs should be kept better informed. As the Americans have done, they could be presented with far more of the intelligence. During the debate on Thursday many MPs declared that they wanted to see more of the evidence – much of it is unclassified, so why not?
But this could be taken further – why not also provide them with independent assessments of the situation and the available courses of action? These assessments are made by highly qualified experts, so why not share them? Why not have foreign policy experts address parliament and outline the possible outcomes of various military interventions (as well as the possible outcomes of inaction) at local, regional and global levels? There is plenty of expertise on these matters floating around, but not enough of it appears to have flowed parliament’s way in time for last Thursday’s vote.
This would better inform MPs’ decision-making, give them the confidence that military action had been fully thought through and might even restore the public’s faith in the process. If this can be achieved, then we will have a system of government that can be relied upon to deliver an adequate, rigorously scrutinised and accountable response to future security crises.
Peter Flatters is a freelance contributor to politics.co.uk. He specialises in security issues including political violence and terrorism.
The opinions in politics.co.uk's Comment and Analysis section are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners.
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