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Pakistan: a state perilously close to the edge

Pakistan's recent temporary closure of a key supply route for NATO ISAF forces in Afghanistan raises fresh questions about whether Pakistan is fully capable of defeating the Pakistani Taliban. Few people doubt the Pakistani government's public commitment to tackle terrorism. However, there are well-documented reports of rogue elements in Pakistan's intelligence services providing material and moral support to the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Taliban attack on NATO fuel trucks that prompted the closure of the supply route underlines the importance for NATO of developing alternative supply routes through Russia and Central Asia. Russia and NATO have a common interest in defeating Islamist jihadi terrorism. Russia is not always aligned with western interests in the region - as its determined stance on Iran indicates, which it may live to regret one day - but it should not be deterred from cooperation with NATO over Afghanistan by its previous military humiliations in that strife-torn country. Russia has a key interest in stabilising the wider Middle East and Central Asia where jihadism is active and gives active succour to Russia's enemies in its own north Caucasus republics.

This attack on a vital supply convoy has underlined that any discussion about security in Afghanistan must take into account the situation in Pakistan. And the situation in Pakistan is not looking too promising right now, as officials in the Obama administration are acknowledging increasingly openly.

The floods that devastated swathes of Pakistan two months ago were an unexpected calamity the country could ill afford. Already beset by a weak central government, hamstrung by a feeble economy and with terrorists operating largely unfettered on its soil, Pakistan now has the overwhelming task of helping the estimated 20 million people who lost their homes and livelihoods in the flooding. For its part, the European Parliament has offered its deepest sympathies to those affected by this tragedy and has called for the EU to intensify humanitarian aid efforts.

Even a wealthy western democracy would struggle to cope on its own with a catastrophe of this magnitude. But for Pakistan, the flooding has not surprisingly proved too much for its government to handle. Indeed, the fact that the army very quickly took responsibility for the immediate aid effort tells us all we need to know about where power in Pakistan really lies. Certainly the restoration of full democratic civilian government under President Asif Ali Zardari has proved to be largely an illusion.

The displaced Chagos islanders' plight should be reconsidered

By Charles Tannock MEP.

In his book Freedom Next Time the journalist John Pilger paints a harrowing and disturbing picture of the fate of the Chagossians, the former residents of the Chagos Islands. I don't often see eye to eye with Pilger but reading his description of the way in which the inhabitants of this archipelago were systematically dispossessed and thrown off their land is deeply moving.

Between 1968 and 1973, Labour and Tory governments organised the removal of everyone living on the 55 islands that constitute the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This was done at the behest of the United States, which at the time was embroiled in the Vietnam war and required for understandable security reasons the use of the island of Diego Garcia as an air and naval base. The narrative employed at the time by the Foreign Office was that the Chagos Islands had no settled population.

The Chagossians were shipped off to the Seychelles and Mauritius, where they were deposited and left to fend for themselves. They were ostracised and isolated, and many succumbed to mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism. Pilger's book contains distressing passages in which Chagossians recount their deceased relatives 'dying of sadness' at having to leave their homes.

Despite the tragic impact of this compulsory removal, the islanders never gave up their campaign to win the right to return home. Many Chagossians eventually moved away from the Seychelles and Mauritius, and some have settled in London, my constituency. They have been a persistent thorn in the side of successive British governments, and it would seem right now that the coalition government seeks to conclude this matter in a fair, humane and just way.

Charles Tannock MEP: Salary and political influence in the EU

William Hague has recently admirably said that he wants to see more British nationals working in the EU institutions. This may mean sacrificing some of the best and brightest working in the Foreign Office because the new European External Action Service (EEAS) will need to call upon the renowned experience, excellence and respected pragmatism of British diplomats, some of whom will be seconded to the EEAS.

Conservative MEPs were opposed in principle to the creation of the EEAS but now that it is a reality we can't continue to be churlish about it and we must move on. We must ensure that our country secures as much influence as possible in the EEAS, because we can be sure that other key powers will be trying to shape it in their own image. To do this, we need the most able and talented diplomats working in it.

I was surprised to read an article in the Daily Telegraph recently that discussed the salaries of senior EEAS staff. Douglas Carswell MP (who often makes valuable contributions to political debate) was quoted, arguing that that the fact that some senior EU diplomats will be paid more than the foreign secretary, who earns £134,565 a year, is an illustration of how the Lisbon treaty reduces Britain's sovereignty over foreign policy. He was quoted thus:

"The reason more than one hundred EU diplomats earn more than the British foreign secretary is because they have more say than him on foreign policy."

I was bewildered by the inference that a civil servant would be more powerful than a politician by virtue of being paid more. Take the example of the UK: dozens of public servants earn more than David Cameron but it is patently absurd to suggest that by virtue of their salaries they have more say than he does in running the country – especially since the PM personally appoints many of these people to their jobs and approves their salaries. Indeed, if salary or wealth was the only benchmark for influence and power the country would be run by footballers and pop stars, and Who's Who would look very different from its current composition.

Whaling: trying to find middle ground between two diametrically opposed positions

The International Whaling Commission is meeting this week in Agadir, Morocco, to discuss a possible lifting of the moratorium on commercial whaling, which entered into force in 1986. Few subjects evoke as much emotion and bitterness as whaling, so we can expect this week to see some fierce debates and probably quite a lot of discord, even among supposed allies.

I have always been a staunch defender of animal welfare, both before and during my career as an elected politician. I have no enthusiasm for whaling and I consider it to be of limited scientific value (science being the guise under which Japan has avoided the moratorium). Like many people, I am distressed by TV pictures of highly intelligent sentient mammals being harpooned and hauled onto ships. I certainly don’t find it an edifying spectacle. I would prefer for IWC member states to vote to maintain a moratorium on commercial whaling.

However, I am rarely an absolutist on any particular policy. And in the case of whaling, I think there is a case to make that it is fundamentally a matter for sovereign states to decide. In particular I advocate this view because in the case of the main pro-whaling nations – Japan, Denmark, Norway and Iceland – whaling has been part of their culture, heritage and identity for centuries.

It’s something we can’t really understand if we haven’t been part of that culture ourselves. The Conservative approach has always tended towards ‘live and let live’ rather than seeking to impose our own values and outlook on others. We should also bear in mind that the aforementioned pro-whaling nations are stable and successful democracies, whose voters would presumably force their governments to act if they felt sufficiently strongly opposed to whaling. I take some comfort from the fact that most young Japanese apparently now find eating whale meat distasteful.

At the moment, three countries catch whales. Norway never agreed to be bound by the moratorium; Japan uses the get-out clause of ‘scientific’ whaling, even though much of the whale meat its vessels catch ends up being consumed; and Iceland, having initially accepted to be bound by the ban, has since resumed whaling – no doubt a complicating factor in future negotiations to join the European Union.

Denmark and Sweden are the only EU member states to support a lifting of the moratorium. The European Union has been trying, and has failed, to agree a common position ahead of the Agadir meeting. However, the EU is not a member of the IWC. Therefore, EU member states will either vote individually or will vote to abstain as a negotiated compromise to accommodate the position of Denmark and Sweden.

However, the EU has, in the past, shown itself able to find common ground on such issues. Last year the EU banned the import of Canadian seal products over the delicate issue of seal clubbing, a practice largely confined to Inuit communities that depend on it for their livelihoods. The EU justified the ban by saying seal clubbing was inhumane, although – and perhaps we should remember this in the context of the whaling debate – it does not seem to have saved the life of a single seal pup.

Last week in the European Parliament session in Strasbourg I found myself speaking on behalf of the ECR Group on whaling. I explained in my speech that I was opposed to whaling but that states have a sovereign right to hunt whales for food, particularly if they have done so for centuries and the species of whale being hunted is not endangered.

If we are to ban whaling in the EU on animal welfare grounds we should surely also ban bullfighting and fox hunting across the EU. The fact that we allow these activities to continue, albeit subject to tight regulation at EU member state level, suggests to me that we ought to allow countries with an unbroken history of whaling to continue to catch whales commercially under certain tightly regulated conditions.

There is also the issue of sustainability to consider. The successful and evocative campaigns launched by Greenpeace and other environmental organisations deliberately made little reference to the difference in the numbers of various species of whales because this would have distracted attention from their argument of a total ban. But scientists concur that certain species of whales are abundant in our oceans, and could be caught sustainably if the catch was monitored, regulated and limited appropriately.

Sustainable whaling would appear to be viable in particular if the creatures are not threatened with extinction as is the case for the minke and sperm whales – the former being the sole species the Japanese hunt for so-called ‘scientific’ purposes, although as mentioned most of the slaughtered whales end up on the menu in up-market Japanese restaurants. On the other hand, the magnificent blue whale is an endangered species which, in my view, would fall under the CITES convention if there were no IWC moratorium, and therefore deserves a very special level of protection. The other issue to be discussed in Agadir is whether to preserve the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, a vast expanse of sea adjacent to Antarctica where all whaling has been banned as part of a settlement.

In my speech last week I also argued that the whaling industry must be able to show that it is progressively developing more humane methods of killing whales, particularly in terms of speed and painlessness, and that any resumption of commercial whaling must be subject to rigorous tests in this regard. We have insisted on more humane methods of rearing and slaughter for farm animals and we should do the same for all animals killed for a commercial purpose or otherwise. Having said that, personally I think that killing these animals is only really justified for food – the scientific reasons seem to be more to do with honing the skills of Japanese whalers in the hope that the moratorium will be eventually lifted.

Mike Nattrass, a UKIP MEP, made in my view an excessively emotive and absurd speech during last week’s otherwise reasoned debate in which he equated whaling to ‘murder’, called the Japanese ‘inhumane’ and said that the UK would ‘vote to leave the EU in uncontrollable anger’ if the EU was to force the UK to abstain, rather than vote against, the lifting of the moratorium. For the record, the UK cannot be forced to do anything – this is a matter for member states to decide in Council by negotiation. It struck me as slightly ironic that a sovereignist UKIP MEP should seek to undermine the rights of sovereign countries like Japan or Norway to pursue their own interests.

It’s just that kind of emotional language that we need to avoid as we debate the future of whaling, because it merely strengthens the determination of those who wish to see it continue. I will repeat: I am no personal fan of whaling and I would rather it did not happen. But I also recognize that there are other factors to be considered, and they should be considered fully, carefully and without emotion. The risk of provoking a schism in the IWC is that some countries break away completely and all efforts by the UK and the EU to maintain a reasonable international coalition in favour of restricting whaling as much as possible will come to nothing.

As I post this, news is leaking out from Agadir. A compromise deal appears to be on the table whereby there would be a return to a strictly regulated regime of commercial whaling for a period of ten years (South Korea is also apparently interested in a resumption of whaling), so those of us interested in this conservation issue will be eagerly watching the outcome of negotiations.

The coalition government needs to focus fully on the new EU diplomatic structure currently under discussion

Over the past decade of institutional introspection in Brussels, many politicians supportive of ever-closer union have repeated the mantra that the EU should have the tools to project a more prominent and coherent identity as a major international actor. Thus one of the key elements of the defeated European constitution and its reincarnation, the Lisbon treaty, was the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), effectively the EU’s own diplomatic corps, set-up to serve the High Representative Baroness Ashton. Whether we like it or not, the Lisbon treaty is now in force, and governs both the legal basis and now –for the first time – the legal personality of the EU. Work to set up the EEAS has therefore begun in earnest and the service is expected to be launched in early October.

Proponents of a more global role for the EU have long argued that the establishment of the EEAS is a logical step in the development of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), which was part of the Maastricht treaty approved by MPs and implemented by the Conservative government of John Major. The new UK coalition government certainly has sympathy for the argument that if the EU is to play a more substantial role in global diplomacy, development aid and multilateral problem-solving it should have the resources to do so credibly.

However the EEAS’ purpose is more than one of just undertaking a classical foreign ministry role. It also encompasses the direction of the civilian peacekeeping and crisis management operations of the EU as well as housing part of the CSDP military architecture (the political and security committee of member states’ ambassadors, known as the PSC). In addition it includes management of the EU’s enlargement and neighbourhood policy (ENP), and strategic areas of development cooperation and humanitarian aid – all of which are policy areas it shares with the Commission, which will thus partly relinquish its strategic powers in this area and will have to subordinate its priorities to the overall foreign policy objectives of the Union.

I have always subscribed to our party’s fundamental belief in the sovereign right of member states to retain an independent foreign policy. To put it another way, I believe the CFSP should be based primarily on an intergovernmental approach in which the Council’s common position is a reflection of the consensus and the input of the various member states and their sometimes competing interests. If any one member state objects there can be no EU position by definition, so every country subsequently in this particular area pursues its own sovereign policy.

That is not to say that I don’t think the EU has a role in foreign policy. The Council usually manages to craft a robust and pragmatic stance on most major foreign policy issues. But Britain should never be in the position of being outvoted by other member states, as is sometimes the case under the co-decision procedure of legislation by Council and the European Parliament in which qualified-majority voting applies at Council level.

The development of the EEAS is therefore a matter of great interest to me as Conservative spokesman and ECR Group coordinator, and should be a matter of great concern to the coalition government. For the past few months a power struggle between the institutions for control over the EEAS has been intensifying, with the hapless Baroness Ashton, new to the job, caught in the middle trying to assert her authority and leadership in the face of some increasingly sceptical member states and a fairly hostile continental press.

Meanwhile the European Parliament, led by two heavyweights – the veteran German CDU MEP and former chairman of the foreign affairs committee Elmar Brok and former Belgian Liberal Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt – has been carving out its own powers. Already we have been granted the right to hold an ‘exchange of views’ hearing for all senior EU heads of delegation and special representatives before they take-up their posts. We have just scrutinized two key appointments (Washington and Kabul), which were a great success in terms of democratic scrutiny. Curiously this is a power not even granted to national parliaments over their national ambassadorial appointments and is inspired by the US Senate confirmation hearings. This is something we might consider for the reformed Westminster parliament to boosts its role by acquiring such rights of scrutiny of judicial and diplomatic appointments.

The other curious thing is that Declaration 14 of the Lisbon Treaty formally states the European Parliament has no new powers under the Treaty but the political reality is somewhat different! Ultimately the European Parliament wields the budgetary powers and co-decision powers over staff regulations, which mean without its approval the EEAS cannot be set-up.

At the same time I also strongly believe more must be done to keep the MPs from national parliaments of the 27 member states formally involved in holding the High Representative to account, particularly as the WEU Parliamentary Assembly, until recently chaired by Robert Walter MP, has now been dissolved. Thus the existing formal structures of European/national parliaments’ interaction and joint scrutiny (the so-called COFAC) of the CFSP and CSDP needs reviewing.

Therefore for the past few months I have been trying to shape this complex debate from a Conservative eurorealist point of view. I often feel like a lone voice amid the overwhelming majority of the European Parliament intent on a power grab at a time of political vacuum resulting from the distractions of the eurozone crisis.

I have had useful advice from the UK Permanent Representation, the expert civil servants and diplomats stationed in Brussels who were keen to help Conservatives even before we regained power, fully aware that EU decision-making would not be put on hold for the sake of the British election campaign. Hopefully our dynamic new foreign secretary William Hague and his excellent ministerial team, who until recently were naturally preoccupied by the priorities of election campaigning and successful coalition negotiations, will rapidly focus their attention on the EEAS. It will not only establish the EU’s foreign policy architecture for a generation but impact significantly on the Foreign Office – not least if the EEAS lures our best and brightest diplomats away for the many sought-after secondments that will be available to member states’ diplomats.

The power struggle over the EEAS is complicated and frequently exacerbated by clashing personalities. However, fundamentally it boils down to a handful of key issues. The first is the extent to which the EEAS should remain under the sole authority of the Council. The EPP, Socialists and Liberals in the European Parliament have tried to hijack the process by seeking to place the EEAS under the joint authority of the Council and the Commission, on the basis that the High Representative straddles the two.

To my mind this is a recipe for confusion and conflict. Member states don’t always agree at EU level but one thing on which they will happily agree is that they should have exclusivity in the conduct of EU foreign policy and that the supranational Commission should not be directly involved in foreign policymaking, but only its implementation and administrative support in terms of aid and resources. I am now confident that this more federalist proposal will be sidelined. At least its proponents have openly justified the proposal by claiming it will further their aims of ever-closer union and supranational governance. It essentially boils down to resources: namely whether the administrative budget of the EEAS, as a stand-alone sui generis hybrid institution should be a different line subject to direct parliamentary scrutiny or buried within the Commission budget, limiting Council involvement in the budget and how it is drawn up and spent.

It also depends on chains of command between the Commissioners and the High Representative and the local non-CFSP political staff in the delegations. It is emerging that all instructions will have to go via the High Representative or the president of the European Council Herman van Rumpoy (whose precise role is as yet unclear) to the EU heads of delegation and then be transmitted onto technical Commission staff on the ground handling all other policy areas eg. development and humanitarian aid. So the central role of the High Representative and Council as gatekeepers is intact.

Another contentious issue is whether the positions available to diplomats from member states should be filled on merit or by quota. Many of the smaller and newer member states are insisting on quotas, whereas I think positions should be awarded primarily on merit. It is extremely hard to justify to taxpayers such massive expenditure on the EEAS (projected to be up to €3 bn annually) if efficient management takes a back seat to a carve-up of cushy jobs. For instance, a brilliant British diplomat speaking Mandarin would be much better-placed to head the EU mission to Beijing rather than a diplomat from another member state who may speak three EU official languages but doesn't speak Chinese. Our FCO is very well positioned in this respect.

Somewhat to my surprise the UK is currently slightly under-represented in the external relations directorate-general of the Commission, whose personnel will transfer over almost completely to the EEAS, so we should actually be able to boost UK recruitment. The European Parliament is seeking to cap the number of temporary national experts (as opposed to seconded permanent diplomats) because it fears these will remain loyal to their governments and not the EU. Needless to say, Conservative MEPs will oppose this cap.

Another issue is whether or not to have two high-profile political deputy High Representatives (for which there is no legal basis in the Lisbon treaty) who would be answerable to the EU and national parliaments and who would deputise for the High Representative. The alternative proposal is simply to have EU or member state officials deputising for Baroness Ashton, such as the relevant ENP or development Commissioner and the foreign minister of whatever member state holds the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers.

There are pros and cons to each suggestion. Permanent political deputies have the advantage of being more publicly accountable and also familiar with the movers and shakers and how the corridors of power work in Brussels. Furthermore, given that the current High Representative is from the centre-left, political balance could be achieved by installing centre-right and liberal deputies. The foreign ministers overseeing their member state's rotating presidencies are generally never around long enough to master exactly how things work in Brussels  but this proposal does have the advantage of  bringing the member state foreign ministers back on board, as currently they are somewhat excluded. Already the initial proposal of an executive secretary-general of the EEAS (most probably a French candidate) has been rightly dropped in favour of simply an administrative one, thus preventing power accumulating behind the scenes which is not open to scrutiny by the European Parliament or national parliaments.

When Baroness Ashton was appointed as High Representative I was critical of her lack of experience. Although I now recognise she has made strenuous efforts to get up to speed on her complex brief. However, I never doubted that she is an able administrator, and it appears that she has adopted the EEAS as her cause célèbre so that she can leave a legacy when she eventually moves on. If she can successfully negotiate a way around all the various competing interests and establish a functioning and sustainable EEAS then she will deserve considerable credit.

Nevertheless, she seems to have packed her private office with many of the left-leaning officials she inherited from Peter Mandelson when she took on the trade portfolio in the previous Commission. She therefore seems to have no close aides who are in tune with current Conservative thinking over the intergovernmental structures required to assert the primacy of member states. She may have been appointed by a Labour government but she would be foolish to isolate herself from those advisers and officials sympathetic to the new Conservative and Lib Dem coalition government.

Interestingly this is the first time ever we have the scenario of a Labour Commissioner serving at the same time as a Conservative Lib Dem Government because in the past we always achieved political balance by having two UK Commissioners from the two main parties.

I am also concerned from a parliamentary perspective that under the working document proposed by Ashton she will be giving confidential briefings on CSDP missions only to those MEPs given security clearance on the foreign affairs committee (though paradoxically I am told she is yet to receive the highest level  clearance herself). As currently proposed this is to be restricted to five MEPs and the top three political groups only, which means the ECR (and by consequence Conservative MEPs) will be excluded even though the UK, now with a Conservative Prime Minister is a major contributor to military missions like the Royal Navy-led Atalanta mission off the Horn of Africa and EUFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the UK may soon increase its presence. However Elmar Brok reassures me that on a need-to-know basis Conservative MEPs will, after suitable security clearance, be brought into the loop.

David Lidington, our talented new Europe minister, has been in Brussels this week for the first time since his appointment to brief Conservative MEPs and I have raised some of these issues directly with him.

Finally, I am sure that the very idea of the EEAS will be anathema to eurosceptics, especially those who advocate secession. I am not saying I am enamoured with the idea. I campaigned against the Lisbon treaty. I fought, and am still fighting, to stop the EEAS from adopting terms like ‘ambassador’ (with partial success) and ‘embassy’ (with total success), terms that should be the prerogative of sovereign states. But the Lisbon treaty is the new reality. We must engage with it and fight vigorously for British national interests. We need to move on from our principled opposition to Lisbon because – as the EEAS negotiations show – the danger is that we will simply be seen as churlish and will damage our country’s interests by sulking on the sidelines.

The coalition's policies on the European Union

The coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is only a week old and yet already pessimists are saying it won’t last long – frankly I hope they're wrong. One of the reasons most often quoted for the coalition’s fragility is Europe, or more specifically the divergence of opinion between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on Britain’s role in, and relationship with, the European Union.

Most of those who believe the coalition will founder on this issue are hardline eurosceptics. One such doomsayer is Lord Tebbit, who disgracefully called on voters in last year’s European election to vote for UKIP. This belief that Europe will be the undoing of a very carefully constructed coalition is perhaps a reflection of the overriding importance – one might almost call it an obsession – that some in our party attach to our membership of the EU. They are so committed either to Britain adopting a more hostile approach to the EU or seeking to secede altogether that it appears they see the collapse of a Conservative-led government as a worthwhile price to pay to achieve their goals. For them, nothing else matters. I sometimes wonder if we have learned the lessons of the last period of Tory government.

For voters, however – and I must have canvassed hundreds, if not thousands, of households across the entire London region in two election campaigns in the past year – Europe barely registers on their political radar. UKIP once again came nowhere near winning a seat, though it may have denied us a few extra ones. UKIP polled 3.1% of the popular vote nationally, which admittedly puts them in fourth place ahead of the Greens but a long way behind the pro-European Liberal Democrats. The Green Party, however, did show that well-disciplined smaller parties are occasionally capable of making a breakthrough under first-past-the-post.

None of the main parties contesting the election advocated a secessionist or obstructionist approach to Europe. The coalition government, therefore, ought to reflect first and foremost the fact that Britain should remain a fully engaged member of the European Union.

Body scanners are not a panacea for airport security

The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee has just issued a report lambasting the government for its timid stance on airport body scanners, which the committee says are essential to fighting the threat of terrorism. The report accused ministers of taking a laissez-faire attitude to security and 'waiting for terrorists to demonstrate their new capabilities before implementing improved security measures.'

The danger of terrorist attacks against commercial airliners is omnipresent. This was demonstrated again last Christmas when a Nigerian extremist tried to blow up a flight from Europe to America. The urgency – some would even call it hysteria – that surrounds the debate about keeping us safe in the air have further fuelled calls for body scanners to be used at airport security. However, I'm not convinced that they are the panacea that many claim them to be.

At the moment there are two types of body scanners available for walk-through in airports: the millimetre wave scanner that uses terahertz radiation and the backscatter system that uses X-rays.

As a former NHS doctor I am well aware of the risks of regular exposure to X-rays – particularly for pregnant women and children – and I cannot see how such scanners comply with the public authorities' duty to avoid causing harm to people. I also believe such scanners may violate EU law under the Euratom treaty, which forbids the use of compulsory ionising radiation for non-medical purposes on humans. Certainly the European Parliament has rightly resisted attempts to introduce body scanners on an EU-wide basis.

Meanwhile, the effects of terahertz radiation, although non-ionising, are less well-known but potentially no less damaging. These scanners create a full image of the naked body, thereby potentially violating a citizen's right to privacy under EU law. On the same day that the select committee's report was published, newspapers reported that an airport worker had received a police warning and faced disciplinary action for ogling a female colleague as she passed through a body scanner.

Moreover, scientific experts have expressed concerns that repeated exposure to terahertz radiation may significantly affect the natural dynamics of DNA, and thereby influence intricate molecular processes involved in gene expression and DNA replication. You don't have to be a Nobel Prize winner to understand how serious that could be when an entire population is being exposed.

Personally I believe that airport body scanners should not be introduced until more research has been done on their safety. We should also wait until scanners become available that do not use electromagnetic radiation but instead rely on much safer ultrasound technology. Body scanners remain potentially an important tool in the fight against terrorism, and no-one more than me wants to see that fight succeed. But it's unlikely that terrorism will ever be completely defeated, and we know how resourceful these fanatics can be. They will start to ingest or insert explosives in their back passages!

One particularly alarming development I read about was the case of a Saudi prince who narrowly escaped being blown up by an al-Qaeda terrorist who had swallowed a tiny amount of explosive and was able to detonate it with a mobile phone. This demonstrates the chilling reality of terrorism, whose proponents will always find new ways of killing. How long before their cunning renders body scanners obsolete?

To my mind, the safest way of checking an airline passenger at security remains an individual full body search (i.e. more than a pat-down if necessary) by a security officer. When I say I think it's the safest way, I mean that it's the safest way for the passenger and also the most likely way in which anomalies can be discovered and acted upon.

Body scanners, if proven to be safe and legal, could be a voluntary option alongside the alternative of personal body searches. Perhaps passengers could be processed through security more rapidly if they voluntarily opt for a body scan rather than a personal body search. But we should always have the option of whether to enter a body scanner: they should never be compulsory. Passengers should be informed of the theoretical small risks associated with body scanning. The government's outrageous no-fly policy for those who refuse a scan should be categorically rejected.

The Conservative Party in recent years has sought to position itself as the party that defends civil liberties. Personally speaking, I hope that if we return to government at the forthcoming election we will manage to retain a sense of proportion about body scanners, and that we can hold up this issue to scrutiny from perspectives other than that adopted by the select committee.

Finally, notwithstanding concerns about civil liberties, we should be prepared to adopt a more realistic and less absolutist approach to the idea of intelligent profiling and full risk assessment of passengers. This rigorous method has been proved to be effective and is employed by El Al, which, despite being a major target for terrorists has managed to avoid an attack for several decades. A Conservative government might wish to reconsider this option.

The plight of Christians in Egypt

Throughout my career as a parliamentarian I have sought to highlight the treatment of Christians and other religious communities in countries around the world where they find themselves in a minority – especially in Arab and Muslim countries, and in the communist world. I hope that the next Conservative government will not shy away from speaking out in favour of religious freedom. We can hardly expect a Conservative government to openly favour Christians – indeed, some would say that even the liberal, politically-correct bishops of the Church of England are reluctant to do that nowadays – but I hope we shall not shrink from promoting religious freedom and denouncing abuses when and where they occur.

One country in which Christians suffer widespread discrimination and persecution is Egypt. Last weekend I had the great pleasure of addressing a gathering of Copts, as Egyptian Christians are known, in my London constituency. The stories they told me about the perilous position of Christians in Egyptian society confirmed to me what I already knew from many briefings, letters and appeals that have been addressed to me by UK-based Copts over the years.

Egyptian Christian emigrés in the United Kingdom are extremely prosperous and well integrated in our society. Their success here reflects their success over two thousand years in Egypt, where between 15 and 20 per cent of the population of 80 million are Christians. According to ancient tradition, Christianity was introduced by St Mark to the city of Alexandria, which makes the Christian community in Alexandria the oldest church in Africa. Copts were fundamental to the development of the monastic, ascetic and eremitic traditions in early Christianity.

After the Arab invasion of Egypt in the seventh century Copts rapidly became a minority, but they exerted influence and enjoyed prosperity out of all proportion to their numbers. It was perhaps because of this situation, which is often a characteristic of religious minority communities around the world, that they became increasingly marginalised, discriminated against and demoted to the status of second-class citizens. Under Gamal Abdel Nasser's socialist and pan-Arab regime they were targeted ruthlessly because of their control of around half the national wealth, giving rise to a continuous wave of emigration that continues to this day.

Despite constitutional guarantees regarding religious freedom, Copts habitually face discrimination and persecution, not least from the state bureaucracy. Christians who want to convert to Islam have no problems doing so but there are many bureaucratic obstacles put in the way of Muslims seeking to convert to Christianity, such as the refusal by the authorities to allow converts to change their ID cards. Furthermore, it is in practice virtually impossible for Copts to build new churches and even to repair or extend their existing churches, whereas no such difficulties exist for the building of new mosques. To digress somewhat briefly, I was told by my Coptic hosts that they had wanted to buy a disused Anglican church in the Home Counties, which according to CoE rules should first be offered for sale to a 'faith community', but that it had been snapped up almost immediately by Saudi money and will be turned into a mosque. Apparently Saudi charities will outbid any attempts to compete in the bidding for a building which they believe should become a mosque.

The crackdown that Copts faced under Nasser has been compounded by the regime of Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power now for almost thirty years. Having been squeezed economically in the 1950s and 1960s, Copts are now increasingly facing violence fomented by Islamist jihadi radicals, whose influence in Egypt (led by the Muslim Brotherhood) is growing all the time. Mubarak is publicly committed to stamping out this extremism, which has caused huge damage to Egypt's tourism industry, but he knows that he has to accommodate the radicals to a degree, and therefore allegedly turns a blind eye to their systematic persecution of Copts.

Over the years I have raised the plight of Copts many times within the European Parliament – usually in the form of urgency debates and resolutions – and with the other EU institutions through letters and parliamentary questions. I believe firmly that the European Commission should insist that Egypt respects its own constitutional obligations on religious freedom before any further deepening of the EU-Egypt trade/aid relationship takes place. Last month the European Parliament passed a resolution on the Nag Hammadi massacre of Christians, when seven Copts were murdered while celebrating the Orthodox Christmas Eve.

I've also lobbied the Commission on particular cases, one of which in particular has left a lasting impression on me. Andrew and Mario are teenage twin brothers who grew up as Christians. Their father converted to Islam and demanded that his sons be classified as Muslims too, even going so far as to request new birth certificates to this effect. The boys' mother supported their right to remain Christians and had to make do without alimony because she refused to be classed as a second wife according to sharia law. When these brave boys were made to sit exams to test their knowledge of Islam they simply wrote 'I am a Christian' on their exam papers. Their case rightly became a cause célèbre and I was pleased to have played a very small part in helping to publicise this distressing situation.

Of course, the persecution of Copts cannot be seen in isolation. It is part of a disturbing trend of persecution of religious minorities throughout Arab and Muslim countries. Among the many such cases I have raised within the European Parliament and with the other EU institutions are: Assyrians in Iraq, Baha’is in Iran, Maronites in Lebanon and Syria, Christians and animists in South Sudan, and Christians in many other countries including Pakistan, Eritrea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. I hope that the sterling work of the Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission, led by Tony Baldry MP, will continue its work to raise awareness within the party of these and other human rights abuses. I shall be meeting Tony soon to discuss how best to put the work of Conservative MEPs in this regard at the disposal of the CPHRC.

Reflections from Auschwitz-Birkenau

I'm just back from my first trip to the concentration/extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which I visited to commemorate the 65th anniversary of its liberation by the Allies.

It was a grim and solemn occasion in the bitter cold of -18°C of the Polish winter which made me wonder how people so famished and underclothed could ever have survived this horrific place. But I met two survivors, who accompanied our visit, and I was moved by their sheer moral courage and determination to make something of their lives even after such a terrible experience. This restored some of my faith in humanity, having earlier seen at first hand the horrors of what humans can do to each other in certain conditions.

 

But what really upset me was seeing a photo of a family "resting" before being sent en masse to the gas chambers shortly after it was taken. The little girl in the photo was the same age as my two precious daughters and reminded me strongly of them. I cannot begin to conceive how anyone could carry out such a chilling crime on an innocent child.

The oft-repeated phrase "whoever forgets the past is condemned to repeat it" sprang to mind as I walked around the camps. But of course the world has not necessarily learned the lessons of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It's extraordinary that in our current timeframe enormous barbarities – albeit not on the scale of the Holocaust – still occur from the genocide of Darfur, Cambodia and Bosnia to the insanity of Rwanda.

Yet impunity still prevails for those criminals behind these atrocities and in the same way that in the past the vast bulk of those Nazis and collaborators who executed the Holocaust got away unpunished. Most of these war criminals are now dead although some may still be alive but very old. That does not justify allowing them to live out their days in freedom. There are many people in this world even today who go unpunished for what they have done – both in the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity since – and this is something the world must address for the future.

Why London should not say a farewell to arms

The governing authority of a great city like London should have its own coat of arms – not only to celebrate its centuries of history as our capital city but to project London 's corporate image in the future, not least with the 2012 Olympics fast approaching. I’m campaigning for the Greater London Authority to resume the long-established convention that London as a whole has a coat of arms. I’m glad to have the support of assembly members Brian Coleman and Roger Evans in this endeavour.

Even under Ken Livingstone in the 1980s the then GLC possessed a coat of arms, as did its predecessor London County Council. Therefore, it’s hard to think of a reason why the GLA should now not have a coat of arms. Since the creation of the GLA in 1999, London has been a combined capital city and administrative region with an incorporated authority but no coat of arms. This is unusual among great European cities and probably unique among European capitals (not to mention the fact that many city and town councils across the UK have their own arms).

The creation of the GLA should have been accompanied by the transfer of the old GLC arms, or the creation and grant of a new design. The College of Arms told me that it had written to the Mayor’s office to raise the matter in May 2008 following the election of Boris Johnson but after a couple of months heard back from a City Hall official that there were no plans to seek a coat of arms for London.

Reflections on the appointments of the EU's two top jobs

When I first heard the news that EU leaders had appointed Herman van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton to the two top jobs (semi-permanent EU President and High Representative) created by the Lisbon treaty, I was both astonished and angry. The EU has been pressing for the creation of these posts for the best part of a decade. They were the centrepiece of the Lisbon treaty and its predecessor, the European constitution. We have been browbeaten into accepting the Lisbon treaty and denied the referendum we were promised. And what do EU leaders do? They choose what might be described, to borrow Trotsky’s description of Stalin, two ‘outstanding mediocrities’.

But after some more consideration, I reflected that this may be quite good for the kind of EU we want to help create. For a start, these appointments do nothing to convince me that the EU is serious about enhancing its role on the world stage, which is of course perhaps the key raison d’être of the Lisbon treaty. If there really was a collective will to give the EU serious political clout in foreign affairs and global geo-politics then surely we would have ended up with a heavyweight candidate like Tony Blair, or someone of similar profile and experience, as President of the European Council.

Similarly, there were many vastly more experienced and charismatic candidates than Baroness Ashton but she was considered someone who would not develop an independent power base. Javier Solana, her predecessor who on paper had a much weaker role, had a PhD in physics from a US university i.e. he had studied abroad, was a long-serving Spanish MP and Foreign Minister and finally NATO Secretary-General before he was deemed ready to become High Representative. Baroness Ashton has nothing remotely comparable in terms of her CV!

Westminster's responsibilities under the Lisbon treaty

The Lisbon treaty will become a reality whether we like or not in just a couple of weeks. I have written before about the need for a future Conservative government to engage pragmatically and constructively with the EU under the new architecture presented by Lisbon, particularly with regard to foreign policy. But if and when we return to government we must also understand and exploit the various new enhanced scrutiny provisions in the treaty regarding the role of our Westminster parliament and other member states’ national parliaments within the EU's institutional framework.

It is estimated that something like two thirds of UK legislation originates in Brussels. The logic of such a situation is that the European Parliament would be considered an equally desirable place to seek a political career as the Westminster parliament (were it not for the fact that in Westminster there is a potential career ladder to ministerial rank, so most politically ambitious people overwhelmingly gravitate towards Westminster rather than Brussels). Three Conservative MEPs stepped down at the last European election after successful ten-year stints in Brussels to seek election to the green benches.

Perhaps another of the reasons that Westminster still dominates the UK political scene despite the legislative realities of our EU membership is ultimately that Westminster remains a sovereign parliament, unlike the European Parliament. The decision to withdraw Britain from the EU could only ever be taken by the Westminster parliament (although in reality there would undoubtedly be the need for confirmation by a national referendum). Only the British Parliament has the absolute right to amend or repeal UK legislation related to our membership of the EU. MEPs have no legal say whatsoever on the fundamental issue of whether Britain is or is not a member of the EU, a somewhat ironic situation for UKIP given that the party's only parliamentarians sit in a parliament whose raison d'être they reject. Long may UKIP’s electoral success be confined to the European Parliament!

Engaging constructively with the EU’s new foreign policy role under Lisbon

Whether we like it or not, the Lisbon treaty will soon become law. David Cameron, having opposed the treaty vigorously, has rightly said that as Prime Minister he will not be able to unpick a treaty that has already been adopted by all the member states of the European Union and is the established legal order of the EU institutions.

What follows from that logically is that Britain now – and under a future Conservative government committed to EU membership – should seek to use the new post-Lisbon architecture of the EU to shape the Union’s policy in our national interest as much as possible. The challenges facing the EU are too important for the Conservative Party’s own internal debates over Europe to allow us to be sidetracked. If we fail to come to terms now with the cold reality of the treaty’s adoption, we will simply see Britain’s influence diminish within the EU.

One of the Lisbon treaty’s main aims is to boost the EU’s standing as a diplomatic heavyweight on the world stage. To do this the treaty strengthens the existing role of the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and creates a novel and well-resourced European External Action Service to help coordinate and project the EU’s common foreign policy objectives abroad.

Hardline eurosceptics dislike the idea of the EU having its own foreign policy apparatus at all. But the reality is that the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has existed for the best part of two decades since it was inaugurated by EU leaders including John Major as part of the Maastricht treaty in 1993. Furthermore, it’s important to emphasise that even under the Lisbon treaty the CFSP will remain subject to unanimity in the Council of Ministers. In other words, Britain (or any of its EU partners) can still apply a veto and pursue a separate line if we so wish, though this is increasingly a rarity in practice. When we did so the last time over Iraq it turned out with the benefit of hindsight not to have been such a clear-cut decision as those of us who supported the war thought at the time.

So in reality, foreign policy under Lisbon will ultimately always remain the preserve of EU member states’ governments, though mainly they will be acting collectively in the Council and delivering their common position through the High Representative.

Taiwan, China and Conservative foreign policy

To my mind, anyone who is a friend of democracy, human rights and the rule of law is a friend of Taiwan. I am well aware of the ever increasing economic, political and diplomatic influence of the People’s Republic of China – a reminder of which we received last week as the PRC celebrated its sixtieth birthday. William Hague, in looking ahead to the foreign policy of a future Conservative government, has also spoken about the vital importance of a broad strategic relationship with the PRC. However, I believe – and here I'm speaking in a personal capacity rather than as a spokesman – that there’s also scope within our foreign policy for a strong and supportive relationship with Taiwan.

I am delighted that this year for the very first time, delegates from our sister party in Taiwan, the Kuomintang or KMT, will be attending our conference as official observers. As chairman of the European Parliament-Taiwan Friendship Group, I have long taken an interest in Taiwan and its uncertain place on the world stage. I am particularly pleased that the KMT delegation will be coming to Manchester at a time when relations across the Taiwan Straits have improved to such a degree that confidence-building measures previously unthinkable are now being instituted with rapid ease.

The KMT is part of the International Democratic Union, the global alliance of centre-right parties to which the Conservative Party belongs. Many other IDU partners are also sending delegates to conference. Taiwan remains largely isolated internationally but the vigour of its democracy and the strength of its highly sophisticated free-market economy are perhaps its greatest strengths. The IDU therefore offers Taiwan a chance to interact internationally with like-minded partners on an informal and mutually beneficial basis. It’s precisely this kind of opportunity that offers Taiwan a really effective way to make its voice heard on the international stage.

Debating the EU in the Tory party

I don't believe that there's a lack of debate in the Conservative Party about the European Union in general, and in particular about whether or not Britain should be in the EU. I therefore couldn't resist responding to a letter last week in the Daily Telegraph that called for the party to engage in a more vigorous discussion about our place in the EU. My response was printed last Friday.

Regrettably the Telegraph published my letter under the sub-headline 'Conservatives in favour of withdrawal from the EU have lost the debate'. If you read my letter, you'll see I never made such an accusation. True, I said that the debate was not going the way the withdrawalists want it to. But I would never pull down the curtain on any debate about any subject in our party. I am also fully respectful of the rule that ultimately the party leader in consultation with the shadow cabinet has the final say on key policy issues. In fact, too often I think we're afraid of debating the EU internally because we're worried about being portrayed in the media as obsessives of various colours.

However, I also made the point in my letter that on ConHome, the EU as a subject for discussion and blogging is perhaps the most popular of all. Certainly if you look at the 'category cloud' on the Tory Diary page, 'Europe' comes a close second to 'MPs' duties and remuneration'. Whenever I post on ConHome the discussion usually veers off into a battle between proponents and opponents of Britain's EU membership (BOOs and BINs), even if I am writing about something that has only a peripheral relevance to the subject.

It's clear to me, therefore, that debate about this seminal issue is thriving at grass-roots level. I am sure that at the forthcoming Conservative conference in Manchester there will be many fringe events either pushing for greater engagement with the EU or calling for withdrawal - and perhaps even a few events endorsing a position somewhere in between.

Back to work in Brussels

The European Parliament begins work this week after the summer break. It’s perhaps worth pointing out that MEPs have a much shorter holiday than MPs at Westminster. If I was seeking to provoke I would say, tongue-in-cheek, that this is because MEPs have more of a legislative and constituency burden than MPs as there is one MP for every 700,000 people. But I don’t want to divert this piece away from its primary purpose – to look ahead to the new legislature now that Conservative MEPs are part of the new European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

Of course, the ECR very nearly died a death before its creation. After so much hard work by Mark Francois and Geoffrey Van Orden to get the project off the ground, it was immediately put into jeopardy by the unfortunate antics of Edward McMillan-Scott. I don’t intend to rake over too much old ground here, because it has been covered extensively by Tim and others on this site. I would simply say, however, that this episode caused a great deal of anger in the Tory delegation and a great deal of incomprehension among the new batch of MEPs. Like those of us who served in the last legislature, they had expected the post-election period to be a time of unity and purpose because we had finally settled the EPP question and had all pledged to make this new group work whatever our individual opinions about leaving the EPP-ED.

I believe the friction caused by this regrettable business has now dissipated and that our allies in the ECR can see it for what it was. In any case, it is absolutely essential not to dwell on the past because the forthcoming legislature will be crucial in terms of enabling Conservative MEPs to articulate their message of reform and restructuring of the European Union. The ECR is the only mainstream parliamentary vehicle through which to seek to achieve that wholesale change. Now that the group is a reality there is a definite sense of excitement among Tory MEPs about the future. We may not be leading the group, which had been anticipated in the carefully negotiated package between national party leaders, but we are the largest delegation by some way and therefore the most influential. Significant numbers of Tory MEPs also hold key committee positions, allowing them to shape the development of EU legislation in their particular areas of expertise.

Russia's gas diplomacy underlines the need for a common EU external energy security policy

Russia's use of gas as a diplomatic weapon by totally and unilaterally interrupting its gas flow to Ukraine has once again proved why we need a common EU external energy security policy. Also why we need to diversify our own energy sources both geographically and the mix, as we currently only import less than 5% of our gas currently from Russia compared to the EU average of 25%, but this is predicted to grow. Whenever the words 'common' and 'EU' are mentioned in the same sentence they tend to provoke apoplexy among many Eurosceptics. However, David Cameron is in favour of such an EU policy, not only for its obvious benefits of minimising our exposure to Russian strong-arm tactics but for the impetus that it will provide to the green agenda - and, dare I say it, to a potential renaissance of nuclear energy in the UK which has the added advantage of meeting our Kyoto targets.

I had the privilege of a ringside seat during the heady days of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, when people power thwarted efforts by the pro-Russian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich to steal the election. It was clear to me then, as it is now, that Ukraine is determined to emerge from Russia's shadow to force its own future as part of the Euroatlantic structures. Shortly after my most recent visit to Ukraine in October last year I posted an article that provoked some interesting debate and prompted a few contributors to dismiss Ukraine as entirely irrelevant. The events of the past two weeks are proof alone of how misguided and myopic that view is. Ukraine is a large and strategic European country which Russia would be delighted to get back under its sphere of influence.

There is no doubt in my mind that Russia although also motivated by getting a better financial deal for its gas to Ukraine is bullying Ukraine and trying to destabilise the government ahead of the presidential election next year. President Yushchenko in turn has not been keen for Prime Minister Tymoshenko to close a deal with the Russians and take credit for it as she is running against him for the Presidency. The difference this time from the previous occasion on which Russia partly turned off the taps for a few days is that much of southern and eastern Europe has also been cut off as the flow has been reduced to nil creating a national crisis in countries like Bulgaria and Slovakia totally dependent on Gazprom supplies and unlike Ukraine itself with only limited reserve storage capacities to tide them over. Matters are exacerbated by both Russia and Ukraine feeling the credit crunch and in the case of Russia because of the unexpected collapse in oil prices it is desperate with its dwindling foreign exchange reserves to get the best long term deal. The EU has therefore reluctanctly been dragged into this row not as an external observer, although initially it had foolishly said it was a bilateral Russia-Ukraine spat, but as a collateral victim of the Kremlin's gas diplomacy. The Czech Prime Minister has had to fly to Moscow to knock heads together as the EU is Russia´s biggest commercial customer and finalise a deal to turn supplies of gas back on again.

Conservative MEPs - what are the options for alliances?

My recent article outlining my concerns about Conservative MEPs sitting as unattached members in the European Parliament sparked off a furious debate, much of which was distinctly off-thread. This article is intended as a follow-up, but first I need to address some of the comments and set a few things straight.

I have no inside knowledge about this issue at all - MEPs are kept very much in the dark about David Cameron's plans, apart from the leader Timothy Kirkhope and the MEP tasked with making contacts with potential partners, Geoffrey Van Orden. I am a loyal supporter of our party leader and a loyal Conservative - I have no intention of defecting to any other party, as per a ludicrous accusation from a nameless contributor. I have signed the pledge to do what Cameron tells us to do and I will respect that pledge. I was not intending to say that Tory MEPs should, out of principle, remain part of the EPP-ED - I have never said that. And I have certainly not been put up by anyone, least of all the new Tory MEPs' delegation leader Timothy Kirkhope, to float views or options on behalf of anyone. I enjoy free and frank debate on party policy but without invective or gratuitous insults.

Why unattached status for Conservative MEPs means no status

If we as a party aspire to government, and if David Cameron aspires to lead Britain as an active member of the European Union, it is not a good idea for Conservative MEPs to sit as unattached members in the European Parliament. This outcome has been mooted many times, and is still under consideration by  senior people in the party as a worst-case scenario in the event that plans to form a new group come to nothing. However, I fear that such a move would be damaging and counter-productive.

All MEPs standing for re-election and all new candidates have signed a pledge to adhere to David Cameron's direction with regard to the formation of a new group. I am not familiar with the latest developments on the creation of a new group involving Conservatives and our Czech partners, ODS. However, conversations at party conference in Birmingham six weeks ago have confirmed in my mind that sitting as unattached members (known in Brussels as 'non-inscrit') remains one of the options on the table.

Personally, I have never been opposed in principle to leaving the EPP-ED, provided we can develop a group that reflects our party's political interests and that enables Conservative MEPs to retain influence in the parliament. However, I have trouble understanding how sitting as unattached members would enhance our party's standing - and such a move would reduce our influence to zero. Conservatives would be barred from serving as chairmen or vice-chairmen of committeees, tabling or negotiating resolutions of the parliament, submitting amendments to legislation without collecting 40 signatures or authoring any significant reports.

Ukraine's steady progress towards EU membership despite a little local difficulty

I've recently returned from Ukraine, a country I've visited many times in the past. The occasion this time was the eleventh EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, of which I am vice-chairman. The meeting came at what is a critical juncture in Ukraine's nascent democracy which has been marked in recent years by a political reorientation away from Russia and towards the West.

It has always surprised me that until now Ukraine has not figured more prominently in mainstream foreign policy thinking, both within our party and within the government. When I first visited the country after my election in 1999 I quickly realised that my then colleague Robert Goodwill and I were almost alone among elected Conservatives in taking an interest in Ukraine and its future.

It is true that the Conservative Party was the first major centre-right party in the 'old' member states of the EU to champion Ukraine's membership of the Union, and the Labour government has also recently supported Ukraine's aspirations. But this has been from a geopolitical rather than a geostrategic point of view – a belief that Ukraine qualified for EU membership on the basis of geography and history rather than a realisation of the crucial importance of anchoring Ukraine to the West in the long term.

The brutal application of the death penalty in Iran

Yesterday in the European Parliament I spoke in the monthly debates on human rights that take place at the end of each plenary session (which would have taken place in Strasbourg had the building's roof not caved in). These debates, known as 'urgencies', highlight issues of major concern around the world and cover a wide spectrum: recent topics have included Japanese comfort women, the recent coup in Mauritania and the bizarre murders of albino people in Tanzania for their body parts to be used to make potions.

One country, however, features disproportionately in these monthly debates. I have lost count of the number of times we have denounced Iran's brutal theocratic regime and its appalling human rights record. And of the many issues that MEPs have sought to highlight, the abritrary and disproportionate application of judicial execution under sharia law is the one that concerns us the most in these human rights debates.

I should say at this stage that I do not support the general thrust of the EU's approach to the death penalty, which is universal abolition. Execution should be a matter of sovereign governments to decide and I can accept that there are times when it may be an appropriate way to do justice for the most heinous crimes. However, in democratic countries that still execute criminals (the main ones being the US, India and Japan) there are generally accepted civilised and humane standards for the administration of capital punishment. Moreover, the death penalty is generally only carried out on adults proven guilty beyond all doubt of aggravated murder and following lengthy due process and appeals.

Iran, on the other hand, takes a very liberal approach to what constitutes a capital crime. The execution of juveniles is commonplace, and indeed formed the basis of yesterday's debate and resolution. It's also common for juveniles to be convicted of crimes and sent to prison in the sure knowledge that they will be executed on their eighteenth birthday. The method of execution most frequently employed - slow hanging, often from a crane - is especially barbaric. Among sovereign states only the People's Reublic of China, which has a population seventeen times that of Iran, executes more people every year. Iran blatantly disregards the fact that it is a signatory to UN conventions on the rights of the child prohibiting executions of juveniles.

People are put to death in Iran for what countries like Britain would consider to be trivial offences, or not even offences at all, such as consensual homosexual sex and adultery. Such cases are known in Iran as 'crimes of sexual chastity'. I remember vividly a similar debate a few years ago that highlighted the case of a mentally ill teenage girl, Ateqeh Rajabi, executed for having sex outside marriage. Apostasy also carries a mandatory death sentence.

The regime in Tehran seems to gain a perverse pleasure in shocking the outside world and inviting its opprobrium. Sadly the barbarity of Iran's application of the death penalty no longer shocks me but still disgusts me, and despite the fact that our resolution will be forwarded to President Ahmedinejad, I doubt that he will lose any sleep over the matter.

Rethinking our party's official position on the International Criminal Court

The Conservative Party is officially opposed to the International Criminal Court. Britain is a member of the court, but we as a party have based our opposition to the court on the suspicion that it would be susceptible to malicious prosecutions and political manipulation. The governments of the United States, India, Russia and China have not signed the Rome statute establishing the ICC. The Conservatives are one of only two centre-right parties in the EU not to support the ICC, the other being the ODS, our sister party in the Czech Republic and future partner in a new European Parliament group.

I wrote for the Wall Street Journal on this subject six years ago to outline my concerns about the court. I can't say I've experienced a Damascene conversion in the meantime because international criminal jurisprudence is largely untried and untested, and many questions are still left to be answered. But in the past few years the court has begun its work and the politically motivated prosecutions that I and others feared have not come to pass. I don't agree with my colleague Dan Hannan, who thinks that the ICC is a threat to democracy, although I can see where he, as a sovereignist, is coming from.

What has really caused me to think about our party's opposition to the ICC is the court's recent indictment of President al-Bashir of Sudan for the alleged genocide in Darfur. Our party surely welcomes moves to bring this brutal dictator to justice, but such a position sits somewhat uneasily with out principled objection to the ICC. What was especially interesting to me was the way in which the United States - still resolutely opposed to the ICC - has effectively validated the court's mission by guiding this whole issue through the UN Security Council, even though Sudan is not a member of the ICC either.

I have already set out some of my ideas about the limitations of an ethical foreign policy on this site. Indeed, the ethics of the ICC's decision have been called into question by some, even within the UN, for risking the wrath of President Bashir and the subsequent further weakening of the UNAMID peacekeeping force, thereby exposing vulnerable civilians to further atrocities. We cannot allow our vital national interests to be compromised by the ICC or any other international body for that matter. But we should also recognise that perhaps the ICC has a role in supporting and furthering our national interests.

There is no doubt in my mind that international criminal justice is viable and appropriate for the most egregious crimes against humanity, for which impunity should never apply (although justice can also happen through the 'truth and reconciliation' model of disclosure and amnesty). Whether the ICC as currently constituted is the right forum to develop this field of jurisprudence remains to be seen. But I think we should take heart from the ICC's history so far and be prepared to change our party's position, subject of course to a tightening of the statutes relating to command responsibility and other areas of genuine concern. An international conference to review the Rome statute is scheduled to take place at some point after July 2009, when we may be in government, so it's time the party did some serious thinking on this issue. Are we saying unequivocally that Britain under a Conservative government will withdraw from the ICC?

The dilemmas of an ethical Tory foreign policy

Foreign policy is an ethical minefield - or at least it should be. The crusading left-wing journalist John Pilger once wrote about an interview he conducted with the late Alan Clark MP, who was then defence minister. Pilger repeatedly asked Clark why he wasn't bothered that Britain was supplying arms to the Indonesian regime occupying and suppressing East Timor. Pilger told Clark that he found this strange in a man who practiced vegetarianism and defended the rights of animals. Clark failed to see any contradiction. But in his parliamentary renaissance in the late 1990s, Clark was outspoken and almost alone on the Tory benches in his condemnation of NATO's bombing of Serbia.

I quote this episode not only to highlight the refreshing bluntness and free thinking of my former MP, but to support my view that in ethical foreign policy - which was supposedly Labour's policy at the time of the NATO attacks on Serbia - there is rarely agreement as to how ethical concerns should be applied in practice.

Of course, there are always going to be times when 'national interest' or 'realpolitik', nebulous though that term often is, will trump concerns about ethics. One such occasion was the visit in October 2007 of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the UK. The visit was not long after Tony Blair personally scrapped a Serious Fraud Office inquiry into alleged corruption over Saudi arms deals. Foreign Office minister Kim Howells rather absurdly lauded Saudi Arabia and Britain's 'shared values'.

Biodiesel is an important part of foreign policy

As a political issue, biodiesel has oscillated sharply on the agenda between preference and pariah in the past few years. This fluctuation is interesting, not least in the context of David Cameron's emphasis on environmental protection. Whereas biofuels were once seen as a panacea for the world's unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels, they are now seen as a potential agent of expensive food at best and mass starvation at worst. Also, some experts have put forward claims that the cycle of biofuel production actually produces more carbon dioxide that it would save. Nothing could illustrate this to me more clearly than the deluge of emails I have received from environmental activists demanding that I do not vote to increase the EU's target for biodiesel as a proportion of road transport fuel, which is currently ten per cent by 2020. Interestingly the environment committee of the European Parliament has just passed an amendment reducing the target to four per cent.

The comments of my former MEP colleague and shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers were spot on in this respect. Clearly the government has been very slow to react to changing circumstances, and not for the first time. Undoubtedly the zealous pursuit of ambitious biodiesel targets has led to deforestation in sensitive ecological zones and may have caused a spike in food prices for consumers around the world, but most seriously in developing countries (however, in my personal view, increased consumption in the growing economies of China and India accounts for the bulk of the rise). It is for that reason that Conservative MEPs, led by our environment spokesman John Bowis, will be voting against the Commission package.

When free trade becomes a free-for-all

An embracing enthusiasm for free trade is one of the defining characteristics of the modern Tory party but it was not always thus. Traditionally Liberals adopted a more laissez-faire approach to external commerce and Tories tended towards protectionism, at least until the landmark Corn Law repeal of the 1840s.

In recent years particularly after the phenomenal success of the Thatcherite reforms some in the party, and in the conservative movement in general, have swung radically the other way towards unfettered and unregulated - some would call it pure unrestricted free trade. This purism has become an ideological and zealous badge of honour in some quarters.

I am in favour of organised and well controlled free trade. It has made our country one of the most sophisticated, resilient and diverse market economies in the world. There is also a strong moral case to be made for free trade and its capacity to make poor countries wealthier by incentivating local competition and change. But equally there are moral pitfalls when free trade is allowed to run riot.