Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) on securing the debate. I note the contributions of Members on both sides of the House and thank them for taking part.
The debate is timely, coinciding as it does with the visit to Sri Lanka by the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), although that timeliness inevitably means that there are limits to what I am able to say. We will know a lot more and be able to make a clearer assessment of the new Sri Lankan Government after his meetings today and tomorrow. He hopes to see the President, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the new governor of the northern province, and he intends to travel to the north to meet the Chief Minister and representatives of Tamil political parties, engage with internally displaced persons and talk to journalists. He is making a point not only of talking to the Government, but of trying to see for himself the situation on the ground in the north and talking to people there from the Tamil minority, who will be able to give him a first-hand view of the current situation and their hopes and expectations for the future.
Of course, we await the publication of the report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is due to be presented to the Human Rights Council in March. The Government do not know what that report will say or what its recommendations will be. We await the report’s conclusions and recommendations on some of the issues raised in the debate, such as whether what happened in Sri Lanka should be classed as genocide, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) knows, carries legal, not just political, implications.
The new Government’s commitments are promising. They have said that they will end the executive presidency within 100 days; restore the independence of key institutions, including the judiciary and the police; reinstate media freedoms; end Sri Lanka’s international isolation; and return powers to the provincial councils. We have seen some early positive signs of progress, such as replacing the military governor of the northern province with a civilian, but I stress that these are early days, which is precisely why my right hon. Friend the Minister of State wanted to go to Colombo and the north of the island as soon as possible to meet the new Government and urge them to continue living up to the high expectations of the people of Sri Lanka and the international community and to make his own judgment on what the Government intend to do. We will not ignore the challenges that Sri Lanka faces, including the challenges faced by Tamil communities in the north and east of the island. There are many challenges, including the settlement of internally displaced people.
Kerry McCarthy
I am pleased with what the Minister has to say about the visit to Sri Lanka by the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), particularly that he is going to the north. The Minister may be coming on to this, but when will we hear about the right hon. Gentleman’s visit? Will he be able to write to MPs or give a written ministerial statement?
Mr Lidington
I will ensure that my right hon. Friend is aware that Members on both sides of the House have expressed great interest in his visit and hope that there will be full communication when he gets back. I will leave it to him to decide whether he wants to meet Members who are particularly concerned or to offer either a written statement or letters to Members who have taken part in the debate. I undertake that there will be transparency, and I am sure that he will want to ensure that Members who have maintained a long interest in Sri Lanka are fully briefed on his conclusions after his visit.
The challenges faced by the Tamil community include the settlement of internally displaced people, land issues, militarisation and the need for an overall and enduring political settlement. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister saw those issues for himself during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in November 2013. He was the first foreign leader to visit the north of Sri Lanka since as far back as 1948. The Government continually raised those issues, including, most obviously, human rights abuses, with the former Sri Lankan Government, and we will continue to raise them in all our dealings with the new Sri Lankan Government.
The recent vote was clearly a vote for change; I say that in answer to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy). Our judgment is that the result on the day reflected the will of the Sri Lankan people, but we note the view of Commonwealth observers that there was an inadequate electoral and legal framework and an unequal pre-election environment, which meant that the nature of the election contest fell short of key international benchmarks for democratic elections. We hope that Sri Lanka and its new Government, with the support of the international community, will address those shortcomings ahead of future elections.
The new Prime Minister has committed himself in Parliament to implement the 13th amendment to devolve more powers to provinces, including policing powers, and we welcome the new Government’s moves to reach out to the Tamil National Alliance to discuss Tamil issues. We encourage both sides to work together to reach a political settlement.
President Sirisena’s manifesto committed him to a number of actions that would benefit the Tamil people economically through education and better governance. For example, he made commitments to provide better access for Tamil students to science education, improve relief to displaced people, put in place a democratic civil administration in the north and south of the island, put a stop to racial and religious hatred, and take steps to promote reconciliation between communities. I acknowledge that it is still early days. The important thing is that those public commitments have been given, and we are keen to talk to the Sri Lankan Government about how they propose to translate those manifesto commitments into practice.
We want to strengthen ties between the UK and Sri Lanka. We have a strong shared history through our people, education and trade, and we stand ready to support the new Government as they implement ambitious reforms. We will encourage them to make progress on human rights, and we welcome their early commitments on media freedoms, the protection of religious minorities and the restoration of judicial independence. We also have very high on our list of priorities for our conversations with the new Sri Lankan Government the need for a lasting political settlement for the north, and a credible domestic reconciliation process, along with accountability for alleged violations and abuses of human rights during what was, as has been said in the debate, a long and bloody 30-year conflict.
I think the UK’s position is well understood, and unless we see progress in those areas of policy the reality is that Sri Lanka will not be able to thrive as the strong, peaceful and inclusive nation that everybody in the House would wish it to be.
The UK joined an EU heads of mission statement on 2 January calling for the elections to be peaceful, credible and transparent, and we encouraged the previous Government of Sri Lanka to ensure that international observers were invited. During the election campaign, officials from our high commission in Colombo travelled around the country, co-ordinating closely with counterparts from other foreign embassies and with local election monitoring groups. We also provided a grant of £128,000 to a range of independent election observation groups to ensure that the elections could be monitored as thoroughly as possible.
On the question of the UN Human Rights Council, we remain firmly committed to making progress on Sri Lanka through the UNHRC. We strongly supported the March 2014 UNHRC resolution that called for Sri Lanka to make domestic progress on human rights and reconciliation, as well as establishing an international investigation of alleged violations and abuses of international law by both sides during Sri Lanka’s conflict. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) pointed out that the most serious allegations have been made about the approach taken by the Government of the former President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, but we must not blind ourselves to the fact that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam remains a proscribed terrorist organisation in this country, and for good reason, given its history.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in his statement of congratulations to President Sirisena, encouraged Sri Lanka to co-operate with the UN investigation, and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will repeat that message this week when he meets Sri Lanka’s leaders face to face. He will ask the new Government to engage with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the international investigation, and to take serious steps to establish credible domestic reconciliation and accountability processes. We will wait to see how Sri Lanka moves forward, given that those matters were part of the new Sri Lankan Government’s early plans.
I do not want to pre-empt the report of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and it would be wrong to make comments that prejudged its recommendations. Once that report is available, we will study it carefully, along with our analysis of whatever steps the Sri Lankan Government take between now and then. The OHCHR report should be, in its own right, an important contribution to reconciliation. It will help to establish the truth for those who seek it—the families of the thousands of missing civilians, especially the missing children. We hope that the report will help to heal the wounds of the conflict, and help people to move on.
In response to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who asked about missing persons, the experience of Northern Ireland will certainly be relevant to the work that needs to be done in Sri Lanka to try to establish what happened to those whose fate is unknown. There is also, tragically, experience elsewhere in Europe—in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in Cyprus, particularly that of the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus—that could be of value to the authorities in Sri Lanka and the international agencies as the work on Sri Lanka’s missing persons progresses.
I agree with what was said about the need to press the Sri Lankan Government to stop the persecution of Christians, Muslims and other religious minorities. It is important that the rights of all minorities in Sri Lanka are fully respected.
In response to the question from the hon. Member for Bristol East on asylum claims, I can tell her that the policy has not changed as a result of the election in Sri Lanka. It remains the case that each asylum claim is assessed on its merits, and in line with the test laid down in the UN convention on refugees and in our domestic law.
Britain is Sri Lanka’s largest export market in the EU; we have an important trading relationship and we are Sri Lanka’s third largest trading partner by value. In 2013, bilateral trade was nearly £1 billion. While that trade weighs heavily in Sri Lanka’s favour, last year Britain saw an increase of 14% in goods and services exported to Sri Lanka, and our relationship continues to rebalance in the UK’s favour. Many British people visit Sri Lanka each year. Between 22,000 and 42,000 British tourists may be in Sri Lanka at any one time, and about 6,000 British people are long-term residents. Also, we are a major education provider in Sri Lanka through the British Council, which has more than 200 staff delivering services across the country, including teaching English to more than 12,000 students each year at British Council teaching centres in Sri Lanka.
We have been pleased to be involved in demining projects in Sri Lanka. Between 2010 and 2015, we provided £5.1 million to support mine clearance, which allows people in the north to return home to their land. I will ensure that my colleagues at the Department for International Development hear what has been said in Westminster Hall this morning about the need for that work to continue. We have also supported community policing projects, women’s refuges, tsunami recovery work and much more. This country is committed to the people of Sri Lanka in helping them on their journey towards a prosperous and inclusive nation.
The new Sri Lankan Government represent a new opportunity for the Sri Lankan people and for UK-Sri Lankan relations, and we must give them a chance to show that they are indeed willing to deliver on their ambitious programmes for change and reconciliation. If we are asked, we will be ready to support them in that work. I hope that the early visit to Sri Lanka by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State sends a strong signal of the UK’s intentions. We want a constructive relationship that benefits both our countries and all our people, but we will not retreat from British values of promoting democracy, good governance and respect for human rights and the rule of law.