Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Goodman]

The purpose of these amendments is to increase the frequency of the periodic review of designations from every three years to every year. I owe this idea to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central, who suggested it on Second Reading. I thought that she might table amendments but that I had better do so in case she did not. It was a very sensible suggestion, and I am sure she wishes to explain why it is a good idea.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland for tabling these amendments—she was just a little swifter getting them in than I was.

I spoke about this issue on Second Reading. First, there is an important point about consistency: the EU has a 12-month review period for its sanctions, and we ought to make the Bill consistent with that. There seems to be no reason why we should want to leave it as long as three years to review sanctions, particularly given that situations can change rapidly and that we should hope that sanctions take effect in a shorter period than three years. We are trying to promote good behaviour and resolution, and we should hope to achieve that within three years, making the three-year period redundant in some cases.

It makes sense to maintain consistency and allow constant review by keeping the review period to 12 months. If things take longer than that, it makes sense to look at them within 12 months to ensure that the Government’s foreign policy objectives are making progress and that things are actually happening. If they are not, perhaps they ought to be reviewed. A 12-month period would give us a good deal more flexibility and accountability. It certainly seems logical to me, and I very much hope the Government accept the amendments.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I rather sense this will forever be known as the bobble hat amendment.

[Alison Thewliss]

The Minister is just jealous.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I certainly am.

Reviews are crucial to maintaining effective sanctions regimes, and sanctions should not remain in place where there is no longer a reason for them to do so. Clause 21 requires the Government to conduct a comprehensive re-examination of each designation decision at least every three years. That is one of a number of safeguards that the Bill provides for designated persons. The amendments would oblige the Government to re-examine each designation annually.

I agree completely that sanctions designations need to be based on solid, legally robust evidence. The UK has pushed hard for that in the EU—that is widely recognised, including, for example, in the House of Lords European Union Committee’s recent report, “The legality of EU sanctions”—and we are committed to maintaining those high standards. I recognise that the EU generally reviews its sanctions regimes annually. However, as noted during the passage of the Bill in the other place, EU reviews are relatively light touch. Designated persons are invited by the Council to present new information, and member states are able to make observations, but they are under no obligation to engage. In contrast, the triennial review envisaged in the Bill would be a comprehensive re-examination of each and every designation.

The Bill as drafted includes a robust package of procedural safeguards, including a number of amendments introduced in the other place. The combined package would provide a higher level of protection for designated persons—at least as strong as current EU standards, if not better. The Government would review all sanctions regulations annually and present the results in a written report to Parliament. If the report concluded that there were no longer good reasons for maintaining a UK sanctions regime, we would lift it. Any changes made to the equivalent sanctions regimes of the EU or other international partners would be examined closely as part of the annual review.

Alongside this annual review of the regulations, the Bill requires the Government to put in place a dynamic process to reassess designations on request. The triennial review is not the only opportunity; a designated person can request a reassessment of their designation at any time, and can request a further reassessment where a significant matter has not previously been considered by the Minister. I take the point that a designated person who has requested a reassessment, challenged it in court and failed to establish any unlawfulness will not have a further review until a significant new matter arises or until the triennial review. However, there will be no need for a further review if the lawfulness of the designation has been established and nothing has changed since. If there are new arguments to be tested or if the passage of time has changed the situation, a further reassessment can be requested. If not, there will be no need for one.

Ministers can instigate a reassessment at any time—for example, if the person concerned has been delisted by the EU. They will have every interest in initiating reassessments proactively, both in the interests of justice and to minimise the risk and cost of legal challenges— a compelling argument in many a ministerial decision. In any case, if the EU decided to revoke the designation of a person also designated in the UK, I would certainly want to reassess the corresponding UK designation.

The provisions will ensure that UK sanctions are under constant scrutiny and that the Government are obliged to respond swiftly to new information and challenges. The triennial review will provide a further backstop to ensure that each and every determination is considered afresh on a regular, predetermined cycle. This aligns with current practice in Australia and will put us ahead of countries such as the US and Canada, which have no such process at all. It will not prevent more frequent reviews; indeed, we have mechanisms in place that oblige us to carry out more frequent reviews where appropriate.

Requiring the Government to conduct such reviews every year would be extremely resource-intensive and—given the finite Government resources dedicated to sanctions—would take resources away from other important areas. It could also make litigation more complex.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I am on my last three words, but yes. The hon. Lady has got in under the wire.

[Alison Thewliss]

I did not realise that the Minister had reached his last three words. He mentions resources and cost implications. Can he give us more specific detail?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

If something has to happen three times as frequently, it will take up a lot more resource.

I hope that the arguments I have put to the Committee have convinced the hon. Lady that the compulsion to have a review every year is superfluous, given all the other layers and safeguards that exist in the Bill.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak in support of the amendments, not least so that I do not freeze to my chair, Mr McCabe.

On Second Reading, the rough theme of the discussion was that we wanted a sanctions regime in this country that punished the individuals for their behaviour but did not as a result punish their countrymen and women or people in their care, and what is proposed would seem to fit perfectly with that. The circumstances that might cause us to use sanctions—persecution, human rights abuses or violent conflict at home—are the very circumstances that cause refugees and people to need to leave their country and seek sanctuary elsewhere. We always have to be mindful of unintended consequences, and the amendment seems to offer one way of avoiding them.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I am happy to rise in support of the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). She makes some good points. We need to be mindful that there are people who are trapped in difficult situations, and if getting on a plane or into a boat is the only way to get out of that situation, and the alternative is almost certain death—particularly for people in Syria and Yemen—they will do that. We need to seek protection for those operating services for such people. I do not know whether Migrant Offshore Aid Station or Médecins Sans Frontières or any of those other people operating boats in the Mediterranean could fall foul of any sanctions regime. It would be good to get reassurance from the Minister on that, because those are important humanitarian services that rescue people and ensure that they are kept safe.

People are taking a huge risk. Recently there was a case of Somali refugees who sought first sanctuary in Yemen and then tried to leave Yemen because it is so dangerous there, and ended up being shot out of the sea by an airstrike. There are huge risks for people in the choices they make when they are trying to flee. We need to do everything we can to protect them in their efforts to get to a position of safety. I support the amendment.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I genuinely thank hon. Members for raising this issue, which we dwelt on at some length on Second Reading. As the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland says, I am a former DFID Minister, so I feel these issues deeply. I am familiar with not only the plight of refugees, but the legal void in which they sometimes have to try to survive. The amendment is a laudable attempt to address that very issue and I make no criticism whatsoever of the intent behind it, because it is one that we all share.

The Government take seriously the impact that sanctions might or can have on a country’s civilian population. We also acknowledge the important work of NGOs and other humanitarian organisations working in difficult and often threatening situations—look at what is happening in Ghouta in Syria at the moment. The amendments are designed to exempt ships or aircraft from sanctions if they are being used to transport refugees. I agree with the principle, but in my opinion this is not the right way to achieve the desired effect.

I hope that hon. Members recognise that refugee status—and hence the ability to deem someone a refugee under the amendment—is usually granted after a person has fled from their country of origin: once they have reached safety, they can apply for asylum and be recognised as refugees. The amendment would not cover persons fleeing from their country of origin in order to claim asylum. I suspect that that does not reflect the good intentions of those who tabled it.

As I said earlier, the UK is very proactive in ensuring that NGOs can operate in countries subject to sanctions by providing licences and exceptions. In fact, the Bill would make it easier by allowing us to draft exceptions and grant general licences specifically aimed at assisting humanitarian activities, which include assisting refugees or displaced persons. There are good reasons why broad prohibitions are applied to a country, and licences are used to provide targeted exceptions. If we were to provide a general exception for ships and aircraft in those circumstances, aside from the practical difficulty with these amendments that I have mentioned, it could be subject to abuse and would be pretty well impossible to enforce.

--- Later in debate ---

New clause 5 is about reviewing the situation at the end of the process. The basic point, made strongly by Rights and Accountability in Development, is that the Bill does not provide sufficient transparency: we do not know why exemptions are granted to sanctioned individuals or how large they are. The new clause covers both the humanitarian exemptions and licences and the ones given to people who are themselves sanctioned. The reason is that we do not know how much money those people are allowed to have and what is considered reasonable for them. They are allowed to keep money unfrozen for their daily living expenses, but also for legal costs, in which we are particularly interested. We all know that there have been massive cuts to legal aid and we want to know whether people who are sanctioned, who often have extremely deep pockets, are being allowed to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on expensive barristers. That is the rationale for our new clause 5.

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree very much with the amendments and support the hon. Lady in what she has said. I share the concerns that she has conveyed from both the NGO sector and the banking sector, where we seem to be caught between admirable public policy objectives—providing humanitarian aid—and the practicalities of sanctions compliance, which seems to be hindering the delivery of that aid in many different ways.

The amendments sensibly seek to expand a particularly narrow EU definition of humanitarian aid. That would give a wee bit more certainty and clarity to agencies working on the ground. It also gives us an opportunity to figure out how we ensure that money reaches those who need it and reaches them quickly. I understand that, at the moment, organisations can often wait up to six to nine months to get licences and agreements in place. Frankly, people on the ground in many of the countries involved do not have six to nine months to wait. They need money and aid almost immediately, so we need to find a way of fast-tracking the money in; we need to figure out what a viable financial route to get money from us here in the UK through to the frontlines in Yemen and Syria to ensure that people can survive looks like.

In Yemen particularly, there is a shortage of physical cash in the country. Hospitals in which people are working are often supported by the likes of Médecins Sans Frontières. MSF is paying those staff, but it needs to get the money into Yemen to pay them, so that they can turn up to work and feed their families, and provide vital assistance to people facing bombardment from the air. We need to find a way of getting the money in and doing that quickly.

There are practicalities involved in asking humanitarian agencies to go and carry out this work. Let us say that people are providing humanitarian aid on the ground; to move things around the country they need fuel. If they are in a country in which they have to choose between buying their fuel from Islamic State fighters or Assad, that is not actually a choice they can make, because both options would place them in breach of sanctions, so there needs to be a way of getting money to people and doing that quickly, so that organisations can do their work. If financial assistance has been granted to humanitarian organisations specifically for the purpose of buying fuel and then they cannot practically do that, that is a real problem and makes the delivery of much-needed aid extremely difficult.

There is an argument for granting up-front licences for infrastructure. If we know what is to be built—put in place—and it is a bridge that will allow people to cross it and move humanitarian aid around the country, or if it is a hospital or other facility that will provide aid, why cannot the licences be granted fast and up front, so that there is no delay in procuring the purchase of things to make that happen?

I agree very much with the points made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland about mutual recognition of licences. If we see fit to issue licences, that should be good enough for other countries as well. If we have gone through a due diligence regime, that should be good enough for other people to accept and would help speed up the process, and would prevent organisations from falling foul of someone else’s regulations. There should be agreement on that, whether in a treaty or some other form. It would be a hugely sensible way of speeding up the process.

I very much agree with the points that have been made on new clause 5. I understand that the United States has a huge amount of transparency around the exemptions and licensing regime. It is possible to see not only what has been licensed and how but the backlog to the licences, which is critically important because we can see delays in the process.

We need to understand why those delays are there and what we can do to overcome them. Frankly, people in different parts of the world cannot wait for us to go through a laborious process to issue licences. We cannot have those organisations spend huge amounts of money on lawyers. We just need to get the aid to where it needs to be with the best practicable due diligence.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I have listened carefully to the respective Front-Bench speakers and studied the three amendments and the new clause: amendment 18 on fast-track exceptions; amendment 19 on consulting on exceptions to disapply; amendment 20 on an exception for humanitarian or peace-building purposes; and new clause 5, which would require the preparation of an annual report on humanitarian and non-humanitarian exemptions.

I will speak to each in turn. Like my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and the Americas, I acknowledge the spirit in which they were tabled, but I will set out the Government’s position on why they are not necessary.

I will address the point about FATF immediately, because I have had some contact with it. FATF was set up by 16 countries after the 1989 G7 summit. It is not an incorporated or treaty body. It does not create binding obligations on the UK. The UK is a founder member and plays a leading role. I would reinforce that with this point. I recently received the Pakistani Home Secretary, who was seeking to persuade the Government to resist the greylisting of Pakistan for not making sufficient progress. That was clearly taken very seriously by the Pakistanis. I also acknowledge the work that is going on across Government in the UK to deal with the considerable challenge of the current evaluation of our own compliance with FATF standards. This is a robust, internationally recognised set of obligations that have real meaning and authority.

Many of the amendments have been debated in the other place and lobbied for by UK Finance and a number of NGOs, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland set out. I can assure the Committee that the Government remain a steadfast supporter of NGOs working in conflict areas. The Government engaged with them while the Bill was in the other place, and we will continue to do so. We recognise that it is important to ensure that this work continues, where possible, in sanctioned countries.

It is equally vital, however, that we have appropriate safeguards in place that preserve our foreign policy priorities, by ensuring compliance with sanctions, but also serve to protect the NGOs and help prevent the sector from becoming attractive to criminals looking to circumvent our laws.

Amendment 18 calls on the Government to establish a fast-track process for dealing with requests for exceptions and licences for humanitarian purposes. I can assure hon. Members that the Government make every effort to prioritise urgent and humanitarian cases, where there is a risk of harm or a threat to life, and will continue to do so. However, we believe that any prioritisation criteria for considering licences and exceptions must remain as flexible as possible, to ensure that the Government can consistently prioritise the most important cases, including humanitarian cases where appropriate.

The process for considering licences is best done administratively and on a case-by-case basis. Government Departments will, of course, continue to reach out to the NGO sector to ensure that NGOs understand how that process works for humanitarian licence applications. Given the number of Departments involved—typically four: the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Department for International Trade and the Department for International Development—and the many rightly differing derogations, exceptions and grounds for licensing that are involved, it would not be straightforward to operate a fast-track process as suggested by the amendment. To get each application right demands a tailored approach, because the facts differ greatly from case to case. Therefore the Government believe that it would not be prudent to establish a single fast-track process, which may impede the Government’s ability to assess cases accurately, and will be unwieldy to operate given the different ways in which the various types of sanctions work.

A fast-track process might also create perverse results—such as where an urgent request for a licence to allow a designated person access to medicine would have to come second to a routine application in respect of humanitarian activity that only involves changing the details of bank accounts. For all these reasons, we do not consider that a new and administratively burdensome requirement ought to be added to sanctions regulations.

Amendment 19 suggests that a consultation be undertaken for an overarching framework for exceptions and licences. The NGOs and UK Finance have called for that, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said.

It must be said that we have carried out a consultation on our White Paper, including roundtables with banks and NGOs. We are still talking to them and have set up a working group with them. We intend to use the opportunity to improve licences—such as general licences for humanitarian activity—and we will issue guidance. We have been clear that we will do that, and because of that consultation we do not feel that the amendment is necessary. We have listened to the comments of all respondents and we intend to design a post-Brexit licensing framework that is fully informed by those comments. That is an ongoing process and one in which we are enthusiastically engaged.

Comprehensive regulations that will be laid before Parliament and debated will include detailed information on the exceptions and licences that are appropriate for each regime. We also intend to continue to consult with industry to ensure that the framework allows us to be flexible and has the minimum possible effect on industry whilst having the maximum effect on the intended targets of the sanctions. An overarching framework for licences will not allow us the flexibility that we need for each regime. For example, the licensing grounds for a proliferation regime should be different from those of a misappropriation or counterterrorism regime. Furthermore, the timetable for conducting such a consultation after the commencement of the Bill makes little sense. By then, we expect that the relevant sanctions regulations—with the appropriate exceptions and licensing arrangements for each regime currently existing in EU law—will already have been made and debated by Parliament. We fear that a further consultation would add confusion at a time when we would be working hard to ensure a smooth transition.

The Government have committed in the Bill—clause 37 —to issuing guidance about sanctions regulations. As the guidance is developed, we will engage with stakeholders, as we already do for guidance that is published on the implementation of sanctions.

[Alison Thewliss]

Could the Economic Secretary give more clarity on the timescale? We have the Bill just now; how soon will the guidance appear? The current guidance is not really useful in terms of how the sanctions landscape works.

[John Glen]

I cannot give a precise timetable. I will consult officials and write to the Committee to give clarification on that as soon as I can.

Amendment 20 would make it plain on the face of the Bill that exceptions to sanctions can be made for humanitarian development, reconstruction and peace-building activities. Broadening such exceptions to cover such a broad group of organisations and activities goes much further than the Government intended and is incompatible with both the policy intent and our obligations under UN and EU regimes. The Government are currently able to issue specific licences on application from humanitarian and other agencies. The licensing provision is read across and extended in clauses 15(2)(b) and 14(3)(a) to allow Ministers to issue both general and specific licences. It is the Government’s intention to use the power to issue general licences where appropriate. One key area in which it is foreseen that general licences could be written is for the purpose of delivering humanitarian aid. We should also be wary of the confusion caused by listing these activities but not others, such as denuclearisation activities. To add one would imply that the other was outside the scope of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

Secondly, this Bill is much worse and more serious than the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, on which Ministers have already made concessions, because that Bill is a temporary Bill. It is designed for making delegated legislation for a two-year period during the transition phase to bring our statute book up to scratch. The powers that Ministers are taking in this Bill are permanent, and there is no sunset clause. I have heard the Minister, but we are thoroughly opposed to Government amendment 4.

[Alison Thewliss]

I echo that. We are also very worried by this amendment, and by the return of something that was clearly and definitively rejected. As far as we are concerned, it is dangerous and an affront to democracy. The Government should accept that they were wrong, and withdraw the amendment. I point out that the Lords Constitution Committee said:

“We consider that such regulation-making powers are constitutionally unacceptable and should not remain part of the Bill.”

The Government should take heed.

[John Glen]

I am grateful for the dialogue with hon. Members on the Front Bench, and I will respond to some of the points that have been made. On the question of whether there is some sort of secret plot to hide any conversations with Lord Judge, Government lawyers have had a number of meetings. No letters have been exchanged, so there is no material to share. The vote was lost by 192 votes to 209; I concede that it was lost, but the thrust of the remarks by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland concerns the notion that behind the measure is some kind of power grab by the Government. I see it as the Government needing to be accountable for how these powers create new offences and how they are used. New clause 3 will require the Government to lay a report before Parliament, setting out what criminal offences are included in any new sanctions regulations.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords]

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

This is another Bill that has been caused by Brexit. EU co-operation has been crucial to sanctions and anti-money laundering, and we have moved quite far along the road together as friends, neighbours and colleagues. A lot of concerns about the Bill have been voiced in relation to the justification of proportionality, and whether it takes us in the right direction to give us the opportunity to correct the flaws in our own systems.

Sanctions, as other hon. Members has said, are effective when we have co-operation, particularly as an EU block. That reflects the limitations of sanctions from the UN Security Council, because there is not always agreement among its permanent members. We need to find our place. Our place is not in the EU, as it was, but it is not entirely as other states are in the world. We need to find out where we are. Tom Keatinge from the Royal United Services Institute has said that we may have greater flexibility, but we will certainly have less influence. Ministers need to be reminded of that. I see that the Foreign Secretary has scuttled off without hearing me, which is kind of him. Without the active co-operation and engagement of Ministers with the EU, we will not be able to be the most effective at imposing sanctions. We should not pour our own collective efforts over the years down the stank just because we are leaving the EU. Unilateral sanctions bring with them a recognised risk that while we might want to do the right thing there may be repercussions. Being a part of EU collective action cushions us to an extent from that risk. We do not want to be marginalised in the world. We must take care to make sure that does not happen.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point, although I have a different opinion on Brexit. Does she not agree that our ability to implement sanctions and address money laundering are essential components of our exit from Europe and that it is vital we have the same protections in place in the international market? We must look at the possibility of even enhancing them and making them even stronger.

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree that we perhaps can and should enhance what we do, but we must take care not to lose what we have so far. We must not lose that co-operation and sense of common purpose against evils in the world, which we have had as a part of the EU.

I support the points on human rights made by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). Ministers did not quite recognise the point that paragraphs (e), (f), (g) and (h) in clause 1(2) are in the Bill because they were put there by a Labour Lord. She may have made that point, but I did not want to let it pass without having recognised it. The Government should not be taking credit for things they did not do and did not put in the Bill. Those paragraphs should be in the Bill. Anything that can enhance the importance of human rights in the Bill should be there.

The NGO sanctions and counter-terrorism working group, chaired by Bond and the Charity Finance Group, has asked for protection in law for humanitarian and peace-building work, as that is, to a degree, currently inhibited by the EU regulatory framework on sanctions. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) set out, aid operations in parts of the world that are extremely dangerous and under sanctions from the UN and the EU still have to have aid workers. They have to build up relationships on the ground. They may not be comfortable with them and they may be difficult, but aid would not happen without them.

Currently, there is not sufficient protection in the Bill. There is reference to general licences with a bit more focus on guidance. Clause 37(1) states that the Minister who makes the regulations must issue guidance, but clause 37(2) states only that guidance “may” include guidance about compliance enforcement and disregards. That is not concrete enough. The guidance should be more certain, so that people know the regime they are working under, know the risks involved in what they are about to do and know if there will be any comeback from the actions they take. I do not think that that is clear enough, and I would like to see improvements in this area of the Bill. More concrete assurances are required.

That concern is shared by the banks. The UK Finance briefing on the Bill says that there is a fear of misuse, but there has to be a way to get around that. It provides the example of banks avoiding any transactions whatever with Iran, due to the risk of being sanctioned by the US—its sanctions regime is far-reaching. That risk alone has a chilling effect on its transactions in that area, regardless of any actual certainty. Sanctions will have an impact on such countries for many years to come, even after sanctions have ended. Banks need to have the confidence that they can deal with a country consistently over a number of years without falling foul of sanctions that suddenly reappear. The people working in such countries need to interact with donors, banks and transport and logistics companies. They need comfort on that. They need to buy fuel. They need to buy mobile phones. They need to make payments to move about the country and to let aid flow. For example, it is not possible to move around Yemen because there are different forces imposing different visa regimes. Moving around the country may involve making payments that fall foul of sanctions.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady in effect agreeing with the Law Society of Scotland’s interpretation of the need in clause 1 for a list of all sanctions, including descriptions of any designated person and types of sanction imposed, and exemptions from such sanctions? Is that the thrust of the point she is making, because I agree with that?

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[Alison Thewliss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for agreeing with me. It is very rare and very nice, and I thank him for it. Yes, there has to be a good deal more clarity. I welcome the Law Society’s view, because that is not clear in the Bill. If people are working in that environment, they need certainty. For aid to flow and for banking transactions to flow, there has to be clarity.

UK Finance seeks further detail in clause 18 on extra-territorial application. It wants to know exactly what a UK element constitutes and what its reporting obligations might be under that regime, because it is not entirely clear.

Scrutiny and transparency are somewhat lacking. There is a lot of scope in the Bill for Ministers to create significant new criminal offences through secondary legislation, some of which would carry a sentence of 10 years in prison under clause 17(6). It is constitutionally unacceptable for that type of thing to be created by Ministers, and it is not just me saying that. The House of Lords Constitution Committee wants beefed-up parliamentary scrutiny, and the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee states that the provisions

“confer exceptionally wide powers which are capable of being applied to a very wide range of persons, with a very wide discretion being given to Ministers to determine the persons against whom sanctions measures may be applied.”

We should be concerned about that and seek corrections later in the process.

The Secretary of State, who has left his place, may not make decisions in haste, but we have to be concerned about the future. This is not a Bill for just now, but for many years to come, so the powers that we put in it are very important. The European Scrutiny Committee currently looks at EU sanctions that go through. We need to know what scrutiny process in this place will replace that, because it is important to ensure that things are being done properly and are above board.

At clause 21(4)(a) and (b) and clause 25(3)(a) and (b), a review process of three years from the laying of a sanction is mentioned. I would like clarity from the Government about why that is three years, because I understand that in the EU process it is only one. The Secretary of State said that a person who has been subject to a sanction has the ability to request from him that it is reviewed. Given that circumstances change and given the way of the world today, perhaps three years is a little too restrictive. We might want to push that down a bit further, or at least give scope for it to be varied, given the circumstances.

Clause 41—a Henry VIII clause, which has the power to authorise additional sanctions—is very like the other clause that I just mentioned, and again, the Lords Constitution Committee had concerns when it looked at it. The clause allows the amending of the definition of sanctions and puts a lot of powers into the hands of Ministers. What is the mechanism, the clause or the parliamentary check on that? Where is the means for Parliament and Committees of the House to have their say on the scrutiny of that? It is fundamentally important to have checks and balances in the system.

I am a member of the all-party parliamentary group on responsible tax, as is the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), and I am pleased to see her amendment on beneficial ownership. I look forward to hearing her later on in the debate hopefully talking about that a wee bit more. There are a lot of issues about working with overseas territories and Crown dependencies. Much as I do not wish the House to legislate on Scottish matters, I do not want us to legislate for overseas territories or Crown dependencies without consent. That is very important. If we want to get buy-in and compliance, imposing things upon people may not necessarily be the best way to do it.

[Sammy Wilson]

The hon. Lady has hit on a very important point. If changes are to be made in the Crown dependencies and overseas territories, it must be by persuasion, rather than imposition. Does she agree that so far, by using persuasion, significant changes have been made in transparency in those countries? That should perhaps be the thrust of future Government policy to ensure that these areas do not become places where money can be hidden and laundered.

[Alison Thewliss]

We have to be very careful. To an extent, we push people and give them a carrot, and in a sense, we have a stick. We have to weigh up in all of this where exactly they are on that continuum and with compliance. Will Ministers tell us what conversations they have had with the likes of Guernsey and Jersey? Do they have confirmation of a permissive extent clause? I am very keen to see open registers. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield laid out some points on that excellently. If the registers are there, they should be publicly available. We want to see transparency everywhere, but we also need to bear in mind that we have a long way to go on ensuring that everything that we do is absolutely correct and proper.

There are clearly issues and disputes among people about their interpretation of the proposals. Having read a submission from Jersey and Guernsey, I know that their account of affairs is quite different from other people’s. Perhaps we will have time in Committee to discuss this a wee bit more, take evidence and see in more detail exactly what needs to be done, how far people can be pushed, cajoled or brought along, or whether or not we need take this action and the extent to which it has a different force.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I am intrigued by the hon. Lady’s contribution. We all want to move forward on the basis of consent, but I slightly disagree with her about how fast the overseas territories are moving. It has been five years since David Cameron first encouraged them to develop public registers of interest. Will she give us some indication of when she thinks that the broader interest of having those public registers and the role that they could play in tackling financial crime would override her absolutely instinctive desire to seek consent in moving forward?

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree. That is the point I was trying to make, fairly badly I suppose: how long do we leave it? Has it been five years with no sign of anything, or five years with some sign of something? We need more conversations to see exactly where things are, but I am keen to support the right hon. Lady’s amendment.

There is slightly more concern about overseas territories such as the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda. When we look at the extent of the Panama papers and the Paradise papers, we cannot fail to be deeply concerned by the extent of nefarious transactions, out-and-out theft and money laundering, particularly when it involves, as other Members have said, the siphoning—the guzzling —of funds from countries whose populations can least afford it. We should be deeply concerned about that, and there seems to be little indication that they will comply at all. Perhaps there is a different approach from the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories on how willing they are to comply with what has to be done to make things transparent and open.

Moving on to part 2 and clauses 43 and 44, on the progress towards beneficial owners of overseas entities. This is very encouraging, but again the thing with the Bill is that action is required. Action is required to check up on all these companies and registrations. Action is required on enforcement and prosecution, and enforcement action requires agencies, intelligence, people and boots on the ground to make sure that it is done. It is fine to have law, but if we do not have anybody to enforce it, there is absolutely no point at all.

Scottish limited partnerships are a particular example of where things are not being enforced. This was bequeathed to me by Roger Mullin, and I am very grateful. It is estimated by Richard Smith and David Leask, who have been working hard on this issue—hon. Members will have seen some of David’s reports in The Herald—that an estimated 20,000 to 28,000 SLPs are of concern. The Herald recently reported that a former president of Peru has been accused of taking £4 million of bribes that have been funnelled through a shell firm based in Scotland. These things should be checked up on and enforcement action should have been taken, but SLPs have become a cover for all manner of murky and dubious behaviour.

As Transparency International and others have said, the missing link in all this is Companies House, because it does not have the duty to refuse a company’s registration; it has to register the company. It does not check up on whether it is legitimate, or whether the people who are registering it actually exist, and it is less compliant than the agents who use it, so there is no benefit to someone going through an agent if they can go through Companies House and avoid all the scrutiny. We have an opportunity in the Bill to close that loophole, because for me, Companies House is ignoring its money laundering duty.

There are wider concerns about shell companies. I invite the Minister to look at New Zealand, which was in a similar situation. However, its regulations have seen a near eradication of its 5,000 shell companies, which were registered to only about a dozen addresses in New Zealand. Part of the solution was a requirement for a New Zealand-based director, which made a huge difference almost overnight.

[Mr Sweeney]

Another interesting example from the recent Labour Government in New Zealand is the idea that they could ban the overseas ownership of property. Given the huge inflationary pressure in the UK housing market, usually from the opaque overseas ownership of UK property, perhaps we ought to consider that measure in this country as well.

[Alison Thewliss]

Yes, that would be a very useful addition. The Secretary of State did not answer the questions on the fifth money laundering directive: how it will be transposed; how it will be scrutinised; if there is a transitional phase; what that transition will look like; how we will prevent any loopholes; and how we will make sure that criminals do not exploit that transition.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Perhaps at this stage I can give the hon. Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) the answer they are seeking on the fifth money laundering directive. It will be published in the summer of 2018 and member states will have 18 months to implement it. That will be after we leave the EU, so whether we or Gibraltar are legally required to transpose will depend on the terms of the implementation period, which of course are under negotiation.

[Alison Thewliss]

That sounds like a vague, “I don’t know” kind of answer.

[Helen Goodman]

Perhaps the hon. Lady would like to ask the Minister whether the powers he is taking in chapter 3—temporary powers in relation to EU sanctions lists—will not give him the power to enforce the fifth money laundering directive.

[Alison Thewliss]

That is a very good question. I do not know whether the Minister wants to take this opportunity to answer it—perhaps not. He has heard the question, so I need not repeat it.

Finally, I want to refer to the Scottish Government, because aspects of the Bill reflect some of the powers that lie within Scotland. The Court of Session is referred to in clause 33(2) and clause 34(2). What consultation has there been with the legal profession in Scotland and with the Scottish Government on that? On clause 47 —“Regulations: general”—the power to change devolved legislation under the negative procedure is really not cool. It is not just I who object to this; the Library briefing states that this will

“enable ministers to make supplemental, incidental, consequential, transitional or saving provisions repealing or otherwise amending existing legislation, including devolved legislation.”

Lord Judge referred to this clause as “monstrous”. Has the Scottish Government been consulted on this provision? What has the Minister got to say about this? This power grab, hidden on page 35 of the Bill, is something that I will seek to amend in Committee.

I support any moves to improve the scope of the Bill, and I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The reason that we have made this distinction in terms of procedure is that we are obliged in law to implement UN sanctions. Once the sanctions have been agreed at the UN Security Council, the UK has an obligation to implement them under the UN charter. Not to do so would leave the UK in breach of international law—hence the distinction in the procedure that we are using.

Returning to what the hon. Member for Glasgow Central described as “monstrous”, I say again that sanctions are a matter of foreign policy and so are reserved to this Parliament.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

No. We consulted the devolved Administrations—that answers a question that the hon. Lady asked—and they did not disagree with us. The ability to make changes to devolved legislation that can be used only to make changes required as a result of sanctions does not injure the devolution settlement. Their primary purpose is for a reserved matter.

Let me move on to the issue of Magnitsky. I recognise the concerns expressed about the importance of taking a stand against individuals responsible for committing gross abuses of human rights. We recognise and indeed share those concerns. I would like to make it clear that this Government are committed to promoting and strengthening universal human rights, and this Bill will permit us to do so. We already have a range of powers to take action against those who commit gross human rights abuses, most recently through the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, as amended by the Criminal Finances Act 2017. The Home Secretary also has the power to exclude individuals whose presence we believe to be contrary to the public good, and we keep track of potentially dangerous individuals to prevent them from entering the UK. To complement this, we also have a range of domestic asset-freezing powers.

We are already committed to using sanctions in this area. This is demonstrated by the number of countries against whom we use human rights-related sanctions. They include the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Libya, Mali, South Sudan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. The Bill will rightly continue this, allowing the UK to continue to implement existing sanctions regimes and to impose new sanctions in the future. I reiterate my point that paragraphs (f) and (h) of clause 1(2) will empower the Government to implement sanctions on human rights grounds. These are broad powers that will provide maximum flexibility and allow us to include all sorts of abuses, including but not only gross human rights abuses.

I should like to refer to the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield about humanitarian access and freedoms. This is an important point. The Government recognise the concerns expressed in the House about the humanitarian impact of sanctions, and we understand the need for engagement with non-governmental organisations and other humanitarian actors. We fully support the work of NGOs operating in difficult areas, and we recognise that they are important partners in delivering the UK’s objectives in challenging environments. I want to reassure the House that the Government have been actively engaging with NGOs. As part of the consultation for the Bill, we held a roundtable to understand their concerns. Within the past couple of months, we have also met organisations involved in humanitarian, development and peace-building work.

The Bill provides a number of tools that will enable the Government to tailor each regime to help to meet the needs of NGOs. In particular, it will enable the Government to make exemptions for humanitarian reasons and to issue licences for legitimate activity. EU case law currently limits our ability to issue general licences, but the Bill will provide greater flexibility by allowing us to do so in circumstances where Ministers judge it appropriate. It will also help to prevent the exploitation of NGOs by those seeking to circumvent sanctions. We have committed to remain engaged with the humanitarian sector and to provide it with high-quality guidance on the implementation and enforcement of individual regimes. We will continue to work with NGOs and other stakeholders to develop the best possible system.

Beneficial ownership has been at the heart of tonight’s debate. We will no doubt discuss it in Committee and perhaps on Report. It is important to recognise that the UK is the only member of the G20 with a public register of company beneficial ownership. We welcome the fact that the EU is catching up with us, but, when it does, public registers of beneficial ownership will still not be a global standard. The non-EU members of the G20 will still not have them.

We hope to work with the Financial Action Task Force and other partners to establish registers of beneficial ownership as a global standard, the effect of which will be not to allow companies or people simply to shift from one regime to another and hide their assets somewhere else. In the meantime, we should remember that the overseas territories are well ahead of most jurisdictions, including many G20 partners, in developing private registers.

In the exchange of notes in 2016, the overseas territories with significant financial centres each committed to holding central or equivalent registers of company beneficial ownership and to making information held on those registers available to UK law enforcement and tax authorities. Those arrangements are almost complete, with some of the territories understandably slightly delayed by last year’s devastating hurricanes.

Moreover, the overseas territories are separate jurisdictions with their own democratically elected Governments. The UK respects the constitutional relationship with the overseas territories and Crown dependencies. It is entirely right to work consensually with them, rather than to impose legislation. The UK has only legislated directly without the overseas territories’ consent in the most exceptional of circumstances, such as on capital punishment.

We do not generally legislate for the overseas territories, and to do so would have the effect of overruling their own legislatures and could be interpreted as disenfranchising the citizens who voted for them. The overseas territories have taken great steps forward in this area, further indeed than many other jurisdictions, and I urge the House to appreciate the importance of not jeopardising what has been agreed with them.

Until we leave the European Union, the United Kingdom will continue to exercise all the rights and obligations of membership, including with respect to common foreign and security policy, sanctions and anti-money laundering. After we leave, this Government intend to continue working closely with our European neighbours to ensure our collective peace and security. Sanctions and anti-money laundering regulations will continue to be a powerful tool in that effort.

Through this Bill, the Government intend to ensure that these important foreign policy instruments continue to be fully available for the United Kingdom to use wherever it is deemed appropriate so to do. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Sanctions and Anti-money Laundering Bill [Lords] (Programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords]:

Committal

1. The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 6 March.

3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading

4. Proceedings on Consideration and any proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.

5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading.

Other proceedings

7. Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Chris Heaton-Harris.)

Question agreed to.

Sanctions and Anti-money Laundering Bill [Lords] (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:

(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State or the Treasury; and

(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Chris Heaton-Harris.)

Question agreed to.

SANCTIONS AND ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING BILL [LORDS] (WAYS AND MEANS)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise:

(1) the imposition, by regulations under the Act, of charges by persons exercising functions under the regulations in connection with the detection, investigation or prevention of money laundering or terrorist financing or the combating of threats to the integrity of the international financial system; and

(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Chris Heaton-Harris.)

Question agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a huge amount to be done. Something like 136 million girls around the world are not in education. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has said, this is truly the Swiss army knife of development, because it works in so many different ways. It helps to resolve issues of conflict and is also important to advance global prosperity.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

CNN recently reported the story of 12-year-old Halima from Yemen, who wants to become a doctor, but whose father is being forced to make the choice to marry her off to make ends meet. He will receive £2,000 as a dowry for marrying off his daughter. What will the Minister do to prevent conflict in Yemen so that young women there can fulfil their potential?

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight a particular example that illustrates the challenges faced by girls around the world. The UK Government have demonstrated significant leadership on this issue as a way of progressing peace and development around the world, and are urging all parties to the conflict in Yemen to make a political solution.

Refugees and Human Rights

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I welcome the choice of debate and the motion, and I particularly welcome the call for effective action to alleviate the refugee crisis. With 23 million refugees worldwide and more than 40 million displaced internally, this is indeed, as has been said, one of the toughest global challenges of our time. There is no silver bullet to solve it, but Governments working together can achieve a great deal to alleviate the dreadful suffering and misery that it has brought—through efforts on conflict resolution, international aid and crucially, through the provision of safe legal routes for those fleeing persecution.

In my view, the report card on the Government’s response is mixed, with significant room for improvement. Let me start on a positive note with the role of the Department for International Development. As the Minister said, there is no doubt that UK aid in countries such as Lebanon has been hugely significant. In that respect the UK is playing its part, and long may that continue. However, it cannot and must not be the case that playing a part through international aid absolves any country of the responsibility of hosting a share of those who have fled persecution. In fairness, I do not think anyone is arguing with that, but on the question of whether the UK has played its part in sheltering its fair share of refugees in response to the crisis, I still believe that the Government have fallen short. Can we and should we be doing more? Undoubtedly, the answer is yes.

From the outset, the Government’s approach to resettlement and relocation of refugees and asylum seekers went essentially from strong resistance to extreme reluctance, only then to find that once the programmes were up and running, they can be genuine successes and make a genuine contribution to the international crisis. A case in point is the Syrian refugee resettlement scheme, which the Minister pointed to. It was introduced by the previous Prime Minister following what can only be described as a summer of resistance from the Home Office. Only after immense public and parliamentary pressure, magnified by the tragic pictures of little Alan Kurdi’s body washed up on the beach at Bodrum—who can ever forget them?—did we finally see a hugely welcome announcement that the UK would accept 20,000 vulnerable Syrians by 2020.

No scheme is perfect, but as I think everyone in this Chamber would agree, once up and running it has proved an extraordinary success. Across the UK, we have been very pleased to see more than 9,000 refugees arrive. As part of that, we were delighted to see the 2,000th arrival into Scotland just last month, and our thanks and congratulations go to all involved in making that happen.

Resettlement works and can make a crucial contribution to the task of the UNHCR. I hope that the Government’s initial reluctance towards resettlement schemes is now a thing of the past. As the Home Affairs Committee recently recommended, it is important that the Government establish a more general resettlement scheme for the future, echoing calls from the UNHCR, which estimated that 1.19 million people were in need of resettlement globally in 2017. It has asked the UK to aim for 10,000 places each year.

Whereas the Government’s report card on resettlement would say, “Solid start but could do better,” their record on solidarity with our European neighbours has fallen further short. It is worth remembering that at the outset, the Government even opposed the introduction of the Dubs scheme before being forced to accept a watered-down compromise. Despite that scheme having been significantly watered down, it is another example of one that can work and transform lives, as we saw when the Home Office was eventually pressed into urgent action by the impending demolition of the camps at Calais.

Although the recent change to the cut-off date applied to the Dubs scheme is a step in the right direction, this Parliament should insist on revisiting some other restrictions that the Government have placed on it, including, most obviously, the desperately inadequate “specified number.” We should insist on the necessary investment to make it work properly. We should find the children in Greece and Italy, and not make them resort to using people smugglers or travelling to Calais.

It is not only children who need protection, but men, women and children all require safety. Long before the Dubs amendment was tabled during the passage of the Immigration Act 2016, my party argued for UK participation in EU proposals to relocate refugees and asylum seekers from Italy and Greece to other member states. It is to our huge regret that efforts at establishing a relocation scheme have continued to flounder.

As we have heard, what does exist is Dublin III. It is far from perfect, but it is there and must be made to work much more quickly and effectively. The recent agreement that the Government reached with France seeks to significantly reduce the processing times for take-charge requests, and that is very welcome. However, huge problems still exist with accessing the asylum system altogether. We should not be waiting for children to come to us, but actively seeking out those who may have grounds for transfer to the UK. Otherwise, it is inevitable that there will be further deaths as young people and children undertake hazardous trips to join family here.

We need to work faster in other countries, too—notably in Greece and Italy, where it can take up to a year for the Dublin process to run its course. If we can do more to fix delays here and to find potential applicants in those countries, we will undoubtedly save men, women and children from hazardous onward journeys, people smugglers and exploitation.

Resettlement, relocation, and Dublin are three examples of safe legal routes that we support that can help to prevent dangerous journeys and alleviate suffering, but let me mention one more: family reunion. Scottish National party Members have repeatedly argued that rights to refugee family reunion in the UK are simply too restrictive. People with family in the UK are clearly the ones who are most likely to try to get here, but by making it virtually impossible for too many categories of family members to qualify for family reunion, including siblings who are over 18, too many are left with no choice but to make dangerous journeys.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point about family reunion. Does he agree with me and my constituents, including children from St Mungo’s Academy and Garnetbank Primary School, who see the absolute logic of being reunited with their family? They do not see the difference between someone being a day under 18 or a day over it—they are their family. Does he agree that we need to do so much more to ensure that those families can stay together? If children at primary school and secondary school can see the logic, why do the Government not see it?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree, and I urge hon. Members to support the private Member’s Bill that has been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). I very much hope that it is passed. He has support from the Refugee Council, the UNHCR, Amnesty International, the British Red Cross and Oxfam, among others.

Hamed bin Haydara

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. I know that as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he will investigate the matter deeply with his Committee. He is right that one of the distressing elements of what has unfolded in Yemen over the past five years is that what was really a tribal conflict has converted into more of a sectarian conflict. That contains the danger of further escalation into a deeper proxy conflict. That is exactly the kind of rising tension and complex structure that, through our diplomatic efforts, we want to reduce and de-escalate so that we get to the point where there can be proper and realistic political discussions in that complex, tribal country to bring stability and, crucially, to overcome the massive famine, disease and rising infant mortality that are probably the worst aspect—although a deeply hidden aspect—of what is going on in Yemen.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for bringing this issue to the House and to the Bahá’í community in the UK for raising it with me this week. As has been mentioned, the Bahá’í community in Yemen is small, but has faced disproportionate persecution by the Houthis, backed by Iran, which has included mass arrests, arbitrary detention, harassment and apparently now shutting down all the Bahá’í centres across the portion of Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

The sentencing to death of 52-year-old Hamed bin Haydara is an extremely worrying development, as he has been in detention since 2013. I imagine that others who are in detention at the moment will be extremely distressed at their prospects, given this development.

Noting the context of the wider discussion of the dire situation in Yemen, will the Minister tell the House what discussions he has been able to have with his counterparts in Iran, who are alleged to be driving this religious persecution? The Bahá’í community allege that it follows a similar pattern to the persecution of Bahá’ís that has gone on in Iran.

In the wider context of countries that choose to continue using the death penalty, what is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office doing to update its strategy on the abolition of the death penalty? What communications could the Minister have with President Hadi, who is in exile but still has a position of influence?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I assure the hon. Lady that the abolition of the death penalty is embedded in all our diplomatic and Department for International Development policies. Wherever we go, in any country, that is our policy and we do our best to argue for it wherever possible.

I have been going to Yemen for over 30 years. I have met President Hadi on about 10 occasions and I met Saleh on about 20. This is a complex country with a vicious history full of conflict and tribal division. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East, who, as I said, is in Geneva, has been brilliant in trying to gather the maximum possible public international and diplomatic pressure not only on this specific case, but for a broader settlement in Yemen. I can tell from my conversations with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on this matter that he is personally very ambitious to do his utmost to use British influence. British influence in Yemen is perhaps greater than many of us in this House realise. The voice of the UK still does matter. We want, as a priority in the Foreign Office, and indeed in No. 10, to do everything we can to use that historical influence to try to bring an end to this disastrous period of Yemeni conflict, famine, and history.

Oman, UAE and Iran

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

The treatment of journalists worldwide is a subject of grave concern. As I mentioned earlier, I have anxieties about the freezing of the assets of BBC Persian. As long as a society does not have free journalism and a free media, it will not only never be free, but never be truly prosperous or happy.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The conflict in Yemen has been characterised by serious breaches of international humanitarian law on all sides; there have been 318 incidents of concern relating to the Saudi-led coalition. Can the Foreign Secretary tell the House what discussions he had on his visit about breaches of international humanitarian law, and about the imminent threat to the life of civilians and aid workers trapped in the escalating conflict on the Yemeni Red sea coast?

[Boris Johnson]

We have repeatedly stated the importance of getting humanitarian aid into the country, and of allowing humanitarian aid workers to get on with their jobs. As for the observance of international humanitarian law, I said in an earlier answer that we already have the most scrupulous procedures in place of any country in the world.

Yemen

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for securing the debate. I agree with much of what he said —his expertise on the matter is valuable. I also agree with much that the shadow Foreign Secretary said. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is steadfast in his work with the all-party parliamentary group on Yemen, and to the aid agencies that are working in circumstances that are incredibly difficult both for their staff and for the people they are working with in Yemen.

The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield mentioned the difficulties in reporting from Yemen, and I rely heavily on some of the first-hand testimony coming through from Twitter, which seems a reasonable way of getting information out of the country. I mentioned the case of Hisham al-Omeisy in a letter to the Government. He was taken by the Houthis on 12 August 2017 and has yet to be seen again. I ask the Government to do all they can to try to secure the safety of journalists in Yemen.

Today I am missing the opening of the new Silverdale nursery in Dalmarnock. The nursery has 140 places for children under five and, while thinking about Yemen, it struck me that if 140 children in Dalmarnock were to die today, we would do something about it. If they were to die tomorrow, we would do something about it. Some 130 under-fives are dying every day in Yemen. If that were happening in this country, we would do something about it urgently and seriously. We would not have our own children dying from the very preventable cause of extreme malnutrition and disease, which take hold so easily when children do not have the food and resilience they need.

One child is dying every 10 minutes in Yemen. It is shocking even to think of the number who have died since the start of this debate. We cannot accept that any longer; it has been going on for far, far too long, and we have a global responsibility to children, wherever they are, to make sure that they are safe, that they are fed and that they will live a happy and healthy life. Anything we can do to that end we must do urgently.

For the children who survive, the impact will be lasting. Millions of children are, and have been, out of school. They do not have a nursery to go to. They are living with stunting, a lifelong condition that will affect their growth and development, including their cognitive development, throughout the rest of their lives. In 2012, UNICEF was already warning of stunting, saying that 58% of children under five were stunted, and that was before this latest conflict. That is a generation being left with a life-limiting condition that we could do more to prevent.

The International Committee of the Red Cross reported yesterday that it had purchased 750,000 litres of fuel to ensure that the water pumps in Hodeidah and Taiz can operate. Those pumps will last only a month on that fuel. The ICRC also reports that nine other cities do not have sufficient fuel to run their water supplies, which is a critical situation given that Yemen has already experienced one of the largest cholera epidemics in history, which has already left about 2,000 people dead. Although the outbreak seems to be on the wane, without water and access to appropriate sanitation it will almost certainly come back. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield mentioned, diphtheria, a very preventable disease that we do not even see here, is also taking hold. So I ask the Minister—I know he will do his best on this—to tell us what the Government are doing to ensure that fuel gets into the country, because without it the petrol pumps will run dry, which will have a knock-on effect on food prices.

Aid very much needs to get in, and aid agencies say so, but all agencies are also stressing the absolute necessity of getting commercial goods in. The scarcity and fuel prices mean that prices are high, and even where there is food people cannot afford to feed themselves. They do not know where their next meal is coming from. It must be incredibly heartbreaking for people to be able to see food on a shelf but not be able to afford to buy it to feed their family. We must bear in mind that many employees in Yemen have not been paid for some time—over a year in some cases at least. Médecins sans Frontières reported in October that 1.2 million Yemeni civil servants have received little to no salary for more than a year. MSF pays the salaries of 1,200 public health staff that it is using in its clinics, but clearly that is not enough by any manner of means. If the doctors trying to treat the people who are starving have no money to feed themselves either, the situation is a disaster. I urge Ministers to consider what else they can do to get more money in to allow staff to be paid, to get the economy restarted and to make sure people have something to live on.

I also urge, as I have urged following previous statements, that we need to see aid getting into the country in the first place, so the blockade must be removed as soon as possible. But that aid also needs to be able to travel around Yemen, and the border posts, the visas and the difficulties the aid agencies are facing in getting around the country are preventing that flow of aid. It is also clear that the different factions in the conflict are using the system as a means of diverting aid to their own people, so that aid that might be intended to go to one place of desperate need is being diverted. That is not to say that people there might not need it, because I am sure they do, but it is being diverted from the people who need to get it. We need to make sure that it can get through to those who need it and that it is appropriately used when it gets there. I urge Ministers to do anything they can to make sure that aid convoys going through the country can actually get to where they need to be.

Finally, I wish to touch on the issue of arms sales, because they are a crucial part of the influence and leverage our country has in this conflict. Sadly, the communiqué that came out of the Quint meeting concentrated far, far more on weapons and the security situation, which I know and appreciate is difficult, than on the humanitarian situation and the need to get goods in through the ports. I am sure the 25 aid agencies that contacted the Foreign Secretary in their open letter will feel very let down by that, and I echo the shadow Foreign Secretary’s comments about how the attendance list of that meeting could have been broader. Efforts need to be made to get more people from Yemen—from civil society and from organisations working there on the ground—involved in such things. In addition, if we look at the picture from the meeting, we note that there may be one woman at the back of the photograph, but women are not being included in this process. We need women as part of the process to help make the peace and make it sustainable.

[Alistair Burt]

When the national dialogue process was going on—I was out in Yemen for that—we spoke to women and young people who had not been part of the governance process. The national dialogue was giving them an opportunity, but the Houthi involvement and the conflict killed that opportunity. Otherwise, there would have been more women involved—that, I think, is what some of the people are fighting for.

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely appreciate that, and the testimony I heard from some of the aid agencies and women’s organisations that came to visit, meeting the right hon. Member for Leicester East and I some time ago, reflected that. They want to be part of the process. Those organisations do exist, and the Government must keep reaching out to them and keep involving them in that process. If we are to get a lasting peace, it must be a lasting peace for all the people of Yemen; it must be as wide as possible, and the attendance must include those organisations.

We lose a huge amount of credibility in this whole discussion, and we cannot be a broker for peace, while we are involved in arming a side in the conflict. We are complicit in what happens. The Minister mentioned 318 incidents of concern, and he may wish to clarify that. How many more incidents are acceptable to the Government, given that 318 incidents of concern have been picked up by the people involved and the armed forces on the ground in Yemen? That is a huge amount of “concern” to have. The amount of aid that has gone in is welcome, and it is good. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe we have put in £202 million in aid since 2015, which is dwarfed by the £4.6 billion in arms sales. A huge amount of money is going into producing absolute brutality and desperation on the ground. If we want the country to be a success, we should be putting all the money and all the effort into rebuilding it, not into destroying what little is still there.

[Graham P. Jones]

The hon. Lady talks about arms sales, and I accept that we should care about people, but we need to look at the current situation. Is she aware that some 80 rockets have been fired into Saudi Arabia? What is preventing those rockets from killing people is the US Patriot defence missile system. That is defence equipment sold by the US to Saudi Arabia to prevent 80 rockets from landing on ordinary people and killing them. Does she agree with those defence sales?

[Alison Thewliss]

What I agree with is that we are putting more arms into the situation, which is continuing to escalate it, not—

[Graham P. Jones]

rose—

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman will have his time later on, as I am sure he will wish to contribute. Adding more weapons to the situation is not going to help.

You will be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, that my daughter has been sent home from nursery sick today. She will be picked up from her nursery by my husband, and she will get medicine, treatment and access to a doctor if she needs it. Unlike parents in Yemen, I will not have to choose which child to save and which child to let die. That is a situation parents in Yemen are facing every single day. Every 10 minutes a child there will die, and parents will have that for the rest of their lives; they will have seen children die before them. We must be committed to finding peace. We must secure, first and foremost, a ceasefire, in order to let aid in. We have had plenty of words, commitments and talk, but Yemen cannot wait. We need action now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Catalonia is a matter for Spain in the same way as Scotland was for the United Kingdom. The Scottish referendum was a legal referendum following the signature of the Edinburgh agreement between the Scottish Government and the Government of the UK. The referendum in Catalonia was not legal in that way. We fully support Spain in upholding the rule of law and its constitution.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes the point about the Scottish referendum being a legal referendum, but Catalonia has had no legal routes from which to have a referendum. Will he put pressure on his Spanish colleagues to look at Scotland’s referendum as a shining example of how democracy can be respected, as well as the rights of the people of Catalonia?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

This is entirely a matter for Spain. It has rules under its own constitution that should be upheld and not challenged in an illegal way, as they have been in Catalonia.

Yemen

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

On my right hon. Friend’s last point, it is for the very reason that we wish to prevent the concerns raised by agencies and the UN from coming to fruition that we are bending all our efforts to working with those who have put on restrictions to the ports in order to preserve their safety and prevent arms getting through to make sure that humanitarian access is indeed given. He is right to raise these concerns, which are shared by the whole House. That is giving the United Kingdom Government every extra incentive, as if we needed any, to try to continue to do all we can to raise those issues with those who fear for their own safety to make sure that they are not putting others at risk in the manner described by so many agencies.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I very much agree with the comments of the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). I thank the Minister for giving me advance sight of the statement. I am glad to hear that there is dialogue, but we need to hear an awful lot more in this House about actions.

I, too, understand the difficulties facing the Saudis regarding the attack on Riyadh, which of course we also condemn. There needs to be a recognition of the two sides to this conflict—at least two, if one counts al-Qaeda. We know about the sophisticated weaponry that the Saudis have because the UK sold it to them. The £155 million in aid that the Minister talks about is dwarfed by the £3.8 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia. There are daily reports of Yemeni civilians on the ground being hit by Saudi airstrikes. Will he speak a little more about those?

Aid agencies have reported for years the difficulties of getting aid into Yemen and across Yemen, including the difficulties involved in getting visas and moving goods and people around the country. Only recently, I heard from the head of Islamic Relief. When he visited to see how the organisation’s projects were going, he was unable to travel around the country because of the visa system that is in operation.

Despite the UN verification and inspection mechanism, Save the Children reports that 13 ships carrying vital humanitarian aid were denied entry to Yemen. What are the UK Government doing to get air and sea ports open, especially when those aid convoys are quite clearly aid convoys and they do not contain missiles? It is fine to say that the Government are providing funding, but without access and without workers on the ground who can deliver it, it is almost meaningless.

The population of Yemen are deliberately being starved by the country’s neighbours, which are key allies of the UK. Today is International Children’s Day. Save the Children reports that 130 children in Yemen will die today, tomorrow, the next day and each day until this conflict ends. Will the Minister tell us how he will stop this?

[Alistair Burt]

Again, I come first to the hon. Lady’s last point: how will this conflict come to an end? This conflict will come to an end when both sides are brought together by people who make it clear that there is no military solution to it, and that there has to be a political one. That is what the United Kingdom has sought to do for many months, through meetings with appropriate parties here in London, in New York and in the region. We share her frustrations because, like others, we can see the impact.

I will comment on one or two of the hon. Lady’s other perfectly proper remarks. First, the key test for our continued arms exports to Saudi Arabia in relation to international humanitarian law is whether there is a clear risk that the items that are subject to the licence might be used in a serious violation of international humanitarian law. That situation is kept under careful and continual review, and, like all other aspects of the United Kingdom’s arms control policy, it is subject to rigorous examination here and by the law.

Secondly, the hon. Lady is right to raise the question of access, as we have done. The restrictions on access do not mean that our work now is meaningless, as she indicated; I am sure that she does not mean that. We are working through partners who are there on the ground, but distribution is, of course, harder. That is the case not just in coalition-controlled areas, but in Houthi-controlled areas; I have to remind the House that there are two sides to this.

Lastly, I will deal again with the subject of arms exports, because I know that it is fundamental. I related this to the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) the other week, and I shall do the same thing again; I do not mean to be harsh about it. If we thought that our not sending support to our allies—who are facing attacks on their own soil, from missiles imported into ungoverned space, where they are trying to support an elected Government against the insurgency—would send the right signal in the region and would prove to be of any use, it would be a course of action, but I do not believe that that is the case. I do not believe that if we were to take that action, it would not fundamentally undermine a number of other regional issues and make our allies wonder, when they faced an attack on their Heathrow, whether we were making the right judgments. We have to pursue other means of bringing the conflict to an end, and that is what we seek to do.