Human Rights in Saudi Arabia

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Crispin Blunt

Thursday 18th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Crispin Blunt]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It does not only apply in this area. When I chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee, I served on the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, which made a report about the inadequacy of accountability in the conflict, stability and security fund, for example, and the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the integrated activity fund. We ought to have accountability for public money; it is a basic requirement of our responsibility as we levy taxes on our constituents.

Having made the case for co-operation with Saudi Arabia, I recognise the flipside. As vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Saudi Arabia, I feel particularly pained by the current situation. In my 22 years as a Member of this House, I have defended the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s important relationship with the United Kingdom. A few years ago, I had hoped that the Kingdom was taking a bold new step forward when Mohammed bin Salman—first as Deputy Crown Prince and then as Crown Prince—effectively assumed the majority of the Executive power in Saudi Arabia.

The moves of the Crown Prince towards economic reform, with Vision 2030, were accompanied by wider apparent social reform: the removal of arrest powers from the religious police, the formal preparation of legislation to ease male guardianship laws and granting women the right to drive. There is genuine potential for modernisation under that programme. However, if the price turns out to be the closure of any emerging political space, any overall societal gain will be heavily reduced, if not negatived altogether.

We must be beyond disappointed by the series of events over the past two years that have led to where we are today. There is a wretched contradiction between the recent societal liberalisation in Saudi Arabia and the detention of the people who campaigned for those changes. Saudi Arabia has been commended for allowing women the right to drive, for the opening of cinemas and other entertainment places and, as I said, for ending the religious police’s power of arrest. They were all immensely important to the freedom one has to conduct one’s life in Saudi Arabia, but if in parallel the activists who for years had advocated those changes are arrested, such incredible detention and this disastrous series of events must be challenged, not least by the friends of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who recognise the importance of that nation as a regional ally. Pushing for successful reform should not lead to prison. The Crown Prince would be well advised to recognise the truth of the aphorism used by President Ronald Reagan that there is no limit to what we can achieve if we do not mind who gets the credit.

This year, I have worked with the hon. Members for Stockton South (Dr Williams) and for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on a detention review panel for the female human rights activists in Saudi Arabia. I accepted the task because I believed that I would command the confidence both of Saudi Arabia and of its critics for fairness. I am trying to demonstrate in this speech that I hope to see both sides of the question. However, I was disappointed that the Saudi Government did not welcome independent oversight of the detainees’ conditions in detention when, by all measures, the Crown Prince ought to be proud of his fellow countrywomen for sharing his desire to advance reform in Saudi Arabia. I am sure the Saudi Government wish to resolve the issue. I can at least record my pleasure that, to date, the Saudi Arabian authorities appear, temporarily at least, to have released four out of the 11 women detained last year. Hopefully more will follow, as the Saudi Government must realise that the decisions leading to the activists’ detentions and the appalling circumstances and death of Jamal Khashoggi must be rectified to save the country from itself. If the lessons are to be learnt and we are to honour Jamal Khashoggi’s life’s work by ensuring a more open society in Saudi Arabia where criticism is seen as an asset to good policy making, and where there is a more open press to report criticism, it can come only if there is a change of approach from the very top. Such disasters must be used to learn lessons on the necessary limitations on Executive power.

The enrichment of Saudi Arabia has led to the education of its citizens, particularly women, which inevitably has led to and will lead to a desire for progressive change. Western nations, particularly the United Kingdom, have to stand by the current constitutional framework, which must find within it the capacity for progressive change in respect of the growing role and responsibility of Saudi citizens in their influence on policy. Of course, that means the United Kingdom faces a difficult situation.

We could choose to ostracise the kingdom, as implied by the policy proposals supported by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, with the cancellation of the Just Solutions contract. I ought to declare an interest as I was the junior Minister most enthusiastically in support of setting up Just Solutions in order to get its methodology away, so I treated the cancellation of that contract as disastrous and an immense personal disappointment. If we followed the prescription of the hon. Gentleman, we could turn the kingdom into a pariah and push it into the arms of Russia and/or China which, incidentally, are two other human rights priority countries for the United Kingdom. Populist diplomacy and noisy condemnation will always be heard, humiliating the key decision makers at the top. Cynically, if its target audience is just the domestic media and NGOs in the United Kingdom, in those terms it would be successful. But in terms of effecting support for human rights and advancing them in Saudi Arabia, and advancing and securing the position of Saudi Arabia within those nations committed to the current rules-based international order, I suspect the policy advocated by the hon. Gentleman might not be quite so successful.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument and I would hate to take credit for the Just Solutions contract being cancelled. I was simply an advocate of it. The hon. Gentleman’s parliamentary colleague, the then Lord Chancellor, must take the credit for it, and no doubt he has had those discussions. In advancing his argument, what evidence can the hon. Gentleman point to in recent years of the regime’s move towards a human rights success—not ones that have been forced or dragged out of it, but ones that he would say our close relationship has helped to achieve? What evidence is there?

[Crispin Blunt]

The most obvious one that springs to mind is the influence of American and British officers in the targeting cells for the operation in Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen was unanimously approved by the United Nations in order to deal with the illegal usurpation of authority, and we all supported the necessary military involvement to restore order in Yemen. It is an awful place to try to advance by military means the political objectives that the world supported the Saudi coalition to put together. That campaign has been of immense difficulty. Rightly, the coalition was properly criticised for the way it appeared to be conducting the operation yet we should note that there has been a significant improvement. That operation has continued because of the quality of advice coming from the United Kingdom and also the United States in making sure that the military operations were conducted within the remit of international law with regard to human rights. I point to that as an area where there has been effective influence.

Domestically over the past two years within Saudi Arabia, I concede to the hon. Gentleman that what we see and what is reported about the execution of the 37 and the rest, and the detention of the women detainees that I and two of our colleagues inquired into, has been profoundly disappointing. I assume that the Saudi Arabian Government would reflect on the issues I have already mentioned—women being given the right to drive and the ending of the powers of arrest of the religious police—as an overall improvement but if, as I will come on to, Saudi Arabia simply closes down the political space and everyone is far too terrified to offer a critique, it will not help a consultative monarchy to advance good governance in Saudi Arabia. The picture is mixed, but let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that we have no influence whatever.

We have enormous leverage over Saudi Arabia as far as defence is concerned, until and unless we cancel our defence contracts with it. Such leverage would disappear and Saudi Arabia would be faced with the enormous expense of re-equipping itself from another supplier. It would be catastrophic if that supplier was in either Russia or China and provided it with the defence capability that it needed. We would certainly then say goodbye to any influence that we had over Saudi Arabia at enormous economic cost to ourselves. In that sense, we are engaged in a contest for influence, and its human rights is a very important part of trying to advance that agenda. I say to the hon. Gentleman that this is difficult, as I am sure the Minister will recognise. If we give up on interdependence, we will pay a very heavy price, as will the people of Saudi Arabia. We need to stand as much as we possibly can alongside them, and this debate and oversight of what is happening in Saudi Arabia should be part of that.

There is a degree to which it should be true that public shaming and the isolation of offending regimes can occasionally be a spur to progress, but it is better to offer a solution, to engage, and to assist by using our centuries-long hard-won experience of accountability for the rule of law. Rather than tell the Saudis sanctimoniously what their values ought to be, we should have these debates to challenge our friends and encourage them to see the merits of an open civil society, for the benefit of their nation’s policy making if nothing else. Given such a process and our influence, we should be able to agree that they could do nothing better than to release the female detainees straight away.

Previously, change came slowly to Saudi Arabia. It was a conservative country with a cautious monarchy. That caution appeared to be swept away with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but expecting it to suddenly transform into a fully-fledged accountable democracy overnight was never going to happen. Britain remains in a position to help the Crown Prince move away from the path of a leader lethally intolerant of dissent. As our ally, there is a necessity for Saudi Arabia to uphold the highest standards of a consultative monarchy by better engaging with its citizens. There remains an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to set a course for a better future for its society and its economy, learning from the human rights disasters of 2018. Those are the terms used by Saudi Arabia’s own Foreign Minister about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi—it was described as a disaster.

The alternative to a consultative monarchy is an absolute monarchy, and down that route lies disaster and probably eventually revolution. Before that disaster and revolution lies terror and repression. In the west we need to ask ourselves whether we want a penitent reformer in charge of Saudi Arabia or a rolling back to a hard-line clerical domination that reflects the values of centuries earlier or some other revolutionary horror. To reapply the words of Talleyrand, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was not only a crime; it was a mistake. We must help Saudi Arabia to deliver accountability for the crime, and for its future, we must do our best to ensure that it does not compound the mistake.