Foreign Affairs and International Development

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who in his short time in this place has brought the experience of his previous work into Parliament. I congratulate him on his speech.

As I wanted to speak in this debate, I had to cancel a meeting with the chief executive of a company just across the river. He sent me an e-mail saying that he hoped I would be called—he does not understand how long we wait to speak—and said, “Could you please encourage the Government to concentrate on growth and not constitutional waffle?” I thought that that was a rather nice way of summing up Lords reform and I hope that we will see sense on that matter and not go forward with any discussion on it at all. It is not something for which any of our constituents are clamouring.

The Gracious Speech included two Bills on the European Union that the Government intend to introduce in this Session and I want to say a quick word about them. Neither Bill is the Bill that the public want to see. We know that the public, like many Members of this House, want a Bill that allows a referendum on our future relationship with the European Union. The public will note that, despite the passage of the European Union Act 2011, the Government propose to pass legislation to approve the creation of the European stability mechanism and to prepare for Croatia to join the EU without a referendum. Many members of the public were told that we did not need an in/out referendum because the Government would put it into law that any changes to our relationship with the EU would have to be approved by them. We can now see that that promise is inadequate because we will not have any say.

It is surprising that the Government are introducing the Croatia accession Bill. Personally—this is a very personal view—I cannot understand why Croatia would want to join the EU, but if it does that is obviously a matter for it. The ongoing expansion of the EU across the continent, well away from the small set of countries it comprised when we joined, shows that the European project is still very much alive in the hearts of the Brussels elite, who are pushing still for deeper and wider union despite the ongoing economic disaster. I believe—and believe that the public would want to see this—that if we are to be asked to pool our national sovereignty with yet another country with the result that in time our voice and our vote count for less in the European Parliament, that changes our relationship and should lead to a referendum.

Preparations for the European stability mechanism might also be premature. Only today we have the meeting between the new President of France and the German Chancellor with the intention of amending the austerity pact which the euro countries signed up to last year. I welcome the fact that eurozone countries should pay to support other countries that are struggling under that currency, but as we wisely did not join, we should not have to contribute a penny. We have already given too much money to propping up the euro through the International Monetary Fund. I remind the Government that the public will not stand for that, as we have seen from the increasing votes for the UK Independence party.

I was disappointed that neither of the Front-Bench spokesmen—I might be mistaken, but I listened very carefully—mentioned the word Commonwealth. Yet that is an association of 54 independent states that work together in the common interests of their citizens for development, democracy and peace. We just need to contrast that with the European Union. The Commonwealth works to uphold democratic rights and nurture constitutional government and parliamentary accountability, whereas the European Union increasingly seeks to thwart and ride roughshod over the democratic will of citizens to such an extent that it wants to install unelected bureaucrats as Prime Ministers of countries.

It is terribly sad that we are not making much more use of the Commonwealth. Despite the size and economic entity of the Commonwealth, the UK Government never talk about it as a huge economic union. We talk about individual countries within it but what about the fact that it accounts for 15% of the world’s gross national income and contains more than 2 billion of the world’s 7 billion population? We have a special link in this year of Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee. As the head of the Commonwealth, she is passionately concerned about it and has done so much as a monarch to ensure its importance and to ensure that we remember what it has done. So although the Commonwealth contains 2 billion of the world’s 7 billion people, there was not a single mention of it in the Queen’s Speech or, more importantly, tonight.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that many countries that do not have traditional links with Britain are seeking to join the Commonwealth? Rwanda is already a member, as is Mozambique, and countries such as Burundi want to forge links with the Commonwealth.

[Kate Hoey]

Absolutely, and that shows the strength and power of the relationship, which does not bind countries into a centralised you-will-all-do-the-same-thing approach but welcomes and supports them as individual countries. Let us not forget that the Commonwealth’s membership includes two of the world’s largest 10 economies—the UK and India—and two members of the G7: Canada and the UK. It also includes five members of the G20: the UK, India, Canada, Australia and South Africa. It has huge global significance and huge potential and also has the advantage of being a group of countries that are friendly, in most cases, including many with deep reserves of key natural resources. It is absolutely disgraceful that we in the United Kingdom are not seeing the Commonwealth as somewhere to which we should be reaching out. Ultimately, we should be establishing a Commonwealth free trade area. That would, of course, mean examining our relationship with the European Union, but our relationship with some of the large Commonwealth countries will be much more important in the long term. I therefore ask the Minister to mention the word Commonwealth in his response and say something about it just to show the Commonwealth countries that we care and that in this year of the diamond jubilee Her Majesty and this Parliament consider the Commonwealth to be worthy of discussion.

Having been quite critical, let me now say something nice about the International Development Secretary. The Department for International Development has been doing a very good job indeed and I want to mention in particular the work it has been doing in Zimbabwe, which has been terrifically important and useful. This covers so many of the issues that other Members have been discussing such as getting books into schools and has been a terrific opportunity for us to be sure that we are doing our bit for the education of children in what was once a fantastically well-educated country, despite all the issues there. I hope that until there are free and fair elections there we will continue to do our bit to ensure that primary schoolchildren have the opportunity to read and have an education.

I was very moved by the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and particularly of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who I know had another engagement to attend. I, too, was at St Paul’s yesterday to hear the Dalai Lama. I am a member of the all-party group on Tibet and I was very disappointed that although the thousands of Chinese students in this country were mentioned in the Government’s introduction to the debate, not a word was said about the Chinese Government’s human rights record and the appalling way they have treated not only the Tibetans but people in many other parts of China. The difference between what my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford said about Palestine and the terrible things she saw and what my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East said about Tibet is that at least the media can still get access to the refugee camps and Palestine. Yes, that is difficult but they and parliamentary delegations can get in, whereas it is incredibly difficult to get into Tibet these days. It has become a closed country to anyone who is not seen as absolutely supporting the Chinese regime.

Our Government should be speaking out more about this issue. We should be forming alliances with other countries and not allowing China to get away with what it is doing just because it is such a huge and economically powerful country.

When China was selected to host the Olympics, everyone said, “It’s going to make such a difference. China is going to change. It will change its human rights record and start freeing prisoners.” Have we seen any changes in China since the Beijing Olympics? I have seen nothing that has made a difference, and the fact that the Olympics were held there has certainly not made any difference to the brave Tibetans who are trying so desperately not just to have a free Tibet, but to be allowed to practise their culture and their religion. What has been happening there is shocking, and I hope that the Minister will make some reference to that.

Our Government have done some very good things through their foreign policy. I am delighted that they are opening up some of our embassies in parts of the world that were closed. I am pleased that they have made a decision that the UK flag must take precedence over the European Union flag. That is just a tiny little change, but it is very important and I welcome it. I pay tribute to our many ambassadors all over the world who do such a good job, trying to ensure that the United Kingdom’s voice is heard in those countries and that we stand up for the values that this country represents.

Finally, please, please would Ministers and shadow Ministers stop referring to Britain, Britain, Britain? We are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. If I hear the Prime Minister say once more, “Britain is this” and “Britain is that”, I am going to get very cross indeed. We are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Britain excludes Northern Ireland; Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.