Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [Lords]
Boris Johnson ExcerptsTuesday 20th February 2018
(6 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I should begin by paying tribute to my noble Friend Lord Ahmad for piloting the Bill through the other place with such skill and finesse. The aim of the Bill is to grant Her Majesty’s Government full power over British sanctions policy after we leave the EU and, in a memorable phrase, to take back control.
This Government’s driving purpose is to strengthen Britain’s global role and widen the horizons of our foreign policy in order to advance the interests and promote the values of the British people, but if our diplomacy is to be effective, it cannot be solely declaratory: we must have the means to impose a price on those who would threaten to do us harm. In the last resort, that will sometimes mean the use of force—this Government will not resile from acting when necessary—but more often, we back our diplomacy through sanctions. Today, the UK enforces 36 sanctions regimes, targeted on countries such as North Korea, Syria and Russia and terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda and Daesh. In total, about 2,000 individuals and entities are listed for sanctions, varying from asset freezes and travel bans to trade restrictions and arms embargos. At this moment, assets worth £12.5 billion are frozen in the UK.
Our powers to impose those sanctions and measures against money laundering derive almost entirely from the European Communities Act 1972. I am delighted to say that Parliament will soon repeal that Act by means of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which is now before the other place. When that Act comes into force, it will freeze Britain’s adherence to the existing sanctions regimes, but if we do nothing, we will lose the ability to impose new sanctions or remove current ones. That is why the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill is necessary. It will give any British Government the power to impose, amend or lift an independent battery of UK sanctions, and update measures against money laundering and terrorist financing, thereby restoring our sovereignty over a vital tool of foreign policy.
The House will readily understand the freedom of action that all British Governments today and in the future will regain. If, for example, there is an international crisis and we judge that sanctions are the best response, we will no longer be compelled to wait for consensus among 28 members of the EU. The Bill will give us the freedom to decide on national sanctions as we see fit, bearing in mind that Britain possesses the fifth biggest economy in the world and the largest financial centre in Europe.
Hon. Members will know that sanctions are most effective when jointly enforced by many nations. Nothing in the Bill will stop us concerting our sanctions with any measures imposed by the EU, but if there is no agreement in the EU, as there often is not, Britain can act independently or alongside other allies. If the EU shares our position, we can act together. The outcome will be that Britain enjoys both freedom of manoeuvre and the option of working alongside our European friends. In the main, I hope that the latter will continue and that we can act in tandem, because the truth is that Britain and our European neighbours will always confront the same threats and defend the same values.
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, Britain’s unconditional and immoveable commitment to the security and defence of Europe will not change one iota when we leave the EU, and this country has always played a leading role in devising EU sanctions—it is thanks to our national expertise in this field that the UK proposed more than half of all the individuals and entities currently listed for EU sanctions. The EU will have every reason to concert its sanctions policy with us in future, just as we will be happy in principle to work hand in glove with the EU. The Bill will place this British Government and our successors in the strongest possible position. We will be equipped with the power to impose sanctions independently, but without prejudice to our ability to co-ordinate with our European allies.
The Bill is also necessary for the UK to continue to play its full part in the struggle against money laundering and terrorist financing. Without the Bill, we should soon find ourselves in breach of international standards. I am proud to say that Britain was the first G20 country to introduce a public register of beneficial owners of companies, thanks to the Conservative-led Government. We are now going further by creating a public register of the beneficial owners of any non-UK entities that possess or buy property in this country, or that participate in UK Government procurement. No other state is compiling such a register, which will be the first of its kind in the world.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
May I ask my right hon. Friend to confirm this: when he says property, is that all property or just real property?
Boris Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention—I was referring to real estate. As I am sure he knows, the proposal has the same intention as the tax on enveloped dwellings that was introduced by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, which has proved, to the best of my knowledge, to be extremely lucrative for the Exchequer.
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
Given the Secretary of State’s commitment to the EU’s action on money laundering, is he saying that the Government will implement the fifth EU anti-money laundering directive, which requires that we all have public registers of beneficial ownership by the end of 2019?
Boris Johnson
As the right hon. Lady will be aware, the UK is already out in front of the rest of the world in insisting on public registry of beneficial ownership, irrespective of the implementation of the fifth EU anti-money laundering directive. As I will explain to the House, we already ask the overseas territories to do far more than other jurisdictions that offer financial services advantages.
Dame Margaret Hodge
I would be most grateful if the Secretary of State would give way again.
Dame Margaret Hodge
I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State. The reason I asked the question is that the EU’s anti-money laundering directive would have an impact on the UK and Gibraltar. I am interested in whether the Foreign Secretary will implement the directive, given that implementation is required by 2019.
Boris Johnson
I do not know the exact stage of the directive at the moment. To the best of my knowledge, we are in the process of implementing it. It should creep in under the wire and will, I hope, have the beneficial effect that the right hon. Lady desires.
Boris Johnson
I will not, if the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
As sanctions have serious consequences for the individuals and entities that are singled out, they should be employed only in accordance with the rule of law, so it may be helpful to the House if I describe the scrupulous procedure laid out in the Bill.
Whenever the Government intend to impose a new sanctions regime, a statutory instrument will be laid before Parliament. When selecting targets, we will apply the legal threshold of “reasonable grounds to suspect”, which is the standard that we currently use for UN and EU sanctions. Both the British Supreme Court and the EU’s general court—the former court of first instance—have endorsed the use of that threshold in recent cases, and it is vital that the UK and our international partners continue to employ the equivalent threshold so that our sanctions policies and theirs can be co-ordinated.
The Bill contains safeguards allowing those listed for sanctions to challenge their designation and receive swift redress if it is warranted. Sanctions are not ends in themselves; they must not be maintained simply out of inertia or force of habit once the necessity for them dies away. The Bill will entitle any designated person to request an administrative reassessment by the Secretary of State, who will have a duty to consider any such request as soon as reasonably practicable. The Secretary of State can amend or revoke the designation in response to new information or a change in the situation. As a last resort, the designated person can apply to challenge the Government’s decision in the courts under the principles of judicial review, and the Bill provides for classified evidence to be shared with the court as appropriate.
Britain is obliged by international law to enforce any sanctions agreed by the UN Security Council. If a court in this country believes that such a designation is unlawful, the Secretary of State can use his or her best endeavours to remove a name from a UN sanctions list, bolstered by the fact that Britain has permanent membership of the Security Council. If a Secretary of State declines to seek a delisting at the UN, the relevant individual could challenge that decision before the courts. In addition, the Bill obliges the Government to conduct an annual review of every sanctions regime and place a report before Parliament. The Government are also required to review each individual designation under all regimes every three years.
The Bill allows the Government to grant licences to allow certain activities that would otherwise be prohibited—for instance, to permit any individuals subject to asset freezes to pay for essential needs such as food or medicine. The Bill will also give the Government the power and flexibility to issue general licences that could, for example, allow aid agencies to provide humanitarian supplies in a country subjected to sanctions.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Where assets have been frozen—for example, in the case of Libya and its support for the IRA—does the Secretary of State see any scope for a licence to allow that money to be used to help the victims of such outrageous crimes?
Boris Johnson
I completely concur with the objectives espoused by my hon. Friend. Many people would like to see some compensation flowing from a more prosperous Libya to the victims of IRA terrorism and, indeed, to other victims of terrorism. Given what we have done so far with Libya, it would be very difficult to unfreeze the assets; they are not our assets and it would be difficult for us to procure them. On the other hand, there is scope—working with the Libyan Government as Libya gets back on its feet, which is what we are currently working for —to set up a fund for the victims not just of IRA terrorism in this country, but of terror in Libya as well. That is the way forward: the UK and Libya working together to address that historical injustice. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that subject, on which there are strong feelings both in this House and in the other place.
We must never lose the ability to keep pace with the criminals and terrorists who strain every nerve and sinew to confound and evade our efforts. The Bill provides the Government with the power to make, amend or repeal secondary legislation to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Behind all this lies our primary goal: to restore the independent power of a global Britain to defend our interests and to exert our rightful influence on the world stage, acting in concert with our European friends whenever possible, sure in the knowledge that we are a force for good. I commend this Bill to the House.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Quite a lot of the money that is hidden is hidden by corrupt regimes, particularly in Africa.
A major criticism of the Bill as first drafted was of its Henry VIII clauses. Throughout, the Bill was giving Ministers the power to make regulations—in other words, to make law that cannot be amended by Parliament and is sometimes made without even any debate. In our consideration of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, Members across the House complained that the level of the Henry VIII powers was so excessive that the Government agreed to a sifting Committee in order to limit the concentration of the power of the Executive. Arguably, with no sunset clause, this Bill is even worse in this respect. Speaking in the other place, the well-named and noble Lord Judge described it as a “bonanza of regulations” and the “Regulation Bulk Buy” Bill. Their lordships defeated the Government twice in votes on this. I hope that the Government will not now seek to undo those changes to the Bill. If so, we will oppose them.
It is surely obvious to everyone that sanctions regimes are effective only when they are co-ordinated internationally, as the Foreign Secretary acknowledged, and we need maximum support across the world and agreed implementation mechanisms to enforce them. However, he did not really answer some of the questions as to how that is going to be done post Brexit. Half our sanctions emanate from the EU. I am not saying that this is necessarily a matter for legislation, but surely the Government should have a plan for how we are going to be involved in EU decision making on sanctions regimes and the implementation of those regimes. Ukraine is a good example of where that is needed. What specific plans has the Foreign Secretary developed for a framework to provide for continued co-operation with the EU on foreign policy issues after we leave? What discussions have been held on that particular issue in the Brexit talks? What are the Government seeking to achieve in their negotiations with the EU on that matter? We were warned last week by the three spy chiefs that, without co-operation with our EU partners in intelligence sharing, policing and judicial matters, it would be difficult to enforce compliance on sanctions, which are vital for dealing with terrorism and proliferation.
Labour’s view is that the core principles of sanctions policy should be that sanctions are targeted to hit regimes rather than ordinary people; minimise the humanitarian impact on innocent civilians; and have clear objectives, including well-defined and realistic demands against which compliance can be judged, with a clear exit strategy. There should be effective arrangements for implementation and enforcement, especially in neighbouring countries, and sanctions should avoid unnecessary adverse impacts on UK economic and commercial interests. We will seek to amend the Bill to ensure that those principles are adhered to throughout.
One very big and obvious hole in the Bill is its failure to incorporate Magnitsky clauses, which the House has repeatedly supported and voted for. Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer who uncovered large-scale tax fraud in Russia. For his pains, he was imprisoned and tortured throughout a whole year, finally dying having been brutally beaten up while chained to a bed. We will be tabling a Magnitsky clause that would enable sanctions to be made in order to prevent or respond to gross human rights violations. Such provisions have been adopted in the United States and Canada, and they were also reflected in the Criminal Finances Act 2017. I cannot understand how or why the Foreign Secretary has missed this opportunity; perhaps he has been too busy designing bridges. Such a step is not just about Russia. We are now in the strange position that the United States has tougher sanctions than we do on Myanmar.
Boris Johnson
I hesitate to accuse the hon. Lady of failure to read the Bill, but clause 1(2) makes it absolutely clear that sanctions can be imposed to promote human rights. A fortiori, that obviously involves a Magnitsky clause to prevent the gross abuse of human rights. The measure that she seeks is in the Bill.
Helen Goodman
I am afraid that I do not think the Bill makes that clear. First, it does not include the phrase, “gross human rights abuses”, which the Foreign Secretary just used, and furthermore, it does not refer to public officials. This is a matter that we can debate upstairs in Committee, and I will be happy to do so with the Minister.
Another key area that the Government have failed to address properly is the position of refugees and victims of human trafficking. Last month, the House unanimously resolved:
“That…conflict resolution…and the protection of human rights should be at the heart of UK foreign policy and that effective action should be taken to alleviate the refugee crisis”.
There are now 66 million refugees—more than there have ever been and more than the population of the United Kingdom. The flow of desperate people across the Mediterranean and through Turkey is continuing. Yet the Bill gives no impression that Ministers have given any thought whatsoever to the plight of these people, who are seeking refuge from desperate and protracted conflicts around the world.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is right that the situation is complex—we have one legal regime for the overseas territories and another for the Crown dependencies—but I think that that would be beyond the scope of the Bill.
The all-party parliamentary group on responsible tax, led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), has been pursuing this agenda energetically for several years now, and across the House, Members want effective action.
Another scandal is the use of London property by oligarchs, corrupt officials and gangsters from across the globe. I am talking about people like Karime Macías, the Mexican wife of the former Veracruz Governor Duarte. He has been imprisoned and charged with corruption, money laundering and involvement in organised crime. His years in office saw a spike in disappearances and murders, while she claims to be a fugitive in London.
When I was young, if you drove through Chelsea at night, it was full of light because people actually lived there. Now, swathes of London are pitch black, as properties are bought simply as money safes. Meanwhile, in the outer boroughs, which the Foreign Secretary never visits—
Boris Johnson
As the hon. Lady may recollect, I was never out of the outer boroughs when I was Mayor of London, and the former Mayor of London visited Havana more often than he visited Havering.
Helen Goodman
I wish the Foreign Secretary was as energetic in his pursuit of the corrupt in this Bill as he is concerned to defend his own record on travelling around the London underground.
In the outer-London boroughs, new buildings are bought off plan and some never even have the cellophane unwrapped. Global Witness has found that 86,000 properties in this country are owned by companies in secrecy jurisdictions. The Cayman Islands representatives told me, when they came to see me in preparation for the Bill, that they were responsible for 11% of the property investment in Britain, pushing up prices so that they are unaffordable, and young people’s home ownership in this country is now at an all-time low.
The new register promised by the Government in 2015 has been put back by six years. There must be a suspicion that this secrecy continues because some senior Tories use it. Just one example will suffice. Lord Sassoon was revealed by the Paradise papers to have been a beneficiary of a Bahamas trust fund that has sheltered a family fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars, yet he was a Treasury Minister and the man charged with presiding over the Financial Action Task Force—the very body tasked with setting the standards to combat money laundering.
We are going to pursue all these issues over the coming weeks. I cannot do better than quote the global summit communiqué, which said:
“Corruption is at the heart of so many of the world’s problems. It erodes public trust in government, undermines the rule of law, and may give rise to political and economic grievances that…fuel violent extremism. Tackling corruption is vital for sustaining economic stability and growth, maintaining security of societies, protecting human rights, reducing poverty, protecting the environment for future generations and addressing serious and organised crime…We need to face this challenge openly and frankly”.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a real pleasure to respond to the debate on behalf of the Opposition. The Bill, as many colleagues have indicated, purportedly aims to provide the UK with an appropriate system to stop the corrupt and the criminal from benefiting from our British financial system. I will first consider the sanctions-related matters before looking at the money laundering matters, although they are of course intrinsically linked.
As with much of the Government’s Brexit-related legislation, many concerns have been expressed about the lack of parliamentary oversight of the Bill’s provisions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) set out, many positive changes were made when the Bill was discussed in the other place, and they must not now be rolled back in this place. Other matters of concern persist, as indicated by the hon. Members for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), and echoed in the calls for clarity from the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly).
We still lack clarity over the extent to which our sanctions regime will be aligned with that of the EU 27. The evidence is clear that sanctions are more effective when imposed collectively—the hon. Members for Glasgow Central and for Huntingdon made that point very well. I was disappointed by the Foreign Secretary’s comments in this regard, which I thought were contradictory; he simultaneously admitted that unilateralism might not be effective while vaunting the possibilities of a totally independent regime. There are no indications in the Bill of how we will concretely ensure the continued co-ordination that is so necessary in this area.
We heard in the debate some persuasive arguments about the need for stronger commitments in the Bill, not just fleeting mentions, on the necessity for sanctions to target those responsible for human rights violations, particularly those responsible for gross human rights violations, as in the so-called Magnitsky regimes. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) spelled out clearly the reasons for such an explicit approach. I hope that Government Members will have listened to those arguments.
Finally in relation to the sanctions-related provisions, the hon. Members for Glasgow Central and for East Dunbartonshire mentioned the need to ensure that measures are appropriately calibrated so that they target criminal individuals and terrorists, not legitimate aid agencies and financial service providers delivering legitimate services. It is essential that we have accurate and appropriately granular mechanisms in that regard.
Let me move on to money laundering. I was very pleased, as I am sure were many Members, about the informative and courteous style of debate that we have had on money laundering tonight. I am afraid that is in contrast to the comments on money laundering from the Government when introducing the Bill, which I thought were disturbingly brief. It is clear that the problem of money laundering is getting worse, not better. I will not go into all the arguments and evidence on that now, because that has been done very ably by other Opposition Members, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq). At the centre of the UK’s problems with money laundering lies a lack of transparency and accountability, both of which are essential if we are to ensure that the criminal and the corrupt do not profit from our leaky financial system.
On the issue of public registers of beneficial ownership in our associated territories, may I say what a powerful tour de force we have had from the right hon. Members for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and for Sutton Coldfield? I am sure that the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, as a former Home Office Minister, has a huge insight into the damage being done by the lack of transparency in this area, aiding international criminals. The Government must listen to the uncomfortable truth that he has set out so ably tonight.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) set out how long this process has been running, as the Government requested beneficial ownership registers from the overseas territories five years ago. Many Members have indicated that we have had a slippage from the Government’s initial commitments in this regard. The failure to clean up their act by some of our overseas territories is having a severe impact on their reputation. As someone who has had many meetings with representatives of those jurisdictions, and who supports them tremendously, let me say that it is not their foes but their friends who are arguing for more transparency, because we see the reputational damage that the lack of transparency is doing to them. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking said, the Government’s failure to act constitutes complicity. I agree with the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) that the UK must exercise leadership.
There has also been a lack of clarity from the Government over whether they are minded to follow EU-level developments, particularly the anti-money laundering directive known as AMLD 5. I agree with the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) about many things—we worked together previously in the European Parliament—but I am afraid I cannot agree with her assessment that we know for certain that the Government will continue to cohere with EU-level developments. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) explained very clearly why we do not have the clarity that we need.
I think it especially important to focus on the regulation of trusts. Under David Cameron, the Government argued against their inclusion in EU registers of beneficial ownership. The Foreign Secretary claimed that the UK was ahead of the rest of the EU with our register of beneficial ownership, but we have been a drag on the EU when it comes to more transparency on trusts.
Anneliese Dodds
At EU level, we have been. David Cameron argued against the inclusion of trusts in EU beneficial ownership registers, but we now have a chance to change. I can see that the Foreign Secretary is appalled by the idea that we might have acted as a drag in that regard, but I am sure that he will be converted to the cause of more transparency.
As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire rightly mentioned, it is deeply concerning that the timetable for the foreign-owned property register has slipped so substantially. I take on board what was said by the hon. Member for Amber Valley—we already have a register of sorts, in the guise of Private Eye’s tax haven property map—but that map was created, essentially, by mistake. It was created when the Land Registry released data, by mistake, which was then matched up with Companies House data. The Government should be delivering the register themselves. I appreciate that there should be additional disincentives, but that is not a reason not to act now.
Finally, let me say something about the issue of due diligence in relation to British company ownership. Yes, we do have a public register run by Companies House, but the responses to a series of parliamentary questions that I have tabled have shown that there is little or no oversight of the veracity of the data supplied to it. That is illustrated by the worrying case mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), to whom I pay tribute for all his effort to help his constituent. There are not enough resources in Companies House, and there is a regulatory gap in respect of those registering companies with it directly. There are even problems for those who register through company formation providers, many of which have been shown not to be fulfilling their responsibilities. In that context, it may be necessary to launch a pincer movement requiring all such firms to have UK bank accounts: at least they would then be covered by anti-money laundering legislation through the bank account system.
The Financial Action Task Force is due to report next month on the UK’s approach to money laundering and ensuring the integrity of the international financial system. I am sure Members in all parts of the House agree that it would be a huge international embarrassment if the taskforce concluded that the UK Government had chosen not to adopt measures that would help to clean up our financial system. I am afraid I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking that there are grim stains on the UK’s reputation in this regard.
Let me issue one last plea. I have been very disturbed by the Government’s decision not to defend publicly the journalists who were singled out by Appleby. It picked on British companies, the BBC and The Guardian, which were taken to court after releasing details that were in the public interest. Sadly, the Treasury team—I see that some of its members are present—has not yet been willing to condemn that behaviour. I appeal to Ministers, including those in charge of foreign policy, to do so now, and to confirm that those disclosures were in the public interest.
Lebanon: Border Assistance
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
The United Kingdom is strongly committed to supporting Lebanon’s peace, stability and prosperity. Through a long-standing Conflict Stability and Security Fund project worth £22.6 million over three years, the UK is helping the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) secure the Lebanon-Syria border. Our ambition is for Lebanon to have complete authority over its border with Syria.
In order to reach this objective, our Embassy in Beirut wishes to place an order worth £319,916.61 for communications equipment to support the LAF. On 7 September 2017, I made a written statement (HCWS118) in respect of our Embassy in Beirut placing an order of £1.8 million for additional defensive barriers/towers as part of this project. This communications equipment will be used in the new towers to allow secure communications between troops and the headquarters of both the Land Border Regiment and the LAF.
The provision of this assistance is fully in-line with the Government’s security and stability objectives in the middle east. Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials carry out regular reviews of our programmes in Lebanon to ensure funding is not directed to non-state actors.
[HCWS450]
National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
Today marks the publication of the UK’s fourth National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security (2018-2022) by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, with support from the stabilisation unit.
The National Action Plan (NAP) is the UK Government’s five-year strategy that captures how we will meet our women, peace and security (WPS) commitments under UN Security Council Resolution 1325, demonstrating how we will ensure better protection and empowerment of women in conflict situations overseas through our diplomatic, development and defence engagements alongside our bilateral and multilateral partners.
The UK is a global leader on women, peace and security, taking the lead on drafting resolutions on this issue in the UN Security Council. In 2017 the FCO’s first ever special envoy for gender equality was appointed as part of wider UK ambition to eliminate all forms of gender inequality. The UK has continued work to increase women’s participation in conflict resolution in some of the most fragile countries in the world, including in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria. Along with Bangladesh and Canada, the UK launched the Women, Peace and Security Chief of Defence Network at the UN Peacekeeping Ministerial Conference in Vancouver in November 2017. The promotion of women in mediation in conflict resolution and countering violent extremism will continue at the Commonwealth Summit and beyond.
The UK continues to tackle gender-based violence, particularly violence against women and girls as the most prevalent form of gender-based violence. We continue to champion the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative to end sexual exploitation and abuse, working closely with our international partners.
This NAP has been developed based on lessons learned from the previous three UK NAPs, extensive consultation and new research and evidence on WPS. Key changes are:
The NAP covers a longer, five-year period, enabling greater opportunity for the UK and implementing partners to demonstrate impact against our long-term objectives and outcomes.
The NAP provides a vision of what the UK wants to achieve on WPS, not a fixed country-level implementation plan. This will enable us to respond flexibly to local realities and changes in the contexts, and to adapt programmes and activities to global and local developments.
We have set out seven strategic outcomes, linked to the four pillars of UNSCR 1325, where the UK can demonstrate a comparative advantage and expect to see real progress over this period.
We have retained inclusion of focus countries, recognising that this helps the UK to raise issues and work in partnership with governments, and to improve domestic and international visibility. We have increased the number from six to nine. They are: Afghanistan, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria.
The NAP 2018-22 sets out more clearly how it fits with wider HMG policies and strategies to ensure complementarity with other Government efforts.
We are grateful to the all-party parliamentary group on women, peace and security for their active engagement on this important issue and would, in particular, like to thank Baroness Hodgson for her dedicated work in this area. We would also like to thank the civil society network, Gender Action for Peace and Security (GAPS), and the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security for the contribution they have made to the process of revising the NAP.
We will continue to consult with Parliament and civil society, including through the annual report on progress on the implementation of the NAP. The FCO will convene a new WPS steering group, chaired by Lord Ahmad, to bring together NGOs and academics with senior officials to provide accountability and leadership on this agenda. We will commission an external evaluation for a mid and end of term assessment of how the strategic outcomes have been included through HMG’s planning and delivery processes.
A copy of the NAP has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, and is available on gov.uk.
It can be viewed online at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2018-01-16/HCWS404/.
[HCWS404]
Oral Answers to Questions
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
Tackling the illegal wildlife trade is a massive priority for this Government. To that end, we will host a high-level conference in London this October to drive further progress. I can assure the House that the Government raise the issue of illegal wildlife trade consistently at all levels with our friends and partners around the world.
Henry Smith
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his answer. Can he say a little bit more about what actions he has taken globally to ensure that the appalling ivory trade is reduced, and whether he thinks that national bans play an important part in that?
Boris Johnson
I am grateful for that question, because the UK Government have been a leader for many years now in calling for an end to the illegal trade in ivory, which not only does so much damage to the elephant population but encourages criminality of all kinds across the African continent. I am proud to say that this Government are currently consulting, as my hon. Friend will know, on an all-out ivory ban. The results of that consultation will be announced shortly, and I hope to have good news for the House.
Rishi Sunak
I commend my right hon. Friend for all his work in this area, but may I draw his attention to a shocking investigation in the Mail on Sunday, which highlighted the continuing illegal trade in tigers in Laos? Does he agree that those findings deserve urgent attention to ensure that this magnificent species can continue to enjoy a safe future?
Boris Johnson
I indeed commend the excellent journalism of that publication—at least in this respect—in highlighting what is taking place in respect of tiger farming in Laos, which is an abominable trade that all right-thinking people across the House would condemn. The UK Government not only call on the Government of Laos to stop this appalling trade, but stand ready to give any support and help that we can to the Laotians.
Mr Fysh
You, Mr Speaker, may be as interested as I am in the oceanic environment. I want to talk about whales, because 30,000 have been killed since the introduction of the international whaling ban, and nations such as Japan, Norway and Denmark take a very controversial view on participating in whaling. What can the Secretary of State’s Department do to make whaling history?
Boris Johnson
I congratulate my hon. Friend, an eponymous Member, on that important question on what we are doing to protect whales—although they are, of course, mammals rather than fish, as he knows. The UK has been in the lead over many decades in calling for an end to illegal whaling. We condone whaling only when it is clearly and demonstrably necessary for subsistence.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Reports from the UN and others have shown links between not just the illegal wildlife trade but the illegal timber trade and the financing of terrorist groups such as al-Shabaab and the Lord’s Resistance Army. Is that on the Minister’s radar, and what will he be doing to ensure that the links between terrorism and those trades are broken?
Boris Johnson
The hon. Lady asks an excellent question, because, of course, the illegal wildlife trade is intimately connected not just with the illegal timber trade, but with drug running, gun trafficking and the trafficking in human beings, so if we tackle the illegal wildlife trade, we drive down those phenomena as well.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The illegal trade in ivory is estimated to be worth about $20 billion per annum, and yet the Government have so cut the Border Force that they are now looking at recruiting volunteers to fill the gap. What confidence can the House have that this illegal trade will be tackled if the Government are not prepared to put the resources into the Border Force?
Boris Johnson
I have every confidence in our Border Force and its ability to police the traffic of illegal items such as ivory. It should be evident, I hope, to everybody coming from another country with such an illegal item in their possession that they face the risk not only of prosecution, but of jail.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, rhino poaching in South Africa increased by 7,700% between 2007 and 2013. People in Broomhouse want to know what support the Secretary of State has offered his South African counterpart to help global campaigning to end this trade once and for all.
Boris Johnson
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the Minister for Africa has raised that very matter with the South African Government only recently.
Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
We will be having a summit of the Commonwealth in April this year. As I am sure all Members know, that will provide a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase an institution that has stood the test of time. The Commonwealth brings together 52 countries —in fact, 52 of the fastest-growing economies in the world. It is a most remarkable institution. The summit will of course be an opportunity to pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen for her long years of unrelenting service.
Suella Fernandes
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the summit taking place in April represents a major opportunity to revitalise the Commonwealth as an international trading alliance, and that India—with 55% of the Commonwealth’s 2.3 billion population and 26% of its internal trade—should play a major role in furthering that mission?
Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is therefore a very good thing that Prime Minister Modi will be coming. Of course, India will be playing a major role in the events.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Last time I looked, there were 54 members of the Commonwealth, but perhaps I am wrong. The fact of the matter is that many people I meet from Commonwealth countries are very worried about the diminished role of Britain worldwide as we leave the European Union. What does the Secretary of State say about that? Many fear that we will lose our place on the Security Council.
Boris Johnson
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman—as I am sure he reassures anybody who makes that point—that our position on the Security Council is absolutely secure. In fact, the only thing that threatens our position on the Security Council, as my hon. Friends will know, is the unilateralist disarmament policy that used to be adopted by the Labour party and its leader. It is the retention and possession of an independent nuclear deterrent that guarantees our membership of the Security Council, as the hon. Gentleman knows full well.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
To make the issue of 52 members versus 54 more orderly, could we perhaps increase the number to 54? Although the Foreign Secretary is right in saying that it is 52, I think that by the time that we get to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the Gambia will already be in, making it 53. Could we add Zimbabwe to the list, particularly if that is conditional on the President making progress?
Boris Johnson
I thank my hon. Friend, who is a great expert on these matters, particularly Zimbabwe and Gambia. The proper solution, as the House will know, is for those countries to apply. The Gambia, I am glad to say, is a long way down the track, and we hope to welcome it back. For Zimbabwe, the prize of Commonwealth membership is once again something for that people to aspire to. That is a wonderful thing.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Among the important issues of human rights, jobs, climate change, poverty, equality, security and so on that the summit will discuss, how much time does the Foreign Secretary expect the Commonwealth countries to devote to the colour of their passports?
Boris Johnson
Not much. One thing that will be absolutely crucial at our Commonwealth summit is, of course, 12 years of quality full-time education for every girl in the world. That is going to be an absolute core of the summit.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Before CHOGM, will the Foreign Secretary get a chronological list of the countries where UK pensioners overseas get inflation-level increases and how many of those are Commonwealth countries? Should we not hang our heads in shame that for half of pensioners overseas who are in Commonwealth countries, there has been no change? I ask him to do something about that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
I hope so, Mr Speaker. Will the issue of tax avoidance and tax evasion be raised in the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting?
Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
We have consistently made clear our concern about Iran’s destabilising and disruptive activity in the region, about its ballistic missile programme —it remains sanctioned by both the EU and the UN— and of course about reported Iranian weapons supplies to the Houthis in Yemen, which would be a violation of UN Security Council resolution 2231. We have set out those concerns with great clarity at the Security Council.
Joan Ryan
Iran’s support for terrorist groups across the region, its culpability in the destruction of Syria and its threats to wipe the world’s only Jewish state off the map must obviously be condemned by all, but words are not enough. What action is Britain going to take to combat Iran’s destabilising activities and, as the Foreign Secretary mentioned, its ballistic missile programme?
Boris Johnson
We have—indeed, I have personally—made clear to the Iranian leadership at all levels the deep concern we have in this country about the very issues the right hon. Lady raises. In particular, of course, there is the supply—or the alleged supply—of weaponry to the Houthis, the ballistic missile programme and the breaches of Iran’s obligations under UN Security Council resolution 2231. We are raising those issues not just with the Iranians but with our international friends and partners, to put pressure on Iran to desist from those activities.
Tulip Siddiq
My constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is still in prison in Iran after 20 months. Despite a lot of attention on her case before the festive period, her husband, Richard, still spent Christmas without his wife and his daughter. When I met the Foreign Secretary, he said he would leave no stone unturned to secure her release. What steps has he taken to fulfil that promise?
Boris Johnson
I thank the hon. Lady. She and I have discussed this case on several occasions. I think that perhaps the best thing I can tell the House is that work continues assiduously at all levels on all our consular cases in Iran. It is, I am afraid, not particularly helpful in securing the result that we both want to get into detailed commentary at this stage about how we are doing.
Stephen Crabb
More than a year since we re-established diplomatic ties with the Iranian Government, Iran continues to develop its weapons programme, continues to fund regional terror groups and proxies, and continues to crack down on human rights campaigners. What positive fruit can we expect this year from our closer ties with the Iranian regime?
Boris Johnson
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I would simply remind the House of the virtues of our approach, which is on the one hand to be extremely tough with the Iranians on what they are doing wrong—as I say, they remain a highly disruptive and destabilising force—but on the other hand to do what we can not just to confront them, but to engage with the forces of reform in Iran, which do exist, need encouragement and could be imperilled. That has to be the way forward, and it is one of the reasons why we believe—I know that this sentiment is shared by many in this House—that the joint comprehensive plan of action, the Iran nuclear deal, is valid, represents a considerable diplomatic achievement and should be safeguarded.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
What steps is the Foreign Secretary taking to combat the growing influence of Iran in both Syria and Lebanon, with weapons focused on Israel, a state that it wishes to annihilate?
Boris Johnson
The hon. Lady is right to detect the disruptive hand and the destabilising agency of Iran in the region and certainly in the supply of missiles to Hezbollah and weapons to the Houthis. What Iran is up to is well chronicled and, together with our friends and partners, we are working at the United Nations and elsewhere to bring maximum pressure on the Iranians to cease and desist from their activities.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
May we erect a new doctrine—perhaps we could call it the Johnson doctrine—that we have learned the lessons of our military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria and never again will we attempt to use military force to remove unpleasant authoritarian regimes and replace them with disastrous totalitarian movements?
Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend makes—I am afraid—an excellent point. Of course we must push back on Iranian disruptive behaviour—it is entirely the right thing to do and this Government will continue to do it—but we must also be intellectually honest and recognise that collectively over the past 20 years or so western foreign policy has helped to create the conditions, alas, in which Iranian influence has been capable of expanding.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
Let us be clear that no peaceful protest should ever be met with violence and no peaceful protesters should ever be locked up and charged with crimes, some of them capital crimes. Can the Foreign Secretary make it clear today that the Iranian regime’s actions over the past fortnight cannot and must not be used as an excuse by the White House to reintroduce sanctions following next week’s deadline and jeopardise the Iran nuclear deal?
Boris Johnson
I agree very much with the sentiments with which the hon. Gentleman began. It is vital that the people of Iran and the Government of Iran should understand that we in this country support the right to peaceful demonstration within the law. We communicated that message very clearly. It is also important that the JCPOA should continue and that that agreement, which prevents the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons in exchange for greater economic partnership with the rest of the world, remains useful and valid. We continue to urge our friends in the White House not to throw it away.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Foreign Secretary see, as I do, some parallels and similarities between the situation in Iran now and the situation in the former Soviet Union in its declining years? Does he agree that a combination of deterrence, containment and constant pressure over human rights issues is the right one to achieve a similar outcome?
Boris Johnson
I do agree with my right hon. Friend. Our approach must be extremely circumspect, guarded and tough, but we should also be in the business of encouraging reformers and progressives in Iran who are capable of taking that country forward in a different direction, as Mikhail Gorbachev and others expressed the hopes of many people in their country, in a different way.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
My priorities for the new year include taking forward Britain’s response to the crisis in Yemen, where we support Saudi Arabia’s right to defend its security while insisting that millions receive the aid that they desperately need. In April, Commonwealth leaders will gather in London for one of the biggest summits that this country has ever hosted, demonstrating the unrivalled network of friendships of a global Britain. Later in the year, as I have said, we will co-host a summit on tackling the illegal wildlife trade.
Tim Loughton
Mr Speaker, I wish you and the Foreign Secretary a happy new year. Through the Inter-Parliamentary Union, along with other hon. Members, I recently met Ministers from Madagascar, including the President, who expressed a desire for Madagascar, which is currently the president of the African francophone nations, to become a member of the Commonwealth. As he noted, Commonwealth countries in Africa seem to be doing much better, politically and financially, than others. What measures is the Foreign Secretary taking to encourage Madagascar and other countries without British colonial links to establish close relations with the UK and the Commonwealth, especially after Brexit?
Boris Johnson
I am delighted to hear the news from Madagascar from my hon. Friend, and I certainly hope that it is correct that Madagascar will pursue that, although the procedures with the Commonwealth secretariat must of course be followed, as he would expect. I gather that several countries in Africa are now queueing up to join the Commonwealth.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
President Trump’s biographer, Michael Wolff, has said that the President’s only interest in a state visit is the opportunity to “Trumpalize the Queen”. I have literally no idea what that means, but will the Secretary of State please save Her Majesty from that unpleasant-sounding ordeal and cancel this wretched visit?
Boris Johnson
I think Her Majesty the Queen is well capable of taking this or any American President in her stride, as she has done over six remarkable decades. She has seen them come and she has seen them go. If the hon. Lady seeks advice on whether to invite the President of the United States to visit this country—she will remember that we are very close allies—I invite her to ask the person next to her, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who said only last year:
“I think we have to welcome the American President to Britain. We have to work with him.”
Those are the words of the right hon. Lady.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
Boris Johnson
As my hon. Friend rightly says, we do not normally comment on such matters, but in this particular case GCHQ made it clear last year that the allegations are “nonsense”, stating:
“They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.”
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
The Foreign Secretary recently commented on the immeasurable contribution of this country, and the RAF in particular, to combating extremism in the middle east. However, does he agree that our pausing reluctance to intervene in the first place diminished us and our standing in the region, leading to many more deaths, and that never again should Britain, with all we can offer, be reduced to standing on the sidelines while extremists and despots kill hundreds of thousands of people with impunity?
Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend speaks for many in this House who now regret what happened in 2013 and our failure to stand by our red lines, because many more deaths have occurred than would otherwise have happened.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
Violence in Iran has escalated. Does the Foreign Secretary share my concern about the reports that 450 Iranians may have been arrested for taking to the streets against a regime that brutalises women and oppresses religious minorities?
Boris Johnson
As I said earlier, I have made it absolutely clear to the Iranian authorities that we believe in and support the right of the people of Iran to demonstrate peacefully in accordance with the law. I will continue to make that point to my Iranian counterparts later this week.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Boris Johnson
Most sensible commentators would say it is vital that this Government perform and act overseas as one HMG, and that is what we are doing.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
The Iranian people quite rightly pride themselves on their educational attainment. How does banning the teaching of the English language in Iranian schools help future generations?
Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course banning the teaching of English does nothing to help future generations of Iranians. On the contrary, it is likely to impoverish them, and it is something we deeply discourage.
Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s first visit here as President next week, will my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary reaffirm the importance of a continuing, deep and close relationship between the UK and France? Does he agree that the relationship must get stronger after Brexit, not weaker?
Boris Johnson
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The relationship between Britain and France is of huge and historic importance, and it has been intensifying over recent years, particularly in the sphere of defence and security co-operation, following the Lancaster House agreement. I hope he will be pleased by some of the developments and announcements that we will be making on 18 January.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Will the Foreign Secretary update the House on what discussions, if any, he has had with the Government of Mauritius following the overwhelming decision of the UN General Assembly last year to refer the question of decolonisation and self-determination of the Chagos islands?
Boris Johnson
As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, we believe this case to be without merit and will continue to contest it.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend and his colleagues continue their very important support of the political process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018?
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
Why are the Government taking legal advice on suing the European Union for preparing to treat Britain as a third country from March 2019 when that is the express intention of UK Government policy?
Boris Johnson
As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman and his constituents would want, we intend to get a superb new relationship, a new deep and special partnership, with our friends and partners in the EU. That is the objective of the negotiations now under way.
Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)
Can the Foreign Secretary confirm that the United States remains our closest ally and that the special relationship rests on more than just leaders’ personalities—it rests on trade, close military alliances and a shared view of the world?
Boris Johnson
I could not have put it better myself, and I commend again to the House the shadow Foreign Secretary’s wise words that it was the right thing to do to invite the President of the United States to visit this country.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
In response to Kim Jong-un, President Trump, who is apparently “really smart” and a “stable genius” to boot, tweeted:
“I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
What does President Trump have to say or tweet in order for any invitation to visit the UK, for any wedding or otherwise, to be withdrawn?
Boris Johnson
If I understood the hon. Gentleman’s question correctly, he wishes to rescind the invitation to the President of the United States. I do not believe that is sensible. The US is our closest, most important security and economic partner, and will continue to be so.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Given events in Iran, is it not time that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was a proscribed organisation, with its assets frozen worldwide?
Boris Johnson
I appreciate the sentiment that my hon. Friend expresses. The IRGC clearly does not represent the forces of progress in Iran to which I was alluding earlier. We keep its status for sanctions purposes under continuous review.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
The situation in Jammu and Kashmir is a human outrage on a regular basis, and the tension between Pakistan and India is threatening world peace. Will the Foreign Secretary use the opportunity of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting to bring our good friends Pakistan and India together and move a peace process forward?
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State place in the Commons Library details of the number of UK nationals who have been deported back to the UK on suspicion of terrorism in supporting Daesh in Iraq and Syria?
Several hon. Members rose—
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Thank you very much for your kindness, Mr Speaker. The Muslim Brotherhood is a well-financed organisation, and before Christmas the Foreign Secretary made a statement along the lines of, “I will scrutinise their visa applications into the United Kingdom.” What action has been taken as a result of that scrutiny?
Boris Johnson
In addition to looking harder at the visa applications, we are looking harder at the engagement of the Muslim Brotherhood and its associates in charities in this country. I would be happy, pursuant to the answer I gave just a moment ago, to supply further details to the hon. Gentleman of what we are doing in respect of Muslim Brotherhood visas.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
The Foreign Secretary is beetling to the Box. If he wishes to stand up at the Box to offer us a product of his lucubrations, we will be happy to hear it.
Boris Johnson
I am not exactly sure what is in order here, but doubtless you will guide me, Mr Speaker. I must redirect the right hon. Lady and indeed the House to her words of 14 May 2017 on the “The Andrew Marr Show”, when she said:
“I think we have to welcome the American President to Britain. We have to work with him.”
I rest my case. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I think honour is served. The shadow Foreign Secretary has offered us her thoughts and the Foreign Secretary has, with some alacrity, beetled back to the Box in order to respond. I think we should, at least for today, leave it there.
National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security: Annual Report
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together with the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, are today publishing the 2017 annual report on progress against the UK’s third National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.
Published on 12 June 2014 (HC Deb, 16 June 2014, c. 72-4WS) the National Action Plan sets out the Government’s objectives on the Women, Peace and Security agenda for the period 2014-2017. It provides the direction to our work to put women and girls at the centre of conflict prevention, response and resolution.
The report published today outlines our progress against the National Action Plan over the last 12 months, including our work in our six focus countries of Afghanistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Somalia and Syria as well as an overview of our wider progress on the Women, Peace and Security agenda over the three year life of the National Action Plan and the commitments we made in October 2015 at the UN Security Council High Level Review of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.
The progress report has been published on gov.uk. I am placing electronic copies in the Parliamentary Libraries.
[HCWS363]
Daesh
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
Daesh no longer holds significant territory in Iraq or Syria. Thanks to the courage and resolve of the Iraqi Security Forces, our partners in Syria and the unwavering support of the 74 member global coalition, in which we play a leading role, millions of people have been liberated from Daesh’s control in both Iraq and Syria.
Daesh is failing, but not yet beaten. It continues to pose a threat to Iraq from across the Syrian border and as an insurgent presence. It is also a global terrorist network. Daesh has the ability to plan and inspire terrorist attacks at home and abroad. Therefore, we will act to protect the UK and our allies, as long as necessary.
We must be prepared for Daesh to change its form by returning to its insurgent roots and making ever stronger efforts to lure more adherents to its ideology. So we will continue to tackle Daesh on simultaneous fronts, which includes preventing the return of foreign terrorist fighters to their country of origin, including the UK and Europe. We will continue to degrade Daesh’s poisonous propaganda, decrease its ability to generate revenue and deny it a safe haven online.
It is vital that we also address the underlying causes of Daesh’s rise. To truly defeat Daesh requires long-term work to address the grievances it feeds off.
That is why we will continue to work with and support the Government of Iraq in their efforts to deliver the reforms and reconciliation needed to rebuild public trust in the Iraqi state and unite all Iraqis against extremism, including by giving them the security, jobs and opportunities they deserve.
In Syria, Assad created the space for Daesh by releasing extremist prisoners and by causing untold suffering to his people. His brutality is evident in the siege and bombardment of almost 400,000 people in eastern Ghouta, which is a replication of the Aleppo siege this time last year. We remain committed to securing a political settlement that ends the conflict and brings about a transition away from Assad. To this end, we welcome the agreement in Riyadh of a new Syrian opposition negotiating team and the resumption of UN-mediated peace talks in Geneva this month.
The ranks of the global coalition continue to grow as more and more countries answer the call to action against Daesh. We will continue to take whatever steps are necessary to protect the British people and our allies.
[HCWS343]
Oman, UAE and Iran
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
With your permission, Mr Speaker, and following my undertaking to the House, I will make a statement about my visit to the middle east, from where I returned this morning.
This is a crucial time in the region. On the one hand we have a moment of hope, with scores of countries having come together to break the grip of Daesh on Iraq and Syria. Britain’s armed forces have played a proud role in a military campaign that has freed millions, and Iraq’s Government declared on Saturday that all their territory had been liberated. During her successful visit to Iraq last month, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister thanked the British servicemen and women who have helped to bring about the territorial defeat of Daesh. In Jordan, she reaffirmed Britain’s absolute commitment to the peace and stability of one of our closest allies in the region. However, the setbacks inflicted upon Daesh have coincided with a dangerous escalation of the war in Yemen, where one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world is now unfolding.
This morning I returned from my first bilateral visit as Foreign Secretary to Oman, the UAE and Iran. My aim was to take forward Britain’s response, diplomatic and economic, to the crisis in Yemen. The Government strongly believe that the only way to bring this tragic conflict to an end is through a political solution. His Majesty Sultan Qaboos of Oman, whom I met in Muscat last Friday, entirely shared this analysis. The sultan and I discussed in detail the tragedy in Yemen, with which Oman shares a 180-mile border. We also agreed on the importance of settling the dispute between Qatar and its neighbours, and I was pleased to see that the summit of the Gulf Co-operation Council went ahead in Kuwait last week.
From Muscat I travelled to Tehran, where I met Iran’s senior leadership including President Rouhani, Vice-President Salehi and the Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif. I was frank about the subjects where our countries have differences of interest and approach, but our talks were constructive none the less.
The latest chapter of Britain’s relations with Iran opened with the achievement of the nuclear deal, the joint comprehensive plan of action, in July 2015. In every meeting, I stressed that the UK attaches the utmost importance to preserving this agreement. For the JCPOA to survive, Iran must continue to restrict its nuclear programme in accordance with the deal, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has verified Iran’s compliance so far, and other parties must keep their side of the bargain by helping the Iranian people to enjoy the economic benefits of re-engagement with the world.
The House knows of Iran’s disruptive role in conflicts across the region, including in Syria and Yemen. Our discussions on these subjects were frank and constructive, although neither I nor my Iranian counterparts would claim that we reached agreement on all issues. If we are to resolve the conflict in Yemen, Houthi rebels must stop firing missiles at Saudi Arabia. The House will recall that King Khalid International airport in Riyadh—Saudi Arabia’s equivalent of Heathrow—was the target of a ballistic missile launched from Yemen on 4 November. I pressed my Iranian counterparts to use their influence to ensure that these indiscriminate and dangerous attacks come to an end.
On bilateral issues, my first priority was the plight of the dual nationals behind bars. I urged their release on humanitarian grounds, where there is cause to do so. These are complex cases involving individuals considered by Iran to be their own citizens, and I do not wish to raise false hopes, but my meetings in Tehran were worthwhile, and while I do not believe it would be in the interests of the individuals concerned or their loved ones to provide a running commentary, the House can be assured that the Government will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to secure their release.
I also raised with Mr Zarif the official harassment of journalists working for BBC Persian and their families inside Iran. I brought up Iran’s wider human rights record, including how the regime executes more of its own citizens per capita than almost any other country. But where it is possible to be positive in our relations with Iran—for instance, by encouraging scientific, educational and cultural exchanges—we should be ready to be so.
I then travelled to Abu Dhabi for talks yesterday with the leaders of the UAE, focusing on the war in Yemen, joined by the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, and colleagues from the United States. We agreed on the importance of restoring full humanitarian and commercial access to the port of Hodeidah, which handles over 80% of Yemen’s food imports. We also agreed on the need to revive the political process, bearing in mind that the killing of the former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, by the Houthis may cause the conflict to become even more fragmented, and we discussed how best to address the missile threat from Yemen, welcoming the United Nations investigation into the origin of the weapons launched.
Our concern for the unspeakable suffering in Yemen should not blind us to the reality that resolving a conflict of this scale and complexity will take time and persistence, and success is far from guaranteed. But it is only by engagement with all the regional powers, including Iran, and only by mobilising Britain’s unique array of friendships in the middle east, that we stand any chance of making headway. I am determined to press ahead with the task, mindful of the human tragedy in Yemen, and I shall be meeting my Gulf and American colleagues again early in the new year. I commend this statement to the House.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for giving me advance sight of his statement. I also thank him for the obvious efforts that he has put in over recent days on these issues, which are of such great concern to this House and beyond.
Let us start, as we must, with the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. I have no wish to go over old ground concerning the Foreign Secretary’s remarks to the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is right that he has finally apologised for those remarks and admitted that he was wrong. It is also right that he has finally met Richard Ratcliffe, and that he has spent the weekend in the region attempting to atone for his mistake and get Nazanin released. We welcome the tentative progress that the Foreign Secretary has made in that regard. As Richard Ratcliffe himself put it,
“it doesn’t change the fundamentals but it makes the change in the fundamentals more likely.”
I appreciate that the Foreign Secretary cannot give a running commentary, but I should like to ask him two specific questions on this issue. First, did he seek meetings during his visit with representatives of the revolutionary courts, the Interior Ministry or the Ministry of Justice? In other words, did he seek to meet those who, in Richard Ratcliffe’s words, have the power to “change the fundamentals” in Nazanin’s case? Indeed, did he seek a meeting with Nazanin herself while he was there? Secondly, in the Foreign Secretary’s meetings with President Rouhani and others, did he make it perfectly clear to them personally that his comments to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which were widely publicised in the Iranian state media, had been mistaken?
Turning to the Iran nuclear deal, we welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary raised this issue, and he spoke for all of us in reassuring Iran that whatever other bilateral differences we may face, Britain will continue to honour our part in the nuclear deal as long as Iran continues to do the same. But of course, that is not where the real problem lies. As with so much else, the real problem lies in the White House. Can the Foreign Secretary tell us what the plan is now? What is the plan in relation to persuading President Trump to see sense and stop his senseless assault on the Iran deal? What is the plan to get President Trump back on board? Or is this yet another area in which the Government are forced to concede that they have no influence to wield?
Turning to Yemen, we welcome the fact that, as well as visiting Tehran, the Foreign Secretary visited Abu Dhabi and Oman and raised the issue of Yemen there as well. While we welcome the talks, we are bound yet again to ask the question: what is the plan now? What is the plan to get the blockades fully lifted and enable full access for humanitarian relief? What is the plan to secure a ceasefire agreement and make progress towards long-term political solutions? And where is the plan for a new United Nations Security Council resolution, 14 months since the UK first circulated its draft?
Last week, the UN Security Council cancelled its scheduled open meeting on Yemen, and instead held one in private. Britain’s representative, Jonathan Allen, said that a closed doors session was needed so that
“Council members could have a frank conversation”.
We appreciate that the best progress is often made behind closed doors, but the people of Yemen have been waiting for two years for any kind of progress and for any sort of hope of an end to the war and to their suffering. Instead, things just get worse and worse. Does the Foreign Secretary accept that people are tired of hearing that progress is being made behind the scenes, when things are getting ever worse on the ground? In the wake of his talks this weekend, in the wake of his meetings with the Quint, and in the wake of last week’s closed Security Council session, will he now spell out what the plan is for peace?
I am sure that many other regional security issues were discussed on the Foreign Secretary’s trip, from the tensions with Saudi Arabia to President Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, but may I ask specifically what conclusions he reached from his discussions on the prospects for a political solution to end the fighting in Syria? Is Iran ready to accept, as an outcome of the Astana process, that it will withdraw its forces from Syria, and will Hezbollah and the Shi’a militias do likewise, provided that President Assad is left in place, that all coalition forces are withdrawn, and that Syria is given international assistance with its reconstruction? If that is the case, will the UK Government accept that deal, despite the Foreign Secretary’s repeated assertion that President Assad has no place in the future government of Syria? If they will not accept that deal, will the Foreign Secretary tell us when it comes to the future of Syria, as on everything else that we have discussed today, what is his plan now?
Boris Johnson
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for the spirit in which she poses her questions. I can tell her that in Tehran I met Vice-President Salehi, the head of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, the Speaker of the Majlis Ali Larijani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and had long discussions with President Rouhani. In each of those conversations, I repeated the case for release on humanitarian grounds, where that is appropriate, of the difficult consular cases that we have in Iran, and that message was certainly received and understood. However, as I said to the House, it is too early to be confident about the outcome.
The right hon. Lady asked about the plan in Yemen, and she will understand that the plan certainly was until last Saturday that Ali Abdullah Saleh would be divided from the Houthis, which seemed to be the best avenue for progress. Indeed, Ali Abdullah Saleh was divided from the Houthis, but he then paid the ultimate price for his decision to go over to the coalition. We are left with a difficult and tense situation, and what we need to do now, the plan on which everybody is agreed, is to get Hodeidah open, first to humanitarian relief, to which the Saudis have agreed, but also to commercial traffic, too.
I heard the right hon. Lady’s question about the use of the UN Security Council. Resolution 2216 is still operative, but as penholders in the UN we keep the option of a new Security Council resolution under continuous review. It is vital that all parties understand, as I think they genuinely do in Riyadh, in Abu Dhabi and across the region, that there is no military solution to the disaster in Yemen. There is no way that any side can win this war. What we need now is a new constitution and a new political process, and that is the plan that the UK is in the lead in promoting. As I said to the right hon. Lady, we had meetings of the Quad last week, again last night in Abu Dhabi, and we will have a further meeting in early January.
As for the UK’s role in Syria, the right hon. Lady asked about the Astana process and whether it would be acceptable. Our view is that if there is to be a lasting peace in Syria that commands the support of all the people of that country, it is vital that we get the talks back to Geneva. I believe that that is the Labour party’s position. Indeed, I believe it was also the Labour party’s position that there could be no long-term future for Syria with President Assad. If that position has changed, I would be interested to hear about that. However, our view is that it is obviously a matter for the people of Syria, and we will be promoting a plan whereby they, including the 11 million or 12 million who have fled the country, will be given the chance to vote in free, fair, UN-observed elections to give that country a stable future.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I must pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the amount of effort that he has put in in the region—not only in the UAE and Oman, which are of course great friends of ours, but in Iran, where the situation is of course very difficult. He listed many of the people he met and kindly told us what he asked of them, so will he perhaps enlighten us as to what they asked of him?
Boris Johnson
I can summarise it by saying that what they really want is the kind of diplomatic energy and leadership that, as I was trying to explain to the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), the UK is supplying particularly in Yemen, where an appalling, catastrophic conflict has been going on for three years. The conflict is a scar on the conscience of humanity and, as she rightly said, we are penholders at the UN. We have a duty to Yemen, and we are in the lead on trying to bring the sides together to advance a political solution. As I told the House earlier, one of my reasons for going to both Oman and Iran is that we cannot ignore the role of those countries in advancing the cause of peace in Yemen.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
First, I add my thanks to the Foreign Secretary for going to Iran. I am glad he made clear our continued commitment to the nuclear deal, in divergence from President Trump.
Forgive me if I missed this in the Foreign Secretary’s response to the shadow Foreign Secretary, but did the Foreign Secretary make it crystal clear that his remarks to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs did not quite reflect why Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran? Did he make that clear to the Iranians when he met them?
On Yemen, the Foreign Secretary is right to highlight the devastating consequences of the war. Can he tell us a little more about the lifting of the blockade on the port of Hodeidah? A few more details on that would be helpful for the House. Did he make it clear to everyone he met that any tactic of “starvation or surrender” is abhorrent? Finally, did he commit to any increase in aid to Yemen at the end of the blockade?
Boris Johnson
The Iranians have always been clear, and indeed they were clear with me again, that none of my remarks in any context has had any bearing on any judicial proceedings in relation to any UK consular case.
As for the suggestion that starvation is being used as an instrument of warfare, that is indeed what I said in terms. What I said to our friends in the region is that, unless we sort this out, we run the risk that the judgment of history will deem that starvation has been used as an instrument for the prosecution of a war. That is not something that anybody wants to see, least of all the coalition forces, which have a legitimate task in hand. They are defending their own countries, and there is a UN resolution and a coalition supporting what they are doing.
In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about how much the UK Government are giving, I can tell him it is currently running at £155 million, and the sum is under continual review.
Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
May I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on his trip? I agree with him that it is absolutely essential that we maintain energetic engagement with all the regional powers, particularly Iran, and use our very considerable diplomatic expertise and influence to resolve what he rightly says are problems that cannot be solved by war and must be solved by diplomacy. Finally, will he pay a warm tribute to the British armed forces that, collectively, have played the most remarkable and yet unsung role in the defeat of Daesh?
Boris Johnson
I warmly thank my right hon. Friend for his tribute to our armed forces. I have heard it echoed many times in my travels overseas, nowhere more than in the middle east, where they understand that we are the second biggest contributor to the war against Daesh in terms of the aerial bombardment, which has now been successful. Although that is not the end of the conflict with Daesh—it is not the end of the struggle—we should pay tribute to what our armed forces have achieved so far.
Several hon. Members rose—
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s visit and his discussions on Yemen. Death continues to hang over Yemen—death from the humanitarian crisis; death from the escalating bombings; and death from the fighting that has now broken out between supporters of former President Saleh and the Houthis. In the 14 days between now and Christmas, another 1,802 Yemeni children will die from preventable causes unless we take action. Is the Foreign Secretary now saying to me that Iran is welcome to sit at the conference table in order to progress peace talks? In my discussions in Riyadh recently with the Saudi Foreign Minister and the President of Yemen, they were very clear that they did not see a role for Iran. Will the Foreign Secretary also confirm that when the President of Yemen comes to Britain next week the Prime Minister will see him, contrary to the advice given by the British ambassador to Yemen, who said that the Prime Minister has no time to see the President?
Boris Johnson
I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman’s vast learning on the subject of Yemen, and he is entirely right to say that there is a critical situation in Sana’a, where the Houthis are, in effect, trying to wipe out the supporters of Saleh—the General People’s Congress—or bring them over entirely to their side. One thing we must achieve is preserving a plurality of political voices in Yemen if we possibly can, which is one reason why we want to move forward with the talks I have described. To prevent further starvation and suffering, it is essential to get supplies flowing through Hodeidah, but to do that we must help to reassure the Saudis and others that that port is not being used to smuggle weaponry and to support those who are attacking civilians. That is one of the jobs in which the Government are now engaged. As for the forthcoming visit by the President of Yemen, I will undertake, on behalf of the right hon. Gentleman, to discuss with the Prime Minister her timetable, and will revert to him as soon as is convenient.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that maintaining an ever-closer relationship with Saudi Arabia is very important in developing stability in the region?
Boris Johnson
I would agree with that, and I thank my hon. Friend for that point. As I have said many times to the House, we should note the progress that Saudi Arabia is making; the “Vision 2030” that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has announced and is pursuing is full of hope for that country. What a transformation it would be for the region if the custodian of the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina could make the kind of progress that he envisages—it could be transformational. No one could remotely say that is going to be easy, or that the project has no enemies, because it sure as heck has enemies, but it deserves support, and it will get the support and encouragement of this Government. We hope that the Crown Prince will be able to visit this country next year.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
There are two immediate things this country should do. First, it should stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, as that has simply fuelled what is going on in Yemen. Secondly, it should pay to Iran the money we owe it in debt—perhaps the Foreign Secretary has agreed to do that. I hope we can thus see the release of the dual nationals—Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and others who are held in Iran and should be released. Will the Foreign Secretary share with us whether he attempted to see Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Did he ask to see those people? Was he refused? What exactly was the situation?
Boris Johnson
I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady, who has been a great campaigner on humanitarian issues throughout the middle east. I must say, though, that I disagree with her on this issue, as she knows. We in the UK have the strictest possible rules and laws on the administration of our arms exports to ensure that they are used only in compliance with international humanitarian law. Were the UK to abstract itself from that scene, there would be plenty of other countries that would be only too happy to fill the void and we would lose our ability to engage and influence in the way I have described.
On the right hon. Lady’s point about debts, we acknowledge the debts that we have and it is a matter of public Government policy to try to settle them. As she knows, there are legal and technical obstacles to be overcome. I should stress that those issues have nothing to do with the difficult consular cases we face. As for the contacts I had with the family members of any of those involved in our consular cases, it would probably be better if I respected their privacy.
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)
In the light of my right hon. Friend’s recent visits abroad, will he confirm to the House that the welfare and wellbeing of Britons abroad remains of paramount importance to his Department?
Boris Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, because although he may not know it, every year the Foreign and Commonwealth Office deals with around 20,000 consular cases, of which the ones mentioned today are only some of the most difficult. I was very pleased to see the release of the Chennai six the other day. Their relatives were not necessarily happy with the help they thought they had received from the FCO, and I noticed plenty of criticism in the media about the handling of that case, but I have to tell the House that I know that there were 50 conversations between Ministers of this Government and the Indian Government, including at least two conversations that the Prime Minister herself had, to seek the release of the Chennai six. When we look overall at the efforts made by our consular service, I really think that people should be proud of what the FCO is doing.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
The Foreign Secretary is right to say how shocking the war in Yemen is: the humanitarian catastrophe there is on a biblical scale. Will he tell the House what discussions he had with Sultan Qaboos bin Said about how to end the conflict in Yemen? What role does he see Oman playing in bringing about peace?
Boris Johnson
It was a privilege to talk at great length to His Majesty the Sultan Qaboos. Indeed, our conversations went on until, I think, 2.30 in the morning. There is no question but that Oman, with its long history, its wisdom and its understanding of the region, can play a very important role in bringing together the sides in Yemen. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the relationship between the United Kingdom and Oman is possibly one of the most extraordinary that this country has with any country in the world outside Europe.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary’s visit and, as vice-chairman of the all-party group on Oman, I particularly welcome his visit to Muscat. Following on from what he just said about his visit and his audience with His Majesty Sultan Qaboos, will the Foreign Secretary reaffirm the importance of the UK’s deep, broad and long-standing relationship with the Sultanate of Oman, which is based on mutual trust and respect, and will he reaffirm our continued commitment to that special relationship?
Boris Johnson
Yes. I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am sure he knows that Oman is one of the few countries in the world where British men and women—officers—serve in uniform in another country. I must check whether women serve in Oman—I would not want to swear to that, now that I come to think of it—but we certainly have British serving personnel in British uniform in Oman. The Sultan himself has proposed that there should be a reciprocal arrangement, and we are only too happy to look into that.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary is correct that the only way forward and out of the tragedy for Yemen is a political solution, but a big stumbling block in the way of that is the supply of weaponry by Iran to not just the Houthis but other groups in Yemen. Will he explain what reaction he got in raising that issue when he was in Iran?
Boris Johnson
That is a good question. I am absolutely certain that I raised that issue with every single one of my interlocutors. I made it absolutely clear that our country was horrified that weapons supplied by Iran should be directed at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia. I must say that my suggestions were greeted not with acceptance but denial—it was not a point that was accepted—and I was obliged to return several times to the fray. I came away fortified in my belief that the Iranian presence in Yemen has increased, not diminished, as a result of the conflict there. That is all the more reason to bring that conflict to an end, which will mean engagement with Iran.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his real engagement with these issues, particularly Yemen. I encourage him to strain every sinew over the next days and weeks, irrespective of holiday periods, to ensure that the potential catastrophe is averted. He will do a huge amount for the cause of the suffering people of Yemen if he and his colleagues can pay attention daily to that tragedy.
Boris Johnson
I can tell my hon. Friend that this is now not just the top priority for the Foreign Office, but something on which we are working together with our friends in the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development; my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) is a doubled-hatted Minister, serving both DFID and the Foreign Office, where he has charge of the crisis in Yemen. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) will see increased British engagement on this issue throughout Whitehall.
Several hon. Members rose—
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sister-in-law lives in my constituency, and local people have presented me with a petition for her release. May I press the Foreign Secretary directly? Did he request to see her personally, so that he could judge of her mental and physical wellbeing?
Boris Johnson
I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the Iranian Government do not recognise the dual national system that we have, and therefore do not give consular access. As for other members of the Zaghari-Ratcliffe family, it would be better if I said that I think their privacy should be respected.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his update. When he spoke about the case of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was he able to remind those he spoke to that a very small, fragile child is involved in this as well? My constituents write to me about that, asking me to remind the Foreign Secretary of it.
Boris Johnson
I am grateful to both my hon. Friend and her constituents. That is, I hope, one of the considerations that will be uppermost in the minds of those in Iran who are pondering the case.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
When I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament, a group of visiting Iranian MPs suggested the establishment of a formal academic link between the University of Qom in Iran and either the University of Edinburgh or my alma mater, St Andrews. I was advised very strongly not to dream of making that suggestion to the Foreign Office, but today things are different. Would the Foreign Secretary be willing to look into that type of academic arrangement and, indeed, consider taking the idea forward?
Boris Johnson
In my meeting with Vice-President Salehi, as in all such meetings, there were some pretty feisty exchanges. As I said in an earlier answer, there were areas in which there was, frankly, absolutely no agreement, but on the promotion of cultural or academic exchanges, there is scope for progress. I would like to see such progress, so if the hon. Gentleman would be kind enough to send his project to us, we will certainly take a look at it.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for giving us an update about his visit to Iran. I am pleased to hear that he raised the plight of dual nationals and called for their release on humanitarian grounds, but what response did he get from the President of Iran, and other authorities, when he pressed for the release of my constituent, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Does he have any indication of what the authorities think about the recent prison health assessments made of Nazanin and her fitness to remain in prison in Iran?
Boris Johnson
Again, I thank the hon. Lady for her persistent campaigning on this issue. It would probably be best if I said that, yes, of course I raised the humanitarian concerns in a number of consular cases, and that those concerns were taken on board, but it would be wrong to give a running commentary or report about exactly what the Iranian side said in each case.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Foreign Secretary both for his statement and for his hard work. One hundred and ninety-three Christians were imprisoned or arrested in Iran in 2016. Has he been able to engage with officials on Christian persecution in Iran, and has he secured any result on that?
Boris Johnson
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. That is something that is regularly raised both by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East, and by our ambassador, Nick Hopton, in Tehran. The treatment of Christians and Baha’is is a matter of deep concern for this Government, and it is something that we will continue to raise.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
I welcome the statement. Does the Secretary of State feel that journalists in the middle east and their families can sleep safer following his visit?
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.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I also thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement to the House. We have seen protests in this country and throughout the Muslim world against the statement that President Donald Trump made. What discussions has the Foreign Secretary had with these countries on taking forward the process between Israel and Palestine?
Boris Johnson
Both the Prime Minister and I have made it clear that we do not agree with what President Trump said about Jerusalem. We do not agree with his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and we do not agree with his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. What the Prime Minister said was welcomed in the region. I found a wide measure of knowledge and appreciation of the UK’s position. We want to encourage our American friends to come forward with the long-awaited plans, which have been gestating, for the middle east peace process. That is the symmetry that the world wants to see from the Trump Administration. In the context of this recognition of Jerusalem, now is the time to bring forth those plans and to do something symmetrical to advance the middle east peace process.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
Although we welcome the progress that the Foreign Secretary reported this weekend, may I ask him whether he pressed the Iranian authorities to allow Richard Ratcliffe into Iran, so that if Nazanin cannot be home for Christmas, he at least will be able to visit her and see the state that she is in?
Boris Johnson
Tempting though it is to go into the details of our discussions on each of these consular cases, given the sensitivity and difficulty of our conversations, it would be better if we just said that we continue to ask for the cases to be treated in the humanitarian way that they deserve, and for those people to be released as soon as possible.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Following on from an earlier question that the Foreign Secretary answered directly, did he personally raise with the Iranian authorities the plight of Christians and other minority religions?
Boris Johnson
To the best of my recollection, the matter did not come up directly in my conversations, but the subject is raised continuously both by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East and by Nick Hopton in Tehran.
Chemical Weapons: Syria
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
I wish to make a statement about the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)—UN joint investigative mechanism.
We condemn the use of chemical weapons by anyone, anywhere. It is of great concern that chemical weapons attacks against civilians in Syria have continued, four years after the Syrian regime used sarin in Ghouta to such horrific effect in 2013.
The UN Security Council has made clear repeatedly, in resolutions 2118 (2013), 2209 (2015), and 2235 (2015), that there would be consequences for those responsible for using chemical weapons in Syria. The Security Council thus sent a clear signal that all chemical weapons attacks in Syria must cease.
On 26 October the joint investigative mechanism (JIM) issued its report on its investigation into the incident in Khan Sheikhoun of 4 April 2017 (available at www.un.org as document reference S/2017/904). When I updated the House in April I said that the Assad regime almost certainly gassed its own people, in breach of international law and the rules of war. Nearly 100 people died and hundreds more were injured in that terrible attack. Six months later the JIM concluded that it was
“confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin”
at Khan Sheikhoun. The JIM also concluded that it was
“confident that ISIL is responsible for the use of sulfur mustard”
at Um Housh on 15 and 16 September 2016. The JIM’s report is the result of a painstaking, independent investigation by UN investigators.
These were not isolated incidents. The JIM had already found that the regime used chlorine as a chemical weapon on at least three separate occasions in 2014 and 2015 and that Daesh used sulphur mustard once in 2015. The OPCW reported on 2 November that sarin was more than likely used on 30 March in Ltamenah, only 15 miles from Khan Sheikhoun. The OPCW continues to investigate further reports of alleged chemical attacks by both Daesh and the Syrian regime. It also continues to investigate “gaps, inconsistencies and inaccuracies” in Syria’s declaration of its chemical weapons programme.
I was appalled to see Russia veto three times the attempts by the UN Security Council to continue the JIM’s investigations. Those votes, bringing Russia’s vetoes on Syria to a total of 11, demonstrated Russia’s overriding determination to protect its allies in the Syrian regime, whatever the crimes committed. Despite the fact that, in 2013, Russia said it had secured Syria’s agreement to destroy all its chemical weapons, Syria has continued to use them. Russia’s response to four confirmed chemical attacks by the Syrian regime and two by Daesh is to shut down further investigation.
The UK has been at the forefront of international efforts to ensure that reports of attacks are properly investigated and those responsible identified. The UK was proud to have supported both the JIM and the OPCW’s fact finding mission, including contributing funding to the OPCW’s Syria trust funds, for destruction, verification and investigative activities. And we responded to the request for assistance from the investigators by sharing information which underpinned the conclusions the UK had reached nationally and which I set out to the House in April.
We will not let Russia’s actions to close down the JIM stop our efforts to uphold international law prohibiting the use of chemical weapons, and to identify and bring to justice those who violate that law. We fully support the OPCW’s ongoing investigations, and other investigations into crimes committed in Syria, such as the UN Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry and the UN General Assembly’s international impartial and independent mechanism (IIIM). Working with our partners on the UN Security Council and in other fora, we will actively seek to hold to account those responsible for using chemical weapons and prevent such attacks happening again.
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Developments in Zimbabwe
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 12 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
Since I updated the House on 15 November there have been historic developments in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe’s 37-year rule came to an end on 21 November, sparking joyous celebrations as Zimbabweans looked forward to the opportunity for a brighter future.
The UK’s objective has remained constant throughout these dramatic developments. We want to support the people of Zimbabwe in building a democratic, stable and prosperous country. The only way for Zimbabwe to achieve a legitimate Government is through free and fair elections held in accordance with the constitution. We stand ready to support a legitimate Government to rebuild their beautiful country, working alongside our international and regional partners, with whom we are already engaging in order to lead the response.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was inaugurated on 24 November, has stated that this marks the beginning of a “new unfolding democracy” in Zimbabwe. He must now demonstrate his sincerity by delivering political and economic reform. In particular, he must hold an election in which all Zimbabweans can participate without fear of intimidation or violence. A transition from one despotic ruler to another would be a tragedy for Zimbabwe and its people.
The process of democratisation and economic recovery will be led by Zimbabweans. The Minister for Africa visited Harare on 23 and 24 November and met with actors from across the political spectrum to discuss the transition to democracy. He made clear to the incoming Administration that the UK stands ready to play a key role in support Zimbabwe’s recovery, but only on the basis of genuine political and economic reforms, including respect for human rights and the rule of law. In this moment of hope for Zimbabwe, the UK will be looking for tangible indications of progress.
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Budget Resolutions
Boris Johnson Excerpts(6 years, 12 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
I know that the whole House will join me in sending our warmest congratulations to Prince Harry of Wales and Meghan Markle on the announcement of a union that will make the royal family even more global, and Britain more global than ever before.
I am delighted to open the Budget debate. The driving purpose of this Government is to strengthen Britain’s global role, to raise our level of national ambition and to prepare for the opportunities before us when this country regains the power to decide our trade policy and strike our own trade deals. As that moment approaches, the House should focus on the salient fact that 80% of the global economy and 90% of world economic growth lies outside of the European Union. The countries of Asia and the middle east have been increasing their relative weight in the global economy for decades, so that the great arteries of world trade are thousands of miles from our continent. Every day, fleets of supertankers carrying 17 million barrels of oil ply the strait of Hormuz, and a quarter of the world’s maritime trade passes through the strait of Malacca in south-east Asia.
Boris Johnson
As I am sure the hon. Gentleman is about to remind us, we are going to create a new, deep and special partnership with our friends and partners in the EU, but Britain is uniquely placed to thrive and prosper in a globalised economy.
Mike Gapes
Given that even the Foreign Secretary does not have the power to change geography, what is he going to do to relocate the United Kingdom from Europe—being linked to the European land mass—to south-east Asia or the middle of the Pacific?
Boris Johnson
I think that most hon. Members who are listening to the exordium of my speech will appreciate that that is an entirely ludicrous question, since I pointed out, just as the hon. Gentleman rose to his feet, that we are going to make a new, deep and special partnership with our friends in the European Union in addition to the exciting growth opportunities that await us around the world. By history and by instinct, Britain is an outward-looking and free-trading nation, and all we need to flourish is the determination to grasp the opportunities around us. This Budget is designed to equip a global Britain for that challenge.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
In terms of grasping opportunities, does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that one in 12 people on this planet is an Indian under the age of 28? Does he agree that that is where the future lies, that that is where the opportunities for this country lie and that we can forge a trade relationship with those people only outside the customs union?
Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I might point out to him as well that India is just one of 52 Commonwealth nations that together comprise 2.4 billion people and some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with whom we can now do free trade deals, as he rightly says, outside the customs union. We will be strengthened in that endeavour by being able to build on the success—
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Will the Foreign Secretary give way?
Boris Johnson
I will give way in a moment, as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will want to hear these points.
We will be able to build on the success of an economy that has grown for 19 quarters in a row, contrary to what the right hon. Gentleman prophesied, with unemployment that has fallen to its lowest level for 42 years and with 3 million new jobs since 2010—one of the best records in the whole of Europe—and we are forecast to create another 600,000 by 2020.
This Budget will take forward our national success by helping Britain to compete in the industries of the future —robotics, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor is overseeing the biggest increase in science and innovation spending for 40 years, investing another £2.3 billion to keep Britain at the forefront of the technological revolution.
Boris Johnson
With pleasure. As the right hon. Gentleman knows full well, when we leave the European Union, there will be at least £350 million a week, of which we will take back control. As he knows full well, substantial sums from that funding will be available for use in our national health service. If he seriously believes that money should be squandered on ill-audited projects around Europe, he is not expressing the will of the British people.
Several hon. Members rose—
Boris Johnson
If I may, I will make a little more progress.
The right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that a new tech business is being created in Britain every hour, and we are dedicating another £500 million to initiatives ranging from 5G mobile communications to full fibre broadband networks.
This Budget presses on with the most ambitious renewal of our national infrastructure in living memory, including the biggest programme of improvements to our road network since the 1970s and the biggest expansion of our railways since Victorian times, with Crossrail comprising the largest construction project in Europe, to say nothing of High Speed 2, the second biggest.
But we cannot prosper at home unless Britain plays our indispensable role in maintaining the stability and security of the world. It is the right thing to do, but it also means that global Britain is of direct benefit to all our constituents. Millions of British jobs depend on the benign and transformative power of free trade. Last year, we sold goods and services worth almost £100 billion to the United States. Our exports rely, therefore, on other countries being rich and peaceful enough to buy our British products.
When the Department for International Development invests £4 billion in development in Africa, we do this, and we are proud to do this, because it is right in itself and also because 70% of Africans are under the age of 25, the population of their continent is set to double to 2.4 billion by 2050, and these are the great markets of the future.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
Last week I returned from the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar, where I heard of unspeakable crimes being committed against the Rohingya people. At this crucial time, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has had its budget slashed, and I am worried about the effect this will have on our ability to prevent future crimes against humanity. I would like to share my findings with the Secretary of State, so will he kindly agree to meet me to discuss the evidence of genocide in Myanmar?
Boris Johnson
I must, I am afraid, correct the hon. Lady. The budget of the Foreign Office is rising from £1.2 billion to £1.24 billion, and including our ODA—official development assistance—spending, it is going to be well over £2 billion every year. There has been no cut in Foreign Office spending whatever; I am afraid that that is absolutely untrue. We are seeing our spending increased rather than the reverse. I have had the opportunity to discuss the crisis in Rakhine and the plight of the Rohingya not just with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, who was there at the weekend, but with many hon. Friends across the House.
Boris Johnson
May I invite the hon. Lady to write to me about the matter and I will certainly do my best to give her a full answer? [Interruption.] I am afraid that, as she can imagine, my diary is very heavily congested. [Interruption.] She importunes me for a meeting. It would be wrong of me—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Hon. Members must not shout at the Foreign Secretary. He has given an answer to a question. People might not like the answer, but he has given an answer, as it is his duty to do, and it does not work to shout at him.
Boris Johnson
It pains me to give any kind of negative answer to the hon. Lady, but I must tell her that my diary is very busy. I have had many meetings on the crisis in Rakhine and the Rohingya, and I am not at this stage able to consecrate the time that she wants from me. May I invite her to write to me and I will do my best to help her?
The reason the UK is one of the biggest donors to Bangladesh and to the solution of the crisis in Rakhine is that Burma, one day, will have a great future and we—our country—will be part of that future. When our soldiers and development experts are deployed in northern Nigeria—I have seen for myself the great work that they do—to help defeat the barbaric terrorists of Boko Haram, they are also helping to bring stability to a country rich in natural resources that will, by the middle of the century, have more people than the United States. When we strive to get girls into school in Pakistan, to unite the world behind Ghassan Salamé’s plan for a peaceful Libya, to improve the resilience of Bangladesh to flooding, to help Kenya to beat corruption, or to help tackle the problems of Somalia—all areas in which the UK, global Britain, is in the lead—we are doing the right thing for the world, but we are also investing in countries with huge potential, filled with the consumers of the future.
Our exports rely on shipping lanes and clear international rules enforced with rigour and fairness. We will not be so foolhardy as the Leader of the Opposition, who apparently believes that all this can be taken for granted and left to the good will of foreign powers.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
I am concerned that the Foreign Secretary might be moving on from the aid budget without mentioning a very good project that we are involved in—a finance initiative for women entrepreneurs that is helping women in the developing world to set up businesses, not only providing security and stability but enabling them in future to become trading partners with us.
Boris Johnson
I am delighted that my hon. Friend has made that valuable point. The emphasis that she places on women’s commercial potential and ability to drive the economy is absolutely right, and it is one of the reasons why all UK overseas effort is focused, above all, on the education of women and girls. I believe that that is the universal spanner that unlocks many of our problems.
We believe that the international rules-based system, on which our safety and prosperity depends, must be defended and upheld. To that end, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has ensured that Britain has the biggest defence and overseas aid budgets in Europe. The Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, DFID and our intelligence services will have a combined budget of £51.2 billion this year, allowing Britain to devote more resources than any other European country to safeguarding our interests and projecting our influence worldwide.
Today, the UK accounts for 13% of the EU’s population but 16% of its GDP, 21% of its defence spending and 25% of its spending on development aid. None of that will be lost to our European friends after we leave the EU, because, as the Prime Minister has said, our commitment to the defence and security of Europe was unconditional and immovable long before we joined the EU, and it will remain equally resolute after we leave.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Does the Foreign Secretary not recognise that there is a £20 billion to £30 billion black hole in the Ministry of Defence budget? What is the Budget doing about that?
Boris Johnson
As the hon. Gentleman knows full well, we are one of the few countries in Europe, or indeed in the world, committed to spending 2% of our GDP on defence. We are increasing our defence spending year on year, as the Chancellor confirmed in this Budget.
We are demonstrating our commitment by deeds as well as words. At this moment, Britain is providing almost a quarter of the troops in NATO’s “enhanced forward presence” in the Baltic states and Poland. I visited them in September, and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman does likewise. He will see a battlegroup of 800 personnel in Estonia, and it will make him proud. It was extraordinary to see the gratitude of the Government and the people of Estonia, because they see what Conservative Members understand: the people of Tallinn, Riga, Warsaw and Vilnius enjoy just as much protection from NATO as the residents of Berlin, Paris or London. It is right that they do, and they have an equal right to live in peace and freedom.
I say again that not only is a global Britain in our national interest, but we have an obligation to promote the general good. It is an astonishing fact that, when we include our overseas territories, this country is responsible —in addition to all the other aspects of global Britain that I have described—for 2.6 million square miles of ocean. That area is more than twice the size of India and 30 times bigger than the UK. Britain is responsible for a greater expanse of the world’s oceans than are Brazil, Canada or even China. It is possible that some hon. Members are unaware that one third of the world’s emperor penguins are British.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
As we are responsible for so much of the world’s oceans, is it really a good idea for the Royal Navy to have only 19 major warships?
Boris Johnson
I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave a moment or two ago in respect of the colossal investments that the Government and the country are making in our defence and armed services, of all kinds. We are spending 2.2% of GDP on defence, and very few other countries can match that record. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has noticed, but this country has only recently commissioned two of the biggest warships—each of them is longer than the Palace of Westminster—that this country has ever produced, which is a demonstration of our commitment to the Royal Navy.
Several hon. Members rose—
Boris Johnson
I will, if I may, complete my point about the penguins. The penguins have their British status by virtue of their residence in the British Antarctic Territory. We have the fifth biggest maritime estate in the world, giving us a special role in conserving the biodiversity of our seas.
Boris Johnson
I think I know what my hon. Friend is going to say, and I will happily give way to him on this point.
James Gray
My right hon. Friend is making some extremely important points, particularly about the Antarctic and the Southern ocean. Will he commit the Government to paying particular attention to marine protected areas around the Antarctic coast, which I think he strongly espouses, as do close relations of his?
Boris Johnson
My hon. Friend brilliantly anticipates the point I was going to make. As he rightly guesses, the Government’s policy is to encircle or, I should say, to engirdle the planet with a blue belt of marine protected areas embracing 1.5 million square miles of ocean by 2020.
Boris Johnson
Thank you.
The House will know that the careless disposal of plastic waste poses one of the gravest threats to marine life. That potentially lethal material, which is carried by the currents, is choking seabirds and imperilling whales. In 2015, the Government introduced a charge on plastic carrier bags, cutting their use in the UK by 80%, and avoiding the disposal of 9 billion carrier bags, many of which might otherwise have ended up in the oceans. From 1 January, we will ban the production of plastic microbeads, the strongest legal measure of its kind anywhere in the world. This Budget goes further by asking for evidence on how the Government could take more such steps, through new taxes and charges, to combat the menace of marine plastic pollution. That is because Britain’s ambitions must be global, as befits our responsibilities, history and tradition.
A global Britain is a safer Britain and a more prosperous Britain. It is profoundly in our interests that we should play the role of helping to guarantee the safety of countries far from our shores—
Several hon. Members rose—
Boris Johnson
With great respect, I will not give way.
As well as taking such actions, we should invest in the development of nations that may be poor today, but will be thriving markets for British exports. I venture to say not just that such an outcome will be good for those countries or for our country, but that the fruits of such investment by a global Britain will be good for the world. I commend this Budget to the House.