Civil Society Space

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 26th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

We have not looked at that specific case, but I thank the right hon. Gentleman for drawing it to my attention—we will do so.

Civil society helps by speaking out against the bad, such as corruption, impunity, service delivery failure and electoral fraud, and by promoting the good—identifying and articulating citizens’ development needs and priorities. I saw that when I was in remote Nepal with the Select Committee on International Development. There, UK aid workers were helping community groups, including women’s groups, to come together to prioritise the basic needs of their area—for example, the need for improved roads and bridges—so that those priorities could be conveyed to regional and then national Government for potential allocation of resources.

Civil society includes community groups such as I have mentioned, but also a hugely diverse range of other structures. Some are loose associations of people mobilised behind a common goal. Some are well-funded and well-organised charitable hierarchies or NGOs. Some campaign for change. Some want just to provide frontline help. In short, civil society is an extremely broad church—if I may use that metaphor. That makes it difficult to generalise about the trends affecting civil society.

The complexity and depth of analysis required really to get a handle on what is happening today does not make for easy headlines or neat, focused campaigns. That is one reason why we do not hear enough about it, and that is why I commend CAFOD and other organisations concerned about the issue, whose workers live and work in challenging environments where they see at first hand how civil society freedoms are being eroded, and then enable us to bring their concerns into this place.

Often, when civil society freedoms are being eroded, it is by creeping incrementalism. The subtle undermining of civil society freedoms is rarely accompanied by great fanfare. A new law may at first seem innocuous, but it might prove to have a devastating effect on civil society—an effect felt only later. We rarely notice these types of changes, so when they happen a sense of urgency is often not present.

I will reflect, in Holocaust Memorial Week, on one of the worst examples of incrementalism in the last century: the actions of the Nazis. At first, relatively small steps were taken, such as discouraging the reading of certain books or the keeping of them in one’s home. Then, employing a Jewish housemaid was banned. But where did that marginalisation and exclusion ultimately lead? To the gas chambers.

That is why we need to worry more than we do about what is happening to civil society across the world today. We should not be accused of being sensationalist, when we hear, for example, of an NGO being expelled from Egypt, Ethiopia or Cambodia. We should not assume that those are localised cases even though it is not immediately obvious that they may be part of a wider pattern. The sad reality is that events such as those do reflect a current global trend.

In 2016, the Mo Ibrahim index of African governance included for the first time a specific indicator for measuring civil society space. It captured the extent to which civil society actors are allowed to participate in the political process, as well as the freedom of NGOs to operate without fear of persecution or harassment. The concerning findings are that nearly half the African population live in a country in which civil society participation has deteriorated. Two thirds of the countries on that continent, representing 67% of the African population, have shown a deterioration in freedom of expression in the past 10 years.

The main thrust of my message today is not so much to point a finger at Government or Ministers to do more—I am sure that the Minister will be relieved to hear that, although I will not miss that opportunity—as to say that all of us, from individual citizens to elected representatives such as Members of Parliament to influential global institutions such as the World Bank, need to be vigilant, speak out and do more to protect the civil society space in which our brothers and sisters around the world are working to improve the lives of those around them. I referred to the World Bank because I had the privilege of attending the World Bank gathering in Washington last autumn, when a group of parliamentarians from across the world raised this issue. They said that the increasingly shrinking civil society space, including in many of their countries, really needs to be attended to and highlighted more.

Why do we hear reports of the shrinking space for civil society to function, not only in Africa but around the globe? I will suggest four trends that might help to provide a partial explanation and paint part of the picture for this complex and concerning global issue. First, and perhaps most alarmingly, there is the trend in certain countries for more frequent extrajudicial killings, detentions, torture and disappearances. From Thailand to Bangladesh, to Kenya, to Congo, to Saudi Arabia, violence is a daily reality for many civil society workers and volunteers. In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, kidnap by and violence from armed groups remains a daily risk.

According to the “Aid Worker Security Report 2014”—the most recent one that I am aware is available—120 aid workers were killed, 88 were wounded and 121 were kidnapped in the course of their work. Those are the highest figures ever recorded, and yet even they exclude many local people whose situations have gone unrecorded. Human rights violations and allegations include illegal rendition, such as that of Andy Tsege, whom several of us spoke about in this Chamber a short time ago. There is torture and the enforced disappearance of grassroots activists.

To highlight another example, I understand that the Irish citizen, Ibrahim Halawa, is now serving his fourth year in prison for taking part in peaceful democratic protest in Egypt. We are told that in this period, he has endured beatings with whips and chains, blindfolding, solitary confinement, electrocution and psychological torture. We are also told that when he was in solitary confinement, he was kept in a cell measuring half a metre by half a metre. It was impossible to lie down and he had to go to the toilet on his cell floor. We heard from the Egyptian authorities that he is to be released, but that has not happened yet. I hope that they will hear this debate and that his release will indeed happen.

It goes without saying that colleagues are united in condemning such abuses, but the connection to civil society freedoms is made too infrequently and inadequately. Such violations are each rooted in a willingness on the part of authorities to dispense with core human rights: the freedoms of association, expression, thought, and religion or belief. We hear so often of those freedoms being eroded—of people not being able to get a job and of planning permission not being granted to, for example, church organisations for buildings. All those freedoms are essential for a thriving civil society to exist. As I mentioned earlier in reference to the Nazi persecutions, the erosion of those freedoms is often where things start, but they end up with the kind of dreadful crimes against humanity, torture, imprisonment and deprivation that I referred to.

The second trend I shall highlight is the proliferation of restrictive legislation: the tendency for certain Governments to impose excessively onerous registration requirements, particularly on non-governmental organisations. That often targets legitimate action and impinges on civil society’s rights of freedom of expression, assembly and association. Some laws restrict the foreign funding of NGOs.

Another example of a restrictive requirement is that in Ethiopia, only 30% of an organisation’s costs can be spent on what is classed as administration. That has a very narrow definition, which severely limits civil society. Legislation in Cambodia has restricted civil society organisations from working on politics, limiting their ability to monitor elections or criticise corruption. Since January 2012, at least 120 laws have been enacted in more than 60 countries to restrict the ability of civil society organisations to register, raise funds or operate.

Organisations are straining to meet the increasingly onerous administrative demands of Governments. In many countries the registration of NGOs has become a lengthy, multi-stage process with uncertain timeframes for decisions. That all requires significant resources, which few organisations can afford. I have heard that in China, if a new NGO with international links wants to set up, they must partner with a domestic organisation, therefore increasing the Government’s ability to subject such groups to checks.

In some instances, organisations have been asked to comply with new regulations by a certain date. Failure to do so means that they are forcibly deregistered. We have heard that organisations are united in the belief that that is the way to silence dissenting voices. Some Government leaders justify the discrepancy by appealing to populism—for example, by seeking to portray international NGOs as a malign foreign influence. This is not the time to open up that debate, but suffice it to say that the end result of those restrictions is that often well-intending NGOs seeking to protect or extend civil liberties or human rights, or even to provide humanitarian aid, have ended up closing.

The third trend I will speak about is the use—perhaps I should say the misuse—of so-called anti-terror laws to close down, intimidate or restrict the activities of legitimate organisations. In Kenya, for example, there has been a clampdown on NGO operations in the past two years, targeting pro-democracy organisations. Bank accounts have been frozen and the leaders of organisations face criminal investigations, as allegations are made of their organisations being used as a source of terrorism finance.

Most people understand that the rising spectre of global terrorism has resulted in Governments reflecting on whether their anti-terrorism laws are sufficient for the unprecedented threats that we face today, particularly from ISIS. Most people also recognise the need for special measures to enable Governments to pre-empt and rapidly respond to threats of terrorism. However, we hear that powers afforded by such legislation, such as detention without trial, are being applied in cases in which there is no evidence of any terrorist link whatever. Political opponents, human rights defenders and even NGO employees have been subject to arbitrary detention, justified by anti-terrorism legislation.

The pattern can extend far beyond detention without trial. In Malaysia, for example, a council has been created with the power to declare “security areas”, within which the council can invoke special measures to arrest and detain without warrant. The misuse or overuse of anti-terror legislation also has indirect effects.

[Jim Shannon]

In business questions in the House today, I had the chance to highlight the persecution of Christians under Malaysian civil law specifically and to ask the Leader of the House to agree to a debate on that issue. Although Malaysia looks outwardly like a peaceful country with few restrictions, it is actually a country with significant and substantial restrictions.

[Fiona Bruce]

What often happens in such cases is that a climate is created in which individuals and organisations self-censor for fear of reprisals—the so-called “chilling effect”.

Lest we think that it is only in other countries that counter-extremism measures threaten the space for civil society to operate, let us reflect on the proposal made by our Government last year, in connection with their proposed counter-extremism measures: that all youth organisations outside schools teaching young people for more than a certain number of hours a week should be required to register with central Government and potentially be subject to Ofsted inspections, to ensure that they are in line with a list of values drawn up by the Government. At one point, it was suggested that just six hours a week of teaching outside school was sufficient to require central registration. The proposals could have covered traditional and clearly non-threatening church groups, such as Sunday schools or youth groups.

Fortunately, we have heard little about the proposal since the justifiable outcry against it by several Members of Parliament during a debate in this Chamber. I hope that the Government have quietly dropped it, but it goes to show how vigilant we must be to protect civil society even in our own country. Whenever we have the capacity, we should also do our best to challenge restrictions in other countries where they can be much more severe. We must do so on behalf of those in more vulnerable societies who do not have the opportunity to speak out for themselves as we do here.

The fourth and final trend is the harassment of civil society organisations. One issue arising from legislation relating to the registration or operations of NGOs is that laws are drafted so broadly that the scope for interpretation is wide open, enabling authorities to pursue agendas tantamount to harassment under the guise of implementing legislation. Excessive monitoring, threatening phone calls and unannounced inspections are commonplace. The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development reports that its partner workers in Sri Lanka and Latin America face surveillance, threatening phone calls, searches and disruption of community events. Fraud, tax, blasphemy and slander legislation is applied arbitrarily to criminalise the activities of human rights defenders or outspoken advocates, resulting, in extreme cases, in abduction and extrajudicial killing.

Those four trends only scratch the surface. There is overwhelming evidence that freedom of conscience, thought, religion and belief—in many ways, the bellwether of a healthy civil society—is progressively being undermined. Freedom of expression is under threat; in many parts of the world, journalists live in fear. Around 250 are serving prison sentences as I speak. I mentioned the issue not long ago in a House debate on Bangladesh. In Hong Kong, too, following the arrest of booksellers, we hear that journalists there feel intimidated, and even young representatives elected to their legislature are being threatened and denied the right to take up their seats.

Taken together, those trends paint a distressing picture of the state of civil society around the world. If civil society is the oxygen of democracy, as former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described it, it is in many places struggling for breath. It is therefore critical that we here, in what has been described as the mother of Parliaments, speak out and provide that much-needed breath. To colleagues who, like me, believe that foreign aid is an essential moral duty of the modern state—I know that there are many in the room—it is a matter of deep concern that such issues are occurring in many countries where UK aid is expended. I welcome the Government’s commitments in DFID’s recent civil society partnership review to tackle them.

Forced Organ Removal: China

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate and on his powerful speech.

Let us be clear about what we are speaking of here, because if what we are discussing is indeed the case it virtually defies credibility. But increasingly research and evidence is pointing towards what is being alleged, which is that the Chinese Government actively condone—indeed, are involved in—the murder of potentially thousands of their own citizens every year for the purpose of forcibly extracting vital organs including livers, kidneys, hearts and corneas, sometimes while those people are still alive, and without anaesthetic. Many of those people are in prison, mainly—we are told—for their beliefs or ethnicity. Often their families are told that they have died. They are young people in reasonable health, and their families are simply handed an urn of ashes.

Credible research findings strongly suggest that many thousands of people are being killed for their organs, particularly people in minority groups, most notably practitioners of Falun Gong—a peaceful, meditative practice—although Tibetans, Uighurs and, potentially, house Christians have also been targeted for political reasons.

The allegations that Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans and Uyghurs have been victims of that horrific practice are well documented and strong, as I shall recount. The suggestion that house church Christians may be affected requires further research. Either way, all the allegations of which we are now aware are sufficiently strong to require investigation by the international community.

It is of the highest necessity that the UK raises the issue with the Chinese directly, and calls for an international inquiry into the matter, ideally led by the United Nations. Even if the UN will not conduct a commission of inquiry, our Government should investigate the allegations and look at alternative mechanisms to bring to account those involved in those horrific alleged practices. If Britain as a nation is to maintain its status as a people concerned about grievous violations of human rights, it is imperative that the issue is addressed loudly and fearlessly, in co-operation with the other international organisations and leading parliamentarians across the world who are increasingly expressing concerns about the issue.

The Conservative party human rights commission, which I am privileged to chair, has recently conducted an inquiry into forced organ harvesting in China. During the course of the inquiry, I have been privileged to hear, in this House, first-hand testimony of those who have conducted research into the nature of the crime, and first-hand testimony by way of a powerful statement from a former Chinese doctor, Dr Enver Tohti, who has been required to perform an organ operation on an executed prisoner—for transplant, he believes.

The House has been privileged to host the UK premiere of the film “The Bleeding Edge”, a fictional film based on the testimony of witnesses to illegal organ harvesting. It was harrowing. I am deeply grateful to Mr Speaker for hosting the film, and to the actress, Anastasia Lin, who starred in the film and gave evidence at one of the hearings of the Conservative party human rights commission. I am aware of other films on the subject, notably “Human Harvest” and “Hard to Believe”.

As I speak, the Conservative party human rights commission is releasing a report of the inquiry, which can be found on the website www.conservativehumanrights.com. It contains more information than I can relay in this debate, but I will refer to some evidence received by the inquiry. The report was written by the vice-chair of the commission, Ben Rogers, who is an expert on human rights in China and elsewhere. I pay tribute to him for his dedicated work in this field and to the work of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the organisation for which he works.

Written evidence submitted to the inquiry included a statement from a former prisoner, Yu Xinhui, who wrote:

“Everyone in the prison knows about this”—

by which he means the removal of prisoners for organ harvesting.

“Usually in the prison, regardless of whether the person is deceased, if he is sent to the prison hospital, he faces the reality of having his organs removed at any moment. Everyone in prison knows that there exists a list of names. People…taken away, and no one will return.”

That list of names includes blood types and the health of patients’ organs so that the information is ready and available if a transplant request is made.

Yu Xinhui continued:

“I once asked a prison doctor, because this particular doctor was very sympathetic to us Falun Gong practitioners. He was especially sympathetic towards me, because we were from the same hometown. Once he told me secretly, saying, ‘Don’t go against the Communist Party. Don’t resist them. Whatever they tell you to do, just do it. Don’t go against them forcefully. If you do, then when the time comes, you won’t even know how you will have died. When it happens, where your heart, liver, spleen, and lungs will be taken, you won’t even know either.’”

Yu Xinhui had three physical examinations while in prison, the last of which was in March 2005. Many former prisoners of conscience have testified to having been subjected to physical examinations while in prison that went beyond normal medical check-ups and were clearly aimed at assessing the health of their organs.

The timing of this debate is apt, given new evidence that the scale of organ harvesting in China may now be far higher than previously estimated. The evidence has built to a point where ignoring it is not an option. There is now strong, academically well-researched information that between 50,000 to 90,000 organ transplants may occur in China every year and are, effectively, concealed by the Government. That is in a country where there is no tradition of organ donation. Indeed, Chinese official figures put the number of voluntary donations at a total of 120 for the entire 30-year period between 1980 and 2009.

Let me quote further from the Conservative party human rights commission’s report:

“Although there are a variety of sources of evidence, there are three key reports which provide detailed research into the practice of forced organ harvesting in China”—

the hon. Member for Strangford referred to those reports. Our report continues:

“The first, published on the Internet in 2006 and in print in 2009, was a report researched and written by the former Canadian Member of Parliament and former Government Minister David Kilgour and a respected human rights lawyer, David Matas, called Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for their organs. The second was Ethan Gutmann’s book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem, published in 2014.”

Both David Matas and Ethan Gutmann have given evidence to our commission. The third report, which was published this year, runs to 700 pages. It updates forensically those two pieces of research, is co-authored by David Kilgour, David Matas and Ethan Gutmann, and is entitled, “Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update.” I have heard Ethan Gutmann publicly invite from anyone, particularly from the Chinese, any evidence or comments that contradict the research in the report, but as of September 2016 none has been received.

The most important point made by the report, and indeed by David Matas and Ethan Gutmann in their evidence to the Conservative party human rights commission, is that the scale of forced organ harvesting in China is significantly underestimated. Their new research is forensic—they have inquired into the public records of no fewer than 712 hospitals in China that carry out liver and kidney transplants. Their detailed research leads them to conclude that potentially between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals, which almost defies credibility. If those figures are correct, organs are being transplanted on an industrial scale, as the hon. Member for Strangford said. One hospital alone, the Orient organ transplant centre at the Tianjin first central hospital, is performing thousands of transplants a year according to its own bed occupancy data. Chinese official claims state that 10,000 organ transplants are carried out each year, but the authors of the report contend that that is

“easily surpassed by just a few hospitals.”

By way of background, according to Ethan the practice of forced organ harvesting began in China as long ago as 1994, when the first live organs were removed from death row prisoners on the execution grounds of Xinjiang. Dr Enver Tohti came to London to give evidence to us, and he told us about the process. He was a cancer surgeon in Ürümqi, Xinjiang province. In 1995, while he was simply doing his job, he was instructed by two of his hospital’s chief surgeons to prepare mobile surgery equipment—in other words, an ambulance—and to wait for them the next day at a hospital gate with the ambulance, the equipment and three other assistants. The following morning, at 9 am, the two chief surgeons arrived in a car and he was told to follow them. He did not know where he was going but, about half an hour later, they arrived at Western Mountain—Xishan—an execution ground where prisoners were taken to be executed. He described what happened:

“We had been told to wait behind a hill, and come into the field as soon as we’d hear the gun shot. So we waited. A moment later there were gun shots. Not one, but many. We rushed into the field. An armed police officer approached us and told me where to go. He led us closer, then pointed to a corpse saying ‘this is the one’.”

A few prisoners had been executed. He continued:

“By then our chief surgeon appeared from nowhere and told me to remove the liver and two kidneys. He urged me to hurry up, so we took the body into the van and removed his liver and kidneys…our chief surgeons put those organs in a special box, and got into the car. They told me to take my team back to the hospital and left. I have no idea where they went… That was the end of that. Nobody has ever talked about what we did that day. It is something I wish hadn’t happened.”

Not only is the scale of the numbers a concern; the speed at which Chinese hospitals can obtain organs is also highly suspect. Doctors will tell us that the time they have to get an organ from a donor to a recipient varies but that it is very short for sensitive vital organs. A heart or a liver cannot simply be saved in a freezer until it is needed, which is why the NHS states that in this country the average wait for a suitable transplant for an adult is 145 days—of course, we are in a country with a tradition of donation. Compare that with the many statements in Chinese medical publications that they can find an emergency liver donor within 24 hours. I understand there is even a medical journal that boasts of taking only four hours to find a donor. I am informed that the Chinese Government claim that the organs come from death row prisoners who have been executed locally to the hospital that is providing the transplant, but the coincidence of that number of prisoners happening to have, say, a healthy liver, happening to match the blood type of the recipient and happening to have been executed locally is simply too much for credibility given the numbers involved. An alternative interpretation, and sadly the one that is more credible, is that people are being killed on demand to supply their organs.

In the other place, Lord Alton has been assured by the Government that the issue has been raised with the Chinese Government as part of the annual UK-China human rights dialogue and will be raised again, for which I thank the Government. However, evidence suggests that the Chinese Government have repeatedly committed themselves to denial, obfuscation and misdirection on this issue. It is therefore appropriate that we increase our activity in light of the new evidence I have highlighted. Indeed, there is growing international pressure on this matter.

The UN special rapporteurs on torture and on freedom of religion or belief have both requested that the Chinese Government explain the sources of these organs and that they allow them to investigate. There has been no response. The European Parliament adopted a written declaration in July 2016 on stopping organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China that, among other clauses, states:

“There have been persistent credible reports on systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, primarily from practitioners of Falun Gong peaceful meditation and exercises but also from Uighurs, Tibetans and Christians.

The international community has strongly condemned organ harvesting in China and actions should be taken to end it.

Owing to the severity of underlying abuse there is a clear need to organise without delay an independent investigation into ongoing organ harvesting in the People’s Republic of China.”

Similarly, the United States Congress unanimously passed a resolution in June 2016 condemning the practice of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in the People’s Republic of China. The resolution calls for visas to be denied to those involved in coerced organ or tissue transplantation. It expresses

“concern regarding persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups.”

The concerns in America are coming from leading Congressmen and Senators. I was privileged to meet Congressman Chris Smith in Washington DC last week. He is the fourth longest-serving member of Congress and is a remarkable campaigner for human rights across the world. He spoke at a joint sub-committee of the US committee on foreign affairs on 21 June. I will quote him at more length at the end of my speech if I have time, but he told the House of Representatives:

“Twenty years ago, I chaired a human rights hearing in my subcommittee with a Chinese security official who testified that he and his other security agents were executing prisoners—with doctors…there and ambulances—in order to steal their organs for transplant. Since then, this horrific practice has skyrocketed.”

The US Congressional-Executive Commission on China published its annual report less than two weeks ago; I was privileged to meet the group of young people who work for the commission and who produced the report. The commission’s chairman said:

“The Chinese government’s human rights record is utterly deplorable, continuing a downward trend over the past three years.”

That, of course, includes organ harvesting.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and for setting the scene. Clearly the world is awakening to what is happening in China; she is as aware of that as I am. Will the awakening that we seem to see in Canada, in the States and now in the United Kingdom precipitate a need for our Government to contact the Chinese authorities to ensure that they can respond now to stop this practice? The weight of evidence is growing every day.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The growing international concern about organ harvesting means it is vital that this country joins in and does not lag behind the international community in condemning these practices and challenging the Chinese Government accordingly.

I have two more things to say. First, as well as politicians acting, the international medical community must do detailed analysis of the claims made by these respected researchers. It is helpful to note that the president of the Transplantation Society, Dr Philip O’Connell, said at the society’s international conference in Hong Kong this year, addressing his comments to China, that

“there remains, in many sectors, a deep sense of mistrust of your transplant programs…It is important that you understand that the global community”—

I believe he was referring to the global medical community—

“is appalled by the practices”.

Finance Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend all hon. Members who have made very valuable contributions, in particular the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). He is no longer in his place, but I would like to speak to his presentation on new clause 3. He set out clearly where we stand.

I want to put on record again the consistent support of the Democratic Unionist party for the provision of the transferable allowance for married couples. I remember the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and I taking some verbal attacks in this Chamber—mostly from the Opposition Benches, I have to say—for our stance on this issue, but we persevered and the Government persevered. I thank the Government for bringing in the provision in their previous term. I had hoped there would have been some indication that the Government could support new clause 3. I understand, after talking to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate, that he will not press it to a Division. If that is the case, we have to abide by that.

The sadness for me is that the Government have, until today, chosen to invest the lion’s share of their resources in their other income tax policy of raising the personal allowance. It is undoubtedly true that that policy helps poorer families, but it is very badly targeted. If I may say so in a respectful way, it seems to be targeted at those who can well afford it, as against those who cannot. I have to put on record that I have some concerns about that. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has demonstrated that 75% of the benefit—and now, as the allowance is being raised from £10,000 to £12,500, even more than 75% of the benefit—goes to those in the top half of the income distribution. That is what the available statistics and charts indicate and I have to say they are very stark. They indicate an imbalance in the system that, as the hon. Gentleman clearly stated, is a concern.

[Fiona Bruce]

There is another imbalance in the system. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that the married couple’s allowance, which provides support to married couples where at least one spouse was born before April 1935, is worth £8,355 a year. Should we not also be looking at providing for those families with young children who are in the lowest socioeconomic bracket and supporting them similarly?

[Jim Shannon]

I could not agree more and I would like to make a comment on that later. New clause 3 clearly outlines the importance of that, but unfortunately we do not have the opportunity to support it today. I am sure the Minister, who knows I respect her greatly, will be able to respond to some of our concerns.

The IFS has demonstrated that, in contrast to the personal allowance, the transferable allowance results in 70% of the benefit going to those in the bottom half of the income distribution. The problem is that so far this has received only symbolic recognition. That has had two effects. First, the fundamental marriage accessibility challenge has not really been addressed, which is a massive issue given the impact on life chances of being brought up in a married home compared with a non-married home. Secondly, the very limited symbolic recognition has translated into low take-up. Given the distributional impact of the two tax policies and the impact of the transferable allowance on life chances, I have to say that if the Government are to have one symbolic policy and one substantive policy, they have got it the wrong way around. I say that with great respect. It would have been wiser to focus investment on the transferable allowance rather than redistribute billions to those in the top half of the income scale by raising personal allowances. I believe that we urgently need to change that. If the allowance cannot be made generally available to basic rate married couples, it should be focused, as the hon. Member for Congleton said, on families with children under five.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the highest levels of marriage breakdown occur when children are aged between nought and three? We are looking to support marriage at just that moment of greatest strain.

[Jim Shannon]

As always, the hon. Lady is wise in her interventions. I thank her for what she said, which underlines other important issues. If we can help at that critical time when the pressure is on, I believe that this House should do so. I hope that the Minister will do so, too, in her response.

The impact of the allowance on low-income households also needs to be addressed, as new clause 3 proposes. I hope we can do that at the right time. The new clause refers finally to

“ways in which the allowance could be changed to target low-income families with young children.”

Those points clearly illustrate for me what is necessary in this Bill, although the provisions may not be as hard and fast as I would like them to be.

Let me conclude; I am conscious of the time. In the longer term, there is a pressing need to adopt a more balanced approach to the resourcing of raising the personal allowance and increasing the transferable allowance. I fully support the transferable allowance and I would have hoped that the Government could commit themselves to it. Speaking as someone committed to progressive tax policy which targets those in the lower half of the income distribution scales rather than those in the top half, if the proposal means less money going to the personal allowance, in my judgment and, I believe, in the judgment of many in this House, that would be no bad thing.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fixed-odds betting terminals.

Fixed odds betting terminals are a big issue, and a big crowd of hon. and right. hon Members are here to speak about them. There is a lot of concern in the House about the issue. There are probably some hon. Members here today—perhaps not so many—who will not be speaking with the same level of concern as me, but Opposition Members intend to take the issue further in their speeches today.

Fixed odds betting terminals are touch-screen roulette machines found in betting shops across the whole United Kingdom. Gamblers can play casino-style games with a maximum stake of £100, which can be wagered every 20 seconds. That is a possible total of £300 a minute. We have more than 35,000 fixed odds betting terminals in the United Kingdom’s bookmakers. FOBTs are disproportionately found in the poorer parts of the United Kingdom and generate some £1.7 billion of revenue for bookmakers. Campaigners have labelled the machines the crack cocaine of gambling, and that is what they are. The issue is of great importance.

Bookmakers have a powerful lobby and powerful friends. They have kept arguing that we need more evidence, despite the obvious case for regulation, in order to protect their huge profits made at the expense of the vulnerable. We are here to speak for the vulnerable, for legislative change and for better protection.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is bringing forward the debate with his characteristic compassion. Does he agree that it is a matter of social justice that we address this issue? Those affected are not just those who are addicted, but their families, and in particular their children. It is primarily for them that many of us are here today.

[Jim Shannon]

As always, I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention—she is an hon. Friend, too. She speaks with heart and compassion, and she speaks for me as much as everyone else here.

Our Prime Minister told Parliament more than 12 months ago that FOBTs are a serious issue, and that he would act as soon as there was more evidence. Since then, two tragic cases of suicide have been linked to the machines, and there are numerous reports of the terrible impact they are having on the most vulnerable, but the Government are yet to act. The Minister is here to respond to the debate, and we look forward to hearing the ideas that he will put forward in response to what we have to say. There is no place for £100-a-spin games on the high street in bookmakers that have little or no supervision. There is a simple answer to protect the vulnerable, as the hon. Lady said, and that is to reduce the stake.

Daesh: Persecution of Christians

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered persecution of Christians and other religious minorities under Daesh.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. May I clarify the subject of the debate? The wording I applied for was “Genocide under Daesh of Christians and other religious minorities”. It is regrettable that, without any discussion with me, the motion was changed, although I understand it was not changed by the Speaker’s office. I shall say no more about the motion, except to clarify that the violence of ISIL, or Daesh, as we now call it, rages against a number of minority religious groups in addition to Christians, including the Yazidis and minority Muslim groups. Space prohibited me from referring to them by name in the motion.

The 1948 UN convention on genocide makes it clear that genocide is the systematic killing or serious harming of people because they are part of a recognisable group. The specific legal meaning of genocide is

“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

The convention specifies certain actions that can contribute to genocide, such as killing, forcible transfer, preventing births and causing serious bodily or mental harm.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter to Westminster Hall for consideration. It is a massive subject that warrants a 90-minute debate, and I am disappointed that it was not allocated one. Nevertheless, we have half an hour. I know that the hon. Lady, along with others present, shares my concern that Christians are given the ultimatum: “convert or die”. It is a choice between continuing to have religious beliefs and leaving the country or dying. Genocide is the only word we can use for that.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point and is quite right. As I stand here today, religious minorities are suffering horrendous atrocities at the hands of this murderous cult in Syria, Iraq and the other countries of the middle east where Daesh has a strong presence. The number of Christians in Iraq has reduced from 1.4 million to just over a quarter of a million in just a few years. The Bishop of Aleppo said this week that two thirds of Syrian Christians have been either killed or driven away from his country.

Acts committed by ISIS against Christians include the assassination of church leaders, mass murders, torture, kidnapping for ransom, sexual enslavement, systematic rape, forced conversions and the destruction of churches. We know about the mass graves of the Yazidis, and about crucifixions, forced marriages and the kidnapping of women and girls, some of them as young as eight, many of them raped mercilessly, month after month, until their bodies are in tatters. We know about children being beheaded in front of their families for refusing to convert.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is being very gracious in giving way. Before the debate, I asked her if I could intervene to say that the Yazidis in particular have been reduced from 500,000 to 200,000 in Iraq. Nobody in the west put out their hand to help or assist, as they should have. The Yazidis have been in the Kurdish camps along the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. They are a small group who have been persecuted, pursued and discriminated against, and their ethnic and religious freedoms have been abused. Perhaps the Minister could respond to that point as well.

[Fiona Bruce]

Again, the hon. Gentleman makes a strong point.

We are sometimes at risk of being desensitised by the horrors under Daesh. They are so extreme that their evil seems almost fictional. But for those who are suffering—people who lived lives like us just a short time ago—they are very real.

Surely one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Bearing in mind the definition of genocide to which I referred a moment ago, can anyone now seriously doubt that Daesh’s actions are genocidal? Nor, surely, can anyone seriously doubt that Daesh is trying to destroy minorities such as the Yazidis, in the words of the convention,

“in whole or in part”.

As Bishop Angaelos, a general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, has said:

“How can we not declare Genocide if Christians are suffering the same fate, at the same time, under the same conditions, at the hands of the same perpetrators?”

The entire population of Christians in the city of Mosul in Iraq, all 60,000 of them, have been effectively eradicated by Daesh—gone, fled or dead.

Daesh’s intentions in perpetrating its violence are a matter of record, as reports have made clear repeatedly. It regularly makes public statements of a genocidal nature, such as the following message, which was broadcast on its Al-Bayan radio station:

“We say to the defenders of the cross, that future attacks are going to be harsher and worse...The Islamic State soldiers will inflict harm on you with the grace of Allah. The future is just around the corner.”

As the US Secretary of State said just last week, after a unanimous vote by the House of Representatives to declare a genocide by 393 votes to none:

“Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions—in what it says, what it believes, and what it does…The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians; Yezidis because they are Yezidis; Shia because they are Shia.”

I submit that the legal criteria for genocide have been amply satisfied. Not only have the US Government now said so, but so have the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Pope, the US Congress, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and 75 Members of both Houses of Parliament when we wrote to the Prime Minister, including the former chief of staff and former head of MI5. A group of leading QC peers also recently wrote to the Prime Minister on this issue. All agree that the crimes of Daesh are genocide.

Why is it so important that we, as Members of Parliament, also collectively define these crimes as genocide? Because doing so would be more than mere verbiage—more than mere words. It would bring into play a whole series of mechanisms that can strengthen the response of the international community to challenge this evil force. The convention on genocide is clear that such a declaration brings with it obligations to prevent, protect and punish. I suggest that our making such a declaration would challenge the 147 countries that are party to the convention to step up and act on their obligations to help to prevent further atrocities, to protect those who are suffering, and to work towards punishing the perpetrators.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. She has outlined clearly the need for us to have this debate. It is an opportunity for us to speak out on behalf of our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the whole world who have been persecuted because of their beliefs. We have the chance to be a voice for the voiceless. I congratulate the hon. Lady again on bringing this debate to Westminster Hall for our consideration.

[Fiona Bruce]

It is right that we should be a voice for the voiceless.

Alcohol Harm and Older People

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 15th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be here and I welcome the opportunity to speak about the very real and damaging effects of alcohol harm on older people. I am pleased that the Minister for Public Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), is present and commend her for her passionate commitment to ensuring that key public health matters, and a strong preventive health agenda, remain high on the Government’s set of priorities for this Parliament.

I should perhaps clarify at the outset that I am seeking not to promote further legislation or regulation in this sphere, but to highlight the need for more education and information to help people make positive choices about their drinking; to enjoy it but at the same time maintain their own health and wellbeing. We all want to live longer—and we are—but, importantly, we want to live longer and healthier so that we can enjoy those later years. That is why this subject is so important.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way so early in her speech—I indicated to her before the debate that I intended to intervene. The theme that she is talking about, which many Members of the House, including me, would agree with, is this: everything in moderation. In other words, people should be careful about what they take and how often they take it.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Although most people are able to drink in moderation and enjoy the benefits of the socialising and relaxation often associated with drink, for many others it comes with significant costs.

Before proceeding any further, I ought to clarify what I mean by “older people”. Depressingly, I am referring to those of us who are over 45. A huge amount has been done in the past few years to tackle excessive drinking by the young, and encouraging figures show that drinking among young people is falling. I am also referring not so much to binge drinking, which perhaps is what we all associate with drinking among young people, but to harmful drinking. That does not have to mean getting wildly drunk and being hungover the next day; it can be continuous drinking, perhaps every day of the week, which does not allow the body’s organs to have a break from alcohol. People are often unaware that that can be extremely harmful.

Alcohol is a leading risk factor for death and disease in the UK; it is the leading risk factor after smoking and obesity. As a toxin, it is the cause of many acute and chronic diseases, and—Members might be surprised to hear this—it affects almost every organ in the body. The relationship between alcohol and liver disease is well known, but alcohol is also a risk factor in a number of cancers, in cardiovascular disease and in gastro-intestinal diseases such as pancreatitis, and of course it is also a leading cause of accident and injury. On that topic, the all-party group on alcohol harm, which I chair, is currently conducting an inquiry into the considerable impact of alcohol on the emergency services. I look forward to being able to update the House on that work in due course.

Given its associations with so many and such serious health conditions, it is unsurprising that the impact of alcohol on NHS services is considerable. In 2012-13 there were more than 1 million alcohol-related hospital admissions, where an alcohol-related disease, injury or condition was the primary reason for the admission or a secondary diagnosis. As the Minister will be aware, the costs of this to the NHS are estimated to be at least £3.5 billion per year—on its own, more than a third of the Treasury receipts from alcohol—yet estimates for the wider personal, social and economic costs of alcohol vary from £21 billion to £55 billion in England alone. We therefore have much to address.

I must emphasise, though, that recent trends in the decline of underage drinking and drinking among young people are encouraging, which leads me to believe that we can similarly address and support improved positive drinking among older people. The proportion of 11 to 15-year-olds who have ever had a drink fell from 61% in 2003 to 38% in 2014, and the proportion of those who got drunk in the past week declined dramatically from 26% to just 8% in the same period.

Encouragingly, this positive trend is beginning to extend to the 18 to 25-year-old age group, many of whom, interestingly, now choose not to drink at all. That includes my own son, a young man in his 20s. He is a sportsman who simply does not drink. A huge amount of work has been done in this area. I commend the Government and their partnership working with many agencies to educate and support this age group to reduce levels of harmful drinking. One of the successes has been the introduction of street pastors. Another has been the presence of club hosts in clubs and pubs, where people on the “older sister” model, perhaps slightly older than those who might drink irresponsibly, will approach a young person they think is drinking too much and say, “Perhaps you need to think about how much you’ve drunk.”

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comment about street pastors. In the past month, street pastors have started to be active in my constituency, with 13 churches and 43 volunteers coming together on this. That is a very clear commitment by community members themselves to address the issue. I recommend those in any constituency where there are no street pastors to ask the churches to be involved, because the benefits are great.

[Fiona Bruce]

I entirely agree. In my constituency, similarly, there are some excellent street pastor groups.

Voluntary organisations, the drinks industry, publicans and the police, together with local and national authorities, have done a huge amount to address drinking by younger people. With older people, though, much of their drinking is a hidden problem, particularly among the baby boomer generation who often drink at home, many of whom have a dangerously limited awareness of alcohol’s harmful effects. This is a ticking time bomb not just for the individuals concerned but in terms of the public cost of their healthcare in the years to come, with an increasingly ageing population.

According to the Health Survey for England 2013, 10 million people in England drink at a higher level than the Government’s lower-risk guidelines, with serious long-term implications for their health. This is particularly true of older people. Many of those in the baby boomer generation drink on an almost daily basis. The survey found that 14% of 45 to 64-year-olds drank alcohol on five or more days in the past week, compared with just 2% of their younger counterparts in the 18 to 24-year-old group. Alcohol-related hospital admissions among this middle-aged group account for 40% of all alcohol-related hospital admissions and 58% of all admissions for alcoholic liver disease. Tragically, this age group also accounts for the majority of alcohol-related deaths.

Some of the impacts of alcohol are rather less obvious but no less devastating. For example, there is a significant link between alcohol use and the risk of hypertension, which is a factor in a number of related illnesses such as stroke, heart disease and other vascular diseases. Alcohol is generally associated with poorer mental health. In later life, alcohol can be used as a comfort for many of the shocks that people experience in middle age, such as adjustment to life after divorce, redundancy, retirement, children leaving home, or bereavement. Loneliness or depression can also be a factor. These points in life can be very challenging, and they are all associated with higher rates of alcohol use. People need to be made aware that when these life shocks hit them in later life, as they do the majority of us, they need to look out to avoid slipping into harmful drinking patterns because the consequences can be catastrophic in just a few years.

The majority of older people are not aware of the potential damage they are doing to their health or relationships through unhealthy drinking. Office for National Statistics figures show that the greatest number of people who did not drink but now do drink are women over 65, many of whom live alone. That is a particularly concerning statistic that we need to bear in mind. Research by charity Drinkaware and by Ipsos MORI suggests that there is a large group of people who are sleepwalking into poor health. Only 20% of 45 to 65-year-olds think they will have health problems if they continue to drink as they do, yet more than a third are drinking at above the level of Government guidelines. Shockingly, one in nine says that they have already been told by a friend, family member or health professional that they should cut down.

Interestingly, this issue was raised in the previous debate—I do not think the Minister was here—when the shadow Defence Minister, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), spoke about needing to address it for those who had been in our armed services, although not in a nanny-culture way. I strongly echo that.

For many, drinking is an everyday occurrence, but when confronted with it, people do not realise that even drinking at relatively low levels but on a continuous—that is, virtually daily—basis can be harmful. Here is a typical comment:

“On reflection when you look back it’s not the fact that I drink to get drunk constantly—that would be a separate issue…but as part of the relaxing process…on a daily basis at home. I just didn’t realise how many excuses I have to…drink.”

Misuse of alcohol has a devastating impact on relationships and families, and on children in particular. That should be given greater prominence. In 2012, a survey by the Children’s Commissioner, “Silent voices: supporting children and young people affected by parental alcohol misuse”, estimated that between 1999 and 2009 more than 700,000 children were affected by parental or other significant adult drinking. It said that parental alcohol misuse is far more prevalent than parental drug use and called for a greater emphasis on it in policy and practice. It is a matter of social justice that we address this, not just for children but for the poorest in our society, because research shows that those who are less well-off are less resilient and more vulnerable to the impact of harmful drinking. Professional people, some of whom drink more, are able to withstand the impacts better.

As chair of the all-party group on alcohol harm, I urge that greater prominence be given to this issue, particularly to the harms caused to older people. A number of strands could be taken forward, alongside other initiatives that I am sure the Minister will consider. One very practical example was given in an excellent report that I had the privilege of launching here in the House last month: “Under Pressure” by the Treat 15 Expert Group, which comprises doctors, nurses and other health professionals. It suggested that whenever an individual has their blood pressure taken, mention could be made, just in those few minutes, of drinking being linked to the risk of high blood pressure, and indicators of the harmful health implications associated with that. It is estimated that about 7.5 million people in this country are at risk of high blood pressure. Just identifying the link with harmful drinking could help a large number of people to improve their health prospects. In those few moments, often when nothing else is done or said, there is a real opportunity, at no cost at all, for the medical profession to provide an important service.

There is also an urgent need for public education on the harmful effects that drinking can have on older people. People need information that is simple, accessible and non-judgmental. There are some innovative resources, such as the Drinkaware app and the Change4Life booze buster programme, which help people make informed choices about their drinking and support them to make a change that could have significant benefits for their health and wellbeing.

We also need more prominent, comprehensive and consistent public health messages from Government, the NHS and Public Health England about the risks of harmful drinking. A report will be released shortly and I look forward to reading its suggestions as to how the issue can be addressed. Given that people are living longer, it is important that they are informed about how to live healthier longer lives.

The alcohol industry also has an important role to play by working in collaboration with others. It is a key partner and has made a great deal of progress working in partnership with pubs and clubs and with the Government. The Government challenged the industry to remove 1 billion units from the alcohol market over two years. In fact, 1.3 billion units were removed—the equivalent, apparently, of the whole nation going dry for one week a year. One of the means by which that was achieved was through providing house wines of less alcoholic strength and smaller glasses. I also commend the industry for the fact that almost 93% of alcohol bottles now warn women that it would be better for them to consider not drinking during pregnancy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

There has been talk in the press over the past two weeks about the best message to give to pregnant women about alcohol consumption. Does the hon. Lady agree—perhaps the Minister will say this in her response to the debate—that the best message and policy would be that pregnant women should drink no alcohol whatsoever?

[Fiona Bruce]

That is my personal view. Women have suffered from mixed messages over the past 20 years and more. It would be very helpful to have a clear message. Just six years ago, only 17.6% of products carried a warning label about drinking in pregnancy; the figure is now 93%. I would like it to be 100% and it would be very helpful if the Government gave a clear message that not drinking in pregnancy is probably the wisest choice of all for the woman and her child.

In conclusion, I ask the Government to consider working in partnership with us to develop strategies to reduce alcohol-related harms in older people, just as they have done, with some success, to reduce unhealthy drinking in younger people. No one now questions the role of Government in promoting healthy eating. The same rule could, I hope, be undertaken in future, with similar, commendable vigour, by the Government with regard to encouraging healthy drinking.