Turkey and Syria Earthquake

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. Many Members want to participate in the debate. In order to try to get everybody in, I propose an informal time limit of five minutes on Back-Bench contributions. If Members do not keep to that informal limit, I will have no choice but to impose a shorter, formal one in due course.

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[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on her thorough introduction to this debate in which she highlighted the real challenges with some feeling. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who described so well, but so sadly, the reality of life for someone who has been through these devastating circumstances. I will pick up in particular her point about family reunion.

I am very proud to represent a borough in Hackney where just over 3% of the population—about 7,000 people —have Turkish and Kurdish backgrounds. I and my north-east London colleagues, whom I am glad to see here, represent what we might describe as a little Turkey. We have a huge engagement with our Turkish-speaking and Kurdish-speaking communities, who contribute an awful lot to our society.

I will talk a bit about family reunion. I appreciate that the Minister has to defer to the Home Office on these issues, but the point must be made very firmly that we have examples in very recent times of reunion schemes to bring people from areas of devastation into the UK. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, looked at the Syria scheme, which was actually well worked out. Obviously that mostly involved people without family here, but 20,000 of them were settled, so there is a precedent. There is also a precedent in the Afghan scheme, although that was not about family reunion, of course, but resettlement routes for people to whom the UK owes a duty of care.

In addition, there is the example of Ukraine. There were rocky moments, but the family reunion and Homes for Ukraine schemes are worked-up schemes that are there to pick up anew. There was also Hong Kong, and back in 1996, when I was a young councillor, we welcomed people from Montserrat. Although that was from an overseas territory, we nevertheless had the capability, the capacity and the mechanisms to ensure that we could get people into this country.

I represent, as I say, around 7,000 Turkish and Kurdish people—well, I do not represent them all; I share that with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). There are many thousands of others across north-east London, and, as we have heard, in Newport and across the country. There are families here who have jobs and housing, who could quickly scoop up family members caught up in the devastation.

Many years ago, when I was the Minister responsible for dealing with issues such as resettlement, we would take a number of people from United Nations camps, but we now know that there are aid agencies there who can identify families or individuals who are very vulnerable, such as lone children, and who could be quickly routed through the existing compassionate route that we operate and support as the United Kingdom. The communities here—not just the individuals, with their housing, jobs and money that could support those people, but the communities in Hackney and around north-east London—could do a great deal to support people. We have groups such as the Alevis and very many Turkish community groups and organisations that would be very welcoming. My own mosque, Suleymaniye mosque, is a Turkish foundation mosque as well.

We know it takes time to get these schemes right, so there is no time for delay. It is important that we have child protection and other protection routes in place, so that we are not just accepting people for wrong reasons. Those such as the 15-year-old orphan girl my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East described need to come somewhere safe, and there is no safe place for them in the region at the moment because of the challenges.

I urge the Minister to give us an answer today on the Government thinking on this. I have already written to the Home Secretary, and I will continue to work with colleagues to press this issue. We are not necessarily talking about great numbers of people—sadly, with so many deaths, there will be very few people in this position —but at the very least we must reach out to those vulnerable lone children and other vulnerable people. I look forward hopefully to the creation of a wider scheme to support people, but could we please get moving on supporting vulnerable lone children and vulnerable family members of those currently in the UK as a starting point?

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

I will now impose a four-minute time limit on speeches.

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[Feryal Clark]

I thank my hon. Friend for her kind words and for her support to the Türkish-speaking community in Hornsey and Wood Green.

As I was saying, local community centres across north London and the UK have spent day and night collecting funds and aid to send to Türkiye. Local faith groups in Enfield, including Jewish, Sikh, Christian and Muslim groups, came to the centre to show their support and make donations. It has been hugely heart-warming for the Türkish and Kurdish community in this time of crisis.

Sadly, the aid that was sent to Alevi faith centres for distribution in Türkiye to purchase much-needed tents and goods has been confiscated. The Government have appointed commissioners to these centres and they are unable to distribute the funding, which is really heartbreaking for my community. My community has some serious questions for the Government, which I hope the Minister will be able to answer.

Those who remain in the disaster zone have lost their homes, possessions and family members. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 5.3 million people have been displaced by the earthquake in Syria alone. The winter weather is making life extremely difficult for survivors.

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. Would the hon. Member resume her seat? The time limit has passed.

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[David Rutley]

I will certainly follow up with the Home Office on that particular point. Questions have been raised about where the responsibility sits, and they have been noted. I will follow up on that.

Let me turn to the other issues that have been raised. There was lots of talk about the border crossings. We want to ensure that the openings that have been put in place are verified and remain open. An important point has been made about how we secure a long-term improvement to the humanitarian conditions, hopefully by keeping those access points secured over a longer term. Russia obviously plays an important role and has not been co-operative in the past.

Comments were also made about what we can do on the longer-term recovery effort. I think everyone understands that the primary focus right now is on what we can do to provide urgent life-saving support and life-sustaining assistance, but we will continue to look at what more we can do to support the recovery effort. It is much more complicated in Syria, given the actions of the Assad regime, but we will continue to focus on that.

In the remaining time I have, I would like to highlight one other vital point—I know the hon. Member for Strangford feels strongly about this—which is about ensuring that we monitor events in Turkey and work closely to co-ordinate with the Turkish authorities, with the United Nations and NGO partners, and indeed with the opposition groups in Syria, to ensure that aid makes it to all those in need. That has come out loud and clear today. Please be assured that that is vital for us. We need to ensure that aid gets to the most vulnerable and the minority communities in Turkey and Syria. If Members hear of reports of that not happening, we would be very grateful for that intelligence. We need to push back to ensure that aid is absolutely made available.

In conclusion, these are truly tragic circumstances. However, we can be proud that we have responded quickly—as a nation, but as a Government as well—and are working alongside our international partners. In the difficult days and weeks to come, colleagues can be assured that we will continue to stand with the people of Turkey and Syria in their hour of need.

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

To speak very briefly, I call Wendy Morton.

International Development: Education

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I am grateful for your forbearance, given my lateness. Unfortunately I was unable to catch what I know must have been an excellent introduction by the Chairman of our Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) that the speakers previous to her had said it all—well, I do not know what was said in the introduction, so I maybe have a slight advantage and will just bowl on anyway.

I want to tackle the other two issues that we covered in the report, beyond financing global education: improving access to education, and improving the quality and equity of education—of course, financing is the key to that. The Chairman of the Committee is to be commended for the fact that report took a good long time to go through because of its depth. I know that he was keen to follow through on the sustainable development goals. The millennium development goals and the sustainable development goals had transferred the international community’s responsibility on education from just getting people into school, sitting down and looking at a blackboard for a few years to actually getting them learning and achieving something so that they can then play a positive role in their community.

For all the reasons that we have heard, education helps people develop their communities, economies and countries, not just through financial prosperity but by building democracy. That is the long-term view behind so many other areas of international development. When we speak in this place and speak to our constituents to quite rightly justify our 0.7% contribution, we can—we should—look really proudly at what we are achieving in getting people into school so that they can make a positive contribution that will help build their countries’ democracies. That will reduce the need for people to emigrate from those countries, so that they can stay in their countries and build them. That also improves security—all those factors stem from education in the first place.

In the last Parliament, the Committee went to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. We looked at barriers to girls’ education in particular, some of which we have talked about. One odd, but no less serious, case was in the Samburu wildlife camp, where one poor girl was eaten by a crocodile on her way to get water for her family. As extreme as that is, it shows that in the most hostile environment in the world, not everything can be catered for.

We went to a PEAS—Promoting Equality in African Schools—school and looked at the lighting, which gave the girls a sense of security in getting around the school camp where they were boarding. They could also have lunch on site, because some headteachers feared that when they were off site, they were subject to predatory behaviour. Some girls were dragged into a situation where they could not carry on with their education, because they felt encumbered by the person who took them on board as a wife in that hostile environment and got them pregnant. It is really difficult in that culture and in those circumstances for a young girl to have a sense of independence and carry on their education. There was no greater example of that than in the Samburu tribe’s practice of beading, whereby a Samburu warrior would put a necklace of beads around a girl’s neck and that girl would become his sexual partner, later to be married. She was effectively owned by that warrior. That restricted her for ever more from that point.

The sense of empowerment provided by lighting, safety and sanitary products can really help liberate girls. PEAS had a girls club that had some boys in it—those boys felt bold enough to join it. It gave them a sense of respect and of being able to discuss issues that are not normally discussed between the sexes in a Ugandan or Kenyan community. That can only help in the long term. Many Samburu and other nomadic people in the area had to move from area to area because of the lack of food and crops. We need to look at what more the Department for International Development and the international community can do to help them stabilise themselves, so that girls and boys can stay within one school and have a sense of continuity and, therefore, a sense of learning.

It is right that DFID stopped offering budget support many years ago, but we should still be influencing the domestic education system. We have talked about public and private schools, but in the Committee in the previous Parliament, the debate about the difference between public and private dampened down slightly when we actually saw what it meant in practice. There were a number of public schools that were still charging for things such as electricity, uniform and food, so there was still quite a considerable cost for many people, albeit within a public school setting. None the less, we need to compare the quality of private and public schools.

The Bridge schools in Liberia have been mentioned. When we saw the Bridge schools in Uganda, they were really a mixed bag. That comes partly from the teaching, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire mentioned. Teachers can only have so much training, and they rely on a tablet for their work. They read out the lesson plan from the tablet, rather than having a deeper understanding of what they are trying to teach the children sitting in front of them. That brings us back to the old millennium development goals, which, as we heard earlier, were just about having people sitting down and being lectured at, but not really learning. We need to find a way of connecting with domestic training in countries to ensure that the teachers are the right people for the job and have the skills they need to engage.

Finally, in the directly funded work that we saw about getting the most marginalised back into schools, we found that people were able to experiment outside the state system. We saw some examples of people with learning disabilities who were learning to count through dance. If the Daily Mail found out about that there would probably be a headline tomorrow, but they had a little space to experiment and trial these sorts of things, to see what works and what does not. We know in this country that people learn in different ways—some visualise, and some learn by rote—so differences in learning are really important to engage people and to ensure that no girl or boy is left behind.

[Sir Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

We have four wind-ups to come, including from the Chair of the Select Committee. May I ask the Opposition spokesmen to try to keep their remarks to no more than about eight minutes, to ensure that everybody is heard?

Tamils Rights: Sri Lanka

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[James Berry]

I certainly was not trying to make a party political point. My experience of our APG so far is that this is one issue on which our two parties are ad idem, and long may that continue.

The Tamil people in Sri Lanka want reconciliation, but reconciliation cannot take place without proper accountability. I close with a quote from the Prime Minister at the time of the 2014 UNHRC session. He said:

“Ultimately all of this is about reconciliation…It is about bringing justice and closure and healing to this country which now has a chance of a much brighter future. That will only happen by dealing with these issues and not ignoring them.”

I call on our Government once again to lead the world in seeking proper accountability for human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Time is quite short, so I propose moving on to the wind-ups from the three Front-Benchers at 5.10 pm. While there is no formal time limit, in order to try to accommodate the other Members who wish to speak, I suggest they try to keep their comments to closer to three minutes than four, if possible.

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[Wes Streeting]

rose—

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind you, Mr Streeting, that I am hoping to move on to the wind-ups at 10 past.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Brady. I will keep my eye on the clock and, with the limited time I have, build on the points made by others, rather than repeating them.

I thank the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) for securing this debate and for the energetic way he has taken up his role as chair of the all-party group on Tamils. I am proud to be one of his vice-chairs. In the detailed speech he gave to introduce the debate, we heard an indication of the crimes that were committed during the civil war. When it is published tomorrow, I hope that the report begins to build even greater international attention and focus not only on what took place but on what continues to happen in Sri Lanka, and the effect on its population, particularly the Tamil community who still reside in the north of the country, as well as the Tamils around the world, including in our constituencies, who feel that they cannot return home for fear of further persecution.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) that tomorrow really must be the start and not the conclusion. The level of independent international accountability—accountability that many have campaigned for—does not go far enough. The Sri Lankan Government have obfuscated and stalled every step of the way. I welcome the work done by Gordon Brown’s Government, and successive Governments since, to put the issue on the agenda. There can be no justice without accountability. We cannot trust the domestic structures in Sri Lanka to ensure genuine accountability for the crimes that took place, which is why independent international mechanisms will be so important.

In the limited time remaining, I want to add to the Minister’s list of things to respond to by asking about how the Home Office responds to asylum applications. To give a recent example, a constituent of mine, a victim of torture in Sri Lanka, who has been here for years and has demonstrable evidence of torture—not just mental torture, but the physical scars of torture—has seen his case continually delayed. After the suffering that he has experienced, he should not have to experience further suffering at the hands of our broken immigration system. I hope that those in the Foreign Office can relay that to their colleagues in the Home Office. On that point, Mr Brady, not wanting to draw your ire, I will take my seat.

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

We have up to 20 minutes for three Front-Bench wind-ups. I suspect that all Members present want the Minister to be able to respond to the points.

European Union Bill

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Iceland has just unilaterally increased its mackerel quotas, which if anything—I would not use the word “stealing”—is potentially damaging to Scottish fish stocks? That is quite a major diplomatic issue at the moment and it has occurred under precisely the regime that he is recommending.

[The Temporary Chairman (Mr Graham Brady)]

Order. May I suggest that we are ranging a little wide? Ranging as far as discussing Iceland might be out of order.

[Austin Mitchell]

You are absolutely right, Mr Brady. By raising mackerel, the Liberal Democrats were seeking to bring a lot of red herrings dancing into my view. I hold no brief for the Scots who want the Icelanders to stop catching mackerel. They have a perfect right to do so. It is daft to talk about cutting quotas of imports for Icelandic fish, which we need, to punish Iceland for mackerel fishing.

That Liberal Democrat red herring has robbed and wasted the Committee’s time and delayed my final peroration. The final word from me is this. The situation can be remedied by the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Stone, particularly amendments 8 and 79. It should be remedied, because it is potentially disastrous to accept that article 122 of the Lisbon treaty can be applied to extract support from the UK for the failures of the euro, when we are not members of the euro. I hope that the Government clarify that position, and that the amendments are made.

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[The Temporary Chair (Mr Brady)]

Order. In order to ensure that the voice of the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) is picked up, may I advise him to address the microphone and the Committee more directly? That would be helpful.

[Ben Gummer]

I apologise, Mr Brady.

As the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) knows, my general point is that the comments that Opposition Members have made today betray the fact that they do not trust the British people with these decisions. They said, “Well, of course, we could put a whole series of things to a referendum.” But this is the point: it is about the transference not of decision making, but of powers by treaty to an outside body. Whether in their attitude to the European constitution—it is odd to try to force a constitution on the British people and a nation that does not have a constitution—or whether on the Lisbon treaty, on which a referendum was promised but not given, at every single point, the Labour party has shown its contempt for what the people want. In the course of that, it has damaged the very European project that it supports. For instance, it makes it very difficult to make the argument for the European arrest warrant—it actually helped one of my constituents in a moment of great difficulty, as I mentioned earlier—because every time it is rightly perceived to be a decision by people who think they know best but who do not trust the people with the arguments.

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[Charlie Elphicke]

One concern that I have about using the referendum mechanism is that it does not contain thresholds. Recently we had before this House a Bill, which has become jammed in another place, where thresholds were discussed. Does the Minister not think that, in the case under discussion, thresholds might surely be worth considering?

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Brady)]

Order. That is outside the scope of the clause, which is about people who are entitled to vote.

[Mr Lidington]

I shall bear your guidance very firmly in mind, Mr Brady, and simply say that the Government do not propose to specify in this legislation any further thresholds on the turnout.

In response to my hon. Friend, I mentioned the Government’s reasons why the franchise should be extended, where relevant, to Gibraltar, but it is worth me explaining, because there has been some concern in the House, why people from the Crown dependencies and British overseas territories will not be included in the franchise. Very little EU law applies to the Crown dependencies, mainly because of the provisions of our Act of accession to the then EEC in 1972, and also because of the current provisions of the European Union treaties. By virtue of article 355(5)(c) of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, the European Union treaties apply to the Crown dependencies, but only to the extent described in protocol 3, which provides that EU rules on customs matters and quantitative restrictions apply to the Crown dependencies

“under the same conditions as they apply to the United Kingdom”,

that the Crown dependencies are inside the EU customs territory and that certain aspects of the common agricultural policy are applicable to allow the free movement of agricultural products.

Cyprus

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alan Meale (Mansfield) (Lab)]

This is the first opportunity I have had to congratulate you, Mr Brady, on your exalted position—I trust that it is the result of a lack of available positions on the Front Bench given the poor coalition that is now in government. Hopefully, you will one day tread the boards in that direction.

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. I did not seek such a position, and I am very happy to be here chairing the debate.

[Mr Meale]

I am pleased to hear it, Mr Brady, and I trust that you will continue to exercise your great degree of independence on political matters from such a prime position.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) for securing this excellent opportunity to discuss what is a very serious subject. I should at the outset declare an interest: I have a small Cypriot community in my constituency, which my hon. Friend failed to mention in his list. As a result, I was invited to visit Cyprus in September for a day and a half—travelling by second-class air fare—to speak at the Morphou rally in the south of the republic.

It is important that we are having the debate at the start of a week in which, as we all know, serious talks will take place in New York. I must say to Members present, and to others who will read the pages of Hansard, that the whole question of Cyprus is expressed as a problem for Cyprus, but—as I keep saying again and again—it is also a problem for Europe and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) said, for Turkey itself.

Let us look at why Cyprus was allowed to join the European Union, a move that was led by Britain. A British Government argued that Cyprus should be in Europe because it would have been ridiculous and folly to keep it out of Europe. We all know what Cyprus was at the time of its entry. It was being treated as an offshore island by many, with 7,500 companies on its shores. It had its own stock exchange and an independent link into the European banking system. It was probably best placed for trade with the old eastern bloc, which most of Europe was not. It had a fine relationship with areas of the middle east and an outstanding trading relationship with China and Africa, which many EU countries did not have. As I understand from scientific texts, Cyprus is one of only four places on the planet that have windows into space, and, communications being so important for the future, it was important that that was kept in the European sphere, rather than being independent outside it. If anyone has any doubt about that, they will recall that it is for that reason that Britain’s listening and searching stations are still situated on the island.

Last, but not least, there is the importance of oil and gas, not only for Europe, but for the rest of the world. People will have to consider the importance of the European oil and gas pipeline, which is now being driven down to the shores of Greece, where further pipelines will be fixed that go across to Limassol in the republic. Similarly, pipelines will be coming down to join the central European pipeline from the Caspian sea, and they will link in to guarantee oil and gas for Europe. Cyprus will shortly become the gas station of Europe, and possibly the world, which is another reason why it was important that it came into the EU.

The talks that will take place this week in New York are very important. Although I praise greatly my colleague, the chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, those who argue in favour of the Annan plan should be asked which Annan plan they favour. Annan 1 had some important aspects that people might have used for the basis of negotiation, but after time there came Annan 2, Annan 3, Annan 4 and Annan 5, and each one was worse than the one before.

In this week before the talks commence, we have had a deliberate provocation by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw)—a colleague from this side of the House, in this place—which was an attempt not only to influence the talks in New York, but to set in motion a political dialogue in Europe that would call for partition. No one with whom I have discussed the issue of Cyprus has argued such a case. I trust those of my colleagues who say that the announcement by that individual two weeks earlier that he would take the opportunity to speak freely around the world, and possibly be paid for doing so, was not one of the reasons that he tip-toed in such a sordid manner into that area of political discussion—I hope not. I met him last night in this place and left him in no shadow of a doubt about what I thought of his position. I fervently countered each of his arguments, and we accepted that we would continue to disagree.

Let us look at why there needs to be a conclusion to the sordid affair of Turkey’s involvement in the independent country of Cyprus. Turkey has no right whatever to be there. Anyone who has any doubt about that should look back only 100 years in history. They will find that the Turkish state sold the island to Britain for 110 pieces of gold—that is the reality. Turkey sold it many years ago and gave up its interest in it.

Since that time, successive British Governments have participated in the life of Cyprus in a positive way. They built good institutions and mechanisms that are still alive on the island today—there was good purpose in those people. As I said earlier, that is one of the main reasons why we have supported the case for Cyprus to enter the European Union.

However, Cyprus is still left in the abyss of division, and we cannot agree that that should continue. I say to this British Government, as I said to the previous Government, who were of my political persuasion, that they cannot and should not stand idly by while individuals take advantage of the situation in Cyprus. British citizens take advantage of it—wrongly, in my opinion—but no action is taken against them. I refer, of course, to British citizens who foolishly invest vast sums of money to get properties and land on the cheap and then seek to put them on the market to make money. That has to be stopped. Rather than actions to try to stop freedom in Cyprus, perhaps some action should be undertaken by the British Government against British citizens who act in that way.