Afghanistan: FCDO Update

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend and pay tribute to his time as a Foreign Office Minister. He is right; we are already consulting the UN. The Prime Minister has spoken to UN Secretary-General. I have spoken to his special envoy for Afghanistan, Jean Arnault,, to talk through these issues and make sure that we get the eligibility and co-ordination right. My right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) is also right to refer to the Syrian precedent. We want to learn the lessons from it, and there was much that was a success there. Of course, the circumstances in Afghanistan are different, and the Home Secretary will set out further details in due course, once we have completed that. It will feed in all of the conversations we are having, not just with the UN, but with allies, including Turkey and other countries around the region.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement. May I ask him about the number of requests the Government have already had in respect of Afghan citizens who do not qualify for the ARAP scheme as they did not work directly for us, but who want and need to flee here from Afghanistan and have already asked? I know that the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is not yet open, but he must already know how many have, through Members of this House or other organisations, already asked to come here because of the Taliban. Can he tell us how many have done so? How will the Government decide who is going to get into the 5,000 cap? The criteria for the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme are yet to be announced, but we know that it is for those who are highly vulnerable to the Taliban because of what they have done in support of the values we and the previous regime were committed to, in particular, women and girls, equality, democracy and human rights. There are bound to be so many more than 5,000, so how will the Government in practice decide between those who will be the lucky 5,000 and be allowed to come here, and those who, although meeting the criteria, will, because of the 5,000 cap, be refused and face a terrible fate at the hands of the Taliban? The reality is that the unless the Government increase the 5,000 cap, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is going to end up as a lottery of life and death.

[Dominic Raab]

I know how passionate the right hon. and learned Lady is about this issue and how assiduous she has been on it. It is difficult to give a precise number of the applications and claims, not least because there is some duplication in the multiple emails and correspondence we have had. She is right to say—frankly, this would be true even if we doubled or tripled the quota—that the number of people who flee Afghanistan is going to outstrip what the UK would be able to take alone. That means that we need to look very carefully at the criteria, as the Home Secretary and I are doing across Government, to make sure that we prioritise the most vulnerable and those with a particular link to the UK, as well as co-ordinating with the United Nations. Further details will be set out by the Home Secretary.

As I mentioned earlier, the UK is doing our bit, alongside the aid we are providing, including to support third countries that take refugees. The UK will not be able to deal with the demand alone—of course we would not do so—but by taking action and showing leadership, we will help to corral and cajole other countries to follow suit. That is how we will have a comprehensive and effective response to the Afghanistan situation.

Cyclone Idai

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say for the benefit not just of the House, but of those observing our proceedings beyond it, that two wonderful but competing examples of seniority in the House are seeking to catch the eye of the Chair. The first is the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who is immensely senior, very distinguished and has a very busy diary. But on the other hand, sitting immediately behind her is the Chair of the International Development Committee—a man of great seniority. I therefore have to be the arbiter of competing greats. I call Harriet Harman.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the former International Development Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), for bringing this matter to the House; I absolutely agree with all the points he raised. I also thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

The commitment of the Minister to this issue is evident, and it is also evident that everyone is dismayed about the scale of the problem. May I ask her about people in this country who will be particularly distraught about the situation—the people who have come here from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique, who have made their home here, live and work here, bring up their children here, pay their taxes here, and contribute to our commercial and public life, but who are also contributors through their remittances to the countries affected by the cyclone? These people are desperately worried about their friends and family caught up in this situation. Will the Minister tell the House how she will engage with the diaspora communities to ensure that she understands the efforts that they are trying to make, and confirm that she will help in those efforts? Will she also inform those communities of what the Department is doing and listen to them, because they will often know what needs to be done? I pay tribute to the work of all the agencies and the Department in this very difficult situation.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for putting the sorority of Harrietts at the forefront in calling Members today.

The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) makes an important point about the links between the UK and people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield alluded earlier. The right hon. and learned Lady also makes an important point about the ways in which we can work with the diaspora here. Let me make a commitment to hon. Members; should colleagues find it useful, I will convene a meeting with colleagues so that they have the opportunity to make representations on behalf of their constituents about what we could be doing differently to help and what information can be found about their relatives. I am happy do that through a face-to-face meeting, on the telephone or through letters of inquiry.

Europe, Human Rights and Keeping People Safe at Home and Abroad

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I would like to say a few words about the counter-extremism Bill and human rights. First, however, I pay tribute to the shadow Foreign Secretary for his speech, with which I strongly agreed. It was profound, principled and progressive, and without wanting him to think that I want some sort of promotion—I am so beyond that at this point—I should say I thought it was exceptionally good. He does great credit to our party, to the House and to politics, and I thank him for what he said.

I was glad to hear the speech by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is a weighty Member of this House and speaks as a former Home Secretary, Justice Secretary, Health Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is well and truly a “former”, and I agreed with an awful lot of what he said. In fact, I agreed with everything he said about prison reform and Europe. I find that quite traumatic, because when I was first in the House, he was sitting in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet and was not to be agreed with on everything, or indeed anything. However, today I agreed with what he said. I also now find myself elevated to the status of a “former”, albeit not one as weighty as the right hon. and learned Gentleman. In this House, one thing about “formers” is that we must crack on with our speeches and not make them too long—that was a reference to the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), not to the right hon. and learned Members for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and for Rushcliffe.

I want to mention two measures in the Queen’s Speech. The first is the counter-extremism Bill. I have the privilege of chairing the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway), who sits on the Committee and has a particular interest in mental health and human rights, is also in the Chamber.

The Government have a duty to protect us—a responsibility that any and every Government take with the utmost seriousness. That is undoubtedly uncontested ground, but when it comes to how to tackle terrorism, specifically the task of countering Daesh-inspired terrorism, there is no consensus. The Government’s approach, set out in the counter-extremism strategy, appears to be based on the assumption that there is an escalator that starts with religious conservatism and ends up with support for jihadism, and that religious conservatism therefore is the starting point in the quest to tackle violence. However, it is by no means proven or agreed that extreme religious views, in particular religious conservatism, are in and of themselves an indicator of, or even correlated with, support for jihadism. If there are to be, under the new Bill, banning orders, extremism disruption orders and closure orders, it has to be clear that they are banning disruption and closing something that will lead to violence, not just something of which the Government disapprove.

The second issue is that if the Government are going to clamp down on Islamic religious conservatism in the cause of tackling violence, is that discrimination that can be justified, or will it serve merely to give rise to justified grievance? Everyone seems to agree that the most precious asset in the fight against terrorism is the relationship between the authorities—the police, the schools and the councils—and the Muslim communities of this country. We must guard against any undermining of the relationship between the authorities and the Muslim community, which would thereby make the fight against terrorism even harder. The last thing we must do is anything that fosters the alienation that can lead to radicalisation.

The third issue is the problem of taking conservative religious views in the Muslim community as an indicator of future terrorism if the same beliefs in evangelical Christianity or Orthodox Judaism would not be seen as prompting the need for any action. Are the Government going to discriminate and seek to justify that, or will they be indiscriminate and annoy and concern everybody?

The fourth issue is the question of definition. This was hinted at by the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) in his intervention. Even if there was reliable evidence of the escalator from extreme views to violence, if the law, in the form of banning orders, closure orders and extremist disruption orders, is to be invoked, there needs to be clarity and consensus around the definition. It is far from clear that there is an accepted definition of what constitutes non-violent extremism, or, indeed, extremism. In the counter-extremism strategy, the Government describe extremism as the

“vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

Now, I am not tolerant of the beliefs of those who are homophobic and I do not respect those who regard women as inferior. Which is the extremism: their beliefs or my intolerance of their beliefs? If we denounce our judiciary as biased Islamophobes, is that undermining the rule of law or is that the exercise of free speech? I have done a certain amount of denouncing the judiciary for all sorts of things in the past, but I would not have regarded myself as extremist—I was just pointing out that they were sexist and needed to be replaced by many more women judges.

The fifth issue is whether it is better to suppress views or to subject them to challenge. Many in the higher education sector say that for their students they believe it is better to challenge abhorrent views rather than to repress them, but do we allow the same approach for school-age children? Some have argued that it simply should be seen as a question of child safeguarding, but although there is a consensus around the nature of child neglect, physical abuse or sexual abuse, from which children have to be safeguarded, there is no such consensus around the definition of extremism from which children should be safeguarded. We can all understand the definition of safeguarding; it is just a question of what we are safeguarding children from. In relation to extremism, there is no such shared consensus or definition. The difficulty around these issues should lead the Government to tread with great care. They should publish the Bill in draft and allow extensive debate and discussion. We should listen with particular attention to those who would be expected to apply for and enforce these orders, such as the police, educational establishments and councils, and to the Muslim community.

I completely agree with everything that the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield said about the repeal of the Human Rights Act and its replacement with a British Bill of Rights. We have not yet seen the consultation, but, when we do, it will again be important that the Government tread carefully. They should ensure that human rights remain universal, rather than simply retaining the popular and carving out the unpopular. The legal protection of human rights is important for everyone, even those who are justifiably the subject of public hostility.

The Government should not do anything that makes it more difficult for people here to enforce their rights in the UK courts, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe said. I had to trek all the way to Strasbourg to get my rights. Had we had the Human Rights Act, I would have been exonerated seven years earlier and at much less expense to the Government. Neither should they do anything that would disrupt the devolution settlement in Scotland or the peace agreement in Northern Ireland, of which the Human Rights Act is part, as was made clear to us on our visit to Scotland and in evidence submitted to our Committee from Northern Ireland.

The Foreign Secretary acknowledged that this country is seen as a champion of human rights around the world, and the Government should be mindful of how what the UK does affects those in other countries who are fighting for their rights but who do not have the democracy and rights we have. Our adherence to the framework of international human rights standards, which includes the European convention, is a beacon to which those campaigning for rights in other countries look and demand in their own countries. That was made clear to us when we visited the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, where people, whether from Poland or Russia, basically told us, “If you leave the European convention, we’re done for.” If our Government were to abandon the convention, it would have a devastating effect on the progress of human rights in other countries.

No Government like any court telling them what to do. Legislators, elected as they are, do not like to be constrained by unelected judges. Parliament does not like to be so restrained. Governments, having got elected and into government, like even less to be constrained. That feeling is multiplied when the judicial ruling comes from—perish the thought!—abroad, but even the best intentioned Government need to be subject to the rule of law. Governments can abuse their power, on purpose or by mistake, so oversight by the courts is essential. International standards, presided over by international courts, are important abroad and to us too. If the Government do not agree with a court ruling, they can gnash their teeth or try to get the court to think again in a subsequent case, but their disagreeing with a judgement does not justify their rejecting the jurisdiction of the court concerned.

In conclusion, it is easy to promise to tackle extremism, to whip up hostility to court rulings and to make “human rights” dirty words, but when it comes to legislating on counter-terrorism and amending our human rights framework the Government need to tread carefully, consult widely and work on the basis of consensus. What I have heard in the debate so far gives me confidence that there are Members on both sides of the House, as there are in the House of Lords, who will make sure the Government do exactly that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

China (Human Rights)

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

My hon. Friend is an assiduous campaigner for Tibet and he will know that, after the death of the senior Tibetan Buddhist, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, in July, we supported an EU statement and the remarks of a Foreign Office spokesman were carried in the media. Prior to Tenzin’s death, I continued to call for his release, including in parliamentary debates on Tibet in June and in December 2014.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I warmly thank the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for bringing this issue to the House. I am sure that this debate will be watched by people in China, so this is an important occasion. I also thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting the urgent question.

Does the Minister agree that our ability to raise our voice and put pressure on China because of its gross violations of human rights is in part based on the recognition that this country has itself made a commitment to human rights? Does he recognise that the increasingly negative tone being used in this country to describe human rights as a problem—even to the point of describing the legislation as “Labour’s Human Rights Act”, which I cannot believe is a compliment—undermines our ability to champion human rights abroad? We cannot champion human rights abroad if we regard them as a nuisance at home. Will he ensure that he and his Government stand up for human rights in this country, as part of our policy of championing them in other parts of the world?

[Mr Swire]

The right hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right. It is incredibly important to have good human rights in our own country before we preach to others, and I believe that we do. In my travels around the globe—looking after two thirds of the world, as I am obliged to do—I have observed that our own human rights are way better than those in the majority of countries. A second thing that gives us a huge moral case when we go round the world is that this Government have pledged to spend 0.7% of our GDP on international aid. Those two factors give the United Kingdom a good say at any table.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Grant Shapps)]

My hon. Friend is right and we fully support President Catherine Samba-Panza and her interim Government. It is striking to note that a country the size of France has a population of just 4.6 million, meaning that there is little infrastructure and almost no state outside the capital. None the less, the UK is leading with £58 million of contributions to date.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

May I draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to the worrying situation of my constituent Rebecca Prosser? She was working in the Strait of Malacca on a documentary about piracy for Wall to Wall productions. She had the right visa for Singapore and Malaysia, but it had not yet been authorised for Indonesia. She was arrested in May and has been detained there ever since. I am grateful for the opportunity to meet the Minister and I have met the Indonesian ambassador, but my constituent is on trial right now. She is a hard-working, law-abiding young woman who has committed a visa breach. Will the Foreign Office do everything it can to support her, and at least have a consular presence in the courtroom where she is on trial?

[Mr Swire]

The right hon. and learned Lady came to see me about this matter, and quite rightly so. I personally raised their case with the Indonesian Foreign Minister at the UN General Assembly in September. She knows that immigration offences are taken very seriously in Indonesia. The trial is progressing at the moment. As I said to her at the time, their lawyers judge that a low media profile is the best way of bringing this immigration case to a conclusion, so it is probably better not to say more than that at the moment.

Greenpeace Activists in the Russian Federation

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for securing this debate. I know that he is very involved in relations with Russia through his work in the all-party group on Russia.

I would particularly like to identify myself with the comments of the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), in whose constituency Kieron Bryan’s parents live; Kieron Bryan is my constituent. I want to speak about Kieron Bryan today and to say that he is detained in Murmansk, and that it has been a long time since 19 September; here we are on 23 October. It is a long time to be detained in Murmansk. He is not a criminal, he is not a threat to the Russian state, he is not a pirate and I say very strongly that I hope the Russian authorities will listen to what is being said in this debate and allow Kieron Bryan to come home.

Kieron Bryan was on a contract with Greenpeace as a journalist. He had worked for The Times, the Daily Mirror and in broadcasting; he had really done well in his professional career. Aged 29, he had already made great strides in that career, and had taken up a short-term contract with Greenpeace to be on the Arctic Sunrise to record the crew’s activities. Now he is in solitary confinement in Murmansk.

None of us makes a habit of lightly second-guessing other countries’ criminal justice systems, and I certainly do not do so. There are many British citizens who are in prisons all around the world, but I say to the Russian authorities that Kieron Bryan is not a criminal, much less a pirate, and I hope that they will release him and allow him to return home.

I will also say something about the facilities in which Kieron has been detained. As has been said, to be in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, having been refused bail, is very hard indeed. Regarding his access to the outside world, I understand that his letters are brought in and he is allowed to read them, but then they are taken away. So he cannot even keep his letters and see what his friends and family are writing to him. He has only been allowed one book and he has now finished that. He was allowed one phone call to his family when he was on the way to detention. Since then, he has only had access to the phone last weekend, which is not acceptable.

I have asked the Russian authorities for Kieron’s brother, Russell, to be able to go out to Murmansk to visit him. A Russian prisoner on remand is allowed a visit from their family, but how much more does someone need a visit from their family if they are detained thousands of miles away from their home in a cell in a prison where they do not speak the language?

I hope that the Russian authorities will listen to what is being said. I thank the Foreign Office for the work that it has already done. I want it to do absolutely everything it can and to leave no stone unturned to get Kieron Bryan back home. I know that the Foreign Secretary is aware of and engaged on this issue, as is the Prime Minister. I thank the Foreign Office Minister who is here in Westminster Hall today for having a meeting with myself and other colleagues, and for the consular team and the team in the Foreign Office here who are working on this issue.

For my part, I will seek a meeting with Baroness Ashton of Upholland. Perhaps she can meet a number of us and can hear from us all how much we are concerned about this issue and how grateful we would be if she could do what she can to help.

I have asked for a meeting with the Russian ambassador, but he has not been prepared to meet me. Perhaps the Minister who is here in Westminster Hall today might encourage him to meet me, and perhaps I could go along with the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon. If a country has an embassy in this country, it is so that it can hear from people in this country what is going on, and to refuse to hear—as a matter of courtesy—what I have to say about my constituent, who is in detention, is wrong. I hope Russia will allow that meeting to happen.

I want Russia to allow visits; to allow Russell a visa; to allow books and phone calls—

[Chris Bryant]

The Russian ambassador is here in Parliament this afternoon at 4 o’clock for a meeting with the all-party group on Russia, if my right hon. and learned Friend would like to attend.

[Ms Harman]

Excellent. I will definitely attend that meeting, and I look forward to seeing the ambassador. I hope that he will take this issue very seriously and will listen to our concerns, particularly regarding the different situation of Kieron Bryan, who is a journalist. It is hard to know how much information Kieron is able to get, so many thousands of miles away as he faces a winter in a prison cell in Murmansk, but I hope he knows that for his family—his parents, Ann and Andy, and his brother, Russell—not a day goes by without their using every effort to help to bring his plight to the attention of the Government and the Russian authorities. His family will leave no stone unturned until he is back with them, and I will certainly do absolutely everything I can to help them too.