Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Hunt and David Evennett

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to help tackle the persecution of Christians overseas.

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department is taking to help tackle the persecution of Christians overseas.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

I think that today the whole House will want to remember the six people killed on Sunday at mass in a Catholic church in Burkina Faso when a gunman arrived, stormed the church, killed the priest and then set fire to the church. That shows why this is such an important issue to address.

[Mr Hunt]

I had a roundtable of faith leaders at the British high commissioner’s residence in Nigeria, and we had a very good discussion on this issue. The main thing that I took away from that discussion is the immensely important role that politicians have in developing countries in not fanning populism and hatred between religions in election campaigns, which is a very easy route to go down but can have immensely damaging consequences.

[Sir David Evennett]

I welcome the recent publication of the Bishop of Truro’s interim report on the persecution of Christians. Does my right hon. Friend feel that there is now a strong case, based on the bishop’s early findings, for the Government to be even more public and more forceful in calling out persecution where it is identified?

[Mr Hunt]

I think there is. We will obviously await the bishop’s final report. The concern we had, and the reason that we commissioned the report, was a sense that while we have, rightly, called out persecution of people of other religions—the Rohingya in Burma, for example—we have been more reticent in doing that when it is Christians, yet 80% of all the religious persecution in the world happens to Christians.