UK Foreign Policy: China and Hong Kong

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alistair Carmichael

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I differ from the hon. Gentleman only in the smallest grammatical sense, in that as a member of all those various international bodies, the Chinese Government ought to believe in, adhere to and demonstrate respect for international law. In this particular care, they are manifestly failing to do that.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The one country, two systems agreement between China and Britain is under threat. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the real need to balance our global human rights obligations with the need to secure a trade deal does not mean that we forget those obligations? Furthermore, does he agree that we can attempt to use our influence and trade to seek the better understanding of acceptable human rights standards throughout the world, and that the two can and must go hand in hand?

[Mr Carmichael]

I absolutely agree with that. I am a strong advocate of human rights and often preach the gospel of their universality, but I am not starry-eyed about it, especially when it comes to working with countries that do not reach or have not yet reached the standards that we adhere to in this country. I will always engage with countries where I think there is an opportunity for improvement, but we have to see that improvement. As far as the People’s Republic of China is concerned, we are not seeing an improvement. In fact, if anything, we are going backwards: I think of the treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang province; I think of the treatment of the people of Tibet; and I think of the treatment of religious minorities right across the People’s Republic of China and of the people of Hong Kong.

As I have said, I had anticipated that our debate tonight would rehearse a number of the areas that we have spoken about in the past. I was thinking about the treatment of the Umbrella Movement protesters; the closure of political parties; the expulsion of the Financial Times journalist, Victor Mallet; the creation of the new offence of insulting China’s national anthem without any effort to define what that insult might be and how it would be constituted; and the abduction of booksellers. In fact, when we consider all these things, it is impossible now, especially given the demonstration of support that we saw in Hong Kong at the weekend, to consider any of these things without considering the position in relation to the extradition arrangements and the Bill, which is currently coming towards the Legislative Council. These issues all tie in to this question of extradition.

You spoke earlier, Mr Speaker, about our mutual friend Benedict Rogers. In fact, in preparing for my debate tonight, I had recourse to an opinion piece that he had recently published. I want to read just a bit of it for the benefit of the House, because it illustrates perfectly how the position of the booksellers in particular and the other causes that I have mentioned all tie into this question of the extradition legislation. He wrote:

“‘If the extradition law is passed, it is a death sentence for Hong Kong,’ said Lam Wing-kee in a crowded coffee shop in Taipei. ‘Beijing will use this law to control Hong Kong completely. Freedom of speech will be lost. In the past, the regime kidnapped its critics like me illegally. With this law, they will abduct their critics legally.’

Yet Lam Wing-kee, 63, knows from first-hand experience what the consequences of this change to the extradition law could be, and how the Chinese Communist party behaves. On 24 October 2015, Lam, who managed a bookshop and publishing business in Causeway Bay that sold books critical of China’s leadership, was arrested as he crossed the border into mainland China in Shenzhen. There then followed an eight-month nightmare in which he was first imprisoned in Ningbo and then moved to Shaoguan, a small mountain town in Guangdong province where he was assigned to work in a library—better off than in prison, but still not free and completely cut off from the outside world.

‘I was not physically tortured, but mentally I was threatened and subjected to brainwashing,’ he said.

When he was first arrested, Lam was forced to sign two statements: surrendering his right to inform his family of his whereabouts and his right to a lawyer. Over the eight months he was held in China, he was forced to write confessions more than 20 times. Several times he was filmed, with an interrogator behind him whom he could not see, and these were then broadcast on national television—one of many forced televised confessions that have become a feature of Xi Jinping’s regime.

‘I didn’t write what they wanted me to write, they would write it for me,’ Lam said. ‘If my confession was not satisfactory, they would tell me what to write.’”

That is the reality of the criminal justice system to which we now countenance, or see Hong Kong countenancing, returning people from Hong Kong. That is exactly why it was decided, back at the time of the creation of the joint declaration, that matters such as this should be excluded from it, and that surely is why it is now wrong that we should sit back and just watch the People’s Republic of China ride roughshod over that agreement and the legal obligations into which it entered in 1984.

This afternoon, I was privileged to speak by telephone to Dennis Kwok from the Hong Kong Legislative Council, and he said to me that the Second Reading of this Bill will be on Wednesday—the Minister knows that. He accepts that the remaining stages will be done over the course of possibly the next two weeks at most. When I asked the Minister today what that would mean for the consultation to which our Government aspired, he declined to answer—unsurprisingly, perhaps—so let me ask him again. If the Hong Kong Executive go down this road and the Bill passes all its stages by, say, a week or a fortnight on Wednesday, what is the Government’s position going to be? How on earth will they possibly get the wider, longer, more meaningful consultation on which they have pinned so many hopes thus far? I just do not see it happening.

If the Minister will not answer that question, will he at least give the House some assurance that there is a plan B, that we are taking steps and that the message is going to the Chinese Government now that if that situation comes to pass, our Government will not just sit by and watch this tragedy—that is exactly what it would be—unfolding? Our Government need to do more. We need to assert the rights of the people of Hong Kong that we undertook to guarantee when we left in 1997.

UK Fishing Industry: Non-EEA Visas

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alistair Carmichael

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

We are considering the matter of visas for non-European economic area citizens working in the UK fishing industry—sadly, not for the first time. In fact, I last brought this matter before the House on 11 July. Others have led Adjournment debates on the same topic on different occasions. It has been raised on multiple occasions at Home Office questions, most recently by me. Sadly, now, here at the beginning of April, we are no further forward.

I will not rehearse the arguments around the necessity for our fishing skippers to be able to employ crew from outside the European Union or the EEA. I suspect that that has been done to death. If we were going to win the argument by raising the issues, we would have won it long ago.

Tonight, I will gently remind the Minister of a couple of things that she told the House in July. I invite her, when she speaks, to give us something of a progress report. I will then consider the content of the Migration Advisory Committee report from September of last year which, according to the Minister when I last raised this with her, is now the basis on which the Government seek to resist the fairly sensible and, I would have thought, uncontroversial measures that we seek to have introduced.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman for his fortitude in this issue. The Minister, too, knows the reasons why we are discussing it. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that highly skilled fishermen from the Philippines, for example, and other countries must have streamlined access to this incredibly dangerous profession? Does he agree that the future of our fishing sector depends on it?

[Mr Carmichael]

I do agree, and I thank the hon. Gentleman not only for his assiduous attendance at these debates and at other meetings but for his use of the term “highly skilled” fishing crews. Those who go to sea to bring the fish home to put on our plates are highly skilled. The root of the problem is in essence one of attitude, which somehow classes those brave, hard-working men as low skilled. Yes, I agree with him.

Modern Farming and the Environment

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alistair Carmichael

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I can be many things, but I can never be Rebecca Pow—or Rebecca “Kerpow!”, as we call her.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) on setting the scene. I declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers Union and as a landowner as well. For the record, I understand the interdependence of modern farming and the environment. On our farm we have retained the hedgerows, created two ponds and planted 3,500 trees. We have seen the return of the yellowhammer, which was missing for many years on farmland where I and other farmers live. We have seen the return of birds of prey and hares as well. Lots of things have happened because of our commitment to our farm and diversity and the environment.

I hail from a rural constituency. In Strangford, the farming and food industry is a massive employer. Indeed, as the Countryside Alliance has said:

“The food and farming industry is nationally important, generating over £108 billion a year for the UK economy and underpinning our food security. It is particularly important for our most rural areas where farming is often central to the economic and social life of the community, as well as playing a vital role in conservation.”

[Mr Carmichael]

May I take the hon. Gentleman back to the point made by the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) about getting younger people back into the industry? I speak as the 53-year-old son of an 87-year-old farmer. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that I have never been tempted to enter the industry. If we can get this right, we can create opportunities right across our agricultural and rural communities, and get children into schools, keep post offices and shops open and keep public transport running in rural areas.

[Jim Shannon]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Bringing all those things together is key for rural communities. We need to encourage young people. I will quickly speak about sons and daughters taking over farms. In my constituency we have been fortunate over the years that that has happened. Some sons and daughters do not want to take farms on, but the ones who have are still there, so we have seen a progression of farmers’ sons or daughters taking over. Farming communities are not employees of the land, but caretakers of the land for future generations. I read in Shooting Times magazine that the wildlife of today is not ours to dispose of as we want. We hold it in trust for those who come after. That is a fact. That is what we do, and the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

Unless we recognise the dual role of farmers as food producers and conservationists, we risk turning farmers into environmental contractors, which we do not want to do. We want them to have an incentive to continue farming. A farmer does not farm to become rich—that is the case in my neck of the woods, anyway. A farmer farms because it is in his blood and it is his calling. I recently highlighted an important point in my local press, and I want to make the point here before the debate ends. The latest figures show that some farmers, especially younger farmers in my constituency, have had very high levels of depression. Strangford has a large rural community and many farmers have handed over the reins of their farms to their sons and daughters, but there are levels of EU bureaucracy—I do not want to bring in the dreaded Brexit word again—and red tape that have almost strangled the farmers, and they are sick to the back teeth of it. They understand that regulations are necessary to bring food up to standard, but they do not need all of the extra paperwork that goes with it.

Tourism Industry: VAT Reduction

Debate between Jim Shannon and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 21st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am delighted to have obtained this Adjournment debate, albeit slightly postponed. I am grateful to the hon. Members who have remained in their place this evening to take part and to demonstrate that the question of a reduced rate of value added tax for the tourism sector is one that commands cross-party interest and support.

Tourism is the fourth largest sector of the UK economy today and, unlike most sectors, it has a reach across our economy and geography that is hard to equal. Certainly, it is a massively important, and increasingly important, industry in my constituency in the northern isles.

We have previously heard talk of voodoo economics, and tourism is a sector that allows us to apply a little judo economics—that is to say we can use the force of those things that would normally work against us to our favour. In Orkney and Shetland, we have a number of disadvantages due to our geography and the size and sparsity of our population, which are all things that, when it comes to tourism, make us an attractive destination. They are the things that make people want to come to see us in the northern isles. For us, tourism is an enormously important industry, and it is one that has grown massively in recent years.

Tourism also complements many indigenous traditional local industries. For years we have told our fishermen, our farmers and our crofters that they have to diversify or die, and they have taken that message to heart. This does not quite come within what I have to declare as an interest, but my parents’ family farm on Islay, off the west coast, is now in the region of 800 or 900 acres, and it not only supports cattle and sheep, as it has always done. Now, between my sister and my parents, the farm supports four individual self-catering units, which is a good example of how a traditional farming unit has been diversified to take significant income from tourism.

Obviously, tourism fits well with the profile of many communities such as ours, because it allows seasonal and part-time employment, which are both important in communities where people perhaps do not have just one job working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. People are looking for a range of different income sources—as evidenced by the recent growth in the number of people working as tour guides in both Orkney and Shetland—and such employment offers that sort of opportunity.

In establishing the importance of tourism as an industry, in communities like mine right the way through to where I stand in one of the best-known tourism destinations in the country, the question arises of how we can best seek to allow the industry to grow itself.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this Adjournment debate. He has mentioned the attractiveness of his constituency to tourists. A VAT reduction would definitely benefit tourism in Northern Ireland. In 2017, some 2.6 million out-of-state visitors and more than 2 million Northern Ireland residents took an overnight trip in Northern Ireland, and during 2017 visitors from all markets combined to spend £926 million in Northern Ireland, up £76 million on the previous year. Does he agree that lowering VAT can only encourage more people to make the trip to Northern Ireland or to his constituency, luring people away from the Republic of Ireland by providing unrivalled beauty and attractions with unrivalled pricing? Indeed, the same could be said of the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point well. I am aware that Northern Ireland has a particular issue as it shares a land border, a fact that is fairly well discussed at the moment, with the Republic of Ireland. The Republic is one of those countries that in 2011—I will doubtless be corrected if I am wrong—cut their rate of VAT on tourism services to 9%. There is a particular sensitivity about the cross-border issues there, which may assist the hon. Gentleman in making the case, because there is a good working example on his own doorstop of the opportunities that are presented.

I know it is counter-intuitive in the Treasury to suggest that cutting taxes will bring an increased return in revenue, but there is good objective evidence to support that very proposition. I was a member of the Cabinet in 2015 when the Budget cut the rate of spirits duty by 2%. We did that expecting it would result in a reduced return of about £600 million, but we felt it was an important thing to do. In fact, the revenue return as a whole was significantly increased. So having taken the expected hit, we got a better return at the end of the day. This is the same thinking that underpins the Government’s reductions in corporation tax in recent years.