Egypt

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend has made a number of very pertinent interventions, all of which I agree with. It is absolutely the case that what he refers to is what this whole issue is about, but what we have to consider—I want to deal with this in my closing remarks—is our relationship to incipient democracies, if we want to call them that, and to political governance in the Arab world.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Before he goes on to the other issue, may I put this to him? He mentions the constitution, which has increased provision for religious freedom compared with what there has been recently. However, in relation to ethnic and religious minorities, particularly Christians and Copts, does he not agree that words are fine—the constitution may make provision in certain areas—but the issue is the enforcement of and the abiding by those provisions and the human rights afforded to religious minorities in particular? How does he see the role of our Government in ensuring that those minorities are properly protected?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My right hon. Friend the Minister can speak with more authority than I can on this, but our Government have been absolutely clear about our commitment to human rights and to religious freedoms in Egypt. What the right hon. Gentleman should be aware of is that the Copts—we talked about a coup last year—were very much in favour of the military stepping in. They saw the Muslim Brotherhood as no particular friends to them. Indeed, they felt that the incidence of religious violence and of terror against their community increased dramatically in the brief period of Muslim Brotherhood rule.

There are many conflicting issues that we have to deal with. On one side is the protection of minority rights; on the other is the democratic will as expressed by the majority. Often in these cases in the Arab world, those two things are in conflict. One justification for military involvement was on precisely this issue. The army would say—it did say to us—that the Muslim Brotherhood did not look after the human rights of all Egyptians; it was sectional, and it looked merely to its own. In that context, the army has taken on itself the role of guardian of minority rights.

Egypt’s parlous economic situation is the context in which that military strongman, for want of a better term, may well emerge. The budget deficit has risen to $34.8 billion, which is 14% of GDP. To put that in context, our deficit was 12% of GDP in 2010, which was the highest proportion it had been in our peacetime history. Public debt in Egypt is running at about 90% of GDP. Clearly, there has been a massive economic crisis and the country is under a lot of pressure. There are also problems with terrorism and the rule of law. When we first arrived in Egypt in 2010, we managed to drive through the Sinai peninsula on our way to Gaza, but the presence of armed militias and armed forces in the Sinai peninsula, and the battles that rage there, make such a trip impossible today. The country suffers under massive economic pressure and the spectre of renewed terrorism.