Nagorno-Karabakh: Genocide Emergency Alert
Debate between Lord Lexden and Baroness Sugg(4 years ago)
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Baroness Sugg (Con) [V]
My Lords, we will continue to support the work of the International Criminal Court and international tribunals to tackle any war crimes that have been committed. We are looking carefully at Genocide Watch’s report and will continue to work with all our international partners to ensure that anybody who commits war crimes or other atrocities is properly investigated and prosecuted and, if appropriate, punished.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have now been asked.
Guantanamo Bay Detainees
Debate between Lord Lexden and Baroness Sugg(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Sugg (Con) [V]
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her words on Hong Kong and I welcome her commendation of our activity there. The UK takes great pride in standing up for universal human rights and freedoms. We will continue to do so with all our partners. We will continue to monitor this event and all cases closely and will continue to regularly raise human rights concerns with the Government of the UAE at senior levels, both in public and in private.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have now been asked.
LGBT International Rights
Debate between Lord Lexden and Baroness Sugg(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, we oppose the death penalty in all circumstances and oppose any discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. We will continue to work with countries to remove the death penalty.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, should we not pay tribute to organisations such as the Human Dignity Trust and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, whose work helps LGBT people in Commonwealth countries to gain their basic rights through their courts, most recently in Belize and Botswana? At the same time, should we not continue to deplore the oppression and suffering that remain the lot of gay friends and colleagues in most parts of the Commonwealth, in open defiance of that organisation’s charter?
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, of course we fully support the Commonwealth charter and we are working closely to make sure that we are seeing progress in this area. I join my noble friend in paying tribute to the brave organisations that are working across the world. These are exactly the kind of organisations that we are supporting through the Commonwealth Equality Network. They work tirelessly to protect the rights of fellow citizens and ensure that LGBT people can live free from discrimination and violence.
Belarus: Presidential Elections
Debate between Lord Lexden and Baroness Sugg(4 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Sugg) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the full support of the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. It is a powerful statement of solidarity for the people of Belarus. Like both of them, I am appalled at the arbitrary detention and abuse of protesters that we have seen.
The noble Lord highlights the importance of international co-operation. The UK is working very closely in the OSCE and the UN Security Council and with our Five Eyes partners and our European allies to make sure that we have a common approach. He also asked about sanctions. As the Foreign Secretary said yesterday in the other place, we will join the EU in adopting targeted sanctions against those responsible for violence, repression and vote-rigging in Belarus—although, as the noble Lord highlighted, the EU process has been delayed. Given that delay and Lukashenko’s fraudulent inauguration, the Foreign Secretary has directed the FCDO sanction team to prepare Magnitsky sanctions for those responsible, and we are co-ordinating very closely with the US and Canada to prepare appropriate listings as a matter of urgency.
The noble Lord and the noble Baroness asked about corruption. As they highlighted, corruption is not currently covered by the Magnitsky sanctions; they deal with a slew of the most serious human rights violations and cover those who profit from human rights abuses, but the Foreign Secretary is looking very carefully at how we can extend the next step of the Magnitsky sanctions to corruption and similar types of offences. He will say more on that in due course, but I am afraid I do not have a date at the moment.
The noble Lord highlighted our close working with the French and the Germans. The UK hosted an E3 meeting recently where we discussed this important matter and the imposition of sanctions. When the Foreign Secretary was in the US last week, he discussed the matter with Secretary of State Pompeo.
The noble Lord spoke about the trade unions and highlighted the Foreign Secretary’s words about them yesterday in the other place. The trade union movement has been closely aligned with the human rights movement and the cause of liberty for many years. We have doubled our support for civil society organisations and are working closely in Belarus with people on the ground to decide exactly how best to distribute that money, including with academics, trade unions and civil society.
Like the noble Baroness, I pay tribute to the brave women who have played such a prominent role in the opposition to Lukashenko’s fraudulent election. They have led an incredibly effective and unified opposition campaign in really trying circumstances. There have been first-hand accounts, witness reports and statements by the UN OHCHR stating that women have been detained and subject to beatings and the threat of rape. That is never acceptable. Of course we will recognise the abuse of women as we prepare our sanctions and will continue to lead the way with our work on preventing sexual violence in conflict. We are very pleased to be co-hosting the action coalition on gender-based violence for the following year, where we will do more work on this.
The noble Baroness also highlighted the importance of cracking down on illegal finance activities. Of course, criminals, from Belarus and elsewhere, should not be able to profit from their illegal activities in any circumstances. Banks should be, and have been, taking steps to ensure that this is not happening on their watch. The UK is internationally recognised as having one of the strongest systems to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing and to bring justice to those who seek to use or hide the proceeds of crime, as found by the Financial Action Task Force. We will continue to crack down hard on dirty money through our world-leading legislation, unexplained wealth orders and the measures in our economic crime and asset recovery plans.
The noble Baroness also asked about exports to Belarus. The UK currently implements EU sanctions on Belarus, which include an arms embargo and the ban on exporting equipment which might be used for internal repression. We will continue to observe those restrictions through our autonomous Belarus sanctions regime after the transition period has ended. The noble Baroness also highlighted the importance of media freedom; as she will know, the FCDO supports the BBC World Service. I agree with her that it does incredibly important work, both to ensure fair reporting and to support other independent journalists who are having such a difficult time in Belarus at the moment.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, we now come to the 20 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.
Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, we do not yet know whether the OSCE investigation will be able to access Belarus. We very much hope that it will, in order to be able to fulfil its independent investigation. The UN rapporteur has not been allowed access to the country, but we hope that they will be allowed access and will report back soon. My noble friend highlights the importance of parliamentary support, and I pay tribute to his and others’ work, which shows such good solidarity with the people of Belarus. I share his desire to see a binding and meaningful dialogue, and we will do all we can to help bring that about.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, all questions have now been asked and answered.
Aid Spending
Debate between Lord Lexden and Baroness Sugg(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg (Con)
My Lords, the Foreign Secretary explained in letters to the Select Committees and placed in the Libraries of both Houses the priorities on how these decisions were made. We remain firmly committed to transparency in our aid spending. I hope noble Lords will welcome the announcement that we will continue in the Independent Commission for Aid Impact.
On the prioritisation decisions, at a minimum our DevTracker website is being updated at the end of every month. If, by the end of August, amended programmes and projects have been uploaded on to that, provisional international development statistics will be published in the usual way. Then, of course, the final international development statistics in autumn next year will include country-level data.
We do not know what the current GNI figure is, so this is an iterative process as we go, but we are absolutely determined to ensure that we are using the aid money that we have to deal with the many issues that the world faces.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Private Notice Question has now elapsed.
Covid-19: Vaccine Availability
Debate between Lord Lexden and Baroness Sugg(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Sugg
My Lords, our record shows that we are taking a leading role in this. The Prime Minister has consistently called on world leaders to work together to rapidly develop a vaccine and make it available to all, including at the Coronavirus Global Response pledging conference, which the UK co-led, and at the recent Global Citizen summit. The UK also hosted the Gavi summit, which raised over £6.9 billion for Gavi to sustain its immunisation coverage and bolster the primary healthcare systems needed to tackle Covid-19. We will continue to play this leading international role.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked and we now move to the next Question.