Pakistan: Aid Programmes and Human Rights

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for bringing this important debate before us today and for his dedication to bringing injustices across the world before your Lordships’ House.

At the heart of all we do as part of our important role as an international aid superpower must be constant self-evaluation to ensure that our aid programmes are achieving results in the context of each state that we help. At the same time, we must be aware of the important soft power that international aid allows us in improving lives for everyone in any state we help, including minorities. How to ensure that aid is concentrated on those who really need it in any state is a significant debate within the international aid community. This applies especially to minorities, who are often among the most marginalised in any society.

I do not want to repeat in this short contribution the powerful evidence that we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and, as has been identified by the Foreign Office, that Pakistan is currently woeful in its treatment of minorities. From state-sponsored blasphemy laws to the death penalty, we see how a state creates an easy mechanism for the persecution of religious minorities, especially Christians and Hindus.

In Pakistan, most of these minorities are among the third of the population who live in poverty and who should be the very people benefiting from our aid programmes. At the same time, Pakistan is of course an important strategic partner for the UK and a state that receives significant support in aid—more than £300 million in 2019-20. The reassurances that I seek from the Minister are around the direction of that aid.

I applaud the focusing of UK international development on education, especially for girls in Pakistan, to ensure they have as many opportunities as possible. I hope that an educated population would by its nature become more pluralistic and less susceptible to the persecution of minorities in these difficult times. I want to ask the Minister about three specific issues.

First, is my noble friend confident that aid in Pakistan is reaching those minorities within the bottom third who live in poverty? It is essential that any aid be focused on need and not on ethnicity or religion. Secondly, can she reassure me that educational programmes that the UK supports in Pakistan are assessed to ensure that they do not allow bigotry or sectarianism to be taught in any UK-funded educational programme? Thirdly, will she impress on her colleagues in the Foreign Office the need to ensure that we make all possible representations against the misuse of blasphemy laws and the retention of the death penalty?