Chagos Islands

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My hon. Friend answers his own questions in a way. Yes, the islands are low-lying and so do face some of the perils of climate change, although I hope that recent decisions and the actions of Governments will stop the water level rising any further. He is correct in saying that there is an understanding that we would cede the islands to the Mauritians in the event that they were no longer needed for defence purposes.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I believe this decision to be wrong. I also believe that the FCO has not comported itself well in how this information has come out. This morning I spoke to my constituent, Louis Elyse, who is the leader of the small Chagossian community in Wythenshaw and Sale East. He is utterly heartbroken and said that it was cruel and unusual that the KPMG report gave so much hope only for it to be undermined in such a way by Government yesterday.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

It is not entirely fair to say that the KPMG report was undermined by Government. The report gave a whole range of possible scenarios, and consultation then followed. I say again that only 25% of the 832 people who responded after further discussions indicated that they would want to return. These are very, very small numbers that would, under the KPMG report, trigger a very high cost per capita. I very much hope that the package we have announced will benefit those of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents who qualify for assistance as Chagossians. It is on those people on his own doorstep that I would like to concentrate the expenditure of this money. We are very happy, in the FCO and DFID, to discuss how that might take place.

Aleppo and Syria

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who has been such a powerful, consistent and long-standing voice on these issues in the House. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for securing this important debate.

The situation in Syria is truly horrendous, and I want to focus on the humanitarian catastrophe. In Aleppo and the Idlib governorate, 2 million people are living without water or electricity, and there are attacks on health facilities. Across Syria as a whole, there are 470,000 people who have lost their lives, 8 million people who are internally displaced and more than 4 million refugees.

We can rightly be proud of our role in providing aid in the region, and I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for International Development to his place. We have seen £1.35 billion in UK aid to the region since 2012—money well spent. However, concern has been raised by a range of humanitarian, civil society and human rights organisations that the Assad regime is controlling deliveries of aid to the detriment of rebel-held areas. That raises serious questions for the United Nations—questions I would like the Government to raise with it.

May I echo what the right hon. Gentleman said about the heroic efforts of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey in coping with the massive numbers of refugees coming to their countries? The International Development Committee recognised that in its report in January on the Syrian refugee crisis. We also said in that report that we would welcome a decision by the Government to resettle 3,000 unaccompanied children. I would like an update today from the Government on what progress they are making on the former Prime Minister’s pledge to take 20,000 vulnerable people through a resettlement scheme, on the pledge to take 3,000 vulnerable children from the region and on the pledge to take children from Greece, Italy and France. I raised that yesterday with the Home Secretary, who said that around 50 children have been accepted so far. I would like to see that accelerated, because we have a duty to act here, in the same way that we have a duty to act there.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an extraordinarily powerful point. However, the resettlement programme is absolutely stuck in the mud. In Greater Manchester, agreement cannot be reached between the city authorities and the Government because the Government refuse to pay the money that is required to get these children and other Syrian refugees to Manchester, where we are willing to accept them. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Stephen Twigg]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. The people of Liverpool have made a similar pledge, as have the city council and the mayor of Liverpool. The National Audit Office published a report last month on this very issue, in which it praised the progress made by local government in the last year but pointed to some of the issues my hon. Friend has highlighted—not least that it is not clear what funding will be available to support local authorities beyond the first-year costs.

Will the Foreign Secretary address another aspect of the current crisis? Some 70,000 Syrian refugees are currently in what is known as the “berm”, which is a demilitarised zone between Syria and Jordan. Those 70,000 people are, effectively, being prevented from going to the safe space of Jordan. Our former colleague, Stephen O’Brien, who is now the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has described conditions at the berm as truly dire. My understanding is that a plan to deal with the crisis has been agreed by the United Nations but not yet by Jordan. Will the Foreign Secretary use his good offices to pursue this as a matter of urgency with the Jordanian Government?

Earlier this year the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield and another former International Development Secretary, Clare Short, brought to the International Development Committee’s attention the issue of the unintended consequences of counter-terrorism legislation for the delivery of aid. Several non-governmental organisations have been in touch with the Committee in recent weeks to raise that question and, in particular, two areas that require action from the Government.

The first area is the need to ease the concerns of banks. My understanding is that even when NGOs are fully compliant with counter-terrorism legislation, banks are sometimes nervous about lending, leading to delays in processing payments and the aid not getting delivered. The second is the need to use our good offices with Turkey. My understanding is that it is not always easy for NGOs to function on the Turkish side of the border region between Syria and Turkey. For example, Syria Relief UK has told us that it has been waiting for its application to establish an office in southern Turkey to be processed, and that the Turkish authorities can be overly restrictive about the means by which they allow funds to be transferred to Syria. I realise these are rather technical points, but they are about how aid can most effectively be delivered, and I would be grateful to Ministers if they addressed those points during this debate.

The scale of the challenge is truly enormous. The heartbreaking scenes mentioned by colleagues on both sides of the House, particularly those in Aleppo, touch us all. They touch our constituents and they touch people in all parts of this country. I am pleased that several speakers have reaffirmed the important principle of the responsibility to protect, which arose from what happened in the 1990s in Rwanda and the Balkans. In the meantime, we need urgent action to secure the safe delivery of aid to all parts of Syria.

Syria

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I will answer just the latter point, for brevity. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we pay tribute to the British capability, which I have seen with my own eyes in places such as Srebrenica. It is important that we gain the intelligence that is needed to hold these people to account, so that the verification processes actually take place. That can only be done, as we saw in Ramadi, once the area has been made safe from all the booby traps. That work is commencing as we speak.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

May I say that the Minister has comported himself well at the Dispatch Box today? If there is no cessation of violence in this instance, is there a plan B?

[Mr Ellwood]

I think it is best to avoid discussion of a plan B. We need to make this work, because the situation has gone on for too long. I began by saying that we are now in our sixth year. There is a recognition that the international community is coming together around the table for the first time. We have not previously had a situation in which Iran and Saudi Arabia—and, indeed, Russia and the United States—have been at the table. We are facing a number of difficulties and complexities, but that should not mean that we do not try to find solutions for the stability of Syria in the longer term.

Chagos Islands

Mike Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I should let hon. Members know that I took on my new role only this morning, but I have long been familiar with the historic injustice done to the Chagos islanders. I defer to the expertise and passion of others, not least my hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, the president of the all-party group, about whom my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) spoke. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) for his powerful, personal and thorough exposition of the appalling treatment of a people.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend believe, as I do, that the debate is timely as all hallows’ approaches? For 50 years, the Chagossians have not been able to mourn the souls of their dead adequately, because there has been no right of return.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have noted many historical dates, and that tragic celebration is an apposite time to have this debate.

The hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) spoke passionately about his constituents and gave a stark illustration of the injustice that has been done to them. I have strong sympathy with his views on sovereignty: that fundamental choice in the future must lay with Chagossians. My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall made a similar and powerful point. The people of Chagos must be at the heart of decisions about their future, and they have shown great dignity throughout the long decades of struggle on this matter. I commend many of the other comments that have been made.

I have absolute and deep regret, which I know is shared by the official Opposition, over the way in which the Chagossians were forcibly resettled in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I, for one, cannot justify those actions or excuse the conduct of a previous generation and previous Governments, whether they were Labour or otherwise. In my view, the UK Government have a fundamental moral responsibility towards the islanders that will not go away. I urge the Government to do all that they can to seek a resolution.

Hon. Members attending the debate will know that that is a view shared throughout the House, including by the Leader of the Opposition. Let us be frank; this is not the only episode of regrettable action or events in the turbulent process of decolonisation. Members will be aware that I have long supported the cause of Somaliland, which is also a former British colony. The difficult fact is that, as in that case, we as successor generations often find ourselves left with complex legal and practical conundrums involving other sovereign states, international bodies and treaty obligations, which often conflict, or at least appear to conflict.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original actions, the fact is that the base on Diego Garcia exists and there are agreements between the US and the UK, based, as we know, on the 1966 exchange of notes. I fundamentally believe that there must be a way of resolving that, and that is a common view among those who have contributed to the debate. The all-party group has said that any renewal of the 1966 agreement must be conditional on a commitment to facilitate and support Chagossian resettlement. I note what the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) on that point. There is a practical possibility of that happening, so why do we not get to it?

I have a series of brief questions for the Minister before I allow him to reply; I am sure that we all want to hear from him. First, will he update us on the status of the negotiations with the United States on the renewal of the 1966 notes and any views on the US’s amenability to resettlement alongside any base that might remain? Secondly, what is his reaction to the legitimate concerns raised by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross about whether the current proposals for resettlement are adequate for the Chagos islanders? Thirdly, what is the UK Government’s position on the judgment on 18 March of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea regarding the marine protected area? Do the Government accept that judgment, and how do they intend to deal with it? Finally, we understand that the Supreme Court heard core arguments in June about the 2008 decision, and that it has reserved judgment. I do not have a deep familiarity with the proceedings of the Supreme Court, but does the Minister have an update on when we might expect a decision? I think that is something that we would all like to know.

I finish by expressing my great sympathy with the concerns of the Chagos islanders. That is certainly the view of the official Opposition, and we seek to work with the Government to find whatever solution can be found to achieve the resolution of their desires and hopes for resettlement, and to right the historic wrongs.