Yemen

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I want to say a few words in support of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who has brought a hugely neglected subject to the attention of the House. This is a neglected part of the middle east, yet, as he mentioned, it is crucial to the security of the region and, indeed, the wider world. It also has a strategic trade position. Some 5% of the world’s oil trade goes through the Bab al-Mandab strait. That is obviously an important trade route. Of course, the situation has greatly worsened in recent weeks, and there was the news just last week that the United Kingdom, the United States and France have closed their embassies in the country, so the ambassador would no longer be able to offer his bed to the right hon. Gentleman if the opportunity afforded itself again in the future.

I well remember the trip with the right hon. Gentleman some years ago. It was a fascinating journey. Yemen is probably the most extraordinary country that I have ever visited. The trip involved something of a pilgrimage to pay homage to the birthplace of the right hon. Gentleman at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Aden, where we were able, with the aid of several television cameras, to dig out his birth records. That was after an overland trip from Sana’a to Aden, which the right hon. Gentleman promised would take only three or four hours. We started off at 9 am and arrived at 11.30 at night. The noble Lord Kilclooney, who was among our number, was convinced that we had been kidnapped by a tribe at one stage of our journey. In fact, such was the security situation that the ambassador was allowed to travel only by air and not by land, but we, being mere dispensable MPs, were able to travel by land.

What we saw on the trip, apart from an extraordinary country apparently still deeply entrenched in the middle ages in many respects, was one that was deeply stricken with poverty. One could see the potential for the encroachment of extremism into some deeply impoverished communities who had little else to survive for and were easily tempted by extremist voices that offered, on the face of it, some form of hope out of their despair. It is that form of poverty that gives rise to extremism and everything that goes with it. That is why our international aid effort in the wider world but particularly in Yemen is so necessary. I think that we can take particular pride in the resources that we have put into alleviating poverty, malnutrition and the severe problems the right hon. Gentleman enumerated.

We also visited the port of Aden. It was one of the great ports of colonial times—it was the fuelling station for the British fleet travelling to India—and yet it is now in decay, with very little activity going on. It is a vast deep-water port that still has the potential to be a major economic player as a staging post in the middle east, so it was disappointing that the Dubai ports company DP World attempted to invest in the port in 2008 and obtained the concession, only for that concession to be relinquished in 2012 because it was said that Dubai was not investing in the port but seeking to mothball it because of the effect that it might have on Dubai’s own interests. I believe that the port offers major potential for regenerating economic growth in the country, which would have huge implications if we got it right.

When we visited Yemen some seven or eight years ago, large parts of the country were effectively no-go areas, and we were unfortunately unable to visit much outside Sana’a and Aden. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian peninsula, but it is the second most populous. In addition to all its current problems, its environmental problems can only get worse. It is a water-poor country and will run out of water resources in the next 15 to 20 years unless some serious investment is made in water management, including desalination plants. Unlike its wealthy neighbours, it has virtually no oil.

I was struck on our visit by the great links between our country and Yemen. The colonial links with Aden go back a long way. Veterans in my constituency remember being in the Army when it was withdrawn abruptly from Aden by the Wilson Government back in 1967, when things kicked off. There ensued some 25 years of chaos in the country, with various civil wars and the dismemberment of the north and the south before Yemen was eventually put back together in the 1990s. On our visit, we met many Cabinet Ministers who were highly Anglophile and highly articulate. Many had children who were at universities in the United Kingdom, if they had not done likewise themselves. They had interests in the United Kingdom and spoke fondly of it. It struck me as extraordinary that we did not have a closer relationship. Indeed, I wondered why Yemen was not part of the Commonwealth, given some of the culture and background that our countries share. There are, and there certainly were, people in positions of responsibility in Yemen who are an obvious channel for dialogue, discussion and potential co-operation with western nations and particularly with the United Kingdom. We have an open door for the British Government to continue to play a significant role in the future of that troubled part of the Arabian peninsula.

As the right hon. Member for Leicester East rightly said in his opening remarks, the future of, and the solutions to, Yemen are largely reliant on its partner states in the Arabian peninsula and the wider middle east. Yemen will require financial backing. We have heard about the abortive attempts to raise donor backing in the Friends of Yemen conference some years ago, in which we played such a strategic role.

Saudi Arabia has, from time to time, injected large quantities of money into Yemen to prevent economic collapse but also, of course, because many economic migrants from Yemen have come into Saudi Arabia. In the 1990s, at the time of the first Gulf war, the President of Yemen backed Saddam Hussein for extraordinary reasons and thereby managed to alienate himself from all the allied forces, Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries. Some 1 million Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia and had to return to Yemen. That caused huge economic hardship. There was a further crackdown on illegal labourers in Saudi Arabia in April 2013, and hundreds of thousands of Yemeni workers were expelled back into Yemen, which has had huge economic implications.

The co-operation of Saudi Arabia is absolutely key to getting some form of economic stability in Yemen. At a time when the country is in the hands of militant Shi’a groups of one description or another, the Saudis are understandably loth to underwrite further loans to Yemen, because they do not know what its future will be. I gather that there are moves afoot to erect a 1,500 km fence across the whole Saudi-Yemeni border. That is a porous and fluid border, across which many al-Qaeda terrorists and others have moved from north to south and vice versa over many years. We also have to consider the role of Qatar, which invested a not insubstantial sum of money some years ago in real estate in Sana’a. One dreads to think what state that investment is in at the moment. The point is that the co-operation of those neighbouring Gulf countries, and their working in partnership, is absolutely key.

A point that hon. Members have only touched on is the strategic aspect—what might be termed the “great game” that Saudi Arabia and Iran are playing out for influence in Yemen, whether by backing a particular Government or providing other support. Yemen is in the middle of what has been called a Saudi-Iranian cold war, and the co-operation of both those countries is needed to find a solution in Yemen. It is not in the interests of Saudi Arabia or Iran for Yemen to become a training ground for terrorists who will wreak havoc in other countries—Arab and non-Arab—in the middle east and the wider western world. Yemen harbours terrorists, despite the intention of the previous democratic Government to try to clamp down on them. As the right hon. Member for Leicester East has said, the huge quantity of arms in Yemen gives rise to serious concerns. If we cannot contain and regularise the situation and bring back stability in Yemen, there will be a domino effect as terrorists trained on the streets of Sana’a—or, more likely, in desert training camps—try to do harm and wreak mayhem in the capital cities of Europe.

Yemen is a neglected and little-understood country in a location that is strategically and geographically important. As a matter of security, it plays a very significant role that we ignore at our peril. I applaud the efforts made over many years by the British Government, from whichever side of the House they have been drawn—this is not a partisan matter. It has been absolutely essential to be at the table and to try to broker partnerships to bring economic stability and security to Yemen. Hand in hand with that, the direct aid that we have given has played an essential part in trying to rescue some of the poorest people in the world, who are vulnerable to falling into the hands of terrorists.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. We are talking about a difficult and frustrating situation, in which we have seen many false dawns. It is essential that we continue to take a strong interest and a strong lead in Yemen. If we can bring about a solution, it will be a great tribute to the Government’s efforts. That can be done only in partnership with all the other nations in the region, and Britain is probably better placed than any other western power to bring it about.

Destruction of Historic Sites (Syria and Iraq)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

At 2 o’clock I must chair the Public Accounts Commission, so I will not be able to stay for the debate. I apologise to the House and I will try to come back.

I very much wanted to take part in the debate to talk about my personal experience, having visited both Syria and Iraq. I also felt that it was right to support my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). I support everything he said in his most impressive speech and I will not repeat all the excellent advice that he has given to our Government.

This issue might seem a long way away, but it is of the most dramatic importance. It is not just a cultural catastrophe, as my hon. Friend has outlined, but a humanitarian catastrophe of the first importance. One cannot divorce the preservation of artefacts from the preservation of local community. Only on Monday, Archbishop Warda of Irbil was at a meeting in the House of Lords, which I attended. He also gave a sermon in Westminster cathedral yesterday. He spoke most movingly about the trauma suffered by his community, which is of appalling proportions. The problems we have in our own country, the issues we were debating and getting very heated about in Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday and the budget I will be discussing later in the Public Accounts Commission all pale into insignificance when one listens to a man such as Archbishop Warda talk about his local community.

Twenty-five thousand Christian families have fled the Nineveh plain and 125,000 people—men, women and children—are without their homes. That is not happening in 1915 or 1940; it happened in August of last year. I have been to these places and I shall describe them a little in a moment, because I feel passionately that having started all this we have a responsibility to finish it.

Let me first follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Newark was saying about Syria. I have been to Syria, but I must admit it was not a recent visit. I have also received an invitation to speak at Damascus university on the plight of Christians, but I think that perhaps discretion is the better part of valour in not going to speak in Damascus at present. However, I have been to Damascus in the past and I visited the house in Straight street where St Paul was converted in the home of Ananias. Apparently that house is in good order and has not been destroyed. Whether that is because it is in a part of Damascus that is controlled by Assad forces, I do not know.

As my hon. Friend said, the destruction in Syria has been truly appalling. According to the United Nations, 300 cultural sites in Syria have been affected by the civil war. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research has accumulated a great deal of knowledge on what has been going on. Focusing on 18 areas of particular importance, UNITAR found 24 sites destroyed, 104 severely damaged, 85 moderately damaged and 77 possibly damaged. Those are sites of world heritage status. Such status is not granted casually; they are vital sites.

In one world heritage site in Syria, the old city of Aleppo, UNESCO believes that 121 historical buildings have been damaged or destroyed—equal to 30% to 40% of the area covered by the world heritage designation. The minaret of the 11th-century Umayyad mosque has been toppled, while the citadel of Aleppo is being occupied by military forces and has suffered at least three violent explosions.

The oldest surviving Byzantine church, that of St Simeon Stylites, built on the site of the famed hermit’s pillar, is at risk given its location 19 miles north-west of Aleppo. There is also damage to Krak des Chevaliers, which was created by the Hospitaller order in the 12th century. I should declare an interest because I am a Knight of that order. We are still around after all these centuries, trying to do good work in hospitals around the world, particularly in the middle east, and the work is extremely challenging. Illegal excavations are occurring in the Valley of the Tombs and the Camp of Diocletian—some of them undertaken using heavy machinery, bound to do a great deal of damage. The damage in Syria has been absolutely appalling.

I now turn to Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was in power, I visited the Christian communities there. I also visited Babylon, which, of course, is one of the great wonders of the world. Alexander the Great chose it to be the capital of his world empire. Following the mistaken invasion of Iraq, the coalition, unbelievably, created a military base right on top of the archaeological site, 150 hectares in size.

Babylon is a strange place. There is a lot of pastiche renovation undertaken by Saddam, but the damage to Babylon has been appalling since the invasion and it is getting worse, so I think that we do have a certain responsibility. Looters have attacked cities such as Nimrod and Nineveh, whose names resound with biblical and literary echoes that have rolled down the centuries, and they are now at the centre of destruction.

Let me quote from the prophet Nahum, whose tomb I visited in the village of al-Quosh. Of all the villages that I visited in the Nineveh plain in 2008, only two of those Christian villages—and I visited several—have not been occupied by ISIS forces. They are the villages of al-Qosh and Sharafiya. In the village of al-Qosh one can still find the tomb of the prophet Nahum, and what he wrote all those years ago still resounds today:

“Take ye the spoil of the silver, take the spoil of the gold: for there is no end of the riches of all the precious furniture. She is destroyed, and rent, and torn: the heart melteth, and the knees fail, and all the loins lose their strength: and the faces of them…are as the blackness of a kettle.”

That was Nahum talking thousands of years ago, and his tomb is right there, in one of the only two Christian villages that have not been pillaged and had their population expelled and churches trashed.

Unbelievably, in 2008 I was saying much the same thing. I organised a debate in Westminster Hall on the plight of the Christians and the Christian sites in the Nineveh plains. I also quoted Nahum, who said:

“Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.”

I said in that debate—it is there in Hansard—

“When I went to the Nineveh plains, what struck me was that there was a sense of security in those ancient, entirely Christian villages. I met many displaced people who had come up from Basra and Baghdad to settle in the Nineveh plains, and I heard some absolutely heart-rending stories.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 26WH.]

I went on to describe them.

It is extraordinary that, having started all this mess, having invaded Iraq—Saddam, for all his faults, was protecting some of these sites—

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Nicking stuff from them.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, but they were not actually being looted and the population was not actually being dispersed. Although things were bad under Saddam—I am no apologist for Saddam—I can tell my hon. Friend that they are infinitely worse there.

Back in 2008 I was given various reassurances by the then Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Bill Rammell, who told me:

“It is difficult to separate this issue from the broader picture in Iraq which, as a result of improving security and progress towards reconciliation, is a far brighter one than we have seen for several years—certainly brighter than it was a year ago.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 41WH.]

We have a responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has given some practical ideas of what we can do, but I have visited those churches and I have listened, in those churches in the Nineveh plains, to services being held in Aramaic, the ancient tongue of our Lord, and I know that it is impossible to separate the expulsion of a people from the issue of the protection of those sites. ISIS, as a result of coalition bombing, has retreated from quite a few villages on the Nineveh plains. The Christian population could possibly be enticed to go back there—because the best way to protect the villages and the archaeological sites is to get the original population back—but they are too terrified to return because they do not trust the Iraqi army.

When ISIS enter a Christian village, they tell the Christians that they have three choices—“You leave, or you convert to Islam, or you die”—so most leave. If ISIS discover that someone is a Shi’a, they give them no choice; they kill them. I am afraid, however, that the Christian population in the Nineveh plains do not have confidence that the Iraqi army, dominated by Shi’as—because many Sunnis have joined or collaborate with ISIS—can protect them. It is therefore down to us.

I am not suggesting that we send some regiment from Aldershot to those burning hot plains where they will make themselves a target, but surely there must be a way forward. Having, in a sense, destabilised Iraq and put the Christian population at risk, can we just walk away and say, “We have fulfilled our side of the bargain by just putting in six planes”? I think we have to do far more than that. We have to arm the local Christian population; that is what they are asking for. I asked that question specifically of Archbishop Warda on Monday. He said, “That is what we want you to do—send in the international peacemakers, protect our people, let our people go back to our villages, and then we can protect their sites.” The same thing, surely—although it would be an infinitely more difficult and complicated picture—applies to Syria.

I will end on that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has done a great service to the House in directing our attention to the appalling problems and humanitarian and cultural disaster going on in that part of the world. I hope that people in our country feel that, given our history, we have some sense of responsibility.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to be able to speak in a debate such as this, which seems to be on a rather obscure and specialist subject. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) so ably put it, there are far greater ramifications of what is going on in the cultural pillaging of Syria and Iraq beyond the appreciation of culture and the great treasures that are gradually disappearing.

I declare an interest not only as the vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on archaeology and chairman of the British Museum all-party group, but as someone who has studied Mesopotamology at Cambridge. It is not often that one gets the opportunity to revisit one’s studies in this place. I have also visited Syria twice. On my last visit there, five years ago, we went to Aleppo, a city which I think we would find hard to identify now. I found the museum there and went in search of some of the excavations by the great Mesopotamologist Sir Max Mallowan, who went to school at Lancing college in my constituency and was, of course, married to Agatha Christie. When I eventually found some of the finds from Tell Brak—one of his great excavations—rather alarmingly, I was asked by the guard who was on duty which of them I would like to buy.

Preservation of antiquities in Syria and Iraq has always left rather a lot to be desired, but there is a sense of déjà vu about this issue. After the first Gulf war there was extensive looting of the regional museums in Iraq in particular—that cradle of civilisation, Mesopotamia, to which my hon. Friends have alluded. It is estimated that the museums in Basra, Kufa and Kut, the great Nebuchadnezzar museum in Babylon and the museums in Kirkuk and Duhuk lost between them something like 4,000 priceless objects.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and after the great museum of Baghdad was miraculously almost untouched by the bombing, in April 2003 it fell foul of the looters. That was one of the great museums of the world; it had one of the greatest collections of cultural treasures in the world—treasures from Ur, Babylon, Nineveh, Nimrod and Ashur, examples of the earliest writing, fantastic cylinder seals and cuneiform clay tablets. Some 15,000 objects from the Sumerian, Akkadian and other periods were pillaged, including 5,000 cylinder seals, and gold and silver objects. Among them was, famously, the great vase of Warka, from the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk, one of the great treasures of the world. It was found in the temple complex of the Sumerian goddess Inanna by German archaeologists back in the 1930s. It is one of the earliest known surviving works of narrative relief sculpture with human figures, going back to the fourth millennium BC. That vase was wrenched from its base in the cabinet in the Baghdad museum. Then it went missing.

There followed an incredible story which is probably much more interesting than what happened in that rather poor film, “The Monuments Men”, about a fascinating part of history. A small delegation of mostly reservists from America were put in charge of trying to retrieve some of those treasures from the Baghdad museum. An amnesty was issued and, remarkably, out of those 15,000 objects, some 4,000 gradually trickled back to the museum. That included, remarkably, the great vase of Warka. Its return was described in The Times back in 2003. Three unidentified men in their early twenties turned up outside the Baghdad museum driving a rather clapped-out red Toyota. The Times went on:

“As they struggled to lift a large object wrapped in a blanket out of the boot, the American guards on the gate”—

at the Baghdad museum—

“raised their weapons. For a moment, a priceless 5,000-year-old vase thought to have been lost in looting after the fall of Baghdad seemed about to meet its end. But one of the men peeled back the blanket to reveal carved alabaster pieces that were clearly something extraordinary. Three feet high and weighing 600 lb intact, this was the Sacred Vase of Warka, regarded by experts as one of the most precious of all the treasures taken”

during that looting.

The vase of Warka was returned. There was great concern because it was in about 20 pieces, so it was thought to have been damaged. In fact, when the Germans dug it up in the 1930s, it was in about 20 pieces, so with a lot of conservation work and a good deal of glue the great vase of Warka was put back together. Alas, I do not know where the great vase of Warka is at present; whether it has been taken to a site of safety, I do not know. Others may have more information on that.

We had a fascinating talk from one of the reservist colonels who led that group of American soldiers retrieving those objects, who came to Parliament some years ago. Indeed, a book has been published about the looting of the Baghdad museum. He told us the story of the red Toyota and he showed us some amazing pictures. The looters tried to get into the Bank of Baghdad, where many of the treasures had been taken for safety, the gold treasures in particular.

I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who has now left the Chamber, that quite a lot of things that were thought to have gone missing were in the private collection of Saddam Hussein and other members of the Government of Iraq, so Saddam did his bit for early looting.

Among the pictures is a photograph taken from the vaults of the bank in Baghdad where, apparently, some rather hapless looters used a rocket-propelled grenade launcher to try to get through a solid steel German safe door. All the picture shows is a small dent in the safe door and a pair of boots from a hapless individual who tried to gain access. Fortunately, the looters did not succeed and many of the treasures in that bank vault were later returned to the Baghdad museum.

So there is a history of looting in that country. In addition to the 4,000 objects which were returned during that amnesty, over subsequent months and years further objects were recovered from Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Italy and the United States. It is estimated that around half of those looted objects were returned. Where they are now, I do not know. Where the others went to, we do not know.

This debate is timely. We are about to see the release of a film about the amazing life of Gertrude Bell based on the book by Georgina Howell, “Daughter of the Desert”. Gertrude Bell was an extraordinary individual who, in her time, was the oriental secretary to the high commissioner for Iraq. She played a part in the Cairo conference in 1921, alongside Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence and others. She was part of those who created the constitution of Iraq and she was also responsible for the founding of the museum of Baghdad in 1926, the major hall of which is devoted to her memory.

What happened in the 1920s sowed the seeds of what we are reaping now—what has happened in recent decades in Iraq and the greater middle east, and the history that produced Saddam Hussein. So the debate is timely. The situation in Iraq and in Syria, as we have heard, is difficult to assess, because for obvious reasons we cannot get access. I, too, have been speaking with the British Museum, which has been liaising with the UK Border Force and other agencies in case any of those objects come into our geographical territory. I have also been speaking to Sam Hardy, to whom I think my hon. Friend the Member for Newark has spoken as well. He is an archaeologist who has spent a long time specialising in the illicit trade in antiquities.

We have limited information, but from the aerial photos it is very clear that so many of these important sites have been badly damaged and looted. There have been extremely disturbing reports, to which my hon. Friend alluded, of the cold-blooded execution of those who bravely guarded these great museums, in particular the museum in Nineveh, where the site guards lost their lives trying to protect those priceless objects.

The destruction of Syria’s archaeological sites has become catastrophic. There are unauthorised excavations going on, and the plunder of and trafficking in stolen cultural artefacts which is an escalating problem. Many of the objects have already been lost to science and society, and the context in which many of them are being dug up in unsupervised conditions will be lost for ever. The trading in looted Syrian cultural artefacts has apparently become the third largest trade in illegal goods worldwide. It is big business. Back in the 1960s it was a buyer’s market as there were few national collectors interested in Islamic art or other antiquities in Syria, but that has changed dramatically since the Gulf countries—Qatar and Abu Dhabi in particular—have become interested in the artefacts. There is also great interest in China and from Germany.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and a crossroads of trade and culture for countless centuries, has been especially hard hit. Its vast, labyrinthine souk—the largest covered souk in the world—was tragically gutted by a fire in 2012. The Citadel, a castle that dates back to 3,000 BC, has been damaged. The minaret of the Umayyad mosque was toppled by fighting in 2013. Hundreds of other sites have been looted. Shops selling Syrian antiquities dot the Turkish side of the border, just 40 miles north of Aleppo.

Another wonderful site is Palmyra. I remember my visit to Palmyra—one of the most beautiful and dramatic archaeological sites in the world. I got up to see the sun rise from the temple of Bel. I had the entire complex of that huge Roman city to myself. I fear the security there left a lot to be desired in those days, let alone now, open as it is. It is an ancient settlement founded in around 2,000 BC, made famous by the great Queen Zenobia—a caravan city during Hellenistic and Roman times, on the edge of the Roman empire. Serious damage has been happening there. Syrian authorities confiscated three busts from Palmyra dating from 200 AD that had apparently been hacked off a tomb.

The majority of looted artefacts from Syria are now being held in antiquity investment storage pits and other stash sites for future sale at higher prices once the buyer’s market glut of cultural heritage artefacts has dissipated. In effect, these objects are being warehoused for people to make a fast buck in future. They will re-emerge, but in the meantime we have little intelligence as to where they are or whether they are being looked after properly. I am afraid that while countries such as China have a ravenous appetite for these archaeological artefacts, this market will exist. We need to appreciate the scale of destruction that is going on, with priceless objects plundered and hidden, and sites destroyed, losing vital historical information and its context for ever.

Some hon. Members—not in your case, I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker—do not appreciate culture and the importance of the amazing sites and priceless antiquities that several of us have mentioned. However, there are also major implications for how we deal with terrorism, how we rebuild that troubled part of the world in future, and how we approach international aid. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newark said, people who buy looted artefacts from Syria or Iraq are feeding insurgencies, fuelling the purchase of arms, and financing foreign extremists and mercenaries, as well as all sorts of other criminality.

It is estimated that looting is IS’s second largest revenue source after oil sales. My hon. Friend alluded to 4,000—although I think the figure is nearer to 4,500—archaeological sites, including UNESCO world heritage sites, which are now under the control of IS. Iraqi intelligence claims that IS alone has collected as much as $36 million from the sale of artefacts. It is the equivalent of what the Taliban were doing through the cultivation and sale of heroin in Afghanistan to feed markets in the west. We took that very seriously, and it was a priority for the invading and occupying forces in that country. Yet the devastation and profit involved in the plundering of these sites and the sale of antiquities does not seem to register remotely as clearly on the radar of the world.

We are facing a quadruple threat. First, jihadists are looting these sites, claiming some sort of religious reason for doing so—my hon. Friend the Member for Newark alluded to the destruction of the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan—but they in fact, entirely hypocritically, profiting on international black markets from their destruction. Secondly, it is alleged that President Assad is knowingly selling antiquities to pay his henchmen. There are videos showing Assad’s soldiers at Palmyra, some time ago, ripping out grave relief sculptures and smiling for the cameras as they are loaded on to trucks. Thirdly, the Free Syrian Army, in its various different guises, is looting antiquities as a vital source of funding. Fourthly, an increasingly active part of the population is involved in looting. Ordinary people are looting Syria’s cultural heritage because they have no jobs, income or tangible economic prospects, and are increasingly turning to age-old plundering techniques, in some cases looting to order. As a result of the activities of those four different parties, the fantastic culture of Syria and Iraq is being systematically plundered, yet that is hardly featuring on the radar in the west. We are also having to face the consequences of the financing of terrorist organisations through the plunder of antiquities.

Looking forward to a day in future when peace, in some form, comes to the region, the looting also threatens to deprive Syria, in particular, of one of its best opportunities for a post-conflict economic recovery based on tourism, which until the conflict started contributed some 12% of national income. There is the fantastic site at Palmyra that I mentioned; Dura-Europos, a fantastic Hellenistic caravan city; Ebla, a bronze age site; the Hama water wheels; the third millennium city of Mari; and the cities of Raqqa and Ugarit.

What should we be doing? My hon. Friend mentioned some practical solutions that we need to address with a greater sense of urgency. Collecting looted antiquities is a white-collar crime. The 1970 UNESCO convention, from an international law perspective, is a rather weak measure that exacts, at the most, a slap on the wrist for violators. The 1995 UNIDROIT—International Institute for the Unification of Private Law—convention is stronger and could potentially enforce more robust international law. Yet, for that very reason, far fewer countries have ratified it, fearing that it might target their citizens’ auction houses and museums. Another problem is that the law frequently differs between the source country from which the artefacts are looted and the country to which they are smuggled and then sold. That is a defence lawyer’s dream come true.

After the maelstrom of violence in the region, a 2003 United Nations resolution called on all 197 UN members to stop the trade in Iraqi antiquities without verified provenance. That now also applies to Syria. The European Union has recently banned the import of antiquities from Syria, but, inexplicably, this prohibition has not been followed by the International Council of Museums. Interpol has drawn up red lists of material known to be stolen from Syria. UNESCO has held workshops on how to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural heritage property from Syria and elsewhere. One sign of progress, I hope, is a new law in Germany that could point the way forward in requiring a certified export licence for an antiquity in order to secure an import licence. That is encouraging, but it still does not tackle the situation in the Gulf states and in China, in particular, where such safeguards are not in place.

As my hon. Friend said, we need, on a practical level, a proper survey of exactly what is going on before we can come up with solutions. There is a pressing need for more training of more specialists who can work in customs offices and at airports and sea ports to intercept some of these things and investigate whether there is any information about their having hit the market. He also mentioned the draft resolution before the UN Security Council requiring all member states to prevent the sale of antiquities from Syria, similar to the measure passed 10 years ago on antiquities from Iraq.

My hon. Friend alluded to blood diamonds. Everybody knows what blood diamonds are. There was a very successful film about blood diamonds. They have ended up on everybody’s blacklist, and we understand why. We should apply the same criteria to antiquities of such importance from these countries. It should be easier to do that because they are more easily identifiable and we know their provenance, as opposed to one diamond looking very much like another. That is the approach that we should be taking. There should be no excuse for being any part of a trade in these illicit antiquities that have been taken from their rightful homes in Syria and in Iraq.

By participating in such trade, and by countries not doing everything they possibly can to clamp down on it, we are creating a rod for our own back, because it allows for the financing of terrorist activities, which have affected our everyday lives, not to mention those of the brave servicemen and women who go to fight the cause in the middle east and try to contain the turbulent situation in those two troubled countries. We ignore the pillaging of their cultural background at our peril. To those who think that those dusty sculptures from centuries ago are of no relevance, I say that they are absolutely key to how we deal with that part of the world and, most importantly, hopefully to how we restore peace to a particularly troubled part of the globe.

British Nationals in Goa

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a slightly obscure and rather distant subject. It is, however, a subject that has the potential to ruin the parents of one of my constituents and apparently affects many hundreds of western expatriates who have also invested in property in Goa. I am delighted that the Minister is responding to the debate in the absence of the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), who I know is abroad.

Many other Members have been involved in this issue and frustrated at the lack of action by Indian and Goan Government officials when some fairly blatant corrupt practices are at work. That is why I am raising the issue and putting it firmly on the radar. I hope that something will come from it.

I want to give a brief background on this particular case, which came to me from my constituent. Just over 13 years ago, Mr Leslie Medcroft and his wife purchased a hotel in Canacona, Goa. They were at pains to ensure—they had done extensive research—that they complied with all the rules and regulations. They complied with the money laundering laws. The funds came from legitimate sources and banks in the UK. They complied with all the residency conditions, which can be strict, and bought the business through a local company that was properly registered. They were buying an investment in an ongoing hotel business, with appropriate Government of Goa licences. They paid all the taxes due and had all the licences that were needed. Those licences were kept up over many years as they ran that hotel business.

Subsequently, it was claimed that the property had been purchased illegally because, among other things, the area was designated for agricultural usage, but no evidence for that was produced. In contrast, my constituent’s parents produced a forest of documentation to show that everything had been complied with and that the purchase and the running of the business were entirely proper and above board.

A couple of years ago, they became the subject of an investigation by the enforcement directorate. The ruling given on 12 February 2013—almost two years ago—by Mr Lotlikar, the deputy director of the enforcement directorate, was that the property of the Hotel Oceanic should be confiscated. He claimed that it had not been properly acquired, despite all the evidence produced to the contrary. My constituent’s parents understandably appealed the decision, but had a long wait, which caused them huge stress. They had given up their life savings and their jobs in the UK to start the business in India and spend their retirement years there.

Eventually, on 26 August 2014, my constituent’s parents received a letter stating that their appeal hearing was at last to be held on 22 August—four days before they received the letter. Fortunately, the advocate they had retained in Goa saw a copy of the letter in time to attend the appeal hearing. That was quite coincidental; his office happens to be next door to the enforcement directorate. The appeal hearing was further postponed to 4 September 2014.

On 2 September, the company accountant acting for Mr and Mrs Medcroft was approached by the special director of appeals in Mumbai, who said he would make a judgment in their favour if they gave him 10 lakh rupees. That is 1 million rupees, which equates to £10,800. There is a certain irony, not missed here, that the origin of the word “lakh” in the Indian numbering system is the amount of money that can be stuffed into a small suitcase, as no doubt those proceeds would have been, had they been forthcoming. It would appear that the request was made for the money not to be paid to the court, the legal system or a Government department, but directly into the pocket of said official. It was a thinly veiled threat that failure to comply with the demand for a bribe would result in a ruling against Mr and Mrs Medcroft and, ultimately, their property being confiscated.

My constituent’s parents were left in something of a dilemma, as we can imagine. Should they pay up, perhaps then getting recognition that they own the property they knew they already owned and had bought legitimately, and thereby condone corruption? Alternatively, should they pay up and risk the case not actually being resolved? As we know, blackmailers usually come back for more. Would they be charged as participants in corrupt practices for ostensibly bribing an Indian official? Should they not pay up and risk the confiscation that has been looming over them for some years? Whichever way we look at it, it appears that they cannot win.

My constituent’s parents were unable to raise the amount of money in the short term in any case, so they did not really have a choice: they did not pay the money. They were also unable to return to India—they were in the UK at the time, renewing their visas—before 17 September, but the appeal went ahead in their absence. The ruling from that appeal was that the argument they put forward was incomplete, despite their having provided comprehensive documentation in support. A further hearing date was set for 26 September, and they were subsequently told that on top of the bribe, they might have to pay an additional sum of £6,000.

“Where does it end?” you may well ask, Mr Hollobone. The case went to a further hearing and the presiding judge, Ajit Kumar, the additional income tax commissioner, very much expected my constituent’s parents to pay. In the absence of that, he deferred a ruling and apparently threatened to have them arrested in the meantime. Tape recordings of that conversation were taken as evidence. They were advised by their advocate that this process will go on indefinitely until they pay up and that they will have constant doubt and worry overhanging their business.

My constituent’s parents have invested their life savings. They were running a legitimate business that helps the Goan economy—tourism, in particular, on which Goa greatly depends. They have had to spend a lot of their money on lawyers, accountants and other professionals, first to ensure that they acquired the business legitimately and maintained all the licences and secondly to maintain their innocence against corrupt officials. If this case goes against them and their hotel is confiscated, they face ruin and a great deal more stress. They would probably have to return to the UK.

I gather, however, that my constituent’s parents are not an isolated case, and that is why I am raising the issue today. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) wanted to be here today, but she is receiving an honorary doctorate from the university of Birmingham—I am delighted to point that out, as she wanted me to. She was approached by some of her constituents who were lecturers. They took early retirement and invested through a direct foreign investment channel in a dilapidated old colonial mansion on the coast in southern Goa in 2005. They spent a fortune renovating it. It was originally set up as a business to cater for convalescing foreigners undergoing medical and dental treatment.

The project was successful and has become a general guesthouse business. In 2009, on having acquired the business, the hon. Lady’s constituents were summoned to Panjim to give assurances, initially on money laundering. In 2011, they received notices from the enforcement directorate claiming that they had illegally purchased agricultural land and that their business was illegitimate—similar circumstances to the case against my constituent’s parents. Yet they had documents to prove categorically that the land they had acquired was in a settlement zone, was listed in the Portuguese book of descriptions in 1905 as an urban dwelling and has absolutely no history of crop growth. Clearly, the charge of agricultural usage is entirely bogus. The business is properly owned by an Indian private limited company, regarded as resident in India for the purposes of FEMA, the Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999. It complies with all the regulations, but the parents of my constituent are facing a lengthy and costly court action and the threat of confiscation.

Only today, I received an e-mail from a member of the British nationals’ working party in Goa, who has been dealing with a number of other expats in similar situations. She told me that in the past two years she has been working on a number of cases and has knowledge of four in which confiscation orders have already been served on people. In one case, a confiscation order has been issued against a British couple aged 80 and 77 in relation to their studio flat. Another confiscation order was issued two years ago against a single British woman in her 70s who owns a small flat in a purpose-built complex in north Goa.

In addition, hundreds of British subjects have been prevented from registering their properties in Goa, having previously fulfilled the requisite legal processes, primarily because of restrictions on visas. In some cases, that has led to criminality and harm against foreigners when they have tried to obtain the properties, causing loss of investment. Some cases have involved extreme violence. Other people affected include those who came together to invest in Indian tourism and who have been prevented from trading due to altered interpretations of the law and, in tandem, prevented from registering their properties.

The problem seems to be quite widespread, with a number of British expats suffering such consequences. It has been suggested that there are in excess of 300 similar cases that we know about. Huge stress is being caused to people who legitimately went out to invest in businesses in Goa. In most cases, they are not wealthy, but have invested their life savings. The situation is proving to be a nice little earner for the Government in Goa, and various Government officials are pretty brazen in demanding money to make the problem, which is of their making, supposedly go away. We seem to have the Goan equivalent of the mafia.

It is surely entirely inappropriate for a fast-growing democracy such as India, which attracts, and needs to attract, large amounts of foreign investment as an important UK trading partner, to allow such practices to go on under its nose. The Indian Government should be keen to find out what is going on and to intervene. In the past few months, however, I have written to the Indian law Minister, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, and to the Chief Minister of Goa, Shri Manohar Parrikar. The latter responded and diverted my attention instead to Dr Rajan Katoch, the director of the enforcement directorate, who has also not responded. I have written to the Minister of Finance, Arun Jaitley, who is responsible for the tax commissioners, including the judge Ajit Kumar who I mentioned earlier.

I also wrote to the high commissioner in London, His Excellency Ranjan Mathai, no fewer than three times, and chased up with several calls and e-mails. I had no reply until yesterday—after I had secured this debate, coincidentally. The response came from the first consular secretary to the high commissioner, Mr P. K. Patel, and merely stated:

“You will appreciate that the High Commission cannot intervene in administrative judicial proceedings in India. If your constituent’s parents are aggrieved by Directorate of Enforcement actions, they may seek appropriate legal redressal of their grievances.”

They have been trying that, and they have not been getting anywhere. Clearly, they will not get anywhere with the high commission in London either, which is a great pity.

The British high commission in Delhi is aware of the problem and the Business Secretary, on a visit to the Indian subcontinent, raised it with Ministers. A high commission official has been dealing with British cases, but cannot get individually involved in them. I was also able to collar the British high commissioner James Bevan when he was about to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee on 15 October. He has been helpful and entirely sympathetic, saying that the high commission is aware of the problem. Action needs to happen, however, and things cannot be allowed to go on unchecked.

The Government need to use their good offices to impress on their Indian counterparts that that sort of practice does the reputation of Goa and India at large no service at all. It stands in the way of legitimate investment. It would be a great problem if that investment were deterred by obviously corrupt practices.

I hope that the Minister will be able to give assurances today, to my constituent’s parents and to the affected constituents of other hon. Members, that this matter will be looked into properly and further pressure will be brought to bear on the Indian Government. I also hope that His Excellency the high commissioner to London is listening intently; I am sure he would not want such practices to besmirch the reputation of the Indian Government. They are clearly doing so at the moment.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on the interesting way in which he has presented this complex and important case. To respond, we have a Minister who is responsible for about half the world, I think.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

Unfortunately, I am not specifically responsible for India and I begin by extending apologies that the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), is unable to reply to the debate. I know that he is aware of the issue, whether or not he is not able to watch the debate on the internet, and he will certainly want to follow the matter up with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

I thank my hon. Friend for initiating the debate. He has been and remains an advocate for British nationals facing difficulties in property disputes in India. As hon. Members will be aware, until 2007—my hon. Friend alluded to this—the rules governing purchases of property by foreigners in Goa were open to misinterpretation. Many foreign buyers fell prey to unscrupulous lawyers and property developers who took advantage of the ambiguity of the laws.

Although the purchases of properties were made in good faith by foreign buyers, in 2008, the Indian enforcement directorate served notices to about 400 foreigners who had been found to have violated foreign exchange and immigration regulations. Simultaneously, the Goa Government sent a notice to all registrars instructing them to close the registry to foreigners. There are about 750 British property owners in Goa, many of whom have been under investigation for six years and are still unable to register ownership of their properties or to sell legally.

Our policy on dealing with property disputes worldwide is clear: we cannot get involved in private disputes, as we are in no position to judge the facts of the cases and have no overseas jurisdiction to resolve such matters. It is the responsibility of the Indian authorities to regulate property laws and Her Majesty’s Government have no authority to intervene in matters concerning domestic legislation. We do not become involved in individual cases, nor do we take steps to recover any capital outlay in individual property deals that might have gone wrong.

That said, we do consider raising systemic issues by lobbying national and local Governments. I reassure the House that we take this matter seriously, as my hon. Friend can attest. We are assisting groups of British nationals who have been genuinely cheated by lobbying the Indian Government to seek settlement or a reasonable solution. I am pleased to say that, through our sustained lobbying of a range of interlocutors, the Indian enforcement directorate has cleared for registration a number of cases involving British nationals. The high commissioner in New Delhi and the deputy high commissioner for western India have discussed with the former Goa Chief Minister the problems faced by groups of British property owners and asked that the cases be considered carefully. The Chief Minister was receptive to finding a solution to the problems faced by British nationals and as a result set up a special committee to assess all outstanding cases.

In addition, during a meeting with the deputy high commissioner just last week, the new Chief Minister renewed the Goa Government’s commitment to finding a resolution to the issue. Consular officials regularly meet with all local authorities—the enforcement directorate, the property committee and the state registrar—that are assessing the cases of British nationals.

The authorities do not want to confiscate property and will act sympathetically where possible, especially where it is obvious someone has made Goa their permanent home, or when dealing with sick or elderly owners. However, they have made it clear that they cannot ignore cases where individuals have built properties on agricultural land or wilfully flouted rules on transferring funds or on visa regulations. We recognise that position.

In January 2013, we encouraged British property owners in Goa to start a working group. They have undertaken to lobby on individual cases, and we have facilitated meetings between them, the Chief Minister and local authorities, with some success.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful for what the Minister has said thus far, and I entirely appreciate, as the Foreign Office has told me, that it cannot involve itself in individual cases. However, could we not do more where there is systematic or systemic abuse, as he mentioned? We are talking about British citizens being denied justice. The rulings against them are not specifically saying what they have done and then proving it; they are constantly saying there is not enough information, so the case is deferred and deferred. In the meantime, money is, effectively, being demanded with menaces. If such corruption were happening in the United Kingdom, on the part of British officials dealing with Indian nationals, we would absolutely want to do something about it and to liaise with the Indian authorities.

[Mr Ellwood]

I will certainly relay that to the Minister of State. Perhaps I can put him on the spot in his absence and suggest that he and my hon. Friend meet so that, rather than the issue lying dormant after the debate, we can move the process forward.

Consular staff are dealing with the property issue at a wider policy level, engaging with the Goa Government and local authorities directly, and that must fit in with what my hon. Friend said about the difference between taking a systemic approach and looking at individual cases. That approach, which I hope will be joined up, has been effective, with approximately 40 cases being cleared of investigation over the last year. However, as has been reiterated today, many more outstanding cases need to be looked at.

We are aware of corruption allegations against local authorities in Goa. However, the matter must be dealt with by the Indian authorities. We have always advised British nationals to report corruption complaints to the Indian law enforcement system.

Although there has been some progress, I recognise that the issue continues to cause distress to British nationals. We will continue to lobby the Goa Government and local authorities on systemic issues relating to expatriate property disputes and to work with those who have been affected to find an appropriate solution.

Tibet

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Owen. I can do the maths. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on battling against his health to be here today for a long overdue and important debate. It is right that the House has an opportunity to express solidarity with Tibetans and to question the continued oppression in the Tibetan autonomous region and of Tibetans across the world at the hands of the Chinese. I cannot rival his Jewish-Buddhist perspective or the number of times he has met His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I have only had the opportunity to meet him twice. I have not been able to go to Tibet, but I have travelled to Dharamsala and met many members of the Tibetan community there and heard the appalling stories they have to tell us. At the outset, I pay tribute to the Tibet Society and in particular to Philippa Carrick. It does fantastic work in keeping the flame of hope lit and the flag flying for the Tibetan cause in this country and beyond. I declare an interest as an officer of the all-party group for Tibet. I welcome the Minister, who has shown a genuine interest in this cause in the past, and I am sure he will be listening carefully to what everyone has to say.

The hon. Member for Leeds North East rightly said that today was an appropriate day for the debate, as it is human rights day, but it is also 25 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, which is another reminder of China’s inability to allow free speech and expression within its borders. I am particularly concerned—I will not go into the detail of all the cases that he articulated—that the situation has been getting worse over the past six years, since the Beijing Olympics. There have been severe security crackdowns and restrictions on freedom of expression, religion, movement and assembly. The climate within the Tibetan autonomous region can be likened to that of a military occupation. I do not think it alarmist to say that the Chinese Government have effectively created a climate of fear within Tibet. They strive to regulate virtually every aspect of public and private life in order to crush any form of dissent against Community party rule.

There has also been a dramatic expansion in the powers of China’s policing and military apparatus in Tibet. As the hon. Gentleman said, many Tibetans in exile report that they cannot talk to their families in Tibet on the phone because of the danger they might be put in through that contact.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is outlining the deteriorating situation regarding Tibet and China, but does he agree that as a society and a Government, we have to analyse the benefits of the UK-China human rights dialogue to see whether it is productive? It would appear that it was productive in the past in trying to de-escalate tensions between the United Kingdom and China. Should we analyse its benefits for the future?

[Tim Loughton]

Of course dialogue is best, but dialogue needs to take place on both sides. Everyone with an interest in Tibet needs to be given the freedom to express themselves in a peaceful way, and the Tibetans just have not been given that privilege within their borders or in other parts of the world. The Chinese Government, with their tentacles even in this country, try to suppress people who plead the cause for freedom of expression and freedom of movement for the Tibetan people. We need to adopt the guise of a critical friend and be in dialogue with China. We have much to benefit from trade and engagement with China, but it does not serve that cause or the cause of democracy that we hold so dear in this place if we turn a blind eye to the blatant suppression of the rights of millions of people who happen to live in part of what is China. It serves no purpose for what we are here to do if we carry on regardless. As a critical friend, dialogue is everything, but remember that some people are put in prison for trying to exercise just that right.

I am concerned about the escalation of surveillance and the issuing of propaganda by the Chinese within Tibet. They sent thousands of Chinese officials to carry out surveillance and what they call “political education”, and to disseminate propaganda. The example of forming a “correct view of art” shows how China’s tentacles go into every element of Tibetan society. The Chinese authorities have deemed it a counter-terrorism drive and, under that guise, they have organised large-scale military drills and intensified border security, and are holding training exercises for troops on responding to self-immolations and dealing with problems in monasteries—despite the absence of violent insurgency in Tibet. All the protests we have seen are peaceful.

Yesterday, the all-party group had a briefing from someone who recently travelled to Tibet and was allowed in as a tourist. Some of the worrying accounts he gave us of everyday life for Tibetans in their country are worth recounting. He had a Tibetan driver with a Tibetan car. There are fantastic new roads across the Tibetan autonomous region. In my constituency, we would die for such roads and the lack of congestion. The speed limit for Tibetans is 40 kph. Their arrival and departure from certain towns is closely monitored to see whether they have exceeded the speed limit. They are prosecuted or under fear of prosecution if there is any minor infraction of that speed limit, yet someone with Chinese plates is allowed to go a bit faster, it would appear. Police checkpoints are littered liberally across those roads, in the middle of nowhere—for what purpose?

Huge urbanisation is going on in the Tibetan autonomous region and, worryingly, most of the new businesses springing up are Chinese-owned. All the road signs are in Chinese, with the Tibetan language version in a small font underneath. People are unlikely to get work with Chinese businesses unless they speak Chinese, even within Tibet. We saw photographs of drones surveying monasteries across Tibet in a rather sinister way. We saw security cameras disguised as prayer wheels within monasteries and towns. We saw what Lhasa has become: a much changed place, I am sure, from when the hon. Member for Leeds North East visited some eight and a half years ago. For what is a holy place for many Tibetans is a sprawling modern city with the ubiquitous cloud of pollution overhanging it, as we see in so many parts of China. The region is home to some 3 million Tibetans, but receives approximately 13 million Chinese visitors. There has been huge immigration of Han Chinese into Tibet, swamping the language and culture and trying to dilute Tibet’s history by sheer weight of numbers. It happens day in, day out, and Tibetans have to suffer this oppression with a depressed resignation that can be seen in the faces of the people in the photographs and film we were shown.

Surveillance happens not only in person, but online. Reprisals are likely following searches for subjects such as “democracy”, “the Dalai Lama” and “Tiananmen square”. State censorship and the suppression of free expression are widespread across China, but since the protests that broke out across Tibet in March 2008, the Chinese Government have strengthened attempts to impose an information black-out across Tibet. That it is an offence to display the Tibetan flag—even a digital image on a mobile phone—because it is deemed to be a separatist activity punishable with a prison sentence, shows just how paranoid the Chinese have become. Singing a song can lead to a jail sentence. People who were legitimately protesting online about abuses in the fur trade earlier this year have also ended up in jail. It is an outrage that people suffer persecution and torture in prison and are then released before they die so they are not deemed to have died from their injuries in jail.

This House has a duty to flag up the abuse suffered by one of the most peace-loving peoples I have ever come across. To liken the Dalai Lama to a terrorist is quite extraordinary when he has spent his life preaching peace and harmony between peoples around the globe. He stands for freedom of worship and of expression. The Tibetans’ struggle for their culture, language, heritage and soul is one we have a duty to do everything we can to support.

I will end on the chilling note that the suppression is not only happening in Tibet. The tentacles of the Chinese Government reach into other Governments and local authorities and within education establishments and universities. I am particularly worried about the Confucius institutes or cultural centres that are co-operating with universities across the world. They have discriminatory hiring practices and seek to impose censorship on topics such as human rights, the Tiananmen Square massacre and any dialogue about Tibet. We must seek out, expose and resist such censorship of our freedom to speak out. When I was a Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), who cannot be here today, and I were warned off meeting the Dalai Lama at a private lunch because it might upset the Chinese—tough. We need transparency of dialogue and to be able to speak freely. When speaking freely in the House, we must say loud and clear that the Tibetan people’s struggle is a struggle for democracy and free speech in which all of us have an interest.

Government Strategy Against IS

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I certainly share the hon. Gentleman’s horror at the ready accessibility of those images. He will understand that there are practical challenges in any Government anywhere in the world trying to control the internet. I will write to him about the specifics.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

As I found in my briefings in Jordan a few weeks ago, the border between Iraq and Syria has disintegrated. I saw freely moved weapons captured from the Iraqi army going straight into Syria. Last year, I did not support intervention in Syria. The challenge now is very different, with a clear enemy and clarity as to who our allies are. May I implore the Minister to ensure that for as long as we have clear achievable objectives, we keep all options open, because Syria and Iraq cannot be dealt with in isolation, just as ISIL cannot?

[Mr Lidington]

At the moment, no decision on British military intervention has been taken. All options remain open and nothing has yet been definitively ruled out. We do indeed need to see a process that eradicates the threat from ISIL across the region, not just within the recognised borders of Iraq. I say again that this could never be a matter simply of military action achieving miracles on its own. There has to be an inclusive political process within the region and there needs to be humanitarian assistance for the people who are in such desperate need.

Protecting Children in Conflict

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) for initiating this debate on protecting children in conflict. She was right to deal with the Palestinian situation, but I will not follow her example in any detail as I do not want to get involved in the debate about the rights and wrongs of the Palestinian issue, except for noting the suffering of both the Palestinian people and the Israeli people in a very difficult conflict.

I want to make some general remarks about how the British Government could try to improve the protection of children in conflict areas, particularly when it comes to education. Education is the subject on which I want to focus and I would be grateful if the Minister could deal with that problem when he replies.

I should perhaps declare a family interest. I am speaking today because both my elder daughters work for charities in Africa and have worked in Kenya, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. They keep me informed of their work and what is going on and, a few years ago, I visited the Congo with War Child to look at the appalling privations that children faced, particularly because of the conflict and the use of child soldiers. My visit had a deep impact on me and I am sure that, even despite all the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Minister and other Ministers in the FCO and DFID, there is still more that we can do.

As I say, I want to concentrate on education, but why are children particularly vulnerable? It is an obvious point, but they are vulnerable because they are young. When a three-year-old loses their parents in a bomb attack, it is virtually impossible for them to survive alone. If a 25-year-old loses a parent, it is a tragedy, but they can survive. It is right that the House should focus particularly on the appalling impact of conflict on children, which is much greater than its impact on mature people.

Of course, children suffer appalling and severe trauma from witnessing events. They do not have the life experience or emotional maturity to integrate a particular scene into the rest of their life. We have been brought up in a very comfortable environment, but we all know how even quite small events from our childhood can have a traumatic effect later on. Imagine a child in a conflict situation witnessing their mother being raped or their brother being dragged off as a child soldier or witnessing murders or the appalling scenes that have happened in Syria. That trauma will live with those children for ever.

Children are targeted in conflict situations for sexual attacks. Girls and boys make up more than half the rape cases in such conflicts and that is an appalling statistic. Imagine the appalling emotional trauma of that. Children are also targeted by military groups that are keen to expand their ranks quickly and we have seen that in particular over the years in Congo. As I know from my visit to the Congo and as we all know, it is appalling to talk to former child soldiers who have been dragged into these events. They have committed terrible things and terrible things have happened to them, sometimes when they are just 13 or 14-years-old.

War destroys livelihoods, and children are often seen as a way for distressed families to get income. Girls can be married early for a price or used as sex workers and boys can be sent out to work in fields and factories or to collect rubbish from the streets. I occasionally visit the middle east, and we see the desperate struggle for survival, particularly for Syrian refugees in Lebanon or Jordan when there is no social security available to any significant extent. In conflict situations, families are desperate to survive, and we all know that children have to be used as part of that.

The point I want to stress and focus on for the rest of my speech is that it is children and not adults who lose their opportunity for education. Once that opportunity is lost, it is lost for ever and can never be repeated. Education is essential for children and particularly for children in conflict areas. It is a life chance that comes only once and a reasonable level of education is even more important for children who will be expected to build a peaceful recovery from conflict. Education keeps children safe. Obviously, if a child is in a school or in an educational environment, it is less likely that they will be married early, raped, abducted or recruited by armed groups. All that is much more unlikely when schools are open.

Actually, education is prioritised by families in conflict areas. We have seen on television, such as during the Iraq conflicts, and from our own experience how families that are often desperate and have nothing—owning nothing, surviving on nothing—still make the effort to dress their children in immaculate uniforms to walk through bombed-out streets to get school. Education is extraordinarily important for them.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case based on his experiences in Africa. It is deeply humbling when we go to developing countries in parts of Africa and elsewhere and see children who have walked miles and miles and miles to attend a classroom where they have no seats, but may have rocks to sit on, if they are lucky, and which have corrugated iron roofs. Their parents have made a contribution out of what limited resources they have, because they absolutely value education as the way out of poverty and conflict. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is deeply humbling for those of us here who take education for granted?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My hon. Friend has made that point very movingly. We live in such a comfortable environment here where education is, frankly, of a fantastically high standard and is free—paid for by the taxpayer—that we simply do not appreciate the appalling sacrifices made in places where education is not free by parents who have nothing. They make that huge effort to try to educate their children, because they know, as we know, that education is everything.

We can establish a case that education is absolutely vital, therefore, in terms of taking children out of conflict situations and giving them life chances. So, having made that case, we would expect it to be prioritised by humanitarian agencies and Governments, but analysis of the 2013 United Nations appeal tracking data shows that only 1.9% of UN humanitarian appeal funds went to education. That seems to me to be very low, and I was surprised when I saw that. I cannot believe that the figure is so low, but that is what I have been told. Donors simply did not prioritise that part of the UN appeals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the very thoughtful contributions made to the debate so far. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) for making it possible, and I apologise for missing the very first part of her speech. I was talking about conflict and children in another context elsewhere. I had not anticipated taking part in this debate, but such is its importance that I want to pick up on some of the points made by previous speakers and draw on my own experiences of visiting conflict zones.

This is, of course, a timely debate, for the most tragic of reasons. The images we saw from Palestine earlier this week of the three Israeli children who became victims of war starkly brought home to us the ghastly things and tragedies that are occurring daily in other parts of the world. Another image that brought that home was that of the Nigerian girls, who were the subject of last night’s excellent debate—of which I read, but, alas, was not part—led by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). For hundreds of girls to be taken by terrorists from their schools, where they expected to be educated and to do all the things our children take for granted, and for their lives now to be in the balance—they have perhaps already been sold into the sex trade or whatever, because such threats have been made under the nose of that country’s Government—is absolutely alarming.

So alarming is that situation that we now have to talk about “safe schools”. Schools should be places of safety. When we send our children off to school, we expect them to be looked after and safeguarded. The fact that terrorists can make them pawns in some misguided holy war—that is how they try to portray their terrorism—is quite inconceivable to us today.

A third image that sends a chill down all our spines was one I saw on a news report from the conflict involving the so-called ISIS forces in Iraq: on the back of a pick-up were two boys, who could not have been more than 10 years old, with two AK47s and belts of ammunition to go with them. Those 10-year-olds are combatants of war, who have been expected to join, and coaxed and promoted into, the front line of the ghastly and misguided conflict in that country. We recently debated an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill—I supported the amendment, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois)—to make sentencing mandatory for 16 to 18-year-olds caught in unlawful possession of a knife as a second offence. That is something pretty ghastly in this country, but to have children routinely taking AK47s into places of conflict perhaps puts it into context.

Those three images starkly portray the tragedy that we are debating today, but they are of course the tip of the iceberg, as are the 250,000 children—surely an underestimate—who are child soldiers, including the notorious ones in places such as Uganda. I repeat the tributes paid by all hon. Members to the staff of the NGOs, whom many of us have visited and worked with in places of conflict. They absolutely put their lives on the line to try to protect and to give some safety and security to children who, through no fault of their own, find themselves victims of conflict. I particularly want to repeat the tribute paid by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) to Rob Williams and the excellent charity, War Child. He does such a good job with that charity, as he previously did with UK-based charities involved with families. Such images haunt all hon. Members and, I am sure, all our constituents.

There are, however, things in which we should take great pride, and I am sure that we will hear more about them when the Minister sums up. As in so many cases, the UK is setting the example—putting its money where its mouth is and leading the world—in trying to turn around the juggernaut of children’s involvement in conflict zones.

The international protocol on the documentation and investigation of sexual violence in conflict, which was launched by the UK, is working to establish international standards to help to strengthen prosecutions for rape in conflict, and it is increasing the prospects for successful convictions. We have got to bring people to book to show that such sexual violence is unacceptable. In whatever part of the world, developed or undeveloped, it must not happen and the perpetrators must not get away with it. We must all work together against the forces of evil who allow it to happen.

[Fiona O’Donnell]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. In looking at our record on international prosecutions for acts of sexual violence so far, would the suggestion made by one of his colleagues about having a local form of justice, rather the western developed world being seen to impose its standards on other countries, be a better way forward?

[Tim Loughton]

I absolutely agree. If there can be a home-grown solution—so that people have ownership of it, and it can be adapted to their cultures and to the baggage of tribal conflicts, histories and cultural identities that have been asserted through violence—that has to be better. Otherwise, there is a risk that the former colonial power is seen as trying to reassert its ways.

There are some common basic moral standards that we should not resile from asserting in the international context, including that children are children, not young adults to be sent into war zones or to become victims of war in all its ghastly forms. They are children, and we treat children differently—they need our protection and respect—whether they are in Khartoum, Boston, Worthing, East Lothian or anywhere else in the world. We should not resile from the expression of such international values, in which we should take pride.

The Government have already committed to providing more than £140 million to the survivors of sexual violence and their supporters. In the context of the many victims of historical cases of horrendous sexual abuse that have recently hit the headlines in the United Kingdom, a key factor is making sure that victims who have had the bravery to come forward get the support they need in order to come to terms with the trauma that befell them, often as children. In this debate, we are talking about victims who have perhaps seen their parents gruesomely killed in front of them, their homes burned, their sisters raped, or their brothers, sisters and school friends kidnapped and taken off into slavery or the sex trade. These children need our support, and they need rehabilitation to get over traumas caused by what happened in front of their eyes, which is why that project is so important. The Government have also called for all soldiers and peacekeepers to be trained not only to understand the gravity of sexual violence in conflict, but to help to prevent it and to protect people. Those are all practical measures that we can sometimes overlook.

The Government, particularly the Foreign Secretary, should be given great credit for the great initiative of the global summit to end sexual violence in conflict—quite rightly, it hit the media, including our television screens—which he co-hosted with the special envoy Angelina Jolie last month in the east end of London. It brought together more than 140 countries and more than 900 experts, making it the biggest global meeting ever convened on the issue. Let us hope that it was not just a talking shop, but that delegates from nations where such violence happens daily could take comfort, ideas and support, could make contacts and could engage with projects that will help them in the future.

The preventing sexual violence initiative—again, the Government are spearheading it—aims to strengthen and support international efforts to respond to sexual violence in conflict, including by enhancing the capacity of countries, institutions and communities to support survivors and to end impunity for perpetrators. A team of UK experts has been deployed to conflict-affected countries at the heart of the problem, such as Libya, Syria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Mali, to name but a few. The initiative provides good practical experience, and we should be proud that DFID, our Foreign Office and this Government are pioneering, leading and setting such an example on the global stage.

Education is absolutely vital in all this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned. That is why I welcome DFID’s pledge that by 2015 it will spend half of its direct educational aid on unstable or war-torn countries where more than two fifths of the world’s out-of-school children are found and where a lack of education can contribute directly to conflict. In such a revolving doors scenario, kids are indoctrinated to hate other kids and families from other tribes and religions in other parts of the country. If they are brought up to accept that as normal, it is little surprise that they are susceptible to taking up arms when a conflict happens. We have to start at the beginning, by educating against conflict and the mentality of vehement retaliation right at the outset. Education is so important. The United Kingdom’s commitment of up to £300 million for the Global Partnership for Education over the next four years is therefore particularly welcome.

Many children out of school are marginalised and hard to reach, and nearly half of them live in fragile and conflict-affected areas. Marginalisation affects children right through the education system, from early education to university level. In post-conflict environments and fragile states, getting children back into school and addressing out-of-school youth, some of whom may have been child soldiers or refugees themselves, helps to bring back a sense of equity, justice and cohesion to what can be a fractured society. That has to be the start.

Girls’ education is a big issue. The girls’ education challenge will give up to 1 million of the world’s poorest girls the opportunity to improve their lives through education. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford was important: if more women were doing the educating—and, indeed, the negotiating before or after a conflict, as well—there might be a better chance of avoiding the worst excesses of conflict in the first place.

We will perhaps think of places such as Afghanistan, where under the Taliban regime girls were excluded from education. Despite all the horrors that have taken place in that country, one great success that we should never cease to emphasise is that so many young women and girls in Afghanistan now have the opportunity to get an education in school and to go on to university. We should never underestimate the importance of that. However, there are other countries, which are not in such familiar conflict zones, where young women do not get access to education. There is so much more to do, particularly in parts of Africa. That is why DFID’s priority of concentrating aid on getting more girls into education across the world is a good one that many of us can support.

I have seen projects in places such as Ghana. In my constituency, I run the EYE project—it stands for Eco, Young and Engaged—and every year we have an eco-summit; recently we had our seventh. A very enthusiastic local man called Jib Hagan runs a charity called CARE—Collecting and Recycling Ecologically. He collects old computers that are being thrown out by local schools and businesses, takes them to Ghana and puts them in schools, pre-loaded with lots of information about how to be more environmentally friendly, how girls can get better education, engagement in the democratic process and so on. In return, he brings back lots of wonderful shopping bags made from old plastic carrier bags by some of the kids and the families out there.

A few years ago, we did a satellite link-up with the British Council between one school in a very impoverished area whose pupils were using those computers and the 250 local kids at my eco-summit. Incredibly, the technology worked. British kids and Ghanaian kids in completely contrasting environments spoke to each other, and understood and empathised with one another. It was a wonderful moment. To see the advantage that a bit of old technology that we were throwing out had brought to those kids—it was going to transform their educational opportunities and, I hope, keep that country out of conflict—was deeply humbling, and a very proud moment for those of us who had helped to make it happen.

Girls’ education is a particularly important part of preventing conflict in the future. I will draw on a couple of examples. I do not need to go over all the statistics about what is happening in Syria at the moment, but there are now 2.3 million children in Syria who are out of school or at risk of dropping out of school. Many hundreds of thousands are refugees outside Syria, as well. I am due to visit some Syrian refugee camps in Jordan later this month—they are vast camps—just as some years ago in Syria I visited what was then the largest refugee camp run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the world. It was for Iraqis fleeing conflict who had gone to Damascus. I saw the great efforts of the UNHCR and other charities, which were trying to make sure that there was some normality in the lives of those kids. Getting some ongoing education for them was absolutely key. We must make sure that children who are displaced because of the horrible war dragging on in Syria can at least have some semblance of a normal childhood by continuing some form of education. The crisis in Syria has placed many women and girls at risk of violence, exploitation and insecurity. We often forget that.

Drawing on some of my previous trips, the very first parliamentary delegation that I went on, some 15 or so years ago, was to Ethiopia. That country had been riven by civil war under a particularly nasty Marxist regime. People had been driven out of their properties and sexual violence was part of the conflict. I remember visiting the Fistula hospital in Addis Ababa. It is a charity set up by some wonderful medics, where visiting clinicians go to help out. Daily I saw 12-year-old, 13-year-old and 14-year-old women—in some cases they had walked hundreds of miles—who had had bad experiences of giving birth because they had been too young. They were victims either of conflict, of misguided forced marriage or of being raped, effectively under the noses of their families in their villages, and had then been cast out. The only sanctuary and help they could get was by walking literally hundreds of miles to that wonderful hospital in Addis Ababa. The war in Ethiopia did huge damage but the country is, I hope, on a better path now.

I visited schools in the drought-affected areas, and, as I said earlier, kids were walking 10 miles or more each day to and from their homes to attend school, because it was such a big deal. They loved it. Nobody was playing hooky there; no truancy officer was needed. They went to school because their parents wanted them to go, as they could see it was a good thing. The kids themselves wanted to go to school and get an education, because that was their ladder out of poverty. It would stop them getting sucked into the conflict that so often happens in these impoverished zones, where people will fight over a little dustbowl of land.

I remember going to Mozambique—again, a country riven by vicious civil war over many, many years. There were many displaced kids who had fled parts of Mozambique and had gone to what they thought was the relative safety of South Africa, but had ended up in the sex trade. I worked with some hugely dedicated charities in Mozambique that were trying to rescue those kids.

A few years ago I went to Tajikistan, where I was taken to a school in Duschanbe, because I wanted to see some of the refugees from Afghanistan—there were a lot of them there. They asked me to give a class to kids of all different ages. They spoke wonderful English and were really enthusiastic about being there. They were there because they had been driven out of Afghanistan. There had been a big spate of kidnappings: brothers and sisters had been kidnapped; indeed, the teacher’s own children had been kidnapped and she had never seen them again. Tajikistan was giving them sanctuary, and had given them a school and some teaching resources, because the way forward is education.

There are many other subjects that we could mention in this debate. Forced marriages are another form of conflict, frankly. Female genital mutilation, of which we have been hearing so much recently, is another form of violence inflicted on children. It is not acceptable in the modern world, and we should not be afraid of saying so, whatever cultural differences might separate us from those people who say it is all right. It is not all right. It is not acceptable in this day and age. It is violence against girls and women.

There is no excuse for children being caught up in war and conflict. Children are different and special, and as adults we have a duty to do whatever we can to protect them, in this country or in any far-flung corner of the globe in which they are involved in conflict. In many of the countries that we are talking about, almost half the population is under the age of 18, so we are talking about huge numbers of people who are the future of those countries. If we do not get it right for those war-torn countries now, we will not get it right in the future. If they get back on the road to peace and prosperity, their kids might at last get an education and a chance to prosper.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We got through the resolution that we wanted. The Prime Minister showed tremendous leadership on this. We were completely vindicated in our decision to go to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting—my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary included—because had we not gone there, we would not be in the position that we are today. Now that the international community has spoken through the United Nations Human Rights Council, it is important that the Government in Colombo listen to what has been said and what is asked of them, and that we can conduct an investigation through the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to make that country a better place for all.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will the Minister also maintain the robust approach to human rights abuses in Tibet with the UK-China human rights dialogue coming up, and will he press the Chinese for a date for the visit to Tibet and China by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, to which China has agreed?

[Mr Swire]

We are of course looking forward to the human rights dialogue with the Chinese, for which a date will be forthcoming shortly. It is worth saying that the new configuration of the Human Rights Council means that it is less prepared to support country mandates, because re-elected along with the United Kingdom were Russia, China and Cuba.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

As the hon. Gentleman is no doubt aware, this complicated case stretches back many years. If I am correct, the trial was in December 2001—more than a decade ago. It is further complicated by the fact that there are intelligence implications and a read-across to other cases in Cuba. The UK has no direct locus in this case as it exists between the US and Cuba. If the hon. Gentleman has information that should have been made available about the case, I suggest it is made available to US judicial authorities as a matter of urgency.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

9. What his priorities are for reform of the terms of UK membership of the EU.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

10. Which EU powers and competences he plans to renegotiate back to the UK.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

In his speech at the beginning of the year the Prime Minister set out five principles for real change in the EU: global competitiveness, democratic legitimacy, powers flowing back to nation states, flexibility, and fairness between eurozone and non-eurozone. Those are our priorities for reform.

[Tim Loughton]

Does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that the great majority of those reforms, and those set out in the Fresh Start project manifesto and others, can be achieved without treaty change, and that when we make it clear that the new reformed EU that most of us want to achieve is not just a case of promoting little-Englander interests, but rather trying to achieve a sustainable outward-looking, globally competitive EU for the benefit of all 28 nations, we increasingly find that we are pushing at an open door?

[Mr Hague]

I warmly welcome the useful contribution that Fresh Start has made to the debate on EU reform, and I think my hon. Friend puts it extremely well. Indeed, many other countries are now also seeing that it is time to move on to new arguments and a new perspective on the European Union. For instance, following their investigation into subsidiarity, the Dutch Government said it should be ensured that EU action is taken only where necessary, with national action always pursued where possible.

Persecution of Christians

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon]

As this debate develops, the Minister or his civil servants will frantically write down the answers to these questions. I have a number of questions as well. I am sure the scribes in the corner will be writing furiously throughout the debate; I hope I was not insulting them by calling them scribes.

Those who drafted our international human rights clearly saw the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief as key to the inherent dignity of the human person and that it was important to protect it at all times. We should afford it the same weight; that is where we are coming from. To this end, I am pleased that the United Kingdom Government have designated the right to freedom of religion or belief as one of the top human right priorities for their foreign policy. We understand that to be the case and hope to hear it confirmed at the end of our debate. Will the UK Government agree that this right should be protected and promoted by all Governments worldwide? That is another question.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way, and what he is saying and some of the cases he is highlighting are deeply alarming. What I am particularly alarmed about is some of the instances he has mentioned within the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is a huge broad church of different faiths, beliefs and religions and we are a family. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should be using the Commonwealth more to promote freedom of worship, as we do poverty alleviation and education, so that Commonwealth countries can promote that among non-Commonwealth countries in the particular parts of the world where they are located?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those very honest and true words, which every one of us can take on board and believe in. I hope we can exert pressure, including through our membership of the Commonwealth, to try to exact change.

This Government are keen to pursue closer financial relations with China and there is nothing wrong with that. The benefits were outlined in the papers today, as were the pictures of the Prime Minister, but there are 100 Christian Church pastors in prison today because they are Christians—because they have a belief.

Middle East Peace Process/Syria and Iran

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

As the hon. Gentleman will understand, we have not yet discussed the full range of global affairs during the meetings that we have had so far. Those meetings have concentrated on the nuclear issue, on Syria, and on bilateral relations. However, the appointment of the non-resident chargés that I have announced today will allow us to discuss with Iran a greater range of issues of mutual concern. Nothing is excluded from that, and what is happening in areas such as west Africa could well be legitimate topics for discussion.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I share the Foreign Secretary’s cautious optimism, given the not inconsiderable progress that has been achieved in the middle east since he last made a statement to the House. No little credit for that progress should be laid at the door of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).

Without being starry-eyed, as the Foreign Secretary put it, may I suggest that one area in which we can pursue issues of mutual concern, particularly with the ordinary people of Iran, is the hard-drugs trade? Many Iranians are now heroin addicts, and many have been killed at the hands of drug barons controlling drug paths in the north of the country. When I visited the country a few years ago, we had seconded to it Metropolitan police officers with expertise in drugs, who were doing some great work that was of mutual benefit. Is that not one of the routes through which we could open up an early relationship with Iran?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, it is. My hon. Friend makes an important point. Combating that trade is in the interests of both countries. I hope that it will be one of the issues of mutual concern that we address at an early stage.