Burma

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

To be candid—again—I am not sure exactly what work is being done, but I am sure that World Vision is working with many other non-governmental organisations on the ground, and that those concerns will have been raised with the Bangladeshi authorities. If that turns out not to be the case, the hon. Lady will have been able to raise the matter on the Floor of the House, and I will ensure that it is raised at the highest level.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement. I especially commend his point that returns must be voluntary, but that, of course, means that they are very unlikely to happen. It is unrealistic to suggest that 700,000 traumatised people could be told, “Please go back to face the guns and the rapists that sent you away in the first place.”

There will be pressure—the Bangladeshi authorities, who I think have behaved admirably, will understandably want to see returns—but should it not be recognised that if there are to be returns, there must be security guarantees, and that those guarantees must be properly underwritten? They will not be for the short term; they will be for decades to come.

[Mark Field]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we would not seek for returns to be anything other than voluntary, so we must be patient.

It is also worth pointing out that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been engaged in a concerted effort of lobbying other nations. Certainly since the Foreign Secretary arrived back, this is an issue that we raise not just with ASEAN states, but with countries such as China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, to make it clear that we need collectively to work—potentially as a matter of great urgency—both on the humanitarian side, which is where I think the urgency will be needed, and on the diplomatic side, where we will have to be in it for the long haul. That is not being pessimistic; I am hopeful. I want things to work and I would love to see solutions sooner rather than later, but the hon. Gentleman makes the valid point for the whole House that this issue will, I suspect, be high profile for many years to come before there are the voluntary returns that we all want.

International Disaster Relief

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) on securing this excellent debate. We have a great deal of consensus in this debating Chamber, and it is important for the Minister to know that, although we can always argue about the refinement of processes, there is nevertheless an overwhelming view that the commitment to 0.7% of GDP as a national objective is one that is shared. In any case, the overriding national consensus supports what all Governments have done in this area.

However, I want to strike a marginal, discordant note. I do not think we have to begin by talking about the national interest. There is a profoundly moral case around disaster relief. I have sat with refugees in Macedonia and Albania who were fleeing the conflict in Kosovo. In Lebanon, I have seen people fleeing over the border from Syria. Most recently, in Bangladesh, we have seen refugees from Myanmar. I cannot look them in the eyes and believe that this issue is only about national interest, because it is not. The British people, generally speaking, are much bigger than that. It is important to make the moral case.

There is also a pragmatic case. At the time of the conflict in Kosovo, we saw refugees flooding into this country. I have constituents who came into this country as refugees from Kosovo—ditto Syria and so on. We know that whenever disaster arises around the world, it has repercussions. There is a profound case—hon. Members have mentioned this—for arguing that the real precursor to disaster relief is having long-term sustainability, to prevent disasters in the first place. That is not always possible. Some of the things that we anticipate are easy, but the unknown unknowns are problematic. Climate change is still producing unknown impacts, particularly in Africa. With the growing population and the capacity for climate change to disrupt whole communities, we might see disaster. That will almost certainly produce a tide of refugees who will look north to Europe for support and shelter.

Some hon. Members mentioned Ebola. We must be alive to the fact that there could be some as yet unknown pandemic that will hit this world of ours. It will be a global problem; it will not be about national interest. It will be about us working collectively together, as we did in the case of Ebola, but possibly on diseases as yet unknown that could have massively more dramatic consequences. And, of course, sadly, war on this planet is still something that we do not entirely control.

When a disaster takes place, the British are massively good-hearted. Some Members have already commented on that—the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) made that very point. We have a good-hearted nation. We see money going to charities, as well as action from our Government.

In the most recent case, of the Rohingya in Bangladesh, the British Government behaved admirably with respect to disaster relief. It was important, however, that that was co-ordinated by the Bangladeshi authorities, and particularly the Bangladeshi army, which was important in making sure that the camps were stable. There was of course also a plethora of agencies from all over the world. When I was in Bangladesh—I should point out my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, having travelled there recently—I met people from the Canadian Red Cross and aid agencies from around the world. All that immediate action requires some degree of co-ordination.

Immediate disasters are not simple to deal with—they are massively complicated—but because such action has been needed on a number of occasions over the years, there are now structures that can quite quickly get operations moving. Sometimes the challenge is what happens post-disaster. I know from exchanges on the Floor of the House that the Minister has thought about what happens next for the Rohingya in Bangladesh. It is not so much a question of transferring people back; that is a considerable way off. It is more about the fact that up to 50,000 women will give birth in the coming months and there is still not a clean water supply or sanitation system to sustain a population that may be living on a small patch of land for a considerable time to come.

The problem, of course, is that the world begins to move on. We saw that, to an extent, at the global level. Britain was a major contributor to the global efforts to provide assistance to the Rohingya in Bangladesh, but those funds are still undersubscribed. This is not about us being morally superior, but it sometimes helps to say we have played a significant part.

We do need people to stay for the long term. If we do not stabilise them into the long term, populations on the scale of the Rohingya in Bangladesh can be a hotbed of disaster. That can mean disaster for the population itself—through criminality, child prostitution and all the evils that can take place in such a community—but there is also the capacity for radicalisation, as has happened in other parts of the world. We must deal with disasters in the long term, not just the first weeks and months.

Several hon. Members mentioned Syria. If it gets to a post-conflict situation, the reconstruction of what was once, if not a first-world country, then certainly not a disaster case, will take decades—perhaps two generations. I think it was the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) who made the point about the relative amounts spent on conflict and on post-conflict stabilisation. That applies to Iraq, Afghanistan and many different parts of the world. Even our country has not put as much into the post-conflict situations as into the creation of the conflicts.

A number of Members pointed out the need to develop local partnerships. The capacity to work with local partner agencies is fundamental for both immediate disaster relief and the second phase. Often, large international agencies, however well intentioned they are, do not have the sophistication to get down to almost street level, which makes a material difference to people on the ground. There are problems with that approach, because as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, we have a duty to steward the pound that we spend. That is right and proper, but it is also important that such stewardship does not mean we miss the trick of getting the resources where they can do people maximum good. That often means working with local partner agencies.

Disasters will occur again and again around the world. It is of course right and proper to reserve resources for disaster relief, including for stabilisation after the immediate disaster period. Nepal, for example, is still not back together after the disaster of some years ago. In the longer run, we should not pit disaster relief against investment in long-term infrastructure, because investment in education, agriculture or industry will make a material difference in stabilising the parts of the world in question. It will make them less prone to war and more resilient to climate change, and it will make them better partners, even if that is seen in terms of narrow national interest. In any case, to conclude as I began, there is a moral debate to be had in the end: we share this planet, and our fellow global citizens deserve something from us. We are good at this and should not be ashamed of what we do.

Refugees and Human Rights

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that conflict resolution, climate change and the protection of human rights should be at the heart of UK foreign policy and that effective action should be taken to alleviate the refugee crisis and calls on the Government to lead international efforts through the United Nations and other international organisations to ensure that human rights are protected and upheld around the world.

We always welcome the wisdom of the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on these issues, but it is a great shame that although the Foreign Secretary has had time over the past week to act as Chancellor, as Health Secretary, and even as underwater construction engineer, he is not able to do his day job today. We hope that wherever he is heading on his travels, he is accorded rather more of a hearing than the Cabinet gave him yesterday.

The motion might be familiar to some, as it mirrors the words Labour used in our manifesto last June, in which we set out how we would tackle the causes of the refugee crisis—because some of us believe in our election promises. There is one more difference between our manifesto and the Government’s. No, it is not that ours was costed, nor that it was popular: it is that not a single one of the 25 countries that I will talk about in this speech was mentioned even once in the international section of the Tory manifesto last June—with, of course, one glaring exception: the United States.

We may differ in our attitudes towards the American leadership, but I am sure that Conservative Members would agree with me on some of the great figures of America’s past. It is fitting that this debate takes place 25 years to the day since we lost Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who, over six decades, helped to dismantle legal discrimination in America and to put human rights at the heart of its jurisprudence. It is worth remembering that his legendary legal career almost never began. As a young man, he only persuaded his grandmother to let him study law on the condition that he also learned to cook. She thought that that was a better guarantee of long-term employment. I wish someone had given me that advice—not that I would have changed my career, but I would at least be able to cook a proper roast dinner, like my nan could.

Among the many other great pieces of advice that Thurgood Marshall left the world are these words, which stand at the core of this debate:

“The measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis.”

That measure is similar to the Leader of the Opposition’s when he said in Geneva last month that the refugee crisis is one of

“the biggest moral tests of our time”.

Let us be clear: as a country, our greatness is currently being tested, but not all will agree with Justice Marshall or the Leader of the Opposition about the right answer. There will be those who say that amid grave economic uncertainty and domestic pressures, we need to focus on our own finances and public services, not on showing compassion to those in need elsewhere; there will be those who say that if we need global alliances to help to preserve trade and investment, that must come ahead of other considerations, including human rights; and there will be those who say that we have enough on our plate trying to manage Brexit, and that the rest of the world’s problems can be left to the rest of the world. But they could not be more wrong.

Our global leadership is needed now more than ever, not least because the five challenges that currently leave 65 million people in our world internally displaced or as refugees are getting only worse. Those challenges are: first, the state-led violence faced by minority groups in places such as Myanmar; secondly, the seemingly intractable wars in Yemen, Syria and elsewhere; thirdly, the cycles of division and violence in which Israel, Palestine and others are trapped; fourthly, the political instability that faces post-conflict countries such as Lebanon; and fifthly, the ever more stark realities of climate change.

Those five challenges may vary, but they all lead to one crisis: millions of vulnerable civilians, many of them children, left in desperate humanitarian need, either trapped, praying that relief and protection will come to them, or fleeing in the hope that they will find it elsewhere. Make no mistake: in the coming years those challenges will test the limit of our resources, the depths of our compassion, the strength of our global leadership and, ultimately, the greatness of our country.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that one of the really big tests relates to our international agencies, particularly the United Nations, and the political paralysis that results from the lack of commitment from Russia, China and the United States? We have to get that commitment back. If we are going to lead, Britain has to make the United Nations central to the solution to the problems my right hon. Friend is outlining.

[Emily Thornberry]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I will develop those arguments later and look forward to listening to his speech, if he gets an opportunity to be heard.

Select Committee on International Development

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This is one of the most fundamental issues we need to address. The position of those who are displaced and, as he rightly says, the status of those Rohingya in Burma—those who have not fled or who have returned—need to be resolved. The international community needs to take this issue seriously and engage with the Burmese Government on it. He is right to remind the House about the sheer scale of this displacement over a very short period. That is partly why I pay tribute to the Bangladeshi people and Government. In reality, the vast majority will be there for some time, so there is a big job of work to do to ensure that services such as health and education are made available to refugees who—let us face it—are likely to be in Bangladesh for years.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

This is an excellent report, and my hon. Friend rightly praises the Government of Bangladesh for their efforts, but it needs to be recognised that they need not validate the actions of the Burmese army in recognising the permanent status of the Rohingya. That is important if we are to move to the next stage of giving support to the 50,000 women who will give birth this year after being raped and providing more permanent shelter before the cyclone season. This is an excellent report, but we have to move to that next stage and give support to the Bangladeshi Government and people.

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. No two situations are the same, but we can learn lessons from other countries that have taken large numbers of refugees. One of the proposals that was made to us, and which we highlight in the report, was for the creation of a special development zone in Bangladesh, similar to what has happened in Jordan, to enable job opportunities for both the Rohingya and, crucially, the host population, the local Bangladeshi population.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I appreciate the sentiment that my hon. Friend expresses. The IRGC clearly does not represent the forces of progress in Iran to which I was alluding earlier. We keep its status for sanctions purposes under continuous review.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The situation in Jammu and Kashmir is a human outrage on a regular basis, and the tension between Pakistan and India is threatening world peace. Will the Foreign Secretary use the opportunity of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting to bring our good friends Pakistan and India together and move a peace process forward?

[Mark Field]

I very much hope CHOGM will provide that sort of opportunity. Both India and Pakistan are long-standing friends of the UK. On the issue of Kashmir, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we do not intervene or interfere; it is for those two countries to determine.

Palestinian Communities: Israeli Demolitions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are clearly in the midst of a potential humanitarian crisis, which may seem small-scale purely in terms of the number of children who use that school, but is potentially catastrophic for the lives of those children. We should appeal to the humanitarian instincts of all hon. Members today.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case about the day-to-day disruption of the lives of ordinary Palestinians. Does he agree with this central point—that none of this can be justified by reference to Hamas or general references to the security situation? Everybody present for this debate must agree that security is fundamental for Israel, but it should not erode the day-to-day rights of Palestinian men, women and children.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend. We know that there can be no peace without security and there can be no security without peace, and we have to find a way out of this vicious circle. I believe that it is in the gift of the Israeli Government to make the progress that is so desperately required.

It seems that nothing is off limits. During August and September 2017, the Israeli authorities demolished or seized a total of 63 Palestinian-owned structures, affecting over 1,200 people, all on the grounds of lack of Israeli-issued permits, which are nearly impossible to obtain. The Supreme Court of Israel, the role of which is to protect the rule of law, has, in a peak of irony, ruled that demolitions can be carried out without any right to appeal if the Israel defence forces judge that advance warning would hinder demolition action. Accordingly, the Israeli non-governmental organisation B’Tselem has said:

“It seems that Israel is so confident in its ability to expel entire villages without incurring judicial or international criticism that it is no longer bothering to create even the illusion of legal proceedings.”

Israel is often portrayed as a lonely beacon of democracy and pluralism in the middle east. Well, it is time the Israeli Government began to live up to that, because there is nothing democratic or pluralistic about demolishing homes, community infrastructure, schools and kinder- gartens, and there is certainly nothing democratic or pluralistic about denying due process and undermining the rule of law.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point to the fact that drug smuggling and trading is becoming a main threat to the implementation of the peace agreement. I am reassured that the Colombian Government are investigating the deaths of several individuals who protested against coca eradication in Tumaco on 5 October.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Will the Minister see what he can do to drive concerted European action to bring supportive pressure to bear on President Santos? The President’s legacy could be an implemented peace deal, but at the moment the legislative process to underpin the peace process simply is not there. We must have action in the last six months of his term.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

We are actively supporting the Colombian Government. We have provided almost £20 million from the conflict, stability and security fund. I am also proud that UK-led work has led to the UN Security Council resolutions to assist the peace-building process that we all want to see succeed.

Iran

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The relationship between states is often complex, and it is doubly so in relation to Iran. We want to see a bilateral relationship with Iran that is based on our values. Trade is clearly important but it cannot be carried on at the expense of those values. Also, the term “leverage” should be considered carefully. It should always be to the mutual advantage of any states that their relationships with one another are based on peace, security, compatibility of values and the opportunity to go over differences and resolve them without conflict. That is what we will continue to do. There are issues between ourselves and Iran, such as the consular matters that people well understand, and we will continue to press them. We hope that the relationship that we are trying to forge will be based on our values and the needs of the rest of the region, which will require Iran to recognise that some of its activities could and should take a different course.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The Minister’s statement is welcome and moves us forward, but he will recall that part of the logic behind the decision to engage with Iran on the basis of distrust, as he says, was the potential for a nuclear-armed Iran to lead to a nuclear arms race in the middle east. What steps will our Government take to say to our friends in the middle east that it is not in their interest to see the agreement destabilised?

[Alistair Burt]

Most of our friends and partners in the middle east recognise that the non-proliferation treaty has prevented the acquisition of nuclear weapons, which would have been easy. Many states possess the wealth to equip themselves with nuclear weapons, but they have not done so because they accepted the terms of the treaty and other international agreements. The importance of continuing with the JCPOA is about ensuring that the signatories remain convinced that parties and powers that sign such agreements will abide by them. I have heard no suggestion that the President’s decision marks a change in that attitude among neighbouring powers, who realise how destabilising a change in Iran’s position on the non-proliferation treaty would be. I have also received no suggestion that Iran’s seeking nuclear weapons is likely to be an outcome of what we heard last week.

Hurricane Irma: Government Response

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

There is a shipbuilding strategy for two new aircraft carriers, but obviously on the detail of our shipbuilding and fleet the answer should come from Ministers from the Ministry of Defence rather than me, but I reiterate that Mounts Bay did an incredible job, is perfectly well suited to the task and had been pre-positioned with appropriate supplies. That is the answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), the Chairman of the International Development Committee, because to take supplies in from a ship that has not faced the risk of those supplies being destroyed is the best way of bringing urgent relief to where it is most needed. I would point out as well, on the question of co-operation, that we have HMS Ocean leaving Gibraltar, which will also carry helicopters on behalf of the French.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

The Minister should know that my constituents Christine and Tony Bibby, who are in their early and late 70s, have been stranded on St Martin since the hurricane. They have a desperately worried family here in Britain and are running out of water and food and have no electricity. There has been very little news about what positive action will help this couple. May I have some clarification? Will they be made safe, will they get the emergency supplies they need to sustain life, and will the evacuation proceed very quickly?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Again, I have seen the hon. Gentleman’s name among those of many colleagues who have been in touch to represent their constituents’ needs. As I have said, there are 70 British on St Martins. It is not one of our overseas territories, but we are working with the French and the Dutch and we are confident that those in most need—and I hope more—can be assisted to depart today. The whole purpose of our hotline and the crisis centre is to ensure that we can properly rank people in order of need so that if, for instance, they are elderly, running out of food, have dependants or suffer from an illness, they will go higher up the list of priorities and will get help more quickly than the more able bodied.

Violence in Rakhine State

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

No one was suggesting that knowing about such a situation would be dependent on a ministerial visit. We are working on the ground, but we do need to verify the facts. I accept what the hon. Lady says and there is no sense of disbelief in what an NGO says—NGOs on the ground are working hard, including with DFID and other parts of the UK Government apparatus—but we need to verify the facts before making such statements. However, she should rest assured that a significant amount of work is going on, on both sides of the Burmese-Bangladeshi border, as we speak.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

When the Minister has finally clarified the facts, will he condemn as genocide what everybody else believes to be genocide? What is the value of having a democratic dialogue if the result is the persecution and massacre of a whole group of people?

[Mark Field]

As the hon. Gentleman rightly points out, our immediate priority has been to establish the facts, but it has also been to ensure that we provide urgent food and medical assistance to as many displaced citizens as we can. As I say, we are at the forefront of that.

On making any judgment about whether crimes have occurred under international law—this goes back to the issue discussed earlier—that is really a matter for judicial determination, not something that we should condemn here as politicians. Whether that is done through the UN—through a UN Security Council referral to the International Criminal Court, for example—lies some steps ahead. None the less, this must ultimately be a legal, rather than a political, intervention. As a P5 Member of the United Nations, we have obviously taken that particular aspect very seriously. As I pointed out in my initial comments, over a week ago we began the process of asking the UN to take seriously the issues that I fear have only deteriorated further in the past few days.