Saudi Arabia: Mass Executions

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jeremy Lefroy

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

We unreservedly condemn torture in all circumstances. I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is asking for. We have to look at the broader picture of the entire Gulf and the dangers around it. That is always taken into consideration when looking at who we work with across the world.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I know how much my right hon. Friend cares and how hard he works on these matters of human rights. The European Union has also condemned what is happening. Can we ensure that this is not just the ritual condemnation that happens immediately after an event and then is forgotten, but that at every opportunity in his dialogue with Saudi counterparts, he stresses the value that this country and our European partners place on freedom, human rights, religious freedom and all those areas that would be of great benefit to Saudi Arabia if it were to embrace them?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My hon. Friend is right. It is no good just having a day’s anger after an event such as this. It has to be persistent and consistent, and the condemnation of executions of this sort and any abuse of human rights has to be built into our policy and actions at all time.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: Presidential Elections

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I totally accept that someone can only be an effective observer if they have the security around them, so the hon. Gentleman makes an important point.

With our regional and international partners, and through a variety of channels, including our seat on the UN Security Council and our embassy in Kinshasa, we have continued to impress upon the DRC authorities the importance of adhering to their commitments. I am pleased to say that this concerted pressure has helped to persuade Kabila to agree to hold elections this month, in which he will not be a candidate. This is welcome news, but we remain concerned about the credibility and openness of these elections. My hon. Friend the Minister for Africa raised these concerns with two of the three main presidential candidates in telephone conversations this week. She discussed the need for the parties to engage fully in the electoral process and to condemn any violence or incitement to violence. She hopes to speak to further candidates in the coming days.

In addition to engagement at ministerial level, the UK has committed significant resources towards practical support for the electoral process. This totals nearly £19 million, and it includes support for voter education programmes, for election observations and for strengthening institutions such as the justice and peace commission. UK-funded civic education programmes have reached nearly 3 million people through face-to-face campaigns and over 10 million more through various media campaigns. We have also trained 425 long-term observers to help to ensure the credibility of the elections, and we have funded 20,000 local observers through the local Catholic Church’s committee for justice and peace. This represents one third of the anticipated number of local observers.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend and to Her Majesty’s Government for all their support. Will he particularly commend the role played by the Catholic Church and other Churches in the Saint-Silvestre accord of 2016, and also their continued striving for peace and democracy in the DRC?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My hon. Friend has an amazing reputation for his interest in Africa, and I totally share his judgment. I agree with what he has just said.

We are concerned that some candidates have been prevented from moving and campaigning freely around the country, that activists from all sides have been subjected to violence, and that some candidates have used inflammatory language. The UK issued a joint statement with the American, Canadian and Swiss ambassadors in response, which condemned all forms of violence as well as expressing regret at the news of the recent fire at an electoral commission warehouse in Kinshasa, to which the hon. Member for Bury South referred.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the fact that electronic voting machines were being used for the first time in this poll. The DRC electoral commission—known as CENI—will be responsible for their operation. In response to a request from CENI in February, we funded the Westminster Foundation for Democracy to carry out a technical analysis of the electronic voting machines. The WFD’s report is publicly available on CENI’s website, and it notes that it is not best practice to introduce the machines on this scale without a pilot. However, it does not endorse or reject their use, because this is a sovereign decision for CENI and the DRC. The report provided a number of recommendations to mitigate the risks associated with using the machines, many of which have been adopted by CENI. All the major presidential candidates have now indicated that voters should use the machines.

In addition to our support for the electoral process, we also run an extensive programme to alleviate the humanitarian situation in the DRC. This includes our support for the World Health Organisation-led response to the Ebola outbreak in the east of the country, where we are the second-largest bilateral donor. More broadly, we are working to improve the humanitarian and human rights situation in the DRC through advocacy work, through bilateral projects and programmes and through our support of multilateral interventions such as the UN peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO.

We help to fund a programme run by the UN’s Joint Human Rights Office to document human rights abuses. We continue to call on the DRC Government, as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, to demonstrate their commitment to the highest standards of human rights and to take decisive action against abuses and violations. With the EU, we have established a sanctions regime against members of the Government responsible for the violation of human rights. We have made it clear that we are prepared to take further action as necessary, including against those who seek to obstruct the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people. We will continue to use all channels available to us to end human rights abuses in the DRC, to press for accountability, and to demand a better future for the Congolese people. I hope I have shown that the UK is engaging closely with the electoral authorities and civil society in the DRC to support free, fair, safe and credible elections on Sunday.

Hamed bin Haydara

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jeremy Lefroy

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I am familiar with this from the days when I was an International Development Minister, and even then—without such a conflict—Yemen had dire needs. We are deeply concerned by what may be nearly 500,000 cases of cholera, by rising infant mortality and by the fact that almost all the food—certainly all the rice—is imported. To that end, therefore, it has been essential to open the port of Hodeidah, which I am pleased to say has happened since last month. DFID is spending over £200 million in this financial year, but the access to those in need and the delivery of humanitarian aid remains a very complex and difficult problem in such a lawless and disintegrating society.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

May I thank you, Mr Speaker—as, indeed, I thank my right hon. Friend —for your dedication to religious freedom and human rights? Does my right hon. Friend agree that human rights and religious freedom are absolutely integral parts of our humanitarian and development aid work across the world?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Yes. If human rights and the rule of law are not upheld, the efficacy of development is severely reduced, so I totally agree with my hon. Friend. That is written in as a principle to all the ways in which DFID goes about its business.

Hurricane Irma: Government Response

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The conditions when Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Mounts Bay arrived at Anguilla were still very severe, but what they did have was the helicopter so they were able not only to do an immediate assessment across Anguilla but to restore power to the hospital and get the airport going again. What they did was significant. In terms of landing on difficult windy sands, the vessel did not do so on that occasion partly because we were trying to maximise or optimise the utility of the ship by getting it to do what it could urgently to make do and mend in Anguilla before going to the British Virgin Islands, where it became clear that the devastation was greater and where the population is larger. Before the threat of Hurricane Jose came in, which would have meant that they had to sail away again, they brought urgent help to the British Virgin Islands having left half their supplies to help Anguilla. Those operational decisions are to be admired.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

HMS Illustrious helped greatly during Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, as did HMS Bulwark during Ebola in Sierra Leone, and now RFA Mounts Bay in the Caribbean followed by HMS Ocean. It is absolutely vital that the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary have the vessels to back up British work on international development, and we know that HMS Ocean is due to be decommissioned. Can the Minister assure me that this is being fed right into the naval shipbuilding strategy?

[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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I stand here as a Kennedy scholar, which is a very similar structure, and we have a fantastic programme of Chevening scholars sponsored by the Foreign Office. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has confirmed that he will raise the Fulbright scholarships with Secretary Tillerson when he next sees him.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

With 250,000 people from Burundi now refugees as a result of the repression and human rights abuses in that country, what is the Foreign Secretary doing to stimulate dialogue to resolve the political impasse there?

Global Hunger

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jeremy Lefroy

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Duncan]

Let me complete what I was saying about land, and I will then turn to tax. On the land issue, the key point is that we welcome the successful negotiation of the voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of tenure, which were concluded by the Committee on World Food Security last year.

The UK Government absolutely recognise the importance of tax transparency in development. As the Prime Minister said at Question Time today, the UK will use its G8 presidency this year to tackle tax evasion and aggressive avoidance.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

The Department for International Development has an excellent programme in Rwanda for registering the land of smallholders. Is there a possibility of rolling it out in other countries to ensure that smallholders have their title registered for security?

[Mr Duncan]

Absolutely. A proper legal framework for ownership of land is crucial if property rights are to be exercised fairly, particularly among some of the poorest people. That building block in any country’s framework of law is crucial for the guarantee of such rights.

To tackle hunger, we need to improve poor people’s access to food. They spend a large proportion of their income on food, so are least able to cope when food prices rise unpredictably. UK aid provides money to a consortium, led by FARM Africa and Self Help Africa, which aims to increase the production and returns of nearly 1 million smallholders. We also provide support for safety nets so that the poorest people have a buffer to help them to survive and recover from economic or natural shocks that threaten their ability to feed themselves and their families. For example, DFID supports the Ethiopian Government’s productive safety net programme, which provides predictable cash or food payments to around 8 million people.

Education Projects (Nigeria)

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for calling tonight’s debate. I am grateful to him and his colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) and for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) for visiting Nigeria last month to see at first hand the challenges in education and the work that the UK is supporting to tackle those challenges.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State and I are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and his colleagues from the all-party parliamentary group on global education for the insights that they shared with us after their visit to Nigeria. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is at this moment boarding a plane to Nigeria to follow up on these issues.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East learned during his visit, primary education in much of Nigeria is extremely poor. As he said, there are an estimated 8.5 million children out of school in Nigeria. It therefore has more primary-aged children not in school than any other country in the world, and the problem is particularly acute in the north of the country.

Nigeria’s education policies and their implementation are poor, having suffered many years of decline under military dictatorships and mismanaged oil revenues. Financial releases to schools are erratic and education officials and teachers struggle to improve schools. The quality of teaching and learning is also extremely poor. A recent DFID study of primary and junior secondary teachers in government schools, as we have just heard, revealed that only 75 of 19,000 teachers surveyed achieved the minimum standards for teaching core subjects.

As my hon. Friends heard during their visit, there are three major educational challenges. The first challenge is simply to get more children into school. A national education data survey, partly funded by DFID, showed that only 61% of Nigerian children attend school. The situation in the north of the country, the poorest part, is particularly bad. Therefore, DFID’s efforts are focused on 10 of Nigeria’s 36 states, mainly in the north. We are working with the Federal Ministry of Education and state Governments to help address these regional disparities.

The second challenge is to close the gap between girls and boys. In many parts of the country, particularly the north, there are many fewer girls than boys in school. In the northern states, only 35% of girls attend primary school, compared with over 80% in the south of the country. That is of great concern to DFID, and we are working with our partners in the country to help close those geographic and gender gaps.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

As members of the International Development Committee have just seen during a visit to Malawi, one of the main problems for girls is the lack of adequate toilet facilities. Will the Minister outline what the Government, through DFID, are doing in that respect in Nigeria?

[Mr Duncan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he is right that we are indeed spending money on sanitation, and I am perturbed to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East about the seemingly excessive cost of one particular structure. I can assure him and the House that we will investigate that as a matter of urgency to check that we have genuinely achieved value for money. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) rightly points out, girls are kept away from school if they do not have proper sanitation; they simply do not turn up. Therefore, sanitation is an essential part of making sure that girls have equal access to education.

International evidence from countries such as Malaysia and other Asian countries shows that educating girls is one of the best investments a country can make. Educating more girls improves family and child health and boosts economic growth by making young women more productive. DFID is therefore working with its Nigerian partners to help get more girls into school and improve their quality of education, their health and their economic contribution to society.