Foreign Affairs and International Development

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

No. I want to list them to the House.

In Africa we have reopened an embassy in Côte d’Ivoire and opened a new embassy in South Sudan; we are reopening our embassy in Madagascar, which should never have been closed; we are opening an embassy in Liberia; and we have set aside funds to open an embassy in Somalia as soon as circumstances permit. We have opened a new embassy in strategically important Kyrgyzstan, and we are establishing a new honorary consul network for economic and commercial diplomacy in Turkey.

In Latin America we have already opened a new consulate in the north of Brazil; we are reopening our embassy in El Salvador, which was closed in 2003; and on top of that we are strengthening many links with the people of Latin America, with an agreement for example to welcome 10,000 Brazilian students and researchers to British institutions by 2014. I stress that this focus on stronger ties in Latin America goes hand in hand with our absolute commitment to the rights of the people of the Falkland Islands to self-determination and to develop their own economy.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hague]

I have more to say about that, but I promised to give way to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz).

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[Mr Hague]

I will come to the middle east peace process later in my speech, but at the EU Foreign Affairs Council yesterday, we issued an important new and detailed statement about our approach to the two settlements, in particular. I will come back to that, but perhaps I will take the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) on this point.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My right hon. Friend has done a huge amount in his time as Foreign Secretary to go to countries throughout the world and to reinvigorate the Foreign Office, which was sidelined by the previous Government. Indeed, under the Blair Government the Foreign Office was seen more as a nuisance than as a help. Will my right hon. Friend outline to the House some of the countries that he has been to which have not been visited by a Foreign Secretary in a great many years?

[Mr Speaker]

We look forward to the Foreign Secretary’s Cook’s tour.

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[Mr Hague]

We will have to see what, if any, proposals Iran makes in Baghdad on 23 May, but if my right hon. and learned Friend is saying that we should be cautious about making large-scale concessions, of course I agree—we will be cautious. It would, in any case, require agreement across the E3 plus 3. We will see what the Iranians say. If they propose and start to implement concrete steps, of course there would be ways in which we would want to respond, but very serious and significant steps would have to be taken for us to change, in any way, our approach to, for example, the imposition of the oil sanctions that I just described.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on taking time to negotiate the position in Iran, which contrasts starkly with when former Prime Minister Blair stood at the inquiry and said that we should take immediate military action against Iran. The Foreign Secretary’s approach should be commended, and I very much hope that he carries on developing those relations, especially with Russia and China, which will have such an important role to play in helping Iran out of this situation.

[Mr Hague]

One hundred per cent. of our efforts are devoted to a peaceful, negotiated, diplomatic solution to this problem, although we have never taken anything off the table. The House endorsed that approach by an overwhelming majority when we debated it in February. We will maintain the pressure of intensifying sanctions until genuine progress is made, and that includes the sanctions I just described.

We will also continue to raise our concerns about the state of human rights in Iran, which are documented in the FCO’s annual report on human rights that I published two weeks ago. We are increasing the funding of FCO human rights work by 30% in the coming year, with an additional £1.5 million of funding devoted to projects to promote freedom of expression online and the implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.

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[Mr Alexander]

There is a rare moment of unity between myself and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in saying that I am not sure it is entirely wise to speculate today about which countries have a future within the eurozone. But I would certainly concur with my hon. Friend’s point that the Labour Government did make the right choice in saying that the economics did not make the case for Britain entering the euro. I know that it was the present Foreign Secretary who argued that we had 24 hours to save the pound. I checked, and I think we have had 90,192 hours since he made those remarks, and as far as I am aware, we all still have a pound in our pocket, thanks to the actions of 13 years of a Labour Government and a little time from the Conservatives thereafter.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

rose—

[Mr Alexander]

I have been generous and I am keen to make a little progress.

Alongside the welcome measures set out in the Bill to allow for the establishment of a eurozone-only bail-out fund, further steps are needed if we are to have hope of a genuine recovery in Europe, including a real capital lift for the European Investment Bank, new infrastructure bonds and a comprehensive review of how EU structural funds operate.

Before I leave the subject of Europe, let me ask the Foreign Secretary another question that curiously he omitted from his lengthy remarks today. The Government defined themselves in opposition and in the early days of government by their commitment to publish a White Paper on the repatriation of powers from the EU back to Britain. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary will update the House on when we can expect that White Paper to be published. With great flourish, he announced another White Paper was due to be published on the overseas territories, but he curiously omitted any mention of a White Paper in relation to repatriation. The last time he mentioned it in the House was November 2011, when, in a written answer to me in February, he said:

“The Government’s stated intention is to examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences. That review does not have a pre-determined outcome.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2012; Vol. 540, c. 366W.]

Can he at least confirm to the House whether it has a pre-determined time frame? I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate he will be able to share that information with the House.

If there is one example of where the European Union could serve to amplify Britain’s voice and maximise our influence, surely it is in the middle east and north Africa in the wake of the extraordinary events we have witnessed over the past 18 months. In the early part of last year we saw protests spread, from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east, with the success of one set of demonstrators giving energy and inspiration to others. But the Arab spring has not been uniform in its impact, and nor are its outcomes guaranteed. We see continuing and very different challenges in countries as diverse as Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain. In the case of Syria, I can assure the House that there is bipartisan support for the continued efforts the Foreign Secretary spoke of to stop the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown on its own people.

At a time when the waves of change are sweeping through the region, it is surely a matter of deep regret to us all that progress on the negotiations in Israel and the Palestinian territories remains frozen. Our shared goal across the House is to secure a universally recognised Israel living alongside a sovereign and viable Palestinian state. The international community and the majority of Israelis and Palestinians share a common view of what the principles of a final agreement should be based upon: land swaps around the 1967 borders, Jerusalem as a shared capital, and a fair settlement for refugees.

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[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

In the time available, I would like to focus on two areas: the situation in Iran and the international development aid budget.

I want to highlight the huge importance of the E3 plus 3 talks that are taking place in Baghdad on 23 May. My starting position, as I think many will know, is that I want everything we do in this place to avoid, as far as possible, the death of innocent people. Politicians have the highest moral responsibility to ensure that innocent people do not die, and war is indeed the failure of politicians. We must therefore work in the organisations that exist. I hope to outline in my speech that I am not just talking about whether we take military action against Iran, but—to return to the premise of trying to protect innocent lives wherever we can—what some of the consequences of not taking military action might be.

Many have said that we should leave things be—that this is another area that we should not get involved in. As a parliamentarian, I have a commitment, along with everybody else in this Chamber, to ensure the best interests of the UK; as a constituency MP, I have a duty to protect my constituents’ standards of living from the knock-on effects that international events can have. Hand in hand, those two points show the importance of negotiations, however protracted and however frustrating. We must work within the organisations that are out there. As Churchill said,

“To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.”

We saw with the Iraq conflict, almost a decade ago now, the serious consequences that impatience with the diplomatic process can lead to. As I outlined in an intervention on the Foreign Secretary earlier, we must use Russia and China in the best possible way to help get the negotiations that we hope to achieve with Iran.

But what if Iran moved towards having the bomb? Some people say, “Let’s not intervene—let them have the bomb.” Would the Iranians use it? I doubt it. However, returning to the fundamental point about protecting innocent lives, I do not believe that Iran would have to drop the bomb to make a fundamental difference to the balance in the middle east or, indeed, to cause uprisings and conflict elsewhere in the middle east, with the idea of a nuclear-armed Iranian Government behind them. We have seen proxy wars take place in the middle east as recently as last year. The Arab spring uprising in Bahrain quickly became a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. What were the consequences of that? We saw many innocent people lose their lives. They were trying to protest for greater freedoms in their own country, but they got drawn into a bigger conflict between a Shi’a Government and a Sunni Government, who fought their proxy war through those people. That is the point I want to highlight to the House. We are simply not in a position to take no action at all; however, we must make every effort possible to ensure that we remove the threat, but through peaceful negotiations.

I also made the point that one of our jobs in this place is to protect the standard of living in this country, for our constituents as much as for anything else. The fact is that a major conflict in the middle east would lead to a devastating rise in the price of oil. If a war or even a stand-off took place between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and if traffic were limited in the strait of Hormuz to ensure that shipping did not go to either country, we might then look on petrol at £1.50 a litre as the good old days. The price could literally double in price overnight, which would have a terrible effect on our constituents.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the conflict in Bahrain. Does he share my concern that Iran was partly responsible for intervening and trying to destabilise the existing regime there?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Yes, I absolutely agree. Indeed, that was the point I was trying to make about what would happen if Iran went down the road and became a nuclear-armed country, because where else does its influence lie in the middle east? It lies with Hezbollah, certainly, and there is even evidence coming forward about some of the military equipment finding its way to Hamas. My point is simply this. We cannot just make the argument in foreign affairs that says, “Let’s not take any military action against Iran because we don’t want to cause the deaths of innocent people.” I absolutely support that point; but we also need to ensure that negotiations work, and that is why we should be involved, because we could cause the death of innocent people by doing nothing. Those proxy wars are important.

I am worried about the rhetoric on military action against Iran that was coming out three months ago. If we were to take such action, what would happen? Another western-led invasion of middle eastern land would certainly serve as a recruitment tool. Such action would also lead to the deaths of innocent people, not only those who were under the bombs when they landed, but those whose infrastructure we would probably take out along the way as part of any military campaign, leading to a degradation of the standard of living of those people. Indeed, tens of thousands of people have died in Iraq as a result of the loss of such infrastructure. Negotiations are absolutely vital, and we must ensure that we use the support of Russia and China to make a deep impact on Iran.

Moving on to international aid, there is a lot of criticism in the country at large about retaining our aim to spend 0.7% of gross national income on international aid. People say that we cannot afford it, but one of the great advantages of having a statement of how our taxes are spent would be that they would be able to see that the proportion being spent on international aid is actually tiny. I do not care if I get criticism from some of my constituents for saying that this is a moral, Christian obligation that we have to carry out and achieve. We simply cannot stand by and let innocent people die through a lack of the most basic infrastructure.

The problem with the international aid budget related to where the money was going before, but the actions taken by the Secretary of State in the first two years of this Parliament have gone a long way to restoring people’s faith in the process. Some £100 million-worth of projects in 16 countries have been closed because they were not delivering and the funds were not getting to where they were needed. Money is no longer going to countries such as Russia and China that have developed and moved forward. I can look my constituents in the eye when they say, “You’re just giving money to Robert Mugabe”, and tell them that that is exactly what we are not doing. The money that we spend on international development is going to ensure that the lives of people in the developing countries get better.

I ask hon. Members this question: if we had spent millions of pounds in 1990, when the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan, to ensure stability in that country, would we now be spending billions of pounds and suffering the loss of more than 400 of our servicemen trying to defend the area? I do not believe that we would; the investment that we make in international aid and development saves us money in the long run and helps to protect innocent lives.

I was going to outline some of the areas covered by our international aid programmes, but my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) has already done so. I believe that the House can get behind a lot of the projects that we take part in. They are relatively cheap and they bring stability to the countries concerned. That reduces pressures on our borders, and it is vital to carry on moving forward in that way. It is my core belief that this is a fundamental moral responsibility. We are a developed nation; we are, in the grand scheme of things, a wealthy nation. We cannot ignore the plight of our neighbours, because if we do, they will come to our doorstep. This investment is not only a moral obligation but the sensible thing to do if we are to ensure the long-term prosperity of our country as well as theirs.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

I would like to emphasise that the hon. Gentleman seems to be under some illusion, probably based on stuff he has read in the media or on certain internet sites, that the Conservative party is not committed to 0.7%. He listened to my speech earlier and I hope he is not going down the road of saying that we are not committed to it, which is deeply offensive to many Conservative Back Benchers.

[Mr Lewis]

I read in the hon. Gentleman’s manifesto and I read in the coalition agreement that 0.7% would be enshrined in legislation in the first Session of Parliament. We are now at the beginning of the second, yet there is no intention to do so. That is why people have doubts.

I am concerned about other aspects of the Government’s policy direction. The Secretary of State recently provoked controversy by linking aid to India with a defence contract—a breach of his commitment to maintain our policy of de-linking aid from specific trade deals. Will he confirm in his response that de-linking remains Government policy? He is demanding an ideologically driven rapid expansion of DFID’s private sector spend, to which I have no objection in principle, but this raises serious concerns about a lack of focus on ethics and responsibility, and fundamental questions about the Department’s capacity to ensure the spend is effective.

In government, we were very clear that both our taxpayers and poor people in developing countries have a right to see tangible results from UK aid spending, so I support the Secretary of State when he places an emphasis on results. Meaningful results, however, are often about long-term sustainable change, not simple quick fixes or easy-to-measure outcomes. It would be an abdication of responsibility if support for state building, the empowerment of women and civil society were sacrificed for easier headlines.

I am concerned that many Government objectives require DFID to work in partnership with other Government Departments. On Rio+20 and private sector/tax transparency issues, I am not convinced that this is happening or that DFID is playing a leading role across Whitehall.

Turning to the future, I welcome the Prime Minister’s appointment by the UN Secretary-General to co-chair the high-level group considering the future millennium development goals framework post 2015. It is good that, after a golden decade of UK global leadership on development, the UK has a further opportunity to help shape the direction of future policy. My test for the Prime Minister is whether he understands that development is about social justice and human rights, not charity, and that an ideological approach that espouses “private good”, “public and NGO bad”, would be a missed opportunity.

A new global covenant for development must recognise that in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the Arab spring and the new concentration of poverty in middle-income countries, the world has changed. A new covenant must be developed on an equal basis by developing, developed and middle-income countries—not by a settlement imposed by developed on developing countries. It must seek to address the big global challenges of fair trade, sustainable growth, climate change, inequality, social protection, universal human rights and responsible capitalism. Instead of global targets, it may be more appropriate to have a matrix of indicators that enables every country to set its own targets.

As we face these big questions, I hope DFID will continue to be a thought leader and policy innovator, not simply an aid agency. It is one of the main reasons why, when we left office, DFID was regarded as the world’s leading state development agency—a source of great national pride. The complex challenges of today’s world require defence, diplomacy and development to be deployed in a strategic and integrated way. Britain has a distinct and crucial role to play, working with allies old and new, to help build a stable, fairer world. The Government must step up to the plate and ensure that their antagonism to the EU does not lead to isolation in Europe and marginalisation in the world. That would be a betrayal of Britain’s national interest.

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[Mr Mitchell]

I will deal directly with that in a moment. The point I seek to make is that we have made changes through the bilateral aid review, which determined that bilateral aid to 16 of the countries supported by Labour under the programme should be wound up, and through the multilateral aid reviews, where we found that 10% of the multilateral agencies that Britain was funding were not delivering value for money. We have made these tough decisions and we have, therefore, been able to refocus the programme and make it far more effective.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald said, we have made sure that girls and women are at the heart of British development policy; we have set up the independent evaluation of British aid, so that the public can judge for themselves what we are achieving; we have emphasised the building blocks of wealth creation—trade, a vibrant private sector, property rights and a low-carbon climate-resilient economy; we have completely overhauled CDC; and we sold our remaining 40% share in Actis to rectify the shameful deal done by the previous Government, from which the British taxpayer has not seen a single penny.

DFID now plays a full part in the National Security Council and has brought much greater focus to fragile and conflict-affected areas; we have ensured that the British public have a say in how part of the aid budget is spent; and our new UK aid match funding scheme has already made commitments that will directly benefit more than 2.7 million people in some of the world’s poorest countries—we have provided match funding for Sightsavers, Sport Relief, WaterAid and Save the Children.

We have also introduced a wholly new system of support for Britain’s brilliant international charities, which means that we will be able to help smaller non-governmental organisations to reach more people by launching fresh rounds of the global poverty action fund, which in its first year supported 56 charities and organisations that will help nearly 6 million people.

Over the course of this Session, we will host a major global summit this summer, with Melinda Gates, which will bring a renewed international emphasis and much-needed action on family planning. The aim will be to halve the number of women in the poorest parts of the world who want access to contraception but cannot get it.

The Prime Minister has been asked by the United Nations Secretary-General to co-chair, along with the Presidents of Liberia and Indonesia, the high-level panel that will consider what framework might succeed the millennium development goals in 2015. This will be a major issue for the international community over the coming years, and the UK will ensure that it helps to steer an open and consultative process, on which I look forward to engaging with colleagues.

We will continue to work with the rest of Whitehall and the international community to tackle the urgent and long-term issues in Somalia. We are championing the case for more effective resilience and humanitarian reform, especially in the light of the recent crisis in the horn of Africa, about which many colleagues have spoken.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My right hon. Friend has outlined the list of achievements by the Government under his stewardship of the Department. Does he take the same umbrage as I do at the suggestion that this is all just a detoxification? This actually is something we believe in, it is a moral obligation and we find it deeply offensive to be told that it is just a detoxification.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend, in his eloquent contribution, brings me directly to the issue of the legislation. Many hon. Members have raised the question of the legislation—[Interruption.] If the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) would stop mumbling from a sedentary position and trying to put me off, he will hear the answer to the question that his colleagues have been asking in respect of the legislation. [Interruption.]