Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Lady just is not reflecting what has happened. Thanks to action by this Government and other Governments, a judicial process started in Saudi Arabia on 3 January and we are sending observers. We have a UN special rapporteur, Agnes Callamard, who is responsible for looking at extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and she is leading an independent international inquiry.

When I became Foreign Secretary—the right hon. Lady was shadow Foreign Secretary then, too—we did not have a peace process in Yemen, and now we do, which is thanks to the UK and the huge diplomatic effort we have been making.

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

5. What discussions he has had with the Lima Group on the political and security situation in Venezuela.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

18. What discussions he has had with the Lima Group on the political and security situation in Venezuela.

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

On 4 February, I attended a Lima Group meeting in Ottawa at the invitation of the Canadian Foreign Minister. At the meeting I spoke to the Foreign Ministers of Colombia and Brazil about the crisis in Venezuela. I have also spoken recently to Chilean Foreign Minister Ampuero and Peruvian Vice-Foreign Minister de Zela. We continue to work closely with the Lima Group, the Organisation of American States, the United States and like-minded European and international partners to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Venezuela.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The Labour party and its leadership have an unforgivable record of defending the Maduro regime, which is so toxic that people have started leaving the party. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that this Government condemn the human rights abuses and the regression of democracy, and will continue to promote freedom and democracy and offer support to surrounding countries that are dealing with the refugee crisis as a direct result of this abhorrent regime?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I can give assurance to my hon. Friend on all those things. We are working closely with all international partners to find a resolution to the fact that the Maduro regime has completely bankrupted his country and made it destitute to the point where 3.6 million people have fled to neighbouring countries.

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I am not going to become involved in speculation about arms races in other parts of the world, and, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, issues concerning the location of weapons are a matter for the Ministry of Defence. However, an escalation of these matters would be in none of our interests. I think that, in one sense, the treaty has worked well for 30 years—at least it has led to some peace on European soil—but trust and verification are required, and I am afraid that those have been lacking for some years. In many ways it is the Trump Administration who have grasped the nettle, with the support of all NATO allies.

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

I clearly remember the treaty being signed when I was 11 years old. That pretty much inspired me to take this career course, and it is with great honour and pride that I am now a member of the NATO parliamentary assembly and international vice-chairman of the Conservative party.

International relationships are very important, and today it is with a real sense of tragedy that we see where the treaty has ended up. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this shows the absolute importance of counterbalances? May I remind people who say that Russia promised that it would not put anything into Europe that it is a country which, less than 12 months ago, launched a chemical weapon attack on this country, and showed what its means were and what it was willing to do? Tragic as today is, does my right hon. Friend agree that we must continue our full support for NATO, our full support for our allies, and our engagement on the international stage with all countries to ensure our safer future?

[Mark Field]

I thank my hon. Friend for his youthful engagement in these matters. I am not sure that even at 23—which was my age in 1987—I realised quite what was going on when the INF treaty was signed. Levity aside, however, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we need to work on this continuously. We should remind ourselves, as he has reminded the House, of events in Salisbury during the past year following the use of chemical weapons by a Russian state source on UK citizens, with fatal results.

I think that all Members who have expressed concern will agree that we need to keep lines of engagement open as far as possible. While trust has broken down and while we want to see verification, we need to talk. One of the criticisms made of international diplomacy is that it is notionally a talking shop. [Interruption.] As several of my right hon. Friends are saying from a sedentary position, we need to talk from strength, but, equally, we need to keep those lines of engagement as open as possible when it comes to these very important matters.

Gaza Border Violence

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The United Kingdom continues to operate a very strict arms regime in terms of sales. I have already mentioned the legitimate uses of arms by a country that needs to defend itself. Any allegations of breaches are of course part of our consideration on future sales and the like, as the hon. Lady knows well.

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

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to take this measured tone. As he alluded to, the ratcheting up of the situation over many years has made no small contribution to what happened yesterday. I am sure that we all share the view that the death of any innocent civilian is terrible. What efforts can be made through the UN and the aid agencies to help with infrastructure in Gaza? One reason why the blockade was put in place was that such things were used to build tunnels, and the Israelis probably reacted in the way in which they did yesterday for fear of what would have happened if the border had been breached.

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend raises an element of the difficulties in the region, by asking how we can ensure that materials used for rebuilding infrastructure in Gaza are not misused. We have strong and strict controls regarding the diversification of materials, and will continue to keep them under review. It is undeniable that more effort is needed in Gaza to relieve some of the population’s misery. Those who govern Gaza have a responsibility, but so do the rest of us. We will do our best to live up to that responsibility and find better ways in which to support the people of Gaza.

Iran Nuclear Deal

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

It is important that we continue to do that, in the spirit of the agreement and to support legitimate UK business activity.

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

Nobody is in any doubt that the Iranian regime is responsible for great terror and often war, certainly in the region and in other areas of the world. My right hon. Friend, as a scholar of Churchill, will recognise the phrase, “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war,” so may I congratulate him on going out to Washington? He will also recognise that this is about not just the White House, but Capitol Hill. As we try to lead America to work on the deal and see how it can be adjusted, he should therefore also give attention to the House of Representatives.

[Boris Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work in building our relationships with Capitol Hill. As he knows, in Congress there is a very wide measure of support for the JCPOA and a great deal of confusion about the exact motives of the White House in choosing to walk away from it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

As the House will know, we have a number of very difficult consular cases in Iran at the present time, and every effort is being made on behalf of each of those—each of those—individuals. All I can tell the hon. Gentleman is that none of those cases really benefits from public comment at this stage.

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

With CHOGM coming up, does my hon. Friend agree that if Zimbabwe held free and open elections, that would give it a route back to the Commonwealth and, indeed, give what used to be the breadbasket of Africa free trade agreements with the rest of the world?

[The Minister for Africa (Harriett Baldwin)]

I assure my hon. Friend that, when I visited Zimbabwe recently, that was indeed the message I was able to convey to the new President.

Budget Resolutions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I entirely agree that it is more complicated than it is often presented as being. I have not said that Iran is entirely innocent, but Iran is not buying £2 billion-worth of weapons of war from the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia is. Saudi Arabia stands accused of war crimes. Until those allegations are investigated, I do not think that we should be selling weapons to those who may be committing crimes of mass murder, and I do not consider the question of whether or not they are using our weapons to commit those crimes to be relevant.

When I looked at the timetable for our Budget debate, I saw “Monday: global Britain”, and thought, “That’s not going to take very long, is it?” The fact is that even the Government’s own misguided ambitions for Britain’s place in the world, which I believe are still based on the fanciful belief that we are somehow entitled to retain an empire and colonies, rather than a simple acknowledgement that the world has moved on since the days when any nation could claim the right to colonise any other nation—

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

No, I will not give way just now.

When we look at Conservative Members’ responses to statements by the sovereign Government of Ireland over the last couple of days, we have to wonder whether they recognise that that country’s Ministers have not only the right but an absolute responsibility to speak in the interests of their citizens. If what they say happens not to coincide with the interests of citizens in the rest of the British Isles, that might be something for negotiation.

Even despite the Government’s misguided ambitions for the role that they think Britain is entitled to play, that role is being catastrophically undermined by the shambles—“shambles” is as strong a word as I can use in the Chamber—of Brexit. Nor is it helped by the fact that we have a Foreign Secretary of whom people in the west of Scotland might say, “You cannae take him anywhere,” to which the response would be, “Or you have to take him twice—the second time to apologise.” When the Foreign Secretary assured us that he had had a number of meetings on the Myanmar crisis, I could not help wondering how many were required for him to apologise for the crassly insensitive and offensive way in which he referred to the people of Myanmar in one of his official pronouncements. We can joke about the buffoonery of the right hon. Gentleman, who is no longer in the Chamber. Everybody can say things that are stupid and wish that they had not, but if they start to make too much of a habit of it, especially if they hold as important and sensitive a position as Foreign Secretary, the time comes when the Prime Minister has to start asking whether she has the right person in the job.

We have heard a lot from Conservative Members during our Brexit debates about how leaving the European Union will open up all these wonderful markets for the United Kingdom. It might open up the American market, if we comply with the requirement announced two weeks ago by the American Secretary of Commerce to drop our opposition to genetically modified foods and chlorinated chicken. That is too high a price to pay, so I hope that the Treasury Minister who sums up today’s debate will confirm that if that is the requirement, there will be no deal with the United States of America.

I remind the House of a report published in the last Parliament by the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union on the Government’s negotiating priorities, particularly in the context of global Britain. Paragraph 170 says:

“The Government should seek a UK-EU Free Trade Agreement…which covers both goods and services and retains the mutual recognition of standards and conformity assessments.”

It finishes:

“The Government should maintain the maximum possible flexibility in its negotiating approach to achieve these outcomes.”

I am not quite sure how unilaterally deciding that the customs union and single market are off the table counts as flexible or anything like it.

Paragraph 198 says:

“The Government must provide more clarity as to the features of its preferred customs arrangement with the EU and how it will differ from a customs union.”

That report was published months and months ago—certainly before the election—but we still do not have that clarity from the Government. We hear the same platitudes, the same soundbites and the same slogans, but we still have absolutely no firm and concrete proposals, even for how they are going to square the circle of the border that runs across the island of Ireland, never mind how they are going to reconcile the irreconcilable and maintain full access to the single market when those who set it up made it perfectly clear that countries can be in or out, but cannot have full access without being members.

Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Mr Deputy Speaker, I realise that there has been a sex change while I have been on my feet; I apologise to both of you. We hear the Government talk about prioritising the rule of law—the previous speaker referred to that. That is an excuse for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the brutality of the Spanish police against some of the citizens of Catalonia.

Why is it that we have annual state visits and state banquets for a Prime Minister whose Government act unlawfully in their occupation of the sovereign territory of Palestine? The UK Government believe that Israel is breaking the law by doing that, so why do they continue to have official state visits for the Prime Minister of a country that the Foreign Secretary believes is acting unlawfully, if the rule of law is so important to Her Majesty’s Government?

We often hear that the wishes of residents must be paramount. With regard to the residents of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, I agree with that 100%. What account have the Government taken of the wishes of the former residents of the Chagos islands, whose treatment by previous UK Governments could properly be described as ethnic cleansing or indeed abduction? By today’s standards it may well fall under the UN definition of genocide, which includes the forceful or fraudulent removal of a population. What account has been taken of their wishes? It seems to me that if we steal something from someone, the only way to make an apology seem sincere is to offer to hand it back. Having stolen the islands from their population, no apology can be sincere unless the Government are prepared to offer to hand them back.

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

There is much to welcome in the Budget, not least when we talk about Britain on the global stage. Infrastructure investment in this country will be important in raising our productivity and making us fit for the global stage. With that in mind, the £300 million to link other infrastructure improvements to the HS2 project is important to me, not least because it will link the HS2 station at Leeds to the main line, an idea raised by Transport for the North. That means there is now no need for a mile-long viaduct over Swillington in my constituency. It is not just about saving money on the project; the money should be reinvested in local trams and trains to ease congestion in the city of Leeds. We cannot be truly globally competitive if we are not working efficiently. It sucks away the productivity of this country if people lose a lot of time getting to work.

I was frankly appalled to hear the comments of the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), the foreign affairs spokesman for the Scottish National party. He said that Britain has no role to play in the world, which is simply not true.

[Peter Grant]

I do not remember saying that Britain does not have a role to play in the world. What I said, and I will say it again, is that the role in the world the UK Government appear to have decided for Britain is not a role that the people of Scotland will be comfortable following. Nobody would deny that any country in the world has a role to play. If the Official Report shows that I said anything different, I will withdraw it. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The Front Benchers have had a good go tonight. If they are going to intervene, it has to be with very short interventions. I am very sorry but, if people give way, others might fall off the list.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My Conservative colleagues simply do not recognise what the hon. Member for Glenrothes has just said as a fact in Scotland. There is only one party on the rise in Scotland, and it is not the SNP.

The reality is that our country and this Government can stand proud of our work on the world stage. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). The whole House recognises that she is a credit to the medical profession, and it is a credit to this House that she took time to go out to see the Rohingya crisis at first hand—it is a terrible situation. I recognise what she said about babies, as I heard the reports on “From Our Own Correspondent”. I cannot imagine the pain she must have been through. I pay tribute to her, because she is a credit to this House and to her profession.

That represents what this country is good at, which is helping in the world. I am proud that more money has been spent by Britain alone than by all the other European countries added together to help the Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. We have been taking refugees, too—not to the extent that other nations have, fair enough, but we have been doing our bit. More importantly, we are putting resources on the ground. I simply do not recognise the view that this Government, however people want to describe them, are setting this country out as a place with which nobody wants to be associated, because that is not true.

It was the Royal Navy that was in the hurricane-torn areas of the Caribbean. Going back a few years, it was the Royal Navy that sorted out the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. This Government have committed to raising the defence budget by 0.5 percentage points over inflation year on year, because we recognise the need to invest in our armed forces.

Yes, only a few nations spend 2% or more of GDP on defence, but we are one of even fewer nations to spend more than 20% of our defence budget on capital infrastructure within our armed forces. That shows the renewal of our Royal Navy under this Government and our investment in other areas of defence. There is much on the global economy and global Britain of which we can be proud.

We have heard many people, and we will hear more this evening, talk about Brexit and where Brexit is, but Labour Members cannot carry on talking about Brexit without coming to one fundamental decision: we cannot nationalise if we are in the single market, so for Labour Members to say that they feel the Government should maintain our membership of the single market is totally at odds with the manifesto they stood on. I do not think we should be nationalising, which is looking backwards, but the reality is that we simply cannot nationalise under state aid rules if we are in the single market. I therefore seek some clarity tonight. Is it the Labour party’s position that it definitely wants to leave the single market?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I wish to follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) said. This has been a good week for the Government because we are focusing on the most important thing—the Budget and the economy—rather than on ourselves.

When people start to think about what is going on in the economy, they start to wonder whether the Labour party yet has the answers. If I was a Labour MP, I would be worried that the opinion polls show us level-pegging. Why? Because the No. 1 problem that faces our economy—it is infinitely greater than so many other problems, particularly Brexit—is the size of the national debt. The question the Labour party has to answer is whether adding to that debt would solve our problems.

I sat through the speech by the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), so I heard him say that he wants to invest for the future. That sounds plausible, but the trouble is that it does not matter what the money is spent on—schools, hospitals, capital or revenue—because if that increases the national debt, our interest repayments increase. The problem we face as a nation is that our interest repayments on the national debt are already more than what we spend on defence, about which we have been talking, and the police every year.

The national debt is far too large. The shadow Chancellor tells me, “You’ve added to the national debt.” That is entirely true—the national debt is still rising by £186 million a day. I am allowed to speak for four minutes, during which the national debt will rise by £200,000. But would we solve our problems by adopting the Labour party’s strategy, which would add to that national debt? We are already facing so many problems in repaying it. I said that the national debt will increase by £200,000 in the four minutes of this speech, but it was increasing by £300,000 a minute when the coalition Government took power in 2010.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

A minute?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, it was increasing by £300,000 a minute.

The central point for the Opposition is that they have to be credible, as new Labour found out in the years before it took power in 1997. The central credibility argument is whether, when the national debt is so crippling—as I said earlier, our repayments are equivalent to paying for 10 Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers every year—we can solve our problems by adding to it. My contention is that that is absolutely not the case.

Well into this Parliament, the reason why the Conservative party is still level-pegging with the Opposition, who should be way ahead, is that the Labour party has no credible economic plan to try to lift us out of our national debt, except for borrowing more, spending more and raising taxes. Who would suffer in that scenario? Would it be us? No, it would be our children and grandchildren, because we would be loading that debt on to them. Of course, as the national debt increased under Labour’s plans, interest rates would rise even more and mortgages would become more expensive. Who would suffer? The young who want to get mortgages. Labour Members’ policies simply do not add up. Until they come face to face with reality, they will never become the Government of this country.

Iran

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

I knew at some stage a question would be asked that is beyond my pay grade. I have always taken the view that there are many signatories to this agreement. The United States is considering the possibility of new legislation, but it remains a party to the deal, so the deal stays in place. We do not want to contemplate a situation in which one party unilaterally withdraws, because of the implications for other parties. We will do all in our power to ensure that all parties to the agreement continue to adhere to its provisions, that the deal stays in place and that it forms the basis of further discussions about the matters of disagreement between us so that we can build a new consensus on what is needed in the region.

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

The deal has made the world a safer place, but it does not cover all aspects, as my right hon. Friend has said. Some constituents of mine are worried that we are giving too much to Iran and ignoring the sponsorship of terrorism that goes on elsewhere. The deal is vital and only it can be the way a peaceful solution can be moved forward, but will he confirm that Britain still stands with other countries that may be affected by the terrorism sponsored by Iran, such as that of Hezbollah and Hamas?

[Alistair Burt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his observations and remarks, as he gives me another opportunity to make things clear. If this deal had tried to cover all the aspects of concern between the signatories and Iran, it would never have been signed—it just would not have happened. The whole point of the deal was to find an area between two groups of people who were concerned about each other on which they could agree and on which there could be external verification to mean that that particular issue was dealt with. That was the purpose of the deal. At no stage was it envisaged that everything else of concern would suddenly disappear. As I indicated earlier, we remain concerned about Iran’s ballistic missile testing and its activity throughout the region, but conversations go on between ourselves and Iran—and other states—on that and on the financing of terror. We can deal with those other issues in other ways, and sanctions will be applied where this is appropriate—where behaviour has been uncovered which breaks international rules.

Britain-Iran Relations

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered relations between Britain and Iran.

It is a great pleasure to serve once again under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson—it has been many times this week—to consider the relations of this great country with Iran. I have moved the motion because I am the first Member of this House to have Iranian heritage, although there are two Members of the House of Lords who are also from Iran.

Trading and cultural relations between Britain and Iran—or England and Persia, as they were then known—have existed since the early 17th century. The English vied with the French as some of the earliest translators of Farsi poetry into European languages; anybody who knows anything about Iranian culture knows the great cultural and symbolic nature of its poetry. In the 19th century Britain’s influence began to grow through acquiring trade concessions as a means of protecting the passage to India. At that time, there was great rivalry between Britain and Russia, with different spheres of influence in different parts of the country—Russian influence in the north, and British in the west. There were informal residencies in Iran from the mid and late 18th century until well into the 20th century, and what we now know as BP began life as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909.

There was a constitutional revolution in Iran in 1910, and at that time the revolutionaries actually took refuge in the British embassy gardens. There have been high and low points to the relationship between these two peoples throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 1979 and the Islamic revolution—in just that short period—full diplomatic relations between the two countries have been resumed and broken three times. That reflects the desire for contact, relationship and dialogue between the two nations, but also the great sense of distrust that remains on both sides.

I come to this debate today with my eyes open about the reality of life in Iran. I am only here today because my family was forced to flee following the Islamic revolution, and my father had his business and our home confiscated. Many hon. Members will rightly and reasonably raise the Iranian Government’s record on human rights, women, press regulation and the treatment of minorities. Those are points of difference between the two Governments, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will address them in his summing up. I want to speak instead about areas where the two nations can work together.

Last year, an historic nuclear deal was signed. I am sure that all hon. Members attending today’s debate—many of whom have spoken on the subject before—will know the background, but it is worth reiterating. From 2006 onwards a series of UN and EU sanctions was imposed on the country following the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report on Iran’s nuclear programme. The Iranian regime always claimed that its nuclear programme was entirely peaceful, but the international community was alarmed by the thought of the country having a nuclear weapon and imposed a series of sanctions in relation to the nuclear programme. By summer 2013 the sanctions were having a profound effect on the Iranian people and Hassan Rouhani, the presidential candidate, fought his campaign on having serious talks with the west and getting the sanctions lifted. On 14 July last year, China, the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany—the P5+1—the EU and Iran announced the joint comprehensive plan of action, according to which Iran would reverse its progress towards a nuclear weapon in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that the success of the negotiations with Iran was based around the economic impact on normal people? Does that therefore suggest that if a more military attack had taken place, it would have united people against the west, because the economic impact would have been far greater?

[Seema Kennedy]

I think that jaw-jaw is always better than war-war, and we have to consider all options before we enter into any military action.

In January this year we reached implementation day, when it was agreed by the observing authorities that Iran had reduced its uranium stockpile, cut its capacity to enrich uranium and modified the heavy water reactor at Arak. At that point the nuclear sanctions were lifted. I will not address the rights and wrongs of the nuclear deal, as many other hon. Members can speak on that, but I contend that the deal has made the region safer.

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

May I first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) on making pretty much the speech that I was going to make? He has covered some important points. Equally, my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) made an excellent opening contribution, and I congratulate her on securing this debate. She said two important things: that jaw-jaw is better than war-war; and that it is not a black-and-white situation.

Let us think of the alternative. I remember standing in the House of Commons when the nuclear deal with Iran was announced, and there and then I asked the then Foreign Secretary what the alternative would have been. He was very clear—the alternative was that we would have gone to war. What debate would we be having in this House today if we were dropping bombs on Iran—bombs that would have done nothing, because we know from the inspectors that the targets were probably sunk in eight miles of mountainside? More importantly, and as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble has pointed out, we are talking about an educated nation. As my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire said, we are talking about a nation that has a desire to grow, to move forward and to become middle-class, as a lot of the west already is. Nothing will unite a nation more, and encourage fighting back and proliferation more, than attacking it. We would do the same thing.

However, what we must make clear is that Iran is not a wonderful country that we should hold up as an example. Clearly, there are massive human rights abuses in Iran. Clearly, there is still funding of terrorism in the world and threats to other nations. We must bear that in mind. However, if we were to take the view that we will simply not engage with countries that do those things, as I am sure my hon. Friends from Northern Ireland will confirm, we would break off relationships with the USA, because of the amount by which it funded the IRA in the 1980s. Do we really want to turn our back on countries throughout the world because we do not agree with what they do? Are we not in this place to be diplomatic and to work on the international stage to bring about the changes that we need to bring about? Are we in this Chamber today, and in our other Chamber, approving of Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen? No, we are not; of course we are not. But will we achieve anything by just walking away from the table and saying to Saudi Arabia, “We no longer want to deal with you”? As my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble said, these situations are not black and white.

However, there is a genuine concern about the actions that take place around Israel, and as a democratic state we have a duty to ensure that we support fellow democratic states that see terrorist organisations trying to undermine them. Also, we must accept that Iran at this stage may be putting more money into Hezbollah and Hamas, but that does not mean we walk away and say, “I’m sorry, Iran. We’ve decided that we’re going to bomb the backside out of you, like the rest of the middle east”, which, quite frankly, is going to hell in a handcart. How do we resolve the situation in Syria? Not easily, but Iran will be a major point of reference in that.

I will finish by simply saying, “Well done”, to my hon. Friends the Members for South Ribble and for North West Hampshire. They have made some excellent points. It is a complex situation, but my goodness—today’s debate is far better than the debate we would have been having if we were killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Turkey

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Yes, I will. Three days after this attempted coup, it is inevitable that there will be lots of speculative judgments about what was planned, what was pre-planned, whether there was a previous list and so on. It is impossible to know these things at this stage, which is one reason why I look forward to visiting, but the Government will speak out very strongly for human rights and for the equal and proper treatment of all citizens in Turkey.

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

I welcome my right hon. Friend to his Front-Bench post. He brings formidable experience and intellect, and will serve the country well. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly annual session is due to take place in Istanbul this November. Does he agree that unless the security situation becomes untenable, that should go ahead in Istanbul, because despite the difficulties that may be ahead in where Turkey is heading, it will be far better to steer that if it stays in organisations such as NATO, rather than if it is exiled?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I commend my hon. Friend for what he has just said, which is both wise and practical. One of the most important ways in which Turkey can be engaged and persuaded is through the forum of NATO. We wish Turkey to remain a full and compliant member of NATO, and I hope that that meeting continuing as he suggests would provide a powerful platform for bringing about the kind of positive developments we would wish to see.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

We continue to lobby the Iranians regularly about all our consular cases in Iran, including that of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. I have raised the case a number of times, and, on 4 July, spoke to Foreign Minister Zarif. I subsequently followed that up with a letter. On 18 May, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the Minister with responsibility for the middle east, met Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family. We will continue to push the Iranians for consular access to her—the challenge is that Iran does not recognise dual nationality—and for more information about the charges that are alleged against her.

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

From my recent NATO Parliamentary Assembly visit to Kiev, I know that there is palpable fear from the Ukrainians that sanctions may start to be lifted against Russia and President Putin. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that cannot happen until meaningful discussions have taken place on Ukraine’s sovereign borders?

[Mr Hammond]

I would go a little further: that cannot happen until Russia has complied with its obligations under the Minsk agreement. At the weekend, in Warsaw, I met the Ukrainian Foreign Minister. My hon. Friend is right that there is concern among Ukrainians that Britain’s departure from the European Union may lead to a weakening of European Union resolve on this issue. I very much hope that that will not be the case, but it is certainly true that we have been one of the leading advocates of a tough line within the European Union.