Israeli-Palestinian Peace: International Fund

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) for organising this debate. I declare an interest as the chair of the APPG on conflict prevention, conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

Last month, I had the privilege to visit Israel and the west bank. We were unable to go to Gaza, but we visited area C of the west bank, where we saw a lot of Israeli settler violence and some of the demolitions in East Jerusalem. We also had the privilege of meeting some of the families of the hostages, as well as Aviva Siegel, who had the very difficult experience of leaving her husband behind when she was released.

In many ways, it is completely understandable that the trauma and suffering on both sides of the conflict have led to such a polarisation of views, which is reflected in the polls. We saw it in our conversations with members of the Knesset, where we heard extreme views on continuing the occupation for generations and justifying what Israel is doing on the west bank.

Other Members have spoken about the UK’s experience in Northern Ireland and how important that is to our positioning on the peacebuilding fund. We are lucky to have peacebuilding organisations working with us in the region, and I was very happy to speak to them this morning. The good work of ALLMEP is well known, and we should recognise that its work is being harmed by the United States Agency for International Development cuts of recent weeks. It is now important that the UK steps up to support these organisations.

I was pleased to see the Prime Minister’s commitment to this fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace. I would like to hear more details from the Minister on when the next meeting will be. Will we use this week’s G7 meeting, which Jonathan Powell is attending, to announce more details of this fund? Also, will the Minister be happy to meet the APPG on conflict prevention to talk about more of our work in the region?

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

Twenty years ago, I joined the Royal Marines. Roughly a year later, I was deployed to Afghanistan. I remember the challenges we faced: daily attacks from rockets and mortars and daily threats of improvised explosive devices, and the massive underfunding and disappointments with the Ministry of Defence’s procurement system. Many of us had to buy our own body armour. We ran out of desert boots had to walk around in 40° heat in black boots. We were driving weapons-mounted installation kit Land Rovers, which provided no protection against the landmines in the area.

I understand that defence underfunding is not new. However, since 2010, when the UK last spent 2.5% of GDP on defence, a decade of austerity under the Conservative Government has completely hollowed out the capability of our armed forces. With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now in its third year, it has never been more important for our military to rebuild its capability to show strength and support for our allies in Europe. I completely back our Prime Minister and his decision to increase defence spending back to 2.5% of GDP, and his ambition to go further in the next Parliament.

This is the right course of action. The most effective way to ensure peace in Europe is through strength. However, state-on-state conflict is not the only conflict that threatens us in the UK. There are more active conflicts across the globe than at any time since the end of the second world war—in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar and the Sahel—and we need a strong military to protect our citizens and deter our enemies.

However, hand in hand with defence is our vital spending on international development. When I was in Afghanistan, serving alongside British soldiers and marines were humanitarian workers, doctors and engineers. Our armed forces were working side by side with aid workers, just as British-backed aid workers are now doing in Ukraine alongside the brave Ukrainian armed forces. There are so many stories of the bravery of aid workers across the world’s conflict zones, where fighting is causing destruction, starvation and violence against women.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing deeply fragile and unstable conflicts such as Afghanistan into this discussion. Does he agree that aid plays a deeply stabilising role in such conflicts and, as such, contributes to global stability and security and to our own national security? Does he agree that that should be recognised in the tough choices we have to make on development spending?

[Alex Ballinger]

Absolutely. I think that those of us who have served would recognise that development and defence are completely complementary. When we reduce our development spending, our defence spending needs to go up.

After leaving the Royal Marines, colleagues and I worked with civil society in Syria, helping to keep hopes of a different, more tolerant country alive during that civil war. Those groups are probably now the best hope for Syria’s civil society and for a more tolerant and stable country.

Aid helps to mitigate the worst impacts of conflict and to prevent further conflict. I am concerned that cutting our development budget so deeply will undermine our ability to stabilise fragile states, reduce the drivers of extremism and stop further conflicts emerging. The implications of that will be felt here in the UK, with a greater chance of spikes in food and energy prices, increased migration and threats from extremist groups. Our military and security services will face those challenges at a time when their attention should be on Ukraine. While I wholly support raising our defence spending, I encourage the Government to look over the next two years at opportunities to avoid such drastic cuts to our aid budget, in particular our investments in conflict zones and on conflict prevention. Each pound we spend on conflict prevention can save £16 in aid to mitigate the destruction caused by conflict.

I welcome the pledge the Prime Minister made for an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace last December, and I hope that that remains a priority for the FCDO after the latest announcements. I strongly support the increase in defence spending announced last week, but, as a former marine, I also urge the Government to value the critical role our aid budget plays in delivering vital aid in conflict zones and preventing conflicts altogether.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Due to time constraints, we now come to the Front Benchers. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Gaza

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West]

I thank the Lib Dem spokesperson for his words. He is quite right to emphasise the psychological impact of this terrible conflict, and the traumatised state of people in the region. As the Foreign Secretary has said, we welcome the release of the 38 hostages in Gaza, including of course Emily Damari, whom we have already mentioned. We think so much of those members of the Lifshitz family—they of course had strong ties to the UK—who were held hostage by terrorists in Gaza and who died. We thank Qatar, Egypt and the US for providing support to ensure that the horrific ordeal of individuals and families can come to an end, but unfortunately, this is not the end. That is why it is so important that we take this moment to push.

The hon. Gentleman asked what we were doing practically. We are in daily contact with the region, including our mission there. Obviously, in the context of the international debate, interventions such as this urgent question push for a just solution for those on both sides of this terrible conflict.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

Last week, I was in the west bank, alongside other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, on our wider trip to the middle east. While the world’s attention is rightly on the devastating humanitarian situation in Gaza, we met Palestinians in the Jordan valley whose schools were being attacked, whose mosques were being burned, and whose livestock were being stolen by extremist Israeli settlers. This is happening with the apparent connivance of the Israeli security forces, and it appears to be part of a wider plan for annexation. What steps are we taking to prevent further erosion of Palestinian land in the west bank that would put the two-state solution even further away?

[Catherine West]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and for his expertise on aid and foreign affairs. He is quite right to emphasise the actions of some settlers. There are many settler communities that just get on with it, and that want a peaceful solution, but he is right to say that there is violence in the settlements, which are of course unlawful under international humanitarian law and harm the prospects of a two-state solution. I thank my hon. Friend for putting on record the impact on the faith community, particularly during the holy month of Ramadan, and the fact that mosques have been attacked. We will ensure that that point gets through in our next discussion with our interlocutors, both on the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side.

Pakistan: Freedom of Religion

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for organising this important debate. From the many examples he has given from his long time spent fighting for religious freedom in Pakistan and for Christians around the world, I can see that this is something he cares deeply about, and it is important that we are discussing it today.

Like the Minister, I spent some time working in Pakistan with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I spent three years working in Islamabad and Lahore from 2019 to 2021. I spent a lot of that time traveling around Punjab—I had responsibility for that province within the FCDO—and a lot of the examples that the hon. Member for Strangford gave are really familiar. I will talk about some of those examples in a moment, but before I do so, I want to highlight some of the other aspects of Pakistan that I saw there, including some of the more positive ones, which may be examples of how religious minorities should be treated that we can give when we are talking to Pakistan in the future.

In my time travelling throughout Punjab, I got to see many religious sites. Travelling through the old city of Lahore, there is the very impressive Badshahi Masjid. You can travel down to Derawar in Bahawalpur and see a fantastic fort there; there is the Rukn-e-Alam shrine in Multan, as well as the gurdwara at Nankana Sahib, and of course there is Lahore cathedral. I mention all those sites not because I want to give people a tour of Pakistan, or indeed to promote its tourism industry—although that definitely should be encouraged—but to highlight that all those magnificent buildings are from different religions. Pakistan has a proud history of various minorities throughout the ages, from the Buddhists of the Gandhara civilisation to Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims of various sects, Ahmadis and Christians. There are parts of the country that recognise that history. Spending time with each of those groups was a real privilege.

Of course, this is a debate on freedom of religion and belief, and while there are huge concerns about the treatment of minorities in Pakistan, I wanted to give one positive example of something that has happened in recent years. Towards the end of my time in Pakistan, I had the opportunity to visit the Kartarpur corridor, on the border between Pakistan and India. It is a site built on the location that was used by Guru Nanak when he first established the Sikh community in the 16th century. For a long time, it was divided between India and Pakistan, but in 2019 Narendra Modi and Imran Khan allowed access for the community to cross between their two countries. When I visited in 2020, I met pilgrims from India who had come to Pakistan to meet relatives in the Sikh community whom they had not seen since partition nearly 80 years before. The joy on the faces of those people, who were enabled to do that by the promises made by the Pakistani Government, showed that it is possible for the Government to be more positive toward some religious minorities.

In the three years I was based in Punjab, there were numerous cases of brutal attacks on religious minorities, some of which the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned. I will give three more examples from the time I was there. In April 2021, there was a mob attack in Faisalabad on Mariam Lal and Newsh Arooj, two Christian nurses who had been asked to clean up lockers in the hospital in which they were working. They were set on by a mob after accusations of blasphemy, and they were later arrested by the police and held in prison for some time. They have now been released, fortunately. In December 2021, there was the lynching of Priyantha Kumara in Sialkot. Priyantha was a Buddhist from Sri Lanka who was running a factory as the general manager. He was lynched by an angry mob after accusations of blasphemy while the police stood by and were unable to intervene. In August 2022, there was the stabbing of Naseer Ahmed, a 62-year-old Ahmadi grandfather, who refused to chant slogans in support of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan. For that crime, he was murdered in the streets by an angry Pakistani man.

I raise those three incidents not because they are extraordinary, but because they felt routine. On a weekly basis when I was there, I would hear of bad examples from the Christian community, the Ahmadi community and others about the brutal violence and humiliations to which they were subjected. Sumera Shafique, a friend of mine who works for the Christian Lawyers Association of Pakistan, would call me regularly to update me about the false conversions she was working on, particularly in the south of Punjab.

Many people from the Ahmadiyya community, who would obviously prefer to be anonymous at the moment, regularly raise with me the victimisation they are facing, with their mosques being destroyed and their schools being closed down. As we heard from other Members, schools have also been nationalised by the Government. There has even been the introduction of a new marriage law meaning that an Ahmadiyya Muslim in Pakistan must renounce their faith to get married. The level of discrimination is quite outrageous.

I am lucky to have a significant Ahmadiyya community in my own constituency, with the Baitul Ghafoor mosque on Long Lane in Halesowen. It holds a number of inter- faith events, and I have been to many of them. I have been pleased to see the welcome that members provide to many people from different religious backgrounds. The contrast with the way the Ahmadiyya community is treated in Pakistan is striking.

When I was in Lahore, I had many discussions with the Human Rights Ministers of Punjab, Khalil Tahir Sandhu and Ramesh Singh, whom I still count as friends. I know they face a very difficult situation, and it is very challenging to work within the system to improve the conditions of religious minorities. Many people in Pakistan and in the Government are trying to do that, but I would of course encourage them to do more.

Finally, I thank the hon. Member for Strangford again for organising this debate on a subject that I think we should be talking about more. I know it is an extremely difficult subject for the FCDO to work on, and I understand the limitations we are working under, but I ask the Minister to continue to raise the deteriorating situation that religious minorities have faced in recent years with our counterparts in Pakistan. I also ask him to commit to include freedom of religion or belief in the discussions about the future co-operation and trade agreements that we are having with Pakistan, and to use every opportunity across Government to hold discussions to push that forward.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

China: Human Rights and Sanctions

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I do not recognise the caricature being put about on this at all. I really do not.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I have met many Ukrainian refugees who are being generously housed in my constituency, and they are extremely concerned about countries such as Iran and North Korea providing matériel support to Putin’s war machine. Can the Foreign Secretary agree with me that China and Chinese companies should not provide any support to Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine?

[Mr Lammy]

Yes, I can. This was a very serious issue that I put to the Foreign Minister. We have evidence that Chinese parts with dual use capability are turning up in Russia, and they are taking lives in Ukraine, which is entirely unacceptable. My hon. Friend will not be surprised that the Chinese denied this, but we have the evidence and we put it on the table.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Doughty]

We call on the Hong Kong authorities to end their politically motivated prosecution and immediately release British national Jimmy Lai. His case remains a high priority for His Majesty’s Government, and UK diplomats attend his court hearing in Hong Kong. The Foreign Secretary recently raised the case with Wang Yi during his visit to Beijing on 18 October. On 24 July the Foreign Secretary raised the case of Jagtar Singh Johal with the Indian External Affairs Minister, and I am happy to write to the hon. Lady further about those matters. She can be assured that we take these cases incredibly seriously.

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

11. What diplomatic steps he is taking to help secure a ceasefire in Lebanon.

[Mary Glindon (Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend) (Lab)]

15. What diplomatic steps he is taking to help secure a ceasefire in Lebanon.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Hamish Falconer)]

The UK was the first G7 country to call for an immediate ceasefire between Lebanese Hezbollah and Israel, when we did so on 19 September. A political solution consistent with resolution 1701 is the only way to restore security and stability for the people living on both sides of the blue line. We continue to press for that with vigour and urgency with our international counterparts. The Foreign Secretary did so last week, and so did I. We will continue to do so this week and every day.

[Alex Ballinger]

We are appalled by the increase in violence after Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon. As somebody who used to work in Beirut when the country welcomed a million Syrian refugees, it is upsetting to see people on the move again after so much violence. I thank the Foreign Secretary for his diplomatic efforts so far. Does the Minister agree that there is no military solution to the conflict in Lebanon? Will he outline again in more detail what diplomatic efforts he is making to ensure that we have a ceasefire so that Lebanese and Israeli civilians can return to their homes?

[Hamish Falconer]

We agree very much. Only a political solution will enable Lebanese civilians to return to their homes and Israeli civilians to return to the north of Israel. Clearly Hezbollah has been conducting terrible attacks on northern Israel for a long time—from 8 October, which was a terrible day to choose to start. We are working with all our allies on a plan based around resolution 1701. We talk regularly with all the key players in the region and in particular with Amos Hochstein, the US envoy working on a proposal to achieve the effect of 1701. We will continue to do so.