Ivory Bill

Debate between Alex Sobel and Lord Coaker

Ping Pong: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely agree that that is nauseating. It is also nauseating that people post photographs of themselves engaging in so-called trophy hunting. As for the right hon. Gentleman’s other point, it is not really a question of whether we agree or disagree. I am attending the debate because I agree with the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow that the importance of this issue should be recognised across the House. Of course there is no disagreement about it—I do not think it is a party political issue. Every single Member of Parliament is appalled by the prospect of elephants and other species being slaughtered for their ivory, and the Bill is an important step forward.

I visit school after school, as do all Members, and meet young people after young people, from all walks of life, who are simply sickened by what is happening. Unless we as a world wake up, these animals—whether they be elephants, whales, giraffes or any other species—will become extinct. It is all very well for us to say “It is difficult, and it is tough”, but the Bill is a step forward, so I am not criticising the Government. It is tough and difficult, but we must not be the generation that sees the end of these species on our planet.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have a degree of unity in this debate, and I think we all agree about this elephant ivory Bill, but those of us who were on the Bill Committee and who spoke in previous stages in the House argue that the protection is not the same for the other species we talked about—I mentioned the narwhal in Committee and in the House, and there is also the rhino, the walrus and others. Is it not a failure that we are not including all those species in the Bill?

[Vernon Coaker]

Of course that is a weakness in the Bill, but the Minister and our Front-Bench spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), mentioned—this is my understanding, too—that the Secretary of State has committed to consulting on extending it to other species. I say to the Secretary of State that this is urgent. Public consultation can take a year or two years before the Government review it. I say to the Secretary of State—I know that he and I agree on this issue, if not others—that there is an urgency about this and we have to get a move on.

I say to our own country and the world that we need to wake up. If we do not wake up, our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren will say to the Secretary of State, to my hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench, and to me and other Members here, “What were you doing? What did you do? How did you stop this?” And everybody will say, “Well, it’s terrible and awful and a disgrace.” That is not good enough—we all need to use the sickening feeling we have to demand more of ourselves and this Parliament.

The last point I want to make is that today and other days have obviously been dominated by discussions about Brexit, but our constituents often ask us what else is happening while that debate is going on. I hope that at least some of the comments made in the Chamber about the important step forward being taken through the Bill will be reported, and that some of the young people out there—whether in the school of the daughter of the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, my grandchildren’s school or others—will learn that this Parliament has been listening and trying to do what we can to ensure that the great animals, including elephants, are saved for future generations.

Council of Europe

Debate between Alex Sobel and Lord Coaker

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the work of the Council of Europe.

It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Hosie, for this important debate. I thank the Minister, who I know is very interested in this work, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood). I also thank all the members of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe, some of whom have worked there for decades—I have worked for just months, so I defer to their knowledge and expertise in this area. I pay special tribute to the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who has been an excellent leader of the delegation and has been very helpful to us all, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who leads the Labour delegation. Much of that work goes unrecognised.

All the parties in this House are represented in the Council of Europe, and the way we try to work together is a great tribute to us all. We do that because we know the importance of the Council of Europe. I was interested in introducing this morning’s debate because I have been in this House for 20 years and, to be frank, before that my understanding of the work of the Council of Europe was limited. The British public’s understanding of it is probably even more limited, which is no criticism of them. We all need to think about how we can raise the profile, not only in this country but across Europe, of the important work that the Council of Europe does. That is the purpose of today’s debate.

The Council of Europe calls itself the democratic conscience of greater Europe, which I think is true. I am not a cynical person—cynicism is the great enemy of politics today. That statement is a fundamental aim of the Council of Europe. Let us be clear: this is not about the UK saying that we have everything right, and that we will tell the rest of Europe and the world what to do. We have our own challenges, as we can see from some of today’s newspaper headlines regarding anti-Semitism and the Windrush generation.

Let us reflect on Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and the great leaders of the past who set up the Council of Europe in the aftermath of the destruction and terror of world war two. Make no mistake: I am not comparing the situation today to world war two. However, I strongly believe that if Winston Churchill or Clement Attlee were alive today and could see what is happening across Europe, they would think, “Goodness me, there is still a long way to go, even some decades after we proposed the establishment of a council of Europe that would work towards the establishment of democracy, the rule of law, freedom of expression and tolerance across our continent, as well as the rest of the world.” That is why it is so important.

Sometimes such rhetoric—stating and restating the principles in which we believe—is seen as remote, and not dealing with the practical realities of the modern world. I say that we should never take for granted the way in which the Council of Europe stands up for and speaks out on the principles on which democratic societies must be based, which it does exceedingly well.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday I wrote to the Foreign Secretary about the proposed Polish holocaust law, which revises history and is clearly anti-Semitic. Does my hon. Friend agree that it needs to be raised in the Council of Europe with the Polish Government, as do the issues with the Hungarian Government regarding anti-Semitic tropes in the recent election?

[Vernon Coaker]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He is absolutely right about those issues in Poland and Hungary, but there are numerous other areas in which the Council of Europe continues to stand up and speak out. We should not shy away from that, which is why the statement that the Council of Europe acts as the democratic conscience of Europe is important. When the Council of Europe was established by Churchill and others with great words, they believed that within 20 or 30 years some of those problems could be defeated. Yet my hon. Friend reminds us of something that all of us who participate in such debates, both here and abroad, know: battles that we thought would be won are having to be refought. Things that we thought would be taken for granted are having to be fought for again.

Some of this is difficult, and there is so much to discuss. The Minister gave us an exposition of his efforts with Turkey. We in the Council of Europe would think that much of what happens in Turkey is not right, but what did the Minister do? He did not shy away from it. He went there, talked to them, and tried to say, “You are a democracy and part of NATO, and you were talking about becoming a member of the EU. We know that there are difficulties, but you cannot fight what you regard as terrorism or prejudice by resorting to measures that we regard as authoritarian and anti-democratic.” Such measures, however, do not mean that we turn our back on those countries. The Minister was absolutely right to remind us about how he went to speak in Istanbul—he will correct me if I am wrong—straight after the attempted coup, not to support the Turkish Government but to say to them, “Look, you may deal with these things, but you need to deal with them in a democratic way that adheres to the principles we all share.” That is exceedingly important.

As a body, we are looking at and dealing with many issues of real difficulty. I cannot believe that in 2018 I am speaking in this Chamber about how it is still important for the Council of Europe, which may become particularly important post-Brexit as an inter-parliamentary assembly where we can come together, to stand up for democracy and freedom under the law. From research by Amnesty International, we can see how in individual countries across Europe political sanctions are being introduced, people are being imprisoned for what they say, and people are being denied freedom of expression, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and gender equality. I am not saying that we all ought to live a life of gloom and pessimism, but part of the role of the Council of Europe is to talk to those countries and stand up for the principles that we hold dear.

Ministry of Defence

Debate between Alex Sobel and Lord Coaker

Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

I will leave it there, but the Government need to have a better idea, and make it public to the Select Committee and Parliament, of the individual costs. I say gently to the Minister that, otherwise, in a year’s time or two years’ time, he will find himself in exactly the same place that the Government find themselves now, where the National Audit Office is pointing to various gaps in the affordability of the equipment programme.

Let me give another example of where the Government need to be clearer with regard to their estimates. I again say this as something that the Minister and the Government should be saying to the Treasury and to the Prime Minister. The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) mentioned this point. As the Minister knows, the Government have had to bring forward £300 million to pay for some more up-front costs with regard to the deterrent programme. When they were asked where that money has been taken from, there was a very vague answer, to put it mildly. In essence, therefore, it is an IOU for future programmes. I think that between 2006 and 2007—certainly in the last few years of the Labour Government—where there was an up-front cost that perhaps needed to be taken from future programmes, the Treasury came forward with an uplift to the defence budget to pay for it. That then gave some certainty to future programmes.

Because the Treasury has not uplifted the Ministry of Defence figure by that £300 million, there is already a potential £300 million gap in the future—next year or the year after. I say this to the Government, again trying to be helpful: the Ministry of Defence should go to No. 10 and say, “We believe that where there are additional costs with regard to our deterrent programme that were unforeseen, or there was a growth in those costs, the Treasury should fund that uplift in costs, as was previous practice”—for example, the £300 million. I use that as just one example.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend has given two excellent examples. There are plans for a super-garrison at Catterick. I understand that service accommodation was meant to be completed by 2020 but is now estimated at 2023, which will clearly create cost overruns. Around the CarillionAmey contract, again, we are seeing a lack of maintenance on that, which will end up costing us more. We are seeing cost overruns in not just equipment but a whole range of areas, including accommodation.

[Vernon Coaker]

My hon. Friend gives another good example.

I have given the Minister a couple of examples, notwithstanding all the questions. I make a plea again to him and to the Government: when we know that the Government are considering their options on amphibious ships, please do not say to Parliament that these are things they cannot talk about and that the Government do not comment on leaks. That does not help us. It does not help this Parliament in trying to support Ministers to ensure they have the resources to defend the country. We then have a situation where, three months or two years down the line, those capabilities are scrapped, and we are all left thinking, “If only we’d known a bit more.”

Let me also mention something positive that the Government should do. We should help to explain this to the British public. Tucked away in annex A of the estimates, under the “Memorandum for the Ministry of Defence Supplementary Estimates 2017-18”, the Government list the additional estimates that they have had to ask the Treasury for for operations. I do not believe the British public would know how many operations our armed forces are rightly involved with.

If we want to build support for our armed forces, we should be telling the public that there is £1 billion for operations, peacekeeping and the MOD’s share of the conflict, stability and security fund, and that there is a further allocation of £84 million for the UK’s contribution to Afghanistan, as well as allocations for the wider Gulf, counter-Daesh activity, the EU mission to counter migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean, NATO enhanced forward presence in Estonia and Poland, enhanced intelligence and surveillance, and support to UN peacekeeping operations in Somalia and South Sudan. Those are just some examples, and the Treasury is giving money to the MOD to support all those different things.

Our country is proud of that work. Our country is proud that our armed forces are involved in defending human rights, defending democracy and doing what they can to ensure that stability exists and conflict is prevented. The Government should be shouting much more loudly about that. It should not be tucked away in an annex; it should be one of the forefront siren calls that the Minister makes in these estimates debates.

I finish with this, and it goes back to where I started. We are not spending enough money on the defence and security of the realm and the role that this country plays in promoting democracy and defending human rights across the world with our allies. All power to the MOD’s elbow when it goes to the Treasury and the Prime Minister to demand more money, but let that be done through the voice of this Parliament, where the majority of Members believe we should be spending more money and will support the Minister in trying to achieve that.