Belarus: Interception of Aircraft

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend raises a very important point. First, we will use all the sanctions—all the levers—that we have at our disposal. We are conscious, as we have discussed and as others have said, of the extent of increasing reliance on Russia, but that cannot be a reason for us not to take the action we take. This is unique; I cannot remember as far back as the ’70s there being a1an analogous case. It is very rare. Sometimes actions are taken more through cock-up than conspiracy—sometimes very tragically when aircraft are shot down—but I cannot think of a precedent for this kind of rather calculated and conniving approach, with the MiG jet and the bomb hoax. My right hon. Friend is right to reinforce, as others have done, the deterrent effect of how we respond to this specific, isolated incident.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

I welcome the very robust political and diplomatic stance that the Government are taking, but this case is more than that. This is a potential human tragedy as well, with Roman Protasevich now in detention and possibly ultimately facing the death penalty. I know, having campaigned in different parts of the world, that consular and embassy staff are very effective in the way in which they deploy their resources in supporting people campaigning against the use of the death penalty. Can the Foreign Secretary give me some assurance that everything that can be done to keep this case in the public eye will be done, within the confines of their role in country?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, and I totally agree with him. We must do everything we can to signal that, as outrageous it is what they have already done, it would be a further step into pariah status if the death penalty were to be applied. I thank him for what he said about consular officers. They relate to and provide services to British nationals and dual nationals abroad, but none the less, the broader point he makes about diplomatically keeping the pressure on and doing everything we can to avoid the death penalty is very important in this debate.

Human Rights Update

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend. First, may I pay tribute to him for his campaigning efforts in this regard? I know he will feel no small sense of accomplishment today, because has eloquently and powerfully made the case in the House. I will certainly look at any names he has. Of course, we have a clear, specific legal regime, and I and the Government have to assess the evidence based on it, but we should be willing to call out. The action we have taken both today and more generally, with the Magnitsky sanctions regime, shows that we not afraid not just to talk, but to act.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

May I too give a warm welcome to this announcement of these sanctions? They have been long sought and they are welcome now that they have finally arrived. May I say to the Foreign Secretary that while he is on a roll we might possibly see some positive announcement on the Alton amendment later on today, as he has a taste for this? Will he also give urgent consideration to the recent report from the Select Committee on Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which came forward with good and constructive suggestions about how to tackle the issue of the use of Uyghur slavery in the supply chain of many goods available in this country, possibly including the eventual linking of that to the disqualification of directors?

Hong Kong: Electoral Reforms

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. We are a co-signatory to the joint declaration. We have a responsibility to uphold the content, and a duty to speak out when we have concerns, which is what we have done. We did so last year: the Foreign Secretary has declared two breaches of the joint declaration in response to the national security law, and, of course, when the details that come out of the National People’s Congress are published, we will examine them and respond accordingly.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

May I first reinforce the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) in extending the warmest possible welcome to Hongkongers coming to the United Kingdom under the BNO passport scheme? As part of that, we should all be calling out any increase in racially motivated abuse or violence against our own Chinese community.

The Minister is quite right when he says that we should not speculate about the list of who might be subject to Magnitsky sanctions, but can I say to him in the nicest possible way that that speculation will continue for as long as he and his colleagues in Government refuse to act? If he wants to end the speculation, the tools for that are in his own hands. Why will he not use them?

[Nigel Adams]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the work he does with the all-party parliamentary group on Hong Kong. He knows what I have to say about sanctions, and that to speculate would be unhelpful, but I will just say to him—as I have said to other hon. and right hon. Members this afternoon—that we are closely and constantly reviewing our sanctions regime. I know it is not the answer that he wants immediately, but that is the situation. We will keep any designation under extremely close review.

Counter-Daesh Update

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend raises an excellent point. Whatever the perverse but romantic ideology Daesh spouts, it relies on cold, hard cash. That is why robbing and depriving it of territory, particularly in Syria, has been so crucial. Yes, we do seek to target the financial lines of credit and other financial support, but it is also important to note that as Daesh has lost territory, it has lost control over oil resources and the people it subjugates, including with illegal taxation, so the territorial aspect is also crucial to the financial objectives.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

The Foreign Secretary is absolutely right that Daesh poses a global threat and we absolutely must not allow it to take root elsewhere. That being the case, does he not agree that it is surely counterproductive to be cutting our aid to Yemen and to be continuing to supply arms to Saudi Arabia for their use in the conflict in Yemen?

[Dominic Raab]

We are still a world-leading donor in relation to Yemen. We have remained and will remain between third and fifth in terms of the top donors. As the right hon. Gentleman already knows but I am happy to repeat, we have a world-leading export licence regime that makes sure that anything that could be used for illegal purposes cannot be exported.

Treatment of Uyghur Women: Xinjiang Detention Camps

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his continued interest. I know how strongly he feels about the issue. Again, to be absolutely clear, we understand the strength of feeling, in particular around the Trade Bill, and we believe that there must be more enhanced scrutiny by Parliament of genocide and our response to the crime. That is why we will work with him and other right hon. and hon. Members in that regard.

As we have said, competent courts include international ones, such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and national criminal courts that meet international standards of due process. On sanctions, we have already come up with targeted measures in respect of UK supply chains. Those are direct actions. Nobody should be any doubt. We are being very clear in our public statements about what is going on in Xinjiang. As I have said, we are carefully considering further designations.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

I echo the words of the Minister in thanking the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) for obtaining this important urgent question. The best thanks that we could give to the hon. Lady and others in this House would be to actually act. What we saw on the programme was shocking, but it can no longer be any surprise. Nobody can say now that they do not know what is happening there.

The Minister has said it twice now: genocide is a matter for the courts, unlike in the United States. Surely the logic of his own arguments is that, when Lord Alton’s amendment to the Trade Bill comes back to this House next week, the Government should be supporting it or, at the very least, finding a form of words that they will bring forward to achieve the same end. I am afraid that warm words and hand wringing are no longer enough.

[Nigel Adams]

The right hon. Gentleman always talks in a measured and passionate way about this issue. I reiterate the comments that I made earlier to the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock): the US has a different process for determining genocide, but it is not linked to a court decision. Our long-standing policy is that any judgment as to whether genocide has occurred is a matter for a competent court.

We are looking to work with right hon. and hon. colleagues to ensure that the relevant debate and scrutiny can take place here. That work has been going on while the Bill has been in the other place. No doubt there will be further such conversations over the weekend as we lead up to the Bill coming back.

UN International Day of Education

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to slip under the wire for this very important debate. Like other hon. Members, I reflect on what education has meant for my family. I have two sisters, and the three of us are the first generation in our family to have gone through higher education. That is not an accident; it is not some freak of nature whereby this is suddenly a generation where the Carmichaels got smart. It is because my generation were given opportunities that were denied to my parents, grandparents and other generations before us. So it pains me to see that with 90% of our children out of school as a result of school closures arising from the pandemic, we risk losing and taking away these opportunities from our own coming generations. The pandemic has illustrated better than most things the full consequences of the digital divide, with which we have lived for too long; we see those areas of the country that have access to connectivity and those that do not, and the families who have broadband and sufficient devices for everybody to get home schooling opportunities, and those who do not. So when we come to the end of the restrictions and to rebuilding our economy, we must also look at rebuilding our own education system. Significant though these problems are, I suspect that most young people and teachers in most countries in the world today would love to have the problems that we will have when it comes to rebuilding after the pandemic. The progress that we made against the millennium development goals in terms of getting young people into primary education was significant, but let us not ignore the fact that we did not actually meet the millennium development goals, so it is now more important than ever that we try to meet the sustainable development goals.

The one point that we have to understand is that giving opportunities to young people in other countries—in the developing world, in particular—is not some act of altruism; it is actually good for our own children and communities. I look at the work that has been done by Anderson High School in Lerwick for decades now through its participation in the Global Classroom Partnership, and I see what that has added to the young people coming through that school in Shetland. The money—in hard cash terms—that we would be required to put in to meet the 0.7% GNI target would already be much reduced; not actually to meet that 0.7% target is criminal. The Government must think about this again, not just for the benefit of people in the developing world, but for the benefit of our own children and their educational opportunities.

Xinjiang: Forced Labour

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am afraid that this will be the last question, because we had an hour allocated and we will have been an hour and 10 minutes by the time we have finished this one. The last question is from Alistair Carmichael, and I think it is audio only.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

Frustrating though it is for many of us, I understand the Foreign Secretary’s reluctance to engage on the question of genocide, but he will know from his own professional background that the Government have a duty to assess the risk factors of genocide against the Uyghurs in China in order to trigger their duty to prevent. All this came from the International Court of Justice judgment in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro. He will also know that that obligation crystallises at the moment that a state learns, or should have learned, of the serious risk of genocide. Can he confirm that his Department is making that assessment of the risk factors of genocide, and will he publish its conclusions?

[Dominic Raab]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting and insightful comment on genocide. Of course, I was in The Hague when the Bosnia judgment was being considered.

The reality is that, in order to secure authoritative assessment and conclusions in relation to those widespread reports, which we think are tenable, plausible and credible, we need access to the camps. In a sense, throughout this statement, we are redefining the question. However, we come back to the point that we need to try to secure access to Xinjiang, and we will not be able to do that without sufficient and widespread pressure on the Chinese Government. The best vehicle for that is an authoritative, independent body or individual entrusted by the United Nations, of which China is a leading member through the Security Council. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights seems to me the right place and the right individual to support in that regard.

UK Relations with Qatar

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new call list system and to ensure that social distancing can be respected. I remind Members that they must arrive for the start of debates in Westminster Hall. Members are expected to remain for the wind-ups, provided there is space in the room. Members are also asked to respect the one-way system around the room. Please exit by the door on the left. Members should sanitise their microphones using the cleaning materials provided before they use them, and dispose of those materials as they leave the room.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered UK relations with Qatar.

It is a pleasure to serve with you chairing, Ms Rees. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time available for this 90-minute debate. I should, of course, as others doubtless will, refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary British-Qatar group, and in February of this year I was privileged to lead a delegation to Qatar. A number of my fellow delegees are present today. I place on record the appreciation of the APPG for the assistance that had been given to it over the years in running those delegations, especially from the UK embassy in Doha. Ajay Sharma, the ambassador, left in the course of this year and will be replaced by Jon Wilks. The assistance that the embassy has given in facilitating meetings outside the programme prepared for us by the Qatari Government over the years has always been exemplary.

We will certainly miss the relationship that we have had with Ajay, now that he has moved on. I very much hope that we will have an equally profitable and warm relationship with his successor; I am pretty sure that we will. Also, the group appreciates the assistance given to it throughout the year, especially during the delegation, by the Qatari embassy in London. His Excellency Yousef Al-Khater, the ambassador, and his staff are staunch in their support, and always willing to go the extra mile, which is appreciated by the group’s members.

Shortly after we returned from Doha, we went into lockdown. It feels like an awful lot longer ago now than it was, but the start of the lockdown period illustrated rather well, in one nice little vignette, the importance of the relationship that we have with Qatar. Qatar Airways facilitated the repatriation of 100,000 UK citizens at the start of lockdown. That illustrates, at a micro level, the importance of what is, at the macro level, a very important relationship, both strategically and economically, for the United Kingdom.

It is well documented that in December 2017, Qatar purchased a number of Typhoon strike aircraft in a contract worth £5.1 billion. That is a lot of jobs in different parts of the country, and good-quality engineering jobs at that. As part of that deal, the RAF and the Qatar Emiri air force have established a joint squadron, based in this country, which is in fact the first that we have had with any other nation since the end of the second world war.

It is therefore not just a transactional relationship; we now have a growing partnership with Qatar that is enormously important. Of course, it should be remembered that in Qatar there are the RAF operational headquarters for the middle east at the Al Udeid airbase, and that RAF operatives there often run joint operations with the Emiri air force. Importantly, Qatar is part of the global coalition against Daesh. In that corner of the world, it is an important strategic ally for us.

Economically, the United Kingdom is the single largest destination for Qatari investment in Europe—something in the region of £40 billion to date. It is worth noting that more than 1,134 United Kingdom companies now operate in Qatar, 993 of which are joint ventures with Qatari business interests. We heard from a number of the people who we met during the delegation about some of the difficulties experienced in furthering those business interests with visas in this country. I know that is not the Minister’s responsibility, but to facilitate good business relations, I hope that the Home Office will hear and listen to that. Of course, this would not be a speech from the MP for Orkney and Shetland if it did not have something to say about energy. Some 80% of liquefied natural gas imports to this country in the second quarter of 2020 came from Qatar.

Several universities now have established campuses in Doha. The British Council continues to work to build links and co-ordinate the higher education presence and, indeed, partnerships such as that with the British Museum in the various cultural enterprises where we work jointly.

Of the universities that operate in Doha, probably the best known with the largest presence is University College London, but I hope hon. Members will forgive me if I mention the presence of Scotland’s premier seat of higher education, the University of Aberdeen, which also has a campus there. I took myself away from the rest of the delegation for an afternoon and I was privileged to meet the management and some of those studying at that campus. It is a very impressive operation and a good example of what can be done by a university seeking to expand and reach beyond its conventional confines. A week or two after we left, the university inaugurated a new master of laws—an LLM course. Nothing makes someone feel old like realising that somebody they were an undergraduate with is now the professor of Scots law inaugurating the new course, as Professor Greg Gordon did a couple of weeks after we left.

For those myriad reasons, it is clear that over the years, the relationship between Qatar and the United Kingdom, which has historically been an important one, has grown at a remarkable rate. The growth has been organic. It is not just the state-to-state relationship that we would expect to find with the defence interests; it is the commercial interests, the energy-related contracts, and the cultural and educational institutions that are building the relationship.

That is where we have got to, but the focus of today’s debate ought to be on considering the issues facing that relationship. Most importantly, we should look at the continuing blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt which has been running for three and a half years. At the start, allegations were made about Qatar’s conduct in relation to the funding of terror and some of its other foreign policy efforts. If those allegations were true, they would be very serious indeed. As the chair of an APPG in this House, I am not here to be an advocate for Qatar; it can do that for itself. I identify an important and strategic relationship, but if Qatar and any other state actor goes beyond the bounds of what is acceptable, it has to explain that for itself. However, despite numerous calls for evidence, three and a half years later we have not seen substantial evidence about the funding of terror and other things, which were used to justify the blockade.

I would be interested to know what the Minister makes of the recent restarting of the Kuwaiti-sponsored process to get the blockade resolved. I do not think it is in anybody’s interests and I think we have kind of lost sight of any of the reasons why it might have started in the first place. It is certainly in the interests of the United Kingdom and the European Union that we should have a functioning Gulf Co-operation Council. As long as the blockade persists, we will not have that.

We saw one illustration of the impact on UK interests when we were able to visit the beIN Sports studios in Doha. BeIN is a global broadcasting corporation, which has purchased many of the broadcast rights for UK premiership teams. Its product is basically being pirated by interests in Saudi Arabia, who then re-broadcast it with a very small time delay and different badging. If we ignore that and just turn a blind eye, we risk doing serious damage to the whole idea of intellectual property, especially in broadcast rights. I was pleased when, in June this year, the World Trade Organisation ruled that not investigating or prosecuting that act of piracy was a breach on the part of Saudi Arabia of its duties as a member of the WTO, because that is something that will very much come home to roost here.

It is difficult to think that the situation is not in some way associated with the now looming World cup in 2022. Members of the delegation were able to see a number of the stadiums that have been constructed, which are a remarkable achievement. It is great to see them up and ready to go. Had we not had lockdown, we would have been able to host an event in the House of Commons—I hope we will still find a way to do so—for Hassan Al Thawadi from the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy to brief Members on the first World cup in an Arab country—an exciting opportunity.

The road to getting here has not been without difficulties. Very serious breaches of labour standards and workers’ conditions in the construction of World cup sites were widely reported some years ago. There was never any excusing those breaches, but it is significant to note that since the sunlight was shone on them, the old line that sunlight is the best disinfectant was shown to be a pretty true one. The construction of workers’ villages has continued and has worked very effectively; the standard of accommodation has improved. The access of workers to healthcare while they are working on World cup projects has also significantly improved.

I have no doubt that an awful lot more still needs to be done. I think it is a feature of all our enterprises there that, in recognising what has been achieved, we always encourage them to do more. With the abolition of the kafala system and new laws introducing a minimum wage for the first time in a Gulf country, it is good to see that sort of progress being made in labour rights. Of course, there is much more to be done. I fervently wish to see the right of workers in Qatar to organise themselves. Our delegation were able to meet a small group of those who organise workers’ rights, and it is significant that the International Labour Organisation has its office now in Doha. That is one area where I would want progress, and we continue to encourage progress in those ways.

It is worth remembering that today is international Human Rights Day. There is clearly still a great deal of progress on human rights to be made in Qatar, but in dealing with those matters, and when we complain about aspects of Qatar’s human rights record, it is always important to remember the way that many such things—LGBT rights, for example—were treated in our own country. Even within my lifetime those things were illegal. The Minister has heard me say that in the past.

The purpose of engagement has to be to encourage progress. What pleases me about engagement with Qatar is that it has been repaid in progress, with improving labour rights and human rights. Of course we want more improvements and we have always wanted those things to happen faster; that is the nature of politics. However, whereas in some areas of the Gulf we engage and things just seem to get worse, the process of engagement—and I think, interestingly, this comes right from the very top, from His Highness the Emir himself—is one by which Qatar is continuing to look outwards, and doing so more rapidly, and taking its obligations on human rights and democracy seriously.

The final piece of progress that I want to mention and welcome, as I want to let others speak, is that I am delighted that the Shura Council itself is now to have direct elections, which will happen next year. That is important and it is an area where progress is probably as meaningful as we could hope. The relationship is important, and I hope that it will continue to progress. It is clearly in our commercial and strategic interest to have a strong relationship with Qatar. It is also in the strategic and economic interest of Qatar to have that strong relationship, and if, as a consequence of that, the rights of Qatari people and those who work in the country continue to improve, surely that is a pretty textbook model of what diplomacy and engagement are supposed to be about.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

If Back Benchers could speak for eight to nine minutes or less, we should get everyone in before the winding-up speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa (James Cleverly)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, and I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing the debate and giving me, on behalf of the Government, as well as other right hon. and hon. Members, the opportunity to speak positively, openly and frankly about the UK’s relationship with Qatar.

I pay tribute to the all-party parliamentary group for the work it does and the commitment of its members to building on what is already a strong UK-Qatari relationship. Qatar is one of our closest allies in the region, and the group plays a crucial role in fostering those links through open and constructive dialogue. I had the pleasure of visiting Qatar in October as part of my first official visit to the Gulf. My time in Doha emphasised to me the deep-rooted nature and the dynamism of our bilateral relationship, from trade and investment to energy and defence, from sport and culture to education and healthcare.

We have heard a number of speeches from right hon. and hon. Members on those important areas and I will touch on a number of them shortly. My dear and hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) speaks almost as passionately about Doha as he does about his great soon-to-be city, Southend. I do hope that I get an official invitation to the twinning ceremony between Doha and Southend, were that to happen. He made the important and very true point about UK-Qatari relations that the person-to-person relationships matter hugely. On my visit, I was warmly welcomed by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Sultan bin Saad al-Muraikhi and Lolwah al-Khater.

I was reminded that over 16,000 British nationals live and work in Qatar, and the UK is a second home to many Qataris. There were a record 175,000 visits from Qatar to the UK in 2019, worth over half a billion pounds to the UK economy. I am particularly pleased to note that, since last month, travellers from Qatar can come to the UK without the need for quarantine on arrival. I hope that, in the near future, UK travellers will be able to visit Qatar under the same circumstances.

I echo publicly the thanks that I made privately to Akbar Al Baker, chief executive officer of Qatar Airways, to acknowledge its invaluable support during the repatriation of British nationals. In the intervening period, Qatar Airways has become the biggest international airline for passengers and cargo. It played an essential role in the repatriation efforts of British nationals earlier this year.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister is right to highlight the role of Qatar Airways. He will also be aware that, as things stand in relation to covid, the contribution of Qatar in respect of the Gavi summit has been significant. Will he recognise that contribution and see how we might build on it as the vaccination programme goes live in this country? We need to share that expertise around the globe.

[James Cleverly]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for highlighting that. As I have said both publicly and privately, I was struck by the fact that, during these times of intense difficulties, the strength of these bilateral friendships has really come to the fore. That is particularly true, as he says, in relation to the vaccine summit, and I have no doubt that it will continue to be true for the distribution of the vaccine, or vaccines, as we collectively—globally—take the fight to covid.

During my visit, I was fortunate to build on recent engagement by my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary, all of whom have met Qatari Ministers in recent months. Those close ties allow us to engage on difficult topics and influence change. In line with many of the comments of colleagues today, the UK Government do not shy away from raising human rights concerns whenever and wherever required, in public as well as in private. We welcome the announcement of elections to the Shura Council and look forward to watching those go ahead.

We also welcome the concrete steps that Qatar has taken to date on workers’ rights, with significant reforms, including the abolition of exit permits for almost all workers, as has been mentioned, and a non-discriminatory minimum wage. We hope for full implementation of those measures. Everyone deserves the right to work safely and securely, whether in Qatar, the UK or anywhere else. We continue to engage regularly with international labour organisations and explore areas of their work where the UK can add particular value. We stand ready further to assist and support Qatar’s continued efforts to implement change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

I thank the Minister for his reply, and all Members who have taken part in what has been a very good and balanced debate. It is clear that the relationship is strong, and that there is still much work that can be done. In the time that I have engaged with Qatar, it has been fascinating to see the way in which the country has developed and continued to look outwards. That is not an accident. It is down, almost exclusively, to the influence of His Highness, the Emir, right from the top. If that commitment continues, then I have no doubt that the strength of the relationship between the United Kingdom and Qatar will continue to grow, and that we will continue to see the progress we all so devoutly wish for.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered UK-Qatar relations.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

I am going to suspend for two minutes to allow the safe exit of Members.

Hong Kong

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

My right hon. Friend is very highly skilled in this area, having served in a similar role to me at the FCO, and he is absolutely right. Hongkongers are highly skilled and highly educated individuals, and we very much look forward to welcoming applications under our new immigration route.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I listened to the answer that the Minister gave to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I can understand the logic of it and I can understand his caution, but, in practical terms, the idea that the likes of Carrie Lam might at some stage be subject to Magnitsky sanctions is something for which we may now have lost that element of surprise. Therefore, the practical consequences of the Government’s position are probably not that significant, but the political consequences of a more robust answer to the hon. right Gentleman and others could be immense, especially if we were to pursue this through our membership of the UN Human Rights Council, to which we have now been elected for the next two years. What will the Minister do with that very useful tool?

[Nigel Adams]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, my former ministerial colleague, on his question and also on the interest that he takes in this particular issue, but he will have to forgive me when I say that, as tempting as it may be, it is absolutely inappropriate and not right for us to speculate on our sanctions regime. We do not want a situation where the effect of our regime is diminished, and speculation could very much do that. We are working very closely and very hard with the EU, as he will be aware.

Integrated Activity Fund: Transparency

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered transparency of the Integrated Activity Fund.

May I say from the outset that it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, and to see Members here for this Thursday afternoon debate? Many MPs from different parties have attempted to question the Government on this fund, only to be met with unclear and murky answers. This is a fund of up to £20 million each year to countries accused of human rights abuses, so the last thing the Government should be is unclear and murky.

I will raise several issues regarding the transparency of the fund, in the hope that the Government can finally provide some answers. We know that the fund is spent across the Gulf Co-operation Council states—Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. However, the Government have failed to provide a breakdown of spending in each country. Ministers reason that this lack of transparency is because:

“Many of the projects and programme activities were delivered regionally, so it is not possible to provide a breakdown by beneficiary state.”

It seems clear to me that a solution would be to outline the projects that the IAF supports, then we could understand how the money is spent across the region.

However, when MPs have inquired into the projects that the fund supports, the Government continue to be vague:

“The Integrated Activity Fund supported a range of non-ODA programmes and projects across the Gulf. These included, but were not limited to, activities focusing on culture, healthcare, youth engagement, economic diversification and institutional capacity building.”

I am afraid that that is not clear enough. The House deserves to know exactly what projects the UK Government are funding across the region through the IAF.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is setting up the debate nicely here, but may I suggest that it might be helpful to go back to first principles and ask ourselves whether, in the areas he has just outlined, the need for any reform within the Gulf Co-operation Council countries may not necessarily be rooted in lack of money?

[David Linden]

The right hon. Gentleman puts a good point on the record, and it is something I will attempt to develop later in my speech. In terms of first principles, he is perhaps right, and I am sure that when he speaks he will reaffirm that to the Minister.

Considering the accusations from human rights groups over the legitimacy of this fund, the Government should be obliged to publish the results of the risk assessment that they should obviously have undertaken. However, the Government will not even disclose to the House the beneficiaries or implementers of, or projects funded by, the IAF, giving Ministers and the public no idea how their money is being spent.

Members of this House and of the other House have repeatedly questioned the Government on the specifics of the Integrated Activity Fund. However, we have only received vague half-answers in response. I guess that begs the question: if the Government have nothing to hide, why will they not be completely transparent on the fund?

The question of transparency clearly links with a topic brought up by hon. Members across the House, that of human rights abuses in the gulf region. Hon. Members have brought up the fact that the UK Government funds projects in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where we know the death penalty, torture and political imprisonment take place. Indeed, the human rights situation in those countries is worsening; Saudi Arabia executed a record 184 people last year, while the indiscriminate Saudi-led bombing of Yemen is responsible for what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst man-made humanitarian catastrophe.

This is not the first time the Government have been criticised over their funding of projects in GCC states. A case in point is the controversial conflict, security and stability fund, the CSSF, which drew criticism from UK aid watchdogs for serious shortcomings in the way it operated. It was found to have been insufficiently rigorous in applying safeguards to prevent collaboration with foreign entities with suspect human rights records.

One project funded by the CSSF was the contentious security and justice programme in Bahrain. In its 2018 report, the Foreign Affairs Committee urged the Government to review the programme, particularly in light of the evidence that Bahraini prison staff and security personnel had been implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings.

That programme, which cost at least £6.5 million, caused the CSSF to come under parliamentary investigation for its lack of transparency. However, once the programme began to face scrutiny, it was simply transferred over to the Integrated Activity Fund. If the CSSF faced severe criticism from this House for its funding of the programme, then it is only natural that the IAF, which is arguably more opaque, should receive the same investigation.

The IAF has also come under further scrutiny for its links to the Bahrain Special Investigations Unit. Recent freedom of information requests obtained by the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy revealed that in 2018, visits were made under the IAF from the College of Policing, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and Merseyside’s professional standards department to meet counterparts at Bahrain’s Special Investigations Unit. Since those visits, Bahrain’s SIU has been criticised by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims as “critically flawed” and failing to meet,

“the minimum professional standards and minimum international legal standards”.

Bahraini judges and representatives from the Ministry of Interior visited the UK in 2018 and 2019 under the IAF. According to the Bahraini embassy in London, these visits were conducted to discuss,

“both the scope and implementation of alternative sentences in the UK”.

The FOI requests also indicate that no overseas justice and security assessment was conducted for the judges’ visit, violating the Government’s own human rights safeguarding policy.

Prior to a mass prisoner release to ease the severe overcrowding of Bahrain’s prisons following the outbreak of covid-19, evidence suggests that alternative sentencing legislation was discriminating against political prisoners, including Sheikh Mirza Al-Mahroos and human rights defender Ali Al-Hajee. Alongside revealing the other contentious programmes and activities that the IAF supports, the FOI requests further highlight that at least two programmes have been provided exclusively to Bahrain. This evidence shows that certain activities are, in fact, country specific, thus negating the FCDO’s claim that country-specific breakdowns are impossible, since activities are only covered regionally. In the light of that, I again urge the Government to provide a clear breakdown of the individual projects and programmes they fund in each of the countries that the IAF supports.

With a history of controversial projects and their insistence on being vague about the Integrated Activity Fund, the Government are not painting a particularly clear image of their support for the GCC region. Lord Scriven said of the IAF:

“I have never seen a situation where it started open and became more swiftly opaque as criticisms grew… the Government have become hypersensitive if not paranoid to the fact that the truth will be exposed”.

It is imperative that the Government are more transparent about the Integrated Activity Fund, including by releasing information on the specific projects that the fund supports, in what countries, and crucially, whether they comply with the human rights risk assessment. I look forward to the Minister, for whom I have the utmost respect as a personal friend, enlightening the Chamber this afternoon as he closes the debate on behalf of the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I remind the Chamber of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I chair the all-party parliamentary British-Qatar group. I am struggling to remember, but I think I am also an office-bearer for the all-party parliamentary group on Kuwait, but other hon. Members will know that the amount of commitment that those offices bring with them is, shall we say, variable. My engagement with those APPGs has, however, given me, I hope, a small measure of insight into engagement with Gulf countries—those in the Gulf Cooperation Council in particular, although I am not sure that there really is a functioning GCC at present.

I am not without sympathy for the purposes behind the idea of such funds. As I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), I am not really persuaded that the deficiencies in civic Government, human rights and even in agriculture—rarely does a debate come up where the MP for Orkney and Shetland cannot talk about agriculture—are necessarily down to a lack of funding. However, I am also always aware that when one engages with countries that have deficiencies in those and other areas, it is best always to do so from a starting point of a measure of humility. We rarely achieve much by lecturing and preaching to people in other countries. Understand a bit of their own history and how they have come to the point they are at today.

To draw on my experience with Qatar, for example, I have been genuinely impressed in recent years to see some of the progress that has been made in relation to labour rights. The abolition of the kafala system and the opening of an International Labour Organisation office in Doha are significant achievements, and we should be pleased. When I speak to people in the Qatari Government, of course we want to talk about those things, as they inevitably do—every Government always want to talk about where they have made progress—but we also have to be mindful that there is still a significant way to go in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, for example. To engage with any measure of integrity with these countries, we have to be able to tell them that, while appreciating the progress they have made, we see other areas where progress still has to be made.

I am always very conscious of the fact that in Britain the abolition of the death penalty and the legalisation of homosexuality both happened in the course of my life. Both date back to the 1960s, so we should engage and encourage, but we should be mindful of the fact that we have not always had the greatest story to tell. On labour rights, for example, let us not kid ourselves, because we still have a problem with human trafficking in this country, notwithstanding the gangmasters legislation that we have now had for about 10 to 15 years. So humility is the order of the day.

That said, engagement must bring with it other things. The most important of those, as the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said, should be transparency and accountability. It is in the operation of the IAF that we find a worrying lack of both transparency and accountability, and I fear that permeates other aspects of our engagement with Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Although it is not necessarily directly on point in relation to the operation of the IAF—at least I suspect that is the case, but who knows?—I am very concerned that the police chief in Dubai appears to be a front-runner for the presidency of Interpol. Nasser Ahmed Al-Raisi was in charge of the police service that detained a British academic, Matthew Hedges, for around six months on trumped-up charges, bluntly, which Matthew has always denied. I understand that he was eventually forced to sign a confession in Arabic, which he just did not understand, and in that time he was tortured. The engagement with the United Arab Emirates in relation to that case, for example, is not one that in any way, shape or form can be seen as working in the interests of United Kingdom citizens.

It is because of the lack of transparency and accountability that the business of engagement with GCC countries looks, from time to time, as if it is operating on double standards. We criticise China—I am 100% behind the Government’s new policy on China—but at the same time we seem to find it very difficult to criticise the Saudi Government, notwithstanding, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) outlined, their truly appalling human rights record. Yes, they have recently passed legislation allowing women the right to drive, but at the same time they are jailing those who actually campaigned for that very right. They also use the death penalty for people who would have been minors at the time they committed any crimes. They seem to continue on an almost unrestricted basis, including—God help us—having crucifixions.

If UK taxpayers’ money is being spent in such countries, the UK Government have a duty to account to taxpayers for where it is being spent and what it is being spent on. The little that we do know about the operation of the IFA, particularly as it relates to Bahrain, is that it involves sentencing reform and alternative sentencing there. That is a cause that I am prepared to support—indeed, it is a drum that I have beaten for many years in this country. That is certainly something we should support. However, if we consider the way in which alternative sentencing policy is pursued in Bahrain, we find very quickly that in fact there is no benefit for the political prisoners there. The beneficiaries of alternative sentencing are all within the country’s criminal justice system. I would have thought that one of the things we would want to promote is equal treatment, at the very least, of criminal prisoners and political prisoners. We should of course be pursuing a situation in which there are no political prisoners, but for those who find themselves imprisoned in Bahrain, any advances should be equally available to all.

There is a case for doing at least some of the work associated with the IAF, but I cannot think of many areas of public expenditure, even at this scale, that are allowed to be maintained in such conditions of secrecy. It is totally lacking in transparency and accountability. If the money is genuinely being spent on capacity building, we should expect it to be spent through non-governmental organisations, which I know is not easy in Gulf countries. However, they are there and they do operate, and they would seem a more obvious route for channelling support through, as we do in virtually every other theatre in which we spend overseas development moneys.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

This fund is not part of our aid budget; it is overseas spending.

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed, which is why I deliberately did not use the terms “overseas aid” or “overseas development assistance”. However, to the hard-pressed British taxpayer, it is money that is being spent overseas, and the objectives set for the IAF would not look out of place in our overseas development assistance budget. If the objectives are the same, there would have to be some compelling reason why, on this occasion, we are effectively giving money to state actors, rather than non-state actors.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in this regard. I fear that it is a topic to which the House will continue to return for some time to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cleverly]

I understand. The hon. Gentleman knows that, since becoming the Minister for the region, I am the responding Minister. If he is critical of repetitive answers, it is because the same questions keep being asked, but I will try to address promptly some of the points that were raised, if hon. Members permit.

I am very conscious that, as we have seen today, through written correspondence and more broadly, there has been criticism of the fund, and particularly of our work in Bahrain, but our policy has been to engage with Bahrain and to encourage and support its institutional reform through targeted assistance. For example, the IAF has enabled British expertise to help develop Bahrain’s independent human rights oversight bodies. I know that Members present have been critical, but the creation of those bodies is important, as is their improvement and reform. I know that the ombudsman’s office has, again, been criticised, but it must be recognised that it has investigated more than 5,000 complaints. I invite hon. Members to consider whether those investigations would have happened had we not been involved.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister cites two examples that we have discussed already. That is good, but if he can tell us about those examples, why can we not be told about them all?

[James Cleverly]

I am going to try to rattle through my speech, because, unfortunately, I will run out of time otherwise. A number of the points that Members have raised are embedded in it, but if I do not get to the end, I will not be able to cover them.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) said that the alternative sentencing programme is a welcome step in the right direction and that he would like to see it go further. He is right, but if it were not in existence it would not be able to go further, and it is in existence at least in part because of the technical assistance from the UK Government. Those outcomes have strengthened human rights adherence and accountability in Bahrain, and they are possible only because—