International Human Rights Abuses: UK Response

Alyn Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

You bounced me out of writing my speech, Dame Maria. [Laughter.] It is a pleasure to wind up for the SNP in this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) on securing the debate; it is a very timely discussion, and a pretty bleak one for those of us who believe in international co-operation and the rules-based international order.

This is close to the SNP’s heart. Our objective as a party is for Scotland to be an independent state. In order to be a global citizen, there is a need to look after our folks at home but also to be a voice for internationalism, progress, multilateralism, co-operation and the rule of law in the world. As a party, we are heavily invested in making the rules-based international order function. We believe in an international community—not global governance, but an international community and structured permanent co-operation—and we believe that that architecture should operate to a series of values that are universally applied against our friends and others.

This debate is close to our hearts. It is a bleak time that we find ourselves living through. It is important to remember a bit of historical context to this. As an SNP Member and an out and proud nationalist for Scotland, I would say that the UK has a good story to tell on the creation of the international human rights architecture. It was English and Scots lawyers who were absolutely integral to the creation of the Council of Europe’s human rights framework and the international court in Strasbourg. UK lawyers have been instrumental in helping to promote the case of human rights worldwide, particularly through the Commonwealth mechanisms, such as they are; we could improve on them, but they do exist and they have made progress. The UK has a good story to tell on this, and I want to see the UK do better than it has done lately.

I will come back to some concrete suggestions, but the fact that the original genesis of human rights—the idea that an individual should be empowered against their Government with rights, which should be protected by an international community—is a genius idea of international co-operation, which we should all cherish and aspire to. This has been adopted, of course, by the EU and the international NGOs, particularly the UN. Human rights have not been universally applied, but that is something that we should aspire to as an international community.

As an aspiring member of the international community as an independent Scotland and part of the international community as part of the UK, I want to see all of us do better. I want to work across borders. I will work with anybody to those ends from any political perspective because the baddies are organised; the baddies are working well. Those on the right side of that ledger—I would include all in this room in that—need to co-operate better, focus more and apply international law wherever we find it being infringed.

It is a bleak time. The SNP was very proudly part of the coalition in support of UK Government policy. We had questions, but we did support UK Government policy on Ukraine, because Ukraine suffered a grievous invasion from a foreign power and the rights of the people of Ukraine have been grievously infringed and continue to be infringed daily. I am sure the SNP is part of the coalition in defence of Ukraine’s liberty and the rights of the Ukrainian people to live without fear from their neighbours.

It would be difficult to say that the UK has been so active in the case of Israel and Palestine. If human rights are to be applied everywhere, they need to be applied universally—against our friends as well as everybody else. So, I strongly support the South African referral of the actions of the State of Israel to the international frameworks. There is a case to answer. I do not believe that individual politicians should use words like “genocide” lightly. I think there should be proper investigations and it should be proper authorities making such decisions, but there is surely cause for concern; surely the evidence that we have seen coming out of Israel and Gaza and Palestine should give us all cause for concern that there is a case to answer—that the State of Israel has committed war crimes, and that must have consequences—so I strongly support the referral by the South Africans to the international framework.

The executive director of Human Rights Watch, I think, puts it best:

“The Human Rights System is Under Threat”

—worldwide. There is not a continent where human rights are not being infringed, either by the state, by non-state actors, or in various places by proxy actors. It’s a messy world out there. I think it was Adlai Stevenson who said that to every question there is an answer that is clear, easy to understand and entirely wrong. I do not expect the UK to be the world’s policeman. I do not expect our Minister to be responsible for solving all these problems, but an international coalition needs to be put together to work on them. The UK could do rather more than we have seen to date in those efforts.

I have a few concrete suggestions. I am about to make some criticism of some UK Government Ministers. I would specifically exempt the Minister present from that criticism; I have not heard him put a foot wrong on these matters, and I do believe that he deeply shares these values. But where we see UK Government Ministers talking about breaking international law in a “limited and specific way” with regard to the Northern Ireland protocol, that is just not how serious Government Ministers and serious Governments talk. That is not how we should be discussing these things. Where we see leading Members of the Government party talking about “unelected foreign judges” in Strasbourg—somehow unqualified judges, as well—as if our judges are elected and as if the members of the court in Strasbourg or Luxembourg are not deeply qualified individuals, it is just not how serious countries talk. The reputational damage to the UK—I am an SNP member, so I should be enjoying this, but I am not. The UK needs to do better with this. We know it is loose talk from loose cannons, but the very worst people worldwide are taking the very worst lessons from this and that should give us all pause.

We are also seeing, as a matter of Government policy, the Rwanda Bill, which has deep implications for international law, yet breaking international obligations to some of the most vulnerable people in the world is being trumpeted as if it was a mere bagatelle. It is a deeply significant piece of legislation and it gives the very worst example to the baddies in the world, who are looking to undermine this international structure that we are all surely invested in.

Speaking of investment, I appreciate that all budgets everywhere at this time are difficult, but we still need to see greater investment from the UK, not only in international aid and development but specifically in the international human rights architecture. That is supporting NGOs in the field; I echo all colleagues who have specifically praised international NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and many others that are active in this space.

We also need to see specific funding for NGOs that are working on investigations and accountability mechanisms, greater support for UN mechanisms for accountability and support for journalists, who have been mentioned by a number of colleagues today. If we do not know what is going on, we will not be able to hold the baddies to account; journalists have a privileged and special place in law, so we need to see that being applied by the international community. The UK really is in a position to have much more influence in that respect.

We also need to see prioritisation of human rights in trade policy. One of the oft-stated advantages of leaving the European Union is that the UK has an independent trade policy, so let us see human rights being put far higher up that agenda than we have seen so far.

I remember that during my time in the European Parliament there was always a human rights component of all EU trade deals. My group almost always voted against trade deals on the basis that the human rights component of such deals was not strong enough. We were not against the trade deals; we just thought that the EU could do more to nudge partner countries in a better direction. The UK really has not prioritised human rights in trade deals at all and we must see much better efforts in that respect. So far, we have seen too little progress.

We also need to apply the values that we all support equally, whether it is difficult to do so or not. We are very vocal about the infringement of the rights of the Ukrainian people, but we have been posted missing on the infringement of the rights of the Palestinian people. We need to do so much better than we are doing currently. However, where there is an international coalition that will work in that direction—I believe that, on balance, the UK has a better story to tell than many other countries—I will be part of that coalition. I believe in working across borders and across parties, because there is an international architecture that is fragile and under attack from all sides; and I believe that those of us who are on the right side of this discussion need to work more closely together to promote these ends.