Official Development Assistance and the British Council

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have spoken to the Mines Advisory Group about its work in Lebanon, which has been so important, not just in promoting our interests. Sadly, it will almost certainly be needed not just in Iraq, where it has operated at some points, but in Syria.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that £6.8 million of the spend by the Foreign Office last year was not “ODA-able”, which is a remarkable thing, as our support, in particular to Lebanese armed forces, has enabled land in Lebanon to be farmed by farmers who have not seen that land for 50-odd years?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend makes an essential point: the OECD definition of what is “ODA-able” is historically anachronistic. He is right to say that we need to update it and that spending money on the armed forces who keep the peace and allow development is an essential building block of development, and therefore should be ODA-able. That is a slightly separate point to the one I am making, but I am very grateful to him for making it. As a right hon. and gallant Member, he knows well the strength that the armed forces and indeed the royal naval surgeons can bring to any theatre.

My next point is about the change to our footprint in Mali, Niger and Chad, where we have just opened embassies, which I welcome. I am glad that we are extending the Foreign Office’s footprint. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) is the Minister responsible and has visited or will no doubt soon visit all three of those embassies and missions. When he does so, I hope he will take with him the best wishes of the whole House to the staff there.

Of course, in such areas of the world it is not enough to have just nice words; we also need nice actions. The actions that we need our diplomats to be able to complete are those that promote our interests and values and, indeed, the interests of the people in those areas. Those things are not terribly surprising: they are democracy, the rule of law and the education of women. I have heard the Prime Minister speak about them so often that I can rattle them off not quite in my sleep but pretty much. It is certainly true that we are doing all the right things when we have the capability; the challenge is that for Mali, Niger and Chad there is no budget line. We will therefore see our efforts branded as the work of the World Bank, the World Food Programme and many other organisations. They are fantastic organisations, but that will reduce the impact of global Britain.

I am a little concerned about the cut to our funding for research on tropical diseases—from £150 million to £17 million. As the House may know, the Foreign Affairs Committee is doing an inquiry into global health security, and we have been hearing how that investment is essential to the maintenance of future capabilities against pandemics. We are all aware of the pandemic we face today but, as the House knows, it is not enough to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted; we need to try to predict when the horse might be getting a little jittery. For example, we know the effect we have had in making sure that Ebola never broke out in the UK —although there was a limited incident when one nurse came back with it.

In Nigeria, a country of which I am particularly fond—forgive my bias, but I think it is a quite remarkably vibrant, brilliant and engaging country—we have been cutting our ODA spend again. This leaves me somewhat confused. Health makes up 34% of the current allocation and education about 11%, so a cut of 58% is very likely indeed to cut into those things.

I hope the House can see that although I welcome strategic alignment, I do not think that ambassadors are admirals or that consuls are captains. What I do think, however, is that this House and, indeed, this Prime Minister have set a strategic vision for Britain in the world that seems to have got lost in translation between the Cabinet table and the Foreign Office. I question, very slightly, whether or not a moment of deep thought, alignment and reinvestment might just bring back a bilateral and a multilateral into balance, and perhaps when we get back to 0.7% that will give us the global Britain we have all asked for.

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[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the very powerful speech from the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on introducing the debate.

It is incredibly moving and, I think, poignant just how much agreement there is across the House. When does it happen like this? It is rare, and so is the absence of dissent from those on the Government Benches. Usually, someone will intervene to bolster the Minister—for whom I have a lot of sympathy for having to defend this stuff—but now the silence is deafening, and the reason is that the Government know this is not the right thing to do. The Government would be defeated in a vote and that is why they do not want to give us one, to put it bluntly.

This also matters because of how ordinary people across the country are seeing the effectiveness of Parliament. They also have genuine concerns about the effectiveness of this Government. My constituents in Oxford West and Abingdon care deeply about this, as one might expect, and many of them work in this area. Keith Hyams, for example, is a researcher and member of the Global Challenges Research Fund’s strategic advisory group, which is UK Research and Innovation’s main funding vehicle for ODA research. He wrote to me to outline the projects that he is involved in. They include youth groups based in slums in six African cities, seeking to understand how covid is affecting life in the slums; a project in Cape Town, with the city’s local government, looking at how climate adaptation can include some of the most vulnerable populations in the city; and a large project tracking the effect of covid on indigenous peoples.

Keith Hyams writes:

“It is difficult to imagine that project partners will be willing to trust UK collaborations again, having invested heavily in existing projects only to have funding pulled out midway through with very significant consequences for organisations reliant on the funding that they receive.”

He says that he does not want to see GCRF funds rescued at the expense of something else, but that

“there are better ways to implement these cuts than abruptly ending”

live projects. Why end live projects? Why not let the projects run their course and then look at how we can find savings down the line? The taxpayer value question, which the hon. Member for Rotherham raised, is very important. Why do it this way?

Talking about covid, Oliver Pybus, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, received an email to say that funding for his project is to be cut. His project helps track genomic variants in places such as Brazil—the P.1 variant, which emerged in Brazil, now has its own name; it is known as the gamma variant. How on earth is cutting that funding in our interests, when we know that the biggest strategic threat to our recovery from the pandemic, now that we have hopefully broken the link between covid infections and hospitalisations, is a new variant that will most likely emanate from somewhere where the people have not been vaccinated? How will cutting the funding for such projects help us? It is foolish and pointless.

People out there—our constituents—are beginning to notice. The last time I spoke about this matter in this place was on 15 June, days before the Chesham and Amersham by-election. Like many on the Opposition Benches who take an interest in foreign affairs, we accept that this is not always the most relevant concern on the doorstep—I occasionally hear it, but potholes and planning reform often take precedence. I was therefore genuinely surprised, in a good way, when aid cuts spontaneously came up on the doorstep in Chesham and Amersham as an example of why this Government could not be trusted.

One could be forgiven for thinking that those people were just Lib Dem or Labour voters anyway, but they were not. They were angry—an emotion I was also not expecting—because they were Conservative voters who had voted for the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) in 2019, giving him the benefit of the doubt, and now they felt that their vote was being taken for granted, and that this was as sure a sign as any that the Tory party had moved so far away from what they considered to be their roots that, for the very first time, they were planning to vote Lib Dem.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Perhaps Chesham and Amersham is a little unusual, but certainly that is not the message I am hearing from my constituents in South West Wiltshire. Neither was that the message given to YouGov in its polling of last November, which showed that 66% of the public were in favour of the temporary cut from 0.7% to 0.5%.

[Layla Moran]

Yes, that may certainly be the case, and I will come to polling in a moment, but the right hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that other polling that has been done—the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden referred to it—shows that if we ask the question, “Do you think aid spending should increase or decrease?”, the proportion of people who think it should increase has leapt nine percentage points this year, to 53%. The direction of travel on that question is upwards.

[Dr Murrison]

rose—

[Layla Moran]

No, I will continue, because this is the important point. To be perfectly honest, as a Lib Dem looking to take seats off the Conservatives in the blue wall, I welcome the Government’s complacency. The Coalition for Global Prosperity has done polling in those seats, and I know that this is not the sole issue—it is not even the top issue—but it is an issue, and it is one that many Conservative voters, especially in those areas but, actually, across the country, care about. When I raised that with the Foreign Secretary the day before the by-election, he said of voters in Chesham and Amersham:

“I do not think that they will be that daft”.—[Official Report, 15 June 2021; Vol. 697, c. 122.]

Well, they did vote Lib Dem, in quite surprising numbers.

The ink will dry on the PhDs that will be written about what happened in that seat, but the point I am trying to get across to the Government is that this matters. This is not just about the spending on one project here or there. It is the moral thing to do and it is the smart thing to do, but it is also the right thing to do, not just for the country but for their seats. People in those areas understand the interplay. They understand the link. They understand that if we want to sit proudly on the world stage and lead at COP26 but say to other countries across the world, “Do as we say, but don’t look at what we do,” then we are going to lose credibility. I urge the Government: please do not be complacent. Give us our vote, or even better, give us the assurance that 0.7% will return next year—no ifs, no buts.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

Indeed, that is an excellent point. People are very strongly in favour of vaccinating the world, and that is why I very much welcome the pledge made at the G7, which I understand will be in addition to the 0.5%. No doubt the Minister will confirm that.

[Dr Murrison]

Just on the subject of polling, the British Foreign Policy Group, which is hardly a right- wing organisation, polled this issue earlier this year. Some 72% of people would like to see a cessation or reduction in aid until the financial situation is resolved. We are in danger of batting these figures backwards and forwards. We must rely on what we hear on the doorstep. I do not know what my hon. Friend’s doorsteps are like, but mine are quite unequivocal on this matter.

[Harriett Baldwin]

What I would say is that there is one poll I would like to take—it is the one that Mr Speaker has asked us to take in this House—and that is a vote on whether the 0.7% should be changed to 0.5% on a forward-planning basis. That is the poll I would like to take. Last week in Prime Minister’s questions, in response to a question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), the Prime Minister indicated that today’s debate on the estimates was that vote.

I have looked into the matter, and I understand that if we voted down today’s estimates, not only would all diplomats stop being paid immediately, but a vote against estimates can only be done to reduce a budget, rather than to increase a budget. That is why I am perfectly happy to support today’s estimates, but I would like to see a separate, stand-alone vote on whether we should go from 0.7% to 0.5%. If this House agrees that, I do not have any problems with the constitutional situation. I think that would override what is in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015. We need to see a test through a poll of the Members of this House.

I am delighted to see that the economy is recovering very fast at the moment here in the UK, which I hope will mean that next year’s budget for overseas development assistance can start to increase once again. I am also delighted that the UK and Kenya are jointly co-hosting the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education at the end of July. I very much welcome the £430 million that the Prime Minister announced at the recent G7 towards global education. It is the single best investment we can make in the future of our planet in terms of making sure that every child gets 12 years of quality education. We all know how much that unlocks in terms of economic prosperity, a better climate and a healthier society, so that is an incredibly important thing to be doing.

Can I suggest to the Minister that, in encouraging a successful replenishment of the $5 billion that the Global Partnership for Education is seeking, we offer, as our economy grows, to match fund contributions from other donor countries around the world? I think that would be a really positive way of saying, “If you’ll put in more money, we’ll put in more money here in the UK.”

I would like to see a reversal of the 85% reduction to the United Nations Population Fund for family planning. I want every girl in the world to be able to access the same choices in family planning as we were all able to access in our lives. Of the countries around the world, one of the most alarming anecdotes I have heard about the impact of this reduction in aid spending is that in South Sudan the World Food Programme is saying it is now having to choose between feeding hungry children and feeding starving children. I would urge the Minister to put that very much at the top of his shopping list for his budget increase next year.

In conclusion, let us not argue about which poll says what. Let us have a poll in this place on this issue. Tonight’s vote is not the vote on that. Let us have a separate one.

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[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate, but it is actually quite painful as well, because none of us want to see a cut in the assistance that we give to other countries that are less well-favoured than we are.

This debate covers pages 183 to 196 of a meaty document that runs to 680 pages, and we have mainly focused—and correctly so—on international development. Other elements of the document will sadly be glossed over in our enthusiasm to debate this particular issue, but it is right that we should do so.

To those who have contributed so far, who I think have all been critical of the decision to go to 0.5%, I say that we should never make the excellent the enemy of the good. We should celebrate the good that UK aid does. An important point to make is that what the Government are charged to decide upon has real-life consequences, no question about it. If that were not so, we would be wasting billions of pounds every year, and manifestly we are not. The question is: how much should we be spending on international development in the longer term? If we are arguing for a reduction of £4.5 billion for this year but we are doing £4.5 billion of good work, perhaps we should be spending more in the future, rather than less, That point has been made by only one contributor today, from the Scottish National party.

I am not advocating that, because we have to make a judgment about what is a proper amount of our national income to spend on international development. Notwithstanding all the polling data cited today, when I am uncertain I have to listen to my constituents. I did so the last time I significantly rebelled against my own party, which was in 2003, over the Iraq war, and I would do so on an issue such as this. The message I get from my constituents on this issue—perhaps they dramatically differ from those in Chesham and Amersham, but I have no way of telling—is that this is something they are relaxed about, at best, on public spending. I get it in the neck for spending on education, healthcare, law and order, and all of those issues time and again. When I say, “Where are you going to find the money?”, nine times out of 10 the response, “International development” comes back at me. I have to justify this spend, because I do believe, as a former Minister in the then Department for International Development, in what this money is able to achieve. But we have to take the public with us, which is one reason why I was pleased about the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID. As a joint Minister at the time, I was very pleased to see those two Departments joined up because it seemed to me that that was one way of convincing the public that the international development work this Government do also achieves foreign policy goals; I see no problem with that at all, and neither do the overwhelming majority of other countries, particularly European countries, which do not separate the two functions.

I also welcome the fact that this move is temporary. I will be supporting the Government on this, but that is conditional on this being temporary. When that pledge was made, the UK economy and the prospects were not looking very good at all. I am happy to say that they have brightened up significantly since then,

[Anthony Mangnall]

How temporary is “temporary”?

[Dr Murrison]

One year is temporary; that is the pledge that has been made. I think that is a perfectly reasonable commitment to hold Ministers to. It could be that there is something else around the corner that can be interpreted as force majeure, as set out in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, but in the absence of that my belief is that this, as a temporary measure—one year—is acceptable. I do not like it—I loathe it and I accept my responsibility for some of the consequences—but it seems to me to be reasonable.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that this temporary cut will have lifelong consequences and life-ending consequences for the people we have it for?

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[Dr Murrison]

Yes, I do. Anybody who comes here thinking that somehow this is not going to have real-life consequences is delusional, and I made that point in my opening remarks. Otherwise, we would be wasting billions of pounds every year in the money that we have talked about—£4.5 billion in this case. I have never said we waste money on the good works that we do, although others take a different view for some of the fine detail. I believe it is good—it does good things, and we should be proud of and celebrate that. In supporting the Government on this measure, however, I have to accept my part of the responsibility for the fact that it will have real-life consequences.

I also welcome the Government’s focus on their seven priorities outlined in the integrated review, and I very much support its emphasis on Africa, which is absolutely right. Contained within it is an admission that going forward we cannot do everything and that as a middle-ranking country we now need to focus on what we do well. I urge Ministers to be very careful about the Daily Mail test in respect of the reputation of international development. Some legations abroad are tempted, with small pots of money available to ambassadors, to do what they think look like good projects on the ground. It is usually those projects, in my experience, that bring the whole thing into disrepute, and it is not worth the candle because it profoundly influences the views the public take of international development. It completely trashes the undoubtedly fantastic work done with the money that we allocate to international development, and it removes public support for international development, making it very difficult on the doorstep. To ensure that that does not happen, we need to take oversight.

We need to look again at the OECD straitjacket. I touched on some of this in my intervention on Lebanon. In my first-hand experience, we do great stuff on things that are not currently ODA-able, and we need to ensure that is, in some way, counted.

I praise the Government for their leadership on vaccines and COVAX, which is the issue of the moment, but I also sound a cautionary note. There is no point wheelbarrowing vaccines to countries that do not have adequate healthcare systems to deliver them. I do not want to see our vaccines simply used to vaccinate the elite in capital and regional cities. We need to be careful of that. What will the Minister do to improve those systems and the logistics behind them, perhaps using some of our very good assets such as armed forces medics and logisticians—I refer to my interest, as laid out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—because it seems there is a real role for them to play?

I support the comments made by the British Council. We do not do cultural imperialism, as several hon. and right hon. Members have mentioned. We get very close to it, but we do not have an Institut Français and we do not do Francophonie. We should be robust in defence of our values, as inculcated in the British Council.

I emphasise the importance of the English language, which is one of the best weapons and ambassadors we have. We do not own it. It is not exclusively our language any more, but we are its custodians, and the British Council propagates it in a way that cannot possibly fulfil the demand.

I hope very much that the loans extended to the British Council by the FCDO can become grants, which would be helpful and would enable it to do the great work it does, particularly on the English language.

Israel and Gaza: Ceasefire

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

Let me read verbatim a section from my opening speech. I said: “The UK position on evictions, demolitions and settlements is clear and long-standing: we oppose these activities. We urge the Government of Israel to cease their policies related to settlement expansion immediately and instead work towards a two-state solution.” So our position on the very questions that the right hon. Lady raised is clear and long standing, and I do not understand why she is raising them. Again, on the issue of Palestinian state recognition, the UK position is clear and long standing. We will do so when it is most conducive to advancing the peace effort.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Minister’s point on the two-state solution does him great credit and it should be clear for anybody to understand. Long-range rockets at scale are not possible without the involvement of a sophisticated, malign state actor that will never be content until the state of Israel is driven into the sea. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there will never be peace in the Levant, never be a two-state solution and never be a solution of any sort until Iran ceases to be a feral bandit state, uncouples itself from its regime and rediscovers the dignity, poise and leadership appropriate to its history and its culture?

[James Cleverly]

I thank my predecessor and good friend for the point that he raised. I have already said that the UK encourages Iran to be a more thoughtful and less disruptive regional player and to stop arming and supporting terrorist militia groups in the region. We will continue to work towards a two-state solution with the framework that has been explained from this Dispatch Box many times, and I pay tribute to the work that he did in this role to try to make that a reality.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

I recognise the work of the IDC and I am very pleased that its work is continuing. Let me just reiterate that when it comes to covid-19, the UK and the FCDO remain at the forefront. With the funds that we have, we continue to support the world’s poorest, and we will continue to focus on the bottom billion. Yes, it is about working with the development world, but it is also about working, where we can, with the public sector and the private sector. I look to the example of Oxford-AstraZeneca. The UK Government invested £84 million in helping to develop that vaccine, and we are now rolling it out. We have committed to the AMC, and we are absolutely committed to helping the world’s poorest.[Official Report, 25 January 2021, Vol. 688, c. 2MC.]

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to ensure UK science and technology plays a role in international development.

[The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)]

Scientific advances funded by the UK have helped drive reductions in extreme poverty, declines in childhood mortality and increases in life expectancy across the developing world. Our investments, including in affordable rapid diagnostic tests for covid-19 and the world’s first child-friendly antimalarial drug, are delivering benefit to hundreds of millions. We will continue to leverage UK and global scientific excellence and invest in cutting-edge technology and research to provide solutions to critical development challenges.

[Dr Murrison [V]]

The Government are doing extremely well in rolling out the vaccine in the UK. The AstraZeneca vaccine in particular is potentially deployable in developing countries. Will the Minister say at what point we will pass vaccines that we have ordered that greatly surpass the need of our population to COVAX? Does he agree that it is vital that, in advance of that, we do everything in our power to develop healthcare infrastructure in developing countries, without which a credible vaccine roll-out is just not possible?

[Nigel Adams]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I agree that we should be incredibly proud of the work that we have done with regard to the vaccine.

I have had meetings with my Philippine counterparts on vaccines, alongside AstraZeneca. We are supporting equitable access through our funding for the COVAX facility. We are one of the largest donors to the COVAX advance market commitment to support access for 92 developing countries; we have committed £548 million. COVAX’s partners, which include Gavi, the World Health Organisation and UNICEF, have huge experience in supporting developing country immunisation systems and the programming of immunisation. We expect the initial roll-out to COVAX AMC countries to start in the first quarter of this year.

Xinjiang: Forced Labour

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) [V]]

The Government are to be congratulated for the international leadership they have applied in this matter. To what extent does the Foreign Secretary think that the bribes, inducements and threats under the belt and road initiative are muting international condemnation from countries in Africa, the middle east and continental Europe that would otherwise be expected to join the UK wholeheartedly in condemning the depredations of President Xi and his people?

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend will know—I pay tribute to his time at the Foreign Office, where he was an exceptional Minister—the challenges we face. He asks about belt and road. The truth is that China is a massive investor all over the world. We can see, with the EU investment agreement right the way through to what the Chinese Government are doing in Africa, that there is a huge amount of money at stake.

China has asymmetric economic size and clout, and of course countries are bearing that in mind and taking that into account. What we have to do is ensure there is a compelling, plausible, credible alternative to those investments, and make sure that everyone understands the shared value and stake we have in upholding the rules-based international system, of which human rights are a key component.

Uyghur Slave Labour: Xinjiang

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this. I agree that there is a role for Government, but businesses have a vital role to play in ensuring that their supply chains are free of forced labour. We repeatedly urge businesses involved in investing in Xinjiang or with parts of their supply chain in the region to do so and to conduct that due diligence. We are going to make enhancements to the Modern Slavery Act. We have reinforced this message through very close engagement with businesses, industry groups and other stakeholders.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Well done, Chief Rabbi, for being one of the most authentic voices to speak out in support of the Uyghur people. Well done, Ministers, too, for taking a lead in October at the United Nations. Will the Minister persuade not only his colleagues, but the Governments that he persuaded in October to support the Uyghur people, to look at national public procurement supply chains to ensure that, while it is difficult to persuade the fashion industry to eschew dubiously sourced cotton, national Governments are doing everything in their power to ensure that products in their supply chains—I am thinking particularly of uniforms—have nothing to do with cotton sourced from countries that may be using forced labour?

[Nigel Adams]

My right hon. Friend is right. As I said, we are working cross-Government and we are working intensively with our international partners. It is absolutely the case that we should be bringing pressure to bear on those companies that are operating in the region. This is an area on which we will have a bit more to say in the new year, but I give him my assurance that we are working very co-operatively with our international partners on these issues, as well as across Government.

Hong Kong

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for all his work as the Prime Minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion and belief. We are aware of the designations by the US, and we will continue to consider designations under our regulations. I am more than happy to write to him to try to clear up the point he has made. Again, I apologise for repeating this, but it is important to emphasise that it really is not appropriate to speculate on who may be designated under the sanctions regime in future.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Depressingly, I think we know where all this will end, and it is not pretty. We are therefore into mitigation. Does my hon. Friend agree that, not least out of a sense of enlightened self-interest, we should encourage and welcome Hongkongers who wish to leave Hong Kong for the UK, as those from other countries have also done, noting, for example, those we welcomed from Hungary in 1956, as well as Iranians in 1979 and Chinese after Tiananmen Square in 1989?

[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.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

As I have said on a number of occasions, the debt, which we recognise, is unrelated. We are seeking ways to resolve this 40-year-old debt, but I am unwilling to go into further details about that as it is an ongoing situation. I would, however, echo the hon. Member’s point that the incarceration of all British dual national detainees in Iran is unacceptable and they should be released.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) for the tireless and impressive work she has done on behalf of her constituent. What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the likely impact of June’s presidential election in Tehran on Nazanin’s case? Obviously, Quds commander Qasem Soleimani will not be in the frame, but he was the front runner. Does my right hon. Friend feel he can make progress where previously that was not the case? To what extent does he feel that his interlocutors, Ministers Zarif and Araghchi, can have influence since the IRGC, which is actually pulling the strings, is very much separate from those to whom he speaks regularly?

[James Cleverly]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his work in this role prior to my tenure. He makes a strong point about the need to maintain working relations with a number of individuals in the Iranian Government, and we seek to do so. Ultimately,

I am not sure it is useful for me to speculate about the outcome of elections or which individuals may be in what posts, because the UK’s position will be unchanged: the detention is illegitimate, all the British dual national detainees should be released and we will continue to work with whoever is in whichever role to achieve that.

China

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

As I mentioned, the challenge will be evidential, in terms of establishing not just the abuses, but the individuals responsible. We are deeply concerned about the persecution of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners and others on the grounds of religion or belief in China, including, given the new national security legislation, the risk that that grip gets only tighter.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

For as long as China’s gross abuses go largely uncensored by the UN Human Rights Council, will my right hon. Friend ensure that the UK will continue to oppose resolutions made under item 7 at the UN Human Rights Council? That item seems grossly disproportionate, given that it singles out Israel for special attention, against its undeniably poor record, while China continues systemic, appalling institutional abuse against the Uyghur people and nobody at the UN Human Rights Council has anything to say about it.

[Dominic Raab]

I remember well from my right hon. Friend’s time as a Minister what a champion of human rights he was. The approach we will take is to hold the countries and the Governments to account for the worst human rights abuses and so far as we can—he will remember this from his time dealing with the UN—mitigate and avoid the politicisation of those by Governments and others who wish to subvert human rights more generally.

Bahrain: Prisoners Under Sentence of Death

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I was incredibly proud when my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary announced the UK’s independent sanctions regime and demonstrated to both the House and the world that the United Kingdom takes human rights abuses seriously and will deal with them. While we were a member of the European Union’s human rights sanctions regime, we had a convention where we did not discuss potential future sanctions, and that remains the convention under our domestic sanctions regime.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Father of the House on bringing forward this urgent question in such a timely manner. Does the Minister agree that cutting our modest and highly monitored technical assistance to Bahrain, particularly the special investigations unit and the ombudsman, would likely make matters worse? Will he use the influence that he has with Bahrain and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to ensure that the judiciary is distanced from the Executive and that sentencing discretion is reduced in those two countries, since it too often produces perverse and unpredictable outcomes?

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend and predecessor knows better than many the nature of our relationship. I commend him for his work on this issue directly with the Bahrainis. As I have found in many cases, both public and private, I can commend the work that he has done and agree wholeheartedly with it. It is the strength of our relationship—the long-standing, strong and powerful relationship between the Government of the UK and the Government of Bahrain—that allows us to support improvements when they are put in place and to ensure that oversight bodies improve their independence and effectiveness. We will continue to push for that improvement.

Official Development Assistance

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

May I start by very much welcoming this merger and the announcement of 16 June? I also welcome the Prime Minister’s recommitment to 0.7%. We are the only G7 country to so commit, and that has been the case since 2013. We need to be very proud of that. It was in the manifesto on which I stood and it is contained within statute, and I am very pleased that it will continue, but it has to be said that aid is not necessarily the best sell on the doorstep, as we found in December last year. The merger will make sense to many of our constituents, who are generous people but who also want a sense that there is something in it for them—that aid will indeed be in pursuit of the national interest, and the merger surely makes sense in that context.

I am also impressed by the OECD’s 2009 report “Managing Aid”, which laid out the bare facts that Britain is unique in how we have approached international development. Either we are right, or everybody else is right. We cannot all be right, and I have been impressed by the work of, for example, Norway, when I have been doing international development. Despite the fact it is a small country, it punches well above its weight in terms of the effect it manages to bring to bear, and that goes for other countries—often small countries—such as Ireland, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), the Chair of the Select Committee, made reference to Australia. Others have pointed out that there was something of an exodus when Australia merged its Foreign Office-equivalent and international development. I am concerned about the difference in terms and conditions between the civil servants in both Departments, who I know quite well and who I respect and admire enormously. Will the Minister say whether there will be a levelling up or levelling down of those terms and conditions of service in the new Department?

DFID spends its money extremely well, and that is recognised. Other Government Departments, sadly, do not do that. It is true that the Foreign Office tends to spend at the riskier end of the spectrum. It is true that DFID tends to spend its money through large NGOs. That is therefore safer, but nevertheless we need to ensure that the merger inculcates DFID good practice into our aid spending across Government. The test of the success of this evolution will be whether we are able to spend our money better, particularly for Departments other than DFID whose records are not brilliant.

Finally, I make mention of the Gavi replenishment, which the Prime Minister hosted on 4 June. It was a great success. I slightly regret the fact that we did not manage to have in person the Liverpool iteration and the iteration in London that I was planning when I was at DFID. It is an irony, is it not, that it took an infectious disease to throw that off track, but it was a huge success, with $8.8 billion committed for the world’s most vulnerable, potentially vaccinating 300 million children. That is an extraordinary achievement in diplomatic terms—a triumph—and I am enormously proud of that.

Covid will hit the bottom billion hardest. We need to ensure we look again at our aid budget to ensure that we use a large part of it to strengthen healthcare systems across the world, so that when we have an effective treatment for this awful condition and its probable successors and a vaccine that works, we are able to roll that out for those people. As covid has shown, we are all in it together. We are in a global village, and the new Department will be well-fitted to take up the challenges of the future.