Gibraltar

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

I am delighted that we are debating the report today. I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway). The debate would not be taking place today had it not been for his casting vote on the Committee to make sure that we have the report. It is right that we should address the multitude of issues that Gibraltar has faced over many years.

However, it is wrong that we as a Foreign Affairs Committee debate and discuss issues relating to a British territory. The Committee deals with the middle east, Europe and our relations with the United States and the wider world. There is only limited time to deal with matters relating to overseas territories that are sovereign British territories, are ultimately governed by this House and are subject to British law. A new arrangement is needed so that overseas territories issues are fast-tracked. There should be a way of dealing with those issues much more quickly to ensure that overseas territories that rely on the British Government to make decisions for them and to help them deal with important matters such as those that we are debating today are able to bring them to a Committee of the House, without having to wait a long time for a Select Committee to happen to look into the matter.

The hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) said that the report on Gibraltar arose from a report we were doing on consular services. Had we not done that report and had we not gone to Malaga, I do not think we would ever have gone to Gibraltar to look into this serious issue. There must in future be a better way of dealing with issues relating to overseas territories; otherwise they will be overlooked and a serious debate such as we are having today will never take place.

As is evident from the speeches that we have heard, we are all proud of the special constitutional relationship Gibraltar has with the United Kingdom as a British overseas territory. Gibraltar is British. It has been British for over 300 years and I believe it will always remain British, not because we have decided that but because the people of the Rock have chosen that destiny. They have made their choice over and over again. The sad thing is that our Foreign Office—or our Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as it should be called—has never treated Gibraltar as equally British. It has always treated it like something down the road, to be looked at. We are always worried about upsetting Madrid, always worried about what Spain will say if we do anything on Gibraltar.

Having spoken on the subject for nearly 14 years in the Chamber, I am heartily fed up with the failure of the Foreign Office to acknowledge that Gibraltar should be defended in the same way as we would defend our own constituents. It is time that the Minister and the Foreign Office changed their approach not only to Gibraltar but to British overseas territories in general.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

I am sure my hon. Friend, like me, has had the opportunity to visit Gibraltar on its national day, when everybody turns out and says that they are proud to be from Gibraltar and proud to be British. If our own Minister has not had an opportunity to do so, would it not be a good idea if he visited Gibraltar on national day and joined in the celebrations of being British and being Gibraltarian?

[Andrew Rosindell]

My hon. Friend is right. I have been privileged to go to Gibraltar national day on many occasions over the years. It is impossible to find people who are prouder of their British nationality and more determined to retain that nationality, but who feel, as we do, part of the great British family, yet continually have to justify their desire to stay British. Gibraltar is not treated as equally British, as we would expect our constituencies to be treated if ever they were under threat or if ever they were attacked by a foreign power. We need a new arrangement to give our overseas territories, particularly Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, which have a similar problem, the right to be heard in this House, via a Select Committee or by some other means.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) referred to Gibraltar national day. I would like to commend our Prime Minister, who the year before last became the first to send a televised message for national day, which was shown in Casemates square in Gibraltar. However, it is time that he, or even the Minister, visited Gibraltar for national day. Furthermore, it is time that there was a royal visit to Gibraltar, as my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) said. It is more than 60 years since Her Majesty the Queen visited Gibraltar. There has not been a visit by the Queen of Gibraltar in over 60 years. I think that is completely unacceptable. I have raised the matter with the Minister many times but have never got an answer from anyone in the Government.

I am delighted to hear that the Queen is to make a state visit to Germany later this year. Gibraltar is not much further away, and I have no doubt that the Government of Gibraltar would extend a very warm invitation to Her Majesty, so I ask our Government, in the last few months of this Parliament, to clear any block there might be to a royal visit. Please allow the Queen of Gibraltar the opportunity to visit her people on the Rock. There could be no clearer signal that we are utterly committed to Gibraltar and determined to support it and give it the full recognition it deserves as a loyal territory of the Crown.

So much has been said today about the problems with the borders, the maritime disputes, the European Union’s failure properly to address the issues we are debating and the negligence of the Foreign Office. I am pleased that Members of Parliament now understand the situation better than they did 14 years ago. When I was first elected, many barely even knew what Gibraltar was. Now Members on both sides of the House understand that a British overseas territory is British and that we have a duty to look after and defend its people. Dreadful mistakes were made in 2001 and 2002, when the previous Government attempted to impose a joint sovereignty deal with Madrid. I do not think that any political party in this country would make such a horrendous mistake again. That is a good thing, because it means a lesson has been learnt.

However, we cannot move forward unless the Foreign and Commonwealth Office changes its approach root and branch. We must stop appeasing Madrid and being afraid of upsetting the Spanish Government in case they might not co-operate with us on the many areas that the hon. Member for Ilford South referred to. We want to co-operate, but there cannot be good relations with the kingdom of Spain as long as it bullies British subjects living close to its land. We must give Spain the message loud and clear that its attitude to Gibraltar is unacceptable to the British Parliament and to the British people. Only the Foreign Office has the authority to make those kinds of decisions in order to show Spain that its actions have consequences. For as long as Spain continues to behave in this fashion, there will be consequences. Relations between the United Kingdom and Spain will never be warm as long as it continues to bully the people of the Rock. We need a complete shake-up in Government policy. We require a more robust stance in dealing with the issues to which I and other hon. Members have referred today.

There is one other thing that we must do. It is, in my view, completely unacceptable that the only countries and territories within the Commonwealth that are continually denied the right to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday are the British overseas territories. It is inexcusable that no one from Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands or any other British territory is invited to lay a wreath. We know what the argument is going to be—that the Foreign Secretary does it on behalf of the overseas territories. Well, I have news for the Minister: the Foreign Secretary was not elected by the citizens of the overseas territories; he is the British Foreign Secretary elected by the British people. The people of Gibraltar have not chosen the Foreign Secretary to lay a wreath on their behalf. Gibraltar has sent soldiers to fight and die for king, queen and country over hundreds of years, and so have the other overseas territories. If they send soldiers to fight, they should be allowed to lay a wreath on behalf of those who have lost their lives. It is inexcusable. I have heard every excuse about the palace objecting, the Foreign Secretary not having a role any more, and so on. It is all nonsense; we all know the truth. It is time that the overseas territories were given this right.

I have here a letter to the Prime Minister from the chairman of the United Kingdom Overseas Territories Association, Albert Poggio GMH OBE, who, as we all know, is the excellent head of the Gibraltar Government office here in London. Let me quote some of his words:

“Countless numbers of persons from Gibraltar and the other Overseas Territories made the supreme sacrifice in the service of the Crown and the United Kingdom in all the Wars of the 20th Century, as well as in the more recent conflicts of the 21st Century. For the Representatives of their Governments to be excluded from the Remembrance Service is, to be frank, offensive and perverse…We believe that it is now time that each of the Overseas Territories had a wreath laid by each of the Territories’ UK Representatives, on the same basis and immediately following those wreaths laid by the Commonwealth High Commissioners.”

Who can argue with that point of view?

We must raise this issue and bring it to a head before the general election. I call on the Prime Minister to intervene personally and once and for all, for ever more, give the British overseas territories the right to lay a wreath on Remembrance Sunday, just as we have this year allowed the Irish Government—the Irish ambassador —to lay a wreath in recognition of the sacrifices that Irish citizens made in the first world war and in other conflicts. This matter is overdue for resolution. I urge the Minister to take it away and resolve it before Parliament is dissolved at the end of March.

We could speak about this issue for far longer than we have time for in this debate. I feel deeply passionate about Gibraltar and wholeheartedly endorse all the comments made by my right hon. and hon. Friends. The time has come to stop appeasing Madrid, to stop pussy-footing over this issue, and to show the people of Gibraltar that we are truly on their side. People have died throughout the centuries to defend British freedom, British democracy and British territories. By being so weak over Gibraltar, as we are at the moment, we are betraying all those people who have defended British freedom over all those centuries. It is time for this Government to show real action and to defend Gibraltar as it deserves to be defended: as a British territory—a territory of the Crown—that should always be British. We have a duty to stand by it.