Rohingya Refugee Crisis

Debate between Anne Main and Helen Goodman

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this important debate. At the beginning of her speech, my hon. Friend drew our attention to the motion before the House, and I am going to begin in the same way:

“this House is deeply concerned by the ongoing humanitarian crisis…agrees with the findings of the UN fact-finding mission that genocide and war crimes have been carried out…calls on the Government to pursue an ICC referral…and further calls on the Government to put pressure on the United Nations.”

The fact of the matter is that we are not going to divide the House this afternoon. This is a substantive motion. It means that the Government, having accepted it, must carry through in full with action.

My hon. Friend made an excellent speech, in which she pointed out that the UN fact-finding mission has found that genocide and war crimes have been committed. I thank her for her work in not only securing the debate but visiting the refugees, preparing so thoroughly and putting pressure on the Myanmar Government. As she said, half the refugees are children, so the horror and catastrophe of this situation cannot be exaggerated. She said, as other Members have, that she was disappointed in the Government’s response. Later in my speech, I will suggest some ways in which we could toughen up the UK’s position.

It is now 16 months since three quarters of a million Rohingya people began to cross the border into Bangladesh. In the camps, there is plainly terrible suffering and squalid conditions—many Members have testified to that —but, of course, the situation from which they were escaping and the horror of the sexual violence were even worse.

All Members have rightly acknowledged the great generosity of the Bangladeshi Government. I also want to thank the voluntary sector for not only its support in briefing us for the debate but the work it is doing day in, day out, including Save the Children, Burma Campaign UK, the International Rescue Committee, Human Rights Watch and the UNHRC.

I was somewhat alarmed when I discovered that the Myanmar and Bangladeshi Governments had reached a new agreement on repatriation and registered all the refugees in the camps, which is the necessary base for repatriation. The main question is: are the conditions right for a safe, voluntary and dignified return? This House is sending a message to both those Governments that the answer is an emphatic no; those conditions are not yet present.

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Lady is referring to the memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries. It is worth putting on record that there was no voice for the Rohingya in the dialogue on the memorandum of understanding. They were being talked about, done to and organised around, but they did not have a voice at that negotiating table.

[Helen Goodman]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention and she is absolutely right. She made a powerful speech. Through their work and actions, she and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) have demonstrated that there is a consensus across the House on this matter, to which we want Ministers to listen and pay attention. She asked, what would be different in December 2019 and why should we wait for the independent commission of inquiry, because this is surely a recipe for delay and the loss of evidence.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who chairs the International Development Committee, made an excellent speech in which he emphasised the problems with repatriation and the conditions in the camps. He stressed the importance of enabling people in the camps to work and secure an education. He pointed out that this problem will not be solved quickly, and we need to borrow from best practice in other countries in order that these people do not become a lost generation.

The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, who is the Select Committee’s rapporteur, gave us the benefit of his deep and long-standing understanding and emphasised that the Rohingya themselves must have more control in this situation. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) demonstrated that the gender-based violence is not the result of an army out of control but is being used as a systematic weapon of war. He expressed his frustration with the position that the British Government have taken. He talked, in particular, about children born in the camps. There is a question for the Minister flowing from his remarks: what is the legal status of these children? It would be very helpful if we could have a clear legal view from the Foreign Office on their legal status, because we are clearly talking about thousands of young children. My hon. Friend also pointed out that relying on the internal state to provide security for the Rohingya people is completely inadequate.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) talked about the catastrophe suffered by two people, in particular. As so often, the horror is easier to understand when one hears about individuals than when one hears about thousands of people. She also pointed to the propaganda war that has been run over a long period. Will the Minister consider what the legal responsibilities are of the social media companies? What, precisely, are the responsibilities that we should be attributing to Facebook—and, incidentally, has it given any money from its huge profits to address this vast humanitarian crisis?

My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) spoke about the atrocities that have occurred. Her testimony was so powerful that I really feel that I do not want even to begin to comment on it. She ended by saying that we need to move from platitudes to promises, and I completely agree.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) pointed to the most recent evidence that has come out of the country. All hon. Members have said that the treatment of the Rohingya is obviously the most horrific act of the Myanmar Government, but a number of things are going on in the country that show that it is not open or properly democratic. The Government made a strategic error when they jailed two Reuters journalists, because now Reuters is using satellite photography that shows that villages are being bulldozed and new people are being put into them. That reinforces the case that hon. Members are making that, when the Myanmar Government say that people should go back into Rakhine state, they mean that they are just going to be put into camps—enclosed, not given freedom of movement. That, in itself, is a completely unacceptable and unsafe situation. They are continuing to oppress the Rohingya people and they are suppressing open reporting.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on international freedom of religion or belief, made a heartfelt call for improvements across the board in Myanmar. I agree with him about what is happening to the Chin people. I was extremely alarmed—again, I would like some answers from the Minister on this—when I heard on the World Service that the UNHCR was proposing to send back people from that ethnic minority who are currently refugees in Malaysia, India, Thailand and Nepal. So I wrote to the UNHCR to ask it about this. I wrote for two reasons, partly out of concern for that group of people and partly because it sets a terrible precedent for the Rohingya minority. I had a letter back from the UNHCR at the end of November, and it said that the reasons giving rise to a fear of persecution under the 1951 convention have very significantly diminished. I will share the letter with the Minister afterwards, but I would like to know whether that is also the Foreign Office’s assessment. I do not think it is the assessment of hon. Members, not least because we have seen the Rohingya people continuing to cross the border throughout the year.

The big question, of course, is, what should be done? What should we do now? The Government are telling us that they think we should allow the Burmese Government to carry on with the process they call a commission of inquiry. The UK Government want to press them to ensure that the process is transparent, independent and considers international evidence. Everything we know about the Myanmar Government suggests that we cannot have confidence in an internal inquiry. Myanmar is not a country with a robust criminal justice system, and there is a big risk in behaving as if it is such a country. The risk is that people escape, that evidence is lost, that nothing ever happens and that people are not brought to justice.

Her Majesty’s Opposition believe it is now time to have a UN Security Council resolution referring the Myanmar military to the ICC. When the Minister wrote to me about that a few days ago, he said that we would lose and that it would not advance the cause of accountability should the UNSC try and fail to refer Burma to the ICC. I do not think for a single moment that that is an easy judgment to make, and nor do I think any Member would think that, but we need to look at where we think the opposition to such a resolution would come from.

First, of course, there is the risk of a Chinese veto. As part of its belt and road initiative, China is currently trying to build a port in Rakhine state. China is continually arguing that the Rohingya are an internal issue. That is clearly because China wants to have a good relationship with the Myanmar Government so it is able to continue with its belt and road initiative, and in my opinion it is also because China does not want people looking too closely at how it is treating the Muslim Uighur minority in the west of China.

We are also beginning to see an undermining of the ICC by the Trump Administration. John Bolton, the US national security adviser, recently said that the ICC is “dead to us”. He does not want the ICC to prosecute US army officials for alleged abuses in Afghanistan.

The question is really whether the British Government wish to hand over their moral conscience to the Chinese and the Trump Administration. Would it not be better to be open and straightforward by standing up for what we believe and letting them be tried in the court of public opinion?

Other hon. Members have talked about sanctions, and we now have individual sanctions against some members of the Myanmar military. However, two further strengthenings would send helpful and powerful signals. Unless we put more pressure on the Myanmar Government, they will feel that they have some impunity. The first point is to have a UN-mandated global arms embargo, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister thinks about the scope for that. The second point is to extend European sanctions, which at the moment are on individuals, to that part of the economy controlled by the military. We know there are travel restrictions on some of the Myanmar military, but we do not know—again, this is a specific question for the Government—what assets have been frozen so far.

Bow Match Women’s Strike

Debate between Anne Main and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure, Mr Dobbin, to serve under your chairmanship this morning. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who gave us the opportunity to hold what has been an excellent debate. The contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), and the passionate and beautiful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) were fantastic. They have shown why oral history matters and how looking back illuminates the past and the present.

[Mrs Anne Main in the Chair]

My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham began with a thorough exposition of the history, and was absolutely right to say that this was an extremely important episode in the history of women and the trade union movement in this country. It is easy to think that 125 years ago is a long time, but it is not so long ago. My father took some nice film of me when I was a little baby with my great grandmother, who was an exact contemporary of the women who worked in the Bryant & May factory. She was sent to work at the age of nine, and she worked in a Nottingham lace factory. It really is not so long ago that people were working in those horrendous conditions in this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South is right that the subject was written about very clearly by Engels, and in fact, the Nottingham lace factories are described very well in volume I of “Das Kapital”. I was absolutely delighted when I came across that, because I knew the truth from my family history. My tutor was also delighted that he had set a text that resonated so strongly with his student—the irony was that he was Andrew Glyn from the Glyn banking family.

What could the Government do to recognise the strike? We have heard that we could have a revision of the blue plaque in the east end, and perhaps the Minister will say something about that. Perhaps we could have something in the curriculum. Another cultural artefact that many of us would like to be covered in the curriculum and that recognises women’s contributions to the trade union movement is the excellent film, “Made in Dagenham”. All these feisty women come from the east end—it is absolutely clear that the heart of radical feminism is down in the east end.

In the north-east, as everybody knows, we have a big Durham miners’ gala, and this year, one of the primary schools in Spennymoor made a banner to go alongside the banners carried by the former miners. The banner referred to all the progress in the Factory Acts and in children’s legislation. Enabling children to understand those important episodes in British history really makes a significant difference. I hope that the Minister will say something about the conversations he will have with his colleagues in the Department for Education about the curriculum, because that would be another way in which the Government could recognise the match workers’ strike of 125 years ago.

A further thing that the Minister could do in recognition is take a different stance on the conditions of workers in the south. As several of my hon. Friends have mentioned, the horrific collapse of the garment factory in Dhaka, in Bangladesh, is not something about which we can say, “We are not connected. We are not responsible.” We are completely connected and bound up with what is going on in other parts of the world. As a matter of fact, one thing that the European Union has done is to put conditions on Bangladesh that it has to meet if it is to maintain its duty-free access to our clothing markets. One of the conditions is that there should be better trade union recognition rights. The International Labour Organisation is currently working on that to raise standards in Bangladesh, so that is another thing that the Minister could take on. He may say, “Well, that is a matter for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; it is not my responsibility,” but let me bring him to his Department and to another area where labour conditions are on the agenda.

The World cup will be held in Qatar, and as the Minister knows, there is a huge scandal about the workers who will die in the construction of the football stadia there. It would be great if we could hear today what his Department will do about that. What representations has it made to FIFA on labour conditions in Qatar? This is another episode in which we can address the issue squarely. We can ask whether it is acceptable for the World cup to be in Qatar and, if it is to be there, what standards have to be maintained, or we can pretend that it has nothing to do with us. We can turn and walk away.

The Minister is not only the Minister for blue plaques, but the Minister for mobile phones. I do not know whether he has seen the documentary, “Blood in the Mobile”, but we all have these little mobile phones. We all tweet, text and have them in our hands all the time, but many minerals that are used in mobile phones come from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The mining of those minerals is fuelling the conflict in the Congo, and, of course, the labour conditions are terrible. What transparency is the Minister demanding from mobile phone companies? What will he do to raise standards in the new technology sector? Of course, it is great that we have new technology—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I understand that this has been a wide-ranging debate, but it may well be ranging rather too far from the Minister’s brief for him to be able to give the answers today. I would be grateful if you could get slightly further back towards the topic.

[Helen Goodman]

I was trying to give examples of the sorts of things that the Minister could do to demonstrate to us that he has truly taken on board the lessons and understood the importance of the strike in Bow. I was looking for things that were in the bailiwick of his Department, and indeed, in his bailiwick.

I went to see the people who made that documentary last week, and while I was there, I saw the ship to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South referred. He is absolutely right: instead of addressing the issues, Ministers are engaging in a race to the bottom. That is why the struggles of the women whom we are talking about—for free trade unions, for better health and safety, for better maternity rights, and all those things—are absolutely relevant, because in this country today, it is women’s unemployment that has gone up the most. We now have 1 million women unemployed in this country. We have a massive gender pay gap. In the private sector, the gap between men’s and women’s pay is 14%, and in the public sector it is 25%. However, if there is one thing I would like the Minister to do to recognise this strike—one thing that I think would make a massive difference and bring us bang up to date—it would be to ensure that the Government do not go ahead with the 70% cut to funding for the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Without the proper resources, we cannot enable women to defend their rights at work as they should be able to.

I would like to end as I began: by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham. This has been an excellent, quite extraordinary, debate. I am grateful to her for bringing the issue to the attention of the House, and I am pleased that I have personally been able to contribute. The lessons of the strike are extremely important, and I salute the women of Bow.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Anne Main and Helen Goodman

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I am not decrying lobbyists. What I am saying is that I need to know who they are, what they are doing, when they are doing it, who they have spoken to and what happened as a result of those conversations, however informal or formal. The register will not capture that. I am sorry if I have offended any gentle lobbyist anywhere, but there are quite a few lobbyists whom I would not give the time of day to. Indeed, I have named them. I think that Mr Hoare knows my views on his lobbying activities in my constituency.

I am sure that the scenario that I described last week is not unique; I was just fortunate enough to find out about aspects of it. Once there is a chink in the dam, there is a chance that the lobbyist will effect the result that they want, but that does not happen in a transparent fashion. Subtle messages and arguments over a private lunch or a catch-up with old chums get results, so why will we not see more of that practice if it is not captured by the Bill?

If lobbying is the next big disaster to hit Parliament, the public have the right to expect us to deliver. I believe that we have the opportunity to deliver a way of recognising where these lobbyists are, for good or bad, and what they are doing. We need to amend the Bill today. Whichever amendments get picked up, I think that we should run with them to show that this House is bigger than party politics.

Dwight Eisenhower, who many people consider to have been a great man who gave great quotes, said:

“You have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominoes set up. You knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have the beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.”

That crumbling effect is exactly what a lobbyist seeks to effect behind the scenes. They pick their domino. One never knows who that domino is. It might be somebody who works in a Department, a Minister or anyone else who has influence in the chain of argument. When that domino falls, the chain reaction can have the most profound influences. In my case, a refusal was turned into a permission. I believe that, but I cannot prove it. When the domino effect happens, it is amazing how other people pick things up and run with them. Most people are never lobbied directly—it all goes back through the chain reaction to the original lobbying.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am very interested in what the hon. Lady is saying. I am not clear whether her new clause covers the wide penumbra of public and quasi-governmental organisations that spend a lot of public money and that can be influenced in the way they spend that money. I think, for example, of health authorities and local enterprise partnerships. Do we not need to address the influence on those local authorities, with respect not only to policy, but to how they spend public money?

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Lady raises a large number of points. As I have said, I am not wedded to new clause 5. It would perhaps be somewhat cumbersome to remove the existing clause and insert my new clause. However, it does seek to cover anyone acting on behalf of a client or an employer and anyone acting as a volunteer on behalf of a charitable organisation or on their own behalf.