India: Persecution of Minority Groups

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Before I begin, I want to say that I resent having to come here this morning. I also resent the fact that this will be one of the last debates that we are able to have in Westminster Hall. Scrutiny is very important, and the scrutiny we do in this Chamber is important, but we should be able to do it remotely and observe the guidance that the Government have given to others.

Imagine when the Windrush scandal broke in the UK if there had been a debate in the Indian Parliament about the persecution of black people in Britain. Or, in 2011, when the London riots broke out after the police shooting of Mark Duggan, that there had been questions asked in the Indian Parliament about the impartiality of the Metropolitan police, and how it was that they stood by and did not use force to stop the rioters for four days before those riots were brought under control. Imagine that there had been debates in the Indian Parliament all through the troubles in Northern Ireland, accusing the British Government of persecuting the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.

I say this, not to minimise the subject that hon. Members have brought for debate in this Chamber today—injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere—but to give ourselves a sense of humility and a little perspective about how we might feel, as parliamentarians, if legislators in India were to pronounce on our institutions from afar, putting us under the microscope in the same way that colleagues are doing for their Indian counterparts today.

Add to that the fact that the UK is the former colonial power, whose influence in what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh was not entirely beneficent, and certainly not above pitting one religious or ethnic group against the other. In this light, it is not beyond ordinary powers of imagination to conceive that people in India might not regard our intervention as either wholly welcome or appropriate.

Many of my own constituents—British citizens whose families were originally from India—have written to me, outraged by the very fact that we are holding this debate at all. One of my constituents’ letters says:

“It is a very difficult time in the UK due to the severe impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It is surprising to know that elected British Members of Parliament are debating subjects attacking the Government of India, rather than focusing on UK priorities.”

There is of course a debate on covid in the Commons Chamber today, and I do not think that we must confine our debates only to immediate to domestic priorities, so perhaps I should have begun my remarks by declaring my interests. I am a Christian and I therefore have an interest to prevent the persecution of my fellow Christians; but, then, I am also a human being and I have never understood how anyone can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation, let alone the persecution, of a fellow being. I am also the founding chair of Labour Friends of India, and as one of India’s longest-standing friends in the UK Parliament, I am keen to see that the true nature of Indian democracy is properly represented and not distorted.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me?

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[Barry Gardiner]

I shall refer to the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks later, but at this point I will continue to make some progress. I represent the constituency of Brent North, which only Newham, which includes the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), might be able to rival for diversity of ethnicity and religious faith. Perhaps 40% of the families in my constituency are originally from the Indian subcontinent. Many are Hindu and many are Muslim and I am equally at home visiting the mosque or the mandir.

As a Christian, I remember the appalling murder of the Christian missionary Graham Staines in Odisha. He was burned to death with his two little boys, aged 10 and six, when Dara Singh led a group of Hindu militants who set light to the van that they were sleeping in. I think I was the first person in this Parliament to raise the matter with the then high commissioner, my good friend Lalit Mansingh. As a human being, I also remember that Dara Singh murdered the Muslim trader Sheikh Rehman, chopping off his hands before setting him alight too. Psychopaths and murderers exist in all countries, but when talking of persecution it is important to examine how the authorities in those countries respond to such atrocities. The Indian constitution is, importantly, a secular constitution and it provides for protections of minority communities including Sikhs, Muslims, Jains, Buddhists and Christians. Though different political parties have formed the Government since its independence, all have respected the constitution and worked within its boundaries, so it is important to say that 21 years later, Dara Singh is still serving a life sentence for his crimes. It is also important that he was convicted in the year 2000 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, at the head of a Hindu nationalist BJP Government.

In June 2017, in response to the growing violence of Hindu mobs known as cow vigilantes, it was the current Hindu nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who spoke out against that violence and proclaimed that killing people in the name of protecting cows was criminal, illogical and unacceptable. When the Muslim trader Alimuddin Ansari was later lynched by a Hindu mob for allegedly transporting beef, 11 people were sentenced to life imprisonment, including one local BJP worker. That justice was meted out by a fast-track court and was the first case ever successfully prosecuted against such religious extremists in India. The state acted. It did not sanction the atrocities. Are there atrocities in India? Yes, there are. Are they often perpetrated against religious minorities? Yes, they are. Do they represent persecution by the state? No, they do not. Islam is the second largest religion in India. There are 40 million Muslims in Uttar Pradesh alone. As the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said, there are 1.4 billion people in India and the second largest population is Muslim. He spoke of 1,000 attacks on minorities.

[Jim Shannon]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is trying to make, but what has unfortunately not come across yet—I ask him to reflect on this—is the fact that, in the legal system in India, four more Indian states are to introduce anti-conversion laws. That means that 1.3 billion people will be under specific state law and state changes that disadvantage them, and 1.9 million Rohingyas do not have the right of citizenship. I understand the points that the hon. Gentleman is making, but I have to say this: we are here to speak on behalf of those who have no voice. We should be their voice in this Chamber.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making his points so clearly. Let me try to address them. He spoke of Muslims being stripped of their citizenship rights—no. Actually, they are not stripped of rights that they ever had. They were not citizens; they were classed as illegal migrants into the country.

It is very important when talking about India and religious persecution to consider the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019. India is one of the world’s top destinations for illegal migrants. Most are Muslims who come from the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Pew Research Center estimates that they number 3.2 million and 1.1 million from Bangladesh and Pakistan respectively. The Act provided a pathway for illegal migrants to become citizens of India where they had been victims of religious persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan. It established the important legal principle of non-refoulement by offering shelter to refugees who fled those countries due to discrimination based on religion. It gave that right to Christians, Parsis, Jains and Buddhists.

The Act was passed in both the Lok Sabha, where the BJP Government hold a majority, and the upper Rajya Sabha, where they do not. It sparked riots and outrage because the pathway was not open to Muslims. The argument applied by the Indian Government is that those are Muslim countries, and therefore Muslims coming to India as migrants could not be persecuted religious minorities.

The right hon. Member for Gainsborough spoke about Ahmadiyya Muslims, and I entirely agree with him. The Indian Government say that the legislation discriminates not against Muslims per se, but only against illegal immigrants who do not have a well-founded fear of persecution in their country of origin. There is a basic logic to that argument, and I disagree with it. It is clear to me that if someone is an Ahmadiyya Muslim or a gay Muslim, it is perfectly possible—indeed, highly probable—that they have suffered religious persecution in one of those countries. It is also possible that Christians or Parsis have come without actually having a well-founded fear of being persecuted. They may simply be an illegal migrant, rather than a genuine refugee. Better, in my view, that the law should seek not to treat illegal immigrants on the basis of broad religious categories at all, but to consider each individual case on its merit. However, India is a sovereign country with an established democracy, and I respect its right to enact legislation whether or not I think it clumsy or ill-framed.

As people criticise India for legislation that is giving citizenship to tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, perhaps we should recall that just in December, a British Home Office Minister complained to the Home Affairs Committee that we had been unable to get the French to agree to a policy of turning back migrant boats in the channel. As India enacts the principle of non-refoulement, we are busy trying to do the opposite. Sometimes, as a Christian, I think we would do better to cast out the beam from our own eye, and then we might see clearly to case out the mote from our neighbour’s.

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[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for leading today’s debate on behalf of the APPG for freedom of religion or belief. In paying tribute to fellow APPG members, I also congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on her appointment as the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief. I know that she has a personal passion for this subject, and I do not doubt at all that she will be an outstanding envoy for the Government, so I wish her well on behalf of my party.

In the run-up to this morning’s debate, I have to say that I have been fascinated—indeed, quite perplexed—by the knee-jerk reaction to the debate. That extends to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner): if I followed the logic of his remarks that we should not be interfering in the domestic politics of other countries, particularly countries that the UK once ruled over, surely the same would be true of the United States of America, but I recall that fairly recently he had lots to say about George Floyd. The reality is that foreign affairs is a reserved matter for this Parliament, and it is entirely right for Members of this House to comment on it.

[Barry Gardiner]

I do not doubt for a moment that we should be engaged in foreign affairs, and we have the right to debate what we wish in this House. I did not suggest otherwise; what I did say was that we should always do so with a sense of humility and appropriateness, and in this particular case, remembering that we were a colonial power that was engaged in pitting one section of the community against the other for over 200 years.

[David Linden]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and that is a point that I will echo later in my speech. However, several hon. Members in Westminster Hall today have been recipients of emails from members of the Indian diaspora, the High Commission of India, and even a Member of the House of Lords, all getting their excuses in early and suggesting that the issues raised in today’s debate are overblown or misplaced. Only this morning, a number of us received an email with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards copied in, complaining that by taking part in this debate we were in breach of the MPs’ code of conduct—which is frankly nonsense, and I expect the Commissioner will clarify that.

As a Scottish nationalist MP, I understand the optics of India’s former colonial rulers being seen to lecture them on human rights and democracy; that is an irony that will not be lost on many people. However, as I said earlier, foreign affairs is still very much a matter reserved to this Parliament, and it is therefore right that we comment, whether on India or on other parts of the world. I have no problem whatsoever with other Parliaments commenting on our situation as well.

In an email that we received from the noble Lord Ranger, we were reminded—if not rebuked—that India is the largest working democracy globally. I have to say, being reminded by an unelected peer about India being a democracy was certainly a novel experience, but Lord Ranger went on to say that

“a free trade agreement is on the cards in the not too distant future.”

He is right: it is precisely because India is the world’s largest democracy, and a country with which the UK seeks a free trade agreement, that we are having this debate today and bringing into sharp focus violations of FORB and persecution of minority groups.

Religious persecution in India is a topic that I have been following for several years now, but I want to draw the attention of the House to a report from Open Doors UK, entitled “We’re Indians Too”. That report provided a sobering analysis of the escalating human rights violations against religious minority communities in India. Although religion-based violence has existed for years, analysis of instances since 2014 demonstrate that Hindu extremists have created an environment of hate and intolerance towards India’s religious minorities, primarily its Christian and Muslim communities. This in turn has led to an escalation of violence, social ostracism, property destruction, hate speech, disruption of peaceful non-Hindu religious activities, and false accusations of conversion activities. This has all been compounded yet further by the emergence of covid-19. We have heard alarming testimony of Christians from different states walking hundreds of miles to Madhya Pradesh state, being denied rations and informed that they would not have access to assistance. Indeed, the hon. Member for Strangford has said already that Muslims continue to be targeted as a perceived source of coronavirus and in many cases have been denied medical treatment as a result of that rhetoric.

Just as I have paid tribute to the work of Open Doors, I also want to thank Christian Solidarity Worldwide for all of its advocacy in respect of India. With your forbearance, Mr Robertson, I want to single out Joanne Moore who has been instrumental in briefing me on FORB issues over the years, specifically on but not limited to India. Joanne leaves CSW this month and will be enormously missed by all of us in the House who have appreciated her diligence, passion and expertise.

The South Asia state of minorities report of 2020, published just last month, paints a picture of spiting, oppressive and minority politics, the criminalisation of dissent and a deteriorating humanitarian situation within India. Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, wrote, and I quote:

“In India, human rights defenders and religious minorities protesting discriminatory laws and practices have faced restrictions, violence, criminal defamation, detention and harassment.”

She went on to say:

“Other recent legislation limits freedom of opinion and expression, in the guise of preventing disharmony and disaffection.”

The situation is grave, and the UK has a role to play, I would argue. It is imperative that the Prime Minister’s upcoming trip to India in the first half of 2021 is used to send a signal that an enhanced trade partnership between the UK and India will not be signed until real change is realised. The British Government often comment that the UK has very constructive relations with India. It is precisely for that reason, Mr Robertson, that we should be acting as a critical friend when it comes to advocating for minority groups facing persecution. As with any negotiation there are trade-offs, but turning a blind eye to the persecution of religious minorities should not be one of them. It must be the case that that remains a priority for the British Government and this matter should be a red line in any future trade agreement.

Last night the House had an excellent debate on the concept of global Britain. I made it clear then and I do so again today that global Britain is not the SNP’s project. We wish it well, but we do not wish Scotland to be a part of it for obvious reasons. However, an early first test for global Britain is in confronting the increasingly thuggish Modi regime, which has seen the oppression of religious minorities for far, far too long. The Minister knows this particular caucus of MPs well enough to understand that we always put party and constitutional politics aside to advocate for international freedom of religion and belief. In doing so, though, we will hold the Government’s feet to the fire as the Prime Minister departs for India on his trip this year. The success of the trade mission will not just be measured in the size or scope of a free trade agreement. For me, the real measure will be whether or not Members of this House are still raising concerns about religious persecution later in the year, and I very much hope that we will not be.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

Sadly, the Iranian authorities have yet to provide any kind of justification for their actions that stand up to scrutiny. Their behaviour is indefensible, and we are confident that our Iranian contacts, including Foreign Minister Zarif, fully understand our concerns and our condemnation of such harassment.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

What proposals the Government have put forward to the UN Security Council on a resolution to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Wendy Morton)]

We remain deeply concerned about the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, and call on all parties to take every measure possible to protect civilians. That is why, on 29 September, the UK called for discussion at the UN Security Council. The day before that, on 28 September, I spoke to both the Azerbaijani and the Armenian Foreign Ministers to urge a return to dialogue under the OSCE Minsk group to ensure a peaceful and sustainable settlement.

[Barry Gardiner]

The Minister will know that there are more Azeris living in Iran than there are in Azerbaijan—some 50 million of them, who hold great sway and influence. Russia, on the other hand, is firmly committed to supporting Armenia in this conflict, and that could see the Russian and Iranian co-operation in the Syrian war come under severe strain. What concerns does the Minister have about the potential for Iran to become embroiled in the dispute, and what steps is her Department taking to avoid that situation?

[Wendy Morton]

As I clearly indicated, we remain very concerned about this conflict, and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it. That is why we are continuing to work to urge both parties back to the table to have dialogue, and to use the Minsk process to further that.

Endangered Species: Developing Countries

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. His campaigning activity, I think, led directly to changes in Government policy. I have not yet been back to Colchester zoo—I think that is our nearest shared zoo, if we go towards my end of the patch—but I look forward to doing so again. They are also an important part of educating our children on the importance of biodiversity. Not all of us can go to Madagascar and see the beauty of that country. In fact, if we all did go it would be somewhat counterproductive in terms of air miles.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I have listened to all the contributions to the debate with great interest. Earlier, the situation in the overseas territories was adverted to. For the UK, 95% of our biodiversity is in the overseas territories, yet 95% of the funding we give for biodiversity goes domestically, within this country. The Foreign Office has always maintained a good relationship with the authorities in the overseas territories, but they have said that although it is their responsibility to act, they do not have the funding. Will the Minister look at that relationship of responsibility and funding? Ultimately, the responsibility under the convention on biological diversity is the UK’s, even though we try to work closely with the governing authorities in the overseas territories.

[James Duddridge]

The two hon. Members make two important interlocking points, the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on the absolute importance of the area, and my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) on our absolute responsibility to assist the overseas territories. Having previously had ministerial responsibility for the overseas territories, I am apprised of that and of the issue of marine diversity in particular, although not exclusively. We have done a lot on that, but I am happy to pass on the hon. Members’ observations to Baroness Sugg, who is examining the relationship with the overseas territories in that regard. We would be open to doing more within our extended family, which is an obvious place to start, rather than in other areas outside that close family.

We have doubled our international climate finance to £11.6 billion over the next five years. We are helping more generally with reform in broader areas such as land use, agriculture and forest governance to help farmers in developing countries, so that they can develop sustainably without damaging the environment. One of the figures I was briefed on, which I had to check several times because it seemed too enormous to be true, is that we lose the equivalent of 30 football pitches of forested area every single minute. My right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell talked about Berlin and other geographical areas; I am not desperately familiar with the size of Berlin, but I know the size of a football pitch, so that figure really brought home to me the importance of this subject. It is easy to talk about the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Congo basin, but they are a long way away and the DRC is a damn big country, bigger than many of us can conceive, but we can understand the more discrete area of a football field.

We are not just stopping bad things happening, but trying to reverse the changes. We are working to conserve and restore mangrove forests, which my right hon. Friend mentioned. That work, covering 180,000 hectares of biodiverse forest, will improve the livelihoods of 80,000 people in coastal areas and avoid the production of nearly 8 million tonnes of carbon emissions. It is not about merely stopping a trajectory, but about undoing some of the harm.

It is important that we do not operate independently. This is a global issue. We are supporting the global environment facility, which was specifically set up on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth summit to tackle some of the most pressing problems. We led the last replenishment, contributing £250 million, making us the third largest donor. We should be proud that we do that. We can always do more and we press to do more, but when we do some good, we should celebrate it. Since its inception, the facility has supported the management of over 3,300 protected areas covering 860 million hectares, and in totality the projects have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 27 billion tonnes.[Official Report, 22 July 2020, Vol. 678, c. 14MC]

We are committed to doing even more, investing more of our aid programme in protecting biodiversity and using our own expertise to help in this crucial work. My right hon. Friend rightly presses me on the financial side. We are reviewing the whole Government portfolio in the light of covid and working closely with Her Majesty’s Treasury and other ODA Departments to make sure that all we do is done in a coherent and strategic way. Although I cannot make commitments tonight on the Floor of the House, I can point to the UK’s commitment to double international climate finance to at least £11.6 billion for the period 2021-26. That should reassure him as to our direction of travel.

Mention was made of endangered species and what we are doing to protect them. We are fully committed to the convention on international trade in endangered species and the convention on the conservation of migratory species of wild animals—the only global convention specialising in the conservation of migratory species, their habitats and their migration routes. We are funding conservation activities in the Kavango–Zambezi transfrontier conservation area in southern Africa, which I know slightly better than the other parts of the world mentioned by my right hon. Friend. That is helping to unlock green corridors and benefiting wildlife and communities, and we will do more.

In the coming months we will use every opportunity to advocate and leverage our impact and influence at a global level on the issue of biodiversity. As co-hosts of COP, we want to amplify the linkages between biodiversity and tackling climate change. We are establishing a joint dialogue between consumers and producer countries, to enable a transition regarding deforestation-free commodity production, driving UK action and green supply chains. We are advocating to secure the protection of our planet’s ocean and land resources by 2030, to help curb climate change, support livelihoods, and safeguard a planet for all. In 2021 we have the convention on biological diversity—COP15—alongside COP26. Having had to delay COP26, in the next 18 months we have an opportunity to deal with some of these issues.

The Ivory Act received Royal Assent in 2018, and there was an appeal to the Court of Appeal which, quite rightly, upheld the Government’s position. There is now a challenge to the Supreme Court—my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes rightly raised that issue, and although we very much want to move ahead, we will be delayed slightly by that challenge. I would be more than happy to discuss the issue with him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. We know that the coronavirus is significantly affecting the tourism industry. That point was made by the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) as well. The Chancellor has set out unprecedented support for businesses and workers, including those in the tourism sector. That includes business rate support for hospitality and leisure businesses. We have also announced a £1.3 million scheme through VisitEngland to provide support to destination management organisations at risk of closure because of the coronavirus pandemic in order to see them through this difficult time. We are committed to helping the industry to get through this crisis so that we can encourage people to take holidays and revive the tourism sector as we come through the crisis.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) [V]]

The Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies recommended an urgent lockdown to save lives on 26 February, but it took another three and a half weeks to implement it. The Government like to claim that they have been following the scientific advice, but they haven’t, have they?

[Dominic Raab]

We have at every stage, from January, when the original crisis started to break out in China, right the way through to the moment several weeks ago when we announced our social distancing measures, followed meticulously, carefully and assiduously the advice both from the chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer. As a result of that, and as a result of the measures we have put in place, two things have happened. First of all, we have protected our precious NHS. It has not been overwhelmed in the way some had feared. Also, I pay tribute not just to the key workers we have talked about but to the huge sacrifices made by the great British public. Because of their compliance with the social distancing measures, we are starting to come through this peak. That has happened only because we have taken the right decisions, based on the evidence that we have had, at the right moment in time—and I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that that is exactly what we will continue to do.

British Citizens Abroad: FCO Help to Return Home

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. In relation to embassies, she said that they have been closed, but actually, a very small number of posts have had to be closed. What we have found—this is not a choice that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has made; it is a direct result of the restrictions that have been put in place by Governments in those countries—is that they have had to work remotely, and indeed, a large chunk of the consular staff work from home. That is not a decision that we made—it was forced upon us—but I reassure her that in all the jurisdictions that she mentioned, we are trying to respond to what I hope she will understand, given her experience, is an incredibly fluid situation. Some of these restrictions are being imposed with no notice or limited notice, and that is very difficult, of course, for our constituents, but we are making sure that we provide them with as much advice and support in real time as we can.

My right hon. Friend mentioned Peru. As a result of the work of the FCO, and having spoken to the Peruvian Foreign Minister, we now have agreement for flights to come out of Peru. There is, of course, a challenge because not everyone is based in Lima, which has the international airport, so we also have to try to work out how we get UK nationals travelling in more remote parts of the country to the capital. We are actively working on that. We have several flights lined up, but we also need to work around or try to overcome the restrictions that have been imposed.

I hope I have explained what we are doing in Australia and New Zealand. My right hon. Friend is right, and I thank her for her remarks, about the critical importance of keeping the international hubs open, and not just in relation to Singapore. We are concerned about other international hub airports. We must try to keep those open. Tomorrow, I will lead the discussion among the G7 Foreign Ministers on this and our wider international strategy for tackling coronavirus. This is extremely difficult. We have hundreds of thousands of British nationals abroad, but I can reassure her that, from the call centre to the support they are receiving at post, we are doing everything we can to give them as much support as swiftly as possible.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and I thank the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for securing it. This is a medical crisis, not a wartime one, but she certainly gave the Foreign Secretary some friendly fire, and she spoke for us all in the concerns she expressed for the hundreds of thousands of British nationals stranded overseas.

Since the House last discussed these issues, we have seen some progress, especially in the planned provision of repatriation flights for British nationals stranded in Peru, and I thank the Foreign Office for its work on that, but as today’s media coverage shows—indeed, as is shown by the dozens of emails, calls and letters that Members from all parties are receiving from Indonesia, New Zealand, Morocco and Pakistan, where I understand no outbound flights are now available—this is not a crisis that can be resolved one traveller, one airline, or indeed one country at a time. It is a crisis affecting British nationals in every continent, many of them accompanied by young children, many of them with worsening health conditions, and many of them running out of money and in danger of losing their accommodation.

They are all in desperate need of reassurance from the Government, so I hope the Secretary of State will take the chance today to clarify the statement he made yesterday, which was reported across the media as an instruction to British nationals abroad—indeed, this is a direct quote from him—to

“come home…now while you still can.”

Despite the headlines, the Secretary of State obviously meant that for individuals who have the option of taking a commercial flight to Britain, but does he accept that that is now very much the exception, not the norm, and that for hundreds of thousands of British nationals the option he highlighted is simply no option at all? Will he make it absolutely clear that the Government remain committed to helping all British nationals; that embassies will have telephone lines available so that they can get the support and advice that they need, whenever they need it; that the Government will find a flight to get them home, no matter how long it takes; and that they will be guaranteed continued accommodation in the meantime?

Does the Secretary of State have a plan to ensure the safe care and medical assessment of British cruise line passengers and their current health assessment? Is he negotiating with countries to ensure their safety during quarantine? Is he arranging safe travel home for all who are stranded? How is he keeping in touch with worried citizens abroad and their families here in the UK?

What discussions has the Secretary of State had with his foreign counterparts about the extension of visas, which may expire during the lockdown in other countries? What action is he taking on airlines to stop the profiteering that is going on, with inflated prices for flights home? In other words, will he send a simple message to those British nationals stranded overseas: “You are not in the last chance saloon; you are in safe hands, and this Government will get you home”?

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Gentleman makes some important points, and we certainly want to give as much reassurance and as much advice as possible, but he will know—he has worked on the international brief for a while—that we have in this country a great tradition of travelling abroad, and that even if we take expats out of the equation we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people at any one time. Given the national restrictions that are being imposed, at pace and sometimes without notice, it is very difficult to give cast-iron guarantees about the situation. What we can do is lead internationally, in the way I described, with the G7, which we are doing tomorrow, and work as hard as we can with all our international partners.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the progress in securing the return home of UK nationals; I can tell him that we have already repatriated more than 1,000 British nationals, and also 254 non-British nationals, where we have had capacity, from 26 countries—places as far-flung as Wuhan over to Cuba.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Morocco in particular. We have facilitated the return of thousands of British nationals via commercial routes, with 49 commercial flights bringing 8,500 passengers home—in fact, it is even more than that now.

The hon. Gentleman is right that we cannot do it alone, which is why I am spending any moment that I am not in this House talking to Members hitting the phones, talking to Foreign Ministers and working our way through the problems. We have talked to the Peruvian Foreign Minister, as I mentioned, and I spoke to the Singaporean Foreign Minister first thing this morning.

The hon. Gentleman rightly raised the issue of accommodation, because where people are travelling for two to three weeks, that is ultimately the issue for them. In Spain, where a large number of Britain nationals are holidaying, the original Government decision in Madrid was to close all hotels today. I spoke to the Foreign Minister of Spain and we secured the flexibility whereby they would not be kicked out on to the streets, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. We have also secured flexibility to ensure that the airlines can come in and, given the large number of Brits in Spain, we can secure those flights home. On the detail of the travel advice to which he referred, we have given that advice based on the rapid rate of new restrictions that Governments and jurisdictions are placing, sometimes on internal travel, which will inhibit people’s ability to get to the airport, but more often on external flights coming in and out.

The hon. Gentleman also asked, rightly, about cruise ships. To the best of my understanding, on the basis of advice from the Department for Transport, no further cruise ships are hitting the water, so we are dealing with the stock of existing ships. We have successfully returned 684 people, including 669 British nationals, from the Braemar cruise ship, which was in the Caribbean, struggling to find a port of entry. We did that via Cuba. That is a good example of reaching out to—[Interruption.] I thought that would get the Leader of the Opposition excited.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019 (Rule of Law)

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

On my hon. Friend’s first point, absolutely any Government must obey the law of the land. There is no doubt about that, but it seems to me that this House, by a substantial majority, including many Opposition Members who voted for this—

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Bring back Eric Forth!

[Mr Bone]

I am sure that Eric Forth was much better. He will probably be looking down, saying, “Oh my goodness, what a shower there is on both sides!” He would do this far better than me and he would wear a much better tie in the process, but alas, he is in a better place—and he will be wearing a better tie than the hon. Gentleman, that’s for sure. The really important point is that this House delegated the decision to the British people, and after three years, we have failed to do it. That is the fundamental difference between this and anything else that we normally debate.

Budget Resolutions

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The global theme of today’s Budget debate has enabled the House to examine the impact of the Chancellor’s statement on Britain’s place in our world and our readiness to respond to the global challenges we face. Many of those challenges have been referred to by hon. Members. The whole House was shocked by the attack on the al-Rawda mosque, in which 305 Sufi worshippers, including 27 children, were slaughtered. The threat of terrorism is global, and although this particular atrocity was perhaps symptomatic of the metastasis of the cancer that is Daesh and a result of its military defeat in Raqqa, we must understand the implications for the strength of our military.

Many hon. Members on both sides of the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) and the Chairs of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees, have warned that cutting our armed forces by a further 12,000 will seriously undermine our global capacity. Recently, Government Back Benchers have reportedly engaged with their Treasury colleagues on this subject in the fashion of an English wicketkeeper greeting an Aussie batsman. The depletion of our armed forces capacity in an uncertain world is something that the Government contemplate at their peril.

Another challenge, which was raised powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), is the appalling suffering of the Rohingya people who have fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine province. Their plight moved the new Secretary of State for International Development to tears on her visit over the weekend to Bangladesh, and she is reported to have said that it appears to be ethnic cleansing. I think that most hon. Members in this House would simply say, “Yes, it is.” But I pay respect to her for going so quickly to apprise herself of the situation there and in the Caribbean. I trust that she will be a strong advocate for her Department’s financial needs against the siren voices in the Conservative party who wish Britain to downgrade its 0.7% commitment or to circumscribe our aid budget in such a way as to refocus it away from poverty reduction, disaster relief or sustainable development. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) was shouted down by Government Members when she pointed out that, as page 22 of the Red Book sets out, ODA budgets will be adjusted to reflect the OBR’s revised GNI forecast. They will, therefore, be cut by £375 million in 2018-19 and £520 million in 2019-20—a reduction of almost £1 billion.

There have been 17 named storms in the Atlantic hurricane season this year, many of them at category 5. That has made the season the costliest on record, with an estimated $367.5 billion of damage. Harvey, Irma and Maria have not just cost dollars; they have devastated the lives of our friends and Commonwealth partners throughout the Caribbean and beyond. UK assistance has been vital to many of those countries, and we welcome the £5 million that was made available to Dominica, as well as the additional funding announced from DFID when the Prince of Wales visited Antigua and Barbuda last week. But perhaps the Foreign Secretary should reflect on the 10% cut in the financial support for our overseas territories and consider reversing it.



Disaster relief is not the answer to climate change, which is one of the central challenges facing the international community. With the UN climate conference having just finished in Bonn, the opportunity provided by the Budget should have been used to make key policy announcements on policies that would mitigate climate change. Instead, we find that there will be no new low-carbon electricity levies until 2025, and there is nothing for renewables or investment in domestic energy efficiency, or for the necessary transformation of our grid structures to bring on new localised production, microgeneration and supply. Instead, there is a clean growth plan—six years late—that will not even meet the target set in the fourth carbon budget, never mind the fifth carbon budget.

No international debate should or could have taken place today without reference to the appalling war going on in Yemen. Yesterday’s Financial Times leader on the looming famine in Yemen is one of the finest editorials I have read. It refers to the risk that allies of Saudi Arabia face in being complicit in the use of starvation as a weapon of war. It is chilling. It says that the conflict has

“descended into a new circle of hell after Saudi Arabia committed its air force to defeating Houthi rebels”

earlier this year, and began destroying bridges, roads, markets and container ports. The infrastructure breakdown means that food is reaching the hungry “fatally slowly”, and that was before the Saudis decided to block even humanitarian aid in reprisal for a missile fired at Riyadh earlier this month. Seven million people are now on the brink of famine, according to the UN.

The relation of this tragedy to the Budget becomes clear when we look at the OBR projections for trade growth. Globally, world trade is set to grow year on year by approximately 4%, but the Government’s own projection of the contribution trade will make to our own domestic growth declines to zero by 2019, and stays at zero for four years throughout the life of this Parliament. It is no wonder that the Government have been reluctant to jeopardise the £4 billion deal to sell Saudi Arabia British fighter jets. Human rights must not be regarded as a commercial inconvenience. If our country wishes to stand tall in the global community, we must do so on the basis of our values. We need to ensure that we do not end up pawning our democratic values to boost our failing economy.

The central facts of the Budget determine how our country is able to respond to all these international challenges. I agree with the hon. Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) who said that sound finance is the only basis for a caring Government. We need a strong economy, and the Budget figures did not show that. Growth has been revised down by 0.5%, productivity by 0.7% and investment by 1.5%. This Budget admits that previous Treasury promises have not been met, but it has failed to set out a vision to take our country forward.

Business growth and trade are crucial to our capacity to act and to lead in the world. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) posed the key questions on which businesses need certainty if they are to lead the economic revival we so desperately need: what tariffs and quotas will they face, and what will our future trade relationships look like—the no deal Brexit my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) warned about, or the deal that the Brexit Secretary once upon a time boasted would give the UK the “exact same benefits” that we currently possess as members of the single market?

The Chancellor told the nation what he thought was more likely when he announced the £3 billion to prepare for a no deal Brexit. It is therefore no wonder, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) pointed out, that the Foreign Secretary spent more time talking about penguins and plastic bags than about Brexit. My hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Dr Drew), for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker), for Leigh (Jo Platt), for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) for Stockton South (Dr Williams) and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) spoke powerfully about the Budget’s failure to address the needs of our health service: £4 billion is needed next year; £1.6 billion has been provided. They highlighted the irony that social care, which was a defining issue in the general election, got scarcely a mention.

In a brilliant speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) not only exposed the anti-London nature of this Budget, but highlighted the total lack of any stimulus to housing supply, as indeed did my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid). My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central highlighted the fact that the need for the productivity growth on which depend our country’s future prosperity and successful engagement on the international stage. Productivity will depend on the two pillars of education and infrastructure investment, so it is not coincidence that these were the two key offers that the Labour party made in our manifesto at the general election, with our national transformation fund and our national education service.

It would be tempting to claim that this Budget proves that the Government have lost their way. The truth is that they never had a direction in the first place. The Prime Minister is a prisoner of her Cabinet, and her Cabinet is divided against itself. Sooner or later, the electorate will put them out of their misery and we will have a Budget for the many, not the few.

EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lilley]

Switzerland moved its banking centres to London post big bang and before the single market. I negotiated the second banking directive, which introduced passporting for banks. I was very proud of it, and subsequently wanted to make a speech saying what a wonderful thing it was, and how wonderful the single market programme was, so I asked my officials to find examples of banks and other businesses that were doing things that were made possible by the single market programme and that sort of passporting. They could not find a single one. Nearly all banks trade through subsidiaries, so do not take advantage of passporting, which allows operation through a branch rather than a subsidiary, regulated by the British financial authorities rather than those in the country in which they operate. I will perhaps come on to other aspects of the passporting issue if time permits.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I always listen very carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. He has made a very strong point about the difficulties in negotiating with a large trading bloc of 27 nations, including the time it would take. Why then does he feel that it would be possible, in short measure, for the UK to re-establish its trading relations with an EU of which we were no longer a part? He has made a very compelling case for why it would not be.

[Mr Lilley]

That is a very good point that I was going to come on to. It takes quite a long time for the EU to negotiate a trade deal with Canada, for example, because each country has tariffs against the other, and different product specifications and so on. Each has to trade off, say, a cut in tariffs on steel against one in tariffs on leather goods. We can see how that could take a long time, particularly if there is not much enthusiasm for it. We would start negotiating with the rest of the EU with zero tariffs on both sides and with common product standards. Zero to zero can be negotiated in a fairly short space of time, I would have thought, compared with the time needed when 10,000 different tariff lines are involved, as in other tariff agreements. It should not take long to negotiate a continuing free trade deal, with good will on both sides.

[Barry Gardiner]

rose—

[Mr Lilley]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman has burned his boats.

Another myth, which I am afraid has been proffered by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, is that we will need to renegotiate trade agreements with all the countries with which the EU currently has trade agreements. That is not the case. There is an accepted principle in international law called the principle of continuity: if a political unit splits into parts—as the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia did, for example—the component parts continue with the same agreement unless one party objects to it. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that the countries with which we are currently party to free trade agreements will want to end those agreements when we leave. For example, when the Soviet Union broke up it was not a member of the WTO, so had traded under separate trade agreements with other countries. Those trade agreements migrated by agreement, so that within weeks even America had migrated its agreement to Russia and other successor states. There is absolutely no reason—

UK’s Relationship with the EU

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I hope that when my hon. Friend has the chance to look at the text in greater detail, he will see that—if agreed—it will mark a significant change in the direction in which he wished to go. Clearly, it will need the agreement of 27 other Heads of Government at the European Council, and I cannot stand here and take that for granted. He should also bear in mind the fact that the precedents of Norway and Switzerland suggest that part of the price of access to the European market and free trade has been an acceptance of the principle of free movement of workers.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that some of our most foundational environmental legislation lies in the EU habitats and birds directives, the clean air directive and the water framework directive? Those things can only, and must, be agreed at supranational level. What would happen if we were to leave the EU and try to renegotiate such foundational environmental legislation ab initio?

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point, but when dealing with environmental legislation, it is important that the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity are rigorously applied. Sometimes it is right to agree on an environmental objective at European level, but to leave a considerable amount of flexibility for individual member states with different circumstances as to how precisely those objectives should be reached.

Britain in the World

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The hon. and gallant Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) spoke with great passion, great eloquence and great courage, and he has clearly come here with a mission to support mental health and our veterans. I was privileged to listen to him and I look forward to seeing him achieve his mission in this Parliament, as he achieved his mission on the battlefield.

Exactly one week before Her Majesty opened this Parliament with the Gracious Address, President Obama gave a speech not in London but in New London, Connecticut, to the United States Coast Guard Academy. He said:

“I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. So we need to act and we need to act now.”

He said that climate change posed risks to national security, resulting in humanitarian crises and

“potentially increasing refugee flows and exacerbating conflicts over basic resources like food and water.”

Last summer, I was critical in this House of the Government’s decision not to provide financial support to the Italian Government’s coastguard operation to rescue refugees from Libya. I recall the Minister’s response to me then, which was that such rescue operations acted as a “pull factor” and were only increasing the number of attempts at migration. I thought that an obscene argument then, and in the intervening months we have seen that it was not only obscene but wrong. The number of attempts has increased. On Saturday, the Italian coastguard announced that more than 4,000 migrants had been rescued off Libya’s coast on Friday.

My purpose is not to berate the Government for their lack of compassion; I want to look more deeply into why those migrants are coming in the first place. The Libyan civil war was part of a much wider pattern of regional upheavals that we called the Arab spring, which began in Egypt in 2010 with the uprisings in Tahrir Square. However, if we track those disturbances back, we come inexorably to the 2010 drought in Russia’s wheat belt. It was the longest and most severe drought in Russia in more than 50 years. Russia lost 25% of its crops, leading it to impose an export ban on wheat that it had traditionally exported to Egypt. The food crisis in Egypt was the precursor to the Arab spring; the situation was the same in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world.

On 9 September 2010, when the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that Syria’s drought was affecting food security and had pushed two million to three million people into “extreme poverty”, few people took any notice. In fact, Syria had suffered four successive years of drought, causing the longest and deepest crop failure since records began in 1900. The losses from these repeated droughts were particularly significant for the population in the north-eastern part of the country. Experts warned at that time that the true figure of those living in “extreme poverty” was even higher than the official estimate of two million to three million people. What is astonishing in military terms is that in September 2010 nobody predicted that such a tinderbox might give rise to civil unrest and the civil war that began only six months later.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies is clear about the impact of resource shortages. In 2011, it published a report claiming that climate change

“will increase the risks of resource shortages, mass migration, and civil conflict”,

and the Ministry of Defence has said that climate change will shift the tipping point at which conflict occurs.

It has been a feature of recent debate to talk of the need for the UK, as a member of NATO, to meet the target of 2% of GDP on military spending. Our military do a superb job, but at the moment it is a job carried out within the limits of a very limited political vision. As politicians, we have to understand that the greatest threats to our security are no longer conventional military ones; nor do they come from fundamentalist terrorists. We cannot “nuke” a famine; we cannot send battleships to stop the destruction of a rain forest, but we can spend money on clean technology transfer that enables countries to bring their people out of poverty without polluting their future, and we can invest in adaptation measures that will protect communities from the effects of climate change that are already putting societies under stress.

Next month, at a UN conference in Addis Ababa, we must begin to align the global financial system with the real economy and the needs of the world’s poor. Then, we will have taken a major step towards achieving real security for our nation and for the people of the world.