Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank my hon. Friend, with his great links to the west midlands and the Mayor of the West Midlands, all congratulating the Speaker on his new position. Of course, this was a great example of global Britain going forward. We are all incredibly proud of the Red Arrows and they are a great example of soft power. When the Red Arrows were out there, the engineers and the pilots ran STEM––science, technology, engineering and maths––workshops in schools throughout their route, which was an excellent opportunity to showcase our soft power. To put my hon. Friend’s mind at rest, yes, we will introduce a strategy for soft power once we have won the general election and come back.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

No soft soap from me, Mr Speaker. The fact of the matter is that I have known you since you came into the House. I am really pleased that you are in the Chair and we at least have a northern voice. It is Lancastrian rather than Yorkshire, but it is nice to have a regional accent. It is very nice to see your dad up in the Gallery, another old friend and colleague of ours. It is a very happy occasion for the Hoyles.

Now I am turning into angry mode. Will the Minister define what is soft power and what is hard power? Is what the Russians did to us in the last election, and possibly during the referendum, soft or hard power, what are we going to do about it and when are the Government going to publish this report that they are trying to hide from the public?

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am always concerned about the health of the hon. Gentleman; far be it from me to suggest that that was theatrics. To answer his question, soft power is one of the best values of the UK as a nation, in that we are out there with our embassies, trade envoys and cultural attachés and our British Council work. All that is absolutely excellent, as is the World Service that we help pay for. As regards Russia, the hon. Gentleman is an assiduous parliamentarian and I believe that an urgent question on the matter has been agreed by the Speaker, the first he has agreed in his time as Speaker. I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman hangs around, he will get the answers that he is looking for.

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[Dominic Raab]

The right hon. Lady will know, as she has been in her post for quite a while now, that ISC reports go through a number of stages of clearance and other processes between the ISC and the Government. The reports often contain sensitive information, and I know that she would want to see the integrity of such information protected. The reports have to go through that process before they are published, and it usually takes several weeks to complete.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Nonsense.

[Dominic Raab]

The recent average, just to respond to the hon. Gentleman, is six weeks. This report was only submitted on 17 October, so it has been handled correctly.

Intelligence and Security Committee Report on Russia

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The right hon. Lady from a sedentary position accuses me of sneering. I think that is pretty rich, I have to say, but I will press on as politely as I possibly can to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on her question.

It is not unusual for time to be taken to consider serious reports. This is a serious report and it should be considered in a timely way. In the meantime, I would say to the hon. Lady that there is no evidence to suggest that Russia or the Kremlin has successfully engaged in interference in our electoral processes; if she believes that there is, please bring that information forward, but we have seen none.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I be helpful to the Minister? I listened to your speech yesterday, Mr Speaker, and you will note that this urgent question goes to the heart of our proceedings: this is an all-party report, the Government are not publishing it, they should publish it, and there is all-party support for it to be published. Only a few minutes ago we had the Foreign Secretary here, and he could have stayed to make a statement. This is a very important issue. I want to fight this election on health, employment, jobs and all those other important things. If we do not stop this issue now, it will run and run, almost like a Watergate thing, throughout the campaign, so please publish the report now and let’s get on with the general election on the real issues.

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: let’s fight the election on the real issues—on migration issues, on health, on education, on our stance on Brexit. Let’s get out there and do it, and let’s stop stirring the pot on this non-issue.

Amazon Deforestation

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

The hon. Lady has provided a short and precise synopsis of my entire speech. I am afraid I will continue with it anyway. She makes an important point: “lost” is perhaps not the right way to put it.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Did my hon. Friend listen to the Environment Minister from Brazil on the World Service this morning, and did his heart sink, as mine did, at his failure to answer any of the questions that my hon. Friend is addressing to the Bolsonaro regime?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I did not hear that exchange, but of course it is not uncommon in the political arena for questions not to be directly answered. The point I will develop in my speech is that the failure to act is devastating and dangerous.

Let me return to the 55 million hectares of tree cover, because not everyone knows what that looks like. I am reliably informed that it translates to a loss of 5.7 football pitches per minute. That is something that I can envisage. It is staggering that so many football pitches have been lost in the time that we have been speaking in this debate.

This is not a new problem. We have known about it for some time. Previous Brazilian Governments have tried to reduce deforestation through a number of measures, which have indeed slowed the rate. In 2012 Brazil recorded its lowest deforestation rate of the past 20 years. However, that has been reversed this year. The New Scientist reported in July that more than 3,700 sq km of forest has been deforested this year alone. According to preliminary satellite data, the losses for the first seven months of 2019 are 16% higher than the high of 3,183 sq km in 2016. There was an 88% increase in deforestation in June 2019, compared with June 2018. Those startling and worrying numbers understandably provoke strong and passionate responses from people across the world.

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[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sorry if I repeat anything that another Member has said. It has been a good debate, with excellent contributions, and I will not push too many statistics. I have always been involved in environmental issues. Early in my career, before I got into Parliament, I started the Socialist Environment and Resources Association, and the first branch of Friends of the Earth in England and Wales, in Swansea. I also started a number of organisation such as Urban Minds. So I “do” the environment, in a sense, but I have obviously not done it very effectively. I have been in this place for 40 years and we have not woken up to the fact that we are destroying our fragile planet. We seem to be hell bent on destroying it.

I support most of the petition, but I think that the question is multifaceted. I have worked with Brazilians and other South Americans. I used to co-chair the British-Brazilian all-party parliamentary group, and I started a charity in Peru working on rural and urban development, giving jobs to young people in Lima and the countryside. I know that those are not primitive, backward people. They are highly intelligent and clever. Often they are absolutely let down by bad governance, but they are talented. They have talented scientists. Some of the best technological and scientific innovation takes place in Brazil. It was one of the best competitors in the aircraft industry—a pretty sophisticated industry. Brazil has enormous talent and I sometimes wonder why we do not reach out to that talent more effectively.

I get fed up, and I think the time is coming when the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association must wake up to the fact that getting on planes and going to visit and talk to other parliamentarians is something of the past. Some colleagues will not like that, but we must develop new techniques for parliamentarians across the globe to work together. We can do it by clever video conferences and the social media potential is enormous. We should reflect on that as parliamentarians. We often say “It’s the Government.” In an intervention on the very good speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), I mentioned the appearance of the Brazilian Environment Minister on the BBC World Service this morning, which I thought was very poor. However, other major influences are also poor. I work with a number of Brazilian legislators on reducing road deaths in Brazil—a very big killer—so I know about international working.

[Mark Menzies]

What a great and powerful contribution from the hon. Gentleman. I encourage him to renew his interest in not only the IPU, but the all-party parliamentary group on Latin America, because we engage on many of the issues that he has talked about, and with that knowledge and expertise he would make a very valuable new member.

[Mr Sheerman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much; I will revisit my level of activity in the group.

When I speak to clever Brazilians, they say to me, “But look what you’ve done to the world. You’ve deforested Europe. At present you are probably despoiling the quality of soil right across Europe and in the UK. You are doing dreadful things that are awful for the environment as well.” When we look at the facts of the matter, we are exporting some of the worst chemicals for people all over the world to put on their land. Indeed, in my own constituency, Syngenta makes weed-killers that it cannot sell in Europe, but it exports them beyond Europe. We should have a conscience about what we are exporting, the soil degradation that we are causing and the fact that we must prove to the Brazilians that we are concerned about climate change worldwide.

I have been inspired by the young people. I have 12 grandchildren. Four of them live in Cambridge and a couple of them have been leaders in the climate change campaign. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge brought one of my granddaughters, Lola, up to meet the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). That shows how active we are on a cross-party basis.

I am inspired because young people have got it. Greta Thunberg, who we invited to this place, has galvanised the level of activity and interest. On the other side, I am inspired by the young people coming out. In Huddersfield the other day, we had a wonderful event in St George’s Square with great speakers. They were young people. It is young people who excite me, because they have got it, and things are changing.

Young people are changing what they eat, so there are more vegans. Two or three years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) got me to join the all-party parliamentary group on vegetarianism and veganism. I do not know that I am as good at pursuing that as she is, but I helped the group to be quorate on a particular day. The fact of the matter is that young people’s habits—what they eat, what they do, their impact on the environment—are changing fast.

My other inspiration is Professor Steve Jones of University College London, who has produced a book that I have just finished reviewing, “Here Comes the Sun”. If people want to know the real science, he is a Reith lecturer and one of the leading experts in the world. I say to hon. Members, “Read it. It is a hard read, but it tells the unvarnished truth about how we are destroying the climate.” This is not just about the species and the wonderful flora and fauna of the Amazon, but about the fact that the Amazon rainforest helps to regulate the weather globally. When are people going to wake up to the fact that these changes—these fires, these droughts, these floods—are related to climate change?

Of course, if we want to pick on anyone big and say, “It’s your fault, mate,” we should not pick just on the Brazilian leadership. We should look at north America and President Trump. If we want to know what has changed a lot of the attitudes in South America, it is the attitude of the President of the United States, which has changed dramatically from Obama to the present President.

Let us, first, recognise that our delicate, fragile planet is desperately in trouble, and that we will not hand on anything to our children and grandchildren if we do not act now, and act positively. That means sharing technology, science and innovation—including giving it to the Chinese. We do not do anything about the Chinese. The Chinese no longer have any bees. Their agriculture has been so intensive that they have to hand-pollinate, because they have killed all the bees in China. In north America they have killed most of the songbirds.

We must wake up to the urgency of what we face, but not then despair and say, “Oh, it’s all too difficult for us, we can’t tackle this.” We need good science, good technology, sharing of information, sharing of new methods of agriculture and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said powerfully, new ways of consuming.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Sheerman]

I was just going to finish, but I will give way.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful speech. Had I appreciated that he was coming to the end of it, I would have backed off. He made the point about how informed young people are about consumption. He was talking about his grandchildren, and I am sure he is struck by how knowledgeable they are and how that knowledge and information is informing the decisions and choices that they make. That should be inspirational to all of us, as he suggests. Visiting various primary schools, I was amazed that so many children said, “We don’t eat those biscuits, because they have so much palm oil.” We are talking about Brazil and the impact on the rainforests there, but if we look at the rainforest fires in Indonesia, where there is widespread devastation and clearance for palm oil, which goes into so many of our foodstuffs, does he agree that this is a massive, global issue? Obviously we are talking about Brazil, but it is a wider thing across our globe.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am grateful for that helpful intervention. I will reiterate that my Bible has become Professor Steve Jones. Interestingly enough, he has been almost banned by the BBC. He told me that the trouble is that we cannot get a decent debate on climate change on radio or television, because the BBC has this daft idea of balance. Steve cannot get on, as a leading professor and scientist, because apparently they cannot find anyone better qualified than Nigel Lawson to provide balance. He is almost banned from the BBC because he knows too much. What a crazy world! The fact of the matter is that we know what is happening, we know about the science and we know that we have the keys if we share information.

We as parliamentarians are too often lazy. We should not be getting on planes. There is a group of us who are working together on how, deep into the 21st century, we can communicate with other legislators around the world in a positive and supportive way. If anyone would like to join that group with me, I will be holding a meeting this coming Wednesday.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

No one is more doughty in his championship of Gibraltar than my hon. Friend, and I am grateful for his kind words. Let me assure him—as the Prime Minister has assured the Chief Minister—that the United Kingdom will protect Gibraltar’s interests as we leave the EU. From 1967 to 2002, at all points in between and since, we have said that Gibraltar is going to remain a vital part of our family. The Government of Gibraltar are responsible for their own contingency planning, but, as I have said, the UK Government regularly speak to and meet Ministers to ensure that their robust plans are in place.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Minister not aware that whether it is Gibraltar, Hong Kong or Zimbabwe, people are struggling for the rights that they thought they had and that they find common cause with people in the United Kingdom who are struggling to get the political rights that they thought they had in this country? Is it not about time that we showed as an example that we believe in parliamentary and political democracy in this House?

[Christopher Pincher]

That was quite a wide-ranging question. Let me put it to the hon. Gentleman in this way: this Government are standing up for the rights of people—the 17.5 million people of our country who voted to leave the European Union—and respecting those that did not. We will make sure that we leave—no ifs, no buts—on 31 October.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

Believe me, it is a compliment; I am paying the hon. Gentleman a compliment, noting his previous occupation. He makes a serious suggestion that is worth considering by all involved in this case. We have lost no opportunity to raise these dual national cases with those to whom we have been given access, at ministerial level and other levels, over the course of this sorry saga, and we will continue to do so. Of course, people need to articulate their concerns, and that is not confined to Ministers. National leaders of various sorts have commented on this case, and if they used any influence they can with their contacts in Tehran, that would be a very positive thing. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister might not know that I am a man of faith—I have personal faith, and in days gone by I have been the parliamentary churchwarden, a lay canon at Wakefield cathedral and an active member of Christians in Parliament. I do not want to say anything that would give Nazanin any more problems than she has. I snuck into the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) the other day, and I just stood, as a silent vigil, outside the Iranian embassy. I found that useful for me, but I would like other Members of Parliament to join me and go back to do that regularly, in a quiet, respectful way, just to keep it going after the hunger strike has finished.

We must appeal to the Iranians in terms of faith. Why do we not persuade the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead an all-faith group to Iran, to appeal to the better natures of very religious people to see that this is a travesty of faith and a travesty of justice?

[Dr Murrison]

I hope very much that the Archbishop of Canterbury is listening to the hon. Gentleman, and that perhaps he might consider whether he or other faith leaders have a role to play in this matter. I am not sure whether the established Church is the best vehicle, but it is universally recognised as being positive and capable of talking to people of all faiths and none. My view on this matter is that dialogue is necessary, notwithstanding the nature of the individuals who we know are intimately connected with this case in Tehran and who have not in the past shown themselves to be the masters of dialogue.

Hong Kong

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on Hong Kong’s autonomy and upholding of the rule of law. It may well be that the most constructive way forward is to establish a dialogue in the next few days between the Government of Hong Kong and their own people that can help to reduce the tensions in Hong Kong that we have seen erupt on the streets over the past few weeks.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is very good to see the Minister spreading his wings. In fact, I hope he will soon return to the Dispatch Box to say something about the disgraceful and disturbing decision by the Japanese to start whaling again—killing hundreds of whales this year.

On Hong Kong, the fact of the matter is that what we have seen in the last few days is out of character. My suspicion is, who is going to gain from instability in Hong Kong? Of course, the answer is the Chinese Government, not the Hong Kongese.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that China should see Hong Kong as something that can benefit China itself. A prosperous and stable Hong Kong is not only good for Hong Kong; it is also good for China. There is a symbiosis that can be mutually beneficial. I very much hope that in honouring the terms of the 1984 agreement in the years ahead, that mutual benefit can be put into practice and that everybody can win from it.

Department for International Development

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robertson]

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will deal with this immediately. The bilateral aid of DFID was 62.6%, as against multilateral aid of 37.4%, and this has remained steady over the past few years. However, that is still a lot of money going on aid that we do not fully control. There are some good projects out there. The World Food Programme is an excellent example of multilateral aid that saves lives. The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) mentioned the money going to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and today we had the announcement of this being £467 million a year. As I understand it, that is multilateral aid, so there are some excellent projects we are involved in, but there are delays in reporting by the multilateral agencies, which impedes our ability to analyse the work they do.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman, an old friend, knows of my passion for cutting road deaths worldwide; this is the biggest killer, especially of children and young people, and mainly of poorer ones. He knows of my role as chair of the World Health Organisation’s Global Network for Road Safety Legislators. Does he agree that bilateral and multilateral approaches are both good in the right contexts and with the right partners? We are doing work in the real target countries, and in some countries this can be bilateral but often we are looking for a number of partners.

[Mr Robertson]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, to whom I pay tribute for all his work in that respect. I shall come back to that issue in a moment.

Let me turn to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). It has identified some spending by, for example—this is only an example, and it is not the only one—the Newton Fund, which the commission said

“is not promoting the best use of ODA and some projects appear not to be within the ODA definition.”

That is of some concern. The commission lists some of the projects about which it is concerned. Sometimes when one looks into the projects and gets into the details, one finds they actually do help people who need help, but the headlines that they receive do not necessarily suggest that. Nevertheless, we have to be careful, because we all have constituents who want to see that their hard-earned money they pay in taxes goes to the right target.

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[Mr Robertson]

I totally agree with the hon. Lady. We have had campaigns in this country to get fair milk prices for our farmers, so it is certainly right that we should ensure that farmers and traders in other countries get fair trade as well as fair prices. It is very, very important indeed.

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman is being very kind in giving way. He will know the sterling work that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) has done in this area. She, like all of us here, absolutely believes not only in tackling world poverty but in the absolute scrutiny and accountability that go with it. For all of us in this field, they are our watchwords, our doctrine. When the newspapers accuse us of being do-gooders who do not care, it is just not true. My hon. Friend is a champion of that sort of scrutiny.

[Mr Robertson]

It is right that we do scrutinise things and that we do demand transparency, but it is also right that we put things in perspective as well. I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman.

I want to try to draw my remarks to a close, because, presumably, lots of hon. and right hon. Members wish to speak. In summary, I want to see an increase in the amounts going to the least developed countries and an increase in transparency, certainly in non-DFID and multilateral spending. I also want us to have a bit more control over, and understanding of, where the multi- lateral aid actually goes. We need to be aware that when we leave the European Union—and I will say “when”—we will get something like 10% of our budget back. We then have to decide where that goes. I am sure that there is no shortage of places or projects for which we want to provide.

In conclusion, I am very proud of our aid budget and of the fact that we have saved and transformed so many lives. The suggestions that I have made and the queries that I have raised today in no way challenge my commitment to our aid budget, but I want to make sure that we help even more people even more effectively than we already are. Most people want to see the United Kingdom, one of the richest countries in the world, helping the poorest people in the world, but they do have a right to make sure that their hard-earned money—it is not our money, it is theirs—actually goes to the people who need it the most. Much of it already does, but I think that all of it needs to do so. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in this debate.

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[Stephen Twigg]

I absolutely agree. When DFID was created in 1997, the UK governorship of the World Bank shifted from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Secretary of State for International Development. That was absolutely the right thing to do. It has given us a strong voice in these multilateral organisations, including the World Bank.

Let me comment briefly on the three other areas that I identified—first, localisation. The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) made this point earlier, and it is very important. We frequently take evidence from organisations that say that it can be hard for a smaller company or smaller non-governmental organisation to get access to some of DFID’s contracts and programmes. That applies whether those companies and NGOs are in this country or in other countries. Greater opportunity for those smaller organisations to access programmes is important.

Alongside that, it is important that we see more autonomy for DFID’s country offices. I was interested to listen to the Secretary of State when he came to the Committee last week, because he was proposing something quite radical in terms of greater autonomy for the country offices. He made an important point—it is something we said in one of our reports—about the concern that, in recent years, DFID has lost some of its in-house expertise in certain areas and made itself much more reliant on contracting for that expertise. Indeed, many of the people now getting the contracts used to be the in-house experts. The Secretary of State contrasted how much DFID spends on specialist country advisers on education or climate change with some of the other donors who spend a lot more. I welcomed him saying to us that he would look at that again, and all power to his elbow.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend knows that I have boundless admiration for him as Chair of the Select Committee. He mentioned localism and smaller groups. There are a lot of fashions. Something less fashionable but none the less effective is cutting road deaths. In the developing world, the loss of a breadwinner or the breadwinner becoming injured or an invalid for life is a sure path to poverty. I have lobbied him to look at road deaths and casualties. Rather than the bigger, more glamorous issues, will he look again at something like that, which is very effective?

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank my hon. Friend. He is tireless. He has lobbied me privately to do that and I do not blame him for lobbying me publicly. There are other members of the Committee here who can bear witness, so we will consider that. We have been looking at the global goals, which make reference to cutting road deaths, and we have the voluntary national review later this month. I can give an undertaking that my good friend, the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham), the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) and I will raise that when we are in New York later this month—Whips permitting—to attend the voluntary national review.

As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury said, aid spending is quite widely and deeply scrutinised, and rightly so. It is scrutinised in the media and by the public. Like all other areas of Government spending, it is scrutinised by the National Audit Office. We also have the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, established when the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) was Secretary of State, which is a very powerful lever for improvement in our system.

Alongside that scrutiny—this is something we are focusing on more as a Committee—we need to get better at hearing the voices of those who are beneficiaries of aid and those who are working in the field. That was brought into sharp focus by the issues around sexual exploitation and abuse that arose last year. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire, who has been raising that issue for years, well before The Times coverage began last February. It brought to light the failure of the aid sector, including those of us who scrutinise it, to hear and to create opportunities for those who live in some of the poorest countries in the world to have their voices heard about the impact of aid—hopefully when it is positive, but also, in this extreme case, when it is negative.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Foreign Secretary may not know that at the time two parliamentary delegations went to Hong Kong to check how the declaration had been accepted by local people. I was on one of those delegations, led by Ian Mikardo, and we all came away absolutely convinced that one nation, two systems was a solemn, sacred obligation. Will the Foreign Secretary give a message to the Chinese Government: none of their nonsense—we know who is behind this and that they want to crush democracy in China, and that if it comes to it, we could have a system of embargoes on their goods coming to this country and to Europe?

[Mr Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his passionate support for the people of Hong Kong, and I want to reassure him on this. On my first visit to China as Foreign Secretary, I spoke to my counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, about the very issue of Hong Kong to underline just how important it is not just to this Government but to everyone in this House.

Sudan

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

As far as Darfur is concerned, the crucial organisation there is UNAMID. With regard to Khartoum, the important way forward there is to ensure that the Transitional Military Council and the Forces of Freedom and Change are able to continue with the current dialogue and that they recognise that peaceful protest needs to be part of this transition. We will try to ensure that all abuses and violations are documented and that people are held to account.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The last I heard, the brave men and women working in international aid agencies such as the International Rescue Committee were still operating on the ground. Are we in contact with those organisations, and what are they reporting back? It is encouraging to hear that European Ministers are meeting to talk, so would not a new delegation be timely if that could be arranged at this time?

[Harriett Baldwin]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. A few days ago, I met some of the leading non-governmental organisations that are delivering humanitarian assistance, and access is continuing to allow them to do that. Obviously one has to put on record one’s admiration for the bravery of the people involved. As far as a delegation is concerned, I understand that commercial flights from both Ethiopian Airlines and Turkish Airlines have now restarted. We hope that the situation will remain peaceful enough on the ground to enable us to update our travel advice, but at the moment the travel advice for British citizens is for essential travel only.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I think there is. We will obviously await the bishop’s final report. The concern we had, and the reason that we commissioned the report, was a sense that while we have, rightly, called out persecution of people of other religions—the Rohingya in Burma, for example—we have been more reticent in doing that when it is Christians, yet 80% of all the religious persecution in the world happens to Christians.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Foreign Secretary pay tribute to the work that Christian Churches do in helping, across Africa and across the world, countries that need help? This is Christian Aid Week. Christian Aid does wonderful things, working in clinics and so on. Perhaps we could use our soft power to widen the perception of that work.

[Mr Hunt]

I had the privilege, the week before last, of seeing the work done by a Catholic charity in the slums of Kenya. I know that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown was incredibly moved by the work of the Churches when he did his big trip to Africa, so in Christian Aid Week, along with everyone in this House, I salute the tremendous work of the Churches in poorer countries.

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[The Minister for Africa (Harriett Baldwin)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work as the former Minister for prisons, with all-party groups and in raising the issue regularly with me. He is right that we have a range of different programmes. Our new Secretary of State for International Development, having recently been Prisons Minister, is casting a fresh eye on that important issue.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

T2. The Secretary of State may agree that when we ceded Hong Kong to China in 1997 we had a solemn agreement on one nation, two systems. What level of trust can we put in any Chinese Government that locks up protestors in the Umbrella movement, as happened only two weeks ago?

[The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and we have noted with great concern the widespread concern in Hong Kong about the proposed changes, including the protests of 28 April and the disorder on the floor of LegCo in relation to the extradition laws that are currently going through. We are considering the potential implications, including how they may affect UK citizens, and will push to ensure that one country, two systems remains intact.