UK Relations with Qatar

Debate between Bob Stewart and Peter Grant

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate, Sir Henry, and to begin the summing up. It has been an interesting debate, because I do not think anyone has said anything that anyone else has disagreed with. It is notable and perhaps disappointing that we have not exactly got the gender balance right this afternoon. I suspect that has prevented the debate from reaching the high quality it might have, but it has certainly been interesting.

We are discussing a country that is thousands of miles away, with a population slightly less than half that of Scotland. Yet the immense wealth that has come its way in the past few decades means that it has the potential to play a major part in decisions taken there and in the region. It has been hinted at—and I think it is true—that an issue that still needs to be worked through in the middle east is that the big, powerful neighbour needs to accept that it does not get to call all the shots, and that some of the smaller ones, including Qatar, want a say. They sometimes want to say something different from what the Saudis would like them to say.

The hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) graphically outlined the huge financial impact that the Qatari sovereign wealth fund has in the United Kingdom—particularly, but not exclusively, in London. When he listed the buildings and property it owned, I felt almost that if something is tall enough to be seen above the rest of the London skyline—or, in the case of a hotel, if it is too expensive to go into—it probably belongs to Qatar. That in itself creates an issue. We must make sure in our dealings with Qatar that the massive financial investment it has made in a lot of infrastructure in London and other parts of the UK does not prevent us from criticising it when that is needed. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) eloquently pointed out, sometimes criticism needs to be made. We can welcome the progress made in Qatar in recent years, but we must also remind it that there is much more to be done.

A few months ago my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) spoke in a debate in this Chamber and referred to the

“human rights abuses that we have seen—workers being tied to a single employer, low pay, poor accommodation, labouring in dangerous heat and, sadly, hundreds of unexplained deaths”.—[Official Report, 14 March 2018; Vol. 637, c. 402WH.]

That is in one of the wealthiest countries in the world; it has not happened because the country is intrinsically poor. Despite that enormous wealth human lives are treated with contempt, and cheaply. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) rightly pointed out that some things for which we now criticise such places as Saudi Arabia and Qatar happened in the United Kingdom not that long ago, and that we must encourage people to move forward rather than trying to order them to stop doing what UK legislation allowed until 40 or 50 years ago.

It was only 10 years ago that the Christian population in Qatar was first allowed openly to practise its religion. That was when the first church in Qatar was opened. We still see what the BBC diplomatically refers to as the filtering of what Qataris are allowed to see on the internet and other media. Interestingly, one objection from Saudi Arabia and other neighbouring countries to what Qatar does is that al-Jazeera, which is owned in Qatar, will broadcast quite critical content about some of the country’s neighbours but will not criticise the Qatari Government. They do not like it to be allowed to do that. Some of al-Jazeera’s coverage of terrorist atrocities in the past has been crassly insensitive and deeply offensive to the families of victims. It may be that Qatar is trying to modernise, and hopefully one day soon the media in Qatar will be allowed to criticise their Government as freely as they are allowed to criticise Governments elsewhere, and perhaps the neighbours need to accept that Saudi Arabian citizens must one day be allowed to watch television programmes without restriction and read newspapers that do not agree with the Saudi royal family.

[Bob Stewart]

I have been interviewed on al-Jazeera, and it seemed a very reasonable English-speaking station that talked sense. I gather, however, that the Arabic version may not be quite the same, and I hope that the Minister will say something about the difference when he responds to the debate.

[Peter Grant]

Not being an Arabic speaker I do not watch al-Jazeera in Arabic—I seldom watch it in English—but as reported by the BBC, some of its coverage of the terrorist murders of innocent hostages, for example, was highly insensitive. It appeared to be designed to give a propaganda victory to the terrorists, which we cannot condone.

Mention was made of the close military links between the United Kingdom and Qatar, and the current Emir and his father who preceded him are both graduates from Sandhurst. One reason—not the main one—why we must hope that the current diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and Qatar does not escalate into anything else is that both countries use British planes and pilots who were trained in Britain by the RAF. It would be terribly ironic if a conflict that cost lives in the Gulf involved two parties using British-made technology against each other. That is a salutary lesson, and we must be a bit more careful about who we are prepared to sell weapons and military hardware to. We cannot always be sure that those weapons will be used against the people we might wish them to be used against.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to his difficulty in imagining the need for air conditioning at a football match. He is one of four or five of us in this debate who, if we were fanatical football fans, would find it difficult to imagine a situation in which it mattered a jot where the World cup was being played—I can just about remember the last time that Scotland went, and I do not think Wales have been there since 1958. I hope they will get there at some point.

Qatar is obviously using the World cup to try to persuade the rest of the world that it is moving forward, but we must ensure that progress continues after 2022. I welcome a lot of the promises made last year about improved protection and rights for workers, but we must ensure that those promises start being delivered this year, and continue to be delivered not just until 2022, but into the late 2020s, the 2030s and beyond. The improvements and changes must be permanent.

Mention has been made of some of the demands that the Saudis and their neighbours have made on Qatar, but as I said when I intervened on the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, a lot of those countries need to examine their consciences about some of the groups that they have supported in other countries. It is, for example, a bit much for Saudi Arabia to object to the fact that Qatar appears to be supporting unpleasant acts in other countries, while it is bombing civilians to death in Yemen and elsewhere.

Although some of the demands and requests appear to be reasonable, Qatar is being asked to break all contact not only with terrorist groups in certain countries, but with political opposition groups. Imagine if the United States Government asked us to stop sending parliamentary groups over to meet Democrats at the time of a Republican President, or to stop going to European countries and speaking to Opposition politicians as well as those in the Government. That is effectively what the Saudis are asking for, and although some of the demands are perfectly reasonable—any allegations of state funding of terrorism anywhere must be independently investigated by an international court or tribunal—we must also say to our friends in Saudi Arabia, “Just wait a minute, you’re going a wee bit too far with this.”

Some of the rhetoric we are seeing from the Saudis and some of their allies reminds me of some of the inflammatory language that we have become far too used to in the claims and counter-claims between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours. They are not just talking about digging a ditch to physically cut off Qatar from the rest of the continent; they are talking about deliberately dumping nuclear and toxic waste on the Qatari border, where the potentially lethal impact will affect Qataris as much as—or more than—anybody else. That sounds to me like a threat of chemical and biological warfare. It might simply be rhetoric, and perhaps the claims are being made more for the consumption of the Saudi Arabian population, to convince people that their Government are standing up to Qatar, but any such threat should be dealt with by a firm response from the international community. Saudi Arabia should be asked to explain itself at the United Nations. All too often in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, once people start talking the language of atrocity the action of atrocity follows quickly afterwards.

We should call on all sides in the dispute in the Gulf to tone down their language, resort to diplomacy, and look to get some kind of agreement. We must also make it clear to Qatar that if there are credible allegations of serious crimes against international norms, whether or not the Government are directly involved, it must be open to having them investigated.

European Affairs

Debate between Bob Stewart and Peter Grant

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I have raised them all. If it were possible for me to speak quickly enough to debunk even half the nonsense on Brexit that we get from Government Members, I might be able to speak about some of the other issues. The record will show that the Scottish National party has made a number of attempts to raise these issues including, for example, the situation in Catalonia, but we have been pushed back by Her Majesty’s Government at every opportunity.

Having made bad worse by inserting red lines on the customs union and on the single market, the Prime Minister decided to waste three months of negotiating time and six months of parliamentary scrutiny time by having an election to guarantee a three-figure Conservative majority, so that everything else could just be steamrollered through without opposition. That worked even better than the referendum that the Government had to bring the Conservative party together.

As I said, this would be funny if the consequences for 60 million people on these islands, and potentially for several hundred million people in other parts of Europe, were not so grave. They are so grave that the Government still do everything in their power to prevent us and the people we represent from knowing just how bad their own analysis shows that the situation will become. Before the most recent Brexit papers had been fully published, one of the reasons we were told not to be too worried about them was that they only talked about the direct impact of different Brexit scenarios and did not take account of the massive benefit of all the new trade deals we were going to get. Supposedly, everybody would be falling over one another to trade with us after Brexit.

As the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) pointed out, the Government’s analysis indicates that maybe we can increase GDP by as much as 0.75% because of those deals. We could be looking at a Brexit deficit of between 7% and 9% of GDP, depending on just how hard the hard Brexiteers are able to push Brexit. A 0.75% mitigation of that will not do an awful lot of good in the communities that will be devastated by this downturn in our economy.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman where he got those figures from?

[Peter Grant]

I got them from Her Majesty’s Government. If the hon. Gentleman wants to tell me that we should never believe anything that Her Majesty’s Government’s civil servants tell us, that is a debate in itself. Those were the figures that were released, with significant protest, by Her Majesty’s Government to the Brexit Committee. I highly recommend the document to him.

Having had the analysis done at significant expense, those who instructed it to be carried out now seem to want to downplay it—to discredit it. I am pleased that we are no longer hearing, certainly from Ministers, any suggestion that there was anything incompetent, unprofessional or negligent in the performance of those who produced the figures. Of course, those who think that the Treasury’s figures are wildly too pessimistic have had the opportunity to produce their own. We might even find somebody who produces figures that give the lie not only to the Treasury but to the Scottish Government and to any number of other professional bodies. Those bodies do not always agree on the exact figures, but few, if any, are producing a scenario that looks anything other than deeply, deeply damaging for our economy and for the social cohesion of our four nations.

During the Minister’s speech, he took an intervention from one of his colleagues about an article in The Times. Interestingly, his answer seemed to suggest that it was only when they read it in The Times that the Government knew that there had been some softening of the attitude in Brussels towards our ability to negotiate trade deals. Perhaps the Minister could clarify that when he winds up. Would it not be typical of the shambolic nature of the Government in conducting these negotiations if they were getting their information from the front pages of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers rather than from direct face-to-face contact with our European friends and allies?

When the Government were asked to name a single country that is saying that it would give us a better trade deal out of the EU than within the EU, yet again not a single country was named that is willing to do so. There is a lot of ambitious and grand talk of all the countries that want to trade with us—a wish list, a pie-in-the-sky list. There is, as yet, absolutely no reason to believe that any of these countries will give us a better deal than we could get by staying exactly where we are. We need to remember that what the Government ask for ain’t necessarily what they are going to get, because there are 27 other Governments over there who are just as determined and just as entitled to look after the interests of the people they represent.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) used the tired old argument that we have a trade deficit with the EU and a trade surplus with the rest of the world, and we should therefore concentrate on the rest of the world. I leave aside the fact that some of us do manage to have a trade surplus with the European Union. The logical consequence of that argument is that, if the rest of the world has a huge trade deficit with us, why in the name of goodness would they want to continue trading with us? It is not because Europe is bad at industry and manufacturing that it has a trade surplus with us—it is because it is better at it than we are. The cradle of the industrial revolution has allowed others to overtake us in investment and reinvestment and improving manufacturing efficiency.

UK Relations with Taiwan

Debate between Bob Stewart and Peter Grant

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant]

Imitation is, of course, the sincerest form of flattery. I have no doubt at all that the expertise both in designing the plant and in including the secret magic ingredients can be exported—methods can be taught—but it is still simply not possible to make proper whisky anywhere outside of Scotland. Those who believe that the Taiwan whisky is the best in the world also think you can make whisky in places such as Ireland, and I believe even Cornwall has had a go.

The economic ties that we have with Taiwan are important not simply because of the export business. Interestingly, I note that for the past 10 years the UK has had a substantial trade deficit with Taiwan. Given that a trade deficit with some countries in Europe is used as an excuse for severing ties with them, it seems strange that the big trade deficit that we have with Taiwan should somehow have the opposite effect. We want to increase and strengthen those links. There seems to be a contradiction or an inconsistency.

As far as the Government of Taiwan are concerned, the Scottish National party welcomes, as we all do, the progress that has been made. It is hard to believe it is only 30 years since Taiwan was under full martial law. It has made a lot of progress since then, which has not always been easy. You cannot change from dictatorship to full democracy in a generation without encountering difficulties along the way. We must recognise that for a lot of the time the Government of mainland China have allowed Taiwan to develop in its own way, although at times they have interfered to an extent that I think is unacceptable. I hope the Minister will agree with that.

Nobody has yet mentioned the arrest and detention of Lee Ming-che, a human rights activist from Taiwan who disappeared in March when he entered China. Within the past four or five weeks Chinese television has broadcast him confessing to sedition and endangering the security of the Chinese state. After six months’ secret detention by the Chinese authorities, most of us would confess to almost anything. We can only wonder what pressure was put on him. He has confessed to planning a website and encouraging people to oppose some of the policies of the Chinese Government, and to distributing literature that criticised the Chinese Government. In other words, he confessed to doing things that all of us do every day of our lives and that people in Taiwan are used to being allowed to do.

Perhaps we should ask the Chinese Government to take note of the fact that economic development in Taiwan has gone on at the same time as the increase in democracy and increasing liberalisation of society. As has been mentioned, Taiwan is the first place in Asia officially to accept the principle of same-sex marriage. I hope that is an example that will go forward elsewhere in Asia.

It was suggested in an intervention that we should look to export arms to Taiwan and look for more military involvement, but I think that would be a disaster just now. The last thing the United Kingdom needs is to find more places for military adventures and more places to sell weapons, when we have no idea how and when and against whom they might be used in future.

For obvious reasons, I can identify with the idea that Taiwan is recognised as a country that is not yet a country. It is a nation, but it does not quite have full state recognition in the United Nations, for example. On the future status of Taiwan, it is important to consider the wishes and the will of the Taiwanese people. Far too often in such circumstances—we can certainly see it from the Chinese Government—it becomes all about what is in the strategic interests of China, which would like to integrate Taiwan more fully into China and to use it as a military base, for example. Whether we are talking about the long-term constitutional status of Taiwan, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands or anywhere else, the ultimate question should always be: what is the will of the people? It is clear that for the time being, the will of the people of Taiwan is that it should not be further integrated into the People’s Republic of China.

[Bob Stewart]

On the status of Taiwan in the United Nations, there are 23 million people living in Taiwan—that is 35% of the size of our own population—and they are not represented at the United Nations. China blocks it and is very effective at blocking it. The United Nations and our Government should consider supporting moves to give proper observer status to Taiwan in the United Nations.

[Peter Grant]

I certainly would not object to that. I can think of other places that should be afforded the same opportunity, because the United Nations wants to be as inclusive as possible and should look for ways to bring people in as observers, rather than to keep them out. For the record, I am not a great fan of the way in which the United Nations Security Council works. It seems to be about making sure that the big military superpowers prevent anything from happening that might go against their interests, rather than to make sure that the world develops in the best interests of most of the peoples of the world.

I will conclude now because I am keen to hear the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson. Taiwan is unique, as far as I know, among all the countries of the world. On its constitutional status and its status as a significant economic power, although it does not have official recognition as a part of the United Nations, as has been mentioned, it is a good example to us that sometimes we need to be prepared to look at answers that are slightly different from the norm and whether it is possible to recognise the sovereignty of people before, during or after the transition to full statehood and to full recognition on the world stage.

I hope that the Minister will continue to rule out military involvement through sales of arms or an actual military presence in Taiwan. I can understand from one point of view why that has been suggested, but I really do not think that that would be the right way to deal with a situation that in many ways is encouraging. As I have said, there has been a lot of progress in Taiwan in the past 30 years. However, there are still dangers and there is significant tension between Taiwan and China. One false or unwise move by the United Kingdom or other powers could make things a lot worse not only for the strategic security of the United Kingdom but particularly for the 23 million people who live in Taiwan.