Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Stephen Twigg

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Church and other faith-based organisations are often involved in peace-building activities.

I will give some examples of the sorts of things that could be covered by peace building. It could include mediation and dialogue activities to negotiate local ceasefires or broker peace talks, support for local communities to strengthen early warning schemes or civilian protection efforts and initiatives to deal with the legacy of violence and promote social cohesion so that peace is built. DFID’s single departmental plan has as one of its five objectives strengthening global peace, security and governance, and DFID seeks to spend about half its investment in fragile states. In November last year, the Department doubled the UK’s commitment to the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund as part of a long-term strategy to build global peace and prosperity by tackling the underlying causes of instability.

[Bob Stewart]

In my experience, a Department such as DFID will sometimes send in a project team to do peace building or peace making, or to build a hospital. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we might also have to consider bodyguards, because a private military company might be involved in protecting DFID’s people when they go into a war zone? Has he considered that as part of his amendment?

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Aid workers—whether directly employed by DFID or other donor countries, or employed by other non-governmental organisations or private contractors—require security arrangements in precisely the sorts of countries that we are discussing. That is an important part of the aid effort, and therefore it is, as he suggests, covered by my amendment.

My concern is that the term “aid of a humanitarian nature” does not explicitly include such peace-building programmes. I fear that without a clear exemption, there is a risk that peace building could be at the mercy of interpretation on what constitutes a reasonable excuse. This is a relatively low-profile area of international activity, so I think there is a risk that it may not be widely understood. I note that, as the SNP spokesman rightly said, on Third Reading in the other place Earl Howe for the Government said:

“In the absence of such an exemption the Government are clear that entering and remaining in a designated area for the purpose of engaging in peacebuilding would constitute a reasonable excuse.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 January 2019; Vol. 795, c. 141.]

That commitment is welcome, but I think the risk remains that were such a case to come to court, juries might not have a full understanding of peace building and might not understand it to be covered by the concept of humanitarian activity. I do not think anybody in this House would want the Bill to have the unintended consequence of deterring NGOs from going into conflict areas or post-conflict areas. I urge the Minister, if he gets the chance to do so in responding to the debate, to give a commitment to the importance of peace building. Ideally, he will do so, as per my amendment, by adding this activity to the list of specified purposes. Alternatively, he could make it explicitly clear today that peace keeping is covered by the term “aid of a humanitarian nature”, and he could reflect that in the policy guidance.

Finally, let me refer to human rights monitoring. Rightly, the Bill now refers to

“carrying out work as a journalist”

but my amendment seeks to extend the provision to cover those who are undertaking human rights monitoring or advocacy. The United Nations defines human rights monitoring as seeking

“to gather information about the human rights situation in a country or region over time through readily available methods, with the goal of engaging in advocacy to address human rights violations.”

That is dangerous and incredibly important work. Without human rights defenders on the ground, injustices too often go unchallenged, and the most marginalised and vulnerable people have little protection from abuses of power. Those who work in the field of human rights monitoring and advocacy often put themselves in grave danger to shine a light on the abuse of power. I believe they have a right to know that when they are conducting that important work, they have protection in UK law that recognises their legitimate reasons for travelling to such designated areas.

I finish by saying that although it is fundamental that we strengthen our legislation to tackle terrorism, it is important to ensure that when we do so, we do not inadvertently undermine the very values that terrorists seek to attack. We have a proud record as an open, outward-looking country that does not turn away when it witnesses injustice. It would be sad if the Bill had the unintended consequence of limiting the contribution of our own citizens to development programmes, peace building and human rights monitoring in some of the world’s most fragile states. Although I will not press my amendment to a Division, I hope that the Minister will consider the points that I and others have made about this and will, even at this late stage, consider accepting my amendment.

Select Committee on International Development

Debate between Bob Stewart and Stephen Twigg

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, and to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing me time, on behalf of the International Development Committee, to speak to the House today about our second report of this parliamentary Session, “Bangladesh and Burma: the Rohingya Crisis”.

The scale and depth of the suffering of the Rohingya has rightly given rise to substantial activity in this House. As well as inquiries by my Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee, we have had an urgent question, debates both on the Floor of the House and in Westminster Hall, and a significant number of parliamentary questions. The International Development Committee is examining DFID’s work in Bangladesh and Burma, and this report is our first output.

The dire circumstances of the Rohingya are of course ongoing. In addition to the £59 million that DFID has allocated to humanitarian aid for the Rohingya, there will doubtless be calls for further emergency relief as this crisis continues. Additionally, DFID’s budget for more conventional, longer-term development aid in Burma and Bangladesh next year will total about £170 million. We are examining that in the next stage of our inquiry.

I pay tribute to the people and the Government of Bangladesh and to the many organisations and individuals who have been working in Cox’s Bazar and elsewhere to assist the Rohingya people. The Rohingya have been devastated by decades of marginalisation and abuse, leading to the events of the past six months, which the United Nations has rightly described as a

“textbook example of ethnic cleansing”

perpetrated by the Burmese security forces. This week we have heard deeply disturbing reports of a possible agreement between the Governments of Bangladesh and Burma to repatriate displaced Rohingya. The potential return of over 100,000 Rohingya to Burma without any clear understanding of their legal status or knowing anything about their final destination is of course of very grave concern.

Early in the conflict, the Government presented a five-point plan to help galvanise the international community into action. The plan involves the cessation of violence by the Burmese; guaranteed humanitarian access to the affected parts of Burma; repatriation, but only on a voluntary basis, with safety guaranteed; full implementation of the Annan advisory committee’s recommendations; and, crucially, full, unimpeded access for, and co-operation with, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission. Our evidence is unequivocal that none of those strands of the plan are anywhere near being realised today.

Our report looked at the previous periods of displacement of the Rohingya and, indeed, other minority groups over the past two decades. In no instance was the outcome satisfactory, and the Committee has little confidence that it will be any better this time. The idea that the Rohingya could be returned to live in internment camps controlled by the Burmese military is surely completely unacceptable.

We welcome the £59 million commitment that the United Kingdom Government have made to respond to the crisis, and, in particular, the swiftness with which that was pledged. However, the Government of Bangladesh have told us that they expect the cost of effective provision of basic services for the displaced Rohingya eventually to total more than £1 billion. The Geneva conference in October secured commitments to provide about a quarter of that sum—£266 million. There is clearly still a huge funding gap, and other donors need to rise to the challenge in the way that the UK Government, to their credit, have done.

We expressed particular concern about large-scale gender-based violence committed by the Burmese military. This is not something new. Predecessor International Development Committees have reported on this, in 2006 and 2014. The Governments of the time, in their responses to those reports, agreed with the Committees’ harrowing assessment about the Burmese army using rape as a weapon of war. Our own evidence heard that this situation is, if anything, worse than ever. ActionAid stated in its evidence to us:

“Girls as young as 5 years of age have been reported to have been raped by multiple uniformed actors, often in front of their relatives. There are reports of rapes being widespread, extremely violent, and accompanied by mutilation. There are reports of pregnant women being attacked and their foetuses removed from their bodies.”

We were very disappointed that the Government seem reluctant to commit their full specialist sexual violence team to the region. This flies in the face of the commitment made by the former Foreign Secretary Lord Hague to give a big focus in UK policy to this issue. In conflicts where rape, sexual violence and torture are used, it is essential that official, contemporary, reliable evidence-gathering by forensic professionals occurs as quickly as possible. The Burmese Government’s claim that they have investigated and that their investigation clears their armed forces of wrongdoing are, in the words of our own Government, “simply not credible”.

There are also issues arising in the camps in Bangladesh. Poor lighting, the lack of privacy around toilets and washing facilities, and the absence of any security for women and girls who work outside the camps have created an environment that is fundamentally unsafe, particularly for women and girls. As we were told in evidence, women and girls are therefore more likely to be victims of trafficking, and more likely to find themselves forced into early—including childhood—marriages.

The most effective way to deal with any crisis is of course to prevent it from happening in the first place. There is nothing new about this situation with the Rohingya. Human Rights Watch has been reporting on the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and asking for action by the international community since at least 2013. Since 2015, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s early warning project has identified the Rohingya as one of the world’s vulnerable populations most at risk of genocide. The disparity between what the international community was saying about the conflict and what we were told by these civil society organisations is very stark. Its effect is that there has not been the quick, effective response from the international community that might have prevented this from happening.

In fact, our evidence suggests that in some ways the opposite has happened. The continued engagement by the United Kingdom and other countries with the Burmese authorities seems to have been interpreted by their military as tacit acceptance of their treatment of the Rohingya people. We also note that there has been considerable over-optimism about the speed and breadth of democratic reforms in Burma.

In conclusion, the Rohingya crisis provided the international community with an immediate test case for the 2016 consensus reached at both the world humanitarian summit and the New York declaration on displaced people, including refugees. It is clear that the commitments made in 2016 have been tested to destruction by this crisis. It is vital that the United Kingdom continues our commendable commitment to humanitarian aid. The five-point plan is welcome, but it would be totally unacceptable for repatriation even to be considered until we see fundamental change in Burma itself. Surely we owe it to the Rohingya refugees and to the Rohingya who still remain in Burma to continue to give the House’s attention to the crisis. I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the House for giving me the opportunity to raise this issue today.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I know there is a problem with UN peacekeeping in the region, but what is the feeling about the Security Council coming to an agreement to put in peacekeepers? There is a dire need for them.

[Stephen Twigg]

That is a very important question. It falls a little outside the remit of our inquiry, so it is not a matter on which we took a lot of evidence or reached conclusions in the report. The hon. Gentleman has raised a very important point, and it may be an issue on which our Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee can work together. Ultimately, if there is to be a point at which the Rohingya feel they can go back, they will need guarantees, and I personally think he is right that peacekeepers could form part of the solution.

Yemen

Debate between Bob Stewart and Stephen Twigg

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s own long-standing work on the issue and to the work of the all-party parliamentary group on Yemen. He is absolutely right to say that a ceasefire is crucial, and I shall come on to access for humanitarian organisations.

At the end of 2015, the International Development Committee decided to conduct an inquiry into the crisis. Last year, we published two reports on Yemen. The first, which we produced on our own, related specifically to the humanitarian crisis, and the second was produced in conjunction with the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, through the work of the Committees on Arms Export Controls. One of the recommendations in our first report was that the UK Government should put pressure on all parties to the conflict to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law. That includes, very importantly, measures to protect civilians and, as we have been reminded by my right hon. Friend, to allow humanitarian agencies a safe space in which to operate.

The humanitarian situation is grave. Our own Government have described the crisis in Yemen as one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world. The United Nations estimates that more than 80% of the population—more than 20 million people—are in immediate need of humanitarian assistance. Fourteen million people face food shortages, 19 million have no access to safe drinking water, and more than 3 million have had to flee their homes because of the conflict. The situation is particularly dire for children: the United Nations has estimated that eight children are killed or maimed every day in Yemen and that nearly 50% of school-age children are not at school.

The situation is exacerbated by the difficulty of gaining access for imports of essential supplies such as energy, food and medicine. That fuels the humanitarian crisis. Supplies are filtering through to the country more quickly than they were six months ago, and that progress is obviously welcome, but levels remain significantly below those of March 2015. Not only is that damaging the economy, but any further changes in the availability of food will pose a risk of famine. It is to DFID’s credit—I am pleased to see that the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), is present—that it is putting more than £100 million into Yemen to help to relieve some of the most pressing humanitarian challenges. The UK is the fourth largest donor to Yemen, and we are leading the way in many respects, as we so often do in humanitarian crises, but we need to do more to press other countries to fund relief.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

If DFID is giving £100 million to Yemen—I totally support that—what is happening to the money? Presumably, it is blocked, because we cannot get through to the people who really need it. I suppose that it is in some bank or food store somewhere.

[Stephen Twigg]

The situation varies in different parts of the country, but I remember that when the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne)—who is sitting next to the hon. Gentleman—was a DFID Minister, we discussed this issue when he appeared before the Select Committee nearly a year ago to give evidence. One of the challenges is precisely the one of which the hon. Gentleman has reminded us: securing access within the country, so that the aid can get through. The UK does not necessarily need to spend more money, but we should do our utmost to get the aid through. That brings us on to the challenges of achieving a ceasefire but also political progress in Yemen.

Even in the present challenging circumstances, DFID is working to improve food and water security and to provide emergency resilience for those who are most at risk. Unfortunately, the organisations that have been, and in some cases still are, on the ground helping to alleviate the humanitarian situation have told the Select Committee that their work has been threatened by the conflict. Since March 2015, 13 health workers have died and 31 have been injured. The World Health Organisation tells us that more than 70 health centres have been damaged or destroyed completely and that more than 600 have closed owing to damage or shortage of supplies or staff. Last year, the non-governmental organisation, Doctors of the World, withdrew from Yemen because it simply could not guarantee the safety of its volunteers on the ground. A number of non-governmental organisations have told us that the humanitarian space in Yemen is shrinking, making it even more difficult for them to carry out their work. All sides in the conflict need to comply with international humanitarian law, and one of the ways they should do so is to ensure humanitarian organisations can work unimpeded in Yemen.

Rwandan Genocide

Debate between Bob Stewart and Stephen Twigg

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I draw the House’s attention to my relevant entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I join other Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) on securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee on granting it. It is absolutely right that the House takes the opportunity to commemorate the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and it is a pleasure to speak after three compelling and powerful speeches by hon. Members on both sides of the House.

The Kinyarwandan word kwibuka means remembrance, and we are part of Kwibuka20, the 20th anniversary of the genocide. A flame of remembrance has been carried around Rwanda, and a similar flame of remembrance was carried around this country. I was delighted to join the lord mayor of Liverpool and others in welcoming the flame to Liverpool town hall in March 2014. The hon. Member for Braintree spoke about the event at which the Rwandan Foreign Minister spoke—the global conversation, which was hosted here in Parliament in March. I was delighted to be part of that event, and then to have the privilege to go back to Rwanda last month to attend the commemoration at which, as has been said, we were represented by the Foreign Secretary and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds).

Since last December I have chaired the all-party parliamentary group on the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. That all-party group was set up in 2005, in the wake of the world summit to take forward the important principle of the responsibility to protect. I am delighted that in framing of the motion before us, the hon. Member for Braintree has not only remembered Rwanda but has made that express connection to the responsibility to protect. I will return to that at the end of my remarks.

I thank the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which funded my attendance of the Kigali international forum on behalf of the all-party parliamentary group. At that forum I made a proposal that we should have a global parliamentary network of parliamentarians in all continents who are determined to work together on a cross-party basis to prevent future genocides and other mass atrocities. At the moment, the only other Parliament that has an all-party group similar to ours is Canada. It was set up at the behest of Roméo Dallaire, who is now a Senator in the Canadian Parliament but was the UN commander on the ground in Kigali in 1994. I was delighted to have the opportunity to discuss the establishment of such a network with parliamentarians from Rwanda itself, from other east African Parliaments who attended the Kigali forum, from the German Parliament on a cross-party basis, and from Australia, and I will be working with colleagues, I am sure, on both sides of the House and in the other place on forging that global parliamentary network, which is an initiative of the Aegis Trust.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about the important work of the Aegis Trust. I had the privilege to work with the trust for five years during my enforced exile from this place between 2005 and 2010. It was with the trust that I first went to Rwanda in 2005. The Aegis Trust is a remarkable organisation, set up originally by a family in the parliamentary constituency of Newark, by coincidence, whose first act was to establish the holocaust memorial in this country known as Beth Shalom. The Smith family are a Christian family who visited Yad Vashem in Israel, saw the holocaust memorial there and made the decision to establish a similar memorial in this country. They used their own home to provide that museum, which educates thousands of young people every year on the horrors of the Nazi holocaust and other genocides and mass atrocities.

After the family had run the holocaust memorial for some years, a number of people asked them, “What about what is happening now? What about other genocides that have happened since the holocaust?” They therefore decided to set up the Aegis Trust to remember what had happened in Rwanda, Cambodia and elsewhere, and crucially to work for the prevention of further genocides and mass atrocities. Both Stephen Smith and James Smith have rightly been honoured by Her Majesty the Queen in honours lists, most recently with James, the chief executive of the trust, being awarded the CBE.

[Bob Stewart]

When I was the British United Nations commander in Bosnia, one of the biggest obstacles to getting international action was the refusal to call what was happening genocide. Once an act is defined as genocide, the United Nations is compelled to do something about it. Does the responsibility to protect ensure that we can now get genocide quickly defined as such, to overcome that reluctance to act?

[Stephen Twigg]

I hope so. That is my honest answer. I will come to the specifics of how we might move forward on the responsibility to protect. It would be terrible if we had another situation where an atrocity was emerging and, for definitional reasons, we were unable to take appropriate action to prevent it from happening.

While I was in Kigali last month, in addition to attending the national commemoration at the football stadium, we had the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Kigali genocide memorial, which all Members have mentioned. The commemoration event was incredibly powerful. During that day, the mufti of Rwanda, the leader of the Muslim community there, spoke, and he did so on behalf of the Muslim community and also the main Christian Churches in Rwanda. He spoke about a new cross-faith initiative to take up what is happening in the Central African Republic. One of the things that has come out of the Rwandan genocide is that the Government as well as the people of Rwanda are key voices in demanding international action in situations that they rightly fear could result in genocide or other mass atrocities.

Remembrance is vital, especially in this year. Commemoration and education are crucial, but as Members on both sides of the House have said, we need also to focus on prevention, and it is on that subject that I wish to finish my remarks. How can we make this responsibility to protect a concrete reality? I concur with the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). There are some real challenges in forging a consensus globally on this. We cannot underestimate the scale of those challenges, but it is vital that the United Kingdom is at the forefront of taking this forward.

Will the Minister say something about the current initiative from the French Government, who are proposing a code of conduct concerning the use of the veto power by the permanent members of the Security Council? The French Government propose that this should be adopted—this comes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—in cases of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The proposal is for a mutual commitment by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to suspend their right of veto in situations of mass atrocities.

We know that in 1994 there was a failure of collective action to prevent Rwandans from being killed simply because they were Tutsi or because they were Hutu people intervening on behalf of Tutsis.

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

Debate between Bob Stewart and Stephen Twigg

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I will take the Leader of the House at his word. Let me say “the relevant amendment”. I believe this relevant amendment is modest. It is primarily about not the costs themselves but the additional bureaucracy that this would involve. For many smaller charities, it would be incredibly difficult to differentiate the amount of time that the staff member spends on these activities from the time they spend on other activities. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) mentioned Lord Harries of Pentregarth. What he said in the other place is worth considering. It is easy to assess the amount of money that one will spend on hiring the hall for a public rally, because there is an invoice. However, there is no invoice for a member of staff or for the 10% of the time spent over four weeks carrying out the work.

[Bob Stewart]

Small charities will get nowhere near their limits, even if they put in all their staff costs. I suspect that charities will not have any problems with the limits whatsoever.

[Stephen Twigg]

I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman is correct. I have already said that we welcome some of the changes to the registration and threshold levels, but there is still concern among charities about the impact this change could have and the Lords amendment simply clarifies and improves that element of the Bill.

There is no desire in this House to create a regulatory system that is impossible to abide by. We do not want to stifle charities or the other voluntary and citizens’ organisations that are often the bedrock of our communities with further unnecessary red tape and changes to their accountancy structure. Many such organisations rely on volunteers, but they have to try to cost the time of their volunteers.

I believe that the Lords amendment is a compromise. The Opposition share the preference that the Electoral Commission has expressed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North, the Chair of the Select Committee, reminded us earlier, the Electoral Commission said that for the 2015 election it would prefer all staff costs to be removed. The amendment does not go as far as that recommendation, as it would merely count for background staff costs in relation to certain activities that are being brought into regulation.

It is clear that some costs should be accounted for, such as those with an indirect relation to the canvassing of voters. It seems to me that it would not be very difficult to identify those costs, but organising a meeting, travelling to a venue or setting up a press conference might take merely a few minutes and it would be absurd to expect small and medium-sized organisations to have to account for that time, too. We see the amendment as a tidying up exercise that could save valuable time and money for charities and voluntary organisations while maintaining the purpose of transparency and accountability for those activities that relate directly to elections.

When the amendment was considered in the other place, only three peers who were not from the Government Benches voted against it. The Government were defeated, and on that basis I urge them to listen. Lord Tyler, the Liberal Democrat peer and a former long-standing Member of this House, made a powerful case, saying:

“Bluntly, I do not think that anyone cares if a policy officer, whose job for the rest of the year is something completely different, spends a little time booking a room for an election rally, or incurs costs travelling to it…if the regulations go through without us thinking about the implications, they could unnecessarily tie up campaigners in accounting for their time—and, worse still, could deter some from campaigning at all.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 January 2014; Vol. 751, c. 280.]