Oral Answers to Questions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The actions of Iran in supporting the Assad regime and the way in which it has conducted a civil war against its own people have caused deep concern. Iran can improve its position only if it does not support such a regime and if it encourages a full part in the political process to see a reformed Syria.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

19. A stable Lebanon is vital to securing a resolution to the conflict in Syria. I have just returned from Lebanon with Aid to the Church in Need, and we saw there that Lebanon is a country barely able to cope with the pressure it is under, having been without a Government for the past eight months. What has been done to ensure, while a Government are being found, that Lebanon remains stable and secure?

[Alistair Burt]

I met the Prime Minister of Lebanon, as did my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, on his visit to the United Kingdom.[Official Report, 23 January 2019, Vol. 653, c. 4MC.] We work very closely with all parties in Lebanon to encourage the process of Government formation. We are acutely conscious of the pressure of 1.3 million refugees in Lebanon. We would encourage the return of refugees from Lebanon to Syria, but only when it is safe to do so. Support for Lebanon and its economy is a fundamental part of the United Kingdom’s engagement in the region.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

2. What discussions he has had with his Saudi Arabian counterpart on the use of the death penalty in that country.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

18. What recent assessment he has made of the strength of the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

We continue to make representations on all cases of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, and I will look carefully into the case the right hon. Gentleman raises. I have to be direct with him and say that, because it is connected to sharia law, we think it unlikely that Saudi Arabia will change its policy on the death penalty, so most of the interventions we make tend to be in cases where a juvenile has committed the offence, or where we do not think the offence is egregious and where we think we will have the best chance of success.

[Brendan O’Hara]

The Government would have us believe that our close ties with Saudi Arabia have led to the regime behaving more humanely. Given that almost 100 Yemeni children were recently killed by Saudi airstrikes, and given the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, there is very little evidence to back up that claim, so can the Foreign Secretary point to the evidence that the UK is making the Saudi regime more humane and more responsible?

[Mr Hunt]

Perhaps this simple fact: yesterday, 50 Houthi rebels were airlifted to Oman, which was the essential precondition for peace talks starting in Stockholm, and they may start tomorrow or on Friday.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the important talks that are taking place. The UK is very much a co-proponent and keen advocate of the proposal currently under discussion. We strongly support this marine protection work, not just in the Weddell sea.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I have recently returned from Abu Nuwar, a village close to Khan al-Ahmar. There, I asked some of the mothers about their hopes and expectations. They said their hope was to remain in their village; their expectation was that, if Khan al-Ahmar is demolished, they would be next. What hope can the Minister give the mothers of Abu Nuwar?

[Alistair Burt]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, both for his visit and for his continuing interest in this issue. As he knows, and as the House knows, we have made significant representations in relation to Khan al-Ahmar and other Bedouin communities in recent times. There has still been no decision to demolish the Khan al-Ahmar village; that is currently paused—a decision by the Israeli authorities that we welcome. We continue to hope that a resolution will be found that does not involve demolition. The United Kingdom will remain closely involved.

Demolition of Khan al-Ahmar

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The hon. Gentleman puts it very forcefully. Israel co-operates in a variety of international organisations, and all the states that work with Israel must and should have some influence with it. He is right to talk about the United States, which is plainly its major relationship, but Israel has a strong relationship with the EU and it has a growing relationship with a number of other Arab states in the region.

This has to be a relationship built not only on what Israel is but on what Israel is to become. Accordingly, such actions raise question marks that friends do not wish to see. Let us see where the influence can be, and let us try to work together so that the Israel we see today, and the Israel we want to see, is the Israel that will be staunch in defence of rights, secure in its own existence and supported by its neighbours, but that works for a just settlement with those who live in the Palestinian areas and in Gaza.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Following this shameful demolition, what must the state of Israel do for this Government to act? That has to be the question. The Minister has said many times this afternoon that it is not UK Government policy, but does he agree that the time has come for the UK at least to examine genuinely hard-hitting, far-reaching economic sanctions, because negotiation, pleading and appeals to international law have demonstrably failed?

[Alistair Burt]

I can only repeat what I said earlier. Our policy remains a determination to do everything we can to see that the two-state solution remains viable, to do nothing that will make it less likely and to work with others who are determined to see it become a possibility. All our actions and responses should still be guided by those principles.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance, and I can also tell him that our ambassador —our excellent ambassador—in Tehran is working on the case daily.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

The Foreign Secretary has said that he finally accepts that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was on holiday, and that the whole country is now behind her. Does he include the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who just yesterday said that he did not know why she was in Iran, and has he told the right hon. Gentleman that his loose-lipped comments were unacceptable and damaging in equal measure?

[Boris Johnson]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath actually made it very clear that he believed she was there on holiday—[Interruption.] He did say that: I watched the clip. He was very happy to accept that that was the case.

Iran: Human Rights

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) on securing this important debate. She painted a bleak, sobering and depressing picture of life for those who step outside the accepted norms in Iran. She was absolutely right to say that many of us who have been concerned with human rights and freedom of religious belief for many years had hoped that with the re-election of President Rouhani in May, we would begin to see a lessening of the hard-line attitude that has become the hallmark of how Iran deals with people deemed to be out of step with the state’s politico-religious ideology. Many of us dared to hope that a more progressive Iran that embraced increased social, religious and political freedoms would emerge. We hoped for an Iran that would finally adhere to the treaties on human rights and freedom of religious expression to which it was a signatory.

Unfortunately, that simply has not happened, and the December 2016 citizens’ rights charter, which talked optimistically about freedom of expression and the right to life regardless of religion, seems as distant as ever. Indeed, there is ample evidence that intolerance, discrimination and persecution of both secular and religious minority groups has increased in Iran, with the regime increasingly hiding behind, as we have heard, that great catch-all offence—“conspiracy against Iran’s national security”. It is using that law to put both journalists and minority religious communities such as the Baha’i and Christian groups under enormous pressure. As we have heard, earlier this year the United Nations special rapporteur on Iran confirmed that “severe limitations and restrictions” on religious minorities persist and that the number of prisoners of conscience in Iran remains staggeringly high.

Every speaker today has rightly highlighted the appalling cases of the British citizens in jail in Iran and particularly that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. I add my voice and support to what has been said about her outrageous imprisonment, based on the nonsensical idea that because of her work with Thomson Reuters and previously with the BBC, she was, as the court case says,

“specifically working to overthrow the regime”.

Unfortunately, that is evidence of a mindset that still exists in Iran. It is confirmation, if any were needed, of Tehran’s paranoia about a free press.

I was contacted last week by the National Union of Journalists, which told me that 152 of its members currently working in London for the BBC’s Persian service had previously seen their assets frozen in Iran and were not allowed to buy or sell property in that country. All 152 of them have just been informed that they have been charged in their absence with

“conspiracy against Iran’s national security”.

Of course, the journalists cannot defend themselves against the charges unless they travel to Iran to stand trial. If they do so, the likelihood is, going by Iran’s recent record, that they will end up in jail for a very long time. However, many of the journalists still have family living in Iran, and according to the NUJ, many of their family members have been interrogated by the security services and encouraged to put pressure on their relatives working at the BBC to leave their job or agree to spy on their colleagues.

As I said, the offence of “conspiracy against Iran’s national security” is used extensively to pursue not only journalists, but minority religious communities. As the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet said, in the last few weeks 12 Christians have been sentenced to prison terms far in excess of what is laid down in the law after being found guilty of

“acting against Iran’s national security”.

As the right hon. Lady rightly pointed out, the charges arose from such innocuous events as Christmas celebrations and attending a church picnic. I understand that the majority of the 12 involved are Christian converts—a group of people who seem to be particularly reviled in Iran by the theocratic regime, as they are deemed not only to have betrayed their faith, but to have rejected the state itself.

There are other examples. Only last month, two Christian converts, a married couple, Mehrdad Hushmand and his wife Sara Nemati, were reportedly detained the day after attending and participating in a Christian funeral. Since the day they were detained, only Sara has been able to contact her family, and has done so just once. No reason has been given for their detention, and nothing is known of their health, legal status or even their exact whereabouts. That is happening despite the fact that the rights of Christians and other religious minorities are explicitly protected under the Iranian constitution, and regardless of the fact that Iran is a signatory to many international agreements that guarantee the right of an individual to change their faith should they wish to do so.

However, it is not just minority Christian groups that are targeted. As we have heard, the Baha’i community, which has 300,000 members and is Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, suffers systematic persecution simply because of its religious belief. The Iranian authorities seem absolutely determined to marginalise and remove the social and economic rights of the Baha’i community. Indeed, an official memorandum, dating back to 1991, from the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council explicitly states that the Government’s dealings with the Baha’i community should be conducted

“in such a way that their progress and development are blocked.”

As a result, the Baha’i community is often demonised in official state media and from the pulpits of mosques. The authorities have given a green light for blatant discrimination—discrimination that, as we have heard, all too often leads to violence and murder.

Regardless of who it is done to, state persecution is wrong, and when it occurs, it is incumbent on us to say so. The Minister is a great champion of human rights and religious freedom. Will he add his voice and that of the UK Government to those around the world saying to Tehran that the harassment, imprisonment and punishment of individuals who exercise peacefully their right to practise their chosen faith must stop, that the smokescreen of hiding behind the catch-all “conspiracy against Iran’s national security” is both intolerable and unacceptable and that we expect Iran to abide by its own constitution as well as the international treaties that it has signed up to and begin to uphold the rights of religious and ethnic minority communities within its own borders? And will the Minister promise to do everything he and his Department can do to secure the immediate release of Kamal Foroughi and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?

Scotland-Malawi Relationship

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Scotland-Malawi relationship.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope, having spent the afternoon with you in the Procedure Committee.

I am pleased to have secured today’s debate, and am very grateful to be able to give the House a chance to discuss and celebrate our very important and successful bilateral relationship. Before I speak about some of the more pressing matters, I would like to talk about the connection, the significance of which is seen through the numerous links to Malawi in every single one of the 59 constituencies in Scotland. I do not doubt that some of the other hon. Members present will be keen to use this debate to highlight some of those cultural links and will try to keep my comments brief to allow other Members to speak. I am happy to take appropriate interventions as well.

I pay tribute to the Scotland Malawi Partnership for all its work to promote the relationship between our nations. It has been invaluable in helping me to prepare for this debate. In particular, I thank and pay tribute to David Hope-Jones, its chief executive, who is tireless in his resolve to celebrate the scale, energy and impact of Scotland’s bilateral relationship with Malawi.

I cannot speak on this subject without honouring another David—now would probably be a good time for someone to intervene with those immortal words, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” The doctor is a famed figure across the globe, but nowhere more so than in his home nation of Scotland and in Malawi, where he travelled extensively on missionary work. David Livingstone’s influence on Malawi is evident right across the country. Its commercial centre and oldest city, Blantyre, was named after his birthplace in Lanarkshire. The history of the great Scotsman’s travels and crusades against slavery is taught to every schoolchild in Malawi even today, which ensures that he remains a much revered figure.

It should therefore come as no surprise that almost 200,000 Malawians are now involved in the Scotland Malawi Partnership, along with 100,000 Scots. The organisation’s impact should not be underestimated: some 2 million Malawians benefit directly from the partnership and 4 million benefit indirectly. In Scotland, almost half the population know someone with a connection to Malawi—an absolutely remarkable statistic.

There are 1,131 Scottish organisations and community champions with active links to Malawi, such as the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, Classrooms for Malawi, Mary’s Meals, Oxfam Scotland and 500 Miles. Glasgow City Council also has strong links. Successive Lords Provost have made the link a real priority since 2005, with each visiting Malawi and outdoing the last in raising funds, engaging and inspiring more people in Scotland and Malawi to connect for their mutual benefit. I recently met our newly appointed Lord Provost, Councillor Eva Bolander. I take great pleasure in informing the House that she will continue the tradition and is ready for the challenge.

A number of Glasgow City Council’s schools already have thriving relationships and partnerships with Malawi. These are active, dignified, two-way, school-to-school links that inform and inspire generations of young Scots to be good global citizens and that are transforming lives in Malawi and in Scotland.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Will he join me in recognising and commending the excellent work of a disproportionately large number of people in my constituency to support the people of Malawi? He has already mentioned the excellent work of Mary’s Meals, but we also have the Mid Argyll Malawi Twinning Group, the Imani Development Foundation in Oban, the Netherlorn Churches’ project “Seed for life. Feed for life”, many secondary schools such as the Rothesay Academy, Dunoon Grammar School, and the primary schools of Strone, Dalmally and Iona.

[David Linden]

I wholeheartedly join my hon. Friend in commending those wonderful local organisations. We have seen the generous, welcoming spirit of Argyll and Bute in its international work in recent years. I am more than happy to put that on the record.

In my constituency, Carmyle Primary School, St Joachim’s Catholic Primary School, Croftcroighn School, Swinton Primary School, Eastbank Academy and my own former high school, Bannerman High School, all participate in programmes to connect our distinct but intertwined communities over thousands of miles. On a recent visit back to Bannerman, I was delighted to learn that the school is preparing for a trip to Malawi next year, which I hope to be able to join.

Bannerman High School’s preparations are likely to be a lot easier than those of Malawians who wish to travel to Scotland, however. That brings me to my first substantive issue: the extremely serious shortcomings in the UK Government’s handling of visa applications. The Scotland Malawi Partnership has reported that over the past decade, its members have experienced an increasing number of issues with visa applications. Worryingly, many of them feel that the situation is worse now than it has ever been. Some argue that Malawians who apply for visas to visit the United Kingdom are treated with contempt from the outset, with ever increasing charges and an ever decreasing quality of service.

The partnership reports that what it sees as the dysfunctional processing of UK visas not only affects its work and the work of its members across Scottish civil society, but has a serious negative impact on the Government’s own development and diplomatic efforts, causing reputational damage. It is quite clear that this is not an isolated issue. The partnership’s experience is that Scottish churches, schools, non-governmental organisations, businesses, NHS boards, hospitals, universities and community groups have had to cancel visits, often at a considerable cost, because UK visas have not been processed correctly or in time.

When concerns have been raised in this place, the Government have been quick to point out that about 82% of UK visa applications from Malawi are successful—perhaps the Minister might ask the relevant Minister to break down for me how that percentage was arrived at. I understand that a significant proportion of Scotland Malawi Partnership members who start the process of applying for a UK visitor visa are not able to complete it because of systemic failures, so I would be keen to find out whether those incomplete applications are included within that percentage. I would also like to know if the figure includes visas that are awarded on the day of travel or even after the scheduled travel date.

The second substantive issue is the 1955 Malawi-UK double taxation treaty. I appreciate that Ministers may have been somewhat distracted by Brexit and disrupted by the snap general election, but the Government have not yet honoured their promise—and it was a promise—to update that treaty. The final deadline of July 2017 has now passed. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) recently asked a written question about the matter, but I am afraid the Treasury’s answer was disappointingly non-committal about the timeframe for completion. Its reason for delay—that the Government of Malawi had raised further points for consideration in August 2016—was somewhat at odds with the promise made by the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury last December that

“we hope to conclude soon”.—[Official Report, 16 December 2016; Vol. 618, c. 1142.]

Nine months on, we seem to be no further forward. I do not think that I am overstepping the mark when I say that the UK Government appear to be dragging their heels. They ought to get on with their day job and bring this matter to resolution. I do not consider it unreasonable to ask them to let us know exactly when they aim to have the treaty signed off. Any update would be most welcome.

British Citizens: Consular Support

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered consular support for British citizens.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I am grateful for the opportunity for this debate. My interest in this important issue was sparked by two of my constituents, who approached me with different issues but with one common theme: the help they had hoped would be provided by our consular services was not there when they needed it.

The first issue relates to my constituent David Greenaway, a former member of the British armed forces. Mr Greenaway contacted me by email on 28 October 2016 to tell me that he was being held in Iraq against his will and was not receiving assistance to remedy the situation. To summarise the case, Mr Greenaway was working in the city of Basra for Hannaford Construction, a company with headquarters in the United States. Unfortunately, after he started work in Iraq, he discovered that his employer had failed to pay a succession of outstanding invoices for his accommodation and an office that the company was using. By the time Mr Greenaway contacted me, it had also failed to pay his salary for four months, leaving him without the financial means of addressing his situation. That resulted in the owner of the hotel that Mr Greenaway was staying in confiscating his passport and holding him against his will until the arrears could be paid. At that stage, Mr Greenaway was also informed that he was banned from travelling out of the country until the debt was paid.

Mr Greenaway contacted the British embassy to request urgent assistance, but unfortunately the officials there did little more than advise him to seek legal advice, which of course he could not afford because his salary had been withheld for a significant time. No assistance with funding for legal fees or other ways of obtaining pro bono advice were offered.

On 31 October 2016, I wrote to the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), then Minister with responsibility for the middle east, to request that urgent assistance be provided to my constituent. I followed that up with a question to the Leader of the House on 3 November, who undertook to raise the matter with his colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Following my intervention, an official from the FCO was able to speak with the chief executive of Hannaford, Shane Hannaford, on 4 November, who undertook to resolve the matter as soon as he could. However, that proved to be no more than another empty promise by Hannaford, like those Mr Greenaway had received on many occasions previously.

Mr Greenaway was again informed that he could not be assisted with access to legal advice, obtaining a replacement passport or funding to obtain an exit visa. Mr Greenaway had of course also been informed that even if he obtained a passport, he would be prevented from leaving the country due to the outstanding debts in his name. In the meantime, the situation in the UK was also becoming difficult, with Mr Greenaway and his wife unable to meet mortgage payments and struggling to keep food on the table for their two young children.

When I spoke to the FCO official handling the case, I was extremely disappointed that he kept coming back to the matter being a commercial dispute for Hannaford to resolve, and did not offer anything that I considered to be concrete assistance. I found that particularly concerning given that Mr Greenaway was being subjected to a travel ban, which I understand is unlawful. The FCO did however eventually undertake to speak with colleagues in the US embassy. In the meantime, I made a number of telephone calls to Hannaford in the United States.

Eventually, on 14 November I received an email from Shane Hannaford in response to my calls telling me that the funds were being transferred imminently. Sadly, that was much like his other promises; the money did not materialise. Fortunately, in the meantime, Mr Greenaway, with the assistance of his family, managed to obtain a sum of money that the hotel accepted as a down payment on the arrears that had been accrued, and it agreed to return his passport.

By 18 November, Mr Greenaway had finally managed to leave the hotel, but he was still unable to leave the country due to the travel ban remaining in place. I continued to lobby my constituent’s employer on his behalf for the funds, which were finally transferred by Hannaford on 7 December, enabling Mr Greenaway to return to the UK two days later.

I hope that the Minster will understand from the circumstances I have outlined why I am so concerned about the response that my constituent received. Despite having served his country in the armed forces for a number of years, at times Mr Greenaway felt that he had been left completely isolated. Sadly, I do not see that the matter would have been resolved without my intervention. Simply advising an individual who is subject to an unlawful travel ban and who has had his salary withheld for four months to speak to a lawyer is really not good enough. I hope that the Minister can assure me that the right lessons will be learned.

How can it be right that an individual who has done nothing wrong can be effectively detained in another country, without any judicial process and without access to legal advice? I accept that there are times when diplomatic channels mean that a direct approach may not be the best route, but in this situation there cannot be any justification for the lack of a robust approach. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that the support my constituent received was just not good enough. I also hope that the debate will serve as a warning to anyone thinking of working in Iraq for Hannaford Construction, which acted outrageously at all stages and had no regard to my constituent’s safety or wellbeing at all.

The second situation relates to my constituent Paul McCann, and sadly it is still unresolved. Paul, along with his twin brother Gary, founded the charity Twin Vision, which undertook work in India with disadvantaged children. Tragically, on 30 October 2004, while on the way to a meeting with an American charity in New Delhi to discuss establishing an outreach photography project with the city’s impoverished street children, Gary was involved in a hit-and-run incident. After arriving at New Delhi following a lengthy train journey, Gary hailed a rickshaw to take him to his hotel, but at around 6 am a 30-seater bus jumped a red light and collided with the rickshaw, killing him instantly. The driver did not stop at the scene, but he was later apprehended by a witness and subsequently arrested.

I cannot imagine the hurt and distress that the incident caused Paul and the rest of his family, but sadly, 13 years after that tragic incident, Paul is still on a painful journey to obtain justice for his brother. Despite making very simple requests on repeated occasions, he has not been aided in that journey either by our high commissioner in India or by the Indian high commissioner here in London. Because of the intransigence of the authorities in India, it took him more than a decade just to obtain his brother’s death certificate. Sadly, despite multiple requests, he was not aided in that by our consular services. Despite us being almost thirteen years on from the tragic incident, he has still not been able to obtain any details at all about the status of the case against his brother’s killer.

Mr McCann initially approached my predecessor, Andrew Miller, before I took up the matter when I was elected to this place just over two years ago. However, despite the best efforts of us both over a number of years, and innumerable letters to both the Indian high commissioner and FCO officials, we have been unable to make significant progress. Mr Miller attended a meeting some years ago with a previous high commissioner, and I have met with another, who has also since moved on. We also both engaged in numerous exchanges with our own officials. However, what should be a simple request for information has still not been met, and none of this has resulted in anything more than promises for follow-up correspondence, which subsequently fail to materialise. To deny Mr McCann any sense of closure all these years on is a tragedy on a tragedy, and one that I am determined to help him address, however long it takes. All this is compounded by what he feels is a failure of our consular services to do anything to assist him.

I will first ask the Minister, as I have asked his predecessors in the past in writing, whether he will instruct his officials to make representations on Mr McCann’s behalf to the authorities in India, asking them to provide him with an update as soon as possible. I also ask him to look into this matter personally and assure us that he is satisfied that everything that can be done has been done.

I would also like to put on the record my anger and frustration with the Indian high commission in London, which has either given me undertakings that updates would be provided and then not met them, or ignored my correspondence altogether. I hope that today’s debate will be the final spur it needs to provide Mr McCann with meaningful information in the very near future. It may be that it will still not respond, and it may be that a more assertive approach from our consulate would not reap any rewards either, but if it could make a personal approach out in India, then at least my constituent would know that every avenue had been explored.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I commend the great work and the service that the hon. Gentleman is doing on behalf of the Greenaway and McCann families. He will be aware, as will the Minister, of the fate of the six British ex-service personnel languishing in jail in Chennai in India, including my constituent Billy Irving. Will he join me in asking the Minister to put pressure on the Foreign Office and the consular service in India to give as much support as they can to the families, and to seek a speedy resolution—the release of those innocent men?

[Justin Madders]

I certainly echo those sentiments. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) also has a constituent in that dreadful situation. It looks like it could drag on for many years, which is intolerable for the families. I understand that sometimes these things cannot be best discussed in an open forum—that does not always reap the best results—but we are in a much more open society now. Channels of communication across the world are much easier, and the information needed should be getting to those in this country, so that they can feel that some progress is being made. I understand the frustration and anxiety of the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) that things do not seem to be moving as swiftly as we would like.

I know that the Minister is also aware of the very serious cases of British dual nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Kamal Foroughi, who are imprisoned against their will in Iran, and that a request has been made of the Government in Iran for Mr Foroughi to be released.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Africa (Rory Stewart)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.

Consular support is fundamental to British foreign policy. It is probably the very oldest element of British foreign policy. Before we had a Foreign Office, protecting British citizens abroad was in our DNA, and it remains for us a very fundamental responsibility. That is why we have hundreds of consular staff working across the world in very difficult circumstances. That obligation is going into a new world—a world that is changing.

When our consular in Aleppo set up in 1570, he saw 12 British citizens in a year. Today, 70 million trips are made by British residents in a single year. Nearly 43 million British citizens currently possess passports. This is one of the most travelled countries on earth, and we wish it to remain so. It is an adventurous trading nation. It is a nation where a lot of our citizens are dual nationals, and many are living in other people’s countries. There are 100,000 British nationals living in South Africa alone, and more than 600,000 British nationals living in the United States. It is not simply that we have more people travelling than ever before; it is that the world is changing. The world is becoming more dangerous.

There are people in this room who will have contemporaries who would have been able to take a bus from Victoria station to Delhi in the 1970s. They would have been able to drive across Syria, Iraq and Iran. They could have gone across Afghanistan, from Herat to Kabul. They would have been able to travel to the north-west frontier province of Pakistan. None of that is possible today for a British citizen. In fact, nearly 50 countries in the world are in a fragile or conflict-affected state. It has never been so dangerous.

At the same time, our relationship with other people’s countries is changing. In the 1850s, Lord Palmerston stood up in this House and established the principle that any British citizen getting in trouble would involve the deployment of a British gunboat. When a British dual national in Athens in the late 1830s was not paid for some damage to his property, an entire squadron of the Royal Navy deployed to Athens to try to deal with it. Today, we have a situation where even the United States of America—a country that is able to deploy 105,000 troops on the ground and spend more than $100 billion a year—frequently struggles to get even quite small countries to provide the respect to its citizens that it wishes. That is not just a problem for the United States, for Britain or for Europe; it is a problem for every country in the world.

Given the 70 million-odd trips that British citizens make around the world every year, the challenge for our consular staff is dealing with a huge variety of problems. For example, I have been to see the consular activities run out of Marbella, where we have to deal with hundreds of British citizens who end up in Spanish jails, frequently because they have had too good a night out. Consular assistance needs to extend from that to British citizens who are captured by Islamist terrorist groups and end up in a boiler suit in the desert, about to have their heads chopped off, in some of the most difficult and inaccessible countries on earth. In between, they have to deal with the fallout of Hurricane Irma, with earthquakes and with military coups. The cases that have been brought up by hon. and right hon. Members show exactly how difficult it is. Members of Parliament have advocated for these cases very powerfully. They are difficult cases. They show exactly where Britain is having to respond. Let me take them in turn.

The first case raised was that of a British national who, as we heard, travelled to southern Iraq. I served in southern Iraq. It is not a safe place. We advise against travelling there on our websites. British embassy staff basically cannot travel to those areas of southern Iraq; it is too dangerous. He went there with an American construction company. We absolutely support the commercial drive and adventurous spirit that leads a British citizen from the constituency of the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) to wish to travel to southern Iraq. He found himself in a situation in which his company had not paid the hotel, and the hotel had taken his passport.

The hon. Gentleman then championed his constituent’s case very powerfully with our Department, but our consular staff acted. They acted by calling the hotel repeatedly and pushing for the passport to be returned. They acted by calling the US embassy repeatedly, and they acted also by trying to provide support for his constituent to access legal advice. We feel absolutely the frustration of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. If I were stuck in a hotel in southern Basra in a difficult situation, with my passport held, I too would feel extremely frustrated and angry with the company, with the hotel and with my Government.

We are very fortunate that the situation was resolved. I would like to pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for all his pressure and the telephone calls he made. I have no doubt that one of the reasons it was resolved was his very active work, but I also pay tribute to the consular staff in the embassy, because I believe that their telephone calls and the pressure they brought also contributed to it being resolved.

The second case raised is an even more difficult one, because it brings us into the Indian legal system. In this particular case, Gary McCann was in a rickshaw when it was struck by a bus in 2004. The consular staff at that moment—we are now going back 13 years through Government records, and it was not this Government but a previous Government who were then responding—identified a lawyer, tried to advise Paul McCann—Gary McCann’s brother—to contact that lawyer when he visited, and were able to identify a witness who had seen the rickshaw struck and introduce him to the witness. Mr McCann understandably feels real frustration and fury at the slowness of extracting promises from the Indian High Commission, getting hold of a death certificate, getting the prosecution done and making sure the lawyer from the Supreme Court brings the case fully forward.

The British Government must balance what we feel we ought to do with what we can do. The balancing act is difficult. We must respect the fact that India is not a British colony, but an independent, proud state with a rapidly growing economy and its own legal system. It does not want to be told what to do by a former colonial power and we must balance that with our belief in the rights and justice that are due to our citizens and the sort of support we can provide for them to work within that legal system.

That brings me to the Chennai Six. Six British nationals were on a ship that had arms on it—the intention was to provide support for actions against piracy in the horn of Africa—docked in an Indian port. The Indian Government, particularly the Q branch, argued and successfully won a prosecution in court that bringing arms into India in that way was illegal and the men were detained. At the very most, these man were guilty of being on a ship that docked in Indian waters. They have been cleared once. The case was then brought a second time and they were prosecuted a second time. They have appealed and it has taken nine months for that appeal to be heard. Meanwhile, they have spent nearly four years of their lives in jail. Some of them are very young. I went to see John Armstrong in Chennai and I met the deputy Chief Minister’s family, consular staff and all the men. These men are in a really tough and unfamiliar situation. An Indian jail is a challenging place to be.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I know how personally the Minister has been involved in this case, but does he think the Foreign Office and the consular staff in Chennai have done absolutely everything they possibly can to help the men currently in jail?

[Rory Stewart]

The honest answer is that we can always do more for British citizens, but the consular staff have done a great deal and they have done a great deal recently. They have provided a lot of support for families to have access to the jail and in respect of conditions in the jail. The High Commissioner has visited, the previous Minister has visited and the consular staff are putting an enormous amount of time and energy into the case. I have met the lawyers representing the men and, without being a lawyer, I have tried to give as much advice and support as I can to the families and men to make sure they get the right legal advice.

The problem is fundamentally within the Indian legal system and I believe the Government and Members of Parliament have an obligation to be honest with people about their expectations. One of the most tragic things that can happen in such situations is to raise expectations and to pretend that the Indian legal system will move faster. I believe that again and again the men have been promised a swift resolution, but it has not come and I am not sure that that has been the most honest or kind thing we can do.

I am very aware of the number of meetings that have been held. Our own Prime Minister raised the matter again with Prime Minister Modi at their latest meeting and it was raised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he was Minister for the Middle East and by the current Foreign Secretary, but the fundamental problem remains with the Indian legal system and we must keep pressing.

Unfortunately, the case is similar to that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is an Iranian-British dual national who unfortunately has been detained, like many American-Iranian dual nationals and many other dual nationals in Iran, by the Iranian Government on very unclear grounds, and consular access has been refused. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East has just paid a visit to Iran and raised the case directly with the Iranian Government.

Again, we are facing a struggle with how we exercise British power and influence in these very different contexts. We have heard about southern Iraq, Iran and India, but in fact our consular work takes place in nearly 200 consulates around the world, every one of them with different, specific local conditions.

I will end by being constructive. What must we do to improve the situation? How can we do better for British citizens going forward? How do we face this new world where 70 million people are travelling? How do we face a new world with these dangers? I have three ideas.

First, we need to focus much more on how we assess vulnerability. We will never be able to deal with every one of the 70 million trips that British nationals make worldwide, even with 700 consular staff, so we need to get much better at mixing compassion, intelligence and some difficult prioritisation to make sure the people in the toughest situations receive support. That means understanding the context, their family and financial situation and, above all, what we can actually do to help.

Secondly, we must try to work with British citizens to make sure they take responsibility and precautions, such as getting adequate travel insurance, following British embassy advice and not engaging in activities that are inherently risky. That means not just personal responsibility, but industry responsibility. How do we make sure travel agencies, employers and others fulfil their obligations to citizens?

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston asked about a company’s obligation. Again, with the Chennai Six, what on earth is the obligation of the company that employed these men? It has stopped paying their salaries, has not paid their legal fees and has made no attempt whatever to represent its employees. It has left six British citizens—as well as 10 Estonians and a dozen Indians—in jail because it has not represented them.

Finally, we must be clear about prevention. What can we do in advance to stop these situations happening? If there are problems with the prison systems of other countries, how can we work in advance with those countries to begin improving their prison systems? If there are problems with the legal systems of other countries, can we do things now to start working respectfully, diligently, persistently and courageously to drive change in those legal systems so that British citizens are not caught up in these problems in future?

The issue is important because we want British citizens to travel and to keep travelling as they never did before. We want to acknowledge the fact that the 70 million trips we make abroad are just the beginning. We want British citizens to be educated abroad, to trade abroad and to enjoy themselves abroad. The entire existence of my Department is predicated fundamentally on trying to enable that spirit of adventurous trading in an outward-facing nation whose citizens feel confident that wherever they go the strong arm and watchful eye of Great Britain is with them with realism, pragmatism and humility. The connection between the citizen and the state in some of the most difficult and dangerous situations on earth is one of the most challenging foreign policy challenges of our era.

That is why I pay tribute to Parliament and the way it has today—and for nearly 200 years—championed the interests of British citizens abroad. I also pay tribute to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and our consular staff who, for all the frustrations and bewilderment of so many constituents who feel let down, isolated and afraid abroad, continue in difficult circumstances to provide what support they can.

Question put and agreed to.

Yemen

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

Yes, and that incident was absolutely appalling and shocking. Nobody can fail to be upset by the pictures of those Somali people, who have suffered enough without being bombed.

Ministers must make sure that the cranes, which have been bought and paid for, are installed in Hudaydah. That would turn on the taps: it would get aid and commercial operations flowing again, and get things moving.

Hudaydah’s strategic importance is recognised by both the Houthis and the Saudis. Aid agencies, including the UN, fear that the conflict in and around Hudaydah is ramping up, which must be prevented at all costs. Half a million people would be displaced and it would make aid efforts all but impossible. Yemen’s primary port cannot be a frontline in this conflict, and I seek the assurance of Ministers that they will pursue the matter.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. We have already heard about the ridiculous situation of the UK Government giving aid with one hand while arming the antagonists with the other. Does she agree that famine relief and a ceasefire can come about only with the immediate suspension of the Government’s selling of arms to the Saudi regime, which has already been found to be guilty of breaches of international humanitarian law?

[Alison Thewliss]

Absolutely. As I said in Foreign Office questions earlier, £3.3 billion has been made from arms licences over the past two years, which dwarfs the £85 million in Government aid, welcome though that is. The arms sales must stop now. Peace will not happen if bombs continue to rain down on the heads of people in Yemen.

The UK Government’s role in establishing the UN verification and inspection mechanism at the port of Hudaydah, inspecting the goods entering Yemen’s ports while they are still at sea, is welcome, but Save the Children told me yesterday that that has not prevented the Saudi-led coalition from carrying out its own inspections, thereby delaying vital aid shipments. That can mean a delay of up to three months in delivering aid and medical supplies, leaving aid workers making life and death decisions on the ground about who they can help with dwindling resources.

Some shipments have been diverted from Hudaydah and around the coast to the smaller port of Aden, meaning that convoys have instead to complete the dangerous journey overland, via checkpoints and across the frontline, adding at least another three weeks to the time taken for that aid to reach the people it needs to reach and risking the lives of everybody on the convoy.

Moving goods and people across the country also requires confirmation of deconfliction from authorities in Yemen, without which the convoy will become a target in the war, and nobody wants that to happen. Other Members will no doubt outline the grave mistakes and errors that have happened during air strikes. NGOs based in the country tell me that they are fearful for the lives of their workers at every single checkpoint where they get stopped. They become targets, regardless of the assurances given to them by the governing parties and their warm words.

All the organisations I have met have stressed the difficulty of moving around Yemen, the complications with visas and the delays caused by petty bureaucracy. Some agencies have not been able to make field visits to support their operations on the ground and to bring back evidence that will enable funders to encourage more people to donate to their campaigns. They are not being well enough supported by the Government agencies that should be facilitating aid.

There are increasing problems in getting to Yemen, with limitations on travel by land and sea. Sana’a airport is also closed and people cannot leave, including those who seek urgent medical assistance. I ask the Government to speak to the Saudis about removing that blockage so that people can get in and out by air and receive treatment.

All the delays are costing lives and leaving the population with long-term health problems as a result of severe malnutrition. For want of clean water and a suitable diet, people are less able to fight off disease and their immune systems are more susceptible to cholera. There have been a suspected 22,000 cholera cases in 15 governorates in the past six months alone, and at least 100 people have died as a result. Tragically, UNICEF estimates that 63,000 children died in 2016 from preventable diseases linked to malnutrition. That is 8,500 more children than were born in the whole of Scotland last year. That is a generation. The future of Yemen hangs in the balance, and the Government must do more.

Budget Resolutions

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) said so eloquently, there is so much wrong with the Budget that it is difficult to know where to start. In the little time available to me, I would like to look at the Chancellor’s decision to reinstate the alcohol duty escalator and raise duty by 4%. I should declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Scotch whisky.

The Chancellor’s decision was particularly galling given that on 3 March, the Prime Minister praised the industry, describing it as

“a truly great Scottish and British industry”,

only for her Chancellor to undermine that same industry with a huge tax grab just five days later. The Chancellor’s decision to raise duty is a major blow to an industry on which so many in my Argyll and Bute constituency depend. He has undone, in one fell swoop, all the good done in the last couple of years, in which the previous Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), cancelled the duty escalator, cutting duty by 2% in 2015, and freezing it the following year. When he cut duty by 2%, it was estimated in the Treasury’s own Red Book that it would create a revenue shortfall of £185 million. However, the reality was very different, because that 2% cut in 2015 actually increased the tax take to the Treasury by more than £100 million, with a further 4.2% rise in revenue from spirit duty in 2016. In cutting duty, the Chancellor sent out a message to potential investors that confidence in the industry was high.

The initial duty freeze followed by the cut gave confidence to investors who, for the first time in decades, believed that the Government no longer saw the whisky industry as a cash cow. Their investment saw more than a dozen new distilleries opening in the past two years, with no fewer than 40 in various stages of planning, hoping to come on stream over the next two decades. It allowed existing production sites to grow and it helped distilleries to expand the very lucrative tourist/visitor side of their business. I fear that the signals sent out by this excise duty increase threaten to stall that investment and damage industry confidence.

In this Budget, 36p was put on a bottle of Scotch whisky, which means that the excise duty paid on 70 cl bottle of scotch is a whopping £8.05, taking the total tax take on a bottle to £10.20. That means that the tax on an average priced bottle of Scotch whisky now sits at an eye-watering 79%. A total of £4 in every £5 spent domestically on Scotch whisky now goes directly to the coffers of the Treasury in either duty or VAT. Sadly, this tax hike is little more than a cash grab by the Chancellor because, as I have said, it goes against the evidence of the past couple of years when duty was cut and then frozen. I fear that the days of the Chancellor using Scotch whisky as a cash cow have returned with a vengeance.