International Human Rights Day

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 8th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to take part in this debate, not least because my biggest anxiety about the world is that it is becoming more, not less, authoritarian. More Governments have given up on democracy and moved towards dictatorship than we thought possible. We always thought that progress would mean people enjoying greater freedoms as the world moved forward. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many people around the world.

I am struck by the number of countries that retain the death penalty. It is obviously shocking that so many states in the United States of America retain it. I am conscious that there are many countries in the world where people can be executed solely for their sexuality, including Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Many of those countries would say that they do not use the death penalty as there have been no executions. None the less, people are sentenced to death and then have to live in a sort of limbo land, thinking that they may be executed at any point.

On Saudi Arabia, I will simply say that it was quite shocking earlier in the year when the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) came to the Foreign Affairs Committee as Foreign Secretary. I asked her about when she had raised human rights concerns with Gulf states. There was just silence in the room. She tried to suggest that she had done it several times—or it had been done several times—but she could not come up with a single occasion on which the British Government had raised human rights abuses with Saudi Arabia.

I understand why the Government want to turn away from relying on gas and oil from authoritarian states such as Russia, but it is not much good if we then just simply turn to another set of authoritarian states in the middle east, and are not prepared to ask the questions that we now feel able to ask of Russia. For instance, it is truly shocking that the British Government have still not said that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the deliberate instigation of the Saudi Government, and dismembered on Saudi territory. That does not do anybody any favours. It is shocking that the British Government do not seem to have complained to Saudi Arabia about the 81 executions that happened on a single day earlier this year, or that there are now more than 100 people on death row, potentially awaiting execution at any point.

We have to continue to ask those questions. I do not think that anybody respects us when they know what we think, but we refuse to say it. It just means that we are weak, and people rely on our weakness. I find it shocking, too, that a country such as Indonesia has just introduced a new law that outlaws sexual activity of any kind outside marriage. I am not sure how that will aid the tourism trade in Indonesia. The country is only just getting back on its feet. Those kinds of repressive measures are simply backward, and do nobody any favours.

I worry about our Government for two reasons. First, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), we have not had an annual report on human rights since 8 July 2021. That is a long time ago. We have been doing it since 2003. It has become standard, and all the human rights organisations in the UK look to the process and love to feed into it. Other countries around the world look to the UK’s leadership in this space, and it feels as if the Government have simply surrendered that space.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The hon. Member must also be aware that it seems to have been a consistent Foreign Office policy for about 10 years now to reduce the number of human rights advisers in our embassies around the world.

[Chris Bryant]

I was going to come to that point. The right hon. Gentleman has made it for me, which is great. Another point is that the European convention on human rights was written by a Conservative Member of Parliament. It was drafted, on the back of the second world war, to say that we did not want the human rights abuses that happened in Italy and Germany to happen on our continent again. Yes, there are all sorts of complications with the way that the Court operates, but if the British Government keep on rattling the cage about leaving the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention, we would automatically no longer be a member of the Council of Europe. We would join Belarus and Russia as the countries in Europe that no longer subscribe, which would be a terrible shame.

One of the things that we have got terribly wrong over the last 12 years in our foreign policy is that we have kept trying to appease authoritarian dictatorships around the world rather than stand up for what we genuinely believe. Sometimes we have relied too much on the United States, which is sometimes a wonderful ally and sometimes not very reliable, depending on who the President is. Who knows what may happen in two or three years? If Donald Trump were in the White House now, what would we be saying in relation to Ukraine? Far too often we vacillate on China. The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) was right to refer to the situation facing the Uyghurs in China. Our Government have flip-flopped endlessly on whether to be robust on that policy, which is a terrible shame.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) spoke about the Minister withdrawing his comment. He was not correcting the record; he was withdrawing his comment on Saudi Arabia and whether the gentleman concerned had been tortured, which all the evidence shows he was. All that points to a Government who are uncertain about whether human rights really matter in the way in which we define ourselves as a country around the world. That will pay poor dividends in the long term for the UK and the values we believe in.

Environment and Climate Change

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I compliment my hon. Friend on her work. An audit like that would be an appropriate response to the debate we are having today. She is right to suggest that unless we examine biodiversity loss, particularly in areas of monocultural agriculture around the country, as well as in urban areas, we will not know just how serious the situation is, so I do support her proposal.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the most disturbing aspects of this climate emergency is that some of the poorest people in the world live on the land that is closest to the rising sea levels? Anyone who is concerned about mass migration today should be truly worried about this crisis, because millions of those people are going to be travelling many miles to try to find a safe place with clean drinking water where they can make a home for themselves.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I shall come on to it in a moment. At the heart of the environment and climate emergency is the issue of justice, and it is those here and around the world who are least to blame for it who bear the burden and pay the highest cost. A 2015 study found that children living in our British inner-city areas can have their lung capacity reduced by up to 10% by air pollution on major roads. Of course, the situation is even more extreme for children growing up in densely populated urban areas in China and India. The pollution levels in many cities around the world are damaging children before they reach the age of five. Children should not have to pay with their health for our failure to clean up our toxic air.

Working-class communities suffer the worst effects of air pollution. Those who are least able to rebuild their lives after flooding will be hit hardest by rising food prices, while the better off, who are sometimes more responsible for emissions, can pay their way out of the trouble. Internationally, in a cruel twist of fate, it is the global south that faces the greatest devastation at the hands of drought and extreme weather, which fuel poverty and war and create refugees as people are forced to flee their homes. Some of the 65 million refugees in this world—not all, but some—are in reality climate refugees. They are paying the price of emissions that come not from the global south, but overwhelmingly from the global north and rapidly industrialising societies.

Sir David Attenborough recently said on his brilliant television programme:

“We now stand at a unique point in our planet’s history. One where we must all share responsibility both for our present wellbeing and for the future of life on Earth.”

That is the magnitude of what we are talking about. It is too late for tokenistic policies or gimmicks. We have to do more. Banning plastic is good and important, but individual action is not enough. We need a collective response that empowers people, instead of shaming them if they do not buy expensive recycled toilet paper or drive the newest Toyota Prius. If we are to declare an emergency, it follows that radical and urgent action must be taken. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to avert the disastrous effects of warming greater than 1.5° C, global emissions must fall by about 45% by 2030 to reach net zero by 2050 at the absolute latest. It is a massive demand and it is a massive ask, and it will not happen by itself.

We are going to have to free ourselves from some of the harmful beliefs that have characterised our thinking for too long. The hidden hand of the market will not save us, and technological solutions will not magically appear out of nowhere. An emergency of this magnitude requires large-scale Government intervention to kick-start industries, to direct investment and to boost research and development in the green technologies of the future, and that is not a burden.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That is not actually relevant to today’s debate. We are talking about the deal that the Government have brought back, and that is what the debate is about. In the backstop, regulatory frameworks dealt with by non-regression clauses are non-enforceable by EU institutions or by arbitration arrangements, and would give the Government the power to tear up workers’ rights and damage environmental protections and consumer safeguards.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is not one of the most extraordinary things about the debate so far that we have not had a single mention of the word immigration, and yet it was meant to be one of the most important aspects of the referendum? The Government have not even published an immigration Bill. We do not know what our immigration policy will be next year. Do we not really want to stand up for the rights of young British people to be able to study, work and live elsewhere in the European Union? It is British people who have used that right more than any other country in Europe.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I was coming to that in my speech, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right: young people need that right to travel and study. The Erasmus scheme has worked very well, giving a lot of people opportunities to study. I will come back to that issue. I just think we should reflect on the massive work done by European Union nationals who have come to make their homes in this country and helped us to develop our health service and many other services.

The backstop would apply separate regulatory rules to Northern Ireland, despite the fact that the Prime Minister said that this is something that

“no UK Prime Minister could ever agree to”.—[Official Report, 28 February 2018; Vol. 636, c. 823.]

That is another of her red lines breached. In fact, the list of the EU measures that continue to apply to Northern Ireland runs to 75 pages of the agreement.

National Security and Russia

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We hope that that will make it easier for the Government to strengthen the resolve of our allies around the world to strengthen the co-ordinated response. To that end, I wonder if the Prime Minister could tell us later when she expects—[Interruption.] Well, then the Foreign Secretary will be in a position to reply to us, with his normal due diligence and care, about the results of the OPCW tests being undertaken at the moment. If he could give us the answer later on this evening, after my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) has spoken, I would be very grateful. Does he agree that this attack serves as a stark reminder of how important it is to properly enforce the chemical weapons convention and to ensure that the OPCW has all the resources it needs, both political and financial, to do its job effectively?

[Chris Bryant]

I commend the Leader of the Opposition for what he said earlier today. One of the horrible ironies of the way that the Russians have done their business over recent years is that they have sought the soft underbelly of British society—the strengths of fair play, the rule of law and all the rest—to try to target the way we do our business in this country. I met Marina Litvinenko last week, and she said, “One of the most sensible things you could do if you can’t get a proper trial,” which is what we would all want, “is some kind of judicial inquiry into the events in Salisbury.” Does my right hon. Friend support that?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That is a very helpful suggestion. Again, my hon. Friend has taken a long-term and serious interest in human rights issues in Russia and the large sums of Russian money that have turned up, particularly in London.

My question to the Foreign Secretary is: what are the Government doing through the United Nations to make sure that the OPCW has the resources and support that it needs?

Immigration Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

It is a great delight to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) although I would like to correct him on a few details. Although Palmerston thought that Don Pacifico was undoubtedly a British citizen, merely because of his birth in Gibraltar, that would not necessarily apply today in the same way because he was actually a Portuguese Jew who therefore had more than one nationality at the time. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s point applies reliably to the debate.

I entirely agree with everything the Home Secretary said about sham marriages. They are a real problem and in certain places in the country—most notably around London and the west midlands—there is a real issue to be tackled. I warmly commend Ministers who have taken the right actions in the Bill to deal with that. I am concerned, however, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said earlier, about the business of removing people’s citizenship, not least because the way the proposal has been drafted gives a phenomenal degree of Executive power to the Secretary of State. I worry about that, as do several other Members, including the hon. Members for North East Somerset and for Brent Central (Sarah Teather).

Two years ago I remember going to the deportation centre at Heathrow and seeing a young man whose state we do not know. He refuses to say where he is from because he thinks he will be deported to that place. He had then been in that deportation centre for four years because for him, that half life in a sort of prison was better than the danger of being deported back somewhere. Some think the best way of dealing with the problem of deporting foreign criminals involves measures to change the rules on article 8. The biggest problem lies not with that, however, but with an awful lot of people who get to this country and instantly abandon their paperwork, either because that is what they intended to do from the beginning, or because they are from countries to which we simply cannot deport people. Again, I commend those Ministers who have worked—as Labour Ministers did in the previous Government—to try to ensure that people will not be subject to torture if they are returned to their country of origin, and that they will have a fair trial and so on There are, however, many countries around the world where such things still do not apply, and those cases make up the largest number of people, let alone those whose paperwork has been lost by the Home Office—also a substantial number. Of course I want foreign criminals to be deported and sent back to their country of origin, but I also want their human rights to be protected. I still believe in the right to a fair trial and am opposed to torture. I believe in all the things we have signed up to as a country. Let us not pretend that the Bill will sort out the bigger problem.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does my hon. Friend accept that one problem is the number of countries that have not signed the convention on torture? We should not deport anyone to a regime where no convention on torture is applicable, and we should not rely on dubious one-off agreements, which is what we have been doing.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree, and anyway, if we sought to deport anyone to such a regime, we would face the courts, which is a very expensive business in this country, and we would be certain of failure. It would be a nugatory exercise.

I worry about creating more stateless people, which is effectively the intention of the Home Secretary’s proposal. I can see an argument for making someone stateless when they are abroad—we can say that a person who has done something appalling, perhaps in another country, is longer welcome in this country and remove their citizenship—but I have a much greater problem with making someone stateless when they are in this country. What would we do? We make them stateless and deprive them of citizenship, but then what? Do we banish them? Do we pronounce exile? Does the Speaker demand that they leave the country? Do we march them to the airport if they refuse to go themselves? In any case, where will they go? What country will take them? That is my problem with the proposals being advanced. There is a mediaeval element in the Bill and it will not help us one jot.

UK Extradition Arrangements

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. and learned Gentleman makes an excellent point, and I agree with him. That is the fundamental weakness in the 2003 Act, which does not allow that discretion which any sensible, right-thinking person would apply straight away on a humanitarian basis.

I was not going to mention the General Pinochet case until I got to the end, but I may as well do so now, as it fits with the hon. and learned Gentleman’s point. Like many others, I fought to get Pinochet extradited so that he could go on trial. We won the cases all the way through, but unfortunately the then Home Secretary decided that there was an overriding medical reason for allowing General Pinochet to return on the “Lazarus flight” to Chile, where he walked off the plane and seemed to be perfectly healthy.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I rather agree with my hon. Friend about General Pinochet, not least as several of my friends were killed by his police force in Chile. My hon. Friend said that any sensible person would want to change the leeway allowed to the Secretary of State, but unfortunately the report that we are discussing this evening says:

“We note the arguments for increasing the role of the Secretary of State in the surrender of persons…We are not convinced that changes should be made”.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am sorry that the authors of the report are not convinced, but it is up to us in this House to try to convince the Government to make those changes. Although I welcome the examination of the issue, as well as this debate, it is absolutely up to us to ensure that that happens.

The second case that I want to mention is that of Julian Assange and the ongoing attempt to extradite him to Sweden. I want to go on to something else in a second, but let me briefly quote Debra Sheehan, who has been campaigning for Mr Assange not to be extradited to Sweden: “I believe this ruling”—the ruling that he can be extradited—

“sets a very dangerous precedent allowing any UK citizen—and possibly any European citizen—to be extradited without charge. Mr Assange’s case shows that the European arrest warrant can be used in a totally disproportionate way without using other less draconian methods of completing police investigations, such as Mutual Legal Assistance.”

The European arrest warrant is a serious issue, because, as others have pointed out, it seems that countries with a far from rigorous, fair and open judicial system can gain arrest warrants against British subjects, who are then taken to a different jurisdiction, where they face a much lower threshold of proof before a conviction is obtained. It is not our business to protect criminals, but it is our business to ensure that people get a fair trial and that there is absolutely the presumption of innocence before any conviction is made.

The third case that I want to mention is that of Babar Ahmad, which was brought up excellently by my friend the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). Yesterday I received an e-mail from his father that I would like to quote from:

“I am writing to request that you attend the debate…and…vote in favour of reforming the laws so that they strengthen the protection for British citizens, such as my son Babar Ahmad, who is now in his eighth year of detention-without-trial.”

He continues:

“Babar is the longest detained-without-trial British citizen in the modern history of the UK. He is in his 8th year of detention in a maximum security institution. He has served the equivalent of a 14 year sentence and if he had been tried and convicted in the UK, he would be probably out by now.

The CPS has recently admitted that it never considered the evidence against Babar before it was sent to the US authorities”—

a point made by my friend, the hon. Lady—

“yet for over seven years, they have allowed him to languish in prison without trial, refusing to prosecute him on the alleged basis that there is ‘insufficient evidence’ to prosecute him. The crimes for which he stands accused are said to have taken place in the UK. Over 141,000 people and 100 senior lawyers have”

written in his support.

“If extradited to the US Babar faces a period of 3 years pre-trial detention in complete isolation. If convicted he would face life without parole in solitary confinement at a Supermax prison”.

Is that really what we want for British citizens under this law? That is what will happen if Babar Ahmad’s extradition goes ahead. His father continues:

“On 22 June 2011, Parliament’s JCHR explicitly raised concerns over Babar’s case recommending that the government urgently re-negotiate the UK-US”

agreement. Finally, just to make the point, he says that this debate is part of the “enormous public interest” in the case, and in particular the examination of it by the Muslim community in this country, which feels that Babar Ahmad’s case is indicative of something about the treatment of people where there is any suspicion of the kind of offences in which he is alleged to have been involved. He cannot be tried in this country because of the way he has been treated—the trial would collapse—so why on earth should we even consider allowing him to go to the United States?

Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is extremely eminent on all legal matters and somebody for whom I have enormous respect, wrote an excellent article in The Guardian today in which she raised the question of the forum. She wrote:

“To my mind, where there is clear evidence to a criminal standard of a crime being committed either in the UK or from the UK and jurisdiction is being contested, an English court should be required to determine the strength of the evidence and the ‘forum conveniens’—that is, the location of any prosecution. The court’s decision on forum should be based on clear guidance—the nationality of the defendant and the victim; location of both the prosecution and defence evidence, witnesses, and so forth. Yet as it stands there is no statutory right for a UK defendant to challenge extradition on forum grounds.”

I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that in winding up the debate.

The general point that I want to make is this. We are not here to defend criminals. We are here to ensure that those who have been charged are given a proper hearing and a fair trial. Extradition arrangements must be fair and reciprocal, and in most past cases they have been, in the sense that the Minister for the Interior, or the Home Secretary, has been able to exercise some degree of discretion as to whether or not a person should be extradited. I think that that is right, although one might disagree with the discretion used on certain occasions. What we have here, however, is a completely imbalanced system—as a result of both the European arrest warrant and our arrangements with the United States—which I consider to be contrary to all the judicial traditions of this country, and on which I think it right for the House to take a stand.

I hope that the motion will be passed, and that that will send a clear message to the Government about what we want. I understand that there may not even be a vote. That either indicates unanimity or that the dark forces of the Whips’ Offices in all parties have taken the night off, but I fear that they are forces that never sleep.

On 11 November the Home Secretary received a long letter from Shami Chakrabarti, general secretary of Liberty, which made points about forum, and many more general points. She wrote:

“The human rights bar in the 2003 Act is of the utmost importance and we continue to encourage its effective application by the British judiciary.”

I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that that letter has received a reply, and will be able to inform us of the Government’s general attitude. We are here to stand up for justice and liberty, and I believe that our arrangement with the United States is the opposite of those things.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point extremely well, and I think that it has been taken by many Members.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am very puzzled by my friend’s approach. If we as a country are signed up to the European convention on human rights, which we frequently use—all of us as Members of Parliament use it in representing our constituents—and if the Court makes a judgment on the question of prisoners’ voting rights within that convention, we are bound by that judgment, by treaty and by law. Why on earth are we debating this issue unless the long-term agenda—and I suspect that it is the agenda of many Members—is complete withdrawal from the convention? Surely that is the real agenda of many people.

[Chris Bryant]

It is certainly not my agenda, and I hope that I shall be able to please my hon. Friend with some of the things that I am going to say. I would add, however, that politicians engage in pick and mix sometimes—indeed, virtually every day of their lives.