Ethiopia: Humanitarian and Political Situation

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Peter Bone

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Europe (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone; I think it is the first time for me, making it the first time for you too. As the hon. Member for Wellingborough, you are my near neighbour and I often walk in your shadow locally, so it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Minister, flattery will get you nowhere.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I was hoping that flattery would get me somewhere—but anyway.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) for securing this debate and I pay tribute to him for all his work as the long-standing chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Ethiopia and Djibouti. I thank him for his level-headed speech and his wise counsel on this matter. Like the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law), I remember—I might have been following him around, probably on a different track—running for the world at a certain point in the mid-1980s, when passions were aroused. It is a pleasure that this debate has been sponsored by the Bob Geldof of Westminster and, as I say, I thank my hon. Friend for his leadership on this issue.

I am also grateful to other right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions today. I will try to respond to as many of the points that have been raised as possible. Although the hon. Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) and for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) are no longer present, I will try to answer their questions too. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned ongoing conversations this week on matters that normally fall without my portfolio. He is correct that I am the Minister for Europe. The Minister for Africa would have very much liked to participate in this debate, but she is currently travelling in the region on ministerial duties, so it is my pleasure to respond to the hon. Gentleman and others on behalf of the Government.

The situation in Ethiopia remains of great concern. As a couple of hon. Members have said, there have been some welcome signs of progress over recent weeks, including the December withdrawal of Tigrayan forces back to their own region, and Prime Minister Abiy’s recent decision to release high-profile political prisoners and begin a process of national dialogue. There is a window of opportunity to begin peace talks and bring about a peaceful end to this conflict, which I know my hon. Friend the Minister for Africa is stressing during her visit to the region this week. I hope that visit will demonstrate the UK Government’s commitment to ending this crisis and working hard with our partners in the region.

Although the developments that I have mentioned are tentative steps towards de-escalation, they are still encouraging. However, we know that, as right hon. and hon. Members have said, fighting and atrocities continue to take place, and the conflict continues to take its toll on civilians.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Peter Bone

Thursday 25th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Yes, and we would not be doing that. In fact, the Prime Minister has announced that a new environment Bill will be introduced in the second Session to build on the vision we have set out in our 25-year environment plan to leave our precious environment in a better state than the one we inherited. It will help us to create richer habitats for wildlife, improve air and water quality and curb the scourge of plastic in the world’s oceans.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Will the excellent Minister tell the House who he thinks will be better prepared to look after the United Kingdom’s interests on the environment: this Parliament or EU bureaucrats?

EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Peter Bone

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow a true Eurosceptic.

In my brief contribution I do not intend to expand on my concerns about the individual measures. In fact, I would welcome a number of the individual measures in this package if we were able to have the final say on them in this House and in our judicial system. But I worry about it happening in one sweep with little debate about the principle of why we are taking away parliamentary and judicial sovereignty in the area of justice and home affairs and allowing the European Court of Justice to have the final say. I am a bit surprised that that did not rate a mention in the shadow Home Secretary’s opening speech, given that it is such a big issue.

To help me to prove my point about the direction of travel that justice and home affairs matters are taking in the European Commission, I should like to quote the former European Commission vice-president, Viviane Reding. She has said:

“In the space of just a few years,”—

since the three pillars were collapsed—

“justice policy has come into the limelight of European Union activity—comparable to the boost given to the single market in the 1990s. We have come a long way, but there is more to do to develop a true European area of Justice”.

We do not talk much about that in the House. The closest we came to having a proper discussion on it was when we were talking about the European public prosecutor’s office in our debates on the European Union Act 2011, in which we discussed referendum locks. I think that all the parties agreed that that was an area of concern and a red line that we would not cross—all the parties bar the Lib Dems, of course. Now, however, the establishment of the policy is part of the EU area of justice. We must not mistake the direction in which we are heading.

Why am I concerned about giving Europe the ability to enact and police legislation in this area? Most of the EU operates under a different system of law from ours, and I do not believe that the European Commission is the body that should be making the UK’s and England’s criminal law. The European Court of Justice should not have the ability to override the primacy of this Parliament or of the English judiciary in these areas. The ECJ has become so prominent because almost everything the European Union does tends to become legally binding and eventually subject to review by EU judges or national courts acting on their behalf. That reflects a European tendency to move difficult political conflicts, such as the eurozone crisis and the EU’s 2013 fiscal compact, away from ministerial gatherings and towards apolitical groups of national experts, the legal realm and the courts.

Member states are discussing plans for a European public prosecutor, which may be created among a core group of countries under the Lisbon treaty. The European Parliament is helping to design jail sentences for rogue traders and people who do wrong in financial institutions, and the European Commission will start taking EU Governments to court over criminal justice standards from December 2014 onwards.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is making a really powerful speech. Will not tonight’s decision also signal to the country the views of MPs in relation to the European Union?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Quite possibly.

The EU now has well over 150 mainly framework decisions in the area of justice and home affairs, many of which involve intergovernmental accords. The Commission cannot yet enforce those accords and EU nationals cannot yet claim rights based on them. However, the Lisbon treaty allows framework decisions to be enforced before the courts in the same manner as single market legislation, but only after December 2014—the same time as our proposed block opt-in. We are not even opting back in to the justice and home affairs system as it operates today; we are opting in to something quite new. None the less, the ECJ has already produced around 50 judgments to do with police and justice co-operation. That is because 19 member states have already voluntarily accepted the Court’s jurisdiction, to enable their own courts be clear as to the exact scope and meaning of each individual EU crime and policing agreement. December 2014, which is just a couple of weeks away, will still represent a watershed. The ECJ will start to create a jurisprudence in an area that really should be a matter for the British courts, the British Parliament and British justice. I am afraid that I shall have to vote against the motion this evening.

European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Peter Bone

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

It would be a bit of a surprise if I did not agree with my hon. Friend, whose constituency is next door to mine.

I believe that one could honestly make the argument that the programme has failed unbelievably badly. Over the past seven years, a group of organisations has received money from it. The European Movement, which states that its objective is to

“contribute to the establishment of a united, federal Europe”,

was awarded the best part of £1.5 million.

The French think-tank, Notre Europe, the Jacques Delors Institute—I will not go into as much detail on this as I did on Second Reading, as my hon. Friend the Minister is now completely up to speed with how moneys from this budget line are spent—was set up by the former European Commission President and champions his vision of a European Union that is a federation of nation states. Over the last multi-annual financial framework period, it was awarded the best part of £1.87 million from the Europe for Citizens programme. The Brussels-based Union of European Federalists got the best part of £500,000. There are also other organisations that I did not mention last time. There is a wonderful—I say that in a sarcastic tone—French organisation called Confrontations Europe. Its website says:

“On April 2012, Confrontations Europe celebrated its 20 years of existence and dedication to the European ideal…Confrontations Europe has become an important network of citizens and European players, a think tank renowned in Paris and Brussels and an active civil lobby of European general interest to the institutions”—

that is, the European institutions. Everyone here will be pleased to know that the body’s founding chairman, Philippe Herzog, a French former academic and politician, was a member of the French Communist party from 1965 to 1996.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend said that everyone here would approve of that; has he noticed that, as far as I can see, only two Opposition Back Benchers have bothered to come to the debate on this important subject?

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Yes, but it is the quality that counts.

Wellingborough Prison Site

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Peter Bone

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on making a good speech. He will know that in my Daventry constituency, we have two prisons: Onley and Rye Hill. If we were to draw a line from London as the crow flies, both would be further away than Wellingborough prison, and they, too, are pretty much full of prisoners who originate from the London region.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning that, which is an issue I shall develop a little later in my speech.

Wellingborough prison also has the huge advantage of being a very cheap area in which to build and develop. If that were not enough, the Wellingborough prison site has a massive amount of land for development, a proposed new road link to the A45, a community that supports and wants the prison, a council that is keen to see the prison develop and many prison officers living just minutes from the site.

In addition, there is another difficulty for the Ministry of Justice in trying to sell the site. If the sale of land were to go ahead, there would be serious questions about whether the Government would remain financially responsible for the prison-owned sewerage system on the site, which is used by the local housing estate. We could end up having to fork out more money for a site of which we are not even making use. I cannot see how that is cost-effective on any level. Much more than that, most of the prison is very modern and has, in fact, won prizes for its design. In the five-year period from 2004-05, an incredible £22.4 million was spent on the prison—all to be thrown away if the site is to be sold.

Clearly, we have a golden opportunity to knock down the 1960s old prison blocks, to extend the existing modern blocks and facilities and to build new blocks within the existing boundaries. We should then implement new prison operational procedures, mix both state and private employees on the same site, allow prison officers to do the essential running of the prison, while allowing private contractors to carry out other functions. We would then have the cheapest prison in the country per prisoner place and a model new prison, which could be the basis for the rest of the prison estate and provide additional overflow capacity for London.