Labour Reforms: Qatar

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Thank you, Sir Christopher, for giving me the opportunity to speak, and I also thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) for securing this debate. There have been many jokes about the World cup, but I am looking forward to 2022, when Scotland are victorious in the final against England.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I am a proud member of that international organisation called the trade union movement. I think there were three key themes in his contribution: what is happening; what we can do to promote sustainable development and the fight against poverty, injustice and inequality internationally; and what we can do to promote best practice here in the United Kingdom.

Those are certainly the themes that I want to pick up, because, as the hon. Gentleman said, in October last year the Government in Qatar committed to reforms to improve significantly the physical and employment situation of 2 million migrant workers, including ending the kafala system, which has already been referred to and which the International Trade Union Confederation had described as modern slavery. Those concessions by the Qatari Government were reported by state media and announced just before the International Labour Organisation was due to decide whether to hold a formal commission of inquiry into conditions in Qatar for migrant workers.

The human rights abuses that we have seen—workers being tied to a single employer, low pay, poor accommodation, labouring in dangerous heat and, sadly, hundreds of unexplained deaths—have been subject to intense global scrutiny and criticism. Foreign workers can only come to the Arab Gulf states through a sponsor, as the hon. Gentleman said. However, the essence of that kafala system was the relationship binding the employee to the employer, which has often been criticised as being like slavery, because the employer could dictate the recruitment process and working conditions, while workers were often forced to pay their own medical insurance fees and surrender their passports and identification papers.

Much work has been done, not only here but in the Scottish Parliament, in relation to how we can make a contribution to sustainable development and the fight against poverty, injustice and inequality internationally. Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, pledged to implement the global goals and made a dual commitment to tackle poverty and inequality at home in Scotland and to help developing countries grow in a fair and sustainable manner. Our commitment to contribute internationally to the global goals must reflect and mirror our domestic aims and ambitions for Scotland. That includes building the economy; tackling poverty and inequality; providing quality healthcare and education; promoting affordable and clean energy; and ensuring a sustainable environment. I am sure that we all want to play our part in contributing to the development of our partner countries through those global goals.

The international framework and international development strategy agreed in the Scottish Parliament have set the direction for Scotland’s international activity. It sets out the priorities that will contribute to Scotland’s ongoing ambition to be a good global citizen continuing to make distinctive contributions in addressing global challenges. We should recognise that businesses have a crucial role to play in preventing and remedying breaches of human rights. Although states, rather than the private sector, have the principal responsibility for respecting and protecting human rights, we can encourage businesses to take positive action, for example by actively managing the risk of being party to human rights abuses. Businesses can exert a direct influence through their trade and investment decisions.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) rightly raised the issue of trafficking and exploitation. In Scotland, a strategy was adopted in May last year that was agreed by Police Scotland, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. That is an important strategy. A number of case studies were produced to show what human trafficking involved and the impact it had on victims. A number of people who had been subjected to human trafficking played their part in developing that strategy.

To conclude, the hon. Member for Nottingham North said that we should promote best practice at home. There are some areas where the UK can help. It can certainly help by looking at how to provide better workplace protection for people in the gig economy. I ask the Government to look seriously at my Workers (Definition and Rights) Bill, which seeks to do that. We certainly need to look at parts of our economy where there are exploitative zero-hours contracts. We need to show that we in the UK lead by example when it comes to workers’ rights and human rights across the globe.