Iran: Human Rights

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I, too, would like to thank the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for securing this debate. It was quite shocking to listen to the seemingly inexhaustible list of human rights abuses by Iranian authorities. It was quite numbing to hear them all. I think it is right that we focus on human rights, as that issue has been a central thrust of my very short parliamentary career since being elected two years ago, but I would also like to focus on the fate of journalists, both those working inside Iran and those working remotely from the UK. I declare an interest as a former BBC journalist and the chair of the National Union of Journalists parliamentary committee. I do that for the record to state my solidarity with journalists both in Iran and around the world, who strive to do nothing more than ask questions in an attempt to hold power to account.

As we know, Iran has elections that many other inhabitants of the middle east can only envy. Here I state a truism, but it is essential that we set it down, that elections are only ever one element of a functioning democracy. A democracy where bloggers and reporters must risk their lives and the well-being of their families in order to comment on the political life of their country cannot be seen as a democracy in the true sense. Democracy is not worth the ballot paper it is printed on without freedom of the press. There is a barrier to informing the electorate, as the press provides feedback to the legislature. The often brutal suppression of those speakers also creates a chilling fear that acts as a cancer on all of those forming opinions and on the ability to take action in the public arena.

It is important to make the point that Iran is not a homogeneous political entity. I have heard other hon. Members make comments about the political situation in Iran. There are reformers, as they are called, as well as the politically established so-called hardliners. I do not know where we place President Rouhani in all this, considering that much of the repression discussed today has occurred on his watch. However, I do know one hardliner, someone who is not a friend of civil liberties and human rights: President Trump. His suspected refusal to re-certify the Iran nuclear deal can only have the effect of pushing Iran ever further into the hands of those hardliners.

I will come back to the journalists. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) mentioned a constituent of his who has been in prison, I would like to mention three journalists who are being held and are on hunger strike. Soheil Arabi has been in prison since 2013 and has been on hunger strike for over a month. Mehdi Khazali was arrested in August and has been on hunger strike since the day of his arrest. Ehsan Mazandarani was arrested in 2015 and has been denied early release despite very poor health. There are many more prisoners I could mention. Their stories make for chilling reading.

The long arm of control reaches way beyond Iran and stretches as far as those working in our very own BBC, as the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) mentioned. Charges have been filed against almost all the Iranian journalists working for the BBC’s Persian-language service in London; 152 journalists have been charged with conspiracy against Iran’s national security and have faced constant harassment and intimidation and an effective freeze on all their Iran-based assets. Those charged cannot defend themselves unless they return to Iran, which they feel unable to do for fear of reprisal. I beg the Minister to raise these names whenever he meets his Iranian counterparts and to push the issues of journalism, freedom of the press and democracy very clearly, as I know he will.

To end with a general comment, there are far too many in politics today who wish to criticise only the countries that fit into a very black and white binary world view. I am not one of them. I believe it is entirely possible—nay, essential—to criticise and hold to account Iran just as much as Saudi Arabia for human rights abuses and attacks on civil liberties. The two are not mutually incompatible. The same applies to the US and Russia and the questionable choices those Governments continue to make domestically and internationally. In fact, our hand is strengthened and our criticism is more valid when we show neither fear nor favour to any country or regime, wherever they may be, whether they be friend or ally, when defending human rights and civil liberties.

Yemen

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your generosity with the time. I am very glad to speak in this place about the current situation in Yemen.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I seek your clarification about this observation, Madam Deputy Speaker. When this debate ends, there will be an Adjournment debate that, if I understand the protocols of the House correctly, will be allowed more than its 30 minutes. Is it not possible for us to use our full allocation and the time up to the period of 30 minutes before Members of the House disperse today?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I have every sympathy—heartfelt sympathy—with what the Minister has said. This is a vital debate, and I will not use up time in fully answering his point of order. The House decided on the timetable. The Backbench Business Committee gave 90 minutes for this debate, and I am powerless to change that. The Minister has, however, made a very good point.

[Clive Lewis]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the hon. Members for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) and for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing today’s debate. I pay tribute to them not just as a politeness but because by choosing Yemen as a topic for public debate in the House they have brought into our public arena an urgent discussion that it is clear our Government would much rather not have and that is, or at the very least should be, deeply embarrassing for them. I say that not to score a petty political point, but to highlight the fact that it is the role of all elected Members to speak up when our Government are acting wrongly on the international stage. That is the essence of our democracy.

As Members have said, a famine in Yemen is imminent, which is a disastrous prospect on top of the many children and adults who have already died. This famine is not a consequence of natural disaster, but a result of the civil war. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) memorably said again today, “Yemenis are not starving: they are being starved”. It is a famine that is being deliberately used a weapon of war, but one that can be stopped as soon as we find the political will to stop it. That is a huge responsibility for all of us in the House, and we must find the political will to do so as a matter of the utmost urgency.

That is a particular responsibility for us because the UK is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we hold the presidency this month of the UN Security Council—that will end this week—and we of course have close political ties with neighbouring states. It is clear that we have been gifted an opportunity to set the international agenda, and it is nothing less than our absolute moral duty to do so. Let us begin by acknowledging that, notwithstanding the good intentions in the motion, we cannot pass a resolution that

“would give effect to an immediate ceasefire in Yemen”

however much we might wish we could do so. We must, however, call for an immediate ceasefire, and throw our weight behind that goal.

We can certainly recognise that all major parties to this war must be part of the solution, and that United Nations Security Council resolution 2216 needs to be replaced by a realistic alternative that will bring everyone to the negotiating table. We can and must recognise the importance of independent witnesses on the ground, and the urgent need for reliable data relating to food insecurity so that relief can be well targeted. Binding assurances are clearly needed from both sides on the protection of humanitarian workers. These are credible and achievable political goals.

Budget Resolutions

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), as well as, of course, the Toblerone tour de force that came from the Foreign Secretary earlier.

It is strange to be debating Britain’s place in the world in the context of a Budget statement that refused to address the single issue that will completely dominate our place in the world for an entire generation: Brexit—a word the Chancellor managed to avoid using even once in his speech. His announcement that he will spend £500 million of new money on technology such as artificial intelligence sounds wonderful, but when we look at what is happening in the real economy, we see that our high-tech businesses are actively considering whether they can afford to remain in the UK at all if we leave the single market.

Only last week, UKIE—the Association for United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment—which represents the UK’s dramatically successful gaming industry and has several members in my constituency, reported that 40% of its members are considering relocating all or part of their businesses abroad because of Brexit. Of course, the same figure, or higher, will be found in many other parts of the UK economy. The Chancellor knows that, and that it was always likely to be the case, which is why he—along with the Prime Minister, of course—opposed Brexit in the referendum.

Has the Chancellor, then, made any allowance in his forecasts for future losses in tax revenue yielded by the taxes of EU citizens working in the UK, who may be given no choice but to leave rather than be forced through the humiliation of expulsion? Some 7% of the UK workforce are EU citizens, and the Office for National Statistics estimates that they have been net contributors of more than £20 billion in the past decade. Why did he make no mention of the tens of billions of pounds the UK will be asked to pay in exit-related costs? The OBR is clear that he has made no contingency for this huge cost, which may be more than £50 billion—why?

As time passes it becomes clearer that the Government have been hijacked by a small gang of ideological fanatics who want the hardest of hard Brexits, and against whom the Prime Minister and her Chancellor appear powerless. This hard Tory Brexit rests on nothing more than wishful thinking—on the fantasy that the UK will be able simply to stroll up to negotiating tables around the world and come away with deals that favour us and our industries, as if the likes of China, India and a Trump-led USA are unaware of how isolated and desperate our position will be.

Last June, the British people did not vote to apparently reclaim their sovereignty, laws and rights from Brussels only to see the Government auction them off to the highest bidder, behind closed doors. We are talking about our NHS, our Climate Change Act, and our employee rights. Nor did the British people vote to divide the Union, yet the Government’s hard Brexit is the key reason Nicola Sturgeon has given for requesting a second referendum. The First Minister wants the people of Scotland to have a choice, just as the Government now have a choice: do they want hard Brexit or do they want to retain the Union?

We must be on our guard. We stand to lose much more than the economy and the Union if we continue down this path. The world that the Donald Trumps, Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pens want to build is a genuinely dangerous one. It is a world of protectionism, bragging nationalism and domestic politics dominated by the empty, angry rhetoric of scapegoating. As any student of 20th-century history will tell us, these are ominous tidings indeed. The world around us is rapidly changing, and not always for the better. Out there, there is a sense that things are out of control. The term “going to hell in a handcart” is one we hear frequently. In this climate of uncertainty and instability—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Clive Lewis]

I shall finish there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

There is progress being made among European partners and with the US on preparing the kind of support we could give to a Government of national accord in Libya when and if one is formed. The problem is that several months after we first expected that to happen, the Government have still not been formed. We are working very closely with the parties in Libya and with the regional powers who have influence, particularly Egypt, to encourage Prime Minister Siraj to take the necessary steps to get that Government formed and approved so that we can engage. There is a strong commitment by the European partners to engage once that Government have been created.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

10. What assessment he has made of the effect of the outcome of the March 2015 election in Israel on the peace process in that region.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

Much gets said, as we know, during election cycles, and we were concerned by some of the statements that were made during the Israeli election. I was in Israel last week, and I can confirm that I had meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has made it very clear that he remains committed to the two-state solution.

[Clive Lewis]

It is more than 20 years since Oslo. There are now more than 350,000 illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied west bank and 300,000 illegal Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem, and the Netanyahu Government continue to announce the building of more illegal settlements. Does the Minister believe that that will aid the peace process? If not, what is he doing about it?

[Mr Ellwood]

The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and I have made it very clear on the record that that is unhelpful and takes us in the wrong direction. During my visit last week, I visited some of the settlements that are developing. Although announcements of new settlements have slowed, the existing settlements are starting to grow, and that happens without people seeing it. There is an area to the north of Jerusalem called the Ariel finger, which, if it continues to grow as it is doing, will eventually link up towards the north of Jericho. That will essentially mean that there will be no two-state solution. We need Israel to show that it is committed to the process and stop the settlements.