Anti-Corruption Strategy: Illegal Wildlife Trade

Debate between David Drew and Madeleine Moon

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to serve under your firm but fair chairship, Ms Moon. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) on her speech, which was a tour de force. I will not need to go over all the issues again, because she has covered them all.

This has been an important and thoughtful debate. I thank all hon. Members who spoke in it—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton, but also my hon. Friends the Members for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Stirling (Stephen Kerr), who all made valuable contributions. The debate’s importance was demonstrated by the rapid and regular interventions from the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), and my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield).

I will concentrate on the London conference, because it is something that we can contribute positively to today, but first let me make two quick observations. First, given how terrorist groups use the illegal wildlife trade to finance their activities, we need to make it clear that it is no less of a priority for us than the drugs trade or human trafficking. It is a multi-billion-pound exercise, from which many such organisations derive most of their income; we need to understand that when we consider Interpol and other matters. I will say in passing that if I manage to get into South Sudan later this year, I will have a word with the SPLA-SPLM about what they are doing to ensure that they legitimise their activities rather than drawing any money from this nefarious activity. Secondly, I do not understand how we can allow anyone in this country who goes trophy-hunting to come back with anything other than a potential prison sentence hanging over them. We need to be much firmer on that.

I have some questions about the London conference in October that the Minister may wish to take away—I do not expect her to answer them all now. I hope that at the conference we will establish a very strong legal framework against corruption and wildlife trafficking. That will be the bottom line. There are already several international laws, but we need to make them much more overt and much stronger. We need to recognise the importance of capacity-building and ensure that customs officials have discretionary powers to interdict and draw attention to what is happening in their countries. I hope we will support the World Customs Organisation’s important project GAPIN—Great Apes and Integrity—to enhance integrity in 15 African nations, because the role of Africa must not be underestimated.

We should also strengthen our international development support for enforcement, for shutting down chains, for helping frontline and subsequent investigations and for the operation of customs. We need a holistic approach; I hope that that will come out of the conference. It is no good pretending that we can address what is happening throughout the world unless we ensure we are doing all we can—whether through an ivory ban or through other measures—to stop the worst aspects of the trade affecting what happens in this country.

My penultimate point is that we need to look at import and export licences to ensure that what people bring into the country is what they say it is. We need to take a stronger approach, and we should encourage other countries to do so too.

Finally, I ask the Minister what particular action we are taking to help NGOs to ensure that they tackle the corruption and illegality associated with this terrible trade, because so much of the activity of the Department for International Development happens through the NGO community. We need to protect whistleblowers. So much of what we find out comes from people who have bravely put their head on the line and taken the risk of saying what is going on, so we must protect those people in their countries. I hope the Government will bring that up at the conference.

The conference will be very important, and it needs to be given much more attention. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling says, this is the end—if we do not get this right now, not many of these species will be left and we will not have done the anti-poverty work that is needed. We have to give people alternatives, because we cannot pretend that we can shut the trade down without giving people a quality of life that allows them to stop what they are doing. That is why the conference is so essential. I wish the Minister well. I do not know whether she will speak at the conference, but as we are hosting it, I hope she will send a high-level deputation to ensure that the British Government do their bit and that we get something concrete out of it.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (in the Chair)]

If the Minister needs time to answer the questions that have been raised, I am mindful—given the length of the initial speech—to leave all the remaining time to her.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between David Drew and Madeleine Moon

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Moon]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 348 and new clause 21.

Today, I took the short and wide pavements over to the Department for Exiting the European Union; what a waste of my time that was. I went because I wanted to read what was written in relation to the workforce impacts for the large numbers of my constituents from Bridgend who work in the Ford engine factory and with Tata Steel. So I went to look in particular at the automotive sector and the steel sector reports.

The Ford engine plant is the largest engine works in Europe, and Tata next door in Port Talbot employs the largest number of people in steelworks in the UK. It was interesting that when I got there—having gone through the whole palaver of not taking my phone with me and being walked up to the Department, being asked to sign myself in and being handed the two big files—I found that the document started off by telling me what it was not: the first page I had to wade through told me that 58 sectorial impact assessments do not exist. So what I had gone there to see did not exist. Instead I was told that the paperwork consisted of qualitative and quantitative analyses in a range of documents developed at different times since—that is an important word—the referendum, so this was going to be new information: it was going to be information and analysis not available before the referendum and therefore, sadly, not available to the voters in my constituency or indeed to Members.

The 38—not 58—sector documents consist of descriptions of the sector, comments on EU regulations, existing frameworks for how trade is facilitated between countries and sector views. In the end, they are sector views, and nothing the Government had collected together was worth going there to read. They did not contain commercial, market or negotiation-sensitive information, as the documents told me, so why on earth could it all not just have been emailed to all MPs? There was nothing there that would upset anybody; all it would have done was insult people, not worry them. Apart from the sector views, it told us nothing that could not be found from a good read through Wikipedia.

There is no Government impact assessment, or indeed any assessment, even in the one part of the document worth reading: the sectoral view. The sectoral view is just there: the Government do not say what they are going to do about it, or even whether they think it is relevant—they just ignore it.

Sir David, what I was greeted with at DExEU would, in all honesty, have insulted us when we were both serving on the Select Committee on Defence; if that had come to us from the Ministry of Defence, we would have sent it back and said, “Do it again.” It was insulting. Members of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly would have been confused by such pathetic information being placed before them. So perhaps that is why we are not making it public.

I read the report relating to the automotive and steel industries. The report admits that automotive is central to the UK economy and a key part of our industrial strategy, so we would think that the Government would want to make sure that whatever they were going to do would protect it. The industry employs 159,000 people, with a further 238,000 in the supply chain. I did like one line, which said that the UK is a global centre of excellence for engine design, and offered the example of Ford; that is us down in Bridgend. Automotive earns us £40.1 billion in exports, and the EU is the UK’s largest export market, so we would think this is pretty important stuff.

What were the sectoral view and the concerns? Again, there was nothing new; my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) and I could have written this ourselves. In fact, we could probably have written a better sectoral analysis than anything the Government have produced; it was pathetic.

[Dr Drew]

Anyone could have written it.

[Mrs Moon]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

The sector has said that World Trade Organisation rules and current EU third country tariff schedules will bring a 4.5% tariff on components and a 10% tariff on cars; I think we already knew that. We were also informed that Japanese and Ford motor manufacturing make the UK their base because of access to the EU market. There is a major statement and recommendation there: it will be devastating for motor manufacturing in the UK if we do not continue to have access to the EU markets.

We were also told that automotive is a high-volume, low-margin industry operating a just-in-time process. It was said that customs checks would add to administrative costs, delay production and shipments and create the need for increased working capital and that they would increase the cost of production in the UK. Concern was expressed about access to key engineering staff if higher immigration controls were in place, exacerbating skills shortages where a significant skills shortage already exists, with 5,000 job vacancies, especially in engineering design and production engineering.

Incontinence

Debate between David Drew and Madeleine Moon

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Moon]

I would ask every Member to consider the impact on their life of suddenly having a desperate, urgent need to access a toilet while at work or walking down the street, and there not being one available. Of course we must do more; no one can assume that incontinence is not coming their way or coming to a member of their family. As a society, we have to take responsibility for ensuring that people can access toilet facilities wherever they are and whenever they need them.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case. She will be aware of ERIC—Education and Resources for Improving Childhood Continence—which has campaigned for many years for better availability of continence pads. These are still charged for at very high rates. If every school were to provide continence pads, a lot of children would have a much better experience at school.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. In particular, we should look at the need for teachers to understand the issue of incontinence. They need to understand that a child who constantly puts their hand up and says that they need to go to the toilet is not trying to get out of the lesson, and that it is perhaps an indication of a deep-seated problem that needs to be tackled. There is certainly a need to educate and to build awareness of continence problems in schools. This relates to the little ones coming into the reception class—some of whom, increasingly and shockingly, have not been potty-trained and have not learned to control their bowels and bladder—and the problem continues throughout the school. Schools need to step in and ensure that parents and children have access to the help and advice that they need.

People should have the confidence to talk about the problem to GPs and to seek an early diagnosis and intervention. People should not have to assume that it is something they have to live with. It is estimated that people manage the problem themselves for an average of five years before seeking help. We also need to highlight the detrimental impact that incontinence can have on an individual, and the fact that existing policy responses exacerbate the situation. This is a quality-of-life issue. It affects sleep and mental wellbeing, and it can cause isolation. For a child, it can have a long-term impact on their self-esteem and on family relationships, and it often makes them vulnerable to bullying.

Access to toilets can become a determining factor in every journey and activity away from the home. The condition can also lead to more complex health problems, which are inevitably more expensive to treat, and some people even choose residential care so that they can have management of their problem. One specialist in the field summed the situation up by saying:

“The reality is that bladder and bowel continence needs can affect anyone at any age. It can reduce a person’s enjoyment of life, ability to live an independent life, reduce education and work opportunities and lead to further medical complications.”

Patient surveys have highlighted the limitations imposed on people’s lives by their conditions. For sufferers who responded to a survey, those restrictions and sleep deprivation were the worst aspects, with 93% saying that it had affected their mood, 63% saying that it had affected their ability to work, and 39% saying that it had forced them to take time off work. Frustratingly, there are solutions for many, but people all too frequently struggle to cope on their own, using incontinence products available in local chemists rather than seeking the help that could be available from the NHS.