Commonwealth Day

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir James.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

It is certainly not Sir James—[Hon. Members: “Not yet!”] Just Mr Gray will be fine.

[Deidre Brock]

Forgive me, Mr Gray. I am sure I have just highlighted something that is missing but will arrive eventually.

First, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (Sir James Duddridge) for securing this debate about Commonwealth Day. This year marked a significant milestone for the Commonwealth and the UK’s international relationships, and a new phase for the UK’s diplomacy and soft power. As we recognise the first Commonwealth Day since Queen Elizabeth’s passing, we have an opportunity to reflect on the impact of the Commonwealth, to acknowledge the damage of British colonial history and, I hope, to begin to forge a path to more conscious, thoughtful and honest relationships with Commonwealth countries.

I want to dwell a little on some of the contributions that have been made. The hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East spoke of the work of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association branches in areas such as election observation and on issues relating to women and girls. The hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) highlighted how the Commonwealth can foster closer cultural links, language ties and economic opportunities—and, indeed, transport links between Manchester and Mumbai in the future. He also touched on some of the concerns that I will focus on in my contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) spoke eloquently of the injustice of frozen pensions, which affect many people from Commonwealth countries. She has pursued that matter for some years, and I am sure those people are grateful to her for bringing it up today. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) described the Commonwealth as a family—indeed, as a “gathering of the clans”. He welcomed the fact that this debate allows us to debate the truth, highlighting the economic and trade benefits. He also mentioned the positivity of the Commonwealth games in bringing nations together in their love of sport, and I very much agree with him. The Commonwealth games in Glasgow were a tremendous occasion for us all in Scotland.

We have witnessed some historic changes across the Commonwealth in the last few years. Barbados became a republic in 2021, and Jamaica has served notice that it intends to do likewise by 2025. In Australia, the arrival of the new young Queen in the ’50s seemed to herald a new start, and the Commonwealth of Nations was a very appealing concept after the misery of two world wars, but the gloss of those early days has faded. Republican voices in Australia, New Zealand and Canada have strengthened, particularly following the increase in the knowledge and understanding of the effects of colonisation on indigenous people. The Jamaican Government have announced plans to seek compensation for an estimated 600,000 Africans who were shipped to the island for the financial benefit of British slaveholders.

There are many now who feel that this reckoning with history should be embraced, paving a new way forward for the Commonwealth based on respect and a real acknowledgement of the past. The SNP’s policy is to join the Commonwealth once Scotland is independent again, because we want to co-operate with the rest of the world, not be apart from it. At the same time, we sincerely wish the Commonwealth to meet this moment of reflection and change positively and constructively.

Although one welcomes the royal family’s attempts to address Britain’s bloody imperial past—King Charles, when he was prince, attended a ceremony in Barbados in 2021 and spoke of the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains British history, and Prince William spoke out against the injustice of the Windrush scandal—there is still a very long way to go to improve relationships and outcomes with Commonwealth countries.

[Navendu Mishra]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and raising important points. On atrocities, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which took place in 1919 in Punjab, impacted a lot of people at the time, and there is a justice campaign in this country and India. Does she agree that there should be a formal apology?

[Deidre Brock]

I am not familiar with the complete details of that situation, but those are exactly the sorts of issues that Commonwealth countries should be discussing among themselves. If a country is involved in something that it needs to apologise for, it should absolutely do so.

The UK Government could start by acknowledging Britain’s complicity in historical crimes, and by seeking to make amends for its role in the slave trade and its frankly shameful legacy of many colonial atrocities around the world. The SNP is aware that the UK and Scotland must do more to address our colonial past. We all need to have an open and honest conversation about goods acquired via colonialism, as well as about the systematic and structural issues that perpetuate ongoing inequality.

Ignoring the crimes of the past undermines our leadership and our ability in the present to ensure the Commonwealth lives up to what are perceived to be shared values. As my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw said, 10 years ago the Commonwealth adopted a charter full of laudable aspirations—justice, democracy and human rights—but it has much to do to ensure adherence to those principles. For example, in 2013, President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka hosted a Commonwealth summit at a time when his Government stood accused of presiding over war crimes.

The human rights picture across the Commonwealth varies greatly. Most Commonwealth states—32 out of the 56—criminalise same-sex acts between consenting adults. Many such laws were introduced in the colonial era. As of September 2020, only 70% of girls in the Commonwealth attended school. That is a shocking figure, and we must do much more to address it. I hope the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East will touch on that in his closing remarks. He mentioned the CPA’s involvement in that, and I would be interested to hear more about that. Only 20% of parliamentarians across the Commonwealth were female in 2018. Of course, the figure is just 34% in this place, so we do not have much to brag about.

Something else that we cannot brag about is the fact that, regrettably, as Commonwealth chair-in-office between 2018 and 2022, the UK Government wasted a key opportunity to recentre human rights and respect for international law. They refused to make covid-19 vaccines more readily available for the global south by protecting intellectual property barriers, they concluded that there was no evidence of institutional racism in the UK via the Sewell report, and they cut international development spending by at least £4 billion in 2021-22. It seems to me that a nation that genuinely cared about the Commonwealth in the truest sense of the word—the commonweal; the happiness, health and safety of all the people of a community or nation or, in this case, nations—would immediately reverse the damaging cuts, including those inflicted on people living in extreme poverty in Commonwealth countries.

Last year, the UK handed over the Commonwealth chair-in-office role, as I think has been mentioned, to Rwanda, despite some very grave concerns about Rwanda’s human rights record, governance structures, reports that the Rwandan Government are arming the M23 militia group—the March 23 Movement—in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and widespread gender-based violence in those countries. The UK Government introduced the immoral and illegal Rwanda scheme. The SNP opposed the Immigration Bill when it went through Parliament and also opposed the anti-refugee Nationality and Borders Bill, as well as the damaging Rwanda proposal that the Bill would enable. We will do the same with the Illegal Migration Bill. Criminalising people is not the answer. Such policies have no place in a tolerant society that respects international law, particularly one that frequently proclaims itself to be a shining example of such qualities.

The UK Government could follow the lead of the Scottish Government and establish a comprehensive loss and damage policy, prioritising vulnerable regions in the Commonwealth that are already suffering devastating effects from the climate crisis. It is vital to ensure much greater investment in renewables and to avoid any new fossil fuel projects, which threaten our path to net zero—the precarity is underlined by the fact that 49 out of the 56 Commonwealth countries border the sea. That would demonstrate genuine commitment to the theme of Commonwealth Day 2023, which is to forge

“a sustainable and peaceful common future…especially through climate action”.

Just days ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered a “final warning” on the climate emergency with the publication of the final part of its sixth assessment report. A significant proportion of the 3 billion people whom the IPCC says are highly vulnerable to climate breakdown are based in Commonwealth countries. The report shows that the 1.5° limit is still achievable—just—but only if action to address the crisis is fast-tracked by every country and on every timeframe. We need to go further and faster, and the UK needs to take much more of a lead.

King Charles’s Commonwealth Day message highlighted the Commonwealth’s

“opportunity, and responsibility, to create a…durable future…in harmony with Nature”

to

“secure our unique and only planet for generations to come.”

The IPCC report is a stark reminder—as if one were needed—that this window of opportunity is rapidly closing. I am aware that climate change was on the agenda last week in London at the Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministers meeting, with an emphasis on building on the outcomes of COP27, but we know that 1.5° will not be met under the final agreement with no deal on reducing fossil fuel usage. Therefore I urge the UK and the Commonwealth to now recognise the opportunity and responsibility that King Charles mentioned, before it is too late.