Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDominic Raab
Main Page: Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)Department Debates - View all Dominic Raab's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe UK will use its G7 presidency this year to advance equitable access to safe and effective vaccines through widespread international co-operation.
Having visited the Kingston vaccination centre recently, I have seen first-hand the fantastic work that our healthcare workers are doing to vaccinate my Stafford constituents, but in order to fully defeat covid-19 we must vaccinate people around the world. During my virtual visit to Kenya last week, there was much excitement about the upcoming delivery of some covid-19 vaccines. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is essential that we not only allow countries to access our surplus capacity via COVAX but donate vaccines to the poorest countries in the world?
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the great work she is doing locally but also for raising the issue of international access to the vaccine. She will know that the UK has contributed £548 million to COVAX AMC, which is the international mechanism that will secure over 1 billion doses. In relation to her virtual Kenya visit, the roll-out of the first deliveries under COVAX has now begun in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, and by the end of June, in 92 of these poorer countries, we want to see all the vulnerable receiving their vaccines. That is global Britain as a force for good.
I welcome the news that the Foreign Secretary has just outlined about the COVAX deliveries in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire; that is excellent. Tragically, we have seen 50,000 deaths in South Africa alone from covid-19, but we have also seen 409,000 deaths from malaria and 700,000 deaths from AIDS-related causes. An estimated 1.8 million could die from tuberculosis in 2020, and there are Ebola outbreaks in Africa at the moment. Vaccines, whether for covid or other diseases, only work when there are the strong public health systems to deliver them, with the nurses, doctors and cold chain and diagnostic capacity. We have a moral duty to do our fair share, and it is in our global common interest. Will the Foreign Secretary be maintaining our overall bilateral and multilateral health spending, or will it be cut?
The hon. Gentleman is right to pay tribute to the work that the UK has done internationally not just on COVAX and the vaccine for this pandemic but on TB, malaria, polio and a whole range of other areas. We have had to make the difficult decision on the 0.7%, and the allocations will be published in due course, but we have been very clear that public health is the No.1 priority to be safeguarded across the piece.
Over the past five years, UK aid has helped 8 million girls get a decent education, and, as the House knows, our global ambition is to ensure that 40 million girls have 12 years of quality education by 2026.
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Choose to Challenge”, which serves as a reminder to us all to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality where we see them. According to UNICEF, only 66% of countries have achieved gender parity in primary education, falling to only 25% by upper secondary education. Will the Secretary of State reassure me that he will not only continue working with his international counterparts to ensure that girls do not fall further behind as a result of the pandemic, but that he will continue his vital work to break down the very real barriers to girls’ education?
I thank my hon. Friend, and reassure her that not only do we have a target of 40 million girls getting 12 years of education, but we want 20 million girls to become literate by the age of 10. With Kenya, we will be co-hosting a major summit in July this year to progress those goals. In January I was in Addis Ababa and had the chance to visit the Yeka Misrak Chora School, which showed me at first hand the incredible difference our aid budget makes.
I welcome what the Foreign Secretary has said regarding the UK’s commitment to ensuring an education for girls. There is no doubt that the UK has world leadership on this issue, as we do on modern slavery and preventing gender-based violence, and of course it was the UK that worked to help stop Ebola becoming a global pandemic. Will the Foreign Secretary confirm his commitment not just to this area, but to maintaining overseas development spending on these very important issues?
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of this issue. As we go through the difficult financial situation that we face, we have been very clear that girls’ education is a top priority to safeguard. On top of the money that we are putting in and the convening power that we are exercising with the joint summit we are hosting with Kenya, the Prime Minister has appointed my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) as the special envoy on girls’ education.
I applaud the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister for making educating girls a foreign policy priority. As host of the G7, we have a critical opportunity to encourage others to do the same. Can my right hon. Friend tell me how much ODA spending he will commit to girls’ education this year to make sure that our manifesto commitment to ensuring that every girl gets 12 years of quality education has the funding that it needs?
I reassure my right hon. Friend, first of all, that the money is being safeguarded; of course, it is published in the normal way, through the formal channels, in the autumn. Through the appointment of the Prime Minister’s special envoy, the convening power that I have described and, as she quite rightly says, our presidency of the G7, we are making sure that this is at the very top of the international agenda.
The British people have a proud history of stepping up and supporting those in need, but the actions of this Government yesterday betrayed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni children, as the Foreign Secretary chose to leave them to starve. In November, he told the House that humanitarian crises were one of his priorities, yet he has cut funding to the largest humanitarian crisis in the world by 60%. Clearly, the Foreign Secretary’s commitments are worthless. Does he agree that his Government’s actions have shown our allies and our detractors that his word cannot be trusted?
I thank the hon. Lady, although the obvious point to make is that the last Labour Government never hit 0.7% and only hit 0.5% twice. In relation to Yemen, over the last five years, including for 2021, we have been between the third and the fifth highest donors. We will keep up that effort. We have provided more than £1 billion of funding to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen since the conflict began, and of course we fully support the efforts of Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy, to find peace there.
The Foreign Secretary is leading a hasty retreat from the world stage while others are stepping forward. We are the only G7 nation to cut aid. The United States has added billions to its development budget, and France has committed to increasing its support for the world’s poorest by reaching 0.7% by 2025. The Government cannot keep pretending that they can make cuts without risking millions of lives, so will the Foreign Secretary immediately publish all the details of the cuts made in 2020 and those projected for 2021? Will he also explain to the House what his priorities are? Clearly, preventing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis from going hungry and starving to death is not one of them.
Of course, the allocations are published formally in the normal way, as I have just described, in the autumn. In fact, the new UK aid pledge of £87 million, which the hon. Lady so blithely dismisses, will feed an additional 240,000 of the most vulnerable Yemenis every month, support 400 health clinics and provide clean water for 1.6 million people. We are doing our bit. Of course these are very difficult financial circumstances. We remain, as we have over the last five years, between the third and the fifth highest donor into Yemen.
I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary’s commitment to women’s and girls’ education. Does he agree, however, that female genital mutilation, which sadly affects so many girls across the world, is one of the great hindrances to the education of girls in many parts of the world, including, sadly, Nigeria? I am sure he joins me in welcoming the release of the girls from Zamfara state only the other day, but will he raise with the Nigerian Government, when he next has the opportunity to do so, the likelihood that some 14 million will go through female genital mutilation between now and 2030? This is a crime, it is a sin, and it is against all justice.
I thank my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee. I join him in welcoming the release of the young girls who were kidnapped, which I am sure came as a huge relief to the whole House. He raises, in a passionate way, the issue of FGM. We have been leaders in calling that out, and also in trying to work with Governments around the world, in particular in Africa, to try to bring an end to this appalling practice. We will continue to do so, in Nigeria and elsewhere.
Since the last oral questions, I have visited east Africa. I have also visited Cyprus, where I met President Anastasiades and the Turkish Cypriot leader in support of the peace initiative and the UN talks. On 18 February, I met our E3 partners in Paris and also the new Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, to co-ordinate our approach to Iran. Finally, I am sure the whole House will be pleased to hear that the international community has elected not just the first British female judge in the International Criminal Court but the first British chief prosecutor.
The Prime Minister has rightly condemned the UN’s Human Rights Council for its disproportionate focus on Israel, which he said was
“damaging to the cause of peace”.
As the UN Human Rights Council meets over the coming weeks, will the Government commit to voting against one-sided resolutions singling out Israel, including those outside permanent agenda item 7, in order to send a clear message that such blatant anti-Israel bias will not be tolerated?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have stood up for Israel when it has faced bias and, frankly, politicised attacks in the UN and other forums. We will continue to press for the abolition of item 7, because it is the only country-specific standalone agenda item and it focuses on Israel, and that cannot be right.
The US intelligence report released last Friday makes a clear and compelling case that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Last year, the Foreign Secretary said of those with “blood on their hands”:
“You cannot set foot in this country and we will seize your blood-drenched ill-gotten gains if you try.”—[Official Report, 6 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 664.]
Can he confirm that he will be bringing forward sanctions against bin Salman following this report and that he now finally accepts that it is time to fundamentally reappraise our relationship with Saudi Arabia?
The hon. Lady is a bit behind the curve here. Of course, we have an important relationship with Saudi Arabia on security, on trade and on other things, but the reality is that it was this Government, and me, who introduced Magnitsky sanctions on 20 Saudis involved in the murder under our global human rights regime—[Interruption.] We did it last July. She ought to catch up.
I am, frankly, astonished; I genuinely expected a better response from the Foreign Secretary. He will not stand with the family of Jamal Khashoggi as they seek justice. He will not stand to lift a finger against the dirty money flowing into the City of London. He will not stand with our allies in ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia. He will not even defend the children of Yemen against brutal aid cuts by his own Department, even as his Government seek to sustain the conflict that they are party to. Last year, we heard him talk tough about standing up to despots and henchmen, but now he tells us that in response to this report he is not prepared to take a single action, will not stand up to corruption, will not stand against humanitarian catastrophe, will not stand up for press freedom and will not stand up for human rights. Is there a single thing that he will actually stand up for?
I again say to the hon. Lady that we were already right out in the lead in imposing asset freezes and visa bans on 20 of the most directly responsible. She refers to the US report. The US has not put sanctions on the Crown Prince, as she well knows. More generally, she will have seen the action that we have taken—[Interruption.] She ought to listen. On dirty money, we have already said, and I have committed to this House, that we will introduce an extension of the Magnitsky sanctions to cover corruption—[Interruption.] She is now going on to talk about Russia. The reality is that we will continue to support standing up for human rights, and I will be introducing to the House Magnitsky sanctions and extensions in the corruption space shortly.
I thank my hon. Friend. We have supported the normalisation of relations, which is a good step around the region. Of course, this also led to the suspension of the threat of annexation on the west bank, which was very important. As a result of that, I was able to go to talk to President Abbas and Prime Minister Shtayyeh and encourage them to resume dialogue on west bank issues, which is very important for security, and to make sure that Palestinian public servants are paid. Plans are at least mooted for elections on both sides—both in Israel and on the Palestinian side. Ultimately, we need leadership from both sides to secure the peace that my hon. Friend and other Members want. We need a two-state solution, and the UK will support all those efforts.
We are having discussions with the Biden Administration on the approach to the proposed US withdrawal or drawdown from Afghanistan. It has to be linked to violence on the ground and to the wider peace talks and the agreements that have been made in Afghanistan between all the local parties, and it has to be based on the delivery of those conditions.
We will of course continue to make sure that we provide vital humanitarian support. I agree with the hon. Lady that the ongoing crisis in Syria is appalling. I think she asked about the Home Office plans for a new global resettlement scheme; that is for the Home Secretary to talk about, but I will—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is right that it is a diplomatic issue, which is why I fully support it.
My hon. Friend raises an important point. The truth is that I would not be here today if it was not for this country’s proud tradition of offering sanctuary to those fleeing persecution. Since 2015, we have resettled 25,000 refugees, with the support of brilliant charities—I always think of Elmbridge CAN in my constituency, which helps new families to settle in. We remain committed to discharging that historic role. The new global resettlement scheme will be developed and launched by the Home Office in due course.
I appreciate that there are concerns on this issue; we have a large Indian diaspora and have had lots of constituents writing in. I did raise the matter with Foreign Minister Jaishankar when I was in India and we discussed it. Ultimately, the situation is the result of a reform agenda that the elected Government are pressing through. It is of course contentious and we have discussed it, but ultimately it is for the Government of India to decide.
I was out in Cyprus recently, as I have already discussed, and spoke to President Anastasiades and to Ersin Tatar, the new Turkish Cypriot leader. That is, of course, the starting point. The most important thing that we need to see right now is for both sides to go to those UN 5+1 talks without preconditions, so that we can re-engage in the kind of flexibility and pragmatism that can see lasting and enduring peace for the whole of Cyprus.
The hon. Lady takes a heartfelt interest in this matter. I have recently spoken to the families of all three British-Iranian dual nationals. Of course, we accept that there is a long-standing dispute in relation to the IMS debt that needs to be resolved, but that is separate from the arbitrary detention of British nationals. Frankly, we should not be giving succour to the idea that anything should happen other than their unconditional and immediate release.
My hon. Friend raises an important issue. Iran’s systemic non-compliance with its obligations under the joint comprehensive plan of action are rightly a concern of the whole international community, particularly the state parties to the JCPOA. Frankly, Iran has a clear choice: return to compliance or face increasing economic and diplomatic isolation. On 18 February in Paris, I joined my French and German counterparts and the new US Secretary of State Tony Blinken to reinforce the transatlantic alliance and concerted action to bring Iran back to full compliance, which is our overriding focus.
The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to the treatment of Palestinians. The reality is that I do not think there is a bar on the use of military systems of justice under international law—let alone under the International Criminal Court system. Indeed, we use a military justice system with some of the highest standards in the world. What is crucial is that there is adequate due process to ensure that people’s rights can be fairly and duly heard.