Budget Resolutions
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am delighted to join the Foreign Secretary in congratulating Prince Henry of Wales and Meghan Markle on their forthcoming marriage. However, I was disappointed that the Foreign Secretary did not feel it appropriate to acknowledge a recent sad event. I want to ensure that all of us in the House join in sending our thoughts to the families of all of the hundreds killed, including 27 children, and injured in Friday’s horrific terrorist attack on al-Rawda mosque in north Sinai. It is a brutal reminder that by far the biggest targets and the highest number of victims of jihadi terrorists are people of the Muslim faith, and that the inhuman evil that is Daesh, which worships no gods but death and publicity, must be wiped from the face of the earth.
For reasons lost in the past, Budget debates have often been the occasion for some degree of light-hearted exchange over the years. However, not least in the light of the events in Egypt and the serious situation in which we currently find ourselves as a country economically, diplomatically and militarily, I do not believe that levity is in order today. Especially when it comes to the Foreign Secretary, all the jokes have worn just a bit thin of late.
I am nevertheless glad that the Foreign Secretary is leading today’s debate. Back in March he acknowledged how rare that was, because never under David Cameron’s Government did a Foreign Secretary lead a Budget debate. In the first two Budgets under the new Prime Minister and Chancellor, however, the Foreign Secretary has been given that honour. Perhaps this is their way of dipping his hands in the blood, as the economic impact of his Brexit plan becomes ever clearer, or perhaps, to be slightly less Shakespearian, it is their way of rubbing the nose of a wild, carefree puppy in the mess he has made.
Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)
Will the right hon. Lady join me and the rest of the House in welcoming the announcement of two major pharmaceutical investments in the UK?
Emily Thornberry
Of course I welcome that, but I am concerned that we still have no answer from the Government on what will happen to the European body that currently regulates pharmaceutical trade across Europe. With no answer on that, it is difficult to be able to look at a long-term plan in that regard.
I was talking about the mess. We saw that mess last week in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest projections. Growth in the UK, which was already projected to be the lowest of all major economies, has now been cut again, in one of the biggest downgrades in our economic history. The truth is that it could be much worse. Let us face the reality. The OBR’s forecasts last week were still based on an optimistic assumption of Brexit.
The OBR said:
“Given the legal requirement for the OBR to produce its forecasts on the basis of current Government policy, we once again asked the Government to provide us with any detail on post-EU exit UK policies in relation to trade, migration and EU finances.”
Let us note two points about the OBR’s language, because Robert Chote is not one to use his words loosely. He said that he had “once again” asked the Treasury for its Brexit plan—presumably, he has been making that request for many months now. What he asked for was very simple but very shocking: he asked the Treasury for “any detail” about its plan. What did the Treasury do in response? According to the OBR, the Treasury sent it a copy of the Prime Minister’s Florence speech. How utterly pathetic. That was followed up with a bunch of documents full of aspirations and pipe dreams, with no detail and of no practical worth.
The OBR was left to conclude:
“We were not provided with any information that is not in the public domain.”
In other words, the organisation whose legal responsibility it is to forecast the future state of the British economy asked the Government what their plan was for Brexit and was treated just as dismissively as every Member of this House has been treated for the past 17 months. As a result, the OBR concluded:
“Given the uncertainty regarding how the Government will respond to the choices and trade-offs it faces during the negotiations, we still have no meaningful basis on which to form a judgment as to the final outcome and upon which we can then condition our forecast”.
Seventeen months on from the referendum, the OBR still has “no meaningful basis” on which to make a forecast about what Brexit will mean, either because the Government refuse to tell them, or because the Government cannot decide what kind of Brexit they want.
However, let us be absolutely clear about one thing: as dreadful as the OBR’s forecast for growth and the public finances is, it still assumes that there will be a deal on future trading arrangements between Britain and the EU. It has not even attempted to look at the consequences of a no-deal outcome on trade, employment and growth. Therefore, when the Economic Secretary to the Treasury responds at the end of the debate, will he address one specific question? The Government have said that they will conduct precautionary preparations for the prospect of a no-deal, cliff-edge Brexit. Can he please reassure the House that, as part of those preparations, the OBR will be asked to assess the likely economic and fiscal impact and to publish that paper as soon as possible, so that Parliament and the British public can fully understand the costs of that scenario?
Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Emily Thornberry
I will of course give way to the right hon. Gentleman, but I wonder whether we could do it this way: if he has a question for me, I have a question for him. Of the 32 taxes listed in the Red Book’s table of current receipts, which one is forecast to take in less money year on year over the next six years?
Mr Duncan Smith
If the right hon. Lady wants me to become her adviser, I am very happy to do so, although of course that has a cost attached: I would advise her to leave her position at once. Can she answer a very simple question? During the election, her party made it very clear that it would have Britain leave the customs union and be outside the single market, and it said that again after the election. Then her party began to drift, and the other day the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), now sitting on her right-hand side, said, “Actually, we could remain in the customs union and the single market.” While she is interrogating the Government, perhaps she would like to make clear what her party’s position is on leaving the European Union.
Emily Thornberry
It is such a shame that during those 20 seconds or so the right hon. Gentleman did not answer the question. The answer is on page 82 of the Red Book—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I stopped people shouting at the Foreign Secretary, and I will stop people shouting at the right hon. Lady. Listen to her answer.
Emily Thornberry
The table on page 82 shows that only one of the 32 taxes listed will fall, and that is the bank levy. That tells us all we need to know about the Government’s priorities in the Budget.
As for what the Government’s plans are and what they are doing to the country, let me turn to the substance of the Budget and today’s theme of global Britain. In recent years the Treasury has taken great pleasure in writing a section of the Red Book entitled “The Global Economy”, which is usually used to trumpet the fact that Britain’s economy was the envy of the western world.
Emily Thornberry
I am not going to.
In 2016 that section of the Red Book ran to a full 10 paragraphs, beginning with the boast that:
“Britain is forecast to grow faster than any other major advanced economy”.
Well, what a difference a year makes. Now that section runs to just one measly paragraph, on page 13, and it does not state how much Britain will grow compared with the rest of the world. For that comparison, we must turn to the OBR, which has stated:
“The pattern of strengthening growth across the other major advanced economies this year contrasts with the slower pace of growth in the UK.”
While it has slashed its forecast for UK growth up to 2022, it has upgraded its forecast for the rest of the world. George Osborne used to boast in every Budget that Britain was winning “the global race.” We now have a Government lagging along at the back of the global field and falling ever further behind. So much for global Britain.
If anyone thinks that growth figures are just numbers on a spreadsheet with no real-world implications, they should turn to two areas where the downgrading of Britain’s growth is already having direct and immediate effects: our spending on defence and on development.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the past 35 minutes the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU has written to the Select Committee to say that the reports being provided are not complete and do not actually contain anything that might be commercially sensitive, thus adding very strongly to the point she is making? The Government are taking on the most significant economic challenge the country has faced since the second world war without a modicum of the basic detail they need to take on the task. Does it not shame the Government and Parliament that we are facing this kind of catastrophe without any serious information?
Emily Thornberry
My hon. Friend makes a very serious and important point. It is a shame that such an important and serious contribution is met by laughter on the Government Benches.
Let me turn to defence. It is not often that I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Members for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) and for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), but I absolutely agree with them that the Government’s proposals to reduce the size of our Army to below the 70,000 mark, a cut of 12,000 from current plans, is nothing short of a scandal. Nor would it be acceptable to cut still further our naval capabilities by taking the amphibious ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, out of service.
We all heard the International Trade Secretary say yesterday that the Government would attempt to reach “some sort of compromise” on these cuts. Well, I have to say to the Government that there is no basis for compromise here. We should not even be having this discussion. Our armed forces are stretched to the limit as it is and they cannot take another round of cuts, so when we hear from the City Minister later on this, who himself served with such distinction as a young man in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, I hope he will make it clear, on behalf of the Treasury, that there will be no cuts in the size of the Army and no cuts in the Navy’s amphibious assault ships.
Sir Edward Leigh
I have already made my point about the armed forces, and in that sense I agree with the right hon. Lady, but does she not realise that the cost of the national debt in interest alone is the equivalent every year of 10 Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers? I am sure she would agree with me that the way to solve the problems with the MOD budget is not to increase the national debt.
Emily Thornberry
The national debt, as I understand it, has more than doubled under this Government, so we take no lessons from them. Surely it is important to borrow to invest in order to grow our economy. It is, essentially, a different attitude to economics.
Let us hope the Minister goes further and corrects one major omission from the Budget on the issue of spending. On the Labour Benches, we welcomed last week’s guarantee that the increase in nurses’ pay would be funded through additional money from the Treasury with no cuts elsewhere to the NHS budget. We will hold the Government to that guarantee. Can we have the same assurances over the much needed and long-overdue increases in paying for our armed forces? It would be entirely wrong and self-defeating if those increases were to be paid for by further cuts in personnel, equipment or living conditions, so I hope the City Minister will be able to give us an assurance on that.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend believe that the Government are doing enough, as set out in the Budget, to tackle tax avoiders and tax evaders, some of whom are resident in British overseas territories and dependencies, to ensure that the Treasury has enough resource to pay nurses and others?
Emily Thornberry
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Studies have been made, have they not, of the amount that each tax inspector can bring in to HMRC? Cutting back on the number of people is simply counterproductive.
Dr Lewis
In the past, it has been possible to make common cause between the Government and Labour Benches on the need to secure the future of the nuclear deterrent. Can we now make common cause on a recognition that the bare minimum of 2% of GDP is simply not enough, bearing in mind the fact that for several years after the cold war, in 1995-96, after we had taken the peace dividend, we were still spending 3%, not 2%, of GDP on defence?
Emily Thornberry
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that question and I will come on to answer it if he will give me a moment.
Beside the specific proposals, there is a wider point of principle on defence spending, which takes us back to the question of falling growth. We on the Labour Benches have long argued that the way the Government meet the target to spend 2% of GDP on defence is wholly inadequate. Defence spending should mean spending on defence, not on Ministry of Defence pensions, as the right hon. Gentleman and the Select Committee have pointed out, or on any other items that the Government simply lump in to meet the target. We need to ensure, at a time when growth is being downgraded—we are dangerously close to a period of falling GDP—that the Government do not use that as an excuse to cut the armed forces budget, in effect treating the 2% figure not as a target but as a cap. If anyone thinks that is a fictional risk, let us take a look at the budget for international development.
I am told this is different but I believe it is not. The Budget speech in March this year was one of the first I can recall since coming to this House, under Chancellors from different parties, that made no mention of international development and our obligations to the poorest in the world. I believed at the time that it was a temporary aberration, but sadly it happened again last week. This time, the omission was far more serious. Say what you like about George Osborne—and I am sure the Foreign Secretary frequently does—at least when he used to cut the international development budget and keep it capped at 0.7% of GDP, he would stand in front of this House and announce that decision publicly. It is a disgrace, by contrast, that the Chancellor last week chose to cut £900 million from the overseas aid budget over the next two years but did not think it worth mentioning in his speech, let alone detailing exactly which projects and programmes will be cut in the world’s poorest countries as a result of the Government’s failure on growth.
Emily Thornberry
I gave way to the right hon. Gentleman once before. I am sure he will be able to cover any points he wants to make in his speech.
Across the world, this is a precarious time for investment in international development. The US Congress is battling to limit Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to foreign aid and the global fight against malaria, but still the only question is the size of the eventual cuts, not whether they will go ahead. Closer to home, the EU’s proposed 2018 budget includes a 6% cut in development spending, a cut that dwarfs any proposed increase in spending on humanitarian aid.
Ms Ghani
I am a little bit concerned that the right hon. Lady might be misleading the House. The 0.7% figure is enshrined in law, and surely she recognises the extra funding placed not only with the World Service but the British Council, which does a huge amount of work on human rights and education, and deals with some of the trickiest countries around the world. We should not dismiss this country’s commitment to international development.
Emily Thornberry
I simply refer the hon. Lady to the Red Book, where she will see that there is less money being spent on international development. It is a great worry to us all and I know it will be a great worry to her. I therefore hope she will join us in speaking to the Chancellor about our responsibilities, because we are at a time of great difficulty internationally. As I have been attempting to outline, there are cuts not only from the United States but the EU. If we are, in effect, spending less money, too, at such a precarious time, that should cause us all concern. It was extraordinary that the Chancellor of the Exchequer chose not to mention it at all in his speech.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that what the Government and the Conservative party do not recognise is that the commitment is to 0.7% of GDP, so when GDP falls, as we learned it did in the Budget, the amount of money going to international aid also falls? The Chancellor should have made that clear last week. [Interruption]
Emily Thornberry
So in conclusion, here we are debating Britain’s place in the world, in respect of a Budget that could not bring itself to mention how we are ranked globally on growth; here we are debating defence, in respect of a Budget that did not once mention defence spending or armed forces pay or disclose the Government’s secret plans to cut the size of our Army to below 70,000; here we are debating international development, in respect of a Budget that is scandalously silent on the issue, even while raiding almost £1 billion from its budget.
If that is what the Government mean by “global Britain”, I would hate to see their vision of isolation. We might see it soon enough, however, because there is one thing that sums up the Budget and the giant mess the Government have got us into: the great flourish with which the Chancellor turned, for approval, to the Foreign Secretary and announced that he would be spending £3.7 billion on preparing for a no deal Brexit—£3.7 billion of taxpayers’ money just to prepare for failure. That is exactly 100 times what the Foreign Secretary wasted on his ludicrous vanity project, the garden bridge, and 110 times what the Chancellor set aside to help the NHS cope with the upcoming winter crisis.
That is the price we are all now paying—literally—for a Government who have spent the 17 months since the referendum fighting among themselves and fighting for position, instead of fighting to get the best deal for Britain—17 months in which, as the OBR report said, we have been given absolutely no detail of the Government’s plan for trade, migration or EU finances; 17 months during which the prospect of no deal has gone from a straw man used to threaten the EU in negotiations to a realistic and increasingly inevitable outcome. And all this is because of the Government’s utter failure to agree on what they want and the Prime Minister’s total inability to show any leadership, whether to her Cabinet or her Back Benches. That is why we are in this mess, why our growth figures are in the global toilet, and why we are wasting £3.7 billion preparing for failure and short-changing the NHS, threatening to cut the Army and raiding the budget for the poorest in the world to pay for it.
The Government are not turning us into a global Britain; they are turning us into a global laughing stock—a global example of bad government, hopeless leadership and a useless Budget. For all their talk of a global Britain, the Government are driving the country at breakneck speed off a cliff, at the bottom of which lies ever greater isolation and ever deeper economic misery. The Budget was one of the Government’s final chances to apply the brakes, but instead they are spending £3.7 billion simply greasing the wheels. It might have saved the Chancellor his job, but it was a shameful dereliction of his duty.
Several hon. Members rose—
Oral Answers to Questions
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Boris Johnson
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was listening to my last answer, because I said that the increased diplomatic representation that we would make in the rest of Europe would be dispersed not just in Brussels, but around the rest of the capitals. Of course, each and every one of those individuals will be working on our common foreign and security objectives, and making the case, which I made in an earlier answer, that our support for European defence and security is unconditional.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
It is now nearly 50 long years since the start of the troubles in Northern Ireland, and none of us who lived through that era ever wants to go back to it again. In February 2016, the Foreign Secretary gave his guarantee to BBC Northern Ireland that a vote for Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border, and I quote, “absolutely unchanged”. There were no caveats, and no “I hope that this will happen”; there was just an unequivocal commitment that nothing would change. Can the Foreign Secretary give us the same promises today?
Boris Johnson
I think, if I may say so, that the right hon. Lady is right to ask that question. I was recently in Dublin talking to all the political groups there, and there is no question but that the issue of the border is very live in Irish politics. I repeated exactly the pledge to which she refers: there can be no return to a hard border. There can be no hard border. That would be unthinkable, and it would be economic and political madness. I think everybody, on both sides of this House, understands the social, political and spiritual ramifications of allowing any such thing to happen. That is why it is so important that we get on to the second phase of the negotiations, that we get sufficient progress at the European Council in December and that we are able to debate these issues properly.
Emily Thornberry
I thank the Foreign Secretary for that answer. No one will have missed the fact that, like on so many of his initial promises over Brexit, he has turned this from an unequivocal guarantee to an aspiration dependent on a successful deal—[Interruption.] I did listen to the right hon. Gentleman.
It seems to me that, like his jogging partner from The Sun, the right hon. Gentleman is now saying that it is up to the Irish to find a solution, but why should that be? It was his promise that border arrangements would not change, so it is up to him to make sure that that works. That is why I want to challenge the Foreign Secretary today. In September, he laid down four personal red lines for the Brexit negotiations. None of them related to the Irish land border, which is a crucial issue to 1.8 million of our own citizens and 4.8 million of our friends south of the border, so may I—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are immensely—indescribably —grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary, but I think she is approaching her peroration, with a question mark at the end of it. I am happy to indulge Front Benchers to a degree, but I want to accommodate Back Benchers. I am determined to get to the bottom of the list today, and I shall do so.
Emily Thornberry
Let me urge the Foreign Secretary to announce a fifth red line today by promising unequivocally what he promised last year—that Irish border arrangements will not change—and to say that if those arrangements do change, he will refuse to stay in the Government.
Boris Johnson
If I may say so, I think the right hon. Lady prepared her supplementary question before she heard my first answer. There can be no return to a hard border. We do not want a hard border north-south, or indeed east-west.
Zimbabwe
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Boris Johnson
We are certainly encouraging restraint on all sides. In common with our international partners, we are urging all sides in Harare to refrain from violence of any kind.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Thank you for granting the urgent question, Mr Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) for securing it.
Events in Zimbabwe have moved incredibly quickly over the last 48 hours. As recently as Monday, here in the Chamber, I referred to the abuse of power by Grace Mugabe; two days later, that power appears at the moment to have been taken away, although the situation seems highly volatile.
Will the Foreign Secretary assure me that the 20,000 British nationals in Zimbabwe will be given all the assistance that they need during this dangerous period? I understand that in the past, at times of great tension, there have been Cobra plans for British nationals to be evacuated if necessary; I wonder whether thought will be given to such a process on this occasion.
I hope the Foreign Secretary agrees with me that three key points of principle apply to these events. First, a descent into violence and reprisals from any direction in the dispute must be avoided at all costs. Secondly, if all that this represents in the long term is the replacement of authoritarian rule by one faction by authoritarian rule by another, that hardly constitutes progress. Thirdly, we know that the only way forward is for the Zimbabwean people to choose their own Government and shape their own future through elections that are free, fair, peaceful and democratic. Whatever happens in the coming few days and weeks, let us keep that ultimate goal in mind.
In September last year, Dr Alex Vines of Chatham House published an excellent study of the scope for a peaceful transition beyond Mugabe. He warned that western Governments were too complacent about the status quo, and had failed to create a dialogue with different factional leaders and the kingmakers in the military. I shared Dr Vines’s concerns with my parliamentary colleagues at the time, and I am sure that the Foreign Secretary himself was equally concerned. May I ask him what the Foreign Office has done over the past year to establish a dialogue with Mr Mnangagwa—or whichever of the factional leaders who will, along with the military, now be in charge? We must all hope for a more constructive relationship with them than we had with Mr Mugabe, and we must urge them to take the correct path towards democracy and peace.
Boris Johnson
I agree very much with what the right hon. Lady has said, and I thought that her earlier remarks on the subject were very commonsensical. She asked about British nationals in Zimbabwe. As I said in my response to the urgent question, there are about 20,000 of them. The FCO crisis centre has been working overnight to ensure their welfare, and, to the best of our knowledge, there have been no reports so far of any injuries or suffering. I talked earlier to our head of mission in Harare, who said that, as far as he understood, UK nationals were staying where they were and avoiding trouble, and I think that that is exactly the right thing to do.
The right hon. Lady asked about our representation in Harare, and about UK engagement with the political process in Zimbabwe. All I can tell her is that most observers would say that we have a more powerful representation in Harare than in any other country. We have an excellent ambassador and an excellent high commissioner, and we engage at all levels in Zimbabwean politics. I think that this is one of those occasions on which the right hon. Lady and I are absolutely at one about what we want UK representation to achieve: to encourage the people of Zimbabwe on their path towards free and fair elections next year.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to make a statement on the case of British-Iranian national Ms Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
I should like to make a statement on the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in response to the right hon. Lady.
The whole House will join me in expressing our deep concern about the ordeal of this young mother, who has spent the last 19 months in jail in Iran. Every hon. Member will join the Government in urging the Iranian authorities to release her on humanitarian grounds.
I spoke by phone to her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, yesterday, and we agreed to meet later this week. I told Mr Ratcliffe that the whole country is behind him and we all want to see his wife home safely.
In view of the understandable concern, I propose to describe the background to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case and the efforts the Government are making to secure her release. In April last year, she was visiting her relations in Iran, along with her daughter, Gabriella, who was then only 22 months old, when she was arrested at Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran while trying to board her flight back to the UK. The British Government have no doubt that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran on holiday and that that was the sole purpose of her visit. As I said in the House last week, my remarks on the subject before the Foreign Affairs Committee could and should have been clearer. I acknowledge that words I used were open to being misinterpreted, and I apologise to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family if I have inadvertently caused them any further anguish.
The House should bear in mind that Iran’s regime, and no one else, has chosen to separate this mother from her infant daughter for reasons that even it finds difficult to explain or describe. On 9 September 2016, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was brought to a secret trial and sentenced to five years in prison, supposedly for plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic. The House will note that so far as we can tell, no further charges have been brought against her and no further sentence has been imposed since that occasion over a year ago.
Eleven days after Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister raised her case with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in New York on 20 September 2016. Two days later, I raised her case with my Iranian counterpart, Mr Zarif. For the sake of completeness, the House should know that the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, raised Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment with President Rouhani on 9 August 2016, and my predecessor as Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), wrote to the Iranian Foreign Minister about her plight, and other consular cases, on 29 August 2016. [Official Report, 14 November 2017, Vol. 631, c. 1MC.]
At every meeting with our Iranian counterparts, my colleagues and I have taken every opportunity to raise the cases of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other nationals held in Iranian jails. We have expressed our concerns at every level—official, ministerial, and prime ministerial—on every possible occasion during the 19 months that she has been in jail. In addition, Mr Ratcliffe has held regular meetings with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), formerly the Minister for the Middle East, and with the current Minister for the Middle East, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).
A situation where a British mother is held in these circumstances is bound to cast a shadow over Britain’s relations with Iran at a moment when, in the aftermath of the agreement of the nuclear deal in July 2015 and the easing of sanctions, we had all hoped to witness a genuine improvement. So I shall travel to Iran myself later this year to review the full state of our bilateral relations and to drive home the strength of feeling in this House, and in the country at large, about the plight of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and other consular cases. In order to maximise the chances of achieving progress, I would venture to say that hon. Members should place the focus of responsibility on those who are keeping Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe behind bars and who have the power to release her whenever they so choose. We should be united in our demand that the humanitarian reasons for releasing her are so overwhelming that if Iran cares about its reputation in this country, then its leaders will do now what is manifestly right. I commend this statement to the House.
Mr Speaker
Just for the avoidance of doubt, the Foreign Secretary has responded to an urgent question in the course of which he has very properly made remarks, but it is important, as others in the House can testify from past experience, to distinguish between a response to an urgent question, on the one hand, and the proffering by Government of a statement, on the other.
Emily Thornberry
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. How unfortunate it is that we need to ask an urgent question as opposed to getting a statement.
Let me say at the outset that whatever strong feelings we have about Iran’s actions in this case, I am sure we are all joined in sending our thoughts to those affected by yesterday’s earthquake on the Iran-Iraq border. I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for returning from Brussels to answer this urgent question. Perhaps he reflected that the last time a Minister of State was asked to answer an urgent question on behalf of a Cabinet Minister, the Cabinet Minister lasted only 24 hours.
I hope that we can make more progress today than we were able to make on the same issue last week. Let us start by clarifying the points on which there is absolutely no difference between us. First and foremost, we all want Nazanin to be brought home as soon as possible. No one who has listened over recent days to the heartbreaking testimony of Richard Ratcliffe can be in any doubt about how urgent it is, for Nazanin’s mental and physical health, that she is returned to her family immediately.
Secondly, if that can be done, as has been suggested, by conferring diplomatic status on Nazanin, that would obviously be welcome, although I would be grateful if the Foreign Secretary clarified how that could be achieved—how we can free this innocent British mother without opening up a Grace Mugabe precedent, which might make it possible to use the same tactic in Britain to help a guilty foreign national to escape justice? Thirdly, we can all agree that the responsibility for Nazanin’s incarceration and mistreatment lies entirely with the Iranian authorities, and we all unite in urging for her freedom to be restored.
On those points, we are in full agreement, but let me turn to two key issues on which we have so far differed and, frankly, we continue to differ. First, the Foreign Secretary argued last week that his comments to the Select Committee did not have “any connection whatever” with the latest threats by the Iranian authorities to extend Nazanin’s sentence, and that it was simply untrue to suggest otherwise. That is entirely contradicted by what was said by the Iranian courts last weekend, and by what was said on the Iranian judiciary’s website and on Iranian state TV. All of them said explicitly that the Foreign Secretary’s remarks were the basis of their renewed action against Nazanin. We know from the evidence of Richard Ratcliffe that when Nazanin was told of the remarks and saw how the Iranian authorities would exploit them, she became hugely distressed and upset. So will the Foreign Secretary today accept the impact that his words have had and the distress that has been caused to Nazanin, and apologise properly for that—apologise not for upsetting people, but for getting it wrong?
Secondly, last week the Foreign Secretary was asked several times to do one very simple thing, and that was simply to admit that he had made a mistake—not that his remarks had been taken out of context or misconstrued, but that they were simply wrong. He has, so far, refused to make that clear, and that refusal was compounded yesterday by his good friend the Environment Secretary. Even after all the debate on this issue, the Environment Secretary still, incredibly, claimed that we “don’t know” why Nazanin is in Iran. We do.
It is not good enough. If it is a matter of pride that the Foreign Secretary is refusing to admit that he made a mistake, I feel bound to say to him that his pride matters not one ounce compared to Nazanin’s freedom. After a week of obfuscation and bluster, will he finally take the opportunity today to state simply and unequivocally, for the removal of any doubt either here or in Tehran, that he simply got it wrong?
Boris Johnson
I am more than happy to say again what I said to the right hon. Lady last week: yes, of course, I apologise for the distress and the suffering that have been caused by the impression that I gave that the Government believed—that I believed—that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran in a professional capacity. She was there on holiday, and that is the view of—[Hon. Members: “Say sorry!”] I do apologise, and of course I retract any suggestion that she was there in a professional capacity. Opposition Members must have heard that from me about a dozen times.
The right hon. Lady asked an important question about diplomatic protection and how that would work. She is absolutely right that that is a question that Richard Ratcliffe himself has raised with me. All I can say is that I will be answering Mr Ratcliffe. I cannot give her an answer today; I would rather answer Mr Ratcliffe in person. I am delighted to say that I am seeing him tomorrow, and I will be explaining the position on diplomatic protection. As I said last week, he has requested to come to Tehran. I do not know whether that will be possible, but we will see what we can do.
Counter-Daesh Update
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement. I will come to his remarks regarding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in a moment, but let me first address the formal purpose of this statement: the Government’s quarterly update on the fight against Daesh. We are all agreed in this House that Daesh is nothing but an evil death cult and that it must be wiped off the face of the earth. We therefore warmly welcome the recent, hard-fought successes against it in both Syria and Iraq, with its vision of a caliphate stretching across both countries now lying in absolute ruins. But while that specific danger evaporates before our eyes, we know all too well that the wider threat that Daesh poses remains, as it ceases to operate as a conventional military force, seeking to occupy territory and towns, and retreats to the role of a well-armed, well-trained and fanatical network of terrorist cells that seeks to indoctrinate others, and to inflict indiscriminate, mass casualties in Iraq, Syria and far, far beyond. We therefore must not let our guard down. The fight against Daesh has not been won; it is simply switching to a new phase.
I therefore have a number of questions that I hope the Foreign Secretary will address. First, will he correct his junior colleague, the Minister for Africa, who said recently that the only way to deal with British citizens who have gone to fight for Daesh is
“in almost every case, to kill them”?
That, of course, sends a very unfortunate signal to groups in Syria and beyond who are currently holding in detention British citizens captured on the battlefield. Will the Foreign Secretary make it clear today that it remains the Government’s policy that those individuals should be returned to this country to face trial for their crimes, rather than simply being executed by their captors? He might also advise the Minister for Africa that in positions of responsibility in the Foreign Office, you have to engage your brain and think about the consequences of your words before opening your mouth.
Secondly, the Foreign Secretary will have noted last week the first US drone strikes targeting Daesh, rather than al-Shabaab, inside Somalia. Will he guarantee the House that if the UK is asked to participate in the opening of that new front against Daesh, authorising such action will be the subject of a proper parliamentary debate and vote?
Thirdly, as Daesh increasingly ceases to be a military player in the Syrian civil war, will the Foreign Secretary tell us the Government’s current strategy in Syria? What are we now seeking to achieve, in both a military and diplomatic sense, from our engagement there? Specifically, will he tell us whether the Government intend to continue channelling funds to Syrian opposition groups? Will he give us a cast-iron guarantee that none of the £200 million that has already been channelled to those groups over the past three years has ended up in the hands of the al-Nusra Front or other jihadist groups?
Finally, as attention turns to Daesh’s last remaining stronghold, in Bukamal, the Foreign Secretary will be aware of the risks as Russian and Iranian-backed forces approach the town from one side, and the Syrian democratic forces approach it from the other. Will he tell the House what steps Britain is taking to ensure the battle to liberate Bukamal from Daesh, both from the air and on the ground, does not inadvertently lead to clashes between the two liberating armies?
Turning now to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, we appreciate the Foreign Secretary’s clarification, we welcome the phone call he made this morning to his Iranian counterpart and we all hope that no lasting damage is done to Nazanin as a result of his blunder. However, I hope that he will now take the opportunity to apologise to this woman’s family, to her friends, to her employers, to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), and to all those others in this House and beyond who have been working so hard to obtain this young mother’s release, for the distress and anguish that his foolish words have caused to them and to this woman in recent days. We are all bound to ask: how many more times does this need to happen? How many more times does the Foreign Secretary have to insult our international partners and damage our diplomatic relations, and now imperil the interests of British nationals abroad? What will it take before the Prime Minister says, “Enough is enough”? If the truth is that she cannot, because she does not have the strength or authority to sack him, how about the Foreign Secretary himself shows a bit of personal responsibility and admits that a job like this, where your words hold gravity and your actions have consequences, is simply not the job for him?
Catalonia
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Sir Alan Duncan
Obviously, there were scenes on television of some acts of violence, and they are not the sort of things we want to see, but the fundamental point is whether this declaration of independence or the referendum were legal, and they were not.
On the comparison between Scotland and Catalonia, no two situations are alike, and each needs to be considered in its own legal and constitutional context. What is clear is that, in this case, the vote and subsequent actions in the Catalan Parliament were neither legal nor constitutional.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this urgent question. I also thank the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for securing it. I was interested to hear his contribution, and I agree with some of the things he said.
We are currently in a very dangerous position, where the future of Catalonia has been turned into a binary choice—a false choice, an impossible choice—between, on the one hand, a unilateral declaration of independence and, on the other, direct rule from Madrid. I do not believe that either choice offers a satisfactory solution to this crisis or that either choice is what the majority of Catalans or Spaniards actually want. I believe that the majority want to see peaceful, sensible dialogue between the parties to try and find a resolution. That is what the socialist party of Catalonia and the socialist party of Spain support, and we support our sister parties in that endeavour.
But what we are currently seeing from the Government of Spain and the Government of Catalonia is as far from peaceful and sensible dialogue as it is possible to get. From Madrid, we see the use of officially sanctioned violence and intimidation by the police and scenes that are horrific to watch. That has been followed over the last month by equally heavy-handed political tactics. From Barcelona, we see a unilateral declaration of independence based on a referendum that had no constitutional basis in Spanish law and in which around 30% of Catalan residents were not permitted to take part and a further 40% chose not to take part.
Neither of those approaches offers a sustainable way forward and neither is a fair or democratic way to proceed; my fear is that the longer we are stuck with this false, binary choice, the deeper and more entrenched the divisions will become and the harder it will be to negotiate a peaceful solution. So, as a matter of urgency, we call on both sides to take a step back, to ease the confrontational rhetoric and heavy-handed tactics, and to start listening to what the majority of people in Spain and Catalonia actually want, which is peace, dialogue and an end to division.
What are the UK Government doing to promote that, or does Brexit suck so much life from our ability to have any influence in Europe that the honest answer is, “Not a lot”?
Sir Alan Duncan
I agree with the second part, at least, of the right hon. Lady’s response—
Sir Alan Duncan
As usual, not a lot. I agree that these things were illegal and against the rule of law. However, I disagree with how the right hon. Lady portrays this choice. This is not a binary choice in the way she describes; it is a binary choice between upholding the rule of law or not.
Balfour Declaration
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement. As we approach the centenary of the Balfour declaration, Labour Members are glad to join him in commemorating that historic anniversary and expressing once again our continued support for the state of Israel.
In 1918, Labour’s first Cabinet Minister, Arthur Henderson, said:
“The British Labour Party believes that the responsibility of the British people in Palestine should be fulfilled to the utmost of their power…to ensure the economic prosperity, political autonomy and spiritual freedom of both the Jews and Arabs in Palestine.”
The Labour party has adopted that position, not least in recognition of the egalitarian goals that inspired the early pioneers of the Israeli state. We think, in particular, of the kibbutz movement—a group of people dedicated to establishing a more egalitarian society free from the prejudice and persecution that they had experienced in their home countries. Even today, despite the challenges that I will address in respect of its relationship with the Palestinian people, modern Israel still stands out for its commitment to egalitarianism—in particular, its commitment to women and LGBT communities in a region where these groups are far too often subject to fierce discrimination.
Today, it is right to think about the successes of Israel, but we must also be aware that 100 years on, the promise in the Balfour letter cited by the Foreign Secretary—that
“nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”—
remains unfulfilled, and we have more to do. I urge the Foreign Secretary to take the opportunity of the centenary to reflect once again on Britain’s role in the region, as his predecessor did 100 years ago, and ask whether we could do more to bring about lasting peace and stability in the middle east. Can we do more to ensure that the political rights, as well as the civil and religious rights, of Palestinian people are protected, just as Mr Balfour intended all those years ago?
On that point, as the Foreign Secretary well knows, I believe that there is no better or more symbolic way of marking the Balfour centenary than for the UK officially to recognise the state of Palestine. We have just heard the Foreign Secretary talk in explicit terms about the benefits for both Israel and Palestine that the birth of Palestinian statehood would bring. Surely we can play more of a part in delivering that by formally recognising the Palestinian state.
I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman knows that in 2011, one of his other predecessors, William Hague, said:
“We reserve the right to recognise a Palestinian state…at a moment of our choosing and when it can best help to bring about peace.”—[Official Report, 9 November 2011; Vol. 535, c. 290.]
Almost six years have passed since that statement—six years in which the humanitarian situation in the occupied territories has become ever more desperate, six years in which the cycle of violence has continued unabated and the people of Israel remain at daily risk from random acts of terror, six years in which the pace of settlement building and the displacement of Palestinian people have increased, and six years in which moves towards a lasting peace have ground to a halt.
Will the Foreign Secretary tell the House today whether the Government still plan to recognise the state of Palestine and, if not now, when? Conversely, if they no longer have such plans, can the Foreign Secretary tell us why things have changed? He will remember that on 13 October 2014, the House stated that the Palestinian state should be recognised. The anniversary of the Balfour declaration is a reminder that when the British Government lay out their policies on the middle east in black and white, those words matter and can make a difference. With the empty vessel that is the American President making lots of noise but being utterly directionless, the need for Britain to show leadership on this issue is ever more pressing.
Will the Foreign Secretary make a start today on the issue of Palestinian statehood? As we rightly reflect on the last 100 years, we have a shared duty to look towards the future and towards the next generation of young people growing up in Israel and Palestine today. That generation knows nothing but division and violence, and those young people have been badly let down by the actions, and the inaction, of their own leaders. Will young Israelis grow up in a world in which air raids, car rammings and random stabbings become a commonplace fact of life? Will they grow up in a country in which military service remains not just compulsory but necessary, because they are surrounded by hostile neighbours who deny their very right to exist? Will young Palestinians grow up in a world in which youth unemployment remains at 58%, reliant on humanitarian aid and unable to shape their own futures? Will they inherit a map on which the ever-expanding settlements and the destruction of their own houses make it harder and harder to envisage what a viable independent Palestine would even look like?
I do not know whether the Foreign Secretary agrees with the Prime Minister about whether it is worth answering hypothetical questions, but as we mark the centenary of the vital step taken by a former British Foreign Secretary in recognition of Israeli statehood, I ask this Foreign Secretary how he believes he will be remembered in 100 years’ time. Will the Government in which he serves be remembered for recognising the statehood of the Palestinian people and taking a similarly vital step towards correcting an historic wrong? I can assure him that if the Government are not prepared to take that step, the next Labour Government will be.
Boris Johnson
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for the spirit in which she addressed the questions. She asks, if I may say so, the right questions about the way ahead. The UK is substantially committed to the support of the Palestinian Authority and to building up the institutions in Palestine. British taxpayers’ cash helps about 25,000 kids to go to school, we help with about 125,000 medical cases every year and the Department for International Development gives, as she knows very well, substantial sums to support the Palestinian Authority with a view to strengthening those institutions.
When it comes to recognising that state, we judge, in common with our French friends and the vast majority of our European friends and partners, that the moment is not yet right to play that card. That on its own will not end the occupation or bring peace. After all, it is not something we can do more than once: that card having been played, that will be it. We judge that it is better to give every possible encouragement to both sides to seize the moment and, if I may say so, I think the right hon. Lady is quite hard, perhaps characteristically, on the current Administration in Washington, which is perhaps her job—
Boris Johnson
Indeed, and I am hard where it is necessary, but there is a job to be done. At the moment, as I think the right hon. Lady would accept, there is a conjuncture in the stars that is uncommonly propitious. I will not put it higher than that, but there is a chance that we could make progress on this very vexed dossier. We need the Americans to work with us to do that and we need them to be in the lead because, as she will understand, of the facts as they are in the middle east.
We need the Palestinian Authority, with a clear mandate, to sit down and negotiate with the Israelis and do the deal that is there to be done, and which everybody understands. We all know the shape of the future map and we all know how it could be done. What is needed now is political will, and I can assure the right hon. Lady and the House that the UK will be absolutely determined to encourage both sides to do such a deal.
Raqqa and Daesh
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Alistair Burt
My right hon. Friend is correct to point to the immediate misery of the aftermath for those who have been caught up in the conflict. The world now recognises that it has a responsibility to work with those on the ground to rebuild areas of conflict, because that is the best way to prevent conflict from happening again. We expect a political reconciliation, so that there are no sectarian difficulties in either Iraq or Syria as they return to conventional governance.
On the physical reconstruction, the Syrian Democratic Forces have been at pains to minimise the damage to the city’s infrastructure as they advance, but, in an urban battle such as this, it is impossible to advance against an enemy such as Daesh without causing any damage at all. It must be remembered that Daesh’s tactics do not adhere to the conventions of warfare. It booby-traps buildings and has taken many other desperate measures to protect its vile interests, including using schools and hospitals as tactical headquarters, denying those facilities to the innocent civilian population.
A stabilisation programme will be put forward under the auspices of the UN reconstruction effort, which will come after political decisions are made to ensure the reconstruction follows political commitments made by those involved in the governance of Syria. I do not know about a donor conference yet, but I will take that idea back to the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question to my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock). I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments. For once, we are in union that the victory against Daesh in Raqqa is a vital blow against an evil death cult, and it makes a mockery of Daesh’s pretensions to establish a caliphate in Syria or elsewhere. It shows them to be the weaklings and cowards they are.
This is a timely reminder of the battle we and our allies fought on this very day 75 years ago, the second battle of El Alamein—the battle that destroyed the Nazis’ ambition to control Egypt. As we recall Churchill’s words after that hard-fought victory, perhaps we can turn them around: this is not the end of the beginning for Daesh, it is the beginning of their end. We should be grateful for that.
I hope the Minister can address my questions in his response. If he is unable to do so and we rely on the Foreign Secretary to make a fuller statement, will he ensure the Foreign Secretary is able to answer my questions? I will not repeat the question on the Government’s response to the humanitarian crisis, but this is my second question: now that Daesh is in disarray in Syria, what is Britain’s ongoing military mission in Syria? In short, what is our strategy for the future of Syria, and what is the military’s role in that strategy? In particular, what steps will the Government now take to help rebuild some form of sustainable governance in Raqqa? What role, if any, will the armed groups that helped to liberate the city from Daesh play in its future administration? And how will the Syrian, Kurdish and Arab opposition forces, which played such a pivotal role in the campaign to retake Raqqa, be represented as part of a genuinely viable peace process for Syria as a whole? If there is one thing on which we can all agree, surely it is that the very last thing the middle east needs right now is another vacuum.
Finally, as the Minister will know, his Department recently confirmed that it has channelled £200 million since 2015 to support the so-called moderate opposition in Syria. Can he give the House a guarantee today that none of that money has ended up in the hands of al-Nusra or other jihadi groups? It would be a tragedy if, while rightly celebrating the destruction of Daesh in Raqqa, British taxpayers’ money is funnelled into organisations that are just as bad.
Alistair Burt
I warmly welcome the right hon. Lady’s remarks, which are highly appropriate and much appreciated. The whole House has engaged collectively on this subject, and it is appreciated by all that she speaks as she does. The House is demonstrating that there is nothing between us on presenting a united front against Daesh and its ideology.
I am pleased that the right hon. Lady mentions El Alamein, partly because I was there on Saturday. As a much-travelled Minister, I had the opportunity to represent Her Majesty’s Government in laying the wreath on behalf of the United Kingdom to commemorate the 75th anniversary of that extraordinary battle, which over a period of days turned the tide in north Africa and in the war. I was proud to stand alongside representatives of the Commonwealth and people from the United Kingdom who fought with the Desert Rats, as well as representatives of the German and Italian Governments, to recognise that, 75 years later, Europe has achieved much by coming together. In doing so, we demonstrated tolerance and forgiveness, which are sometimes rather lacking in other parts of the middle east, where memories are long and dates are often remembered for the wrong reasons. I was proud to represent the United Kingdom, along with representatives of the military, our ambassador and Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, who represented the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, of which he is vice-chairman.
Returning to the right hon. Lady’s questions, we recognise the need for ongoing humanitarian relief, about which we have more information if she wishes. As far as the military are concerned, we do not know what will come next. The military will remain engaged as long as there is a need for them to be there. As I have indicated, the strategy further to close off the avenues for Daesh in the Euphrates valley will be supported by United Kingdom personnel until there is no possibility that military action could recommence and no possibility that coalition forces could be put under pressure.
As the right hon. Lady rightly says, the coalition is clearly essential. The coalition comprises a large number of people from the Kurdish region of Syria and Iraq and from other areas. Discussions are ongoing about how the coalition will stay together, but it is premature to say anything about a disbandment. The coalition has to be kept in place until there is no further military threat, and that will be advised either by my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary or my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary in due course.
On support going in the wrong direction, there has been a continual concern since 2011 that, in trying to provide support for legitimate opposition forces in such difficult circumstances, arms and money get traded. There has been an absolute determination to try to ensure that supplies going to support opposition forces do not go in the wrong direction. As far as possible, that is still the case. I cannot say with absolute certainty that not a single pound or element of aid has gone in the wrong direction—there are difficulties on the ground, where forces must co-operate to overcome Daesh—but the Government are absolutely determined to ensure that, as far as possible, the risk is minimised. I assure the right hon. Lady that that is the case.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
At our last session of questions, the Foreign Secretary agreed with the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) that if the EU demanded a single penny in the Brexit divorce bill, then they could “go whistle”. A month later, the Foreign Secretary said—[Interruption.] I appreciate that accountability is difficult for the right hon. Gentleman, but he ought to listen. He said:
“We are law-abiding, bill-paying people”
who will
“meet our legal obligations as we understand them”,
so can he clear up this issue today? Does he accept that there will be a divorce bill or not, and if so, how much should the bill be?
Boris Johnson
I must very humbly and apologetically correct the right hon. Lady, because she is not faithfully representing what I said. [Hon. Members: “She is.”] She is not. What I said in answer to an hon. Friend on these Benches was that some of the sums I had heard spoken of were, in my view, or in the view of my hon. Friends, eye-watering and far too high. The figure I heard was €100 billion. Would Labour Members cough up €100 billion? Would you, or you, or you? I think they would, the supine, protoplasmic, invertebrate jellies. I think that is the sort of money they would readily fork out. I think it is too much.
Mr Speaker
I hope the Hansard reporters caught the full flavour of that. We will inspect the Official Report tomorrow.
Emily Thornberry
I do not think that has really cleared up a great deal, but let me try another question.
Again at our last session, the Foreign Secretary told this House—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I cannot believe that the Foreign Secretary conducted himself in that way when he was a schoolboy. Or perhaps he did, which might explain some matters.
Emily Thornberry
Let me just quote again from the last session of Foreign Office questions, when the Foreign Secretary told the House:
“There is no plan for no deal”.—[Official Report, 11 July 2017; Vol. 627, c. 141.]
Five days ago, he said that
“we must make the right preparations…for a no-deal scenario.”
We know that the Cabinet cannot stop fighting about the Brexit that they want, but it would be a start if our flip-flopping Foreign Secretary could stop fighting with himself.
Emily Thornberry
I have not asked the question yet, Boris. Which is it: the Telegraph article or the Florence speech—the lion roars or the lion wants to stop this malarkey? Apart from his own fading ambitions, what exactly does the Foreign Secretary believe in?
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Lady should not refer to the Foreign Secretary by his first name. It is rather vulgar.
Mr Speaker
Not the name, but merely the mention of it. It is unseemly and insufficiently reverential.
Iran
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(7 years, 8 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the future of the joint comprehensive plan of action with Iran.
The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)
I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. The Government take note of President Trump’s decision not to recertify the joint comprehensive plan of action and are concerned by the implications. The Government are strongly committed to the deal. The JCPOA contributes to the United Kingdom’s wider non-proliferation objectives. The International Atomic Energy Agency continues to report Iran’s compliance with its nuclear commitments. We share serious concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its destabilising activity in the region.
Emily Thornberry
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. While I am, as always, grateful for the Minister’s presence and his opening remarks, I must say that it is a matter of deep regret that the Foreign Secretary did not consider this worthy of his attention today. For a man who so desperately wants to run the country, he shows surprisingly little interest in running his own Department.
The nuclear deal with Iran stands out as one of the most successful diplomatic achievements of the last decade, and let us be clear: the deal is working. What could today have been another North Korea-type crisis in the heart of the middle east has instead been one problem that the region does not have to worry about. For Donald Trump to jeopardise that deal—for him to move the goalposts by linking it to important but utterly extraneous issues around Iran’s wider activities in the region; for him to play these games—is reckless, mindless and downright dangerous. It makes a reality of Hillary Clinton’s prophecy that putting Donald Trump in the White House will create a real and present danger to world peace.
Let us make it clear that when Donald Trump talks about the deal needing to be fixed, that is utterly disingenuous, when the only evidence that it is in any way broken is a figment of his fevered brain. Yet sadly this behaviour is what we have come to expect of this President. Some of us in the House have been sounding these warnings from day one of his presidency, whether over climate change, human rights or the Iran nuclear deal. When we raised those fears in the House, what did the Foreign Secretary say? He said that I was being “too pessimistic”. He told us that his strategy of hugging the President close—inviting him to meet the Queen, holding his hand when needs be—was the way to wield influence. Specifically on the Iran deal, the Foreign Secretary stood at the Dispatch Box seven months ago and said that I had simply got it wrong on the Iran deal. He said:
“We were told that the…plan of action on Iran, was going to be junked”,
but
“it is now pretty clear that America supports it.”—[Official Report, 28 March 2017; Vol. 624, c. 116.]
Well, one of us got it wrong. One of us was being naive and complacent, and one of us is seven months too late in waking up to this issue.
It really is high time that we had a Government capable of standing up to Donald Trump, not just meekly following his lead. Perhaps in his response the Minister can make a start by making clear two specific differences between this country’s policies and Donald Trump’s. Will he make it clear today that the Government will reject any attempt to make the deal subject to new conditions that have nothing to do with Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons? Will he also make it clear that we reject an approach whereby international agreements can be made by one President and torn up by the next for purely political reasons? It puts us in the invidious position that we will never ever feel secure doing a deal with America again. Will he share that concern today and reassure our allies that this is one Trump lead that the British Government will never follow?
Alistair Burt
I am answering a question about the future of the joint comprehensive plan of action with Iran, and I think I will focus more on Iran and the British Government’s position than anything else, because that is what I am required to do.
I thank the right hon. Lady in the first place for making it clear that she agrees with the Government’s assessment of the importance of the joint comprehensive plan of action and our belief that the deal is working. I can tell the House that this was a hard-won deal. It went through many years of negotiation. It was not designed as an all-embracing deal to cover everything that concerned the west and Iran, and both Iran and those who have signed the deal have made that clear. There are a number of issues on all sides, certainly involving ballistic missiles and also Iran’s activities in the region. As Foreign Minister Zarif made clear, however, at a meeting of the UN at which the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was present—as was I, representing the Government, and other signatories—if the deal is to be renegotiated, there is an awful lot on both sides to be renegotiated that was never contemplated by any party when we signed the deal. The deal was designed to do a specific job, which was to curtail Iran’s nuclear programme and its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, and so far it has done just that. That is why the UK strongly supports it.
Clearly we disagree with President Trump’s assessment. We do not fail to understand the United States’ concerns about Iran’s activities in the region, and we have made that clear, but we also believe that those matters need to be dealt with outside the agreement, which is why the agreement is so important. To have gone through all that and got something that works, in a world where it is quite difficult to get agreements that work, and then to put it to one side would not help the wider situation. We will continue to work our counsel with the United States and other parties to the agreement, and we will continue to work with the Iranian Government on matters of mutual interest, including those things about which we have concerns, to see if we can use the agreement as a possible springboard to future confidence, knowing that these things do not come quickly, but knowing also that signatures on deals matter. That is what the UK will adhere to.