Freedom of Religion or Belief

Debate between Fabian Hamilton and Rehman Chishti

Thursday 12th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. Let me start by congratulating the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who brings us these debates frequently, and more credit to him for doing so, because we need to air this issue regularly and ensure that fellow hon. Members are fully informed. It is a pleasure to follow the contribution of the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant).

I have appeared as the Opposition spokesperson on a number of occasions. The hon. Member for Glenrothes said something important; he talked about peace and about how every world religion believes in peace. Amazingly, I am the shadow Minister for peace. I am not sure how long that will continue to be a position, but we need one in Government, so I would have somebody to shadow.

The hon. Member for Strangford made an excellent contribution, as he always does. He told us about the all-party parliamentary groups that he chairs: the APPG for international freedom of religion or belief and the APPG for the Pakistani minorities, which I did not know existed until this afternoon. He talked about the churches that have been shut down in China and the 2019 attacks on Christians in India, and he asked the Minister for progress on the Bishop of Truro’s report; I will come on to that in a minute, and I am sure the Minister will want to respond to it in full.

We had a number of very appropriate interventions from the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) and my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), who made at least two interventions, as a fellow member of the shadow Foreign Office team. The Prime Minister’s envoy for religious belief, the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), made three, or perhaps four, excellent interventions.

[Rehman Chishti]

There was a question about progress on implementing the Truro review, which I lead on for the Prime Minister and the Government. When I came into post in September, those 22 different recommendations were divided into short-term, medium-term and long-term. Eleven of those recommendations, which I shared with Bishop Philip of Truro on Monday, have now been taken forward. Some of those are about ongoing data collection, but 11 of the 22 recommendations have now been, or are in the process of being, taken forward.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing us up to date on such an important issue. I will briefly mention the Bishop of Truro’s report later, but obviously we all want to hear from the Minister, too.

The hon. Member for Strangford mentioned the plight of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, and I will say a few words about that in a moment. Of the many contributions I have heard from him, the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), whom I am honoured to call a friend, gave one of the most powerful I have heard. He talked about his first-hand experience of religious fanaticism and violence in Bosnia, and told us horrific stories of death and destruction. This time he had the names of those people—I think he said he had just received them today.