Easter Adjournment

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I would like to speak to just one concern today, and that will probably come as a great relief to the Minister. I want to speak at some length, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to do so. It relates to my role as the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief—a role I hugely enjoy and count as a great privilege, having the potential to make a real difference to some of the most oppressed and vulnerable people on earth.

My mandate from the Prime Minister refers to three strands of work, and I want to raise my concern regarding progress on one of them, which is my duty to support the implementation of the Truro review. The review was initiated in 2019 by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) when he was Foreign Secretary to improve support within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for persecuted Christians and, by extension, all who are persecuted across the world, of whatever faith or belief.

I will touch on the other two strands of my role. They are to work on

“how the UK government can protect and promote this fundamental freedom internationally”

and to work with the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, as I do. This growing alliance of countries is appointing ambassadors or envoys like myself—I am working on hopefully being promoted to ambassador, but for the moment I am content to be an envoy. There are 42 countries that have committed to promoting and protecting this freedom around the world, championing its good use and calling out its abuses. Both the number of countries and the substance of our work is growing. It is my privilege to have been elected chair in 2022 and re-elected for 2023.

On another occasion, I would like to talk much more about our work, but I will briefly touch on it before I move on to my main concern about progress on the Truro review. The FORB special envoy team is myself, the Prime Minister’s deputy special envoy, David Burrowes —the only deputy special envoy there is—my parliamentary aide Chloe Black and my private secretary from the FCDO, Sue Breeze. We work together, and I commend the tremendous dedication of my colleagues in the special envoy team to this work. I am greatly encouraged by the progress we have made over the last two-plus years, since my appointment and that of David Burrowes, to ensure that the UK continues to be seen as a leader across the world in addressing freedom of religion or belief. As a special envoy team, we are working with others across civil society—non-governmental organisations, academics and my counterpart envoys and ambassadors from the alliance countries—because we all recognise that nothing is achieved alone in this challenging sphere.

We have developed a number of areas of action since the London ministerial conference last July. Time sadly precludes my going into the detail of those areas of action, but I will list them. We are developing education materials on FORB for the very youngest children. That is being piloted in four schools in this country, including one in my constituency.

We are inspiring the next generation of FORB ambassadors by planning for a global virtual conference this autumn, which will involve 1,000 young people joining virtually from around the world—including those in countries such as Myanmar and Pakistan, where they are experiencing real-life persecution—who will be able to share their experiences with other young people. Hopefully, we will galvanise young people from around the world to speak out, particularly using the social media tools they have so effectively used in challenging issues regarding climate change.

We are championing individual prisoners of conscience, such as young Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, who is 19 and in Nigeria. He is actually a little older than 19 now, but at 19 he was arrested on a charge of blasphemy, because one of his friends shared some music he had written. He was taken to court without any legal representation and he has been sentenced to death by hanging. We are supporting his appeal to the Supreme Court. We are building an international network of FORB roundtables, including a particularly strong one in central and eastern Europe around the countries where Putin is attacking Ukraine. Those countries that suffered under communism and know what it is not to have freedom of religion or belief are very exercised about this issue right now.

We are networking human rights defenders, engaging the media on FORB, working with lawyers on legislative reform and protecting religious and cultural heritage. I have recently written to every one of our UK diplomatic posts across the world, and I am greatly encouraged by the responses I have had to date showing that they are increasingly aware of the importance of freedom of religion or belief in their missions.

All of that is good news, but I will return to the main purpose of my speech. My concern is that while so much progress is being made internationally, and with the UK playing a leading role, the same sadly cannot be said for progress on implementing the Truro review in the FCDO. Indeed, work on the Truro review, which is a manifesto commitment, appears to be stalling.

Five written parliamentary questions were recently raised by one of our senior parliamentary colleagues, my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice). Those questions specifically requested progress on recommendations 4, 5, 6, 12 and 17 in the Truro review. Disappointingly, all five questions received the same answer—a generic reply that did not address the specific questions or recommendations raised at all. I know that concerns about the need for further progress on Truro are shared by other parliamentary colleagues and by the Bishop of Truro himself, who remains actively and admirably engaged on this issue—in fact, he has just returned from several days in Greece, where he has been speaking about the issue.

One year ago, an independent assessment was undertaken of progress on the Truro review. It was a three-year assessment, required by the Truro review under recommendation 22, to measure progress. It was conducted by three world-renowned FORB experts, including the then UN special rapporteur on FORB and the current UN special rapporteur on FORB—one cannot get much more expert than that. Their detailed expert assessment clearly indicated that there was, and is, still much to do to implement Truro and honour our manifesto commitment.

That detailed assessment contained many constructive suggestions for progress and best practice. When it was published, I pressed for those to be acted on, particularly the experts’ recommendation for a comprehensive operational action plan on FORB in the FCDO—that is not the same thing as a FORB strategy. I pressed for the need for better co-ordinated work on the part of those in the FCDO working on FORB; for greater engagement at a more senior level in the FCDO; and for the implementation of appropriate working groups, including jointly with other Government Departments where FORB matters.

The then Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), in a written ministerial statement published at the time of the ministerial conference on FORB in July 2022, accepted the expert assessment and its conclusions in full, stating:

“We welcome and accept this expert review on progress and in line with the findings, accept their assessment for the need to continue to work to promote and strengthen Freedom of Religion or Belief as a fundamental human right for all…we will continue to ensure that the changes we have made are embedded and to look for opportunities to make FoRB central to the FCDO’s wider human rights work.”

At the time of the very successful FORB ministerial conference in July 2022, to which 88 countries sent official delegates, expectations were raised internationally and domestically about the UK championing FORB and fully implementing the Truro review. In September 2022, I raised a question in the House about progress on Truro and the adoption of the experts’ recommendations in their three-year assessment. My hope was to politely nudge people about the fact that the work needed to continue and, indeed, to be more focused. I again raised my concerns more explicitly and in more detail in a debate in this room in November when I said, among other points:

“The Truro review is a manifesto commitment and there are still outstanding elements to be fulfilled. I hope that the Minister will concur with me—indeed, it is in accordance with the Prime Minister’s determination to address outstanding manifesto commitments—that work on the Truro review should be completed. It is about promoting not just freedom of religion for Christians, but freedom of religion or belief for all.”

I went on to say that it was “well over six months” since that expert assessment was completed,

“and action on the comprehensive operational action plan needs to be taken forward. A lack of joined-up working within the FCDO on FORB means that resources are not being used as efficiently as they could be, and that needs to change.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 369WH.]

I most recently raised a question on Truro’s progress earlier this month. Sadly, none of my interventions to date appear to have initiated an appropriate degree of action, hence my need to be more forthright today. To quote one my colleagues:

“We cannot simply shuffle Truro off half-done.”

The Truro review was considered a landmark document when it was published in 2019, and it made an international impact. I know from my travels in my role across many countries that it continues to be hugely respected. At the same time, many across the world are watching to see how it is implemented. We must continue to work on it. If we do not, we will not only be perceived by others to be going backwards in an area on which we have led internationally to date, but we will actually slip backwards. There are best practice suggestions in Truro to ensure we keep our feet to the fire; it is an ongoing piece of work.

It was, as Ministers know, a great disappointment to me that freedom of religion or belief was omitted from the recent integrated review refresh. Yes, I understand that that document was meant to be an evolution from the 2021 integrated review and that Ministers did not want to make it too long, but it is actually only half the length of the 2021 document and, however we nuance it, the omission of FORB has sent out a signal. Renewed energy in the implementation of Truro would help to address that.

I have one specific suggestion to make to Ministers for immediate action, please. This relates to recommendation 6 of the Truro review, which recommended that the role of special envoy on FORB be established permanently. The expert assessment of that in the review three years later noted that

“‘no substantial action has been taken, to date’ with respect to delivering this”.

If we are to ensure that the role I hold is not at the discretion of an individual Prime Minister—although it has been my great privilege to serve under three Prime Ministers—but is embedded in statute and continues under successive Governments, a short Bill is required in this Parliament. That would send out a clear public statement internationally about our continuing commitment to FORB and, indeed, to the implementation of the Truro review. Will Ministers work with me to ensure that? I am optimistic about such a Bill being passed, and hopefully with the support of all parties, given the substantial cross-party support in this House for freedom of religion or belief—something that I now know is unique across the world and that we should rightly be proud of.

In addition to work on recommendation 6, there is much outstanding work on the other Truro recommendations. I hope that Ministers will similarly support me to ensure that that happens. I should mention that in expressing these concerns about the implementation of Truro, I am not in any way disparaging Ministers’ commitment to FORB. I know that every Prime Minister under whom I have served in this role, every Foreign Secretary and all other FCDO Ministers are absolutely committed not only to the UK’s wider FORB work, but to the Truro review in particular. That includes Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Minister with responsibility for human rights, whom I work alongside and who is personally seized of the importance of this issue. I look forward to continuing to work with them and to ensuring that our manifesto commitment, which states that we

“will seek to protect those persecuted for their faith and implement the Truro Review recommendations”,

is honoured and fulfilled in full.