Freedom of Religion or Belief

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the subject of freedom of religion or belief. I was going to speak about three countries, Nepal, Egypt and our own, but the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who spoke so eloquently at the start of the debate, has already discussed Nepal, so I will limit my speech to just two countries.

I want to highlight the latest position for those of religious minorities and atheists in Egypt. At the end of last year, a 35-year-old man told the news agency Al-Monitor:

“Atheists in Egypt are afraid to publicly come out as such. If you proclaim yourself a nonbeliever, you literally open the gates of hell; you stand to lose many of your friends and will be treated like an outcast. Your own family may accuse you of mental illness and possibly disown you. We are being forced to live as hypocrites for fear of facing discrimination and harassment.”

He also said that the situation was getting worse.

A number of recent cases back up that claim. In December, Egyptian security forces arrested Ibrahim Khalil, a 29-year-old computer science graduate, who prosecutors at the Dokki police station interrogated for five hours on accusations of “defaming religion” and “administering a Facebook page that promotes atheism”. He was ordered to be detained pending further investigation. The Egyptian Parliament has recently been discussing a Bill to criminalise atheism, classifying it as contempt of religion, which is punishable by up to five years in prison under Egyptian law.

I encourage the UK Government to seek to persuade the Egyptian Government to end discriminatory and restrictive policies, including legislation banning atheism and minority faith groups, as well as legislation restricting church construction, and processes that make registration of conversion challenging. I am pleased to see the Minister for Asia and the Pacific, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), in his place today because he has taken a genuine personal interest in this subject over many years. I am confident that he will refer it to his Foreign and Commonwealth Office colleagues, who I know have previously expressed concern about the situation in Egypt.

I must also mention, once again, attacks on Coptic Christian churches in Egypt. Most recently, over the past 12 months, more than 100 Christians have been killed, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide. I commend the work of CSW, in particular its recent publication, “Faith and a Future: Discrimination on the Basis of Religion or Belief in Education”, launched at the CSW meeting earlier this week in this place, which a number of us attended. If the Minister has not received a copy, I hope he will accept mine, because it contains many recommendations.

Turning back to the position of Christians in Egypt, in April last year, attacks on two churches killed 44 and left scores injured. In May, at least 28 people were killed and 23 injured when masked gunmen opened fire on three vehicles transporting members of the Coptic community to the St Samuel the Confessor monastery. In October, an extremist attacked Father Samaan Shahata Rizkallah, a 50-year-old Coptic Orthodox priest, chasing him, stabbing him repeatedly in the head, neck and abdomen with a meat cleaver, and imprinting a cross on his forehead. Father Samaan died from his injuries. In December, in the Helwan neighbourhood south of Cairo, a gunman attacked a Coptic-owned shop, killing two brothers. Later that day, the same gunman attempted to storm Mar Mina church, killing members of the congregation and a police officer at the checkpoint guarding the church. Several others were wounded. The gunman was endeavouring to enter the church to detonate explosives, but fortunately was intercepted and arrested.

These are incidents, the like of which we have heard time and again in Egypt over recent years. I implore the Minister and the UK Government to call on the Egyptian Government to ensure that all such attacks are thoroughly investigated, with perpetrators brought to justice and proper investigations launched, so that accusations of complicity—including within the security forces—are also investigated. Will the Government encourage the Egyptian Government to ensure that the measures put in place to combat terrorism do not violate human rights, including freedoms of association, expression and religion or belief?

Given that, I want to reflect on how and why the UK should lead on matters of religious freedom. I want to express concern about freedom of religion or belief in our own country. In more than seven years in this place, I have spoken many times, including in this Chamber, about challenges to religious freedom in other countries. I have to confess, however, that while I was preparing for this debate I was in some trepidation about speaking about the subject with reference to our own country—I thought I might be seen as somewhat out of kilter with what we call the “mood of the room”. So it was with some relief that I heard other Members speaking about their concerns about challenges to freedom of religion or belief in this country. I am therefore somewhat surprised, but ironically also very pleased, that I appear to be echoing concerns already expressed by colleagues relatively early in the debate. As has been said, we cannot credibly ask other countries to pursue religious freedom diligently if we do not do so ourselves.

Our former, well-respected colleague, who spoke many times about this subject, David Burrowes, the former MP for Enfield, Southgate, told me today about a meeting that he and the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) held with an Iranian parliamentary delegation in the last Parliament. David Burrowes challenged that delegation on human rights issues in their country, including the persecution of Christians. They challenged back, picking up on abuses in this country, and in effect said, “Put your own house in order before you criticise us.”

Precious religious freedoms have been hard won in this country over centuries by many, including free church Christians, Catholics and Jewish people. As the recent publication, “Turn the Tide: Reclaiming Religious Freedoms in the UK”, reminds us:

“The very first clause of Magna Carta includes the statement…‘The English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired’”.

That is one of only four of the Magna Carta’s 63 clauses that remain part of the English law. It ends:

“This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith…in perpetuity.”

From the 16th century, Britain led the world in developing those freedoms, spreading them to other countries round the globe. Many died to achieve those freedoms; others were imprisoned or exiled, or had to leave the country; others were denied an education, not allowed to hold jobs in the public sector or stand for Parliament, simply because of their faith. William Tyndale gave his life so that the Bible could be freely read in England. John Bunyan, author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, spent 12 years in Bedford County Gaol for the right to preach and worship freely.

The hard-won freedom of religion is under attack in the UK today, whether unintentionally by those who lack religious literacy, more deliberately from aggressive secularists, through attacks by one faith on another, or simply by those who ridicule people of faith in the 21st century. Those people are ridiculing our Queen and our Prime Minister, both of whom have very publicly declared faith. We hear of British adults who were raised in other religions and converted to Christianity being subjected to extraordinary abuse, including physical violence. One from the north of England wrote to his MP about his family’s troubles. He said:

“We were forced out of our…home after…several years of suffering as converts...in the form of persecution which entailed assault, daily intimidation, criminal damage to property: smashing house windows and also 3 vehicles written off”.

In fact, the empty house next to them was set on fire, in the hope that the fire would spread to their property. Eventually, the family was moved out under armed police protection to a new home elsewhere in the country.

Two street preachers were arrested and prosecuted in 2017 for peaceably preaching from the Bible—we know that they were peaceable because there was a film of the event. A Crown prosecution lawyer suggested at the court hearing that publicly quoting from the Bible should be considered a criminal offence. The street preachers were fined but later acquitted on appeal to the Crown court. Their case is seriously disturbing. The fact that the police and Crown Prosecution Service decided to prosecute the men simply for publicly reading the Bible challenges the long-established freedom in this country to do that. That was one of the very first aspects of freedom of religion to be established, when in 1537 Henry VIII issued a royal decree to that effect. As I have mentioned, that was the freedom that William Tyndale died for in 1536.

Let it be said and heard in this Parliament that reading the Bible in public is not a criminal offence in this country in the 21st century. The case I have mentioned appears to have resulted from a misunderstanding of the law by public officials, but such instances are deeply concerning and have a so-called chilling effect on the freedom that many Christians feel they have to speak about their faith in public in this country. That is deeply troubling, and we in this place, who value freedom of speech so preciously, need to be more keenly aware of it and call it out. I am not saying that every complaint of religious discrimination we hear is justified—sometimes we might not hear the whole story—but there have been enough instances in recent years to cause us concern.

Parliamentary colleagues in this room may remember the assault that took place against the Brethren denomination just a few years ago, when the Charity Commission sought to remove its charitable status. I remember more than 40 MPs crowding into this very room to raise objection after objection. More recently, we have had to combat the suggestion—again in this very room—from the Government, that churches running more than six to eight hours of Sunday school or youth clubs each week should have to register with the authorities and be monitored by Ofsted for the content of their teaching. That suggestion would have turned the clock back two centuries in terms of religious freedom in this country. I sincerely hope that, as there has been no public announcement on that proposal, the Government have quietly dropped it.

Even more recently, there has been a suggestion that those wanting to hold public office should have to swear an oath supporting a currently undefined set of 21st-century British values. That harks back to my earlier reference to people being barred from public office because of their religious beliefs. Great work was done through the 18th and 19th centuries to remove such barriers to people becoming school teachers, Army officers, lawyers, mayors, or students or academics at Oxford or Cambridge Universities. Drawing up a new set of beliefs that people have to sign up to could take us back to the 17th century, and attempts to draw one up have been troubled. Although most things on such a list would be universal values, not necessarily everything would be. If the Government are still considering that suggestion, I urge them to reconsider it and to withdraw it.

The issue of freedom of religion, belief and expression in our country merits much further attention. Government need to ensure that UK laws that target violent extremism do so precisely and do not impinge on the religious freedoms of peaceable citizens, whose faith often motivates them to contribute very positively to society. To that end, Government should consider requiring officials to include religious belief in the equalities impact assessment, along with the current criteria of race, disability and gender, to ensure protection from discrimination. After all, religious belief is also a protected characteristic.

It would be beneficial for Government to look at ways to improve religious literacy across Departments and public officials, as suggested in the report, “Improving Religious Literacy”, published in 2017 by the all-party parliamentary group on religious education, which I have the privilege of chairing. That is being done in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development. I very much welcome that recent work, but it needs to be done more widely. If we are to be coherent and carry integrity internationally, religious freedom in this country must be nurtured, manifested and supported as well as it is abroad.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I reassure the shadow Minister that the Prime Minister did raise these issues, but we do this not through megaphone diplomacy but in private meetings; we relentlessly raise human rights issues, not least in respect of Hong Kong. As the hon. Lady rightly says, it is vital that Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms are respected. Our most recent six-monthly report states that one country, two systems must continue to function well, and we remain concerned by, for example, the rejection of Agnes Chow’s most recent nomination for March’s Legislative Council election.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

T4. What steps has the Department taken to highlight concerns about North Koreans sent to other countries to work, in effect, as slave labourers—and with what result?

[Mark Field]

We have fully supported the United Nations resolutions that have imposed increasing sanctions upon the use of overseas labour from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Many such workers operate in slavery-like conditions while the DPRK regime takes a large slice of their wages. The latest of those was UN Security Council resolution 2397, which was adopted as recently as 22 December last year.

Democracy in Hong Kong

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered democracy in Hong Kong.

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China. Pursuant to the 1984 Sino-British joint declaration, the United Kingdom has a responsibility to ensure that the legal, economic and social rights and freedoms guaranteed to the people of Hong Kong under the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution, which was derived from the joint declaration, are protected. The UK also has a responsibility to ensure that the one country, two systems principle on which Hong Kong was handed over to China by the UK is respected.

In 1996, one year before the handover, then Prime Minister John Major said:

“If there were to be any suggestion of a breach of the Joint Declaration we would have a duty to pursue every legal and other avenue available to us.”

More recently, the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs has stated that,

“the UK has both a legal right and a moral obligation to monitor the implementation of the principles established in the”

joint declaration.

I note that the Government’s six-monthly reports are a vital part of that, and I welcome the fact that the most recent report was significantly more robust than previous ones, stating as it did that recent developments in Hong Kong on issues such as democracy and the exercise of rights and freedoms, including freedom of expression and of the press, had “caused concern”. I also welcome the public assurances made only yesterday by our consul general in Hong Kong, Andrew Heyn, that Britain will continue to speak up about pressures it feels that the one country, two systems concept is under.

I am pleased to see the Minister who will be responding to the debate in his place, because he is respected in this House as a man who has a keen respect for human rights and freedoms. I have called for this debate to ask him what “meaningful action”—to borrow a phrase from Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, who has recently returned from a visit to Hong Kong and whose subsequent report I will refer to later—the UK Government are taking to ensure that the principles of the joint declaration are protected and respected in the light of increasing concerns about challenges over recent years to the rule of law, human rights and democracy in Hong Kong. I will refer to some of those challenges. Furthermore, many of the concerns are referred to in a detailed recommendation entitled, “Hong Kong, 20 years after handover”, which was published by the European Parliament in the past few days.

It is fair to say that for much of the past 20 years, China has by and large respected one country, two systems, but the dramatic signs over the past four or five years, and in particular over the past 12 months, are a cause for increasing concern. The 2015 abduction of the Causeway Bay booksellers—one, British citizen Lee Bo, from Hong Kong territory itself—simply, it appeared, for having published books critical of Chinese authority, caused international consternation about the apparent erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy.

I pause for a moment from the main body of my speech to put on record the fact that, while four of the five abducted booksellers were released over the following months, two years on the fate of one, Gui Minhai, a Swedish citizen, remains unclear. He has been denied access to legal counsel and has not been officially charged, tried or allowed to return home. I pause to mention that because this week, dramatically, The New York Times reported that he was snatched on Saturday from a train bound for Beijing, where he was heading for a medical examination, apparently by plain-clothed Chinese police. What steps has the United Kingdom taken to raise his case, and to urge the Chinese authorities to allow him to leave China, reuniting him with his family, including daughter Angela, who studies in Cambridge and whom I have met? She campaigns valiantly for her father’s release.

The January 2017 abduction from a Hong Kong hotel of Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua has caused similar concern. A further cause of grave, indeed international consternation was the disqualification not long ago of six democratically elected Hong Kong legislators, including the youngest ever member of the Legislative Council, Nathan Law, whom I had the privilege of meeting here in November 2016. Those legislators were removed from their seats because they were accused of failing to take their oaths properly. Some of the individuals, it is true, were disrespectful and inappropriate in how they took their oaths, but Nathan Law took his oath perfectly properly, merely adding to the end some words of Mahatma Gandhi. To be disqualified for quoting Gandhi is extraordinary. For a court to disqualify these young men instead of the legislature giving them a chance to retake their oaths properly is alarming. They now face demands to repay salaries and expenses that they legitimately earned while fulfilling their duties as legislators.

Last August, a further injustice occurred when Joshua Wong, Alex Chow and Nathan Law, who were student leaders of the peaceful umbrella movement in 2014, were sentenced to prison terms of six, seven and eight months respectively. Twenty four hours after their sentencing, a letter signed by 25 international figures, including me, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), who is here today, and many leading politicians, diplomats and academics, was published, which expressed concern at this as a miscarriage of justice, a threat to Hong Kong’s rule of law and basic human rights and a blow to the one country, two systems principle. It was followed by a letter by 12 senior international lawyers, many of them Queen’s counsel, who argued that the imprisonment of these young men was not only a threat to the rule of law, but a breach of the principle of double jeopardy in Hong Kong and a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which applies to Hong Kong. They noted

“serious concerns over the independence of the judiciary”.

I am pleased that a few weeks later, Joshua, Nathan and Alex were granted bail, released from prison and permitted to appeal, but whatever happens with their cases on appeal, the serious issues raised by the decision to jail them in the first place should not be ignored. I would like to think that the international consternation expressed at their treatment, and undoubtedly noted by the Chinese authorities, contributed to their release. That is why I share the view of the last Governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten, when he said our Government’s Ministers should speak out publicly, not only privately, and that those who believe that raising difficult issues with China, such as human rights, would affect trade are “mistaken”.

Joshua, Nathan and Alex are far from alone. According to expert Kong Tsung-gan in a recent article in Hong Kong Free Press,

“at the heart of the government strategy to keep pro-democracy groups on the defensive and to intimidate ordinary people into not participating in the movement are the 39 legal cases (criminal and civil) it has brought against 26 pro-democracy leaders, as well as prosecutions of dozens of grassroots activists.”

I understand that, at present, more than 50 democracy activists face court proceedings and potentially prison under public order offences, in cases that past precedent indicates would normally have been punished with non-custodial penalties—community service or a fine. Some 16 peaceful demonstrators have been jailed for between six and 13 months already.

“As never before,”

writes Kong Tsung-gan,

“the government is using the courts to criminalise and delegitimise the pro-democracy movement.”

He argues that although some cases—such as those I have quoted—have received international attention, more focus should be given to the “overall pattern”.

In a further example of the erosion of democratic procedures, in December last year, the Legislative Council introduced procedural changes regarding elected legislators’ authority. The powers of the Legislative Council chairman to close down debates were increased. Inevitably, that will reduce the ability of pro-democracy groups, which represent the majority of Hong Kong’s people, to properly scrutinise legislation and hold the Executive to account. A new law imposed on Hong Kong by China now criminalises disrespect of the national anthem. Some Hong Kong football fans have booed China’s national anthem during football matches. One can argue whether it is appropriate to disrespect a national anthem, but is it right to criminalise such action with a penalty of up to three years in prison? Disturbingly, I understand that these new laws can be applied retrospectively.

Journalists now face physical threats. Hong Kong has fallen to 73rd place in Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 World Press Freedom Index—down from 18th in 2002. Academic freedom is being curtailed, too, with recent reports of controversial academic figures being removed from posts or having promotions blocked, of state-appointed figures governing universities, and of a growing push to limit freedom of speech there.

Another illustration of the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy, and one that directly affects the freedoms of the United Kingdom, was the decision to deny British human rights activist Benedict Rogers entry to Hong Kong in October last year. I take the opportunity to thank Foreign Office Ministers for expressing concerns to the Chinese authorities about the denial to Mr Rogers, after I raised questions in the House at the time. Does the Minister have any update regarding this? In late 2017, several Taiwanese scholars were also refused entry to Hong Kong.

The year ended with yet another example of the increasing erosion of Hong Kong's authority: the Chinese Government’s decision to enforce mainland Chinese law at the new West Kowloon high-speed rail terminus in Hong Kong. Under the arrangement, Hong Kong will effectively surrender its jurisdiction across a quarter of the new express rail terminus, where immigration procedures will be performed by mainland law enforcement agents with powers of search and arrest. I understand that Chinese national law will apply at the rail terminus. Thousands demonstrated in Hong Kong against these plans on new year’s eve. In the view of many experts, that effectively introduces one country, one system.

I understand that the National People’s Congress standing committee decided that the co-location arrangement is constitutional, thereby usurping the function of the courts, which under the Basic Law of Hong Kong should have exclusive rights to adjudicate cases. The Hong Kong Bar Association has said it is “appalled” by this decision, and stated:

“Such an unprecedented move is the most retrograde step to date in the implementation of the Basic Law, and severely undermines public confidence in ‘one country, two systems’ and the rule of law”

in Hong Kong. Does the Minister share the concerns of the Hong Kong Bar Association?

In December, Mr Speaker hosted the launch in Speaker’s House of a new organisation set up in this country to monitor, report and advocate for Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy—Hong Kong Watch. I had the privilege of attending the launch of that organisation, which was founded by Benedict Rogers and others. I commend its work to the House and encourage Members on all sides to engage with Hong Kong Watch. It has a highly distinguished cross-party group of patrons, including Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Ashdown, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC. The seniority of those individuals in their respective spheres of public life underlines that the concerns I am expressing are shared by respected public figures across political parties in this country and beyond, and that they cannot be ignored.

Indeed, Lord Ashdown recently visited Hong Kong as a patron of Hong Kong Watch. He published a report, which he presented at a meeting in the House of Lords last week, which I attended. The report is entitled, “Hong Kong 20 Years on: Freedom, Human Rights and Autonomy Under Fire”. I urge the Minister to read it if he has not already done so, and to respond to the concerns and recommendations in it. Lord Ashdown states:

“Over the past five years the freedoms guaranteed to the people of Hong Kong in its mini-constitution, the Basic Law, have been increasingly eroded. In Hong Kong, the rule of law is under pressure, human rights are undermined, and the city appears no closer to democracy. Legislators, legal experts and activists that I spoke to expressed concerns about the direction of travel: the situation appears likely to worsen in the coming years unless the people of Hong Kong and international governments unify to protect the rights of those living there.”

What concerned me particularly, as I listened to Lord Ashdown presenting his report last week, was what he said of his recent visit, compared with previous visits to Hong Kong over the years.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Fiona Bruce]

I will shortly draw my remarks to a conclusion. I was about to quote Lord Ashdown. Following his recent visit to Hong Kong, he said that

“something has happened to cause the almost irrepressible sprit of Hong Kong to be dampened down”.

It is profoundly concerning to hear claims from China that the joint declaration is viewed by some as a historical document of no relevance. Does the Minister agree that it is still relevant now and right up to 2047, that it is a joint declaration by both Britain and China in which both signatories have responsibilities and obligations, and that, as an international treaty lodged at the United Nations, China’s adherence to those obligations under the treaty ought to be taken as an indication of its reliability in adhering to all its international treaty obligations?

Does the Minister agree that, as Lord Ashdown said,

“it is in the interests of Britain, China and Hong Kong to continue to uphold the rights enshrined at the handover”?

Does he also agree that Britain has, as Lord Patten said,

“a right and a moral obligation to continue to check on whether China is keeping its side of the bargain”

publicly as well as privately? If so, what are the Government doing to fulfil that obligation?

We must heed the plea of Anson Chan, Hong Kong’s former Chief Secretary, and Martin Lee, founder of Hong Kong’s Democratic party, who told the Conservative party human rights commission, which I have the privilege to chair:

“We need the UK to speak up forcefully in defence of the rights and freedoms that distinguish Hong Kong so sharply from the rest of China. If it does not lead, then the future of one country, two systems is at best troubled and at worst doomed.”

I hope we will step up to our responsibilities, speak up for Hong Kong and live up to the promise made by Sir John Major 22 years ago that Hong Kong should never have to walk alone.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank colleagues for contributing to this debate, and I thank those who have joined me in raising concerns about recent challenges to democracy and human rights in Hong Kong. I also thank the Minister for his considered response, and for the clear assurances that he has given of the UK Government’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that the principles, rights and freedoms enshrined in the joint declaration and the Basic Law are adhered to.

In speaking of such matters, I know that we all share a genuine concern for the wellbeing of the people of Hong Kong, for their flourishing future and for a positive relationship between our two countries. I hope that our deliberations will aid all those things.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered democracy in Hong Kong.

Draft International Development Association (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) (Amendment) Order 2017 Draft African Development Fund (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) (Amendment) Order 2017 Draft International Development Association (Eighteenth Replenishment) Order 2017

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 General Committees

[Rory Stewart]

The answer is that we focus very hard on this and improve all the time. As my hon. Friend points out, every year we realise more and more the complexities and risks in such investment. In the case of the IDA and the World Bank, there is often a very complex chain of intermediaries before the investment hits the ground. That means we need to look at everything: the tenders; the way that contracts are let; and implementation on the ground. We need to go beyond the numbers to look at the quality on the ground. The figures that the IDA and the World Bank have achieved on the ground are absolutely staggering. They are responsible for providing a water supply to nearly 100 million people, and for providing education to nearly 200 million children. The numbers that they are able to achieve are absolutely astonishing.

Where we need to get better, and what we are working on much more closely with the bank, is making sure that we focus on quality. What are the children actually learning in school? Do they emerge fully literate? Do they have the skills we want, rather than us just getting somebody into a seat? Secondly, can we get the bank to be more innovative? Can we get it to think more about economic development, or how to work for the private sector? Getting the right relationship between public risk capital and the private sector is critical, because it is the private sector that is likely to know whether the business that is being invested in is genuinely sustainable. Will those jobs be there in five or 10 years’ time? Are people being trained in a skill for which there is a market, as opposed to what has often happened in the past, whereby vocational training programmes and investments have been directed towards an idea of where the market is, without a real understanding of the business environment?

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Encouragingly, the Minister has talked about investing more funds in fragile and conflict-affected states. Can he tell us the five top countries in which the most funds are invested, if not the specific amount?

[Rory Stewart]

I cannot promise to do that off the top of my head. The broad answer is that the World Bank divides into two halves. With regard to the IBRD and non-concessional loans, which are not what we are talking about today, some of those go to middle-income countries; we would expect them to be the larger middle-income countries. The IDA, which we are talking about, and which is the concessional arm, will focus on the lower-income countries. We would expect large amounts of that money to go to Nigeria, Ethiopia and Pakistan; they are very large examples of non-middle income country recipients. That is where we want to direct increasing amounts of the IDA’s funds.

The other two statutory instruments are about multilateral debt relief. I remind everybody that many of the poorest countries in the world ended up in huge amounts of debt—very heavily indebted. By the 1990s, many of the poorest countries of the world were spending most of their taxation revenue on trying to pay off debts accumulated by previous Governments. By the late 1990s, we realised that probably the most useful thing the developed world could do was forgive that debt, giving countries the chance to get off the ground again and to start to spend money on the provision of services—education and heath in particular. It was the former right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath who drove that process through, and at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 we, along with other countries, committed to playing our role in debt relief.

The Committee will not be surprised to hear that the amount we have put into debt relief in the international community is again around the 13% to 14% margin; that represents both our commitment to aid and the size of our economy. These statutory instruments are part of ongoing obligations determined by a previous Government in 2005, but continued by that Labour Government and by the coalition Government. Now, our Government continue to fulfil these long-standing obligations that a British Government took on, with the rest of the international community, to forgive the debt of these states.

That is not enough in and of itself. We have also put new processes in place to ensure that as those countries get money again, it is invested back in education and health, rather than going to building up more debts. We need to be particularly careful, because since the 1970s and 1980s when they accumulated the debts, the nature of international finance has changed. Increasing numbers of private sector actors in China, India and the City of London could be lending large amounts of money—there could be eurobond offers, for example, from the City of London—without the kind of conditionality that would have come with the previous debts. That could lead to countries again accumulating a large debt burden that it would be difficult for us to deal with.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The short answer is no, as the Foreign Secretary indicated earlier, until there is movement on the Quartet principles. However, resolution to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza is urgently needed, and we are doing all that we can to support that.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Do Ministers share concern about the apparent continuing erosion of the one country, two systems principle in Hong Kong following the disappearances of booksellers, the recent imprisonment of a democratically elected representative and, last week, the refusal of entry into Hong Kong on a purely private visit by UK citizen and human rights campaigner Ben Rogers, who is watching our proceedings today? If so, what action is the Foreign Office taking?

[The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. It is fair to say that broadly UK-Hong Kong relations remain strong, and there is bilateral work. However, I very much accept her position. We are very concerned that Ben Rogers, a UK national, was denied entry into Hong Kong on 11 October in absolute disregard of the one country, two systems principle. The Foreign Secretary has issued a statement, and the Foreign Office director-general for economic and global issues summoned the Chinese ambassador on this issue over the past few days. We have also made representations to Beijing, and I shall write to Carrie Lam in Hong Kong in the days ahead.

The Rohingya and the Myanmar Government

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

In an article in The Wall Street Journal in November 2016, Ben Rogers—the vice-chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, which I have the privilege to chair—wrote:

“A human tragedy approaching ethnic cleansing is unfolding in Burma, and the world is chillingly silent. In recent weeks, hundreds of Muslim Rohingya people have been killed, and more than 30,000 displaced. Houses have been burned, hundreds of women raped and many others arbitrarily arrested. Access for humanitarian-aid organizations has been almost completely denied. Thousands have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, only to be sent back. Witness all the hallmarks of past tragedies: Bosnia, Darfur, Kosovo, Rwanda… It’s also time for the international community to speak out. If we fail to act, Rohingyas may starve to death if they aren’t killed by bullets first…Let us act now before it’s too late.”

How right he was. That was almost a year ago. For many, such as the seven-year-old girl we just heard about, buried by her 12-year-old sister, it is already too late.

In a further article in February this year, Ben Rogers and the EU special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, Ján Figel’, highlighted the question of impunity, writing:

“Under the constitution, the military remains in control of the Home Affairs, Border Affairs and Defense ministries, meaning Ms. Suu Kyi’s leadership is tenuous. While she could have done more to speak out, she does not control the troops. Only Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief, has the power to stop the killing and rapes.”

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I take my hon. Friend’s point about Aung San Suu Kyi, but it is not simply that Aung San Suu Kyi has not condemned the activities of the military; it is that she has actively apologised for them over and over again in interviews. Having gone from being one of the most celebrated people in the world for her courage in taking on the brutal authorities, she has become that brutal authority.

[Fiona Bruce]

It should be remembered that, yes, she could have done more to prevent this tragedy and to speak out when it began, but she does not control the army.

The article continued:

“The international community must now act to hold the Burmese military to account for its crimes.”

Those warnings were also made many months ago. Now a tragedy is unfolding on a far bigger scale and action is long overdue.

I welcome the action taken by the Government so far: initiating discussions at the UN Security Council, suspending training programmes with the Burmese army, providing £30 million in aid and pledging to match £5 million in donations to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal.

[Paul Scully]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, while it is absolutely right that we should suspend our military programme with the Burmese military, it is a matter of regret that the people left training the Burmese military at the moment are the Russians?

[Fiona Bruce]

I will come in a moment to the further action I want to challenge the Minister to take with regard to the military.

More surely can and should be done. When the United Nations Secretary-General describes the crisis as “catastrophic” and “a devastating humanitarian situation" and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that it is

“a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”,

there is surely a need for a much more robust response.

So what other measures will the UK take to put pressure on the army and the Government of Burma to stop this appalling ethnic cleansing? What steps are the Government taking to demand that the military in Burma immediately cease operations in Rakhine state and that the Government of Burma allow unhindered access to all affected areas for international humanitarian aid organisations, human rights monitors and the media? What pressure will the Government put on the Government of Burma to ensure that Rohingyas can safely return to their home villages and that homes are rebuilt, livelihoods are secured, security is guaranteed, the recommendations of the Rakhine advisory commission, chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, are implemented, a reconciliation process begins, and the military are held to account for their crimes?

Will the Government work at the UN Security Council to secure a global arms embargo on Burma and targeted sanctions to prohibit investment in Burmese military-owned enterprises? Will the UK urge the EU to extend its arms embargo to ban the sale of non-military equipment that could be used for military purposes and to impose a visa ban on senior members of the military? Will the UK work to reintroduce a UN General Assembly resolution on Burma, imposing specific measures to put pressure on the Government and the military in Burma to address this crisis?

I urge the Minister to consider introducing regular meetings at this critical time, either with himself or his officials, so that non-governmental organisations based in London that have much expertise in Burma can discuss the current crisis. I have referred to the expertise of Ben Rogers, but I also have in mind the Burma Campaign UK, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and, in particular, representatives of the exiled Rohingya community.

This tragedy requires our urgent attention and action now. It is time to act to prevent another ethnic cleansing from becoming another genocide.

Persecution of Christians: Role of UK Embassies

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister to his place and thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for bringing this issue to the House once again.

It is about five years since we stood here and spoke about this issue for the first time in a debate about the persecution of Christians in the middle east. I am pleased that there have been positive developments since then. The FCO has recognised that this issue needs to be addressed. There has been religious literacy training for FCO staff, and the Department held an excellent one-day summit. Ministers now raise issues as they go around the world, and they come to debates. Lord Ahmad’s appointment is another indication that the FCO takes this issue increasingly seriously.

However, as colleagues have mentioned, DFID needs to do much more. The FCO has led on addressing this issue, but DFID is way behind the curve. I know from trips with the International Development Committee that, in many parts of the world, DFID staff share embassy sites with FCO staff. I believe that they could do much more to address the serious and deteriorating position across the world.

In its most recent review of religious freedom in 196 countries, Aid to the Church in Need clearly indicated that religious freedom has declined in 11 of the 23 worst offending countries and stated that in seven others,

“the problems were already so bad they could scarcely get any worse.”

The tragedy is that, of the 23 countries with the worst religious freedom in the world, which contain 4 billion people, no fewer than 17 receive UK aid.

DFID has promised to

“sustainably address the root causes of poverty and exclusion”,

but it will never do so unless it addresses religious freedom much more seriously. Lack of religious freedom is a root cause of poverty, displacement, violence and death across the world, including in many places where DFID operates. The 21st-century phenomenon of the rise of hyper-extremism is concerning. The hon. Member for Strangford referred to recent atrocities against Coptic Christians in Egypt. Hyper-extremism was illustrated graphically by a video released by IS in February 2017, in which it vowed to kill all Egyptian Christians. Hyper-extremism is a wrecking ball. It is primarily, but not exclusively, violent Islamic hyper-extremism. It is determined to do nothing less than eliminate all other beliefs, including moderate Muslim beliefs, and to develop a monoculture.

Of course, women suffer particularly from the elimination of religious diversity. That is why it is so important that we ask DFID to address religious freedom when it addresses sustainable development goal 16, which states:

“Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

DFID needs to be much more proactive. It needs not just to stand alongside civil society and deal with individual cases but to take a lead globally and, in countries where we work, proactively prevent civil disturbances where the root is lack of religious freedom.

I am afraid that, as I have travelled the world with the Select Committee, I have found that that is not the case. In Nigeria, for example, I had to fight for someone from a leading Christian organisation to get round the table at a meeting with non-governmental organisations that DFID had organised. It seemed that there was an elephant in the room with regard to civil disturbances that DFID simply did not want to address: religious freedom. That must change.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)]

I thank the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) for giving me plenty of time to address the important issues that have been raised today.

First and foremost, let me congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate. I am pleased to announce that his tie will be going into cold storage for the next 366 days, because next year is a leap year, but we look forward to seeing it in future. There is some relevance in his wearing that tie. Although many of us in the Chamber may feel that the ideals behind the United States of America are not as strong today as they have been at some point in the last 250 years, those ideals have been a fundamental approach towards freedoms that should be promoted across the globe. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his important work and his consistent and persistent commitment to the freedom of religion or belief, as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the issue.

I hope that Opposition Members will allow me to quickly mention two former Members of the House who are not here because they lost their seats, David Burrowes and Caroline Ansell, who I think would have been here, playing an important part in this debate. We very much miss them, but I know that their commitment to Christianity means that they will play their part.

Like all hon. Members here today, I am appalled by the persecution suffered by countless millions of Christians across the world who seek only to practise their deeply held beliefs openly, in peace and safety. Here in the west, as has been rightly pointed out, those freedoms are all too often taken for granted. We need to utilise this opportunity, particularly on such a robust all-party basis, to make the case that has been referred to.

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar). Here in the UK, we rightly recognise that we have a special responsibility for protecting and upholding the rights of Christian communities across the globe.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) is absolutely correct that Her Majesty’s Government should redouble their efforts to work on a cross-departmental basis. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) rightly pointed out that there has been improvement, but Members can rest assured that I regard it as an important priority to ensure ever closer work between DFID and the Foreign Office in this area and, indeed, a number of other areas where there should be closer co-ordination.

[Fiona Bruce]

I welcome that. The Foreign Office and DFID work closely together, so will the Minister kindly assure us that he will refer his ministerial colleagues at DFID to the comments made by many Members in the Chamber today? DFID needs to follow the FCO’s lead in addressing the human rights issue of freedom of religion and belief in a much clearer, more comprehensive and structured manner than it has done to date.

[Mark Field]

I entirely understand that, and I will come on to the comments made by my hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden about that issue. They can be assured that there is, in ministerial terms, rather more co-ordination now between the Foreign Office and DFID, given that two Ministers are double-hatted. That will assist particularly in parts of Africa and the middle east where there is a part to play. I also will ensure that in the most evident problem hotspots, we make clear to our embassies the expectations about what we need to work towards.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden asked how much is spent on freedom of religion projects. We shall, during this tax year, spend some £758,000 on such projects worldwide, including in Pakistan and Iraq. We also lobby Governments across the globe on a regular basis. She rightly pointed to the case of Taimoor Raza in Pakistan—which has already come across my desk in the two and a half weeks since I took on ministerial office—and the appalling death sentence that has been passed after his blasphemy conviction. The reality is that more often than not, or almost invariably, such a sentence is commuted to life imprisonment—bad though that is.

We need to have a debate about the issue that my right hon. Friend raised. She is quite right that Pakistan is the second largest recipient of aid from the UK Government through DFID. I have some sympathy with her view that we need to, in some diplomatic way at least, link the two. However, I also have some sympathy with what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said. I would be very reluctant to withdraw from any ongoing aid or development projects on the basis that there were concerns here. We should openly try to suggest, in a cross-departmental way, that a number of Her Majesty’s Government’s priorities, particularly in relation to freedom of religion, need to be an integral part of any ongoing aid and development work. We are spending significant sums of money, but a number of projects could happen in various other parts of the globe.

I very much take on board what my right hon. Friend said, and she can rest assured that through diplomatic channels, in our work between London and Islamabad, we will ensure that the Pakistani Government are made well aware of what we regard as being not just our priorities but their responsibilities in relation to DFID expenditure.

I want to touch on the issues raised by the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) about Colombia and Mexico and by the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), whom I congratulate on his debut on the Front Bench, about Tanzania and the terrible plight of Zanzibar. I have to confess that I have no data to hand about issues of freedom of religion in those areas or the particular issue referred to of organised crime, but I will write to both hon. Members once I have been able to get more information from our embassies.

I am particularly concerned currently about the plight of Christians in Burma, Iraq and Syria, where the Christian population has fallen dramatically, from 1.25 million as recently as 2011 to approximately 500,000 today. I recall my parliamentary visit 14 years ago to Aleppo, Palmyra and Damascus in Syria. We drove for a mere half an hour from the centre of Damascus to visit some of the ancient Christian villages where St Paul proselytised some 1,900 years ago. I shudder to think what has become of those ancient Christian communities today.

The right to practise one’s religion peaceably—or, indeed, to follow no religion at all—is and must remain a fundamental entitlement, and the UK Government will continue energetically to defend and promote it. As a number of hon. Members pointed out, it is a sad indictment of our 21st-century world that we still have to defend that right, but we do have to, because, as we have learned, it is increasingly being violated.

In 2013, I spoke from the Back Benches in another debate, which I think was led by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton, about the persecution of Christians. The fate of Christians and other religious communities in the middle east and the north Africa region is complex and often compounded by their minority status. In Syria, Assad’s actions have helped to fuel the worst sort of sectarian violence. Although at one point he was perhaps seen as someone who could stand up for minorities, the truth is that he has now shown himself incapable of maintaining control of his country or of effectively countering the threat from extremists. In so doing, he has put at risk communities including Christians, Mandaeans, Yazidis and all other minorities, as well as the interests and safety and security of the Sunni majority.

The UK Government remain determined to promote and defend human rights more generally. Failure to do so has an impact on Christian and other religious minorities. As the hon. Member for Rhondda powerfully reminded us, where freedom of religion or belief is under attack, other basic rights are threatened too. It is in all our interests to promote religious freedoms and human rights more generally, so I welcome this opportunity to set out briefly what the Government are doing to promote freedom of religion or belief across the world.

Our activity is both multilateral, through institutions such as the United Nations and its Human Rights Council, and bilateral with individual countries. In the multilateral sphere, we strive to build and maintain consensus on this issue by lobbying other countries and supporting UN resolutions such as the one recently sponsored by the European Union. We also engage closely, through our extensive diplomatic network, with individual countries. We promote the right of freedom of religion or belief and we raise vigorously—if often, for obvious reasons, behind the scenes—individual cases of persecution.

In relation to Pakistan, which we have discussed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs continues to raise the rights of all Pakistani citizens, including religious minorities, and did so very robustly during his visit last November.

In relation to Iraq, we remain deeply concerned about the atrocities committed by Daesh or ISIS against individuals and religious communities, including Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and others. We continue to engage closely, and with a specific cause in mind, with religious leaders both in the UK and in Baghdad and beyond. In the last financial year, we have provided £90 million of humanitarian assistance to Iraq alone. That takes our total commitment to £169.5 million since June 2014. A significant, ring-fenced element of that support will help to protect displaced religious minorities. I take to heart some of the criticisms by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, about the Government’s approach to religious minorities in the middle east, but it is the case, as has been pointed out in this debate, that an avowed policy of giving preferential assistance to any single religious group might make it more vulnerable to discrimination in some of the more ungoverned spaces of the world.

In Syria, Christians, Mandaeans, Yazidis and other minorities, as well as the Sunni majority, as I pointed out, have all been victims of Daesh atrocities. Ultimately, as I think we all know, the only way to stop that abuse is to defeat Daesh, and we continue to play a leading role in the 67-member global coalition in that regard.

The hon. Member for Strangford and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) were right to highlight the plight of the Coptic Christians in Egypt. They are a minority, but a very significant minority—some 8 million to 9 million out of an overall population of 90 million.

We have touched on Yemen and the treatment of the Baha’i community, and on the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, which the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out. Officials from our mission in Moscow attended the various court hearings there, and members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the UK noted that the presence on the ground of diplomats from the UK had a positive effect on how individuals were treated and how the process was undertaken. We shall continue to monitor that case particularly carefully.

More generally, our project work overseas is an important part of our effort to promote and protect religious freedoms. One project is helping to develop lesson plans for secondary school teachers in the middle east and north Africa. The aim is to teach children about religious tolerance, religious acceptance, and the absolute right to freedom of religion or belief. We strongly believe that teaching children in that way is a vital part of promoting tolerance and respect at grassroots level and of helping to build future resilience against extremism.

Civil Society Space

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner, and to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is such a doughty campaigner in this place for freedom and human rights. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate. I also thank CAFOD—the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development—and its representative Ruth Stanley, who a year ago brought to my attention an issue that deserves greater prominence than it is currently receiving: the deeply concerning trend towards the shrinking of the space for civil society to operate, in countries all around the world. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said:

“Civil society is the oxygen of democracy…Civil society acts as a catalyst for social progress and economic growth. It plays a critical role in keeping Government accountable, and helps represent the diverse interests of the population, including its most vulnerable groups…Yet, for civil society, freedom to operate is diminishing—or even disappearing.”

In the past five years, concerning developments are increasingly limiting the ability of civil society to function. Indeed, as DFID says in its recent “Civil Society Partnership Review”,

“Around the world, civil society is facing unprecedented pressure, from violent attacks to attempts to close down the space for democratic dialogue and debate. The UK Government, as part of its commitment to freedom of thought, association and expression, will stand alongside civil society against these encroachments.”

I strongly welcome those words. I also welcome the presence at the debate of not only a Foreign Office Minister, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and the Americas, but a DFID Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). Their presence signifies the importance that those Departments attach to this issue, and we thank them for it.

It is important that we examine why civil society across the globe faces the pressure that it does today. I will talk later about four themes on which we could reflect. I have become increasingly concerned about this issue over the past year as chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, which has been looking into it.

What do we mean by civil society? I suggest that we mean the complex weave of individuals, organisations and institutions that endeavour to manifest the will of a people living in a community or country. That is non-governmental. They endeavour not only to manifest the will of the people—to give them a voice—but to maintain and support their human rights and freedoms.

[Tom Brake]

I commend the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for the very important roles that they both play in campaigning on these issues. She mentions human rights. Has the Conservative commission that she chairs looked at the case of Nabeel Rajab from Bahrain? He is clearly a very prominent human rights campaigner and he has been detained there for reasons that many of us believe are bogus.

[Fiona Bruce]

We have not looked at that specific case, but I thank the right hon. Gentleman for drawing it to my attention—we will do so.

Civil society helps by speaking out against the bad, such as corruption, impunity, service delivery failure and electoral fraud, and by promoting the good—identifying and articulating citizens’ development needs and priorities. I saw that when I was in remote Nepal with the Select Committee on International Development. There, UK aid workers were helping community groups, including women’s groups, to come together to prioritise the basic needs of their area—for example, the need for improved roads and bridges—so that those priorities could be conveyed to regional and then national Government for potential allocation of resources.

Civil society includes community groups such as I have mentioned, but also a hugely diverse range of other structures. Some are loose associations of people mobilised behind a common goal. Some are well-funded and well-organised charitable hierarchies or NGOs. Some campaign for change. Some want just to provide frontline help. In short, civil society is an extremely broad church—if I may use that metaphor. That makes it difficult to generalise about the trends affecting civil society.

The complexity and depth of analysis required really to get a handle on what is happening today does not make for easy headlines or neat, focused campaigns. That is one reason why we do not hear enough about it, and that is why I commend CAFOD and other organisations concerned about the issue, whose workers live and work in challenging environments where they see at first hand how civil society freedoms are being eroded, and then enable us to bring their concerns into this place.

Often, when civil society freedoms are being eroded, it is by creeping incrementalism. The subtle undermining of civil society freedoms is rarely accompanied by great fanfare. A new law may at first seem innocuous, but it might prove to have a devastating effect on civil society—an effect felt only later. We rarely notice these types of changes, so when they happen a sense of urgency is often not present.

I will reflect, in Holocaust Memorial Week, on one of the worst examples of incrementalism in the last century: the actions of the Nazis. At first, relatively small steps were taken, such as discouraging the reading of certain books or the keeping of them in one’s home. Then, employing a Jewish housemaid was banned. But where did that marginalisation and exclusion ultimately lead? To the gas chambers.

That is why we need to worry more than we do about what is happening to civil society across the world today. We should not be accused of being sensationalist, when we hear, for example, of an NGO being expelled from Egypt, Ethiopia or Cambodia. We should not assume that those are localised cases even though it is not immediately obvious that they may be part of a wider pattern. The sad reality is that events such as those do reflect a current global trend.

In 2016, the Mo Ibrahim index of African governance included for the first time a specific indicator for measuring civil society space. It captured the extent to which civil society actors are allowed to participate in the political process, as well as the freedom of NGOs to operate without fear of persecution or harassment. The concerning findings are that nearly half the African population live in a country in which civil society participation has deteriorated. Two thirds of the countries on that continent, representing 67% of the African population, have shown a deterioration in freedom of expression in the past 10 years.

The main thrust of my message today is not so much to point a finger at Government or Ministers to do more—I am sure that the Minister will be relieved to hear that, although I will not miss that opportunity—as to say that all of us, from individual citizens to elected representatives such as Members of Parliament to influential global institutions such as the World Bank, need to be vigilant, speak out and do more to protect the civil society space in which our brothers and sisters around the world are working to improve the lives of those around them. I referred to the World Bank because I had the privilege of attending the World Bank gathering in Washington last autumn, when a group of parliamentarians from across the world raised this issue. They said that the increasingly shrinking civil society space, including in many of their countries, really needs to be attended to and highlighted more.

Why do we hear reports of the shrinking space for civil society to function, not only in Africa but around the globe? I will suggest four trends that might help to provide a partial explanation and paint part of the picture for this complex and concerning global issue. First, and perhaps most alarmingly, there is the trend in certain countries for more frequent extrajudicial killings, detentions, torture and disappearances. From Thailand to Bangladesh, to Kenya, to Congo, to Saudi Arabia, violence is a daily reality for many civil society workers and volunteers. In eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, kidnap by and violence from armed groups remains a daily risk.

According to the “Aid Worker Security Report 2014”—the most recent one that I am aware is available—120 aid workers were killed, 88 were wounded and 121 were kidnapped in the course of their work. Those are the highest figures ever recorded, and yet even they exclude many local people whose situations have gone unrecorded. Human rights violations and allegations include illegal rendition, such as that of Andy Tsege, whom several of us spoke about in this Chamber a short time ago. There is torture and the enforced disappearance of grassroots activists.

To highlight another example, I understand that the Irish citizen, Ibrahim Halawa, is now serving his fourth year in prison for taking part in peaceful democratic protest in Egypt. We are told that in this period, he has endured beatings with whips and chains, blindfolding, solitary confinement, electrocution and psychological torture. We are also told that when he was in solitary confinement, he was kept in a cell measuring half a metre by half a metre. It was impossible to lie down and he had to go to the toilet on his cell floor. We heard from the Egyptian authorities that he is to be released, but that has not happened yet. I hope that they will hear this debate and that his release will indeed happen.

It goes without saying that colleagues are united in condemning such abuses, but the connection to civil society freedoms is made too infrequently and inadequately. Such violations are each rooted in a willingness on the part of authorities to dispense with core human rights: the freedoms of association, expression, thought, and religion or belief. We hear so often of those freedoms being eroded—of people not being able to get a job and of planning permission not being granted to, for example, church organisations for buildings. All those freedoms are essential for a thriving civil society to exist. As I mentioned earlier in reference to the Nazi persecutions, the erosion of those freedoms is often where things start, but they end up with the kind of dreadful crimes against humanity, torture, imprisonment and deprivation that I referred to.

The second trend I shall highlight is the proliferation of restrictive legislation: the tendency for certain Governments to impose excessively onerous registration requirements, particularly on non-governmental organisations. That often targets legitimate action and impinges on civil society’s rights of freedom of expression, assembly and association. Some laws restrict the foreign funding of NGOs.

Another example of a restrictive requirement is that in Ethiopia, only 30% of an organisation’s costs can be spent on what is classed as administration. That has a very narrow definition, which severely limits civil society. Legislation in Cambodia has restricted civil society organisations from working on politics, limiting their ability to monitor elections or criticise corruption. Since January 2012, at least 120 laws have been enacted in more than 60 countries to restrict the ability of civil society organisations to register, raise funds or operate.

Organisations are straining to meet the increasingly onerous administrative demands of Governments. In many countries the registration of NGOs has become a lengthy, multi-stage process with uncertain timeframes for decisions. That all requires significant resources, which few organisations can afford. I have heard that in China, if a new NGO with international links wants to set up, they must partner with a domestic organisation, therefore increasing the Government’s ability to subject such groups to checks.

In some instances, organisations have been asked to comply with new regulations by a certain date. Failure to do so means that they are forcibly deregistered. We have heard that organisations are united in the belief that that is the way to silence dissenting voices. Some Government leaders justify the discrepancy by appealing to populism—for example, by seeking to portray international NGOs as a malign foreign influence. This is not the time to open up that debate, but suffice it to say that the end result of those restrictions is that often well-intending NGOs seeking to protect or extend civil liberties or human rights, or even to provide humanitarian aid, have ended up closing.

The third trend I will speak about is the use—perhaps I should say the misuse—of so-called anti-terror laws to close down, intimidate or restrict the activities of legitimate organisations. In Kenya, for example, there has been a clampdown on NGO operations in the past two years, targeting pro-democracy organisations. Bank accounts have been frozen and the leaders of organisations face criminal investigations, as allegations are made of their organisations being used as a source of terrorism finance.

Most people understand that the rising spectre of global terrorism has resulted in Governments reflecting on whether their anti-terrorism laws are sufficient for the unprecedented threats that we face today, particularly from ISIS. Most people also recognise the need for special measures to enable Governments to pre-empt and rapidly respond to threats of terrorism. However, we hear that powers afforded by such legislation, such as detention without trial, are being applied in cases in which there is no evidence of any terrorist link whatever. Political opponents, human rights defenders and even NGO employees have been subject to arbitrary detention, justified by anti-terrorism legislation.

The pattern can extend far beyond detention without trial. In Malaysia, for example, a council has been created with the power to declare “security areas”, within which the council can invoke special measures to arrest and detain without warrant. The misuse or overuse of anti-terror legislation also has indirect effects.

[Jim Shannon]

In business questions in the House today, I had the chance to highlight the persecution of Christians under Malaysian civil law specifically and to ask the Leader of the House to agree to a debate on that issue. Although Malaysia looks outwardly like a peaceful country with few restrictions, it is actually a country with significant and substantial restrictions.

[Fiona Bruce]

What often happens in such cases is that a climate is created in which individuals and organisations self-censor for fear of reprisals—the so-called “chilling effect”.

Lest we think that it is only in other countries that counter-extremism measures threaten the space for civil society to operate, let us reflect on the proposal made by our Government last year, in connection with their proposed counter-extremism measures: that all youth organisations outside schools teaching young people for more than a certain number of hours a week should be required to register with central Government and potentially be subject to Ofsted inspections, to ensure that they are in line with a list of values drawn up by the Government. At one point, it was suggested that just six hours a week of teaching outside school was sufficient to require central registration. The proposals could have covered traditional and clearly non-threatening church groups, such as Sunday schools or youth groups.

Fortunately, we have heard little about the proposal since the justifiable outcry against it by several Members of Parliament during a debate in this Chamber. I hope that the Government have quietly dropped it, but it goes to show how vigilant we must be to protect civil society even in our own country. Whenever we have the capacity, we should also do our best to challenge restrictions in other countries where they can be much more severe. We must do so on behalf of those in more vulnerable societies who do not have the opportunity to speak out for themselves as we do here.

The fourth and final trend is the harassment of civil society organisations. One issue arising from legislation relating to the registration or operations of NGOs is that laws are drafted so broadly that the scope for interpretation is wide open, enabling authorities to pursue agendas tantamount to harassment under the guise of implementing legislation. Excessive monitoring, threatening phone calls and unannounced inspections are commonplace. The Catholic Agency for Overseas Development reports that its partner workers in Sri Lanka and Latin America face surveillance, threatening phone calls, searches and disruption of community events. Fraud, tax, blasphemy and slander legislation is applied arbitrarily to criminalise the activities of human rights defenders or outspoken advocates, resulting, in extreme cases, in abduction and extrajudicial killing.

Those four trends only scratch the surface. There is overwhelming evidence that freedom of conscience, thought, religion and belief—in many ways, the bellwether of a healthy civil society—is progressively being undermined. Freedom of expression is under threat; in many parts of the world, journalists live in fear. Around 250 are serving prison sentences as I speak. I mentioned the issue not long ago in a House debate on Bangladesh. In Hong Kong, too, following the arrest of booksellers, we hear that journalists there feel intimidated, and even young representatives elected to their legislature are being threatened and denied the right to take up their seats.

Taken together, those trends paint a distressing picture of the state of civil society around the world. If civil society is the oxygen of democracy, as former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described it, it is in many places struggling for breath. It is therefore critical that we here, in what has been described as the mother of Parliaments, speak out and provide that much-needed breath. To colleagues who, like me, believe that foreign aid is an essential moral duty of the modern state—I know that there are many in the room—it is a matter of deep concern that such issues are occurring in many countries where UK aid is expended. I welcome the Government’s commitments in DFID’s recent civil society partnership review to tackle them.

[Tom Brake]

I apologise to you, Mr Turner, and to the Minister; because I must go to the Holocaust Memorial Day service, I will not be able to hear the summing-up. Does the hon. Lady agree that this is one of the most important things that the Government could do in relation to Syria? Surprisingly, there are still civil society organisations active there. The Government might consider more investment to secure successful elections in the part of Syria near the border with Turkey, where there is still civil society activity.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that suggestion, and I hope that the Minister will address it in his response.

I welcome the Government’s words in the first paragraph of the partnership review:

“A healthy, vibrant and effective civil society sector is a crucial part of Britain’s soft power and leadership around the world. The Government will give them our strongest support.”

The UK can use its considerable soft power to influence global behaviour. Although I would always like to see more done, I commend our Foreign Office Ministers and officials for raising concerns privately and publicly. For example, FCO officials supported land rights activists in Colombia by visiting them, improving protection of their livelihoods by helping them raise the visibility of their case. Just yesterday, when I met the Minister for Asia and the Pacific, he confirmed that he had raised human rights concerns with the Chinese authorities over the alleged forced harvesting of the organs of prisoners of conscience in that country.

The UK Government have given excellent international leadership by example in respect of listening to civil society advocates by tackling female genital mutilation, taking up what was wrongly seen as a niche issue. Our Government are doing a lot. Of course I think that DFID could do more; I have said many times in this Chamber that I believe it could do more to support freedom, particularly of religion and belief. When I went to Nigeria, I was concerned that I had to fight to get a representative of a major Christian organisation there to come to a roundtable discussion involving other NGOs.

I welcome the new review. It refers to commitments by DFID, including that we will

“increase opportunities for in-country CSO engagement with DFID country offices, including working with…faith groups”.

That is exactly what I am talking about with regard to my Nigeria experience, so I am pleased to see that commitment in the review.

I am also pleased to see the commitment that DFID will

“help shape the environment in which CSO operate. We will address declines in the operating space for civil society that reduce civil society’s ability to improve the lives of poor people and hold those in power to account. Alongside other UK Government departments, DFID will support organisations that protect those under threat and increase understanding of the extent, causes and consequences of closing civic and civil society space.”

I appreciate that the Department for International Development Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border, has had to leave this debate, but I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and the Americas, who has remained to respond. I was going to ask the DFID Minister to tell us in a little more detail how DFID will action the commitment; perhaps he will ask his colleagues in DFID to respond to that question in particular.

As I said, there is much more that we can do—all of us; not just Ministers. I have therefore suggested that the Select Committee on International Development should consider sustainable development goal 16:

“Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

That is a new goal and a new commitment. I hope that the Committee will examine how it is being implemented internationally, as well as through UK aid. It would go a long way towards tackling some of the grave challenges that I have outlined.

I end by reiterating the complexity of the issue and the incremental way in which freedoms can be eroded. I hope that we will all be stirred into recognising the urgency of the issue and into speaking out to protect civil society far more. In the current atmosphere of rising nationalism and economic protectionism, and with Islamic State so threatening, legislation putatively designed to address those issues could become more common, as could Government acts to deter them. If the pattern of the last decade is an indicator, abuses will therefore also become more common, unless we all resolve today to redouble our efforts to ensure that the oxygen of democracy continues to flow, so that civil society can play its vital part around the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Susan Elan Jones]

Probably. The tradition of civil society and openness goes hand in hand with the development of charity in our country. It is fascinating that freedom of thought happened at the same time as freedom of action. That is very important for us to consider today.

I want to move on a few centuries and pay tribute to the work of the Charities Aid Foundation, which, as we know, provides great assistance to UK and international charities. It promotes general donations to charities and operates on six continents with services provided by local experts in nine countries: America, Australia, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, India, Russia and southern Africa. CAF has called on the Government to consider working even more with Governments overseas to develop civil society infrastructure where the UK is transitioning out of aid funding. In view of CAF’s expertise, will the Minister comment on that point?

My final thought on that subject is that we are probably in a time when nationalisms of different hues are growing and there is a populist message. The hon. Member for Congleton used a word that perhaps more of us should reflect on: incrementalism. It often starts with something small: a comment, a bit of rhetoric or —dare I say?—a bit of banter. It can then grow to something quite unmanageable: the bashing of Muslims and the insidious growth of anti-Semitism of different varieties on all parts of the political spectrum.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady makes an important point in saying that it often grows to something unmanageable. One of the reasons we have such a massive refugee problem today is that so many people are denied their rights in their home places and are therefore displaced. Is that not an example of how we have incrementally caused a major problem?

[Susan Elan Jones]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady on that point. We also need to reflect on the demonisation of migrants, which in some cases seems to have dropped into common parlance. Let us remember that, in our country—I think it was in the early 1970s—there was a case that resulted in Sikh bus drivers being allowed to wear turbans. Let us remember how long ago that was and remember our tradition of tolerance.

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

I have a little word for our friends across the pond. I find it extraordinary that certain of the United States of America still have the death penalty. Many people who claim to support religious and individual freedoms across the world probably get put into greater danger—some of the minorities and some of the Christian groups and the like—and they too face the death penalty. I find the very fact that American states have the death penalty quite extraordinary. The British Government support a global ban on the death penalty, but I find it extraordinary how many states in the US still have it.

More broadly, the story of Christians and Muslims coming together over the Wrexham mosque and similar ones may in the wider world in some small way strengthen the rights of Christians, who, particularly in the middle east and sub-Saharan Africa, face unprecedented hardship. That coming together and those stories from this country are important. If civil society matters at all—most of us believe it is fundamental—it is about bringing people together; freedom of expression; and the right to be different, to exercise freedoms and stand up for people with whose opinions we may disagree. That is a vital right in this country and this place. If we are truly to have a civil society based on community and tolerance, and if we care about civil society space in other parts of the world, what we do, think and say in our country matters.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, as I do in the all-party group on the Chagos islands. If there was ever a community that deserved the support of a strong civil society movement it is the Chagossians, but we shall perhaps not trouble the Minister too much on that issue, as he responded to it in Westminster Hall recently.

I congratulate the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing the debate, and want to clear up a point: I was happy to support their bid for a debate at the Backbench Business Committee, but because I would be summing up for the Scottish National party on the Front Bench, my name had to come off the motion. We in the SNP exist in a kind of gloaming—a word people can look up if they need to—depending on whether we are speaking from the Front or Back Bench, and on the topic and who is replying. The concept of the debate has my full support, and we have heard some considered speeches and interventions.

I thank, as other hon. Members have, the large number of non-governmental, civil society organisations that provided briefings for today’s debate, including Bond, CAFOD, Amnesty International, the Charities Aid Foundation, and ABColombia. The fact that so many briefings were submitted is a cause for both celebration and perhaps a little concern: celebration because this country has a vibrant NGO sector that feels empowered to speak out; but concern at the content of the briefings and the many instances of the closing of civil society space around the world. Indeed, Amnesty’s report says that the situation is unprecedented.

I want to reflect on three themes: the intrinsic value of civil society and its contribution; areas of specific concern—countries that we have heard about and specific individual cases; and some domestic considerations and the role of the UK Government. I no longer need to declare a formal interest, but I should say that my professional background was in the NGO sector as a civil society lobbyist and campaigner on international development issues. I sometimes feel a little like poacher turned gamekeeper, but it has been an interesting 18 months or so since the 2015 election.

A strong civil society is a key indicator of healthy, stable democratic societies. As other hon. Members have said, it is such an important indicator that it has been integrated into the sustainable development goals framework—the plan for the planet over the next 30 years. Goal 16 commits countries around the world to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. So it is fundamental to the global vision of peaceful and sustainable societies.

Civil society provides a platform for debate, to influence policy process and to mobilise opinion outside party political structures. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) referred to the Charities Aid Foundation. Its research shows that when asked who is best placed to speak up to Government on behalf of disadvantaged people, and to influence their policies, 84% of respondents in this country said it was charities that specialised in those areas.

The role of the Church and faith-based organisations has also been a strong theme in the debate. Often there is pressure on them from two fronts—from Governments in the countries where they operate, and sometimes from extremists and fundamentalists of other faiths. Yet often those faith-based organisations are among the best placed to speak out on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable communities. In countries where there is very little infrastructure, such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, it is the Church that has a presence in the communities most remote from society and central governmental structures.

Conversely, the absence of a strong civil society is generally a sign of instability. Syria has been mentioned by several Members. The roots of the conflict are incredibly complex, but Syria is an example of how, when people cannot protest peacefully against the Government, or protests are shut down, people turn to extreme measures. It allows violence to creep in, and Governments respond in kind. We fall into a downward spiral. That point was powerfully made by the hon. Member for Congleton when she reflected on other lessons from history, especially given the fact that we are preparing to mark Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow; I know that a number of right hon. and hon. Members are attending a service today. The role of faith-based organisations in this country, such as the Jubilee 2000 movement, the trade justice movement and the Make Poverty History campaign, has also been recognised.

Several specific countries of concern have been discussed, and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (Natalie McGarry) gave a powerful testimony in her speech. It struck me that the countries mentioned are middle-income countries. Colombia, Ethiopia, Malaysia—mentioned by the hon. Member for Congleton—and Turkey are all classified by the World Bank as lower or upper middle-income countries. I said in yesterday’s Westminster Hall debate on West Africa that middle-income country status is perhaps the most precarious, because those countries are in transition from having had little in the way of infrastructure or the kind of development that we enjoy. Hopefully, they are on a journey to the kind of stable democracies that by and large we experience in the west. However, there is a huge risk of regression and backsliding, and it is one of the most precarious periods in a country’s history. An important point that has been made a couple of times is the statistic from the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law about the 120 or so legal initiatives that have been introduced, in more than 60 countries, since 2012. Many of those are in transitioning middle-income countries. Amnesty has issued more than 40 reports on repression and fundamental freedoms.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point. Does he agree that we need more lawyers to engage in international development, to help those countries develop strong democracies? That is not something that we have inspired lawyers—particularly the younger generation of lawyers—to think about doing, as we have inspired medics or teachers. If we are really to achieve SDG 16, we need that.

[Patrick Grady]

That is a fair point. The rule of law —we have heard a lot about it in this part of the world in recent days—obviously requires lawyers. I will perhaps come on to say a little about the appropriate use of the aid budget later.

I want to look at a couple of particular cases. Colombia has been mentioned; it is symptomatic of issues around the country that, despite the progress—the peace agreement signed with FARC, pending agreement with the ELN—civil society organisations report that the situation on the ground continues to worsen progressively. In 2016 85 human rights defenders were killed, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights publicly condemned the violence against human rights defenders. What is encouraging, however, is that the UK ambassador to Colombia is one of eight ambassadors who have publicly denounced abuses of human rights and announced their concerns for human rights defenders.

The case of Andy Tsege in Ethiopia, the subject of a debate in its own right here in Westminster Hall, was mentioned again by the hon. Member for Congleton. His case is a powerful example of how UK citizens can be affected by oppressive Government crackdowns on freedom of speech. The Ethiopian Government, which announced the state of emergency that has seen thousands detained and severely limited due process and access to justice, sentenced Andy under a widely condemned anti-terrorism proclamation. Other concerns have been expressed about aspects of Ethiopia’s regulation of civil society. NGOs are not allowed to accept more than a very small percentage of their budget—15% or something like that—from overseas donors. Likewise, only a small percentage may be spent on administration, but the definition of that can be extremely wide. I wanted to flag up those two situations in Ethiopia.

There are some domestic considerations, and it has never been more important for the United Kingdom and its Government to lead by example. The examples given by the hon. Member for Clwyd South were very interesting. Even a local organisation can have a global impact, taking Wales forward to become the first fair trade nation. Scotland was the world’s second fair trade nation, which we are very proud of, but it is something we are happy to work with our brethren in Wales to promote. Indeed, the fair trade movement as a whole is another example of successful civil society campaigning, and it is an approach that also leads to positive economic benefits for people.

Even in the lifetime of this Parliament, since those elected in 2015 have been here, there have been some concerns, such as the threat to repeal the Human Rights Act without any clear indication of what was to replace it. Concerns were expressed about surveillance during the passage of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, and the Government were also pressing the so-called anti-advocacy clause, which would have severely restricted the ability of NGOs in this country to advocate on issues of Government policy. The climbdown on that was welcome. One concern was that scientific researchers in receipt of Government money could not have been called to give evidence to Select Committees in this Parliament, which would have been nonsense. We welcomed the Cabinet Office climbing down to an extent, but we have to keep an eye out for all such things.

I appreciate that a Foreign Office Minister is responding to the debate today, but there is a role for the Department for International Development to play in support of civil society and civil society organisations around the world. The Government should also recognise their importance here at home.

The “Civil Society Partnership Review” was mentioned, but my concern about it was that the concept of partnership was being changed significantly. Partnership was not about working together to achieve shared goals but about a service delivery model through which DFID was almost to commission its desired results from civil society stakeholders, rather than take the collaborative approach that may have been seen in the past.

The hon. Member for Strangford asked about acknowledging the particular role of faith-based organisations. Particular kinds of support and sensitivity are necessary with them.

In recent days the Minister’s colleague in the Government has confirmed several times Government support for the 0.7%, which is important, but I ask the Minister present to do the same again. It is important for as many Ministers as possible to make it clear that the UK Government are committed to the 0.7% in current and future spending reviews, despite the best efforts of some of their Back Benchers.

In the context of Brexit, it is especially important for the UK Government to continue to be seen as a world leader on the 0.7% and not to roll back from such an important commitment. If they are somehow struggling to meet that commitment and to find things to do with the money, plenty of examples have been given today. Only a moment ago we spoke about support for lawyers and legal practitioners around the world. There is no shortage of imagination on how to spend the budget, not least in civil society. I say that as a former employee of a civil society organisation, but I have made my interest clear.

The Scottish Government have a good partnership approach to civil society. Due to the nature of the devolution settlement, they are not allowed to use their small international development budget to fund organisations directly in different countries, so they have to work through civil society organisations in Scotland. There are some lessons to be learned from that model, although it is not entirely replicable at the scale DFID operates on, obviously.

This has been a very substantial and constructive debate, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. Governments at home and around the world should have nothing to fear from a strong civil society and, as we have heard from all Members, they have so much to gain.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Rosindell. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this important debate.

A well-placed civil society has always been a hallmark of a successful, stable democracy. A Government alone, no matter how efficient, cannot run a country effectively and harness all its potential unless they use the will and involvement of all the people in it. We want to ensure that people power, in tandem with government, starts to work effectively to provide proper and clear democratic structures for societies.

Unfortunately, part of the problem is that, when elections are held, we call the institutions and countries democratic. Democracy entails a structure—a structure of accountability, transparency and rule of law. Unless those things are taken into account by a nation or country, we should question whether they have democratic institutions or whether they are a democratic country. We get too easily waylaid by the perception of democracy as people having elections. First, we need to account for whether those participating in an election are properly selected to their posts. Is a democratic selection taking place? Do they have limits on their spending power and, I would go so far as to say, limits on their buying power in those countries? How are they elected? Is the value of that vote independent and transparent, or is it purely down to whom they can intimidate, what they can buy and what they can pressurise people to vote for?

[Fiona Bruce]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise, as I do, an increasing trend of elected representatives and premiers staying on beyond the agreed maximum period that their nation’s constitution permits, causing huge amounts of distress and unrest in their countries? I am thinking, for example, of Burundi.

[Mr Mahmood]

I concur with the hon. Lady. There is a real problem that, when some people get into elected office, they assume it is their right to continue to rule. That is a real problem for us to address. It becomes not only a position for life for themselves, but a hereditary position for their kin. That is a real problem we have to look at when we talk about democracy.

Those three things I spoke about—transparency, the rule of law and accountability—come from civil society structures. If we have the right civil society structures, if the structures and the systems are accountable to people who work in communities, and if those people understand how Governments need to be accountable to them, accountability happens when an election comes. However, if people do not have access to those institutions, the rule of democracy and people’s presumption that it is working becomes dubious. The rule of law also has a huge part to play. When people are kept away or held in prison for a long time before their cases are even heard, that is a huge problem. Civil society needs to play a role there. When people are discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or caste, or on the basis of where they come from, there are real issues for us to look at. We need to look seriously at those things in terms of civil society.

The Minister with responsibility for the Commonwealth is here, but unfortunately, his colleague the DFID Minister did not stay. Perhaps he was unable to participate in the debate. There are several important aspects of DFID funding that we must look at. It is crucial that DFID looks at the democratic structures that I pointed out and how we can best support them. We work in different parts of countries where such things are seen differently, and we need to start to address some of those issues.

We all cherish the fact that we have protected our fantastic aid budget in difficult circumstances here at home. We want to keep protecting that budget, but if we are to do that, it must be implemented properly in countries of operation, and DFID must understand that when it allocates money in those countries, it should keep the use of external contractors to a minimum. If they are used, such contractors must be able to leave a legacy by building capacity in those countries. Unfortunately, in certain cases where projects are taken on board and contracts are issued, the people who deliver those contracts remove themselves at the end and leave a huge vacuum; the budget goes, but there is no legacy. If we build capacity in a country, it can generate further capacity in those areas and move forward.

Several Members have made huge contributions. The hon. Member for Strangford, who is passionate about this subject, quite rightly raised the issues that he strongly believes should be looked at in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Where people go missing without any trace or are just moved out of place, and where people are detained for long periods without trial or justice, discriminated against because of their religion or victimised for who they are, that needs to be addressed. Those are important issues against which we need to assess countries and where we need to build capacity.

I was actually in Lahore in Pakistan over Christmas. I understand a lot of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raises, but I did see one bit of progress. In the majority of places, there was a huge celebration of Christmas. I saw a huge amount of decoration and many Christmas trees, which was very heartening. In the lobby of the hotel that I stayed in, carols were sung in the evening, and people came out. That is a good sign. If the mainstream of the community starts to accept things like that, where there are issues at a local level, people can be stopped from using the legislation that is available to them to persecute the Christian community in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh or anywhere else. That is a positive start, as far as I saw, but there are certainly issues that need to be looked at. Certainly issues have been raised in relation to the Ahmadiyya community. I understand that. All the people living in that country should be treated the same. Equally, I would say that to India.

We had a debate last week in Parliament about Kashmir and the issue of civil society being allowed into Kashmir, where mass graves have been discovered. There has been huge abuse, including the use of pellet guns. Those sorts of issues have been raised, and it is important for us to recognise that.

Extreme action has also been taken in Bangladesh. People there might say that that is because of terrorist activity and that that gives them carte blanche in most instances now to do whatever they want. A huge amount of legislation has come in that clamps down on civil society, justified by the use of the word “terrorism”.

It is right to say that a huge number of countries are now using different legislation to make it difficult for civil society organisations to register and start to get funding. There are significant issues that we need to address. The hon. Member for Strangford made that point very clear. The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) also made those issues very apparent and was very positive in the way she came across and the way she wanted to deal with them. In particular, she spoke about the conditions that are imposed on non-governmental organisations in order to frustrate the process; they are not able to do the things that she mentioned.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East (Natalie McGarry) spoke passionately about her own experience and the current situation in Turkey. All of us need to be mindful of what is going on in Turkey and how we should deal with that. Certainly the Minister should seriously look at how we can address some of those issues. I know that the Secretary of State has refused to address any of those issues, but I think it is important that we look at that. This is a close neighbour of ours and it has a huge impact in terms of access from Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq and all those areas into Europe. If the country itself is not stable in the first instance, that makes it very difficult to provide all the necessary services.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) made a very passionate case on behalf of the Welsh contingent about the inter-faith practices and civil society activities that they are carrying out to a great extent. That is really powerful if we are to be a role model—to move forward and say how it is best to deliver those.

I do not want to take up too much time, because I think that the Minister wants to wrap up as well, and will be very pleased to do that. There are some serious issues to address. I had hoped that his DFID colleague would respond to the debate, because many of the issues relate to DFID, but I am thankful that this Minister is here to do so. He has himself played a very active role on most of these issues over the years, but did so particularly in his former role as a Minister of State in DFID, and he understands the issues.

I will bring to the Minister’s attention again—he should perhaps pass this on to his successor—the way in which major contractors deal with DFID contracts, the capacity-building issue and the capability that should be left after they have finished doing that. That is a key issue. There are also trade issues. Obviously, post Brexit, we will be dealing with a lot of these nations, which want to trade with us. We now have another window to be able to deal with them. We should start to insist that they treat their NGOs correctly and improve civil society in order to be able to work with us. There are a number of important issues, but certainly those two issues I ask the Minister to look at.

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

I thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), and my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for securing this important debate.

Poverty, violence, extremism and large-scale migration are some of the most important challenges of our times. Evidence shows that those problems are most acute in countries where civil society is not allowed to function. Democracies do not start wars with each other—[Interruption.] I challenge my hon. Friend to name two democracies that have ever gone to war. By and large, democracies do not suffer famine, nor do they trigger the uncontrolled exodus of their people in a way that leaves them vulnerable to all manner of abuses, such as modern slavery. Democracies are countries in which civil society is allowed the space to thrive, to challenge authority without fear and to work for the good of society as a whole.

The space in which civil society operates is under ever-increasing pressure throughout the world. Her Majesty’s Government are fully aware of this disturbing trend, and we are working hard to counter it. The Government believe that a free and vibrant civil society not only helps safeguard individual human rights but contributes to a country’s security and prosperity. I should like to highlight some of the ways in which this Government work for the promotion and protection of civil society space overseas.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s annual human rights report shows that the issue of civil society space has been increasingly prominent in our human rights work in recent years. Last December, we placed civil society organisations at the centre of our activities to mark UN human rights day in London and across the entire FCO network. In her speech on that occasion, my noble Friend the right hon. Baroness Anelay stressed how she sought to champion civil society organisations on her official overseas visits. The message was echoed by our diplomatic missions around the world, which celebrated human rights day by reflecting back to their host Governments our admiration for the dynamism of local civil society, or our disapproval, and frankly our bafflement, when they tried to clip its wings.

We also support civil society around the world through our human rights programme work, funded by our Magna Carta fund. In 2016-17, we invested £1.6 million to support 14 projects designed to protect civil society space by promoting freedom of expression, including online, which is important in the modern age. The projects took place in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, Burma, Syria, Pakistan, Rwanda, and Uganda.

The Government are equally proud of the effective work of the Department for International Development in this field, which I recall from when, as has been said, I was Minister there for four years from 2010. Since 2014, DFID has been an active supporter of the Open Government Partnership, which drives up global transparency standards and promotes civic space in developing countries. Recently, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria have joined the partnership, bringing membership to 75 countries.

In November last year, DFID published its civil society partnership review, which assessed the results and effectiveness of DFID’s work with civil society. In that document, the Secretary of State for International Development stated:

“A healthy, vibrant and effective civil society sector is a crucial part of Britain’s soft power and leadership around the world.”

She also pledged to

“robustly defend the rights of civil society in a dangerous and uncertain world.”

One could not hope for a clearer statement of the Government’s position.

The Treasury has also played its part, working with the Charity Commission to prevent the misuse of Financial Action Task Force standards, which are designed to prevent the financing of terrorism, to restrict civil society. Many hon. Members will be aware that the Government sponsors the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Through its programmes to support democratic practices and institutions around the world, the foundation shares the experience of our democracy, in which the relationship between civil society, Parliaments and political parties is of fundamental importance. We welcome that approach and want WFD to continue to promote that healthy respect for civil society that we enjoy, and that we know is critical for the quality of democracy everywhere.

Another vehicle for our support for civil society space is the Community of Democracies, a democracy-building alliance of Governments and civil society, the governing council of which we joined in December last year. Its working group on the protection of civil society space issues a call to action whenever it sees a threat to civil society space emerging through new legislation or regulation, or whatever it might be, anywhere in the world. Last year, for instance, it successfully helped to influence decisions in Kyrgyzstan, deterring the adoption of an anti-civil society law along the lines of Russia’s deeply cynical and very damaging foreign agents law. I reassure hon. Members that the UK’s diplomatic service works tirelessly to support civil society and to defend its right to function freely.

[Fiona Bruce]

Would the Minister be good enough to comment on the concerns I expressed regarding the apparent reduction of space for civil society to operate in Hong Kong? What can be done to address that?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I do not cover Hong Kong—I cover the other half of the world, which keeps me quite busy —but I note what my hon. Friend said. I will ask the relevant Minister to write to her with a specific reference to Hong Kong. Our ambassadors and high commissioners frequently stand shoulder to shoulder with those who seek to defend the values in which we believe, including the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, and the right to live without discrimination of any kind.

At the multilateral level we play a leading role in defending the rights of civil society. We support the accreditation of legitimate and serious NGOs to take part in the workings of the United Nations, including the Economic and Social Council. Knowing the keen interest of the hon. Member for Strangford in the freedom of religion and belief, I am sure that he will appreciate our continued strong support for the efforts of Christian Solidarity Worldwide to be so accredited. The UK plays a leading role at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe in the struggle to keep open civil society space. This year, we are proud to chair the Human Dimension Committee of the OSCE and are developing a work plan that reflects the importance of civil society to human rights, security and prosperity.

Let me turn to some of the very important points that have been made in the debate, in order to give a proper and thorough answer. The hon. Member for Strangford emphasised the importance of freedom of religion and belief, as I mentioned. Freedom of religion promotes prosperity and security and is also an important part of countering violent extremism, so we always urge our international partners to allow freedom of religion and belief, and to end all forms of discrimination on religious grounds.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question of freedom of religion in Pakistan. The Government have urged Pakistan to uphold religious freedom and the rule of law. During the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Pakistan in November last year, he raised the issue of religious tolerance and the importance of safeguarding the rights of all Pakistan’s citizens. The hon. Gentleman also raised the case of Shahidul Alam in Bangladesh. We are aware of the apparent detention of Shahidul Alam in Dhaka this morning. The British high commission is monitoring the situation very closely and will diligently follow that up.

Although the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) has left the Chamber, he raised some specific points, so it is only fair that I should answer them—my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton also raised the question of Egypt. It is no secret that we want to see more political freedoms and space for civil society in Egypt. The Prime Minister raised the ongoing foreign funding NGO case with President Sisi when they met in New York in September at the United Nations General Assembly. Restrictions on civil society take Egypt further away from implementing the freedoms that are in the 2014 constitution. I can also confirm to the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington that we have raised the issue of discrimination against the Baha’i with the Government of Iran, and the arrest of Nabeel Rajab with the Government of Bahrain.

I join the hon. Member for Glasgow North in praising the excellent work of our ambassador to Colombia. I have seen at first hand the work of our diplomats overseas who work with human rights defenders, often in very difficult environments. I am sure everyone here joins me in recognising their work.

Yemen

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I believe that is the case; certainly ours was agreed by a majority vote. I thought that my hon. Friend was going to make the different point that all three reports are in support of this motion. I am not aware of any of those voting in the minority in any of those three Committees doing so because they disagreed with this recommendation. I hope that the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington and I have framed a motion that can enjoy support across the House, because it focuses on the issue of an independent investigation.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

The Chairman of our Select Committee will recall that when we took that vote—my decision is on record—it was my particular concern that the independent investigation take place. I feel strongly about that and want to put it on record today.

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank the hon. Lady, who is an assiduous member of the International Development Committee. I do indeed recall that her focus was very much on needing to see the independent investigation first, and that was why she voted in the way she did. However, we all agreed across the Committee that there should be an independent international investigation, and that, indeed, featured in our first report as well as the second.

Let me now focus on the proposal for an investigation that is independent and international. In May 2015, at the beginning of the conflict, Human Rights Watch accused the Houthi rebels of violations of international law in the southern seaport city of Aden; the crimes highlighted included the killing of civilians and the arrest of aid workers at gunpoint. Since then the Houthis have been accused of a range of other violations of international humanitarian law, such as the prevention of the import of basic commodities, as well as medicine, propane, and oxygen cylinders, into the besieged city of Taiz.

A United Nations expert panel has documented 185 alleged abuses. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) reminded us, Médecins sans Frontières, which often works in the most difficult and challenging humanitarian situations, suffered attacks on three hospitals in three months. In September 2016, the Yemen Data Project reported that one third of all Saudi-led raids on Yemen have hit civilian sites, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has estimated that 66% of all civilian deaths in Yemen have been caused by Saudi-led air strikes.

UK Nationals Imprisoned Abroad

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) on securing this debate. As we have heard today, Mr Tsege, who was a prominent figure in Ethiopian opposition politics, has experienced terrible difficulties. He has undergone experiences that give many colleagues in this House cause for concern, which is evidenced by the number of Members of Parliament, from many different parties, who are in their places today.

I am here today because a member of my staff recently met Mr Tsege’s partner, Ms Hailemariam, at her request here in Parliament, was deeply moved by the family’s plight and referred Mr Tsege’s case to me. I pay tribute to Ms Hailemariam for her tenacity and perseverance in championing her partner’s case; as I said, that is why I am here today.

I will focus on one aspect of Mr Tsege’s case—that is, the apparent absence of the appropriate due judicial process. Judicial process under law is not apparent from his situation, and we in the UK Parliament should defend the right of all our fellow citizens, wherever they are in the world, to have the benefit of due process under law, whatever they might be suspected or accused of. We should not tolerate without challenge a UK citizen being subject to peremptory abduction, rendition, imprisonment and the lack of a fair trial, as appears to have happened in Andy Tsege’s case. That is why so many of us are here today.

[Bob Stewart]

I am so sorry to interrupt again. Is Andy now under sentence of death, having been tried in absentia, so he is there permanently? Is there any chance of a review of his case by the judicial authorities in Ethiopia? In other words, are we down to political, international and diplomatic pressure to get him out?

[Fiona Bruce]

As far as I understand it, in Ethiopia there is no right of appeal from a death sentence. I stand to be corrected if other hon. Members understand the situation differently, but I see some nodding in the Chamber.

I do not want to interrogate the veracity of the claims against Mr Tsege, but whatever the intricacies of his particular case, we cannot avoid the fact that a UK citizen has, by all accounts, been kidnapped, arrested, rendered and imprisoned, and then tried, convicted and sentenced to death in absentia, in flagrant contravention of the due process of law.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) on securing the debate. Is it not material to this matter for the international community that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention described Mr Tsege’s detention as “illegal” and concluded that an “adequate remedy” would be to release him and afford him “adequate compensation”?

[Fiona Bruce]

That is right. As we have heard, Mr Tsege was convicted in absentia in 2009 while he was at home with his family in London. He was not formally notified of the proceedings brought against him, nor of his ultimate sentence. Obviously, he was not given any opportunity to defend himself and the US State Department has described his 2009 trial as an act of “political retaliation” that was

“lacking in basic elements of due process”.

Mr Tsege was sentenced under Ethiopia’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation of 2009—a statute that the Foreign Office has noted has been used to

“restrict…opposition and dissent”

by targeting

“members of opposition groups, journalists”

and

“peaceful protesters.”

Mr Tsege was tried alongside scores of other political prisoners including his 82-year-old father. What is very concerning is that the anti-terrorism proclamation under which he was convicted was not introduced until a month after his in absentia trial began in June 2009. I know that many hon. Members share my concern about retrospective legislation, particularly in the case of criminal charges.

During the proceedings, the prosecution amended the charges against Mr Tsege, dropping the initial allegation that he was involved in plotting a coup d’état and introducing instead charges of conspiring to dismantle the constitutional order. I understand that UK authorities have noted that at no point have they been presented with any evidence against Mr Tsege from the Ethiopian authorities that would stand up in a British court, despite the requests made of the Ethiopian Government.

The civil liberties group, Reprieve, which I commend on highlighting the case, said that Mr Tsege was bound, hooded and bundled onto a plane headed for Ethiopia. It should be noted that the circumstances of his abduction, which have been widely publicised, have not been disputed by Ethiopian officials. The fact remains that the Ethiopian Government did not request his lawful extradition while he was living in London, nor have they produced any evidence to back up the claim of an extradition arrangement with Yemen. His kidnap at an overseas airport is a clear breach of the established international legal extradition process.

Further, the UN special rapporteur on torture reported to the United Nations Human Rights Council that Ethiopia’s treatment of Mr Tsege has violated the convention against torture. In addition to the marked difference in Mr Tsege’s physical appearance before and after abduction in his television appearances—it is clearly discernible—a British psychiatrist commissioned by Reprieve, who has assessed his case, has noted his deteriorating mental state. I understand that Ethiopia has not allowed the British Government to have a private consular visit, making it impossible for Mr Tsege to report directly instances of suspected mistreatment.

There have been some consular visits, albeit not private. When Mr Tsege was with the UK ambassador to Ethiopia he stressed that he only ever advocated the conduct of politics “by peaceful means.” That echoes his testimony before the European Parliament in 2006 in which he encouraged Members of the European Parliament to back the

“peaceful, just and fair struggle of the people of Ethiopia for freedom and democracy”.

In the years before his abduction, Mr Tsege mounted a global campaign to draw worldwide attention to concerning developments in Ethiopia. He testified before the European Parliament and the United States Congress, encouraging the latter to introduce legislation to encourage Ethiopia to engage in “democratisation and economic liberalisation”.

Some organisations, such as the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which has investigated the case, have concluded that the only proper solution is for Mr Tsege to be immediately released and returned home. It could well be argued that the UK Government should demand that. If, following his release, the Ethiopian Government then wish to pursue a case against him, they should do so legitimately by seeking his extradition and observing the norms of legal process. What is the Minister’s response to that and what steps have the UK Government taken in that regard? Have they pushed for Mr Tsege’s release from Ethiopia, or have diplomatic efforts been limited, as has been reported, to efforts to try to convince the Ethiopian Government to grant him access to a lawyer, which, as we have heard, will be of limited benefit at this stage? Perhaps the UK Government are aware of information that is not in the public domain; what can the Minister tell us to help us to understand the otherwise inexplicable treatment of Mr Tsege?

In a recent letter to supporters of Andy Tsege, the Foreign Secretary wrote that

“Britain does not interfere in the legal systems of other countries”,

but it is interesting to note that in recent years, two UK citizens who were arbitrarily detained have been released: Lee Po in China and Karl Andree in Saudi Arabia. I understand that, in both cases, their release came about following intervention by the UK.

The question is whether we believe that the circumstances of Mr Tsege’s arrest and subsequent treatment are acceptable. Surely they are not.

[Dr Mathias]

Does my hon. Friend have concerns, as I do, that the UK Government may be giving aid worth millions of pounds to a country that is maltreating a UK citizen?

[Fiona Bruce]

I was going to observe later in my speech that I had the privilege of visiting Ethiopia as a member of the Select Committee on International Development in 2013 to look at UK aid projects there.

[Mr Laurence Robertson]

It is my understanding that no UK aid actually goes to Governments these days. Certainly, it does not go to the Ethiopian Government. I think that it goes much further down the line.

[Fiona Bruce]

It is now often the case that aid is not paid bilaterally to many countries. None the less, UK aid money is being spent in Ethiopia, as has been indicated by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias).

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

While the hon. Lady is on the subject of aid, I wonder whether she had an opportunity on her visit to look at the MSc in security sector management. I understand it was initially funded through a Department for International Development programme and it appears that some of the people who were responsible for Mr Tsege’s detention had taken part.

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

Before the hon. Lady responds, I gently suggest that other Members wish to speak and that I will call the Front Benchers at half-past 10 o’clock.

[Fiona Bruce]

Thank you, Mr Flello. I did not have an opportunity to see the project to which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) referred.

In conclusion, disrespect for basic human rights continues to be widespread throughout the globe. I see that all too frequently as chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission. It is in that capacity, as well as in my capacity as a Member of Parliament, that I raise concerns about Mr Tsege today. As the Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, so eloquently stated:

“Upholding human rights is in the interest of all. Respect for human rights advances well-being for every individual, stability for every society, and harmony for our interconnected world.”

[Robert Flello (in the Chair)]

There are now six Members who wish to speak. We have 29 and a bit minutes. I call Kerry McCarthy to demonstrate how succinct Members can be.