Freedom of Religion and Belief in Nigeria

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered freedom of religion and belief in Nigeria.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the motion. This subject is close to my heart. I visited Nigeria the year before last with the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. I declare an interest as chair of that group. We speak for those with Christian belief, those with other beliefs and those with no beliefs, because we genuinely believe, as I know you do, Mr Paisley, in the love that our God has for others and the importance of reaching out across the world, where many obscene, difficult and heartbreaking things are happening, to speak up for human rights and to be a voice for the voiceless—those who have no one to speak for them. We will try to put forward that voice in this House in a constructive and positive way.

The debate was requested, and the Backbench Business Committee agreed to it, primarily because, at Christmas last year, almost 200 Christians were murdered because of their beliefs. They were attacked, murdered and abused by Fulani tribesmen. Those who were able to do so fled into the forest. Their houses and churches were destroyed and their property was taken. Those events were massive and really worrying.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for bringing this subject to the House, and for all he does to ensure that the concerning situation of people who are persecuted and discriminated against because of their religion or beliefs is continuously highlighted in this place and in the country. Does he agree that when there are attacks like the one at Christmas in Plateau state, this Government ought to ensure that they, with others, bring immediate help and relief, and look to see how they can help with rehousing, for example, and meeting all the urgent and immediate needs of people who suffer such atrocities?

[Jim Shannon]

I wholeheartedly agree. We need to be effective and probably urgent in our response. We have much faith in the Minister; I am sure that when he responds, he will give us some ideas about how that can be done better.

Ever mindful of Nigeria, on which we are focusing today—I referred earlier to the attacks before Christmas, my visit to the country and some of the lessons we learnt—it is frustrating and particularly worrying that, just over a year since we visited, things are no better. When we were there, campaigning was starting. We arrived in the early hours of the morning—I think it was about midnight or1 am—and wondered, as we went from the airport to our hotel, why there were crowds. I found out the reason when we got to the hotel, because a political document had been left on a chair: all the rallies were happening in the early hours of the morning. That was when we were hoping to see some change, but I understand that the elections have been postponed. We have great concerns about that.

The influence of people from Northern Ireland is always greater than people suspect. When I was leaving Nigeria, a young man came up to me in the airport and said in a Northern Irish accent, “Hello, Jim. How are you doing?” What are the chances of speaking to somebody with a Northern Irish accent at the airport after midnight in Nigeria? He turned out to have worked in the office of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) many moons ago; he was there as part of a lobbying and information group that was working on behalf of the opposition. The chances of having the change that we, and the Nigerians, all wish for have to be considered.

I am a well-known advocate for those who cannot speak out or who try to speak out but simply cannot be heard. Today is another opportunity to highlight the desperate daily battle that people face, seemingly without anyone knowing or understanding their plight. Today I seek to again speak out and draw attention to the horrific situation that exists for too many people throughout Nigeria at present.

Violations of FORB, along with broader discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, are often particularly serious in situations of crisis, emergency and conflict, which exacerbate it. I think we can all agree that the world is in turmoil. The Bible says that there will be wars and rumours of wars. How true that is across the world at this moment, nowhere more so than throughout the African nations, particularly Nigeria. What happens in Nigeria will dictate what happens across all of Africa. With a population of almost 220 million, Nigeria is the cauldron for the rest of Africa. That middle band of Africa is awash with weapons, arms and people with evil intent. That concerns me.

[Jim Shannon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to underline that point, and those stark figures illustrate it very well. Unfortunately, it seems to be the killing ground for those of an ethnic or religious minority background, particularly Christians.

[Fiona Bruce]

I spoke with a member of the Nigerian diaspora yesterday. He called what is happening, “a prolonged national nightmare of tragedy after tragedy,” as these attacks continue unabated and asked, “Who are supplying the AK47s and the rocket launchers to herders in the crisis-ridden middle belt? Who is sponsoring these wars and these crimes in Nigeria? Who are the international funders?” Is that not a question that all of us in this country should be asking, together with the international community, so that we can address this?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady again makes a very pertinent intervention, which illustrates the issue I referred to earlier. Nigeria and the middle belt of Africa are awash with weapons. We need to address those issues.

The ethnic nationalist groups fighting for greater power for ethnic Fulani people overwhelmingly target civilians with violence in northern Nigeria. In north central Nigerian, Christians represent the majority of victims of that violence. There was a recent attack, at Christmas, in which 200 Christians lost their lives. As parliamentarians, it is our duty to denounce and address such action against freedom of religion or belief, which is a basic human right. One young American lady said to me just last week that the United States has failed to address this situation—I understand that the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) was in the States for a weekend, and I am sure she heard similar remarks. Just last week, that American lady urged me to ensure that we do not fail. We are having this debate today, and we will not fail when it comes to addressing the issues—those who are here will ensure that.

I am fully aware of the limitations of our Government’s ability to control the situation in Nigeria. But by the same token, I believe that there is more that we can and must do to make changes on the ground to get help and support to those who need it most, and simply to do what is right—it is right to do these things. In addition to the recent Christmas massacre, Islamic insurgent-directed Fulani gangs killed at least 10 Christians in Taraba state—another in a catalogue of murder—while a dozen similar gunmen kidnapped over 150 people in Zamfara state, and Boko Haram killed 15 rice farmers in Borno state. It seems to never end.

Those incidents serve to further escalate tensions in a country where violence divides people and erodes trust, threatening Nigerians’ freedom of religion or belief. Historically, violence in Nigeria has fallen along ethnic or religious lines. Violence by Boko Haram, the JAS— I will not try to pronounce the full name; you might understand if I said it in an Ulster Scots accent, Mr Paisley, but I suspect that no one else will—and Islamic State in West Africa threaten the freedom of religion or belief of Nigerians. Despite statements in favour of inter-faith unity, the Nigerian Government—I say this respectfully—have generally failed to enact meaningful policy reforms and changes to address the drivers of the violence impacting on religious freedom. I remember being outraged when I first heard about Boko Haram’s actions against women and children and the trafficking of those young girls. Even today, one young girl, Leah Sharibu, is still under the control of Boko Haram.

[Fiona Bruce]

Is it not correct that Leah Sharibu is still in captivity because she refused to renounce her Christian faith? Is it not also correct that while, for example, moderate Muslims and others suffer attacks, it appears that Christians in particular are being targeted? Churches are attacked during services, as Owo church was at Pentecost last year, and there was the attack at Christmas in Plateau state. It is a tragedy that, somewhere in the world, every two hours a Christian is killed, and that more than four fifths of those are in Nigeria.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

Again, I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and for her other contributions to this debate.

When we visited Nigeria, I remember well the stories we were told by some of the Christians who had been displaced. Those internally displaced peoples informed us that when they were being attacked, the police station was only about half a mile the other side, but while the attack was ongoing, there seemed to be no movement, unfortunately, by the police or the army to reach out and help. It is frustrating that we should have to record such incidents, where the Nigerian police and army have been unable or unwilling to respond when they should. It also annoys me that sometimes the media are silent. It is time for the media to highlight the increasing numbers of murders, atrocities, persecution and kidnappings of young people, as well as the murders of their mums, dads and grandparents.

In Nigeria, 12 northern states have adopted sharia law, even though the constitution recognises the right of freedom of religion or belief—in other words, a right to have a different religion, and not to be subject to another religion in any place. Christians, however, are charged in sharia courts, even though such courts have no jurisdiction over them according to the Nigerian constitution, and even though Christians’ evidence and their testimonies are worth half that of a Muslim. Will the Minister give us some idea of what discussions have taken place between the UK and Nigerian Governments about ensuring that sharia law, contrary to the constitution, does not take precedence over Christians and their beliefs across Nigeria?

A predominantly Muslim ethnic group, the Fulani, have also experienced significant persecution and statelessness across west Africa for several decades. As a primarily pastoralist community, the Fulani have experienced growing disenfranchisement in the country. The marginalisation stems from federal and state government preferences for developing agriculture and the livestock sector, on which the Fulani solely depend. There are other issues, especially ecological shocks from climate change and growing competition for resources. Government authorities have failed to curb the flow of weapons—the hon. Member for Congleton referred to that—or to protect pastoralists’ property from growing criminality.

We need a strong hand from the Nigerian Government, through their police and their army, to protect their people. What is the duty of our Government here, and of our Army and our Minister? It is to protect our people. I commend our Government for their stance; Nigeria and its people deserve the same.

Open Doors, a charity that I support prayerfully and practically and whose information I highly regard—others in this Chamber have the same opinion—has provided information about other religious minorities that are also being attacked and abducted by the majority groups. Followers of African traditional religions are subject to attacks and abductions in their hundreds—not just ones, twos, tens and twenties, but hundreds. Muslims who do not partake in militant attacks are also vulnerable to attack, because they do not participate.

When we were in Nigeria, we made the case clearly. We met many people of the Muslim faith who told us that they were as absolutely disgusted at what was happening against Christians as we were. We have to divorce those who are involved in terrorist campaigns from ordinary people who have a different faith but do not try to push it on to others.

In the north-west and north-central states, many Muslims have been killed, abducted or forced to flee their villages. Ethnic Shi’ites are banned in Nigeria—again, they deserve to have their faith and to worship their God in the way they wish—and it concerns me when I hear of such things happening.

The Government response to extreme violence against civilians has been insufficient to meet their obligations to ensure security and justice for victims. In the north-east, communities have alleged that Government security forces deliberately avoid responding to warnings of violence until after attacks have taken place. Even when they do respond, Christian civilians have reported that they respond with stronger force to alerts about impending violence against Muslim communities than to violence against Christian communities. That institutional bias must be addressed, as the hon. Member for Congleton said. It is clear that what people told me on my visit to Nigeria happens regularly, which is concerning, so I am keen to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that.

Due to the lack of a federal response, some state and local officials have called for civilians to take up arms and defend themselves. Although they do that with good intent—there is good reason to do it—the result is the militarisation of identity groups and an increase in the human rights abuses associated with poorly trained vigilante groups with little to no accountability, so that is not the best way of doing things. It is only right that there is Government enforcement; it is not up to individuals, paramilitary groups or church groups to carry out such actions, but they continue in the southern part of Nigeria.

What worries me is that a conflict that started in the north-east of Nigeria has moved into the centre, and is now moving south. In the south, the Igbo, a largely Christian ethnic group, have issues with political representation, given that the country’s quota system for state revenue distribution privileges the comparatively more populous north and south-west of the country. At the same time, more political, religious and human rights groups are the target of violence. It worries me that the Igbo, the largest ethnic group in the south, are being disadvantaged because they happen to be Christians. No group should be displaced or prevented from accessing aid, grants and advice for that reason.

[Fiona Bruce]

Several years ago, when I was in Nigeria, the UK Government sent some of our military personnel to work with the Nigerian security forces to address the issues causing the attacks by Boko Haram, but that did not stop them; indeed, as the hon. Gentleman said, the attacks have increased way beyond the northern part of Nigeria and now take place in the middle and even southern areas. What more can we do to assist the security forces? Working with others from the international community to do so is urgent.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for those words. We have a fantastic and incredibly important relationship with Nigeria; there are rich cultural, historical, economic and family connections between our two countries. When I was in Nigeria, I had the opportunity to speak to the British consulate, and the attaché, who was at some of those meetings, indicated that the United Kingdom Government were working closely with the Nigerian Government, but perhaps we have not seen enough of what could be done in a more tactical and advantageous way. One of the things we were told was that Nigeria was keen to have more helicopter support. The Minister is here to report from a human rights and religious point of view, but he has seen long and gallant service in the Army over many years, and he will understand the issue very clearly. I think we could do more, from a Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office point of view, to help the Nigerian army to take on the terrorist groups.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Member is being very generous to me in allowing interventions—I appreciate it greatly. I join him in acknowledging the Minister’s experience with regard to military matters. Is it not correct to say that it would not be simply an altruistic act for the UK to get involved in ensuring greater peace and security in Nigeria? It is also in all our interests, as it is in the world’s interest, because if young people in that huge country—Nigeria’s population is composed largely of young people—become disillusioned and disenchanted with their home country and seek to emigrate elsewhere across the world, denuding Nigeria of its young people and the skills they could be trained in, that would be an absolute tragedy for international peace and security, not just security in Nigeria.

[Jim Shannon]

Again, I thank the hon. Lady for the intervention. In my introduction, I mentioned the fact that Nigeria has almost 220 million people, and it is clearly the cauldron for what happens in the whole of Africa—what happens in Nigeria will indicate what happens elsewhere. So the hon. Lady is right to re-emphasise the importance of dealing with terrorism and atrocities and dealing fairly and equitably with each and every person, of whatever faith, in Nigeria. Ensuring that their human rights are respected, that the aid gets to them and that they are secure, happy and safe in their homes is so important, because if that fails in Nigeria—this is what the hon. Lady is reminding us of—it fails for all of Africa. That is why this debate is so important and, as the hon. Lady said, so critical.

To refer back to the Igbo people in the south, armed separatists defending Igbo interests target Muslim civilians, based on ethnic or religious identity, and have also attacked individuals of various faiths travelling to worship and to celebrate holidays in the region. The FORB violations in Nigeria impact everyone in Nigeria; that is where we are—everybody is affected. What happens for the Christians will have an effect elsewhere. What happens with the Muslims will have an effect elsewhere as well.

In terms of FORB, even the judiciary are an area of concern—I have to underline this issue. In the past year, a sharia court sentenced Sheikh Abduljabbar Kabara to death for blasphemy, which is contrary to the constitution of Nigeria, as a sharia court should not have the power to do so. Other judicial authorities sentenced humanist leader Mubarak Bala to 24 years in prison for blasphemy and other charges. Mubarak Bala has been incarcerated since 28 April 2020. We used our visit to speak to some of the judiciary and judges in Nigeria and to make a case. The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) will speak today for the Scots Nats. His hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) was in that delegation and made a very good case for the release of Mubarak. We thought we had made some headway on that, and the indications coming from the judiciary seemed to say that, but he is still in prison. I understand that he was given an option to leave the country, and his wife and child deserve to be able to be reunited with him, wherever that may be, in freedom. I said at the beginning of the debate that I speak up for those with a Christian faith, those with other faiths and those with no faith, and I mean that. The other members of the APPG mean it as well, and I think everyone in this room also means it. It is important to say that.

Additionally, a high court in Nigeria ruled that the blasphemy laws in the sharia penal codes are constitutional. In September, armed officers conducted a surprise raid on the presiding judge of the Kano court of appeal, who was the only judge who dissented from the ruling. Is there undue influence from the police and army on the judiciary? The question has to be asked. How impartial can those decisions be?

The Nigerian Government have failed to address the drivers of this violence and to prioritise justice for its victims. We must take action to address the systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom and human rights. The failures are clear. The Minister and his officials must think that I believe they have a magic wand. If only we all had a magic wand, imagine what we could do to fix things. I do not think they do have a magic wand, but I do think we can use our influence economically, culturally, historically and through families, because of the rich bond that is shared between Nigeria and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I know that there are limitations, but I do not believe that we are on the cusp of the limits; I believe that there is more engagement that can and should take place. When the Minister responds and tells us what has been done by the United Kingdom Government, I would be glad to hear that we are heading in a positive direction.

I believe that more on-the-ground missionaries could get involved. I have many in my constituency; in almost every church there are missionaries with contacts across the world, including in Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Nigeria—in large numbers—Swaziland and South Africa. I make that point because there is a non-governmental workforce that could be used as part of the Government network. I have suggested before that missionary groups are there for one purpose: not to be political or to change the direction or focus of the Government, but to help people. I think they could be part of the network that we have in the UK. I know that there may be a sense of, “What else can we be asking for?” when Members see my name next to a debate, but lives are in the balance. There are people in Nigeria who I will never meet in this world, but hopefully we will meet in the next. The innocence of children is at stake, and I believe we have more to give.

When I used to get tired at home and feel like there was nothing left to give, I would recall a biblical verse that my mum ingrained in me. I mentioned in the main Chamber yesterday that my mum got me a bank account when I was 16 and got me my pension when I was 18. She is a lady of great influence. She is the same height as the hon. Member for Congleton—about 5 feet 6 inches— and I am over 6 feet. I get the height from my dad, not my mum. My mum ingrained in me a thought that comes to mind.

Human Rights in Hong Kong

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

One of the examples of where attacks on FORB are unfolding in Hong Kong is education. Nearly 60% of Government-funded schools in Hong Kong are Church run, and they are now under the control of Beijing, which promotes its propaganda in the curriculum. Does the hon. Lady agree that believers can practise their faith only in name rather than in essence? Beijing controls religious freedom in Hong Kong by exerting total control over Churches, without closing them. That is the reality in Hong Kong.

[Fiona Bruce]

It is indeed, and if time permits I will go into more detail on that point.

I join others in paying tribute to Ben Rogers, who ably researched and drafted the “Sell Out My Soul” report. In a sense, it is inevitable that freedom or religion or belief in Hong Kong has been undermined, for two reasons. First, when freedom itself is dismantled, sooner or later religious freedom is impacted. All the basic rights set out in the universal declaration of human rights are interlinked and interdependent. We cannot have freedom of religion or belief without the freedoms of expression, association and assembly, and elsewhere I have argued that FORB is fundamental to all those freedoms. Secondly, like any autocratic regime, the CCP has always been inherently hostile to religion and has sought over the years to eradicate, suppress, control or co-opt religion, so it was inevitable that, as it exerted greater direct control over Hong Kong, undermining the high degree of autonomy set out in the one country, two systems principle, freedom of religion or belief would come under increasing pressure.

The campaign against religious freedom in Hong Kong is one of slow, subtle suffocation rather than sudden, dramatic crackdown. However, although the threats may be subtle, for those who have eyes to see, they are clear. Yes, people can still go to places of worship and access religious literature, but since the introduction of the draconian national security law in July 2020 and the climate of fear surrounding it, with almost all of Hong Kong’s other basic civil liberties—freedom of expression, association, assembly and so on—having been dismantled, inevitably there is a knock-on impact on religious freedom. It has created a chill factor, leading believers to keep quiet about their faith in public, and religious leaders themselves to make compromises, including widespread self-censorship by clergy in their sermons.

I will give some examples. In August 2020, Cardinal John Tong, apostolic administrator of the Hong Kong Catholic diocese at the time, instructed all Catholic priests to “watch your language” when preaching and to avoid “political” issues. A Protestant pastor, who has now left Hong Kong, claims that his church has removed all his sermons from the past 30 years from its website. Many churches no longer share sermons online. At least three prominent pastors have been arrested in Hong Kong. The most well-known case was the arrest of Hong Kong’s 91-year-old bishop emeritus, Cardinal Joseph Zen, in May 2022. Then there was Pastor Garry Pang, convicted of sedition and sentenced to a year in jail, and Pastor Alan Keung Ka-wai, arrested in January last year for producing and selling a book that was allegedly seditious. Arguably, all those cases relate to political rather than religious activities, but those individuals were acting according to their consciences, informed and inspired by their faith.

We see religious freedom threatened in other ways. Charity laws have been tightened. The US State Department’s 2022 report on international religious freedom noted:

“Religious groups may register as a society, a tax-exempt organization, or both”.

However, with reference to organisations seeking tax exemption, it added:

“Government tax regulations provide that any group, including religious groups, involved in activities deemed to endanger national security would not be recognized as a charitable organization.”

The message is clear.

An issue of even more concern is how church-run schools in the education sector are a particular target for the Chinese Communist party’s stealthy undermining of religious freedom. As one religious scholar observed:

“The CCP knows very well that in order to control a state, the first step is to control the mind[s] of young children.”

In Hong Kong, only a small percentage of Government-funded schools are actually Government run. As we have heard, the majority—at least 60%—are run by religious groups. Under the Basic Law, those schools must adhere to a curriculum that ensures that the CCP’s ideological narratives feature prominently. The crackdown on freedom of expression resulting from the national security law began to impact Hong Kong’s church-run schools almost immediately. In August 2020, the Hong Kong Catholic diocese issued a letter to the principals of all Catholic primary and secondary schools, urging them to enhance students’ awareness of the new national security legislation and the national anthem law, and cultivate “correct values” on national identity.

Human Rights in Myanmar

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Sir Edward, for giving me the chance to make a contribution. I thank the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) for leading the debate and all hon. Members for their passionate, detailed and significant speeches. It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who knows more than most about the subject. I thank her for sharing her knowledge with everyone in the Chamber, and those outside who are watching.

As everyone probably knows, I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. I will take a specific point of view that is similar to that taken by the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), but I will speak generally about the issue. It is a pleasure to see the shadow Ministers in their place, and especially to see the Minister, who grasps what we are saying very well. He knows what we are after. He knows the answers that we seek, and I am hopeful that he will give us the encouragement that we need, which, more importantly, will be encouragement for the people who are suffering in Myanmar. I will illustrate that suffering, which others have illustrated exceptionally well, in my short contribution.

When I think of this subject, the thing that always comes to mind first is the astounding atrocities. Everyone has outlined them, especially the hon. Member for Bradford West. Such atrocities are taking place not only in Myanmar; we had a debate yesterday in Westminster Hall on those occurring in Nigeria. In Afghanistan, too, women and young girls are denied the basic rights that we have as a norm across the world. That was illustrated in the main news on BBC 1 this morning. Today’s debate is an opportunity to shed some more light and make people aware of such human rights abuses, and to support the hon. Member for Bradford West and others in their requests.

I always think that freedom of religious belief and human rights march together. They are not separate; they are one and the same. Religious minorities often find that human rights abuses fall significantly more upon them than upon others, because they seem to be the target. Whenever we speak out for those without freedom of religious belief we speak out for those facing human rights abuses as well. Myanmar ranks at No. 14 in the Open Doors world watch list. Although last year it ranked at No. 12, the fact that it has dropped two places does not for a second reflect an improvement in the rights of Christians in Myanmar. Regrettably, the change in Myanmar’s ranking is a result of persecution in other countries worsening at a faster rate. It is not that Myanmar is improving; others have just got worse and overtaken it.

The press regularly marks the persecution that takes place. There are so many examples across all of south-east Asia, but today’s debate is about Myanmar. Unfortunately, the plight of Christians in Myanmar has worsened in the past year, having deteriorated ever since the military took control in February 2021. This is not the first debate we have had in Westminster Hall on these issues, nor is it the first debate in which everyone present has tried to highlight them. As we know, violence and fighting are increasing across Myanmar, but Christians are suffering disproportionately. Churches are targeted, converts are beaten, and community resources including such basics as clean water are all too often denied to Christians.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Member is, as ever, making a compassionate speech. He referred to churches being targeted. Does he agree that the Myanmar regime’s deliberate targeting of places of worship for attacks, burning and, in some cases, wholesale destruction should be particularly condemned, not only because international instruments such as The Hague convention call for the protection of places of worship, but critically because, so often and particularly in times of conflict, places of worship are focal points where communities gather to support one another and to seek to promote forgiveness, reconciliation and peace?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is so right. For many across Myanmar and the world, churches are the focal point for the local community. That is where people gather to worship, socialise and interact with one another. Although the church is just a building, it is a focal point where people can reassure, comfort and help each other. Whether that is physically, prayerfully or emotionally, it is really important.

[Fiona Bruce]

Of course, we are not just talking about the members of that particular faith group; we are talking about support for the wider community, which is so often offered in such cases.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is right to clarify that. It is absolutely right that whenever someone is being persecuted, whenever someone is under pressure, whenever someone’s human rights are being abused, they do not have to be a Christian to go to the church. Muslims and people from other religious groups can go. It is the social interaction, the encouragement, the brotherhood and the sisterhood that brings it all together. The hon. Lady is right to clarify that.

One thing that really bothers me—I know that it bothers others as well; the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar), who will speak shortly, will probably mention it too—is the terrible, criminal, wicked, vindictive abuse of women and girls. The hon. Member for Bradford West set the scene in referring to those who fled across the border, especially women and children. They have experienced some of the most terrible, mind-boggling and sickening abuse.

Others have asked the Minister this, but I am going to ask him as well. Those who have carried out abuse know that they may get away with it today. They certainly will not get away with it in the next world, because there will be a day of justice for them, but I want to see that day of justice happen a wee bit earlier for them, in this world. Will the Minister give us an indication that those who have carried out some of these despicable, awful crimes will be held accountable? There are some that are yet to be held accountable. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow referred to some people being able to walk the streets of London, even though their countries are guilty of some of these crimes. That must be addressed.

Furthermore, as is often the case, women from religious minorities face double persecution. Christian women are forced to adopt disguises in public and are prevented from taking the sacrament of holy communion, which is a basic part of our right to worship and to religious belief. Christians in Myanmar cannot even do that.

The impact of the fighting in Myanmar on Christian displacement is particularly worrying. According to Open Doors research, record numbers of Christians in Myanmar have become internally displaced people or refugees and are living in camps or churches without adequate food or healthcare.

Extreme Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar poses another serious threat to Myanmar’s Christian population. For example, Na Ta La schools aim to convert Christian children to Buddhism, even though their parents do not want that. Buddhist nationalists seem to be pushing that with some severity, effectively stopping Christianity spreading to the next generation. Freedom of religious belief means having the freedom to worship your God as you wish and to have the education that your parents wish. Such Buddhist nationalist tendencies are not prevented by the Government, with actors getting away with impunity. Until legal protections are extended to Christians and other minorities alike, there will always be disproportionate targeting of religious minorities and impunity for the actors.

Is the Minister able to give some encouragement that aid is being provided to the minority Christian populations in Myanmar and the surrounding countries? I underline again the need to ensure that those who carry out terrible crimes are held accountable.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is making a particular plea to the Minister, who has vast experience of development work—indeed, we spent many recesses with others on the Umubano project, working on aid internationally. What often seems not to be recognised, although I am confident that the Minister will do so, is that the specific targeting of people because of their beliefs, and the specific targeting of women and girls, is often a driver of poverty. It is often a root cause of people living in dire need of aid and development support. That is exactly what we see in Myanmar today.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady clearly underlines my—and indeed her—request to the Minister to ensure that some aid and assistance can be given directly to those groups. They are under terrible pressure. This morning, we probably all had a fairly good breakfast. We were lucky. Some of the Christians in those countries today will not have breakfast, a bed to sleep on or a roof over their head. It is about how we can help those people.

Those are all issues to be concerned with to help us all in realising our goal of an environment in which we can live, preach and worship freely. We are here in this House to represent those who do not have a voice to speak with; we are often the voice for the voiceless. My constituents feel the same. The hon. Lady and I get vast amounts of correspondence on these matters—I suspect that we all do. I frequently receive correspondence from Open Doors sent directly to Westminster by my constituents. The debate gives us a chance to make requests to the Minister and his Department directly and encourage them to ensure that aid and support get to the people who need it. We are pushing at an open door, as I know he wants to respond in a positive fashion; we will get that shortly. We must look for improvements and not a deterioration in the rights of people to worship their God as they wish and not to have their human rights suppressed.

Religious Minorities in Nigeria

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his time as envoy. We all recognise his interest in Nigeria. Although he is no longer the envoy, I am not surprised he is here to participate in the debate. I thank him for his knowledge. It is clear to me, and probably others as well, that Islamic State and Daesh are very much in the background. They are using the unrest and perhaps the grievances as well to escalate the violence. The Government and the police and security forces in particular have been accused of deliberately standing by as attacks happen. The impunity must end and our Government—our Minister—should not continue to turn a blind eye when it persists.

In January armed gunmen invaded the home of Father Isaac Achi, a Catholic priest in Niger state, setting his residence ablaze and burning him to death. The attackers also shot his colleague, Father Collins, as he tried to escape. Days later, when the state’s minority Christian community marched to protest security force inaction at the local police station—not in a violent fashion—authorities called in reinforcements and responded with force against peaceful demonstrators. It frustrates me that that is just another example of the Nigerian security forces failing to ensure security for religious minorities and other vulnerable communities.

Many Members will remember the attack during Pentecost Sunday on St Francis Xavier Church in Ondo state. The attack led to the death of 50 worshippers and injured more than 70. Bishop Jude of the Ondo diocese visited Parliament in the months after the attack. I and probably many others met him when he was here. He told Members that despite Government buildings being across the road from the church, the gunmen were able to act with impunity for 20 minutes. Nobody tried to detain them or stop what was happening.

The attack on St Francis Xavier Church is nowhere near an isolated incident. During Holy Week there were numerous attacks on Christians across Nigeria. On Palm Sunday, during an early morning prayer vigil at the church in the village of Akenawe in Benue state, gunmen entered the church, killed a young boy and kidnapped three worshippers, including the church leader, Pastor Gwadue Kwaghtyo. Three days later, on April 5, gunmen killed at least 50 people in the village of Umogidi.

On Good Friday gunmen raided an elementary school building in the village of Ngban in Benue state, which serves as a shelter for 100 displaced Christian farmers and their families. The attack left 43 people dead and more than 40 injured. On the same day gunmen abducted at least 80 people, mostly women and children, in Zamfara state. The Catholic diocese of Makurdi reported that 94 Christians were killed during Holy Week in Benue state alone. Where is our Government’s response to that targeted violence? I am respectful to the Minister, but I need answers—I think we all do—to see what exactly has happened.

While violence has historically been concentrated in the northern states in Nigeria and perpetrated by Boko Haram, recent years have seen the middle belt become the epicentre. Benue state in particular has been badly affected. All those examples indicate exactly what is happening. Fulani herders traditionally migrated through pasture lands in the middle belt region. However, the desertification of the Chad basin has led to those groups being forced to migrate further south, bringing them into conflict with settled farms. Fulani militia targeted non-Muslim communities, trying to secure grazing lands. Five hundred churches in Benue state have been destroyed and more than 200 have been abandoned. That is 700 churches with all their congregations affected.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

The hon. Member is making a compassionate speech, as ever. Will he, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, join me, as vice-chair, in calling on the President of Nigeria to be similarly compassionate and exercise clemency by granting a pardon to the young Sufi singer, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, whose situation we have mentioned before in this House and who is in prison, having been sentenced to death by hanging? His case is currently on appeal. He was accused of blasphemy because a song he wrote was circulated, as I understand it, by someone else on social media.

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the hon. Lady for all she does. Each and every one of us in this House recognise her good work and I join with her in calling on the President to grant a pardon to this young man. It seems to me that he is guilty of no crime and it is only right that he should be released. I hope that will be the case.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom raised concerns about a spate of lethal attacks against Christian communities in Kano and Kaduna states. Central Nigeria is known as the country’s bread basket, but because farmers are being killed in their fields, many are afraid to go out to work. First, we need to recognise that security must be obtained for everyone in Nigeria, and the police and the army must be active in making sure there is peace in the streets and securing peace for people to work, live and not be brutalised by others. That is really important. So often, much of the discussion focuses on Christians in Nigeria, and for many reasons. Attacks on Christians receive more headlines in the western media and often, monitoring groups have links to the global church networks. However, the situation for other religious minorities is precarious: the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) rightly mentioned the Baha’i. For humanists, atheists and non-religious belief groups, discrimination and persecution is a fact of life. Many in those groups are forced to live in hiding, making it hard to estimate the number of people in Nigeria of non-religious belief.

I want to give the example, along with a question for the Minister at the end, of Mubarak Bala, a Nigerian human rights activist and president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria. In April 2022, he was sentenced to 24 years in prison for posting blasphemous content on Facebook. He was originally arrested in 2020 and held without charge for more than a year. He faced charges before the Kano State High Court in connection with Facebook posts that were deemed to have caused a public disturbance because of their blasphemous content. In addition to being arbitrarily detained for more than a year before being charged, there have been several other violations of the rights to a fair trial, which include being denied access to his legal representation. I want to express my thanks to the Minister and to the United Kingdom Government, which have been repeatedly outspoken in support of Mubarak Bala’s release. When we were in Nigeria last year, we met some of the Ministers responsible. At that time, we felt we were moving towards a solution. Can the Minister update us on where that is?

Nigeria is also home to a variety of traditional beliefs and indigenous religions. However, they often face discrimination and have less legal recognition. The majority of the discrimination affects children and is particularly prevalent at school. While students have a legal right to wear headscarves, crosses and other symbols of Christian or Muslim faiths, schools have prohibited students from wearing symbols of traditional faiths, such as prayer beads. Schools are obligated to provide both Christian and Islamic education for students, but have no such requirements for traditional beliefs, leaving members of those communities forced to select either the Christian or Islamic course track against their parents’ wishes. Finally, the Nigerian Government recognise the official holidays of Islam and Christianity, but they have refused to recognise holy days common to traditional African religions. Therefore, when we speak for those of a Christian faith, those of other faiths and those of no faith, we do so for everyone in Nigeria—I want to put that on record.

I will come to the horrific case raised by the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers). On 12 May, Deborah Samuel was murdered by her classmates for blasphemy following a message on WhatsApp. She had passed her exams at Shehu Shagari College of Education in Wamako, Sokoto state, and she posted a voice message in a group WhatsApp saying:

“Jesus Christ is the greatest. He helped me pass my exams.”

Deborah was accused of blasphemy and forcibly taken from the security room. While they were trying to take her from the room to a local police station, she was attacked by a mob, stoned to death and burned beyond recognition.

Many of us in this room have said that Jesus Christ is the greatest and has helped us in our health and jobs, and in all our lives. We have done it and never had any fear; Deborah Samuel did it in Nigeria and lost her life because of it, so the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet is absolutely right. Her killers acted with a sense of impunity. In one video, men with sticks can be seen beating the lifeless, bloody body of a woman reported to be Deborah Samuel. The video also showed young men celebrating, with one man holding up a matchbox and saying he used it to set her on fire and kill her—such gross social media and gross debauchery against an innocent Christian.

Efforts by the authorities to identify and arrest those involved in the murder of Deborah Samuel were met with violent protest. It is nearly one year later, and no one has been prosecuted for her murder. The last statement from the Sokoto state police in August said that they are still looking for the killers.

Legal Rights to Access Abortion

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Monday 28th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

It is very interesting that a large number of organisations, as my right hon. Friend has mentioned, are joining together in what I referred to earlier as a national and, indeed, international campaign to see the law changed on abortion. It is all part of a co-ordinated move to reduce the protection that already exists in our country today for the unborn child.

[Jim Shannon]

I fully support what the hon. Lady is saying. In my contribution I referred to the Royal College of Midwives and the 1,000 midwives who expressed concern the direction this is going. Opinion is divided between those in favour of abortion and those who are against. Clearly, we cannot move forward when there is division among the doctors and nurses themselves.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. In this country we already allow abortions to term where the unborn child has a relatively minor and correctable physical condition. I have spoken about that many times before in the House because I have a son who was born with a club foot. Some 90% of babies with Down’s syndrome are aborted. A right to abortion would open the door to even more abortions after 24 weeks —a period of time inconsistent with medical advances that now enable babies prematurely born before that time to survive to 22, and in some cases even 21, weeks.

Religious Education in Modern Britain

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Dame Maria. I too thank the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) for setting the scene so well and for giving us a chance to participate. It is good to see the Minister is his place, and I look forward to hearing his comments, as well as those of the shadow Minister.

This debate could include many conflicting opinions, yet I trust we can all come from a place where we respect the ideal of faith. Although we may treasure our individual faiths, there is undoubtedly a place for all in the diverse United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I know that the ideal of religious education differs from region to region. I bring the Northern Ireland perspective to these debates, as I always do, and that is somewhat different yet again. The importance of religious and theological teaching could not be more prominent today, given the expansion of belief and the ever-changing faiths we all have.

It is great to be here today to discuss the importance of religion in schools, both primary and secondary. According to the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, religious education in Northern Ireland is a compulsory part of the school curriculum. As I am sure all hon. Members are aware, Northern Ireland is no stranger to different and diverse religious beliefs and the impact they can have on modern society. For young people to be able to understand our changing world, they must be able to interpret different religious issues.

The Department for Education and the four main Churches in Northern Ireland define the religious studies curriculum, allowing for the teaching of the revelation of God, the Christian church and morality from both Protestant and Roman Catholic perspectives. That is as it should be, because the personal relationship someone has with the Lord Jesus is what is important, not their denomination or the church they go to.

Seven out of 10 people—73%—surveyed across the United Kingdom—agreed that the role of religious education in schools is to provide pupils with opportunities to learn about other people, beliefs and cultures. A further 65% stated that the subject also allows young people to evaluate their own political beliefs. That is why the hon. Member for Cleethorpes referred to political beliefs with a religious viewpoint.

I understand that some young people nowadays have become disillusioned with religion, but it is crucial that they have a basic understanding of how religion plays a part in modern society and indeed in modern Britain. Parents are allowed to withdraw their children from some or all aspects of the teaching of religious education, but I always encourage them not to do that, regardless of what they may think of that religion. Having strong faith oneself is one thing, but being able to understand and respect other people’s faith starts from a young age—as early as P4 teaching in Northern Ireland.

The High Court in Northern Ireland ruled that exclusively Christian religious education and worship was discriminatory. However, we must ensure that this ruling, and the calls for it to be considered UK-wide, do not diminish the place of the larger practised religions, such as Christianity, in religious education, but rather allow learning about other faiths equally. I have the utmost belief in Christ as my saviour, but that does not mean that the faiths of Judaism, Sikhism or Islam are of no interest to me.

I can recall the 1960s and 1970s, when I was at secondary college. Our religious education teacher asked the class whether we wanted to know about other religions, and the answer from us all was that yes, we did. Our teacher then introduced us over a period of time to other religions. In the closed society we were in, we perhaps did not have any knowledge of other religions. That teaching gave us an opportunity to understand these things at an early stage. Through another teacher in a different subject I had the chance to understand Irish history. As a proud Unionist, it did not do me any harm to understand Irish history—understanding it a wee bit better never made me less of a Unionist. It does not harm anyone to understand things from another perspective, but it does let people develop a wider understanding and respect for others, which is what I try to do in my life.

We live in an ever-changing world; nowadays people can believe and be practically anything. In my eyes, one thing that does not change is the importance of religion—not just my own belief in Christianity, but everyone else’s beliefs as well. As chair of the APPGs for international freedom of religion or belief, and for Pakistani minorities, I know that the study of religious education allows us a chance to learn about religions without feeling the socialisation or pressure of today’s society.

As always, there was not a thing that the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said that I do not agree with. She touched on the Uyghurs, the Falun Gong in China, the Baha’i in Iran, the Yazidis in Iraq and the Rohingya Muslims. In Nigeria, which we visited in May and June, we ascertained just how bad the persecution of Christians was, but it is getting worse—there is less understanding. That is so frustrating, because the people we talked to told us they were trying to bring things together, but the reality is that that is not happening.

[Fiona Bruce]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is not too lofty a thing to say that helping our young people understand how important it is to respect the freedom of religion or belief of others of different faiths and beliefs contributes towards nothing less than global peace? So many atrocities across the world start small and locally and then grow. If we can develop a generation in this country that has respect, and we can promote that across the world, we will be able to stop local friction developing so that people can learn how to live together peaceably. We will then see a better world for the next generation.

[Jim Shannon]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady. That is something we should all strive to make happen. I am reminded of the Hindus in Pakistan and the Ahmadi Muslims in India as examples of people across the world with a different religious viewpoint who are terribly persecuted, both physically and mentally.

My youngest staff member chose to drop religious education at GCSE in order to focus on mathematics, as that was what she wanted to do. She has since said on numerous occasions that she does not feel informed about what people believe and why they choose to believe it. She says it was great to pursue mathematics, but in a way it is a pity that she did not get that understanding at an earlier age.

While I appreciate that education is devolved and our curriculum guidelines differ slightly, the principle that religion is important remains the same. I call on the Education Secretary—we are pushing at an open door—and respective regional Ministers to ensure that the teaching of religion in modern Britain remains in our schools to help to tackle religious discrimination and promote respect for others with a different religion or faith. It is difficult to see a path forwards if we do not know where we have come from. For me, the teachings of Christ, which tell a child that they are loved and chosen, that there is a plan for lives and that they are not alone, are imperative. When social media tells them that the opposite is true, we need the calming influence of religious education in schools.

I am far from perfect—I am probably the most imperfect person in this room—but I believe that the creator, God, has a job that he has set only me to do. Oh, that more of our young people across this great nation would understand their unique, divinely appointed role and that, no matter what the world may say to them, they are special and worthy. I believe that RE plays an important part in understanding that. It is as essential a skill as home economics or technology. When we talk about the important things for future vocations, we should note that religious education in schools is a calming influence and gives us a better understanding of those around us. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes referred to a Scripture text, and I will finish by quoting Jeremiah 29:11, which says:

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans…to give you hope and a future.’”

Who does not need that?

Blasphemy Laws and Allegations: Commonwealth Countries

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

First, I congratulate the Minister on her appointment. I know that her interest in such subjects is profound, and I am pleased to see her in her place, as I am pleased to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton)—my hon. Friend, as we call each other. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for continually shining a spotlight on freedom of religion or belief, for securing the debate and for his excellent and detailed speech.

It is deeply concerning that in the 21st century the rights to freedom of religion, belief and expression are still severely limited in many Commonwealth countries, and that all too often blasphemy laws are used to silence people who hold minority views. I intend to focus on the use of death penalty policy in the Commonwealth. In doing so, I will be assisted by research and work undertaken recently by the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, which I have the privilege of chairing. The alliance has grown to 42 countries, members and friends, and we will shortly issue a statement on blasphemy and related offences. Later this month, we will call for action across the world.

Research in Australia by Monash University examined 12 countries identified as having retained the death penalty as a lawful possibility for offences against religion. Apart from Nigeria and Pakistan, which are the two most concerning Commonwealth examples and on which I want to focus my remarks, those countries include Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, the Maldives, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. It is worth mentioning that of those 12 countries, 11 have established Islam as a state religion. The 12th country, Nigeria, has no state religion, but the 12 Nigerian states in which blasphemy is punishable by death operate a sharia law system in parallel with secular courts. In all 12 countries, sharia is cited as the basis on which the death penalty is prescribed for offences against religion, regardless of whether that penalty has been subsequently codified. We therefore have an issue, but it is one of policy and legislation as well as one of religion. That requires advocacy at different levels, including within Islam.

I will give a few short examples from Nigeria. Yahaya Sharif-Aminu was a Sufi Islamic gospel musician from Kano state who was accused of blasphemy for sending audio messages on WhatsApp in 2020. His house was burned down, and he was arrested and sentenced to death by hanging. His conviction was overturned, but he is still in danger of being convicted. As recently as August 2022, a court of appeal upheld the constitutionality of the blasphemy law in his case. His lawyer will soon appeal to the Supreme Court to call for the blasphemy law to be ruled unconstitutional.

There is a particularly disturbing case for me as a mother, although so many are. In 2020, 13-year-old Omar Farouq was sentenced to 10 years in prison for blasphemy after comments were made to a friend. Thankfully, his conviction was eventually overturned, although only on procedural irregularities.

As we have heard, the impact of blasphemy laws goes beyond the courtroom and into the community—dreadfully and fatally so in the case of Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a young teenage girl who was burned to death in Sokoto after an allegation of blasphemy in 2021. She had been accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed in a WhatsApp classroom discussion group, although apparently she had merely thanked Jesus for helping her in an exam. All of this is happening under the watch of the constitution of Nigeria, which prohibits the adoption of any religion as a state religion. The reality, though, is that the state endorses numerous anti-secular and theocratic policies. Islam is often regarded as the de facto state religion in nine of the northern states, where the majority of the population is Muslim. Blasphemy laws in those sharia states allow the death penalty, which has affected Christians, atheists, Shi’a Muslims, artists, converts and those expressing beliefs that local leaders find offensive.

I turn now to Pakistan, which actually ratified the international covenant on freedom of religion or belief—the international covenant on civil and political rights—in 2010. However, it is ranked No. 8 in the Open Doors 2022 world watch list, and a main source of persecution comes from the strict blasphemy laws. Even though freedom of speech is guaranteed under the Pakistani constitution, it is limited by law and considerations of national security, and also by

“the interest of the glory of Islam”.

Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws have been in place in their present form since 1986, punishing blasphemy with death or life imprisonment for

“deliberately or maliciously outraging the religious feelings of any class or the citizens of Pakistan—either spoken or written.”

Over the past 30 years, nearly 2,000 people have been accused under the blasphemy laws, yet Amnesty estimates that most examples are based on false premises and lack evidence. Although the most severe punishment of execution has not been used in Pakistan to the knowledge of the international community, it is acknowledged that the laws have been used to sentence people to death and to incite harassment and violence against those accused under the law. In a judgment released by the Pakistani Supreme Court recently, the judges noted that

“many a time false allegations are levelled to settle personal scores and cases are also registered for mischievous purposes or on account of ulterior motives.”

I will not go into too much detail about some of the more high-profile cases; suffice to say that I was deeply saddened last year to hear of the case of Shagufta and Shafqat, a couple who were on death row for seven years for sending allegedly blasphemous text messages. Eventually their sentence was overturned in June last year, when it was found that neither of them could read or write. Stephen Masih spent three years in jail after being accused of blasphemy by his neighbour during an argument over a pigeon.

[Jim Shannon]

Surely the cases that the hon. Lady has outlined show a failing in the police investigations. For the two people who were accused of blasphemy but could neither read nor write, why did it take so long for that to be sorted out? Surely the police investigation would have sorted it out right away.

[Fiona Bruce]

One of the problems is that many countries sign up to international covenants and rights, including of freedom of religion or belief, in their constitutions, and yet the court systems and the police investigation systems often do not apply the principles in practice. That does need to be looked at.

The social implications of Pakistan maintaining blasphemy laws cannot be underestimated in terms of mob violence, the burning of villages and the public parading of blasphemers, which are all too common. Two politicians who have advocated against blasphemy laws have been assassinated within the last 10 years. One defendant died from a gun wound after he was shot in court, when on trial in 2020.

What can be done to better respect and protect freedom of religion or belief? One of the outcomes of our London ministerial conference on FORB in July this year—I am delighted to report that no less than 88 Governments sent delegates—is to provide funding for lawyers via an organisation called Role UK, Rule of Law Expertise, to work in countries such as Nigeria to support law reform. That is exactly the kind of issue that the hon. Member for Strangford referred to.

We need to use the respect and expertise of UK lawyers in the Commonwealth to modify or repeal blasphemy, defamation of religion and other speech laws that allow for the persecution of individuals. Frequent concerns that have been expressed, such as the vague wording of such laws, lack of due process and arbitrary enforcement, need to be addressed. I am pleased to confirm that one of the “next steps” set of actions, which is being led by the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance with the aid of our experts, is to look at how legal systems can be strengthened to better reflect FORB in practice. UK Ministers should use every opportunity, including on in-country visits, to raise FORB concerns with their counterparts, including those raised in the debate today. What assurance can the Minister give me on that?

We should appeal to countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan to enact strong safeguards to ensure that individuals who take sharia blasphemy laws into their own hands are punished under law. This is a human rights issue. Sunni schools agree that only the ruler of a state should sentence people to death and that vigilantism on the basis of alleged apostasy should be punished, meaning no individual Muslim without state authority could execute an apostate. That is of relevance to Pakistan, where there is widespread violence at community level. There is a need for careful advocacy, supporting the position of many contemporary Islamic scholars, as articulated by the retired chief justice of Pakistan, S.A. Rahman:

“The position that emerges, after a survey of the relevant verses of the Qur’an, may be summed up by saying that not only is there no punishment for apostasy provided in the Book, but that the Word of God clearly envisages the natural death of the apostate…He will be punished only in the Hereafter.”

We need to urge Commonwealth countries to uphold and fiercely protect the rights of individuals to a fair trial and to ensure due process. Often the emotion of a crowd of accusers has expedited trials to the detriment of a court firmly establishing the facts. Again, careful advocacy locally led with the support of international non-governmental organisations can make an impact. We should thank organisations such as ADF, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Open Doors, CAN and Amnesty for their tireless advocacy. We should join with these NGOs in calling for the release of individuals facing the death penalty, and with the report of the UN Secretary-General on the 13 August 2020 in calling for a moratorium on the application of the death penalty for non-violent conduct such as apostasy and blasphemy, in line with the agreement of the international covenant on civil and political rights, which so many countries have signed up to, including Nigeria and Pakistan. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Nigeria: Security Situation

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

The Foreign Secretary commendably called out last month’s atrocity in Nigeria, when over 40 people were killed simply for being in a Catholic church in Ondo state, celebrating Pentecost. But that was no isolated incident, because on the same day, 5 June, there were reports from Kajuru in south Kaduna of Fulani bandits attacking the indigenous Adara people, aided by an air force helicopter, killing 32 and destroying a church of the Evangelical Church Winning All. Not a single terrorist was killed; 32 members of that church were. The following Sunday, 12 June, there were further reports of approximately 50 Catholics killed just before morning mass in Edumoga in Benue state, north-central Nigeria. In one week alone, over 120 innocent civilians were slaughtered in north-west, north-central and south-west Nigeria.

[Jim Shannon]

I apologise for not mentioning this earlier, but when a town was under attack right outside the gate of an army barracks, the army did not respond because it was waiting for the okay from superior officers. Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the major issues in Nigeria is the need to address terrorism on the ground? Only then can the local community get back to living a normal lifestyle in peace.

[Fiona Bruce]

Indeed, it has to be addressed on the ground. It is heartrending that night after night, people are going to bed fearful of whether they will wake up.

The International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law noted in April 2022 that 4,650 Christians were killed in Nigeria between November 2020 and October 2021. That is higher than the 3,530 deaths recorded in the previous year of October 2019 to November 2020. It also noted that 2,500 Christians were abducted between November 2020 and October 2021, compared with 900 in the previous year.

The Minister will no doubt be keen to throw something of a contextual narrative on my emphasis on religious-based violence and religious targeting of mainly Christian victims. She will also likely note that religious identity can be a factor in incidents of violence in Nigeria and that Christian communities have been victims but emphasise that root causes are often complex and frequently also relate to competition over resources, historical resources and criminality. She might also factor in the pressing challenges of climate change and global food shortages. I ask her, however, to interrogate the repeated number of attacks going on in the central and north-west regions of Nigeria. They are executed and co-ordinated by well-organised and well-funded groups, including the Fulani Islamist militia groups, as well as other terrorist groups, such as Ansaru in Kaduna state.

The appalling atrocities by those perpetrators, using sophisticated equipment including a helicopter, cannot simply be characterised as atrocities by local bandits. The killings going on, such as those last month, are not simply a clash between farmers and herders. Much attention is given to the security challenges in north-east Nigeria, rather than the central parts of Nigeria experiencing such devasting attacks. Many villages have been destroyed, and thousands of people are displaced. Some reports say that the Fulani Islamist groups have killed more people than Boko Haram in the last two years and are more vicious in executing their atrocities.

Efforts to rightly avoid simple descriptors of Nigeria’s insecurity as a religious conflict should not fail to properly diagnose the security situation facing Nigerians who get in the way of Islamist militants. The Minister will rightly reference that the nearly 350,000 Nigerians who have died as a result of Islamic insurgencies include a large number of Muslim victims, as well as indigenous, humanist and Christian believers. As the Foreign Secretary recognised two weeks ago, those are grievous violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief, a right that should be available for everyone, everywhere—a universal right that only 10 days ago brought together over 1,000 delegates from 100 countries for the London international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief. However, a country whose representative at that conference sadly does not truly get what is happening in Nigeria is Nigeria.

The second speech to which I wish to draw the House’s attention is that of the Nigerian high commissioner to the UK, who pledged to uphold freedom or religion or belief without hindrance, as guaranteed in Nigeria’s constitution, but then declared that insecurity has nothing to do with religion—refusing to recognise religious-based and targeted violence. Sadly, that speech risks perpetuating impunity for religiously motivated violence across Nigeria. It means that when the young student Deborah Samuel was horrifically lynched in Sokoto on 22 May of this year, having been accused of blasphemy—which was rightly condemned by religious leaders—no one has been held accountable for the severity of that crime. It is why there are reports of security services being at best absent and at worse complicit in violence perpetrated by militants.

In conclusion, I ask that, rather than follow the line of the Nigerian Government on security and freedom or religion or belief, the Minister follow the recommendation of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s April 2022 report. It stated:

“The integrated delivery plan should include concrete steps for how the UK Government will support the Nigerian Government in promoting freedom of religion and belief, as well as preventing violence against women and girls, across their engagement activities in Nigeria.”

Digital Persecution

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

On 5 and 6 July in London, the largest international gathering hosted by the UK Government this year will take place—the 2022 international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief. Government representatives from over 50 countries have been invited, together with faith and civil society representatives, to discuss the concerning global trend of increasing restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, and also, it is hoped, to commit to practical steps to tackle that. A session including digital persecution should be at the cutting edge of that conference. My purpose in calling this debate is to highlight why.

Each year, millions of people around the world are increasingly having their freedom of religion or belief restricted, and to devastating impact. A key reason is the increase in persecution by authoritarian regimes, including through the misuse of technology. Right across the world today, people are losing their jobs, education, homes, livelihoods, families, freedom, access to justice, and even life itself, simply on account of what they believe. People are being discriminated against, marginalised, beaten, threatened, tortured and killed, and too often by their own Governments—the very Governments with a duty to protect their freedom of religion or belief. The gross scale of this as a global issue is both under-recognised and under-addressed. One of the aims of this July’s conference in London is to change that.

The Pew Research Centre indicates that 83% of the world’s population live in countries with high or very high restrictions on religion. The campaigning charity Open Doors, in its 2022 world watch list, states that the persecution of Christians has now reached the highest levels since the world watch list began nearly 30 years ago—that across 76 countries, more than 360 million Christians suffer high or very high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.

Of course, persecution affects not only Christians but those of all faiths and none. In Nigeria last month, the humanist Mubarak Bala was sentenced to 24 years in prison, now on appeal. Recently, the plight of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Ahmadiyya Muslims and Baha’is across the world has been highlighted by the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance of 35 countries, which I have the privilege of chairing in 2022. Details can be found on the US State Department website.

Why is freedom of religion or belief so important? We need to ask this question, and try to answer it, to set in context this debate on digital persecution and why addressing it is so critical. FORB is important for several reasons. It is important in itself, for us as individuals, because what we believe gives us a sense of worth, f purpose and meaning, and of dignity and identity. It goes to the heart of what makes us human.

Respecting freedom of religion or belief is important because it is so closely connected to other human rights, such as free speech, the right to assemble, the right to work and even the right to life itself. When freedom of religion or belief is not respected by those in authority, all too often, other rights crumble, too. FORB is also important for communities, which are stronger, including economically, when they include everyone. Societies cannot fully develop when they oppress members of minorities.

Freedom of religion or belief is one of the foundations of a stable and secure democratic society. Countries that respect FORB are less prone to violent extremism. Not to put too grand a point on it, promoting and defending freedom of religion or belief is an important element of promoting peace globally. Indeed, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the UN, envisioned a world of peaceful co-existence between nations, he stressed the importance of four freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom of belief. How tragic it is that we reflect on this today as the very opposite is occurring less than a three-hour plane flight from here. Let us be under no illusions: freedom of religion or belief is very much a live issue in the plight of the Ukrainian people.

Permit me to take a moment to refer to that. In Luhansk, a Russian rebel-held area of Ukraine taken by pro-Russian separatists in 2014, freedom of religion or belief is now severely restricted. Religious communities need to register to have permission to gather, following a restrictive law that makes it illegal for any religious community to congregate without such permission. As a result, all Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Pentecostals and other Protestant communities have been denied that permission. Such unregistered groups therefore meet to worship in a climate of fear. They are subject to surveillance and at risk of repeated raids, with their social welfare activities in their local communities banned and an increasing list of allegedly extremist books banned, including an edition of the gospel of John from the Bible.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on all that she does in her role as the special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, and I express an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for freedom of religion or belief. She is right to highlight the issues in Ukraine, which I am sorry to say also unfortunately include incidents of Baptist pastors who have disappeared and never been located—their whereabouts are unknown. Churches have been destroyed. People from my constituency are actively involved in Faith in Action Missions in eastern Ukraine. What they have expressed to me goes along with what she has said.

We have to highlight these things in this House. It is not just the murder of innocents, but the persecution of Christians and those of other religious beliefs. Russia has to be held accountable in the highest court of the land for the genocidal campaign that it is carrying out against Ukrainians in Ukraine.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Member, who is chair of the all-party parliamentary group for freedom of religion or belief, makes excellent points and I thank him for doing so. It is so important that we highlight that the Ukrainians’ right to freely practise their religions or beliefs, whatever they may be, is a key aspect of what the leadership of Ukraine and its people are fighting for today. We applaud and stand with them.

Returning specifically to the subject of this debate, digital persecution, I want to put on record my appreciation and thanks to Open Doors for the recent conference it organised, partnered with the Universities of Birmingham and Roehampton, which invited papers on three core themes: surveillance, censorship and disinformation. I also want to thank many of those who contributed to that conference and to my speech today, and those who supplied papers. My speech is all too short to do justice to this issue, so I urge parliamentary colleagues and others listening to this debate to access the conference online—it was recorded by Open Doors—and to access the open source of papers by the contributors, including Professor Francis Davis of Birmingham University, Dr Ewelina Ochab, author Jeremy Peckham, Dr Pasquale Annicchino of the University of Foggia, Chung Ching Kwong of the University of Hamburg, Dr Daniel Aguirre of the University of Roehampton, Rahima Mahmut, UK director of the World Uyghur Congress, and others.

Technology and its extensive communication capabilities can of course be used for good, as we all saw during the pandemic, but, as Open Doors states,

“digital technology enhances state capacity for surveillance of religious minorities and censorship of their speech. It also greatly assists the spread of disinformation against religious minorities by state and non-state actors, which can have lethal consequences for those minorities.”

Misuse of technology has played a crucial role in some of the most egregious atrocities perpetrated in recent years, including the persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China, of the Rohingyas in Myanmar, and of the Yazidis in Iraq.

Religious minorities are often subject to state surveillance, often because of their very status as minorities. This can be either targeted surveillance of specific individuals or groups, or mass surveillance of large groups of people. This may include CCTV, including facial and emotional recognition; device listening; spyware; state monitoring of social networks; tracking, proximity and location apps; and large-scale data harvesting. I shall explain some of that in a little more detail later.

Examples of digital censorship include publication banning; disabling websites and applications; blocking websites, communications and social media posts, including state moderation and firewalls; punishing users who visit particular websites; hacking; cancelling of activities, platforms and public personae, often without reason or redress; and financial freezing.

Disinformation is the communication of deliberately misleading or biased information, the manipulation of narrative or facts, and propaganda, which we are becoming increasingly aware of in Russia’s information war against Ukraine. Examples of disinformation include propaganda, including advertising; targeted fake news; discord bots strategically magnifying discord, including trolling algorithms; and network incitement of mob violence.

During the last few minutes, I have given many examples of the misuse of technology and have used technical terms. Perhaps I have given too many examples for anyone to absorb unless they are already engaged in this subject, so I shall give just one example of how such misuse of technology works in practice—namely, the misuse of technology to oppress the Uyghurs in China, of whom an estimated 2 million, possibly even up to 3 million, are incarcerated in detention camps.

At the conference, Rahima Mahmut’s evidence about the plight of the Uyghurs set a sombre and moving tone. She told us that the Chinese Government have invested huge sums of money in advanced surveillance technology, including facial recognition software, voice recognition software, DNA and data collection, constructing a huge network of cameras and physical checkpoints. All the information gathered on people is stored in what is called an integrated joint operations platform. The data is then used to classify Uyghurs by colour—blue, yellow or red—and therefore to classify their threat level. This has not only resulted in the mass criminalisation of the Uyghur population, but led them to question their own sense of self-worth and self-belief.

How does this work? The integrated joint operations platform is used by police and officials. It is a mobile phone app used to collect data on individual Uyghurs for an assessment to be made about whether someone should be arrested. The extent and penetration of the personal data collected is deeply concerning. Data is collected on individuals as they move about in public places, including from CCTV, by voice recognition and even through their relationship with others who may have political or religious affiliations or convictions. The voice recognition software can not only monitor conversations from a mobile phone, but record a voice from 300 metres away while simultaneously blocking out the surrounding noise.

The technology is now even used in schools to record what Uyghur children say in the classroom—even those as young as kindergarten children—so that, in effect, children are unwitting spies on their own parents. Key words are recorded and then detected by the app to flag concerns to the authorities and indicate dangerous or threatening tendencies. These include words such as “prayers” or “mosque”, or even “get together” or “gather”. As soon as a key word is picked up by the app, this will be fed into the integrated joint operations platform app as suspicious activity, together with all the other data being collected about an individual.

Someone can also receive a colour for many reasons, such as simply eating in a restaurant where someone else with a red mark against their name is also eating. Once the information is gathered and reaches a certain level, an individual is flagged with a colour—red, yellow or blue—which indicates their threat level and how they will be treated, in particular as they move through the many checkpoints manned by police. Someone who is blue can pass through, though of course their colour can and may well change. If an individual is passing through a checkpoint with a yellow mark, an alarm goes off. If it is red, the police will automatically arrest the person immediately. In other words, the app—a computer—is triggering an arrest.

Once arrested, individuals can then be interrogated by computer, too. Police can place an individual not in a normal chair for questioning, but in a tiger chair, in which the body is completely locked and highly stressed, resulting in inevitable physical responses. During questioning, a computer will then monitor heightened changes in heartbeat and muscle movement, and on that basis a computer can indicate that the person must be guilty. Imprisonment can then be meted out.

An individual can be surveyed, detected, arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by technology, simply because the computer says so, and surveillance technology of this nature is being sold around the world. According to an Open Technology Fund report of 2019,

“over 100 countries have purchased, imitated, or received training on information controls from China and Russia.”

Christians and Religious Minorities: India

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 24th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

The concern, of course, is the misuse of such laws.

Pastor Rakesh Babu and his family were brutally beaten at their home in Chandauli, Uttar Pradesh, by unidentified men armed with wooden logs as they gathered to pray in their parsonage, a tiny room attached to the church where Pastor Babu had served for 15 years. A week earlier, he had been threatened with jail if he continued to encourage others to join him in prayer. Worryingly, after the attack, the pastor struggled to get local police to properly register his report. Mervyn Thomas, the founder-president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, told me that police often refuse to register first information reports and that over a number of years, perpetrators of communal violence in a number of areas have not been penalised. More information about that can be found in the CSW reports.

[Jim Shannon]

The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) made the important point about referring things to the police. A number of incidents against Christians—particularly the desecration of churches, the beating up of people, the burning of bibles, and the injuring of people going in and out of churches—have been reported to the police, but there have been instances of the police not turning up as requested. There is an evidential base that cannot be ignored.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As I said, more details about such reports can be found in the Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports on India.

I will mention two further reports. On 20 May, Pastor Alok Rajhans was attacked at his church by Hindu nationalists. Most worryingly, we learnt about the death in judicial custody of Father Stan Swamy, one of 16 humans rights defenders, on 5 July. We should applaud Indian civil society for last week launching a popular petition opposing the anti-conversion Bill, which was approved in the Karnataka state Parliament on February 14.

Ram Puniyani, the co-ordinator of the National Solidarity Forum—a consortium of more than 70 organisations and civil society groups of different origins and inspirations—said:

“Wherever the anti-conversion law, ironically called the ‘Religious Freedom Law’, has been passed, it has become a justification for the persecution of religious minorities and other marginalized groups. Attacks on minorities have increased significantly in recent years since this law has been used as a weapon against Christians and Muslims, especially Adivasis, Dalits and women”.

To those who criticise us for calling out those incidents in India, and who ask what it has to do with us, I say that we are all in this together and we must all join together, as demonstrated by this cross-party debate, to unite around the universal human right of freedom of religion or belief. I look forward to working as the Prime Minister’s special envoy for FORB—across party lines and across all faiths and none—to continue upholding that fundamental human right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions, and in particular the Minister for her summing up. The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) sponsors the Open Doors event every year. We thank her for that. I am sure she will bring to the attention of the Indian Government the fact that India is now No. 10 rather than No. 31. We look forward to her using her position to do so.

I thank the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) for her contribution. She recently joined the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief. We are very pleased to have her on board, and thank her for highlighting that where there is persecution we must stand up and say so. Well done to her for that.

The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) knows that he is a good friend of mine. We might agree on some things and disagree on others, but I thank him for the very balanced point of view that he put over today. He acknowledges that there are issues to be addressed. We are not here to give him a hard time, but to highlight the issues. That is our job. People do not come to us when things are all right; they come to us when things are wrong. They tell us these things, and these things have to be addressed. When there is an evidential base and the police are not providing protection, or are letting things happen, that has to be taken on board, so I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point.

The hon. Member for Bolton North East (Mark Logan) spoke up for Muslims in his intervention. I thank my dear friend, the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for all that she does. The Government made the right decision in putting her in her post. I mean that genuinely. Forgive me, Mr Stringer, for going all gushy, but she is wonderful. She does that job well, and we are particularly pleased to have her in her post.

[Fiona Bruce]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim Shannon]

I am not allowed to take an intervention. The hon. Lady expressed all the concerns that we have about the issues.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who is also my friend, always brings passion and fire to these issues. The conversation in trade negotiations should be about human rights; they must be at the centre of all discussions.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), also highlighted the issues in her summing up. I understand that there are pockets in India where these things are happening. That is what we are here to highlight—where they are happening—not to brush over them like they do not matter, because these people have no one else to speak for them.

I know that the Minister is not responsible for this area, but she always does well and I thank her for that. I am very pleased to know that the Government have the persecution of Christians, and the freedom of religious belief for people of all religions, at the core of what they are doing across the world. As always, I thank the Government for that.

I was reminded by people who emailed or texted me during the debate that, when right-wing groups are emboldened by a culture of state negligence or complicity, such things continue to happen. We need to ensure that they do not happen in India any more, and that the future will be one in which all people, wherever they are from in India and whatever their religious viewpoint may be, have freedom of expression and belief. That is the one thing on which probably all of us present in the Chamber can agree. We believe in that, and we must see it happen. If it does not happen, we look to our Minister and our Government to ensure that they highlight that with the country of India.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the persecution of Christians and religious minorities in India.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The person that he referred to who came to Belfast then came to Millisle, which is where the Kindertransport children came who were fortunate enough to get out of Germany. It became home for many of them and that is important. Although Millisle is only on the edge of my constituency, the farm is in my constituency. It played an important role in the Kindertransport operation, giving refuge to Jewish children.

A local businessman, Lawrence Gorman, leased his derelict farmhouse to the Belfast Refugee Aid, which is the point that the right hon. Gentleman made. Ballyrolly House, where the children were, has grown greatly. There is now a housing estate there with private housing, as well as Ballyrolly. This small village in County Down became known as a haven from Nazi terror. Years later, many of those children returned as adults to Millisle to thank the people who helped them, including Lawrence Gorman and the residents and people of Millisle who saved lives.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for his constant dedication in his role as the chair of the all-party group on international freedom of religion or belief; he is an example to us all. Will he join me in welcoming plans for the UK-hosted ministerial meeting on freedom of religion or belief in July this year, an international conference that will bring together Government Ministers, faith leaders and civil society representatives from around the world, giving us an important opportunity together to review lessons learned from previous atrocities and to ensure that they do not happen again?

[Jim Shannon]

I appreciate that intervention and, in return, thank the hon. Lady for all she does as the envoy to the middle east on behalf of Christians and other ethnic minorities. I declare an interest as the chair of the APPG and I am glad that the hon. Lady made that point.

We talk about genocide and today is about the holocaust, but it is also a day, as the hon. Member for Putney said, to remember those who have been subject to persecution, such as Christians across the world and in the middle east, China and North Korea; the Uyghurs in China; the Baha’is in Iran; the Shias in Iran and Iraq; the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia; the Muslims in India; the Hindus in Pakistan; the Yazidis in Iraq; and the Hazaras in Afghanistan. All those are being tortured and murdered because of their beliefs, and that is the issue. The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) gently reminded us all of the seminar that is happening this year. It is great to know that the Government will be central in highlighting the genocide that is taking place against many people of different religious groups across the world—it is a salient reminder.

I also want to tell the House about an Austrian refugee, Alfred Neumann, who arranged visas and brought Jewish refugees from Vienna to Newtownards—I suspect that he may be the very guy that brought that young person to Belfast. He came and contributed to life in Newtownards, helped to train people in crafts and to make belts and handbags and create home industries. It has been said that no one in Northern Ireland saved more lives from the holocaust than Alfred Neumann; he was from Cookstown in County Tyrone and he came the whole way to County Down. We are very pleased he did and many people are alive because of it. These efforts, during a period of persecution and loss are worthy of the deepest respect, and I am immensely proud to recognise the contribution of the people of Northern Ireland in providing sanctuary to those who fled such horror.

Some Members in the Chamber may have visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. I am afraid I have not, although it has always been my intention to do so. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) referred to education, the importance of which has been illustrated by every speaker today, and I want to talk about what we have done back home. Many younger people in my constituency have recognised the moral responsibility to go to the concentration camps and to experience what took place. My youngest staff member made the pilgrimage at the age of 18 and that part of history has become one of interest and significance to young people.

In our schools in Northern Ireland the curriculum covers the two world wars. It is imperative that remembrance of the holocaust remains a vital element of our curriculum, so I thank my friend and colleague Peter Weir MLA, who as the then Northern Ireland Education Minister allocated funding of £160,000 to support the Holocaust Educational Trust to deliver the Lessons from Auschwitz project to Northern Ireland schools and colleges as part of our education programme. That is what we all want to see, and I am sure that the Minister and the House are united today on how important it is to have that in place. The project ensures that young people learn from that dark chapter of human history, remember it and understand that it must never happen again.

Although the motion relates to Holocaust Memorial Day, I would like to take a minute to highlight the fact, which many hon. Members have referred to, that antisemitism still pervades our society. It is an evil stain on mankind, and for that reason we must continue to support lessons about the holocaust, listen to those remaining few who bore witness, and remember. We must be clear that antisemitism was the foundation on which the genocidal plan was built. The personal narratives of those who survived to bear witness must never be diluted or diminished.

The holocaust remains on the conscience of humanity because in the middle of the 20th century—the most progressive century in human history—humanity experienced its greatest failure. It failed to do what was right; indeed, it did what was wrong, with a vengeance.

Triumph can come from failure, and it must provide hope. I end with a sentence from Magda Herzberger, who was in the concentration camps and prayed to God that she would make it out alive:

“You have to also carry in your heart forgiveness…If you do that, people live in harmony.”

Support for Self-employed and Freelance Workers

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to support freelancers and self-employed people in my constituency who have fallen through the cracks of what I recognise has otherwise been an extremely generous financial package provided by the Treasury for so many people. As I have gone about my constituency over the past few months, so many people have thanked me—people in business and employees—for the support that they have received from the Chancellor. However, I want to use this opportunity to highlight three cases in my constituency.

The first is that of Andy Warren, a co-director of the long-established Congleton company Printing Group (UK) Ltd. He refers to the fact that dividend-receiving company owner-managers are effectively discriminated against from receiving support. He says:

“HMRC is happy to accept our word on our income tax returns (that are self-assessed), on our corporation tax returns (that are self-assessed), on the furlough claims we make for our staff, and on our entitlement to a bounce-back loan. We even have to self-declare that we have to repay child benefit. None of these are verified by a third-party, we are taken at our word. So why is it not acceptable regarding our dividends?”

Secondly, I would like to turn to the concerns expressed by another constituent, Dave Boutcher, who is a director of Thorn Distribution Ltd, a warehousing and distribution company with 15 staff. Neither he nor his co-director have received anything by way of benefit from any national scheme or council support package for themselves or their company. They have not even received any furlough money, due to a technicality on the payroll submission date, but being the honourable employers that they are, they have paid out some £100,000 of their own money to their staff, effectively furloughing their staff out of their own funds. I wrote to the Treasury about this on 13 May and received a generic reply letter on 8 September. I am asking the Treasury to look again at their case, which their accountant says is one of the worst they have seen in a system with no flexibility and no appeal.

Finally, I would like to talk about my constituent Lauren Scott, a self-employed musician. We have heard a lot about musicians in the debate, and I would like to tell the House about Lauren’s circumstances. Lauren is a highly professional harpist, and her husband Andy is a composer and teacher. Over the past 10 years of my being a Member of Parliament, no individuals have done more in my constituency to promote the arts, and particularly the engagement of young people in music, than Andy and Lauren Scott. I have heard Lauren perform many times as a harpist, and I have heard one of Andy’s pieces premiered at the Southbank Centre.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Lady for what she has said. It is so important to foster talent, and if we do not provide the support now, that future talent could be lost forever.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Member is absolutely right—it is about not just these people’s talent, but the next generation that they are nurturing.

Lauren says:

“I am a self-employed freelance musician of 25+ years. I have only ever been a professional musician. During that time I have always paid my taxes and never considered myself to be a burden on the state. I am highly regarded within my field and very often my work is booked into my diary up to 1-2 years in advance. All my concert work has been cancelled…Performing was 80% of my work/income and private teaching was 20%. The only work I now have is my teaching.

At the start of lock-down I applied for 18 jobs with local supermarkets for roles ranging from shelf stacking to driving delivery vans. I did not succeed with any of those applications. It appears that 25 years of playing guest principal harp with all the professional orchestras playing at the likes of the BBC Proms, recording live broadcasts and performing at all the major concerts venues across the country was not the right kind of experience Aldi and Tesco were after.

I will not be able to ‘get back to work’ when the current SEISS ends in October. By now my diary should be full of bookings for 2021, but promoters are not booking and I have nothing booked in for next year…

Please could you ask for there to be consideration to extend the SEISS for self-employed musicians and the Arts Sector. Having high quality live events happening in major venues… is precisely what is going to attract people to visit those city centres.”

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Report stage & 3rd reading & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I support this landmark Bill and the Government’s amendments to it. I wish to speak to new clause 1, in my name, new clause 28 and my amendments to it. In 2018, the Select Committee for Women and Equalities concluded:

“There is significant research suggesting that there is a relationship between the consumption of pornography and sexist attitudes and sexually aggressive behaviours”.

The Minister has rightly said that the rough sex defence is unconscionable. In the light of recent survey evidence showing a clear link between rough sex and the influence of pornography, I tabled new clause 1, to ask the Government to investigate this further and to highlight the urgent need for action to be taken by Government to tackle pornography concerns more widely, such as addiction, and to protect children from seeing it and being forced to engage in it. In tabling new clause 1, I am seeking from the Minister—and I appreciate the fact that I have found a listening Minister during the progress of the Bill—an assurance that Government will take early steps to tackle concerns about harm from pornography, so that I do not have to press new clause 1 to a vote.

I cannot put the key objections to new clause 28 better than a response I obtained from a female GP. It is long but worth repeating. She says:

“I am very concerned about the proposed changes to new clause 28. It is extraordinary that it should be argued that a woman suffering or at risk of domestic abuse, seeking abortion should somehow be considered to be at less risk if she consults a doctor remotely by telemedicine and given abortifacients to take at home. Where is the opportunity to check with her, privately, that she is not being coerced or that she may be in danger, to examine her to determine her stage of pregnancy, to offer support and clear advice in a place of safety? As a medical practitioner working remotely, how can I reliably ensure she is at the stage of pregnancy she says she is, as the use of abortifacients used later than the 9 weeks 6 days limit carries greater risk of complications which I would be responsible for providing care for? And how can I provide assurance that this woman is suffering from domestic abuse unless it has been previously disclosed to me… These factors are virtually impossible to verify without a face to face consultation”.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Lady for all she does in this House on preserving life in every sense of the word. In a context where article 39 of the Istanbul convention highlights the need to counter coercive abortion, does she agree that the proposal to allow women in domestic abuse situations unique permanent access to medical abortion, without needing to leave their abusive environment for a physical consultation, is nothing if not seriously misplaced? That is why her amendments (a), (b) and (c) to new clause 28 are very appropriate.

[Fiona Bruce]

I will come on to that; I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution.

I want to quote someone who works regularly with victims of domestic abuse. She says:

“This proposal in reality is actually a gift to male abusers who want their partners to abort.”

New clause 28 will not help abused women. It could put them in a worse position, and it is dysfunctional. I tabled amendments (a), (b) and (c) to illustrate that fact. I want to thank the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) for underlining and accepting that. Amendments (a) and (b) address the fact that there is no 10-week gestation limit, which is potentially dangerous, and that this potentially includes surgical abortions outside clinically approved settings, which is similarly concerning. Amendment (c) relates to the vital need for some sort of review of the current emergency legislation before any extension of the legislation is brought forward. I thank the Minister for her proposal of a consultation. Will she confirm that it will be a proper inquiry?

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her considerable contribution in setting the scene for us. She and I have a very similar outlook on life, as I believe others in this House have as well. Is it her intention to ensure, through her amendments and new clauses, that services to save marriages—Relate and others—are available from the very beginning of a relationship breaking down to almost the end of it, so that every person at every stage will have a chance and an opportunity to save a marriage, rather than let it fall apart?

[Fiona Bruce]

I absolutely agree—indeed, not just from the very beginning of a marriage, but from before it, as I shall mention shortly when I refer to new clause 1.

I return to the important point that a great many family breakdowns may be a lot more salvageable than is commonly assumed, and therefore help towards that is important. Statistics bear this out: only 9% of married couples who split one year later could be categorised as high conflict couples who reported quarrelling a lot in the year before the split, and 60% of married couples who split were low conflict couples who also reported some degree of happiness. This Bill should have focused on helping to keep them together, not least, as has just been mentioned, by offering every couple going into marriage a pre-marriage course.

Such courses would help couples to appreciate that it is not all plain sailing; to understand what the commitment they are making will involve in practice and how to resolve conflict; to understand that better times do not always follow a break-up; and to equip themselves to persevere through difficulties to better times within their marriage. Such difficulties include the disruption a first child can bring, which is so often a crunch point in a marriage, and the current lockdown crisis, which has understandably exacerbated stress in some relationships. Indeed, lawyers report an increase in divorce inquiries of over 40% at present. The last solution offered by the Government for this should be a quick, spur-of-the-moment escape route.

This Bill is not focused on helping to keep marriages and families together; it does exactly the opposite. That is why new clause 1 is so important, and I am also minded to test the will of the Committee on it. New clause 1 would ensure increased funding for relationship counselling and new support for couples where an application for divorce has been made to a court. The availability of marriage support services in this country is wholly inadequate and requires substantially greater Government investment. This is no doubt one of the reasons why we have one of the highest rates of relationship breakdown in the western world.

It was encouraging that, in the last Budget, the Chancellor committed £2.5 million towards this, but much more is needed. Importantly, it is needed for less well-off couples, who cannot afford the private relationships counselling that better-off people can afford. The Government say that they want to remove conflict flashpoints and reduce areas of conflict in the divorce process. Improved relationship support and counselling would help achieve that. The Bill should have focused on it, and new clause 1 will amend this omission. I was encouraged by the support from those in many parts of the House for this on Second Reading.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is most gracious in giving way. She will understand and agree with me and probably others that churches offer such services. Is it possible within this legislation, with the extra money that will come through if the new clause is accepted, for the Government to work alongside churches to ensure that relationships can survive?

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Some excellent marriage counselling and, indeed, pre-marriage courses are supplied through church organisations. They are very popular, and I personally think it would be marvellous to see a lot more of them and to see some Government-funded support for them.



Counsellors help parties to understand the implications of what marriage means and, when difficulties occur, of what splitting up would mean for them, their children, and their wider families. They help people to consider what a split will involve practically, regarding contact arrangements and finances, and whether the option of staying together might be something that they could look at. Counsellors give people tools to help work through the problems, since they may not have had a role model to copy in earlier life. Critically, if the divorce goes ahead, such help can assist a couple to navigate their future relationship in a way that is best for the future wellbeing of their children, and that will, hopefully, foster continued co-operation and constructive communication, while avoiding, or at least minimising, unnecessary acrimony and relationship acidity over the many years—often decades—to come, for the benefit of all involved. It might help people who receive such counselling to know two interesting facts. First, in a study that involved more than 1,500 people, Professor Janet Walker found that two years on from a divorce, many people wished they had been warned beforehand of the harsh realities of life after separation, and said that if they had been forewarned, they might have sought reconciliation. Another piece of research from the US in the early 2000s found that people who are unhappy in their marriage are more likely to be happier five years later if they do not divorce than if they do.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 5

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Monday 30th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention.

In 2015, the Northern Ireland Assembly became the first legislature in the United Kingdom to pass comprehensive human trafficking legislation. I commend Lord Morrow on his leading role in initiating that legislation and the Assembly on fully supporting its wide-ranging provisions. In some areas, it goes further than the human trafficking legislation in England and Wales, the Modern Slavery Act 2015, in providing statutory assistance and support for victims during the process of confirming victims, which is known as the national referral mechanism. There is also a fully implemented scheme of independent guardians for trafficked children. An article published in the journal Statute Law Review in 2016 described that Northern Ireland Act as “an impressive instrument”.

Section 18 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) sets out the first statutory support for victims, or potential victims still to be assessed, of a minimum of 45 days during the NRM process, but it also recognises that there are times when that support would need to be extended. Again, the Northern Ireland Assembly was ahead of the rest of the UK in that regard, because section 18(9) specifically allows for assistance and support to be extended beyond the point where a victim receives a positive conclusive grounds decision at the discretion of the Department of Justice. Indeed, it is one of the more bizarre features of the current system of identifying victims of trafficking that, once fully recognised as a victim, the state offers them no further statutory support. As the previous anti-slavery commissioner said,

“supporting a potential victim until the conclusive decision is made and then ceasing support so abruptly could be damaging for the victim and negatively affect their recovery.”

In 2013-14, Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly envisaged that there could be circumstances in which it is not in the best interests of the victim for support to be stopped if they receive a positive conclusive-grounds decision. The Assembly was ahead of its time in recognising the need for victims to receive support beyond that point. The report that we are considering shows that, for the past three financial years, 17 victims received that additional support. That is welcome, although sadly the numbers are low. Will the Minister give us some more information on how long the victims were supported and say why information is scant? Will he confirm that those 17 did indeed receive that extended support after they had had a positive conclusive-grounds decision?

Northern Ireland introduced that pioneering legislation, and there has been much debate and dialogue about what assistance should be provided, and for how long. It has become clear that the extent of stability and support that victims need to help them on a pathway to recover beyond the NRM potentially has a huge impact on their ability to recover, on their resilience to the very real risk of re-trafficking, and on their capacity and confidence to participate in police investigations and court proceedings against their traffickers. They need that support to enable them to have the confidence to stand up and do so.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Lady recognise the international aspect of human trafficking? The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) referred to local paramilitaries, both loyalist and republican, being involved in human trafficking. In many cases, the people who are trafficked are from eastern European countries, so the internationalism of criminal gangs must be taken into consideration. Under the legislation that has been introduced to help the victims, that internationalism must be considered so that we find the right way forward.

[Fiona Bruce]

That is why I was disappointed that there was no reply to the third aspect of the report, on information relating to the immigration status of individuals. It was not so much that I wanted to see particular information, but it might have indicated a pattern of trafficking to this country from certain other jurisdictions, which could be helpful in tackling the problem further.

I have spoken a number of times about the need for much greater support for trafficked victims, which was acknowledged in a court case in June by the Home Office, albeit in an out-of-court settlement with victims of human trafficking. If the Home Office has acknowledged that in a case in this jurisdiction, it should consider that that has implications for Northern Ireland. Forty-five days is better than nothing, but it is still not enough. Several reports and Committees have stated that in recent years, and I shall highlight a few. The Select Committee on Work and Pensions produced an important report on victims of modern slavery as long ago as 2015 and strongly recommended personal recovery plans for victims of up to 12 months in cases in which they wanted to stay in the UK. More recently, the British Red Cross, in its July 2019 report, “Hope for the future”, repeated those needs. The Home Affairs Committee is running an inquiry into the impact of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, including, because it knows that it needs to be looked at, levels of support for victims and how that can be improved. The independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, led by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), along with the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee and Baroness Butler-Sloss, stated in its final report in May this year that there was a need for improved victim support, even though victim support was not in its remit. It said that

“it cannot be right that the Government provides no standardised post-NRM support offer for victims, who are often still incredibly vulnerable, and this can increase their vulnerability to being re-trafficked and re-exploited.”

As I have said, victims who receive support are more likely to be able to work with the police in any investigation of their traffickers and provide important evidence in court.

Following Northern Ireland’s example, Lord McColl of Dulwich introduced the Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill at the beginning of this Session in the other place. It is being taken through this House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) no less, and it recommends 12 months’ support. That is the kind of support that is needed, with the option of different services to meet an individual’s particular needs. I understand that it is possible that, if the Government accept the Bill, the measure will relate not only to England and Wales, but could easily be extended to Northern Ireland. I would appreciate a meeting with the Minister to discuss that and other aspects of my speech.

I sincerely hope that the McColl Bill will be considered in the House so that we can debate more fully the benefits of providing longer-term support for victims. The University of Nottingham Rights Lab recently published a cost-benefit analysis of providing support to victims in England and Wales on the basis of the provisions in the Bill. It estimated, staggeringly, that there would be a direct and indirect net benefit to society of up to £25.1 million from providing all confirmed victims with 12 months of support to help their rehabilitation.

The report of the independent review of the Modern Slavery Act, to which I have referred, called for standardised support for victims wherever they are trafficked in the UK. The Government report on trafficking that we are discussing gives very few details on why the 17 individuals were given further support. It is inadequate for it to say that the reason that the Department of Justice decided that it was necessary to provide assistance related to the general policy intent underpinning the provision. That is the rationale behind the regulation—it does not give us any detailed information. The response is barely five lines long. When one considers some of the desperate situations that people can face when they are trafficked, it is completely inadequate to have so little information to help us understand how they can be helped further. Will the Minister let us know whether or not officials who have made decisions to extend support have received any guidance on how to make those decisions? If there is guidance, can he place a copy in the Library? If there is no guidance, how are decisions made as officials consider the case of each individual victim?

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 3(2)

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Ministers will understand that I am disappointed that we have been unable to discuss the reports on human trafficking and gambling this evening, given that they were reviewed as a result of amendments that I tabled to the original Bill. I would therefore appreciate an assurance from Ministers that these things will be debated in this House at the earliest possible date.

Turning to the abortion law review, I was surprised at its brevity, given that it represents a seismic change to the law in Northern Ireland, one that, as we have heard, led to tens of thousands of people marching on Stormont and in central Belfast in recent days. It is my fervent hope that any change to the law on abortion, a sensitive devolved issue, as the Secretary of State has said, could be taken forward by a restored Northern Ireland Executive. However, if that does not happen, and we have to be realistic about this, and an Executive are not reformed by 21 October, the people of Northern Ireland will find themselves in a situation where the provision of abortion, from conception up until the point of viability, which could be as far as 28 weeks, will take place in a complete legal vacuum from 22 October, with no guarantee that anything will be put in place until 31 March 2020. That is unacceptable. It means five months when there will, in effect, be no law regulating abortion at all in Northern Ireland—as I say, these are abortions taking place from conception until just before a baby is capable of being born alive. I said that we should not rush through this legislation when it was originally debated and now we see the results.

This country has all manner of statutory checks to protect women, including the need for clinics to be vetted and registered, none of which will exist in Northern Ireland. How is that good for the health of women in Northern Ireland? I have heard it suggested that the bodies of the relevant health professions will self-police in the interim, but that is simply unacceptable.

I believe that this House has failed the people of Northern Ireland in this Act. The Bill was rushed through, in dereliction of our duty to review legislation. We spent only 17 minutes debating the actual text of clause 9 when it returned from the Lords, which places on Northern Ireland a more permissive abortion regime than obtains in this country. It is unacceptable that there should be a five-month period during which abortions can take place in a legal vacuum, which is something I suspect most hon. Members were completely unaware of until tonight. I believe it is absurd to remove a law five months before we are required to put a new law in its place.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Lady share my view that if we had had the Abortion Act 1967 in Northern Ireland, 100,000 children would not be alive today? What we have in Northern Ireland is the acceptable thing to have, and the people of Northern Ireland are saying that they do not want to see that change—some 60% say that they want no change whatsoever.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

I have a few questions for the Minister. First, could he give more detail on the five bullet points on page 25 of the review, which give inadequate information on some really key issues, such as the scoping of how best to deliver the regulations? One line on that is insufficient, given that we are only 40 days away from 22 October, and on a matter of such gravity.

Secondly, given the uncertainty over the new framework, how is the health and safety of women in Northern Ireland going to be protected during the five-month period? Thirdly, will the lack of regulation from 22 October mean that Northern Ireland is not compliant with the Istanbul convention’s requirement for an offence of forced abortion? This is serious. The whole point made by those in the Opposition who brought this measure forward was that there were human rights concerns. This is a human rights concern.

Fourthly, can the Minister confirm whether, as a matter of law during this interim period—I do not say that it is likely—it might be possible for abortions to take place up to 28 weeks in Northern Ireland? Fifthly, although the report mentions clarity for the medical professions, can he say how the Government will engage with them? Finally, will he be seeking advice from the Attorney General of Northern Ireland, as he will be from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission?

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

This is a sensitive subject and I hope to approach it in that way. Divorce can never be easy—not for the parties, nor for the others involved, such as children or the wider family. People who marry do so in the hope that their relationship will be long lasting, but when relationships do break down, often, the impact is devastating for many involved. I will never forget a grandmother coming to see me to make a will—I practised for many years as a solicitor in a community law firm, although never as a family law specialist. She broke down in tears as she told me that, following her son’s divorce, she had lost all contact with her grandchildren for years.

However, when couples do stay together and weather the inevitable storms of marriage, the stability that that engenders benefits not just the parties, but their children. Indeed, it is increasingly acknowledged that, even where there is an argumentative marriage—as many are—where parents stick together, the stability benefits the children. Indeed, the Lord Chancellor talked about stability benefiting children. The wider community and society benefit, too. Sadly, the UK has one of the highest levels of family breakdown in the developed world, with profound consequences for children’s mental health, housing pressures, homelessness, addiction, loneliness in old age, and much more. So, to promote stability, the Government are justified, and have an interest, in helping couples stay together and in counteracting wherever possible the consequences of the high level of relationship breakdown in this country.

[Jim Shannon]

I fully support what the hon. Lady has put forward. I talked to her beforehand about this subject —indeed, we have talked about it on many occasions—and she and I agree that we see divorce as bad for children. Does she agree that this might minimise some forms of conflict in the short term, but that the long-term negative impact of divorce on children’s development and adult wellbeing will become more prevalent as divorce increases? Does she see in her constituency office, as I see in mine, the side effects of divorce and the impact on children?

[Fiona Bruce]

I do, very much, in many cases. It is that break-up that causes so much hurt. Very often, it is not so much the conflict; in fact, a lot of emerging research shows that the shock of marriage break-up can be greater for children when there has not been conflict in the parents’ relationship than when there has been.

I accept that not every marriage can be maintained and that it is sometimes better for one to end. I am also very much aware that many single and separated parents do a brilliant job. However, this Bill not only makes it easier to leave a marriage, but fails to take the opportunity properly to promote reconciliation where that may be possible. It fails to instigate better mediation procedures. At present, mediation procedures do not work well, according to family law practitioners. They need to be much more wisely applied at a more timely point during the legal process. If need be, I shall say more about this at a later stage of the Bill’s progress. I sincerely hope that an amendment will be tabled to reflect that need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

Absolutely, and that is very much the thrust of what I want to say today. The Government need to do much more to help to strengthen family relationships.

[Jim Shannon]

I want to make a quick intervention because the hon. Lady mentioned the words “family relationships”. When the Conservative party came to power, one of the policies it pursued at that time—I supported this by the way—was to fix broken Britain. In relation to striking at the institution of marriage, does she feel that this divorce Bill, as it is coming forward, fixes broken Britain, or does it make it worse?

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting intervention because the phrase “broken Britain” came from a report by the Centre for Social Justice that was produced a decade or so ago. Sadly, relationship breakdown is even greater now than it was then. I do not believe that successive Governments have put in place policies and procedures to help to strengthen relationships, and this Bill will not do so either. In fact, sadly, I believe it will make divorce easier. Why do I say that? Simply because it will allow one party to walk away from the most important commitment they are likely to have made in their lifetime, without giving any reason at all and without their spouse being able meaningfully to object to their decision to do so. The removal of fault sends out a signal—I am particularly concerned about the signals sent out by the Bill to young people—that marriage can be unilaterally exited, on notice, by one party, with little if any recourse available to the party who has been left. I fear it signals that marriage need no longer be entered into with the intention of its being a lifelong commitment, as it is today—perhaps it will be signalled more as a time-limited arrangement that can be ended at will. Indeed, it is interesting that, in my law firm, I am now hearing the phrase “my current partner” coming into usage.

As I say, the removal of fault, without any opportunity to challenge, means that some who are genuinely wronged—it may be only a tiny number, as the Secretary of State has mentioned—cannot put anything on record on what they feel about the reasons stated for the divorce. The Bill simply says that a court must make a divorce order merely on the bald statement by one party that a marriage has broken down irretrievably.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for taking a further intervention and you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for letting me intervene. Does she accept this concern—I believe it is her concern as well? This change to the divorce law proposes irretrievable breakdown as a sole ground for divorce, but what is actually proposed is unilateral, no-reason divorce. That is what it is about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. It is that thoughtfulness that I am seeking to preserve. There is something also about the thoughtfulness that goes into preparing for the marriage ceremony, including—to pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) about not all marriages being religious—secular ones. There is a thoughtfulness about that ceremony and the public commitment it entails, with the support of friends and relatives who witness it, all of which helps to strengthen the relationship and often enables people to weather the inevitable storms. I am concerned that the thoughtfulness the Bill will extract through the ending of a marriage will denude the necessity, importance or encouragement of the thoughtfulness at the start of and during the relationship.



It is deeply worrying, because at the end of the day, one of the most precious things in life that many if not most of us want is the fulfilment of a loving, enduring relationship. Is the fact that people construct a reason for applying for divorce, as the Minister mentioned, a good enough argument for abandoning altogether the requirement and the thought that has to be put into it?

I am deeply concerned that marriage rates are likely to decline further. Interestingly, that is the conclusion of research drawn on by the authors of “Finding Fault”—the paper the Government rely on heavily in promoting the Bill. The authors of “Finding Fault” choose to ignore that conclusion and instead rely on Professor Justin Wolfers’s study, which cites a 2004 piece of research on other jurisdictions where no-fault divorce has been introduced. They do not quote it, but I shall. The research showed that

“the marriage rate declined by about 3 to 4 percent following the adoption of unilateral divorce laws.”

The likelihood of remarriage is also affected by such laws; according to the research,

“unilateral divorce led remarriage rates of divorcees to decline by around one-third to one-half.”

[Jim Shannon]

I intervene to back up the hon. Lady’s argument. To make marriage a relationship that one can exit unilaterally simply by saying that one wants out will fundamentally change its nature and undermine the ability of marriage to bring stability to the lives of adults and children. Does she agree that the ethic of marriage embodied in the Bill prioritises individual freedom and liberty, rather than encouraging, as it should, self-giving, sacrifice and commitment?

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes a profound point. Without going too far into philosophy and theology, I will say there is something to be gained from the giving as well as the receiving within a marriage. It is difficult to understand why the Government are proposing legislation that will make the fulfilment that can be obtained from that harder to achieve. It is already hard enough for so many young people, with few role models of sustained relationships to look at and with media misconceptions about relationships so prevalent today.

What is truly tragic is that it is the poorest in our society who are not now marrying in great numbers and who are the least resilient when relationships break down. Marriage brings stability. Just one in 11 married couples split before a child’s fifth birthday, compared with one in three unmarried couples. As the Minister says, children benefit from stability. The well-off are still marrying and still benefiting. That is not social justice. Sadly, as the Minister acknowledged, many families will be affected by an immediate increase in divorce rates that even proponents of the Bill accept will inevitably follow the Bill’s passage, as those who currently wait for two or five years opt for a quickie divorce instead. I understand that it could take a decade for the spike to dissipate to our normal rates of divorce—already the highest in Europe—and the heaviest effect will be felt by the children involved.

It is especially concerning that the Government are ignoring the result of their own public consultation on the matter. Of those who responded, 80% did not agree with the proposal to replace the five current grounds for divorce with a six-month notification process; a mere 17% were in favour of the proposals in the Bill. No less than 83% wanted the Government to retain the individual’s right to contest a divorce; only 15% said that that right should be removed. What reason did the Government give for ignoring those responses? It was that the respondents who objected to the proposals did so as a result of a campaign to raise public awareness about the proposals. That is laughable—not just laughable, but deeply worrying. Why should the public bother responding to consultations if they are ignored in this way? Are we in this place not already being ridiculed for ignoring the public’s view on another grave matter?

The tragedy is that the premise on which the Bill is founded—reducing conflict—is a false one. Solicitors specialising in family law tell me that no-fault divorce is no silver bullet to reduce family conflict and acrimony. They say the real source of contention between spouses and ex-spouses is finance and the division of assets. The Bill will do nothing to change that. Indeed, the Government are missing an opportunity in the Bill to tackle some grave injustices in that regard, while creating others. One solicitor who has specialised in family law day in, day out for 25 years says of the Bill:

“It will in my view lead to more not less divorce”

The solicitor continues:

“I have dealt with a lot of cases these last few years where people have done the divorce themselves”

and says the Government are

“trying to make it easier to exclude lawyers—but”

the divorcing couples

“have not sorted out the finances correctly, either by not getting a clean break order (therefore the former spouse can still make a claim years after the divorce) or not sorting finances at all, as a dominant party (usually man) puts pressure on the other to do nothing—often causing that other to be in financial hardship.”

He goes on:

“The issue is and always has been finance in divorce, not the divorce process. No-fault divorce will not solve anything in my view. Instead they should look at ways to provide financial equality in the process of sorting divorce and finances, as it is still often one party who is more able to pay for good legal support. The Financial Services order is supposed to allow the other to apply to court forcing the financially stronger to fund both lawyers but in reality the process is…difficult…restricted and doesn’t work.”

It seems the Government have missed the opportunity to address that problem, too.

Sadly, despite the Minister’s words, the proposals will do even less than the current procedures to promote dialogue and potential reconciliation. As I approach the end of my speech—as I said, it is a luxury to be able to speak at the desired length and to take as many interventions as people wish to make—I will quote from the explanatory notes on the Bill. They say:

“The Government’s policy intention behind the reformed law is that the decision to divorce should be a considered one, and that separating couples should not be put through legal requirements which do not serve their or the state’s interests and which can lead to ongoing conflict and poorer outcomes for children.”

[Jim Shannon]

Is the hon. Lady aware of a story in the press a month or so ago about a father and mother who were divorcing, and when it came to deciding who would have responsibility for the children, neither parent wanted it? Is she as dismayed as I was that neither the father of the children nor their mother wanted anything to do with them? Does that not disappoint her? It disappoints me.

[Fiona Bruce]

That is heartrending. Words fail me.

Returning to the more prosaic words of the explanatory notes, I remind colleagues of the statements that

“the decision to divorce should be a considered one”,

and that

“couples should not be put through legal requirements which do not serve their or the state’s interests and which can lead to ongoing conflict and poorer outcomes for children.”

In my view, this Bill fails on every one of those counts. As I have explained, it will make divorce not a more considered decision but a less considered one, with no reason needing to be explained. It will do nothing to reduce the ongoing conflict that arises from financial disputes. It will increase divorce rates and reduce marriage rates.

The very recent Centre for Social Justice report on families leads me to the inevitable conclusion that the Bill will not serve the state’s interests and that it will lead to poorer outcomes for children. Time prohibits me from quoting much of the excellent and well-evidenced research in the report, but I will simply quote from it as follows. It concludes:

“Marriage leads to better life outcomes for children. Marriage promotes stability. Children of married parents are more likely to achieve at school, have better mental health, less likely to use drink and drugs and less likely to get involved in offending behaviour.”

As I said at the outset, there are always exceptions to every such statement, and I repeat that many single and separated parents do an excellent job. Having said that, however, divorce can be deeply hurtful and costly for those involved, for their children and for wider society. It is already at epidemic levels. The Bill will make it worse. The Government should be actively seeking to strengthen family relationships, not weaken them.

Forced Live Organ Extraction

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I start by commending the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his impassioned, stirring and challenging speech. This is not the first time he has addressed the House on this issue and, sadly, I am sure it will not be the last. This is not the first time that I have addressed the issue of forced live organ extraction in China in this House, but again, it is unlikely to be the last; nor is it the first time that I have expressed my disappointment at the lack of attention to this issue from the UK Government—I say that with all courtesy to one of the most attentive and courteous Ministers in this place. It is also likely that it will not be the last time I express my disappointment at the lack of attention from the international community to an issue that cries out for such action.

Later on in my speech, I will be so bold as to suggest some specific action that could be taken to address a serious human rights concern, a crime against humanity and, if the information we are hearing is correct, potentially nothing less than a 21st century genocide, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) implied in his strong intervention. Surely, at the very least, it demands further investigation at both UK Government and United Nations level.

Over the years, as we have heard, substantial research has been done on the issue of forced live organ extraction from prisoners of conscience in China. I have attended many meetings in this House, including with the Minister’s predecessor, and listened to the accounts of that research in countless meetings in Committee Rooms as well as in debates in this Chamber. The sheer numbers alleged are absolutely staggering.

As long ago as 2016 the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, which I have the privilege of chairing, produced a report on this issue. We called it then:

“A form of genocide cloaked in modern medical scrubs”,

quoting Ethan Gutmann, to whom I pay tribute for his persistent work on this subject. We also quoted the first-hand testimony to us of Dr Enver Tohti, formerly a doctor in China, who gave evidence to our commission personally of having been forced to remove an organ from a live prisoner. He subsequently fled China and now lives in London, driving a London bus.

In this place, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission showed the horrifying film “The Bleeding Edge”, starring the brave actress Anastasia Lin. If the Minister and his officials have not seen that film, I urge them to do so. It showed in graphic detail a young Falun Gong woman being taken from prison and held down, screaming and without anaesthetic, while operators began the act of removing her organs. Let us make no mistake: once this lethal act is committed, the victim faces certain death. Indeed, that is how the film ends. It is a far cry from the voluntary organ donation we are used to in this country. That is why I do not use the term harvesting; as the hon. Member for Strangford has said, that is far too gentle a word for an utterly sinister act.

Yet, time and again, our Government give the same response to concerns expressed by Members of this House and of the other place on the issue of alleged forced live organ extraction in China. Just a few days ago, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon quoted the same response given in this Chamber in October 2016 when he said, in reply to concerns expressed by Lord Alton in a written parliamentary question on the issue:

“Although I do not doubt the need to maintain close scrutiny of organ transplant practices in China, we believe that the evidence base is not sufficiently strong to substantiate claims about the systematic harvesting of organs from minority groups. Indeed, based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot conclude that this practice of ‘organ harvesting’ is definitely happening in China.”

That answer is simply not good enough.

Over the years, as we heard from the hon. Member for Strangford, more research has been done on this issue. Most recently, as we have also heard, in December 2018, a people’s tribunal, the independent tribunal into forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China, was set up. Should not the very fact that that is being led by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC—a world-renowned lawyer and professor of law with decades of relevant experience who, among other things, led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević at the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia—show that this issue merits time and attention at the most senior level of Government?

The tribunal has done its work. It has conducted days of hearings, it has heard evidence from some 30 witnesses and it is showing again and again that the evidence produced in the 2016 report by David Kilgour, David Matas and Ethan Gutmann, which I believe is 700 pages long and is entitled: “Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update”, must be looked into at Government level. In his recent oral evidence to the tribunal, Dr Matas emphasised that although there are problems with establishing exact data, sufficient concern has been raised for this issue to be investigated at the most senior level, both by Governments and by the UN.

The estimates in the report are so wildly different from the Chinese Government’s that they merit investigation. China’s central Government suggest that there are approximately 10,000 organ transplantations per year, but the research suggests that it may be as high as 60,000 to 100,000. In one hearing, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission heard of the size of the hospitals constructed to undertake these operations, pointing to a far greater number taking place than the Chinese Government’s official figures indicate.

[Jim Shannon]

We see hospitals on industrial scales; that is the magnitude of what the hon. Lady refers to. Those outside listening must grasp what we are looking at—industrial-scale organ removals from living people.

[Fiona Bruce]

That is a graphic description. Anyone who has seen an indication of these buildings has to be concerned about the scale of what is going on, and about the number of people disappearing. What is happening to those people?

Indications suggest that prisoners of conscience routinely have their blood type and DNA assessed, so that they can be made available for this tragic and sinister practice of forced organ removal. Indications suggest that specific groups are being targeted, such as prisoners of conscience and people of certain faiths, including Falun Gong, Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists and House Christians. This is religious persecution and a crime against humanity —the crime of crimes.

Witnesses have testified to the China tribunal that they have seen Falun Gong practitioners examined by doctors while other prisoners are not, then often disappearing from the prison without a trace. One witness, a Falun Gong practitioner herself, suggested that she was subject to the same thorough medical examinations as others but was diagnosed with a heart condition, so did not face the same fate. Presumably, because of her heart condition, she was deemed to be unfit to become an organ donor.

Community Hospitals

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I was pleased to note that on announcing his long-term plan for the NHS, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said he is a strong supporter of community hospitals, so I am today asking if Health Ministers will kindly look into how some of the additional resources announced with the long-term plan can be earmarked for the community care provided by community hospitals, such as the much loved Congleton War Memorial Hospital in my constituency.

Congleton Hospital needs sufficient resources to ensure that it can continue to provide the all-round services it has already provided for several generations of my constituents for generations to come. The hospital is much valued locally, providing a range of services, such as the minor injuries unit, which saves residents travelling some distance to hospitals further afield with A&E facilities. Minor injuries such as burns, cuts, splinters and sprains can be treated quickly and efficiently at Congleton. As one person, who sustained a hand injury, told me:

“I popped down to Congleton Hospital, the wound was treated straight away and I was back at work within the hour.”

That person would have lost at least half a day’s work travelling for treatment elsewhere.

In recent winters, the minor injuries unit has, on occasion, been closed temporarily by East Cheshire NHS Trust, with staff redeployed to Macclesfield’s A&E. Then, in September 2018, the trust stated that it expected closures to be in place throughout weekends and bank holidays, plus ad hoc weekdays, throughout this winter. As a result, the minor injuries unit is currently scheduled to open only between 9 am and 5 pm from Monday to Friday, but with additional ad hoc closures within these hours. It was not open, for example, when I visited last Friday afternoon.

It is therefore not surprising that some people in need of urgent treatment decide not to risk calling at a unit that may be closed unpredictably, with user numbers no doubt affected accordingly. It is also understandable that these closures are causing grave concern among local people. On their behalf, I am calling on Ministers to ensure, please, that resources are put in place so that valuable community hospital facilities such as Congleton Hospital’s minor injuries unit are not only stabilised but strengthened.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this issue to the Chamber. I spoke to her beforehand to ask what her thoughts were on this issue and how I might helpfully intervene. I spoke to the Minister, too. In the past few weeks, the national and provincial press have highlighted a number of incidents in hospitals. They report NHS staff referring to “war zone” conditions in A&Es. The community hospitals the hon. Lady refers to are vital for the treatment of patients, but it is also good for the mental health of NHS staff to have hospitals where they can do their job—their duty—without facing any injury or threat to their life.

Antisemitism in Modern Society

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I am sure that I represent all Members of this House in saying that the Jewish community is and has been a real blessing to our nation throughout its history; both inside and outside this House, Jewish individuals have contributed in extraordinary ways to the culture and prosperity we all share. We should take this opportunity to honour and thank their community for the contribution they make to our common good. In recognising and celebrating the Jewish community, we should condemn unequivocally all antisemitic behaviour suffered by our Jewish brothers and sisters. One antisemite is one too many, and there is much work to be done to tackle this.

Today, I wish to focus on the responses to the problem. An effective response will flow partly from the following two principles. First, we must do all we can through education to understand and accept our differences, and in this context our religious differences in particular. Although respect for freedom of religion and belief should not give special privileges to the religious, it should allow believers like our Jewish brothers and sisters the maximum possible freedom to live out and profess publicly who they are and what they believe. Secondly, we must re-emphasise the things that bind us all together, whatever our background or beliefs, and first and foremost that means our innate value as individual human beings—our shared humanity.

Before I touch on those principles in a little more detail, let me just say that true tolerance cannot just be of religions or practices with which we agree; it must also be of those who may be quite different from ourselves. Neither is true tolerance best fostered by state-established measures of what is good for all; rather, it is fostered by enabling those who are different to exist freely and together with those differences. One way to promote that is to facilitate better religious education in schools.

As chair of the all-party group on religious education, I am aware of the number of highly dedicated RE teachers throughout the country, yet as our report “Improving Religious Literacy: A Contribution to the Debate” highlighted, over recent years RE has not been given the priority or resources that it should have had in many schools. I am pleased that Education Ministers are now seeking to address this, because for many children today RE serves as the main or sole space in which they encounter and discuss different religious beliefs, values and meaning.

Poor-quality RE can have a lasting detrimental effect on the extent of children’s ability to understand and engage with those of different faiths. In turn, that can affect their ability throughout life to engage intelligently and positively in an increasingly diverse society. A submission to the all-party group from the University of Chester department of theology and religious studies said:

“Religious literacy enables willingness and ability to live with religious and cultural tensions and with conflicting beliefs and practices. It supports social cohesion by providing spaces where different views can be aired, listened to and engaged with without the pressure to conform to an overall perspective.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I have been moved by the speeches we have heard, and particularly by the hon. Lady now. Does she agree that we need the three themes of love, tolerance and respect of everyone in society? That is what this debate is about and we should all practise those themes in our own lives, and those outside this place should do the same.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman hits the mark absolutely.

Good religious education will help to promote community cohesion, which is critical as the shape of our communities changes. I am pleased that the Secretary of State for Education appreciates that, too. He noted recently:

“It is mandatory for all state funded schools to teach RE and it is important that they do this well. Good quality religious education not only helps schools meet their legal duty to promote children and young people’s spiritual and moral development. It also gives them knowledge of the values and traditions of Britain and other countries, and so fosters mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.”

Lord Alton said in the other place:

“Religious literacy and understanding of faith and no faith, the honouring of difference, the determination to understand one another and to reconsider bigotry, prejudice and caricatures, must surely be at the heart of how we form tomorrow’s citizens.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 December 2018; Vol. 794, c. GC158.]

We can promote true tolerance by reasserting the rights and respect owed to each person simply by virtue of their humanity. These rights, as intended in the universal declaration of human rights, assume that we all have equality by virtue of our humanity.

International Freedom of Religion or Belief Day

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 25th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

I agree wholeheartedly. I was saddened and deeply concerned by the stories we heard at first hand of intimidation, harassment, imprisonment—often including cruel treatment in prison—and repression of people in Russia because of their beliefs.

[Jim Shannon]

In my introduction, I referred briefly to eastern Ukraine, which Russia has annexed and taken over. Some Baptist pastors went missing in that area and are entirely unaccounted for. Churches have been destroyed and people have been restricted from being able to worship their God. Russia has control there.

[Fiona Bruce]

Yes. There are many other aspects of the report that time precludes me from going into, but there are indeed many geographical areas where persecution is taking place.

I would be grateful if the Minister agreed to meet my co-commissioners and me to discuss our report. We received some evidence in person from some important witnesses, including Marina Litvinenko—her husband, as Members will remember, was assassinated in London over a decade ago—and Bill Browder, whose lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in prison in Russia, as a result of which Mr Browder has campaigned internationally for justice and human rights in Russia. We also received evidence via Skype from Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion, who was driven into exile because he could not freely live his life according to his beliefs in Russia.

I will now turn to Nigeria—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) wants to speak about that country, so I will shorten my comments a little. A serious issue is occurring in Nigeria. I will refer first to my letter of 9 October to the Minister for Africa, my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), regarding the case of Leah Sharibu, one of 110 girls abducted by Boko Haram from their school in Dapchi. The other girls were all released some six months ago following negotiations, but Leah—the only Christian among them—remains in captivity because she refuses to convert in exchange for her freedom. She has now spent more than 200 days in captivity. Will the Minister speak with his ministerial counterpart, and perhaps respond to my question in that letter about what steps the UK Government can take to assist the Nigerian authorities in ensuring Leah’s swift and safe return?

I draw the Minister’s attention to concerns that nothing less than genocide is unfolding in Nigeria, with inadequate international attention paid to it. In recent years there has been an escalation in attacks on communities in several states by well-armed Fulani herdsmen. Local observers describe those attacks as a campaign of ethno-religious cleansing. Reports from Christian Solidarity Worldwide—an organisation whose work globally, and in this case in Nigeria, I also pay tribute to—say that

“the local chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) recently revealed that herders have destroyed over 500 churches in Benue state alone since 2011.”

When I visited Nigeria over two years ago with the International Development Committee, my colleagues and I attended a roundtable of civil society representatives. One of those representatives was a senior member of the Christian Association of Nigeria, who highlighted concerns about the issue, saying that ethno-religious cleansing was happening. Sadly, insufficient notice of his concerns was taken by DFID representatives in Nigeria at the time. Two years later, the matter has significantly worsened. I implore the Minister to look into the situation. It has been exacerbated by inadequate Nigerian Government action, which CSW says has “entrenched impunity”.

The people being persecuted by those herdsmen need Government support, as the herdsmen are so brutal that individual communities are defenceless against them. Only yesterday evening, at a meeting of Nigerians, I spoke with someone who had lived in Nigeria until very recently. He told me that those herder militias are so brutal that even Boko Haram leaves them alone. They are armed with sophisticated weaponry, including AK47s, in some cases chemicals, and even rocket launchers. Those militias are believed to have murdered more people in 2015, 2016 and 2017 than Boko Haram, destroying, overrunning and seizing property and land, and displacing tens of thousands. It is not sufficient to say that they are simply traveller communities involved in farmer-herder clashes, attacking indiscriminately. That is what I heard when I was there.

Attacks on Christian communities by these herdsmen are becoming far too common. CSW reports that in the first quarter of 2018 they have perpetrated more than 100 attacks on communities in central Nigeria, claiming more than 1,000 lives. To give one example, in August a Nigerian pastor, Adamu Wurim Gyang, his three children and his wife were burnt alive when their house was set on fire in Abonong village. A clergyman, Ezekiel Dachomo, appealed in a video in September for assistance from the US, UK parliamentarians and the UN, saying:

“Please stand for us. We are dying…please allow us to survive. We have nobody. Only God in heaven can stand for us. Please, I am begging you. United Nations, your silence is getting worse…Please, please, I’m begging you stand for the helpless.”

The international community must hear these cries. Those of us who remember the barbaric genocide in Rwanda are reflecting now that history could be repeating itself. Will the Minister work with the UN to urge the Nigerian Government to develop effective solutions to bring an end to this atrocious violence?

Before I turn to my final country, I urge colleagues, in addition to commemorating International Freedom of Religion or Belief Day today, to support Red Wednesday on 28 November. I ask them to join calls for the Speaker to permit the buildings of Parliament—the Commons and the Lords—to be lit up red to highlight the concerns we have about these freedoms. I also ask them to urge local public buildings in their communities to do the same. A third day that I would like to draw colleagues’ attention to is specifically about victims of genocide. I tabled an early-day motion in July asking for support for an international day commemorating victims and survivors of religious persecution. If colleagues would be good enough to sign that EDM, we can perhaps bring the need to have a particular focus on victims and survivors much more into the international arena than we have to date.

I will move on to my final country, which is, as it was when we were last in this Chamber debating this issue, the UK. I rejoice that here in the UK we enjoy a significant heritage of prizing and protecting freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. We do not suffer persecution of the type we have heard about in many countries. However, I have become increasingly concerned in recent years about whether these freedoms are being adequately protected in practice in our country.

I welcome the recent Supreme Court judgment regarding Ashers Baking Company, where the Court ruled that the owners should not be compelled to promote a message that clashes with their own sincerely held biblical beliefs. The ruling has implications not simply for Christians or for religious people; it is an important safeguard for us all, because it upholds an important principle of freedom of expression—namely, that no one should be compelled to express a belief that they do not hold, still less a message with which they strongly disagree.

None the less, I want to sound two notes of caution in closing. First, although I am pleased by the Supreme Court judgment, I am concerned that the case progressed to anything like the extent it did through our courts. I am all the more concerned because its progress was reportedly funded at enormous public expense—to the tune of around a quarter of a million pounds—by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, and that is not to mention the fees of the McArthur family. Should the issue not have been sensibly resolved more quickly, and certainly without the trauma that the brave McArthur family must have endured to make the public stand they did? I pay tribute to them, as I do to the Christian Institute, which supported them. Why did a public body support the action? Why did the courts not uphold this important freedom much earlier in the process? As one part of the solution, I suggest that we need to see a redoubling of efforts to promote religious literacy in the judicial system.

Secondly, while underlining my welcome of the recent judgment and the vindication of the McArthur family, it is important to recognise that that does not negate the challenges faced by many other Christians in the UK on account of their Christian faith. I hope that the judgment is a turning point in securing a better, practical settlement in the protection in everyday life of religious freedom generally, not only for Christians, but for those with other beliefs. I hope that the judgment will encourage those who have sincere beliefs to speak out about them and not to feel that they are subject to what has been called “the chilling effect”, inhibiting them from doing so. I hope that we will see further evidence in coming months that judicially, politically and culturally our commitment to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as to freedom of expression, is deep and real here in the UK, even where that freedom may be politically or culturally inconvenient. In terms of religious freedom, we should stand as an exemplar beacon of hope to others who suffer far more gravely around the world.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I absolutely agree that this is an issue that requires the greatest of care and that needs to be addressed with considerable compassion. It therefore deserves more time to be considered by the Members of this House than it has been given in this emergency debate. That is the point that I wanted to make. The proposer of the new clause might say that it does not interfere with devolution, but it clearly has the potential to undermine devolution, touching as it does on the key devolved issues of abortion and marriage.

[Jim Shannon]

Not only does the new clause go against the will of a great many of us in this House, but it also goes against the will of 60% of the people of Northern Ireland—women who say that they do not want any change. That is what the people of Northern Ireland are saying, so why should this House make it any different?

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes a pertinent point, which I shall refer to further.

I think the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said that the powers of guidance that the Bill gives to the Secretary of State are powerful. Indeed, I believe that they are; the guidance given to the Secretary of State is far reaching. The guidance cannot and should not change the law, but it could well encourage officials and citizens to believe that it does, and it may well change behaviour. I therefore exhort the Secretary of State to ensure that if new clause 7 is passed—I will certainly vote against it—none of the guidance she provides in any way encourages officials to effect any policy changes. Indeed, I seek her reassurance today that she will specifically guard against that happening.

Civil Society Space

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 26th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[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.

Forced Organ Removal: China

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this debate and on his powerful speech.

Let us be clear about what we are speaking of here, because if what we are discussing is indeed the case it virtually defies credibility. But increasingly research and evidence is pointing towards what is being alleged, which is that the Chinese Government actively condone—indeed, are involved in—the murder of potentially thousands of their own citizens every year for the purpose of forcibly extracting vital organs including livers, kidneys, hearts and corneas, sometimes while those people are still alive, and without anaesthetic. Many of those people are in prison, mainly—we are told—for their beliefs or ethnicity. Often their families are told that they have died. They are young people in reasonable health, and their families are simply handed an urn of ashes.

Credible research findings strongly suggest that many thousands of people are being killed for their organs, particularly people in minority groups, most notably practitioners of Falun Gong—a peaceful, meditative practice—although Tibetans, Uighurs and, potentially, house Christians have also been targeted for political reasons.

The allegations that Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans and Uyghurs have been victims of that horrific practice are well documented and strong, as I shall recount. The suggestion that house church Christians may be affected requires further research. Either way, all the allegations of which we are now aware are sufficiently strong to require investigation by the international community.

It is of the highest necessity that the UK raises the issue with the Chinese directly, and calls for an international inquiry into the matter, ideally led by the United Nations. Even if the UN will not conduct a commission of inquiry, our Government should investigate the allegations and look at alternative mechanisms to bring to account those involved in those horrific alleged practices. If Britain as a nation is to maintain its status as a people concerned about grievous violations of human rights, it is imperative that the issue is addressed loudly and fearlessly, in co-operation with the other international organisations and leading parliamentarians across the world who are increasingly expressing concerns about the issue.

The Conservative party human rights commission, which I am privileged to chair, has recently conducted an inquiry into forced organ harvesting in China. During the course of the inquiry, I have been privileged to hear, in this House, first-hand testimony of those who have conducted research into the nature of the crime, and first-hand testimony by way of a powerful statement from a former Chinese doctor, Dr Enver Tohti, who has been required to perform an organ operation on an executed prisoner—for transplant, he believes.

The House has been privileged to host the UK premiere of the film “The Bleeding Edge”, a fictional film based on the testimony of witnesses to illegal organ harvesting. It was harrowing. I am deeply grateful to Mr Speaker for hosting the film, and to the actress, Anastasia Lin, who starred in the film and gave evidence at one of the hearings of the Conservative party human rights commission. I am aware of other films on the subject, notably “Human Harvest” and “Hard to Believe”.

As I speak, the Conservative party human rights commission is releasing a report of the inquiry, which can be found on the website www.conservativehumanrights.com. It contains more information than I can relay in this debate, but I will refer to some evidence received by the inquiry. The report was written by the vice-chair of the commission, Ben Rogers, who is an expert on human rights in China and elsewhere. I pay tribute to him for his dedicated work in this field and to the work of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the organisation for which he works.

Written evidence submitted to the inquiry included a statement from a former prisoner, Yu Xinhui, who wrote:

“Everyone in the prison knows about this”—

by which he means the removal of prisoners for organ harvesting.

“Usually in the prison, regardless of whether the person is deceased, if he is sent to the prison hospital, he faces the reality of having his organs removed at any moment. Everyone in prison knows that there exists a list of names. People…taken away, and no one will return.”

That list of names includes blood types and the health of patients’ organs so that the information is ready and available if a transplant request is made.

Yu Xinhui continued:

“I once asked a prison doctor, because this particular doctor was very sympathetic to us Falun Gong practitioners. He was especially sympathetic towards me, because we were from the same hometown. Once he told me secretly, saying, ‘Don’t go against the Communist Party. Don’t resist them. Whatever they tell you to do, just do it. Don’t go against them forcefully. If you do, then when the time comes, you won’t even know how you will have died. When it happens, where your heart, liver, spleen, and lungs will be taken, you won’t even know either.’”

Yu Xinhui had three physical examinations while in prison, the last of which was in March 2005. Many former prisoners of conscience have testified to having been subjected to physical examinations while in prison that went beyond normal medical check-ups and were clearly aimed at assessing the health of their organs.

The timing of this debate is apt, given new evidence that the scale of organ harvesting in China may now be far higher than previously estimated. The evidence has built to a point where ignoring it is not an option. There is now strong, academically well-researched information that between 50,000 to 90,000 organ transplants may occur in China every year and are, effectively, concealed by the Government. That is in a country where there is no tradition of organ donation. Indeed, Chinese official figures put the number of voluntary donations at a total of 120 for the entire 30-year period between 1980 and 2009.

Let me quote further from the Conservative party human rights commission’s report:

“Although there are a variety of sources of evidence, there are three key reports which provide detailed research into the practice of forced organ harvesting in China”—

the hon. Member for Strangford referred to those reports. Our report continues:

“The first, published on the Internet in 2006 and in print in 2009, was a report researched and written by the former Canadian Member of Parliament and former Government Minister David Kilgour and a respected human rights lawyer, David Matas, called Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for their organs. The second was Ethan Gutmann’s book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem, published in 2014.”

Both David Matas and Ethan Gutmann have given evidence to our commission. The third report, which was published this year, runs to 700 pages. It updates forensically those two pieces of research, is co-authored by David Kilgour, David Matas and Ethan Gutmann, and is entitled, “Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update.” I have heard Ethan Gutmann publicly invite from anyone, particularly from the Chinese, any evidence or comments that contradict the research in the report, but as of September 2016 none has been received.

The most important point made by the report, and indeed by David Matas and Ethan Gutmann in their evidence to the Conservative party human rights commission, is that the scale of forced organ harvesting in China is significantly underestimated. Their new research is forensic—they have inquired into the public records of no fewer than 712 hospitals in China that carry out liver and kidney transplants. Their detailed research leads them to conclude that potentially between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals, which almost defies credibility. If those figures are correct, organs are being transplanted on an industrial scale, as the hon. Member for Strangford said. One hospital alone, the Orient organ transplant centre at the Tianjin first central hospital, is performing thousands of transplants a year according to its own bed occupancy data. Chinese official claims state that 10,000 organ transplants are carried out each year, but the authors of the report contend that that is

“easily surpassed by just a few hospitals.”

By way of background, according to Ethan the practice of forced organ harvesting began in China as long ago as 1994, when the first live organs were removed from death row prisoners on the execution grounds of Xinjiang. Dr Enver Tohti came to London to give evidence to us, and he told us about the process. He was a cancer surgeon in Ürümqi, Xinjiang province. In 1995, while he was simply doing his job, he was instructed by two of his hospital’s chief surgeons to prepare mobile surgery equipment—in other words, an ambulance—and to wait for them the next day at a hospital gate with the ambulance, the equipment and three other assistants. The following morning, at 9 am, the two chief surgeons arrived in a car and he was told to follow them. He did not know where he was going but, about half an hour later, they arrived at Western Mountain—Xishan—an execution ground where prisoners were taken to be executed. He described what happened:

“We had been told to wait behind a hill, and come into the field as soon as we’d hear the gun shot. So we waited. A moment later there were gun shots. Not one, but many. We rushed into the field. An armed police officer approached us and told me where to go. He led us closer, then pointed to a corpse saying ‘this is the one’.”

A few prisoners had been executed. He continued:

“By then our chief surgeon appeared from nowhere and told me to remove the liver and two kidneys. He urged me to hurry up, so we took the body into the van and removed his liver and kidneys…our chief surgeons put those organs in a special box, and got into the car. They told me to take my team back to the hospital and left. I have no idea where they went… That was the end of that. Nobody has ever talked about what we did that day. It is something I wish hadn’t happened.”

Not only is the scale of the numbers a concern; the speed at which Chinese hospitals can obtain organs is also highly suspect. Doctors will tell us that the time they have to get an organ from a donor to a recipient varies but that it is very short for sensitive vital organs. A heart or a liver cannot simply be saved in a freezer until it is needed, which is why the NHS states that in this country the average wait for a suitable transplant for an adult is 145 days—of course, we are in a country with a tradition of donation. Compare that with the many statements in Chinese medical publications that they can find an emergency liver donor within 24 hours. I understand there is even a medical journal that boasts of taking only four hours to find a donor. I am informed that the Chinese Government claim that the organs come from death row prisoners who have been executed locally to the hospital that is providing the transplant, but the coincidence of that number of prisoners happening to have, say, a healthy liver, happening to match the blood type of the recipient and happening to have been executed locally is simply too much for credibility given the numbers involved. An alternative interpretation, and sadly the one that is more credible, is that people are being killed on demand to supply their organs.

In the other place, Lord Alton has been assured by the Government that the issue has been raised with the Chinese Government as part of the annual UK-China human rights dialogue and will be raised again, for which I thank the Government. However, evidence suggests that the Chinese Government have repeatedly committed themselves to denial, obfuscation and misdirection on this issue. It is therefore appropriate that we increase our activity in light of the new evidence I have highlighted. Indeed, there is growing international pressure on this matter.

The UN special rapporteurs on torture and on freedom of religion or belief have both requested that the Chinese Government explain the sources of these organs and that they allow them to investigate. There has been no response. The European Parliament adopted a written declaration in July 2016 on stopping organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China that, among other clauses, states:

“There have been persistent credible reports on systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, primarily from practitioners of Falun Gong peaceful meditation and exercises but also from Uighurs, Tibetans and Christians.

The international community has strongly condemned organ harvesting in China and actions should be taken to end it.

Owing to the severity of underlying abuse there is a clear need to organise without delay an independent investigation into ongoing organ harvesting in the People’s Republic of China.”

Similarly, the United States Congress unanimously passed a resolution in June 2016 condemning the practice of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in the People’s Republic of China. The resolution calls for visas to be denied to those involved in coerced organ or tissue transplantation. It expresses

“concern regarding persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience in the People’s Republic of China, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups.”

The concerns in America are coming from leading Congressmen and Senators. I was privileged to meet Congressman Chris Smith in Washington DC last week. He is the fourth longest-serving member of Congress and is a remarkable campaigner for human rights across the world. He spoke at a joint sub-committee of the US committee on foreign affairs on 21 June. I will quote him at more length at the end of my speech if I have time, but he told the House of Representatives:

“Twenty years ago, I chaired a human rights hearing in my subcommittee with a Chinese security official who testified that he and his other security agents were executing prisoners—with doctors…there and ambulances—in order to steal their organs for transplant. Since then, this horrific practice has skyrocketed.”

The US Congressional-Executive Commission on China published its annual report less than two weeks ago; I was privileged to meet the group of young people who work for the commission and who produced the report. The commission’s chairman said:

“The Chinese government’s human rights record is utterly deplorable, continuing a downward trend over the past three years.”

That, of course, includes organ harvesting.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and for setting the scene. Clearly the world is awakening to what is happening in China; she is as aware of that as I am. Will the awakening that we seem to see in Canada, in the States and now in the United Kingdom precipitate a need for our Government to contact the Chinese authorities to ensure that they can respond now to stop this practice? The weight of evidence is growing every day.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The growing international concern about organ harvesting means it is vital that this country joins in and does not lag behind the international community in condemning these practices and challenging the Chinese Government accordingly.

I have two more things to say. First, as well as politicians acting, the international medical community must do detailed analysis of the claims made by these respected researchers. It is helpful to note that the president of the Transplantation Society, Dr Philip O’Connell, said at the society’s international conference in Hong Kong this year, addressing his comments to China, that

“there remains, in many sectors, a deep sense of mistrust of your transplant programs…It is important that you understand that the global community”—

I believe he was referring to the global medical community—

“is appalled by the practices”.

Finance Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend all hon. Members who have made very valuable contributions, in particular the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). He is no longer in his place, but I would like to speak to his presentation on new clause 3. He set out clearly where we stand.

I want to put on record again the consistent support of the Democratic Unionist party for the provision of the transferable allowance for married couples. I remember the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and I taking some verbal attacks in this Chamber—mostly from the Opposition Benches, I have to say—for our stance on this issue, but we persevered and the Government persevered. I thank the Government for bringing in the provision in their previous term. I had hoped there would have been some indication that the Government could support new clause 3. I understand, after talking to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate, that he will not press it to a Division. If that is the case, we have to abide by that.

The sadness for me is that the Government have, until today, chosen to invest the lion’s share of their resources in their other income tax policy of raising the personal allowance. It is undoubtedly true that that policy helps poorer families, but it is very badly targeted. If I may say so in a respectful way, it seems to be targeted at those who can well afford it, as against those who cannot. I have to put on record that I have some concerns about that. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has demonstrated that 75% of the benefit—and now, as the allowance is being raised from £10,000 to £12,500, even more than 75% of the benefit—goes to those in the top half of the income distribution. That is what the available statistics and charts indicate and I have to say they are very stark. They indicate an imbalance in the system that, as the hon. Gentleman clearly stated, is a concern.

[Fiona Bruce]

There is another imbalance in the system. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that the married couple’s allowance, which provides support to married couples where at least one spouse was born before April 1935, is worth £8,355 a year. Should we not also be looking at providing for those families with young children who are in the lowest socioeconomic bracket and supporting them similarly?

[Jim Shannon]

I could not agree more and I would like to make a comment on that later. New clause 3 clearly outlines the importance of that, but unfortunately we do not have the opportunity to support it today. I am sure the Minister, who knows I respect her greatly, will be able to respond to some of our concerns.

The IFS has demonstrated that, in contrast to the personal allowance, the transferable allowance results in 70% of the benefit going to those in the bottom half of the income distribution. The problem is that so far this has received only symbolic recognition. That has had two effects. First, the fundamental marriage accessibility challenge has not really been addressed, which is a massive issue given the impact on life chances of being brought up in a married home compared with a non-married home. Secondly, the very limited symbolic recognition has translated into low take-up. Given the distributional impact of the two tax policies and the impact of the transferable allowance on life chances, I have to say that if the Government are to have one symbolic policy and one substantive policy, they have got it the wrong way around. I say that with great respect. It would have been wiser to focus investment on the transferable allowance rather than redistribute billions to those in the top half of the income scale by raising personal allowances. I believe that we urgently need to change that. If the allowance cannot be made generally available to basic rate married couples, it should be focused, as the hon. Member for Congleton said, on families with children under five.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the highest levels of marriage breakdown occur when children are aged between nought and three? We are looking to support marriage at just that moment of greatest strain.

[Jim Shannon]

As always, the hon. Lady is wise in her interventions. I thank her for what she said, which underlines other important issues. If we can help at that critical time when the pressure is on, I believe that this House should do so. I hope that the Minister will do so, too, in her response.

The impact of the allowance on low-income households also needs to be addressed, as new clause 3 proposes. I hope we can do that at the right time. The new clause refers finally to

“ways in which the allowance could be changed to target low-income families with young children.”

Those points clearly illustrate for me what is necessary in this Bill, although the provisions may not be as hard and fast as I would like them to be.

Let me conclude; I am conscious of the time. In the longer term, there is a pressing need to adopt a more balanced approach to the resourcing of raising the personal allowance and increasing the transferable allowance. I fully support the transferable allowance and I would have hoped that the Government could commit themselves to it. Speaking as someone committed to progressive tax policy which targets those in the lower half of the income distribution scales rather than those in the top half, if the proposal means less money going to the personal allowance, in my judgment and, I believe, in the judgment of many in this House, that would be no bad thing.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fixed-odds betting terminals.

Fixed odds betting terminals are a big issue, and a big crowd of hon. and right. hon Members are here to speak about them. There is a lot of concern in the House about the issue. There are probably some hon. Members here today—perhaps not so many—who will not be speaking with the same level of concern as me, but Opposition Members intend to take the issue further in their speeches today.

Fixed odds betting terminals are touch-screen roulette machines found in betting shops across the whole United Kingdom. Gamblers can play casino-style games with a maximum stake of £100, which can be wagered every 20 seconds. That is a possible total of £300 a minute. We have more than 35,000 fixed odds betting terminals in the United Kingdom’s bookmakers. FOBTs are disproportionately found in the poorer parts of the United Kingdom and generate some £1.7 billion of revenue for bookmakers. Campaigners have labelled the machines the crack cocaine of gambling, and that is what they are. The issue is of great importance.

Bookmakers have a powerful lobby and powerful friends. They have kept arguing that we need more evidence, despite the obvious case for regulation, in order to protect their huge profits made at the expense of the vulnerable. We are here to speak for the vulnerable, for legislative change and for better protection.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is bringing forward the debate with his characteristic compassion. Does he agree that it is a matter of social justice that we address this issue? Those affected are not just those who are addicted, but their families, and in particular their children. It is primarily for them that many of us are here today.

[Jim Shannon]

As always, I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention—she is an hon. Friend, too. She speaks with heart and compassion, and she speaks for me as much as everyone else here.

Our Prime Minister told Parliament more than 12 months ago that FOBTs are a serious issue, and that he would act as soon as there was more evidence. Since then, two tragic cases of suicide have been linked to the machines, and there are numerous reports of the terrible impact they are having on the most vulnerable, but the Government are yet to act. The Minister is here to respond to the debate, and we look forward to hearing the ideas that he will put forward in response to what we have to say. There is no place for £100-a-spin games on the high street in bookmakers that have little or no supervision. There is a simple answer to protect the vulnerable, as the hon. Lady said, and that is to reduce the stake.

Daesh: Persecution of Christians

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered persecution of Christians and other religious minorities under Daesh.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. May I clarify the subject of the debate? The wording I applied for was “Genocide under Daesh of Christians and other religious minorities”. It is regrettable that, without any discussion with me, the motion was changed, although I understand it was not changed by the Speaker’s office. I shall say no more about the motion, except to clarify that the violence of ISIL, or Daesh, as we now call it, rages against a number of minority religious groups in addition to Christians, including the Yazidis and minority Muslim groups. Space prohibited me from referring to them by name in the motion.

The 1948 UN convention on genocide makes it clear that genocide is the systematic killing or serious harming of people because they are part of a recognisable group. The specific legal meaning of genocide is

“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

The convention specifies certain actions that can contribute to genocide, such as killing, forcible transfer, preventing births and causing serious bodily or mental harm.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter to Westminster Hall for consideration. It is a massive subject that warrants a 90-minute debate, and I am disappointed that it was not allocated one. Nevertheless, we have half an hour. I know that the hon. Lady, along with others present, shares my concern that Christians are given the ultimatum: “convert or die”. It is a choice between continuing to have religious beliefs and leaving the country or dying. Genocide is the only word we can use for that.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point and is quite right. As I stand here today, religious minorities are suffering horrendous atrocities at the hands of this murderous cult in Syria, Iraq and the other countries of the middle east where Daesh has a strong presence. The number of Christians in Iraq has reduced from 1.4 million to just over a quarter of a million in just a few years. The Bishop of Aleppo said this week that two thirds of Syrian Christians have been either killed or driven away from his country.

Acts committed by ISIS against Christians include the assassination of church leaders, mass murders, torture, kidnapping for ransom, sexual enslavement, systematic rape, forced conversions and the destruction of churches. We know about the mass graves of the Yazidis, and about crucifixions, forced marriages and the kidnapping of women and girls, some of them as young as eight, many of them raped mercilessly, month after month, until their bodies are in tatters. We know about children being beheaded in front of their families for refusing to convert.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is being very gracious in giving way. Before the debate, I asked her if I could intervene to say that the Yazidis in particular have been reduced from 500,000 to 200,000 in Iraq. Nobody in the west put out their hand to help or assist, as they should have. The Yazidis have been in the Kurdish camps along the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. They are a small group who have been persecuted, pursued and discriminated against, and their ethnic and religious freedoms have been abused. Perhaps the Minister could respond to that point as well.

[Fiona Bruce]

Again, the hon. Gentleman makes a strong point.

We are sometimes at risk of being desensitised by the horrors under Daesh. They are so extreme that their evil seems almost fictional. But for those who are suffering—people who lived lives like us just a short time ago—they are very real.

Surely one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Bearing in mind the definition of genocide to which I referred a moment ago, can anyone now seriously doubt that Daesh’s actions are genocidal? Nor, surely, can anyone seriously doubt that Daesh is trying to destroy minorities such as the Yazidis, in the words of the convention,

“in whole or in part”.

As Bishop Angaelos, a general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, has said:

“How can we not declare Genocide if Christians are suffering the same fate, at the same time, under the same conditions, at the hands of the same perpetrators?”

The entire population of Christians in the city of Mosul in Iraq, all 60,000 of them, have been effectively eradicated by Daesh—gone, fled or dead.

Daesh’s intentions in perpetrating its violence are a matter of record, as reports have made clear repeatedly. It regularly makes public statements of a genocidal nature, such as the following message, which was broadcast on its Al-Bayan radio station:

“We say to the defenders of the cross, that future attacks are going to be harsher and worse...The Islamic State soldiers will inflict harm on you with the grace of Allah. The future is just around the corner.”

As the US Secretary of State said just last week, after a unanimous vote by the House of Representatives to declare a genocide by 393 votes to none:

“Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions—in what it says, what it believes, and what it does…The fact is that Daesh kills Christians because they are Christians; Yezidis because they are Yezidis; Shia because they are Shia.”

I submit that the legal criteria for genocide have been amply satisfied. Not only have the US Government now said so, but so have the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, the Pope, the US Congress, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and 75 Members of both Houses of Parliament when we wrote to the Prime Minister, including the former chief of staff and former head of MI5. A group of leading QC peers also recently wrote to the Prime Minister on this issue. All agree that the crimes of Daesh are genocide.

Why is it so important that we, as Members of Parliament, also collectively define these crimes as genocide? Because doing so would be more than mere verbiage—more than mere words. It would bring into play a whole series of mechanisms that can strengthen the response of the international community to challenge this evil force. The convention on genocide is clear that such a declaration brings with it obligations to prevent, protect and punish. I suggest that our making such a declaration would challenge the 147 countries that are party to the convention to step up and act on their obligations to help to prevent further atrocities, to protect those who are suffering, and to work towards punishing the perpetrators.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. She has outlined clearly the need for us to have this debate. It is an opportunity for us to speak out on behalf of our Christian brothers and sisters throughout the whole world who have been persecuted because of their beliefs. We have the chance to be a voice for the voiceless. I congratulate the hon. Lady again on bringing this debate to Westminster Hall for our consideration.

[Fiona Bruce]

It is right that we should be a voice for the voiceless.

Alcohol Harm and Older People

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Thursday 15th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be here and I welcome the opportunity to speak about the very real and damaging effects of alcohol harm on older people. I am pleased that the Minister for Public Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), is present and commend her for her passionate commitment to ensuring that key public health matters, and a strong preventive health agenda, remain high on the Government’s set of priorities for this Parliament.

I should perhaps clarify at the outset that I am seeking not to promote further legislation or regulation in this sphere, but to highlight the need for more education and information to help people make positive choices about their drinking; to enjoy it but at the same time maintain their own health and wellbeing. We all want to live longer—and we are—but, importantly, we want to live longer and healthier so that we can enjoy those later years. That is why this subject is so important.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way so early in her speech—I indicated to her before the debate that I intended to intervene. The theme that she is talking about, which many Members of the House, including me, would agree with, is this: everything in moderation. In other words, people should be careful about what they take and how often they take it.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Although most people are able to drink in moderation and enjoy the benefits of the socialising and relaxation often associated with drink, for many others it comes with significant costs.

Before proceeding any further, I ought to clarify what I mean by “older people”. Depressingly, I am referring to those of us who are over 45. A huge amount has been done in the past few years to tackle excessive drinking by the young, and encouraging figures show that drinking among young people is falling. I am also referring not so much to binge drinking, which perhaps is what we all associate with drinking among young people, but to harmful drinking. That does not have to mean getting wildly drunk and being hungover the next day; it can be continuous drinking, perhaps every day of the week, which does not allow the body’s organs to have a break from alcohol. People are often unaware that that can be extremely harmful.

Alcohol is a leading risk factor for death and disease in the UK; it is the leading risk factor after smoking and obesity. As a toxin, it is the cause of many acute and chronic diseases, and—Members might be surprised to hear this—it affects almost every organ in the body. The relationship between alcohol and liver disease is well known, but alcohol is also a risk factor in a number of cancers, in cardiovascular disease and in gastro-intestinal diseases such as pancreatitis, and of course it is also a leading cause of accident and injury. On that topic, the all-party group on alcohol harm, which I chair, is currently conducting an inquiry into the considerable impact of alcohol on the emergency services. I look forward to being able to update the House on that work in due course.

Given its associations with so many and such serious health conditions, it is unsurprising that the impact of alcohol on NHS services is considerable. In 2012-13 there were more than 1 million alcohol-related hospital admissions, where an alcohol-related disease, injury or condition was the primary reason for the admission or a secondary diagnosis. As the Minister will be aware, the costs of this to the NHS are estimated to be at least £3.5 billion per year—on its own, more than a third of the Treasury receipts from alcohol—yet estimates for the wider personal, social and economic costs of alcohol vary from £21 billion to £55 billion in England alone. We therefore have much to address.

I must emphasise, though, that recent trends in the decline of underage drinking and drinking among young people are encouraging, which leads me to believe that we can similarly address and support improved positive drinking among older people. The proportion of 11 to 15-year-olds who have ever had a drink fell from 61% in 2003 to 38% in 2014, and the proportion of those who got drunk in the past week declined dramatically from 26% to just 8% in the same period.

Encouragingly, this positive trend is beginning to extend to the 18 to 25-year-old age group, many of whom, interestingly, now choose not to drink at all. That includes my own son, a young man in his 20s. He is a sportsman who simply does not drink. A huge amount of work has been done in this area. I commend the Government and their partnership working with many agencies to educate and support this age group to reduce levels of harmful drinking. One of the successes has been the introduction of street pastors. Another has been the presence of club hosts in clubs and pubs, where people on the “older sister” model, perhaps slightly older than those who might drink irresponsibly, will approach a young person they think is drinking too much and say, “Perhaps you need to think about how much you’ve drunk.”

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comment about street pastors. In the past month, street pastors have started to be active in my constituency, with 13 churches and 43 volunteers coming together on this. That is a very clear commitment by community members themselves to address the issue. I recommend those in any constituency where there are no street pastors to ask the churches to be involved, because the benefits are great.

[Fiona Bruce]

I entirely agree. In my constituency, similarly, there are some excellent street pastor groups.

Voluntary organisations, the drinks industry, publicans and the police, together with local and national authorities, have done a huge amount to address drinking by younger people. With older people, though, much of their drinking is a hidden problem, particularly among the baby boomer generation who often drink at home, many of whom have a dangerously limited awareness of alcohol’s harmful effects. This is a ticking time bomb not just for the individuals concerned but in terms of the public cost of their healthcare in the years to come, with an increasingly ageing population.

According to the Health Survey for England 2013, 10 million people in England drink at a higher level than the Government’s lower-risk guidelines, with serious long-term implications for their health. This is particularly true of older people. Many of those in the baby boomer generation drink on an almost daily basis. The survey found that 14% of 45 to 64-year-olds drank alcohol on five or more days in the past week, compared with just 2% of their younger counterparts in the 18 to 24-year-old group. Alcohol-related hospital admissions among this middle-aged group account for 40% of all alcohol-related hospital admissions and 58% of all admissions for alcoholic liver disease. Tragically, this age group also accounts for the majority of alcohol-related deaths.

Some of the impacts of alcohol are rather less obvious but no less devastating. For example, there is a significant link between alcohol use and the risk of hypertension, which is a factor in a number of related illnesses such as stroke, heart disease and other vascular diseases. Alcohol is generally associated with poorer mental health. In later life, alcohol can be used as a comfort for many of the shocks that people experience in middle age, such as adjustment to life after divorce, redundancy, retirement, children leaving home, or bereavement. Loneliness or depression can also be a factor. These points in life can be very challenging, and they are all associated with higher rates of alcohol use. People need to be made aware that when these life shocks hit them in later life, as they do the majority of us, they need to look out to avoid slipping into harmful drinking patterns because the consequences can be catastrophic in just a few years.

The majority of older people are not aware of the potential damage they are doing to their health or relationships through unhealthy drinking. Office for National Statistics figures show that the greatest number of people who did not drink but now do drink are women over 65, many of whom live alone. That is a particularly concerning statistic that we need to bear in mind. Research by charity Drinkaware and by Ipsos MORI suggests that there is a large group of people who are sleepwalking into poor health. Only 20% of 45 to 65-year-olds think they will have health problems if they continue to drink as they do, yet more than a third are drinking at above the level of Government guidelines. Shockingly, one in nine says that they have already been told by a friend, family member or health professional that they should cut down.

Interestingly, this issue was raised in the previous debate—I do not think the Minister was here—when the shadow Defence Minister, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), spoke about needing to address it for those who had been in our armed services, although not in a nanny-culture way. I strongly echo that.

For many, drinking is an everyday occurrence, but when confronted with it, people do not realise that even drinking at relatively low levels but on a continuous—that is, virtually daily—basis can be harmful. Here is a typical comment:

“On reflection when you look back it’s not the fact that I drink to get drunk constantly—that would be a separate issue…but as part of the relaxing process…on a daily basis at home. I just didn’t realise how many excuses I have to…drink.”

Misuse of alcohol has a devastating impact on relationships and families, and on children in particular. That should be given greater prominence. In 2012, a survey by the Children’s Commissioner, “Silent voices: supporting children and young people affected by parental alcohol misuse”, estimated that between 1999 and 2009 more than 700,000 children were affected by parental or other significant adult drinking. It said that parental alcohol misuse is far more prevalent than parental drug use and called for a greater emphasis on it in policy and practice. It is a matter of social justice that we address this, not just for children but for the poorest in our society, because research shows that those who are less well-off are less resilient and more vulnerable to the impact of harmful drinking. Professional people, some of whom drink more, are able to withstand the impacts better.

As chair of the all-party group on alcohol harm, I urge that greater prominence be given to this issue, particularly to the harms caused to older people. A number of strands could be taken forward, alongside other initiatives that I am sure the Minister will consider. One very practical example was given in an excellent report that I had the privilege of launching here in the House last month: “Under Pressure” by the Treat 15 Expert Group, which comprises doctors, nurses and other health professionals. It suggested that whenever an individual has their blood pressure taken, mention could be made, just in those few minutes, of drinking being linked to the risk of high blood pressure, and indicators of the harmful health implications associated with that. It is estimated that about 7.5 million people in this country are at risk of high blood pressure. Just identifying the link with harmful drinking could help a large number of people to improve their health prospects. In those few moments, often when nothing else is done or said, there is a real opportunity, at no cost at all, for the medical profession to provide an important service.

There is also an urgent need for public education on the harmful effects that drinking can have on older people. People need information that is simple, accessible and non-judgmental. There are some innovative resources, such as the Drinkaware app and the Change4Life booze buster programme, which help people make informed choices about their drinking and support them to make a change that could have significant benefits for their health and wellbeing.

We also need more prominent, comprehensive and consistent public health messages from Government, the NHS and Public Health England about the risks of harmful drinking. A report will be released shortly and I look forward to reading its suggestions as to how the issue can be addressed. Given that people are living longer, it is important that they are informed about how to live healthier longer lives.

The alcohol industry also has an important role to play by working in collaboration with others. It is a key partner and has made a great deal of progress working in partnership with pubs and clubs and with the Government. The Government challenged the industry to remove 1 billion units from the alcohol market over two years. In fact, 1.3 billion units were removed—the equivalent, apparently, of the whole nation going dry for one week a year. One of the means by which that was achieved was through providing house wines of less alcoholic strength and smaller glasses. I also commend the industry for the fact that almost 93% of alcohol bottles now warn women that it would be better for them to consider not drinking during pregnancy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

There has been talk in the press over the past two weeks about the best message to give to pregnant women about alcohol consumption. Does the hon. Lady agree—perhaps the Minister will say this in her response to the debate—that the best message and policy would be that pregnant women should drink no alcohol whatsoever?

[Fiona Bruce]

That is my personal view. Women have suffered from mixed messages over the past 20 years and more. It would be very helpful to have a clear message. Just six years ago, only 17.6% of products carried a warning label about drinking in pregnancy; the figure is now 93%. I would like it to be 100% and it would be very helpful if the Government gave a clear message that not drinking in pregnancy is probably the wisest choice of all for the woman and her child.

In conclusion, I ask the Government to consider working in partnership with us to develop strategies to reduce alcohol-related harms in older people, just as they have done, with some success, to reduce unhealthy drinking in younger people. No one now questions the role of Government in promoting healthy eating. The same rule could, I hope, be undertaken in future, with similar, commendable vigour, by the Government with regard to encouraging healthy drinking.

Human Rights (North Korea)

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

I agree with everything that the hon. Lady has said. Does she also agree that the power of prayer is very important?

[Fiona Bruce]

I do, and in answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question that I referred to earlier, one way we can also provide support is through some of the organisations that go into North Korea; many of them are Christian organisations, such as Open Doors or Christian Solidarity Worldwide. The commission heard from Amnesty International, in a witness session, that support for them by means of food aid will get through to people in North Korea. There are means of reaching North Koreans and those organisations are providing tremendous strength and support for people in North Korea as they travel about and provide aid and information.

I turn back to the commission’s report. It was not its intention to repeat in detail evidence of the human rights violations, because they were already extremely well documented in the UN commission’s report, published earlier this year, by Mr Justice Kirby. As the Conservative party human rights commission’s report states:

“Instead, this brief report aims to serve as a policy document for the Conservative Party, summarising the scale of the challenge”

faced by the international community

“and then focusing on possible ways forward for the United Kingdom in helping to lead the international community’s effort to end the climate of impunity in North Korea, enhance mechanisms for accountability and justice, break the regime’s information blockade, and bring an end to more than half a century of horrific suffering endured by the North Korean people.”

Breaking that information blockade is, as my colleagues have mentioned, one way in which we can provide support. Mr Jang said, interestingly, that,

“this is not just a humane thing it is also a pragmatic thing to do”.

The commission urges the UK Government to continue their efforts while pursuing a critical engagement in the DPRK on questions of human rights on every level. We are also pressing them to continue to invest in academic and cultural exchanges, such as sponsoring the British Council’s English teaching in North Korea. Many escapees have told us they benefited directly from that. Although the British Council has only four people teaching there, it has taught hundreds of North Koreans over the years. In many cases, that has been extremely helpful when people have sought to move on.

Similarly, the report encourages increased investment in developing the skills and education of North Korean refugees in the UK. The country will need leaders who can go back to it when change happens; it will need men and women of courage, insight and vision who have experienced life in a free nation. I think, for example, of one young refugee, Timothy, who has done a little work experience in my office. He grew up in North Korea, but he was orphaned. From the ages of about eight to 14, he virtually lived on the streets. He then managed to escape to China, but unfortunately he was caught, repatriated and tortured. He managed to escape again, and he finally reached this country. He is now studying politics at Salford university.

We need to take care of such people. The UK has about 600 North Korean refugees—the largest diaspora in the world, outside South Korea. We really should increase engagement with them and draw on their knowledge and experience. We could then send communications from them into North Korea, using some of the technology we have these days—smuggled USB sticks, DVDs and other portable devices. Such things can also be used to send over films, newspaper articles and reports from the human rights organisations I mentioned, and information can also be brought back. If we can work more closely with the North Korean diaspora here, we can find another way of breaking the information blockade.

Abortion (Disability)

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this very important matter to the House for consideration. It was mentioned in Prime Minister’s questions today, for example. Does she agree that the UN convention on the rights of the child, which protects the rights of children, and the Equality Act 2010, which outlaws discrimination on grounds of disability, would demand that this House should change this grossly offensive law that allows children over 24 weeks to be aborted?

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes a relevant point.

Developments in the law, in medicine and in cultural attitudes have led me to introduce this debate. Because of the lack of clarification, the law is being applied in what one barrister has called a haphazard fashion. In 2007, the Select Committee on Science and Technology recommended that the Department of Health produce guidance that would be clinically useful to doctors and patients in this regard, and in response the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists provided updated guidance in 2010, but there still seems to be a considerable difference in views and working practice about what comes within the law and what does not. That is concerning for parents, practitioners, law makers and disabled people, many of whom believe it is now time to review the framework within which this law operates.

It is hard to see the differing treatment of disabled fetuses and able-bodied fetuses as anything other than discrimination, about which disability groups are particularly concerned. Medical knowledge has changed radically since 1990, and even more since 1967, and there have been improvements in fetal medicine, including the ability to correct disabilities, even within the womb before birth.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Friday 5th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman is right. If passed, the Bill will trigger a debate throughout the nation and give the British public an opportunity to make that informed decision. The debate has already started in this Chamber today. Millions of people across the country will be watching and listening, and will have heard valuable and critical contributions, such as the speech from the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds).

[Jim Shannon]

On the subject of giving people choice, the fishing industry has felt the brunt of EU legislation and red tape—more so than other sectors. As European bureaucracy continues to strangle and choke the fishing industry, my constituents in Strangford, particularly in the fishing port of Portavogie, will want the chance to say no in a referendum—this is what we want to see.

Liverpool Care Pathway

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on the passionate way in which she has dealt with this issue. Does she agree that it is important that those who work in the Liverpool pathway are highly skilled? If such care is left in the hands of those who are less skilled, there is a possibility that what could be termed voluntary euthanasia will take place. Does she agree that only highly skilled people should be involved in the Liverpool care pathway?

[Fiona Bruce]

I do, and this is where training is so important. Without the proper application of the Liverpool care pathway, death can be hastened, and that is not the intent of the pathway. Occasionally, even with correct application, it can be the unintended consequence—for example, through the use of narcotics to alleviate severe discomfort and facilitate a more peaceful passing.

I wholeheartedly welcome the Minister’s decision to hold an independent public inquiry into the LCP. I have met him, and I thank him for his open-minded, calm and reasoned approach and for the fact that he has had ears to hear concerns about the LCP. Without wishing to prejudge the terms of the inquiry, may I make the following suggestions for it to consider?

First, a number of pressures might subvert the proper implementation of the LCP, and I am grateful to Professor David Albert Jones of Oxford, who is an authority on this topic, for highlighting them. He says they are:

“the subjective character of judgments about how soon someone is going to die…the fact that the LCP may be initiated by people who are not senior clinicians familiar with the individual patient’s case and have not consulted with palliative care physicians… the influence of managerial pressures to reduce bed occupancy …reluctance to face the difficulties of continuing care of certain difficult patients…the euthanasiast outlook of some clinicians…the possibility of doctors or nurses regarding the LCP as a set of ‘tick boxes’…rather than assessing the needs of the patient…Other NHS organizational/staffing procedures or constraints”.

He adds:

“Research shows that care of the dying is poorest in the hospital setting”

in contrast to care in hospices, which I believe we all admire.

I also urge that the inquiry consider the following measures: that no patient should be placed on the LCP unless they are imminently, irreversibly and inevitably dying, which I understand to mean perhaps within 36 hours; no one should be placed on the LCP without its being discussed with a designated relative or carer; every patient placed on the LCP must be continuously monitored and reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team; documentation must be simplified and standardised, so that those implementing the LCP can easily follow the guidelines; training and supervision should be mandatory, as well as standardised and improved; non-clinical priorities in the use of the pathway must be eradicated and every patient must be treated solely according to their needs; payment for such care must be reconsidered; and the communication to relatives should be substantially improved.

I believe that, if it is well used, the LCP can improve standards of end-of-life care, especially in hospitals. It should promote better palliative care and support the kind of good death that we would all wish for ourselves and our loved ones. I sincerely hope that the independent inquiry will be a major step in facilitating that.

General Matters

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because obtaining such clarity is exactly the purpose of my contribution to the debate.

My concerns—and other concerns—were shared by several colleagues during the debate on 30 April. Responding to the debate, the then Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), stated:

“The concern has been expressed that this Bill is somehow a Trojan horse, preparing the way for a permanent relaxation of the rules for large stores. Let me assure hon. Members again that that is not the case.”

Referring to my particular concerns about the impact on families and family time, he stated:

“I think she is absolutely right, so let me say to her that the Bill affects just eight Sundays and the deliberate inclusion of a sunset clause means that the Bill will be removed from the statute book after 9 September. Indeed, as the Secretary of State has made clear, if a future Government were to consider a permanent relaxation, they would have to undertake a full consultation and present new legislation to this House. As the Secretary of State also pointed out, we have no such plans.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 1352-53.]

I was pleased to hear the Minister’s words and I took them as a personal assurance, although I still abstained rather than vote for the proposals. I understood, however, that many of my colleagues also took those words as a firm assurance on behalf of the Government that the temporary alterations to Sunday trading hours would not be further extended or used as a precedent, and hon. Members voted accordingly on that basis.

Some weeks later, towards the end of the wonderful Olympic and Paralympic period of which our nation is so rightly proud, suggestions circulated in the press— I know not from what source they originated—that a permanent deregulation of Sunday trading hours should perhaps be considered, following the limited extension period.

Such suggestions were completely at odds with the statements expressed by more than one Minister during the passage of the Bill. Another Minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), stated at the time:

“I want to make it clear that this is a temporary measure and not a test case for a permanent relaxation of the rules in the future”,

and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills stated that the Bill was

“not a signal of the Government’s intent on the broader issue of Sunday trading;”. —[Official Report, 30 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 1293.]

In the light of recent press speculation about a possible further extension to Sunday trading hours, I seek today, either from the Deputy Leader of the House, or after the debate from the new the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), clear confirmation that the assurance given on behalf of the Government still stands, and that despite references to an extension of Sunday trading hours, the Government have no such plans. The Government’s assurance was carefully noted not only by me and many colleagues in the House, but—crucially—by many millions of people across the country.

I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House and the responsible Minister will take this point in the spirit of the utmost courtesy with which I express it, but there is an issue of integrity here. In issuing the confirmation that I seek, Ministers would put an end to continuing speculation that is a cause of concern to many. Of course, the extension of Sunday trading hours was in neither coalition party’s manifesto nor in the coalition agreement.

I turn to some comments that have been made since the summer extension of hours. The British Retail Consortium has recently announced that it does not want to lobby for permanent deregulation of Sunday trading hours. According to Retail Week magazine, momentum for a permanent change among retailers has begun to wane, which may be a result of the BRC’s announcement that retail sales fell by 0.4% in August, compared with August 2011 on a like-for-like basis, with no sign of the Olympic boost that was promoted as a reason for the temporary extension. According to the Association of Convenience Stores, independent retailers reported a loss of sales of up to 20% and a 30% drop in footfall over the Olympic period. That reported negative impact is of considerable concern to many small retailers, which often live on narrow margins, and to their employees.

[Jim Shannon]

Does that not knock the giant supermarkets’ feet away from under them? They said that if they opened longer on Sunday, there would be extra trade and extra jobs, but those figures prove that it did not happen.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and I understand from answers to written questions that I have tabled on the issue that the Government are proposing to produce their own analysis of sales over the Olympic period. May I venture to suggest that any analysis would be of questionable conclusive value due to a number of variables that influenced retail sales during the Olympics, not least the fact that they were a wholly unique event? There was also the differing proximity of retail outlets to Olympic venues, the weather and the coincidental holiday period.

I remind the House that the Government have already given extensive consideration to a review of Sunday trading hours in their retail growth review and their red tape challenge. In both instances the policy was rigorously explored, and I understand that a clear view was formed that there was no need to amend the current trading hours, which represented

“a valued compromise for all parties.”

I should add that many people would welcome more protection for Sundays as a day of rest and a day for families, friends and those of shared faith. I commend the work of the Keep Sunday Special campaign, which continues to make a strong case for keeping Sunday a different and special day in our national life.

If shops were open longer, that would not mean that consumers had the funds or the inclination to buy more goods. Our quieter high streets during the Olympic period showed that, including some of the Cheshire high streets about which I have inquired.

Far from being pro-growth, any proposal further to extend our already long retail trading hours may actually have the opposite impact, as work or productivity expands to fill the time allotted, as the old saying goes. I am reminded of accounts that I have heard from during the war, when factories seeking to increase their production moved to a seven-day working week and found that production actually decreased. A subsequent return to six-day production led to an increase. The day of rest proved its value.

I wish to give two quotations from senior business leaders. They were not necessarily made subsequent to the Olympic period, but they are worth putting on the record. Justin King, Sainsbury’s chief executive, has said:

“We’re content that Sunday is special and we don’t see customer demand for a change in the current law.”

The former Marks and Spencer chairman Sir Stuart Rose has said:

“The fact of the matter is you simply spread the same amount of business over a longer period, but with more operating costs. It’s a zero-sum game.”

Time with family—time to care—is important. So many people at the end of their lives say, “I wish I’d spent more time with my family; I wish I’d spent more time caring.” We have all heard the expression that not many people, if anyone, would say, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office”, and I doubt that anyone will say, “I wish I’d spent more time shopping.”

I have been encouraged to hear it reported recently that the Prime Minister, on being asked whether he would support changes to the law in this regard, responded:

“We said at the time it was a specific thing for the Olympics and that was the proposal that we made.”

I request from the Deputy Leader of the House, on behalf of BIS Ministers, clear and unequivocal confirmation of the assurance given in this House when the Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill was debated and passed that the extension of trading hours for the period of the games was limited to that period and would not be extended. In doing so, he will put an end to the ongoing speculation and concern in this connection. I look forward to his response.

Uganda (Human Rights)

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this issue, which is of great importance to many people both inside and outside my constituency. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I thank hon. Members who have taken the time to participate in the debate.

Let me set the scene. Picture with me a quiet village on the Ugandan plains at night. There are lots of shacks, and the peaceful silence is interrupted only by the odd bleating of an animal. The children are asleep; all is at rest. The silence is suddenly destroyed by the noise of trucks, shouts and guns being fired. Families are literally dragged out of their homes. Children watch as their fathers are shot and their mothers are taken.

A little boy is pulled from his brother to stand in front of a man who points a gun at his head and tells him to shoot his mother. If he does not shoot her, he and his brother will be shot. He looks into his mother’s eyes as she slowly nods her head urging him to do it. He pulls the trigger, turns to his captor who says, “You are on my side now. You are my comrade in arms. You are a soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army.” All that little boy knows is that he has killed his own mother. All that he believes is that he is evil and worthless, and all that he hopes for is that he never comes back to this place. Some people say that such events happen only in the movies and that it is not real life, but the fact is it is real life for far too many in Uganda.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. It is not only real life for children now, but it has been real life for people in Uganda for 25 years. Some 1.5 million have been forced to flee their homes, 20,000 children have been abducted to become soldiers or sold as sex slaves. They are used as cart horses, force-marched and kept hungry for days. Other children are used as target practice. Babies are slaughtered for cannibalism and villages are abandoned. Again, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising this matter and hope that in this debate we can highlight the atrocities right across this country and beyond because action must be taken to stop this.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her words. She is well known in this House for her compassion and interest in many countries across the world where abuse takes place on a regular basis. In my comments, I will probably touch on some of her points.

In some areas, what I have outlined is still life and something must be done to change it. Some 20,000 children from Uganda have been kidnapped by the LRA for use as child soldiers and slaves. That is 20,000 childhoods stolen, 20,000 hearts broken, 20,000 children ripped from their mother’s arms and forced, as in my example, into terrible situations, and 20,000 reasons for us, as Members of Parliament, to stand here today and ensure that everything possible is done to make a difference to those lives.

The Lord’s Resistance Army, or the Lord’s Resistance Movement, is a so-called militant Christian group. There is certainly nothing Christian about its activities. It operates in northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic and is accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, sexual slavery and forcing children to participate in hostilities—all grievous charges. Initially, the LRA was an out-growth and a continuation of a larger armed resistance movement waged by some of the Acholi people against the central Ugandan Government whom they felt marginalised them at the expense of southern Ugandan ethnic groups. The group is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself to be the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium.

Since 1987, Kony is believed to have recruited between 60,000 and 100,000 child soldiers and displaced about 2 million people throughout central Africa. The LRA is one of the foreign organisations that the United States Government has designated as terrorist, and its leadership is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On 23 March, the African Union announced its intentions to send 5,000 soldiers to join the hunt for the rebel leader, Joseph Kony, and to neutralise him—its words—while isolating the scattered LRA groups, which are responsible for 2,600 civilian killings since 2008. This international task force was to include soldiers from Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Those are countries in which Kony’s reign of terror has been felt over a great many years.

Before that announcement, the hunt for Kony was primarily carried out by troops from Uganda. The soldiers began their search in South Sudan on 24 March, and that search will last until Kony is caught. Over the weekend, hundreds of people turned out for a rally in Northern Ireland to highlight the atrocities in Uganda and to call for tough action, ever mindful of the fact that the African Union’s 5,000-strong army has pledged to catch him.

The Americans have laid their cards on the table and are supportive of this hunt. In his response, will the Minister tell us how we are supporting the capture of this evil man and his army? There is also the issue of his dynasty. This is a man who is rumoured to have 88 wives and 46 children—he has been a busy man—and his ideals are certain to be carried on. We must do all that we can to ensure that there is no succession in this case.

The ravages of war have left the country literally dying and in great need of help. The conflict in the north of the country between the Ugandan People’s Defence Force and the LRA has decimated the economy, retarded the development of affected areas and led to hundreds of thousands of gross human rights violations. Those violations have centred on the poor emergency provision for internally displaced persons fleeing their homes to avoid the LRA. It has been estimated that 2 million Ugandans had to flee their homes. Many ended up in refugee camps, rife with disease and starvation—almost a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Disease has spread further through Uganda due to the number of people who are passing through these camps. Many are suffering in rural areas. A simple shot or course of antibiotics could almost instantly end the pain and stop the spread of disease. Will the Minister tell us what medical help has been given directly to Uganda?

Finance Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I fully accept that the Government’s priority has been to clean up the terrible financial mess left by the previous Administration, which has necessarily involved difficult decisions, and I want to put on record today my support for the Government, who have not been afraid to grasp the nettle and make the difficult decisions that the previous Administration were incapable of making. Britain is on a much sounder footing today than was ever the case under the previous Administration, and I pay tribute to the Government’s hard work in this respect. However, even in the current economic environment, I believe that new clause 5 would, as I have outlined, be an investment well worth making both fiscally and socially. The Government have said that they will recognise marriage in the tax system at the appropriate time. I suggest that that time is now, particularly given that it would still take Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs some considerable time to implement a transferable tax allowance, because of the IT and other implications.

Does the Minister agree that the increased tax burden on one-earner married couples on an average wage—it will soon be more than 50% greater than the OECD average burden on such families—commends the early introduction of the transferable allowance if we are to be, as we aspire to be, the most family-friendly country in Europe? What assessment has he made of the time it will take to make the necessary IT and other changes to give effect to the Government’s commitment to introduce the transferable allowance? If he has not made such an assessment, will he do so? I ask the Government to bring forward this legislation not when they are ready, but sufficiently in advance of that, so that all IT and planning changes can be made first, and when the money is available, transferable allowances can become operational quickly, not one or more years later.

The transferable personal allowance was a key election commitment from many of us in the House and an important reason why people voted for the Conservative party. They are now looking for action. I very much look forward to what the Minister has to say, and I will conclude with a quotation from a speech given by the Chief Rabbi in another place earlier this year:

“If the Jewish experience has anything to say to Britain today it is: recognise marriage, not just cohabitation, as in the best interests of the child. Do so in the tax system. Do so in the educational system. Do so in relationship support. Otherwise, our children will pay the price—financial, educational, medical and psychological—for generations to come. Without stable marriages we will not have strong families, and without strong families we will not have a big society.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 February 2011; Vol. 725, c. 366-7.]

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak this evening, Mr Deputy Speaker. For the first time in what I suppose is a long time, I will be at odds with some of my colleagues sitting on the Opposition Benches. They are surrounding me at the moment, and I suspect that I will say something that they might not be entirely happy with. None the less, that will not stop me making my point of view heard.