Commonwealth in 2020

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be here today on Commonwealth Day and the day of the Commonwealth service, when all 53 flags are flying in Parliament Square—a day when the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill was brought before Parliament and the Minister has arranged for us to have a Commonwealth debate.

I think I arranged the first such debate in 2012 as the founding chair of the all-party group on the Commonwealth and, at that stage, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the first of two Ministers for the Commonwealth. It is a great treat to be here with him—the comeback kid of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He puts the “C” firmly back into the FCO: three times returned to the FCO to keep that C flag flying. If he has been to only 18 out of the 19 Commonwealth countries in Africa, surely his officials have an opportunity to arrange a trip to the 19th—we could even have a sweepstake on which one he has not been to.

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), the living symbol of UK-New Zealand partnership in this Chamber. His speech followed two maiden speeches of great distinction. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) typifies the concept of service before self, having moved seamlessly from the Army to Parliament, where I know he will put his constituents first. I shall return to one of his Commonwealth themes later.

We also heard a passionate speech from the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe). I have no doubt that everyone who lives in the Nevis Islands will celebrate her speech and her presence in the Chamber. She shared with us all a vivid talent for focusing on some of the crimes of the past, while perhaps skating lightly over some of the more recent scandals. We welcome her to the House. The Commonwealth is part of her, but it is also part of me, because I am a child of the Commonwealth. I was brought up in Kenya, and the atrocities in Hola to which she alluded were part of my childhood.

In the Chamber, although many of its Benches are empty at this late stage of the evening, people from all over the Commonwealth are celebrating today and what it means. This is a moment for congratulations, but also for us to reflect, each year, on what the Commonwealth means and how it is progressing. I must say that I do not share the intrinsic gloom of the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), who was ashamed of the past, apologetic for the present, and gloomy about the future. That, I am afraid, is my summary of his lengthy speech. He described finding “glimmers of hope” in the Commonwealth, but I think we can do better than that.

Let me give just one example of the symbol of the success of the modern Commonwealth and the countries within it. The whole business of being able to conduct financial transactions over a mobile telephone was not invented in some rich western country, or even by state-sponsored technology innovation programmes in China; it was invented and formed in Kenya. It is possible to travel over large chunks of that most lovely country and find Masai herdsmen nestling a spear in one hand while looking out over their goats and, with the other hand, transacting their business over their mobile telephones, often returning in the evening to their huts where the telephones can be recharged by a miniature solar panel. There is much to be proud of in all parts of the Commonwealth: there is innovation, and much more than “glimmers of hope”.

There has been huge progress on eliminating malaria and reducing blindness, and on the Prime Minister’s campaign in promoting 12 years of education across the Commonwealth and, indeed, across the world, supported by the Department for International Development. I believe that, in future, this country in particular will be able to offer considerable expertise to help other parts of the Commonwealth to thrive. Cyber-security is incredibly important to us all, and, as we know from what happened in the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, there are all sorts of reasons why it should be strengthened—not just across that continent, but in other parts of the Commonwealth, including the parts where I spend some of my time nowadays as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy in the far east: Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, three nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which are members of the Commonwealth.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

May I present another offer of hope, and a glimmer of light from the Commonwealth? Will the hon. Gentleman join me in congratulating Rwanda, where the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting will be held? It has made enormous strides in respect of water and sanitation, which is especially impressive because it is such a mountainous country. Many other Commonwealth countries need to go further in those respects to achieve health and wealth: through the Commonwealth and our work with DFID projects, we can achieve that as well. Water and sanitation need to be part of CHOGM, and part of our work with the Commonwealth.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her considerable intervention, which demonstrated her love of Rwanda. No doubt she has spent a great deal of time there. I am occasionally in touch with a former Anglican bishop of Rwanda, who is equally proud of some of the great progress that has been made in that country.

There is a slight warning note about Rwanda, which is a remarkable member of the Commonwealth. Her history is different, as she joined 28 years ago—something like that—and there is a caveat for all of us: not to put its leader on a pedestal. We are all human, and we all have feet of clay. I remember vividly the disappointment felt by many hon. Members when Aung San Suu Kyi became Prime Minister of Burma, but then presided over one of the world’s saddest periods of internal conflict and possible genocide against the Rohingya people. That was a period in which those who had strongly supported her opening the new Labour offices when she visited London had cause to reflect on the fragility of all of us as humans.

I return to two or three things that I should like to ask the Minister. During our time as the chairing office, various initiatives were launched, all of which I supported strongly—for example, the new business Commonwealth standards network, the world trade-based trade facilitation agreement, the Commonwealth clean oceans alliance, and the marine economies programme. All those were good news, and worthy causes. Will the Minister give us a brief update on how they are doing, and whether the progress made during our time in the chair can be continued?

Will the Minister also consider something else, so that we can end on a note of great consensus among Members all parties in the Chamber, including the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), who made a very good speech on the Commonwealth, wrapped in a more traditional speech about the European Union? The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell about Commonwealth servicemen and women having to pay considerable amounts of money when applying for the right to remain here after five years’ service is something about which many of us feel strongly. In fact, I attracted 125 signatures to a letter that I wrote to the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), last year. He was sympathetic, as were Ministers in the Ministry of Defence, who said that it was a Home Office decision.

I encourage my hon. Friend the Minister to take careful note of today’s debate and the feelings on this issue. I understand that there are problems—there always are—of precedence and cost. There are lots of different problems, as we want those Commonwealth servicemen to be motivated by the concept of serving in our armed forces rather than purely being attracted to the later possibility of being able to bring their whole family here. I understand all those problems, but my hon. Friend, who is nodding from a sedentary position, would probably agree on something about which many of us feel strongly, as does the British Legion. There must be an opportunity for the new Government to do us all a favour by taking a closer look at what can be done to help Commonwealth servicemen and women on Commonwealth Day, in a debate in which there is much good will across the House to make the Commonwealth prosper.