Imprisonment of Catalan Leaders

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the imprisonment of Catalan leaders.

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Christopher Pincher)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this urgent question. I appreciate it is a question that will drive passions among him and individually among other right hon. and hon. Members of this House, but the position of Her Majesty’s Government on Catalonia is clear: it is a matter for Spain. The United Kingdom strongly supports the rule of law and remains clear that political leaders, like anyone else, have a duty to abide by the law. Questions related to Catalan independence should be resolved within the proper constitutional and legal channels, and questions related to the legal penalties handed down by the courts of Spain are a matter for Spain and its democratic institutions.

[Hywel Williams]

I thank the Minister for that answer, as far as it went.

Many Members of this House have been concerned by the cases brought before the Spanish Supreme Court against 12 Catalan political and civic leaders on charges of sedition, the embezzlement of public funds and disobedience in relation to the 2017 referendum on Catalan independence. I wish to make it entirely clear that my question today is about what happened yesterday and that it is not about whether independence is right or wrong.

Nine of those accused have already been held in preventive detention for nearly two years and have been visited by Members of this House, Members of the Scottish Parliament and Members of the Senedd of Wales. Yesterday, they were sentenced. One of those sentenced is Carme Forcadell, the Speaker of the Catalan Parliament, whom you kindly welcomed to Speaker’s House and to our Chamber when she visited us shortly before her detention, Mr Speaker. Her offence, apparently, is to have allowed a parliamentary debate on independence. Yesterday, she was sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison. Mr Speaker, as you confirmed in respect of a point I made some time ago, we would not expect your detention and prosecution were you to allow a debate on Welsh independence. Others jailed include former Vice-President Oriol Junqueras, who was given the harshest sentence of all: 13 years in prison.

Bringing criminal charges is no way to resolve political differences, so will the Government today join calls for the Government of Spain to engage in a proper and respectful process of dialogue with the Government of Catalonia? Will the Secretary of State commit to pressing the relevant EU institutions to consider launching a procedure under article 7 of the treaty on European Union in respect of the Spanish state’s response to the Catalan crisis? This would include consideration of the prosecution and sentencing of the Catalan political and civic leaders, as this is a clear example of how Spain is bringing about a risk of serious and persistent breach of the EU’s founding values of respect for freedom, democracy, justice and human rights, as outlined in article 2 of the treaty. This is a matter for us and the European Union, and is not just a Spanish domestic matter.