Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

May I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the cause of the problems is that destabilising activity by Iran has continued even after the JCPOA? It has had success in restraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and that is why we continue to support it, but we are not going to get proper peace in the middle east unless we end those thoroughly destabilising activities.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to protect the rights and freedoms of journalists throughout the world.

[The Minister for the Middle East (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

This year, the UK is spearheading a global campaign on media freedoms, and our diplomatic missions around the world have stepped up their activity accordingly. We have announced the appointment of Special Envoy Amal Clooney, establishing a high-level panel to drive legislative reform throughout the world, and we will announce further practical steps with wide international support at next month’s UK and Canada-led conference.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s answer, but at least 94 journalists were killed in the course of their duties last year. Will he and his ministerial colleagues undertake, on every occasion when they travel overseas or meet foreign Heads of State, to raise this issue, which is so vital if we are to get real news, not fake news?

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As it happens, at the weekend I was in Tehran, and I made the points that he has made to my interlocutors. It is absolutely vital that journalists are able to do their work unhindered and certainly unthreatened, and the secret to peace and prosperity across our world—our troubled world—today is the ability to have the transparency that is the stock in trade of journalists.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

I utterly deplore what Katie Hopkins said—I condemn it in the roundest terms—but I also support the view of the President of the United States that the Mayor of London needs to do more about knife crime.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T5. Over the weekend, the chief of the general staff of the Ethiopian army, the president of the Amhara region and several other high-ranking Ethiopian citizens were murdered. Will my right hon. Friend join me in sending condolences to the people of Ethiopia and to its excellent Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed? He is trying to secure reform in that great country, but clearly there are those who are trying to oppose him.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s excellence as a trade envoy between the UK and Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s trade has increased by some 80%, which must surely be one of the records among trade envoys.

We are truly appalled by those killings, and our thoughts are indeed with the people who have been affected by them. We support Ethiopia’s progress in political and economic reforms, and we do not want such events to influence that agenda.