Venezuela

Debate between John Howell and Graham P Jones

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham P. Jones]

I would like to make some progress, please.

Bolívar’s revolution in the 1820s gave Venezuela a legacy of freedom and self-determination. Chávez and Maduro’s Bolivarian revolution in the 21st century plagued Venezuelans with destitution and dictatorship. There is no worthy comparison between the two. Some in the UK claim that Maduro’s cause is a rightful one, and the British left is aligned to that. They are wrong, and those who think that Venezuela is now subject to some right-wing coup are wrong. One is an economy of bankrupt Marxist ideas, and the Opposition represent democratic socialism.

Juan Guaidó, and his left-leaning Opposition, needs our party’s support. His party, Popular Will, is, in fact, a member of one of Labour’s sister parties in Venezuela, and a member of Socialist International, like the Labour party. It is worth stating too that the bankrupt Marxists who have ruined Venezuela over the last 20 years are not members of Socialist International and are, in my opinion, anything but socialist. They, and their fellow Marxist travellers who propagandise about foreign interference, are wholly responsible for a bankrupt economic policy.

It is ironic that those Marxists should reject unwelcome foreign interference. Perhaps they could include their list of friends who seem to be interfering in Venezuela: Iran, Russia and Turkey, who are propping up the illegitimate, authoritarian and kleptocratic regime. It would carry more weight if they knew what they were talking about. The United States, our long term ally, has so far resisted economic sanctions, instead targeting the extreme wealth of the Chavismo politicians, some with links to drugs cartels. The US has also targeted currencies that facilitate the syphoning of Venezuela’s assets into private bank accounts.

The truth is that the “Boligarchs” of Venezuela have ensured that Venezuela’s problems will never affect their luxurious lifestyles. According to the Venezuelan news website Noticias Centro,

“the late-president’s family owns 17 country estates, totalling more than 100,000 acres, in addition to liquid assets of $550 million…stored in various international bank accounts”.

The Marxist hypocrisy is astonishing. Hugo Chávez said:

“Being rich is bad, it’s inhumane. This is what I say and I condemn the rich”.

He also said that

“capitalism leads us straight to hell”

and that

“we must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world”.

Meanwhile, his daughter, María Gabriela Chávez, is reported to be one of the richest people in Venezuela, with a net worth of $4.2 billion. I would like to know where she got that money from.

Finally, it is worth pointing out how the US has so far resisted economic sanctions and continues to allow US companies to purchase 21% of Venezuelan crude oil, which provides the Venezuelan Government with vital overseas currency. It is a regime that is increasingly despised by a majority of its citizens, that routinely arrests, imprisons and tortures its opponents, that mismanages the economy and that profits from narco-trafficking with the cartels, with much of the result finding its way on to the streets of English towns and cities such as mine.

It is not a functioning Government in the name of the people. Speaker after speaker at the APPG has relayed their and their families’ stories of just how bad the situation is, from hunger to property theft, gun crime and the “colectivo”—the Chavismo motorbike gangs that terrorise ordinary citizens on behalf of Maduro. The rest of the international community has a duty to support the values of liberty, democracy, the rule of law and human rights, and to support the Venezuelan people at this time, not an oppressive dictatorship that ignores those values.

In the last partially free and fair elections in November 2015, the majority of the Venezuelan people voted in droves for the Opposition, and three years later those people are out on the streets protesting en masse. The biggest priority for the international community is to address a devastating consequence of Maduro’s Marxist regime: the migrant crisis—the exodus of almost 4 million people since 2014.

The Minister said yesterday that

“those who have left Venezuela are in staggering numbers: well over 1 million have gone to Colombia; well over 1 million to Peru; nearly half a million each to Ecuador, Argentina and Chile; and 180,000 to Brazil. This is the biggest movement of population we have ever seen in Latin America”.—[Official Report, 28 January 2019; Vol. 653, c. 485.]

Yemen

Debate between John Howell and Graham P Jones

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who brought forward this important debate. He will recall, as will the House, that over the past year I have asked various Ministers a lot of questions about Yemen. One of the themes that I have brought out is how we can ensure that our aid workers are kept safe in what is effectively a proxy war, though he does not like the term, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and I will stick to that theme.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) said a lot about humanitarian aid; let me set out what it is achieving. A number of people have mentioned the £400 million that has been made available since 2015. In the 2018-19 financial year, I think we have added an additional £170 million—the Minister is nodding—which is a great achievement.

A number of people have mentioned the incidence of cholera, but that says nothing about what we have done on it. We have funded and provided a tremendous amount of vaccine and have provided a whole lot of things that keep people safe, such as chlorinated water. We have helped to restore medical facilities in the country, too. I think that we are all agreed that it is unacceptable that millions of vulnerable Yemenis are at risk because aid is being blocked. We should all do whatever we can to help get it through, but we should not in any way diminish the amount of humanitarian aid that is being provided.

The influence of Iran has been only partly mentioned. The Iranian regime is an active sponsor of international terror groups. It operates a complex network of weapons smuggling in defiance of not one but four UN Security Council resolutions. The question we have to ask is: what pressure can we bring to bear on Iran to stop funding the Houthis? That is a question I have asked in previous question sessions in this House.

A good starting point would have been the nuclear arms deal, which we conducted with Iran. Unfortunately, however, it is completely silent on this important point. It is one of the great lacunae in that agreement, because it provides no mechanism to stop released funds from reaching the Houthis. It provides no mechanism for us to put pressure on Iran to stop funding the Houthis. If we just think about it, just a fraction of the £100 billion that was there as part of the sanctions that have now been released, would triple or more the amount of funds that are reaching the Houthis.

If we want to look at that in more detail, we need to look at the Government’s position on Iran. I am very pleased that the Prime Minister said in 2017 that her aim is to

“reduce Iran’s malign influence in the Middle East”.

That is an accurate description of Iran’s influence. She went on to say:

“we must also work together to push back against Iran’s aggressive regional actions, whether in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Syria or in the Gulf itself.”

That is an important list of areas where Iran is trying to establish its own arc and explains why there is such antagonism from the Saudis to taking that and not fighting back.

Can we work with the Saudis and are we having success with them? I would say that on this particular issue our continuing closeness with the Saudis is having an effect on what we can say to them and on what we can get them to do. The failure to look at it in that way goes to the heart of one the things that was mentioned at the beginning of the debate, which is missing the wider context of this terrible fight in Yemen. Missing the wider context ignores one of the main players and makes it appear as though this is nothing more than a Saudi attack on Yemen, without any possible additional influence.

[Graham P. Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful speech about aid, and the importance of peace and supporting the Yemeni people. He raises a point about them wanting to take back control of their country. The 25,000 Yemeni people backed by the Government on the outskirts of Hodeidah do not want war. They want peace and a return to civic democracy with human rights, as opposed to oppression by the Houthi militia who have no right to be in Hodeidah.

[John Howell]

I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman. My thoughts, and the principles of my actions, are with the people of Yemen: those who are not Houthi rebels and do not side with the Saudi regime, but who want to carry on having normal lives and go about their normal business as best they can. If we do not stress these points, we begin to lose balance in this discussion and I do not think that that is helpful. It is not helpful to the Yemenis and it is certainly not helpful to us. For example, there was a BBC report on the situation in Yemen—I do not know whether hon. Members saw it—that was the usual three or four minutes long. Not once did it mention Iran as the financial backers of the Houthis. It was presented entirely as a Houthi versus Saudi Arabia conflict.

We have heard a lot about resolving the problem. The Houthis were either misinformed or simply did not take seriously the need to be in Geneva to participate in the talks. I agree that that is probably not a disaster, but it is illustrative of the difficulties we have to overcome to ensure that we can achieve a real taking forward of the peace initiative. I agree with those who have made this point before: the battle is going to be won not on the military field, but by negotiation.