Yemen

Debate between Lord Spellar and Stephen Twigg

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have heard nobody in all the debates in the International Development Committee and other Committees of the House in any sense suggest that the Houthis are not to blame, and that is why the proposal is that we should have an investigation into abuses by both sides in this conflict.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Perhaps my hon. Friend is going to come on to this, but our discussion seems to be being conducted on the basis of the Saudi-led coalition versus the Houthis. Does this not miss the very unhelpful, and indeed sinister, role played by the Iranians, particularly in providing conventional weaponry? Without going into all the data, I would suspect that many more people have been killed, injured and dispossessed by the use of conventional weaponry, of which there is a steady pipeline coming into Yemen from Iran, than they have by air action.

[Stephen Twigg]

I have already mentioned the role of Iran in supporting the Houthis, and any independent international UN-led investigation would certainly address the issue of Iranian involvement, but I reiterate the point that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has estimated that two thirds of all the civilian deaths in Yemen have been caused by the Saudi-led coalition.

Representation of the People (Proportional Representation) (House of Commons)

Debate between Lord Spellar and Stephen Twigg

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I am slightly surprised to be congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds)—and he is a friend—on his honesty in admitting that he once sat at the feet of Roy Jenkins. That is not something to which people are normally prepared to admit.

I find it astonishing that, in a month when the Front National in France has made considerable advances, someone in this House should argue for changing the electoral system. I do not want to detain the House for too long, so I will not go into detail about how damaging this proposal would be to effective government; how it would transfer power away from constituents and local parties to party leaders, kitchen Cabinets and bureaucrats; how it would empower fringe parties at the expense of parties that are fit for government; how it would damage the direct link between many MPs and a constituency; and how, interestingly enough, countries that have such systems always have to amend them as those problems start to come through.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

Germany?

[Mr Spellar]

Germany has changed the system. It has introduced thresholds and it regularly changes the thresholds to deal with exactly the problems I am describing.

The proposal flies in the face of British public opinion, which was made absolutely clear in the referendum by more than two to one. In fact, 68% of people voted no and 32% voted yes. Of the 440 counting areas, only 10 recorded yes votes: the inner-London boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark, Camden, Hackney, Haringey and Islington—all those boroughs that used to feature in national headlines in the days of the loony left councils; Oxford, which has a great university and was described once as the city of lost causes; Cambridge; and Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Kelvin, which I think—SNP colleagues will correct me if I am wrong—are the seats of the universities in those two cities. Interestingly, in the seat of my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, the borough of Tameside voted more than two to one against, with 72% against and 28% for. To my chagrin, that was a bigger margin than in my borough of Sandwell, which managed a mere 71% against to 29% for.

I merely ask those who are considering voting for this proposition a simple question: what part of “no” is it that you don’t understand?

Question put (Standing Order No. 23).