Hong Kong: Electoral Reforms

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Gentleman speaks regularly in this place on these issues and he has elevated me to Secretary of State. I thank him for that, but there has not been a reshuffle just yet. [Interruption.] That is kind of the Opposition spokesman, but that has certainly not occurred. I am, however, happy to be here responding to this urgent question. We are regularly in touch with businesses in the region to make sure that they are living up to their responsibilities. Whatever decisions they take they have to be responsible for publicly. That is probably the best way of putting the response to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Minister accept that an estimated 250 to 300 former naval and military personnel are at particular risk as Hongkongers who served the British Crown? Will he discuss with the Home Office the fact that it has said in answer to questions, both in June last year and January this year, that their situation is under review and that it is time for that review to be brought to a close and for those Hongkongers who served this country but were not awarded citizenship to have their right to come here now granted?

[Nigel Adams]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point, and I assure him that I will have those conversations on behalf of those who have served the United Kingdom in the way he describes.

Nord Stream 2 Pipeline

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend, who is such an excellent speaker with so much experience in military matters, has managed in a few words to sum up the whole situation more succinctly than I could in half an hour. I am grateful to him.

Poland and Croatia have been the instigators of the Three Seas initiative. Both countries have built liquified gas terminals on their coastlines. The whole thing about the Three Seas initiative is that the investments seek to create additional pipelines so that more of this liquified gas can be sent inland to landlocked neighbours and NATO partners. Poland is also buying a huge amount of liquified gas from America and from Norway, and has invested billions of dollars in its liquified gas terminal at Świnoujście on the Baltic coast—I would like to see Hansard deal with the spelling of that. I shall help them with the spelling of Świnoujście. Is that not an amazing example, Mr Deputy Speaker? If a country is a member of NATO, that exclusive club or organisation that has not lost a square inch of territory since its inception 70 years ago, surely the next step should be to do as Poland is doing, which is to buy gas from America or Norway, even if it costs a little bit more, so that it is not dependent on Russian gas supplies.

I would like the Minister to give me an assurance that the Foreign Office is working hand in glove with the Department for International Trade to assess what opportunities there are for British companies to participate in the construction of these pipelines within the Three Seas jurisdiction, and to assist and invest in these liquified gas terminals on the coastlines of the Adriatic sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic sea so that we have some of the greatest energy companies in the world. That is important not only for British strategic and financial interests, but in helping our fellow NATO partners in central and eastern Europe.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

rose—

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I give way to the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

[Dr Lewis]

I wonder what reasons Germany has given, at least publicly, for its behaviour, given the overwhelming case against Nord Stream 2 outlined by my hon. Friend. I cannot help being put in mind of that famous quotation, which may or may not have correctly been attributed to Lenin, that the west and the capitalists

“will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I could not have put the situation better. Germany, in a rather peculiar statement the other day, did not really explain why it is building this pipeline. Clearly, it is a stitch-up between the Russians and the Germans. They do not want to rely on the transportation of gas through Belarus, Ukraine or Poland—countries that the Russians have problems with. Russia does not want to rely on exporting its main commodity through those countries; it wants to have a direct link under the sea, so that Germany, irrespective of its obligations to NATO, can have that direct access to Russian gas.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I will not give way for the moment.

It is a very selfish act on Germany’s part and inconsistent with NATO membership. The Germans have also said that it is something to do with their obligations to Russia in terms of reparations from the second world war. They need to help the Russians with the construction of this pipeline out of some sense of duty over war reparations. If that is the case, Poland is still waiting for its war reparations 80 years on.

I am very grateful to have secured this Adjournment debate, but it should not be for me, a Back-Bench Tory MP, to raise this issue. It should be the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary explaining the threat of this project to our electorate. I suspect that, if most of us went back to our constituencies and started talking about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, not many people would be cognisant of it. It should be the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary who are leading the way in explaining to our citizens the threat that this project poses to our allies and, ultimately, to us. One thing that we have learned from history is that if there is instability in central and eastern Europe—if these countries are threatened, blackmailed or invaded—which country always get sucked into it? It is the United Kingdom. We have seen too much instability on our continent to allow Britain to be sucked into that. We need a statement from the British Government that we will implement sanctions on every company and individual involved in this project and it must start with the former German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who was earning an eye-watering salary at the very pinnacle of this organisation—

[Dr Lewis]

Gazprom.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Yes, Gazprom, as my right hon. Friend says.

Germany is behaving in a selfish and dangerous way and in a way that is incompatible with its responsibilities to NATO. As I have also said, let us talk to the Russians, but let us do it from a position of strength.

We have all seen—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has been one of the most vocal on this—the outrageous behaviour of the Russians within the neighbourhood, whether in Georgia, the butchery that took place in South Ossetia, in Ukraine, or the ongoing deliberate violation of the Baltic states’ maritime and airspace. I went to Ukraine when I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee. We went to Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. I have never seen anything like it in my 15 years as a Member of Parliament. It was like being on the face of the moon. Everything was destroyed. Nothing was left standing. It was a wasteland. We on the Foreign Affairs Committee saw what the Russians are capable of in Ukraine.

The two countries that this pipeline will violate most are indeed Ukraine and Belarus. The Government are trumpeting their agreement with the Ukrainians on the Government website, saying just this month,

“UK and Ukraine sign Political, Free Trade and Strategic Partnership”.

“A strategic partnership” with Ukraine—there is a photograph of the Prime Minister with the President of Ukraine signing the agreement, and it says:

“UK cooperation in political, security and foreign matters with Ukraine”.

How can we sign a strategic partnership with the Ukrainians while at the same time kicking the chair from underneath them, by allowing the one last power that they have over the Russians—the fact that they have to export their gas from Ukraine—not to happen? This agreement it is not going to be worth the paper it is written on, if this project is allowed to come to a conclusion.

British Council and the Integrated Review

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is important that, through our network and posts and through what we do in our embassies and high commissions around the world, as well as through our British Council offices, there is a huge diplomatic effort going on. I appreciate that that is not the principal object of the British Council, but it does add to the UK’s strength of diplomacy. If there are emergencies or crises around the world—sadly we have seen a number of them—the United Kingdom has a strong part to play, and he is absolutely right to raise that.

To continue the theme of that intervention, the council also contributes to our global prosperity and helps to develop favourable conditions for new trade and investment links. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay rightly raised the integrated review. The Government want our foreign policy to deliver for the British people and to be rooted firmly in our national interests, which is why the commitment to deliver a review of foreign, defence, security and development policy was announced in the Queen’s Speech in December 2019.

The integrated review will define the Government’s ambition for the UK’s role in the world and the long-term strategic aims for our national security, foreign and development policy. It will outline the way in which the United Kingdom will be a problem-solving and burden-sharing country, and it will set a strong direction for recovery from covid-19, both here and overseas, so that together we can build back better.

The full conclusions of the integrated review will be published later this month. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay will understand that I do not want to pre-empt the findings, nor how the British Council will feature in the final report, but I would be surprised if soft power does not play a part in it. It is absolutely certain that the FCDO will continue to value the British Council’s role as a contributor to our long-term foreign policy and our development ambitions.

As I set out, the integrated review will map out the UK’s direction for recovery from covid-19. It is important to acknowledge that the British Council has been acutely affected by the pandemic, as my hon. Friend said. At the pandemic’s peak—at its worst—more than 90% of the British Council’s teaching and exam centres were forced to shut, with a huge impact on the organisation.

We have worked hard to provide the British Council with additional support at a time of strain on public finances. Last March, the Department provided £26 million of emergency funding, as well as providing half of the council’s grant-in-aid funding up front. We will also provide up to £145 million in loans to ensure that the British Council is able to continue to operate through this exceptionally difficult time. We will provide further financial support for future restructuring plans to enable the British Council to rebuild its commercial surpluses.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister and am very encouraged by everything he has said so far. Does he agree that, despite the covid-19 pandemic forcing us all to move into the virtual world, the physical footprint of organisations such as the British Council must be maintained and restored, because in international competitive environments, where we leave a vacuum, other countries with less benign intentions will be all too ready to fill it?

[Nigel Adams]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. The footprint of the British Council is huge globally. If he is referring to potential office closures, no decisions have been taken. Clearly, the British Council is operationally independent in that regard. We will work and are working extremely closely with the council to ensure that any negative impact on its work is minimised as much as possible.

Despite the hardship endured throughout the pandemic, the British Council has continued to innovate and it has adapted to digital delivery. I understand the point of my right hon. Friend’s intervention. Previously, the digital footprint was nowhere near what it is now in terms of delivering the English language. Currently, more than 80,000 students are learning English online.

The British Council has also been able to deliver events online. An example of that is the UK-Italy season of culture, which was the first of its kind. Fifty virtual events have been held for hundreds of cultural professionals. I was delighted to take part in the UK in Japan season earlier this year, although very sadly I was unable to get to Japan for obvious reasons. I was able to visit digitally, and I had the pleasure of taking part in an online discussion with leading figures from the UK and Japanese cultural sectors. It is a credit to the British Council that it has been able to continue its vital work throughout this period. It demonstrates the resilience of our soft power institutions.

We have ensured that the British Council will be on a steady footing for the future, so that it can continue delivering core work across arts and culture, the English language and, importantly, education. As part of the spending review settlement for 2021-22, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office will provide £189 million of grant-in- aid funding, of which £150 million is official development assistance.

The British Council delivers key soft power benefits for the UK, as I have said, through its networks and expertise. It ensures UK influence through its programming. It attracts students and visitors to the UK and, through its work on the ground with communities and young people, it helps to secure global co-operation, as referenced in the intervention by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

The full conclusions of the integrated review will set out the UK’s vision for the next decade. It will be based on our values and grounded in the UK national interest. I have no doubt that the British Council will continue to play a vital role, and the FCDO will continue to support it as one of our most valuable soft power institutions.

Counter-Daesh Update

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support and for the forensic contributions that he makes on this important issue. As I said to the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), we are grateful to have the support of the whole House and the whole United Kingdom for the military action that our armed forces take, often at some risk to themselves. It is important to have that solidarity.

The hon. Gentleman asked, as others have, about the humanitarian element of the work that we do. That is crucial; it is a key part of the strategic jigsaw. We will ensure that we continue to provide humanitarian support and the aid that goes in to provide the supplementary support that is so essential to taking effective military action. He is right to praise the work of our Kurdish partners. They are very important and, yes, we support them both militarily and in their impact on institutions and civil society on the ground.

On disinformation, I thank the hon. Gentleman for the SNP’s submission to the integrated review. He makes a very important contribution. How we deal with some of the new types of threat that we face, from cyber to misinformation, will be crucial to dealing with many of the threats that we face not just in Syria and Iraq but across the world, so we welcome that support.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Now that the caliphate has been overthrown, Daesh reverts to a more traditional form of terrorism requiring long-term containment measures. In order to bring this to an end, a lot depends on who is sponsoring terrorist movements. What evidence do we have of Turkish behaviour towards our Kurdish allies in Syria, and what evidence do we have of Pakistan finally turning its back on an ambivalent approach to Islamist terrorist movements?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend, the Chair of the other Select Committee—the Intelligence and Security Committee—and he is right to raise both those issues. It is difficult for me to talk, as he will understand, about evidence as such, but in both cases we have to monitor it very carefully, not least because both of the countries and forces that he referred to do not often represent a single whole—there will be different views within, for example, the Pakistani Government—but, certainly, we feel that there has been an improvement and a recognition that we face a single global threat that we must all rally round and work together to tackle.

Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

What a joy it is to follow two such pro-defence warriors as we have just heard. As the years roll by, the contents of defence reviews get vaguer as their titles grow more convoluted. In my time in Parliament, we have moved from the 1998 strategic defence review through the 2010 strategic defence and security review, the 2015 national security strategy and strategic defence review and the 2018 national security capability review to the snappily titled integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy that we are discussing today.

Conducting such exercises in public will always be problematic. When a conflict is actually under way, it is folly to spell out our strategy, yet in between crises it is usually impossible to predict which potential conflicts will actually occur. If we want peaceful co-existence and our adversary does not, he has the choice of whether, when, where and how to attack. We, by contrast, must maintain a range of capabilities to deal with a wide spectrum of threats. Because an opponent’s intentions can change far more quickly than military capabilities, a democracy must maintain maximum flexibility to deal with the unexpected.

The spectrum of threats runs from nuclear and other mass destruction weapons through to conventional or hard military power, and then, via cyber-space and subversion, to disinformation—the latter three on an industrial scale thanks to the coming of the internet. The range of options available to democracies in the face of such threats runs from deterrence through to containment, and then to the dire last-resort alternatives of open warfare or submission to the attacker’s demands. If only deterrents could meet all potential threats, that would clearly be ideal, but while one can deter some of the most destructive methods of aggression, containment must be used to hold hostile states and aggressive ideologies in check until they evolve into something less virulent. In cyber-space, there is a role for deterrence by building resilience and ensuring that would-be attackers will face unacceptable and unavoidable penalties, while at the level of subversion, which is often commercial and financial, not just ideological, the role of good intelligence work is of paramount importance.

As I have already in the past expressed doubts about the wisdom of holding strategic reviews of this sort in public, I will spend the remaining short period of time posing a few questions about the intelligence aspects. I would like to know from the Government whether Defence Intelligence, in particular, will have the necessary agility and breadth to meet the newer threats on the spectrum. Can some detail on the operation of the National Cyber Force announced at the end of last year be provided in the context of the review? Will adequate investment be made in UK capability to operate in the so-called grey zone of disinformation and influence operations, which can be contained but are difficult to deter? Will such investments be funded by additional resources and not be at the expense of conventional capabilities needed to counter hard-power threats elsewhere on the spectrum? Finally, if the fusion doctrine set out in the national security capability review continues to move elements of national security policy into Government Departments not traditionally involved in such work, will parliamentary oversight of those national security elements be facilitated, and will my Committee be able to do its job in that respect?

Hong Kong National Security Legislation: UK Response

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I totally agree with the hon. and learned Lady on that point. We disagree about many things, but one thing about which we have always firmly agreed is the upholding of those elementary human rights, including the essential freedoms of peaceful protest, which are the aspiration of the people of Hong Kong. As I mentioned to the shadow Foreign Secretary, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), I raised the need for a fully independent and robust investigation into the recent events, including the police treatment of protesters, in my first conversation with Carrie Lam back on 9 August. I made that clear then and we have done so consistently since. We recognise the concerns about the Independent Police Complaints Council and we have been working to see what we can do to reinforce it and to make it stronger. We also recognise the inherent weaknesses in it, which is why we will continue, in line with the shadow Foreign Secretary, to call for a fully independent inquiry into those actions. I hope the hon. and learned Lady will support that.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) has often pointed out, only 500 veterans of the former Hong Kong Military Service Corps and royal naval service were offered UK passports in 1997; the rest were disregarded. Has not the time now come to pay this debt of honour to around 250 additional former servants of the British Crown by allowing them and their families the right to relocate to the United Kingdom if they wish or need to do so in future?

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important and forensic point, as ever. As a Government and as a country we are extremely grateful to those who served in the Hong Kong Military Service Corps. He is right that under the scheme, which was introduced in 1990 and ran until July 1997, only a limited number of Hong Kong Military Service Corps personnel who were settled in Hong Kong could apply to register as a British citizen. The Home Office is listening to representations made on behalf of those former service corps personnel who were unable to obtain citizenship at that time too see what, if anything, further may be done.

British Citizens Abroad: FCO Help to Return Home

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I do understand the situation in which people find themselves: they planned to be abroad for a certain period of time and have run out of cash. Given the scale, the Foreign Office cannot provide a direct subsidy or grant. Our priority is to try to ensure that people can get back home and, in extremis, if they have run out of money, we are willing to offer temporary loans to facilitate that situation, so we are doing everything that we practically and realistically can.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Following the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) about the Coral Princess, may I urge the Foreign Secretary to check on what is happening with this vessel? The information that I had from Ken and Doreen Hodge on board is that they are heading for Fort Lauderdale in the US, and they fear that they may then be required to stay for 14 days in isolation before coming home. Will he make a particular point of checking what is happening to the Coral Princess and the people on board?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I think that I have described the latest data that I have, but, of course, we are tracking the cruise ship in real time. It has been a challenge on that bit of coastline and, indeed, in that region, to get onward flights and to get permission to dock in order to take advantage of them. None the less, we are tracking the situation. I track the cruise ships in real time every day. I can also reassure the House that we have changed the travel advice on cruise ships, and my understanding is that no further cruise ships are setting sail, so we are dealing with the stock that is at sea and making sure that we do everything we can to get everyone home. I have already explained the success that we had with the Braemar, the Azura, and the Norwegian Spirit. We are looking to do the same for those on the Coral Princess.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

What is the Government’s latest assessment of the role of Saudi Arabia in promoting radical Islamist doctrines beyond its borders?

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s expertise in this area. We have raised that issue. There has been a step change and a reduction in the Government promoting that kind of extremism, and we want to ensure that other private sector or charitable bodies are also compliant. We have raised those issues, and I will continue to do so.

Freedom of Religion or Belief

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I really do not know how to follow that speech. The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) may think that it was a ramble, but I think we have just had difficult privilege of hearing one of the great speeches in this place, for which I thank him. I am a practising Roman Catholic, so it was not easy to listen to, because sadly my religion, like many others—as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will know only too well—is used by people who claim to be of the same faith to justify deeds that would never have been condoned by the one we call our saviour. I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate and thank both previous speakers for their speeches.

It saddens me greatly that this debate is necessary, but the sad fact is that persecution based on what people believe or do not believe is probably as big a problem now as it has ever been. How can that be? The world in so many ways is getting smaller, and it is much easier for us to understand what other people are about and to get to know the basis of so many beliefs and cultures. When that is happening, how can it be that almost every religious or faith group in the world is, somewhere, being persecuted, with people losing their lives because of what they believe, and that almost every faith group in the world participates in that persecution? I cannot begin to understand it.

We can look at the horror of Daesh murdering Muslims, Christians and other religious minorities with complete impunity; at the terror attacks such as the one on Easter Sunday last year in Sri Lanka, when people were murdered simply for celebrating the most important day of their religious year; at 1 million people in China being supposedly “re-educated”, as the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned, to strip them of their cultural, religious and ethnic identity, just because they are Muslims; or at the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims. We can look at countless other atrocities. Individually, they might often not be important enough to get a mention on the UK news or in the newspapers but, collectively, they add up to an estimated 2 billion people possibly daily risking persecution and even their lives simply because of what they believe.

The hon. Member for Beckenham rightly said that freedom of religion and belief is a fundamental human right. International organisations have said for years that everyone has the right to believe or not believe what they believe to be right for them. There can be no let-up in international efforts to safeguard freedom of religion and to prevent the persecution of religious minorities anywhere. This principle was adopted in 1966:

“Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law”—

I was five when the world agreed to that, and I turn 60 later this year. But the world, having agreed to that, far too often seems to turn away, or decides to act far too late.

The Rabat plan of action launched by the United Nations in 2013 sets out the kinds of comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that all nations should adopt, but as the hon. Member for Strangford so rightly said, having legislation in place is one thing; making it happen in reality is a very different thing. The international community has the tools it needs to tackle religious persecution. It is up to Governments everywhere, working together, to use all the diplomatic, political and economic means at their disposal to ensure that no Government feel that they can ignore, condone or actively participate in religious persecution.

I fully support much of the hon. Gentleman said when he asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office what it will do in trade deals and diplomatic relations to ensure that human rights and rights of religious freedom are always at the top of any agenda. Personally, I believe that there are some countries with which the United Kingdom has strong diplomatic and economic ties that we should simply isolate ourselves from, because their persecution of people has got to the stage where they are no longer the kind of country that we should be proud to have as a friend anymore.

The large-scale persecution of religious or racial minorities does not happen overnight. As with racism—a very close cousin of religious sectarianism, as the hon. Gentleman said—such persecution needs to be fostered over a longer period. It starts with verbal insults and racist or sectarian language, which is first ignored and tolerated, then actively promoted and celebrated by those in positions of power in the media or in politics. It grows through deliberate attempts to isolate a targeted group and to vilify anyone who speaks in their defence, denouncing them all—those being targeted and those who would stand alongside them—as somehow disloyal to the country of residence, a threat to national security, or even terrorists, simply because of the peaceful practice of their religion.

Once a country has allowed that attitude to become embedded, the next step forward is easy: the violence, the abductions and the wholescale sexual abuse of women and children become much easier. At the moment, we would all say that we in the United Kingdom are among the 17% of the population of the world who do not suffer from religious persecution—it is a shocking statistic that almost 85% of the world’s population live in countries where one religious minority or another is actively persecuted—but if we took a hard, honest look at where the United Kingdom is now, we would see some worrying signs that the first steps in that process are happening. That does not mean we will see wholescale violence in the next week or so, but we have to be aware of what is happening on our streets and in our communities, and we have to be prepared to stop it.

For example—I am not taking sides on this one—did political processes come out with much credibility after the accusations and counter-accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia over the past year or so? They have been such a feature of our political debate, but does anyone think that the political establishment came out well when a response to an accusation of antisemitism was a counter-accusation of Islamophobia? Instead, everyone should have said, “You know what? All of us have a problem with some kind of racial or religious bigotry within our organisations or our culture. Let’s sit down to talk about how we can tackle it all together.” We have to recognise that a large percentage of the world’s refugee population are only refugees because of religious persecution. The less we are able to prevent religious persecution, the greater the moral responsibility we have to take our share of the responsibility for looking after the refugees who inevitably come here.

This is a difficult topic to talk about—I seem to be pinching an awful lot of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, because he said much of what I wanted to say, more eloquently—but I feel that it is important when we talk about freedom of religious belief to acknowledge as an equal right the right to not believe. I have real concerns about what is happening in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He is trying to change the constitution so that believing in God becomes compulsory. As someone who believes in God, that worries me greatly, because a fundamental part of my faith is that that is my decision, and that I will answer for it when my time comes.

Sometimes, I have taken decisions that have surprised some of my close friends and family who thought that as a practising Catholic I might take a different decision on same-sex marriage, for example,. However, following a faith that has a particular set of teachings on human sexuality gives me no right to pass laws to prevent someone else from, first, following a different faith or, secondly, having a different view of what is acceptable or not, or right or wrong, for them in their private or family life.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Is the real problem not so much the religion itself but fundamentalism? When people get so absorbed in their religion that they can only interpret it literally, extremism and persecution take root.

[Peter Grant]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very valid point, whether that is a political or a religious view. I have to make a distinction between being fundamental or extreme and how firmly we believe something. Being fundamental or extreme can be an unwillingness to accept that other people are equally sincere and passionate about a completely contrary view. When it comes to being extreme and the steps that people take to promote a particular set of beliefs, it becomes a problem.

I do not speak from a position of great authority, but on the occasions when I have engaged actively in dialogue with someone whose behaviour was blatantly racist, sectarian or religiously intolerant, it is surprising how often, on getting down to it, such people are deeply insecure in their own religious or political beliefs. It is almost as if they had never stopped to think about what they believe, and cannot allow anyone to suggest anything different, rather than accept that someone might challenge them. They hide in a shell, to come out fighting. That might present itself as Christianity, but it is so mired in hatred and intolerance that I can see no connection with what is happening or, certainly, with the teachings of the version of Christianity that I seek to follow.

I will finish with one statistic that should concern us all. In 2018, the British social attitudes survey found that almost two thirds—63%—of people in the United Kingdom believed that religions bring more conflict than peace. In my religion, we worship one who has the title “Prince of Peace”; and the word “Islam” can translate as “peace”. Every religion that I have any knowledge of is founded on peace, on respect for human beings of all kinds and on living together in peace and harmony. In this collection of countries, we think freedom of religion and belief is established, but almost two thirds of the population think religion is the problem rather than the answer. I suggest that it is not only the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that needs to change the way it does things. Perhaps the Church establishments, including my own, have a job to do in persuading that 63% not necessarily to follow a particular religion, but at least to understand that any true religion is about making things better for the whole of humanity.

I have spoken for longer than I expected to, so I will sit down to allow other hon. Members to speak.

Turkey-Greece Border: Refugees

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

The United Kingdom is doing a significant amount. We are supporting Turkey to implement the EU-Turkey statement, and the United Kingdom has made €483 million of bilateral and EU budget contributions towards the €6 billion facility for these refugees.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Have the Government formed a view on what Turkey is doing on the ground inside Syria, other than suppressing our allies, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, and supporting Islamist fighting groups?

[Nigel Adams]

We keep such matters under constant review, and the Foreign Secretary is due to meet Foreign Ministers from the region shortly. I am sure there will come a point when an update to the House will follow.