Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bellingham]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. Our Government are doing all they possibly can, working with the Southern African Development Community, front-line countries, the UN and the EU. I agree entirely with him: two important polls are coming up next year—the referendum on the constitution and the presidential and parliamentary elections—and it is vital that monitors and observers are in place early on. We must learn the lessons of the 2008 election. They need to be in place early and after polling day they need to monitor the count as well.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Given the critical situation in Zimbabwe, does it remain the Government’s policy that Zimbabwean citizens who have claimed asylum here will be removed to Zimbabwe?

[Mr Bellingham]

The UK Border Agency is looking to start work on a process aimed at normalising our returns policy to Zimbabwe as and when the political situation develops. However, we are not starting enforced returns yet by any means.

Kabul Conference

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

In the margins of the conference, did the Foreign Secretary have an opportunity to discuss, especially with the Americans, the situation in Yemen? As he knows, the London conference was about Afghanistan, but there was a conference about Yemen at the same time. We welcome the visit of the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), to Yemen, but will the Foreign Secretary please make sure that the Government’s focus remains on that country? Al-Qaeda is already there. If it is pushed out of Afghanistan, it will merely go to Yemen and strengthen its forces there.

[Mr Hague]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point, with which I agree strongly. I had many bilateral meetings with other Foreign Ministers during the Kabul conference, and that was a regular subject. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary and I have spent most of the morning with the Italian Foreign and Defence Ministers, and Yemen was high on our agenda, as was Somalia, on which the Italians have particular expertise. We will try to make sure over the coming months that we reinvigorate the Friends of Yemen process launched by the right hon. Member for South Shields, and I fully take the point made by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz).

Alleged War Crimes (Sri Lanka)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the excellent work that she has done on this issue. In the last Parliament, the then Government appointed a special envoy to try to cut through the difficulties of talking to the Sri Lankan Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is perhaps one appointment that the present Government can make to show their determination to try to deal with the horrific consequences of the war?

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I agree. I thank my right hon. Friend for all his work on behalf of the Tamils and I ask the Minister to address the point that he raises.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alistair Burt]

We shall continue to listen to everyone in such circumstances. It is not for us to dictate how an inquiry should work or what voices it should listen to, but this Government will continue the policy followed by the previous Government and be open to the views of all those in the community.

[Keith Vaz]

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment; I am sure that his work will be a very valued addition to the Foreign Office. When he next speaks to the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, will he raise with him the newspaper reports that a Chinese firm has been contracted to go into Sri Lanka to remove the evidence of those who have been buried there? It is a very serious matter, and it will obviously affect any investigation that takes place. Will he ask the Foreign Minister whether such reports are true? Has a Chinese firm been instructed to remove the evidence?

[Alistair Burt]

I shall make sure that an inquiry looks into the issue the right hon. Gentleman has raised.

The establishment of a lessons learned and reconciliation commission is a step in the right direction, but to be credible it needs to show itself to be a strong, independent voice. We urge the Sri Lankan Government to draw on the experience of other countries that have set up successful post-conflict commissions. I said very clearly to the Foreign Minister today that, no matter how painful they are, experiences in South Africa, Rwanda and, indeed, in our country have shown that the only way to deal properly with reconciliation is to be honest and open and to get absolutely to the heart of the matter. There must be proper public consultation, sufficient time to examine evidence and a clear and realistic mandate.

In particular, we hope that the commission can investigate fully the recent allegations of war crimes. We also encourage the Government to address urgently the issue of witness protection in Sri Lanka, mentioned by the hon. Lady. That will be essential if the commission is to get to the truth in its investigations. We recognise that it is for the Government of Sri Lanka to take the lead in addressing allegations of war crimes, but we also support the UN Secretary-General’s proposal for a panel of experts to advise on accountability issues. We trust that the Government of Sri Lanka will co-operate fully with the Secretary-General’s panel to help their own domestic process.

We believe that lasting peace will come about only when Sri Lanka addresses the underlying causes of the conflict and ensures that all communities are treated with fairness and respect. Following elections earlier this year, the President and Government of Sri Lanka have a renewed political mandate. We urge them to use the mandate to take meaningful steps towards long-term, inclusive political action. We welcome the commitment of the President in his joint declaration with the Indian Prime Minister on 9 June to develop a political settlement that is acceptable to all communities, in which the people of Sri Lanka can

“lead their lives in an atmosphere of peace, justice and dignity, consistent with democracy, pluralism, equal opportunity and respect for human rights.”

The United Kingdom stands ready to support Sri Lanka to make good on those commitments, and to take decisive steps to establish a long-term political solution to the island’s divisions.

I hope that the Sri Lankan diaspora in the UK can also play a role. The diaspora’s support following the humanitarian crisis undoubtedly helped to alleviate the hardship of many individuals and their families, and we thank them for their contribution. I hope the diaspora will find meaningful ways to engage with communities across Sri Lanka in pursuit of a lasting and agreed political solution.

European Affairs

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I do congratulate the previous Prime Minister. I am not in the habit of doing that, but on this subject I am very happy to do so. What a good job it was that the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, ensured that we had an opt-out so that the most recent Prime Minister could keep us out of the eurozone.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I give way to a former Minister for Europe.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to the Foreign Secretary; I am actually going to be very nice to him. I congratulate him on his appointment and remind him that I gave him his first job in the Commons, as secretary of the all-party footwear and leather industries group. I am glad that he is going to be active; we would expect nothing less from him. On enlargement, will he continue the previous Government’s policy of ensuring that countries that are capable of joining will be allowed to join? Leaving aside transitional arrangements such as whether people will be able to work, particularly in relation to the Croatia file, which must be on his desk, will he confirm that we believe in a Europe that is wider and stronger?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The role that we played together on the leather and footwear industries all-party group 20 years ago will for ever be somewhere in the recesses of my mind. I am very grateful for that reminder; the memory has just been retrieved from somewhere. He is absolutely right: there is a strong cross-party commitment on EU enlargement, to which I want to turn later in my speech. I want to talk specifically about Croatia later. He used an important phrase about countries joining when they have met the conditions. It is important that they meet the conditions for membership, rather than the conditions being changed to suit a particular country. I very much agree with what he said.

It is also our intention to approach European issues in a more coherent way across Whitehall than has sometimes been the case. In the three weeks for which I have held the office of Foreign Secretary, it has been apparent to my colleagues and me that under the previous Government, Departments could have worked together better, particularly more strategically. That point might also be relevant to previous Governments, and we intend to put it right. We are establishing a new Cabinet Committee on European affairs that I will chair, with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change as the deputy chair. [Interruption.] It is another example of a good coalition in practice.

That Committee will allow the new Government to take a more holistic approach to EU issues than was sometimes the case in the past, and I hope it will achieve better results for Britain. We must ensure that we are always ahead of the game in Brussels, unlike the previous Government, of whom that could not always be said; the position in which they left us in relation to the hedge funds directive is a particular example. In doing so, we will be aided by achieving a more collegiate feeling in a two-party Cabinet than in the previous Cabinet of one party.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Miliband]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention had so little to do with what I was talking about, which was a serious point about the development of human rights support in Russia. As he knows, the Council of Europe continues to receive generous support from the United Kingdom. The fact that we froze our budget is an example of the sort of efficiency and drive that he has often preached about. However, there is an important point there for the Foreign Secretary to address.

[Keith Vaz]

“Europe 2020” is the successor to the Lisbon agenda. What went wrong with the Lisbon agenda was that European countries did not acknowledge and achieve their benchmarks on certain aspects of policy. Before the shadow Foreign Secretary finishes the economic section of his speech, will he say whether he agrees that, as we focus on the new European Council, it is extremely important that there should be credible benchmarks? There has to be a proper understanding from European countries that those benchmarks are not pie in the sky; rather, they actually have to meet them if Europe is to become truly competitive.

[David Miliband]

I fear that there is a rather more fundamental problem than the one that my right hon. Friend has addressed. Although it is right to have a single European growth strategy, there is not a single European Government, nor is there a single European economic policy. We have nation states of Europe that pursue their own policies, and the vast majority of right hon. and hon. Members across the House would support that. The benchmarks that he talks about could not be enforced by the European Commission, or by anyone else, in those areas that were not within the competence of the European Union. I do not think the lesson from that is that we should centralise all work on universities or other supply-side issues. However, the structural problem remains, whereby the European Union operates by agreement, but implementation in significant areas is carried out by nation states.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Miliband]

First, we will attack the Government for being insufficiently pro-British, and not for being insufficiently pro-Brussels. When they are insufficiently strong in their defence of the national interest, in regard to any aspect of European policy, we will attack them for that. Let me address my hon. Friend’s last point. His new ally, the Prime Minister, repeated in each of the prime ministerial debates that Britain needed a policy in which new entrants to the European Union had transitional arrangements for labour market access. That exists today for Romania and Bulgaria, precisely because we are learning the lessons of the past 10 years. I would say to my hon. Friend that, when our comrade party has done something right, it would be worth his while to recognise that. In this case, we have got it right.

[Keith Vaz]

Please could the shadow Foreign Secretary explain to our comrade from Glasgow—this now seems to be the parlance on these Benches—that this is not actually immigration? Once the treaty has been signed, people from the European Union have a right to come and work here unless there are transitional arrangements. Furthermore, there are 1 million British citizens working in mainland Europe in exactly the same way.

[David Miliband]

It is important to point out that there is now a net outflow of European workers from the UK, according to the latest figures, which were published at the end of last month. That reflects quite a lot about our economy. It is also important to say that other European citizens are required to work and pay taxes for 12 months in the UK before they are entitled to claim benefits. That is an important part of the compact. I accept that there are rights, but it is important not to forget that there are also responsibilities attendant on migration within the European Union.