FCO: Human Rights Work

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I join in the congratulations to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) and to Committee members for bringing their report to Westminster Hall today. However, I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) about the need to spend much longer debating it. We had the same problem last year, and we could easily spend a whole day on it in the main Chamber to do justice to the issues raised. I hope that that matter will be considered next year.

Both the Chair of the Select Committee and the Chair of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), have brought their considerable experience to bear in their speeches. If we look around the Chamber today, we will see that the entire political spectrum is covered, and yet we are all committed to pursuing the issue of human rights and trying to ensure that the UK gives the matter greater priority. That is the one thing that has come through in all the speeches we have heard this afternoon.

The right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling used his expertise to talk about North Korea and Russia, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). Last year, I went to Moscow to observe two days of the trial of Pussy Riot, which is an issue that is quite dear to my heart. This year is the 10th anniversary of Khodorkovsky’s arrest, and the two band members were held in the same glass box that was used to contain him when he came to court. From the people I met on that visit and from the numerous events that I have been involved in since calling for the release of the two remaining members of Pussy Riot who are still being held in penal colonies, it is clear that the human rights situation in Russia has deteriorated significantly. Human Rights Watch said recently that 2012 saw the worst crackdown since the fall of the Soviet Union. It will be interesting to see how that is addressed in next year’s report.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South mentioned the deportation issue in Sri Lanka. I am also speaking in the next debate about Commonwealth day, so I will be covering that issue then as well. His points were well made. We need to revisit the issue of who we are deporting to Sri Lanka and the situation that they might face there.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) discussed in some detail the matter of Israel and Palestine. I will not refer to it here, as it is a topic that is discussed in quite some depth elsewhere. For example, in Foreign Office questions last week, about half of the questions on the Order Paper were about Israel and Palestine. None the less, let me echo the concerns that have been expressed, especially about the failure of international law to make any progress. It is all very well to condemn the human rights situation, the illegal settlements, the route of the wall and, of course, the abuses on the other side, but there is always this sense of déjà vu; what can the Foreign Office do to address those issues, make some progress and try to ameliorate the situation for the many people who suffer human rights abuses?

Let me turn now to the detail of the report. Last year’s report noted the Foreign Office’s decision to omit Bahrain from the list of countries of concern in its 2010 human rights report, which was described as a “glaring omission” by Human Rights Watch. The Government’s response last year argued that many of the most serious events in Bahrain fell outside the 2010 period covered by the report, but that they undertook to ensure that next year’s report—the one we are discussing now—would address them. None the less, Bahrain is still not included as a country of concern, and the Committee has once again concluded that it should have been.

The FCO’s report included a case study of Bahrain, but Human Rights Watch has described it as “very weak”. Will the Minister elaborate on the reasons for including Bahrain as a case study rather than as a country of concern, and tell us who was involved in taking that decision?

Will the Minister commit to introducing more transparency and clear criteria for the designation of countries of concern, especially as Human Rights Watch has described the current rationale as “vague and unconvincing”? I also echo the questions that were posed about the Bahrain grand prix. It was a matter that we discussed in some detail last year. There seemed to be a lack of clear guidance as to whether it was appropriate for the 2012 grand prix to go ahead. Will the Minister advise us on the FCO’s position on the 2013 grand prix?

Boycotts are also mentioned in the report. As some Members have said, they can be a blunt instrument if they are used in a seemingly arbitrary way. As the Select Committee reported:

“It is difficult to discern any consistency of logic”

in the Government’s approach last year. Indeed, with the Euro 2012 matches in Ukraine, the Minister seemed to suggest that the Government would keep the attendance under review. It was said that if the England team progressed to the later stages of the tournament, the Government might be prepared to attend, but they would boycott the earlier stages, which seemed rather inconsistent and gave the impression that the Government were willing to attend if they received good PR and a nice photo opportunity back at home but were not too bothered about the earlier stages of the game.

Conflicting interests were a prominent concern in the Select Committee report as they were in the 2010 report. The Committee said:

“It is inevitable that the UK will have strategic, commercial or security-related interests which have the potential to conflict with its human rights values.”

The previous Minister with responsibility for human rights, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), advised that the Government saw no inherent contradiction between the Government’s pursuit of commercial interests overseas and the promotion of human rights, and the Government’s official response this year stated again that they “do not agree” with the Committee’s assessment.

It is troubling if the Government are not alive to the danger that their pursuit of financial investment from some countries could compromise or overshadow their message on human rights. Does the Minister at least acknowledge that there is the potential for conflict, and will he set out the Foreign Office’s strategy for managing that and ensuring transparency so that the Government’s human rights work is not compromised?

Only last month, there were reports that the Cabinet was split over how robust the UK should be on China’s human rights record given the country’s economic importance. Yesterday, along with other Members, I met a couple of constituents from Tibet, who were here to lobby us about continued human rights abuses in their country. I had to say that I strongly suspected that the matter of Tibet was not a priority for Ministers when they visit China, and I said that it should be.

The Prime Minister’s answers to my parliamentary questions suggest that he did not discuss the use of the death penalty during his recent visit to India.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

I did.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was about to mention the fact that the Minister did, but the Prime Minister did not, despite India’s recent resumption of the use of the death penalty, and the abolition of the death penalty being included among the priorities of the Foreign Secretary’s human rights advisory group. As the Minister has just advised me from a sedentary position—I was going to mention it anyway—he discussed the death penalty with representatives in India, but if

“the promotion and protection of human rights”

really is at the heart of UK foreign policy, as the Foreign Secretary states in his foreword to the 2011 report, does the Minister not think that that should be the case at every level of Government and that it should not be given to—if the Minister will forgive me for saying so—a junior Minister in the Department rather than the Secretary of State to raise such issues?

Similarly, when I asked the Prime Minister about what discussion there was of human rights when he visited the UAE and Saudi Arabia, he would say only that

“no subject is off limits”.—[Official Report, 13 November 2012; Vol. 553, c. 143W.]

That rather gave the impression that human rights had not been discussed in detail with the Government. Will the Minister advise us on whether human rights were discussed and, given that Saudi Arabia is listed as a country of concern, will he tell us what the Government’s policy is on ministerial and prime ministerial visits to countries of concern, and whether there is clear guidance about whether and when human rights should be included on that list?

The Prime Minister’s visit to Saudi Arabia brings me neatly on to the arms trade. It is deeply concerning that the Committee found that the Minister with responsibility for human rights was not even aware let alone consulted about which countries appeared both on the FCO’s list of countries of concern and as one of the priority markets for arms exports for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Will the Minister assure us that in future there will be more co-ordination between the two Departments, and can he outline the FCO’s guidance on arms exports to countries of concern? With the imminence of the UN conference on the arms trade treaty, will he assure us that the UK will be the champion of a strong treaty and not a broker for a weak one?

Given the short time we have left, I will leave my comments on Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth day debate. None the less, I echo the concerns that have been raised about the human rights situation there.

I was in Burma over the weekend and had the fantastic opportunity to attend the first-ever conference of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. It had been banned for 25 years from holding a party conference. It gives one such hope to visit a country where there has been progress on both human rights and democracy. We hope that in 2015, there will be democratic elections which will see Aung San Suu Kyi become President of Burma. I wanted to mention my visit because it shows that improvements can happen. Last year, the EU took the decision to suspend sanctions. Given what I have observed of the situation in Burma, I think that that was the correct decision and indeed it is something that the NLD supported as well.

Finally, it was troubling that the Government were so reticent in providing information on the number of staff working full-time on human rights. I know that the Foreign Affairs Committee eventually ascertained that there are 14 staff working across the 28 countries of concern and four case-studies countries. Does the Minister have any plans to increase that number?

To conclude, I welcome the Government’s continuing commitment to their annual human rights report and, as I have already said, I hope that next year we can have a fuller and more public discussion of the 2012 report in the main Chamber.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

May I ask you, Minister, to give Mr Ottaway a couple of minutes at the end of the debate?