Badger Culls (Assessment)

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Anne Main

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Main]

I absolutely condemn anyone who sabotages experiments, and I condemn anyone who puts any of our armed forces, police or anyone else involved, including protesters, in any danger. However, my hon. Friend must accept that passions are running high because logical arguments are being made in various debates and by panels that I have chaired, but people are not listening. If we are to prevent sabotage, which is obviously a last resort for some people, we must ensure that genuine concerns are listened to.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I went down to Somerset recently to meet some of the people monitoring the culls. They are there not to sabotage them, but to ensure that the rules are obeyed and that badgers are not shot and left wounded to die slowly and painfully. They are there to ensure that the rules are kept. I met a farmer who did not want to take part in the cull pilot, but wanted to vaccinate her cattle. She had to stand guard at midnight at the gates to her farm to stop people coming on to her land and trying to shoot badgers. It is wrong to categorise anyone who protests against and monitors the culls as trying to sabotage them. They are just trying to ensure fairness.

[Mrs Main]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. Other hon. Members want to speak, so I will not labour the point, but my constituents, who have written to me in their hundreds, have lost confidence in the rationale and the way the problem is being tackled. No one is disputing that there is a problem, but we still do not know how many badgers were killed after having been cage-trapped, when that was expressly excluded originally.

I do not believe that the Government’s method of choice will deliver what the farmers and the Government want, so we must look at the matter again. I for one, and hundreds of people in St Albans who care about the humaneness of the approach, believe that the Government are foolish not to listen to two failures. I do not accept that activists have ruined the trials; I suspect that the badger does not wish to comply with the trials, that the marksmanship has not been up to the job, and that the original premise of using free shooting instead of cage shooting was never a realistic means of dealing with the problem. We must come up with an alternative proposal, and I suggest that cattle movements, vaccination and other methods that do not inflict cruelty on another animal species are the way forward.

Bangladesh

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Anne Main

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate all Members who have taken part in the debate on their well-informed contributions, many of which result from personal visits to Bangladesh. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk)—he has made his apologies for having to leave the debate early—for stepping in at short notice to secure the debate, which is timely, given that the elections took place on 5 January.

I also want to say briefly that I am sure that we are all mindful of the reason why the debate on child neglect that had been scheduled for today was cancelled. My thoughts are with the family, friends and many colleagues of Paul Goggins who are paying their final respects to him today.

As several hon. Members have said, Bangladesh has long been a valued partner of the UK. Obviously it is a young country, but our historical links with the region and its people go back long before its formation. We also have a sizeable diaspora community in the UK. Indeed, Bristol has the pleasure of having not only its first Muslim lord mayor, but its first lord mayor of Bangladeshi origin, Councillor Faruk Choudhury, who has made a real impact as a role model for younger people in the community.

As I said, the elections were held on 5 January. We have heard already about the widespread concern that has been expressed by the international community and the condemnation of shocking acts of violence and intimidation. I want to focus my remarks mostly on the elections, given that they are so recent. As we have heard, more than half the 300 seats were uncontested. Some candidates from other parties, I understand, tried to withdraw their names from the ballot paper. Some from smaller parties were elected, but more than 100 candidates from the ruling Awami League were elected unopposed, and 48 million registered voters out of 92 million could not vote. Indeed, it is reported that people could vote in just two of the 20 constituencies in Dhaka, so it is no surprise that the turnout was disappointingly low. The Government’s official turnout figure was 39% to 40%, but that has been queried, given that there was no turnout at all in many parts of the country because the seats were uncontested.

Furthermore, election day and the weeks preceding it saw deplorable acts of violence. There were arson attacks on polling stations, including more than 120 schools. There were reports that an election officer was beaten to death on polling day, and that 440 polling stations closed early owing to security concerns. Human Rights Watch reported that 120 people lost their lives in pre-election violence, and at least 18 people died on election day. Media reports have said that many were shot by police.

The reasons for the violence and the failure of the elections to proceed as we would have hoped are varied and complex. The Bangladesh Nationalist party, along with several of the smaller parties, decided to boycott the election in protest against the Government’s decision not to allow a neutral caretaker Government to take charge in the run-up to the elections. As we heard from the hon. Member for St Albans and others, such a practice had been in place since the 1996 elections. Meanwhile, there was a court order preventing the Jamaat-e-Islami party from participating. There were also reports that some candidates tried to withdraw, but were prevented from doing so, and that party representatives were arrested or forced to leave Bangladesh. After the BNP’s leader called for a march for democracy in late December, hundreds of opposition supporters were arrested, and demonstrators were prevented from reaching Dhaka. There were reports of arbitrary arrests and the indiscriminate use of force. Ms Zia was, in effect, placed under house arrest, with security forces preventing her from leaving her home. Those are all deeply troubling human rights violations.

We believe that the European Union, the United States, the Commonwealth and others were right not to send election observers, given concerns about the election arrangements, and the associated violence and intimidation. We support the remarks by the EU High Representative, Cathy Ashton, condemning the violence and highlighting the concern that some of the attacks targeted women and children, and religious and ethnic groups. Many of our international partners support her conclusion that conditions were not met for transparent, inclusive and credible elections.

It is hoped that the dialogue everyone—particularly the UK, the EU, the UN and the Commonwealth—is calling for will enable all people in Bangladesh to participate in transparent and credible elections in the future. We have heard calls today for fresh elections, with differing views about whether they should take place within the next few months, or whether more time is needed to put the appropriate mechanisms in place. I know that it is early days, but I would be keen to hear from the Minister what discussions the Government have had with the parties in Bangladesh and what role we could play in ensuring that elections that are satisfactory to the majority of the people in Bangladesh happen in the near future, no matter what the outcome.

The hon. Member for St Albans talked about the troubled history of elections in Bangladesh. She also discussed the persecution of religious minorities, which is a matter of great concern to hon. Members—it has been raised on a number of occasions, and it is important that it is flagged up. She talked about the all-party group’s visit to Bangladesh last September, which sounds very successful. Members of Parliament get criticised quite a lot for going on such overseas visits, but Members who took part in that visit feel that they are now informed about the situation so that they can take part in this debate. There is no substitute for being on the ground in a country and witnessing at first hand what is happening there.

The hon. Lady spoke about the garment industry, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). The role of consumer power in flagging up these issues is something that we have not really mobilised. There are brilliant campaigns such as Labour Behind the Label, a Bristol-based organisation, and groups such as War on Want have campaigned on the matter in the past. We need to do more to flag up the ethics of our high street and what we are actually buying.

[Mrs Main]

I thank the hon. Lady for her favourable comments. The report by the all-party group, which we have handed to DFID—we hope for a response—explores many suggestions, such as kite marks. We would love to have a response from the Minister to some of them.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Given that the report has been submitted to DFID, it would not be my place to respond on its behalf, but my colleagues in the shadow DFID team, my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), are doing a lot of work on how we can make the high street more ethical. I am sure that we can work on that on a cross-party basis and with the support of those such as the all-party group.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) spoke from her unique perspective as the sole Member of the House of Bangladeshi origin—indeed, she was born in the country. She spoke eloquently about the frustration that is felt by members of the community over here. No matter which political party they may be aligned with or which party they may want to win the election, they all have a desire to see political stability and order restored in Bangladesh, not least because the current situation is putting at risk the economic investment that is lifting the country out of poverty. She made a powerful plea for people in power to put their political differences behind them in the country’s interests and said that the country’s politics is holding it back. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale echoed those sentiments, as did the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish).

I thought at one point that the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) was after a free meal in one of the curry houses in his constituency. I hope that he name-checked all of them and did not leave anyone out or he will be given a cold welcome next time he visits. He talked about the impact of aid and the contribution made by the diaspora, as did the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South, who speaks as someone with not just a significant Bangladeshi diaspora in his community, but in his role as a shadow DFID spokesman, talked about the Department. The last thing we want to do is to abandon a country just because the democratic process is not perfect, but we need to see how FCO and DFID funding, and the work taking place in the country, can be pulled together so that it is about supporting better political engagement and strengthening governance to ensure that aid money for poverty projects is well delivered, going into the right hands and benefiting the people. The hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) was entirely right to raise concerns about extra-judicial killings and the Rapid Action Battalion, about which I was talking to somebody only the other day.

Let me turn to the human rights situation. Last year, as a result of political violence, Bangladesh was added to the FCO’s human rights report as a case study. It is estimated that 500 Bangladeshis were killed in political violence in 2013, with injury caused to thousands of others, predominantly associated with the international crimes tribunal’s investigations into the 1971 war. I have seen harrowing reports. Human Rights Watch has documented evidence that the security forces were responsible for some of the deaths during the protests. It is imperative that those responsible are held to account. The incidents provided further evidence of the need to promote freedom of expression and association in Bangladesh. People in Bangladesh and some external observers have argued that the tribunal process is flawed, and there are troubling reports that at least one witness has been attacked and killed.

The verdicts have led to the death penalty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North said, most of us are united across this House in condemning the use of capital punishment in all cases. I know that that is not a unanimous view, but I think I am right in saying that it is probably a majority view. Labour Members regard the death penalty as inhumane. As in the case of the execution of Abdul Quader Molla of the Jamaat-e-Islami party last month, it serves only to heighten tensions and spark further violence. The Government therefore have our full support in calling on Bangladesh to implement a moratorium on the use of the death penalty and to uphold the international covenant on civil and political rights. It is important, especially now that we are members of the Human Rights Council, that the abolition of the death penalty continues to be raised at the council and with our Commonwealth partners.

As has already been mentioned, the people of Bangladesh had our deepest sympathies following the Rana Plaza factory disaster last April, in which 1,100 people lost their lives and 2,500 were injured. We have discussed the protection of ILO standards within the garment industry and the hidden human costs associated with the ability to buy high street products in the UK at such a low price. I commend the TUC, among others, for its work with retailers to secure support for an accord to fund an independent and much-needed health and safety inspection body for Bangladeshi factories.

Draft EU Budget 2011

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Anne Main

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

Again, we are not here to answer questions. We are here to put the questions and to get—[Interruption.] The Minister should accept that the Conservatives are now in government. She cannot just do what she did in opposition and talk tough—

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I want to make progress. The Minister cannot just talk tough on European issues and pander to people who want to take us out of the EU. She is here to make progress in negotiations and to fight Britain’s corner. I have asked her what she would see as success in doing that.

On the specifics, we are here to debate whether, when EU member states and regions are all engaged in belt tightening, the EU itself should engage in a similar exercise. The Minister has said that sizeable austerity measures are being implemented across the EU. Does that not in itself prove that this economic situation is a global phenomenon that affects all EU member states and not, as the Government say every time Ministers get to their feet in the Chamber, the result of profligate public spending by the previous Government?