Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of cost of living support for households in Wales.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of cost of living support for households in Wales.

[The Secretary of State for Wales (David T. C. Davies)]

This Government are supporting households across Wales with the cost of living. Between October 2022 and the end of June 2023, a typical household would have seen half their energy bills paid for by the Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Patrick Grady

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

12. What recent assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU on the economy.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

17. What recent assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU on the economy.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Victoria Atkins)]

The UK has grown faster than France and at a similar rate to Germany since leaving the single market. It remains challenging to separate the effects of Brexit and wider global trends on the UK economy, such as the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, adding pressures to trade, prices and the wider economy. We continue to support businesses trading with the EU and help them to seize new opportunities with fast-growing economies around the world, including through our free trade agreement negotiations.

Human Rights and Religious Minorities: Sudan

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Patrick Grady

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate. That is a phrase heard quite frequently in Westminster Hall these days. It is a pity that there is not more interest in Westminster Hall. I am not entirely sure what is going on; perhaps some colleagues who were elected in 2019, from all parts of the House, do not realise the value of these debates and the opportunity that they present to hold Ministers to account and raise issues that are of importance to constituents. I certainly regularly hear from constituents in Glasgow North about the importance of freedom of religion and belief, and protection of human rights around the world. The hon. Gentleman has given us a very important opportunity to shine a light on the situation in Sudan.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald), I thank the many organisations that provided briefings and background information for the debate, both for that and for their ongoing work protecting and defending human rights, particularly the rights of those persecuted for their religion or belief in Sudan and around the world. Those organisations include Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Waging Peace and Open Doors. We should acknowledge the excellent work that the Library has done for us on this topic. I also thank our teams, and the team that supports the APPG; the hon. Member for Strangford deserves recognition, too.

As others have said, in 2011, when South Sudan gained its independence, there was much hope that in Sudan and South Sudan there would be a new era of peace, perhaps even leading to prosperity, but instead the cycle of violence and instability continues. South Sudan now ranks 191st out of the 191 countries that the UN is able to rank in its Human Development Index. The Republic of the Sudan is only slightly further up, at 172. As all Members have said, the situation continues to deteriorate.

The coup in 2021 was followed by the detention of several civilian Government officials, including the then Prime Minister. It was met with large-scale, pro-democracy, anti-military demonstrations, but they were repressed on a scale that led to scores of deaths and thousands of injuries among civilians. It is not dissimilar to what we are seeing play out right now in Iran and even, to some extent, Afghanistan. The Sudanese security forces are accused of unlawfully detaining, forcibly disappearing, and committing sexual and gender-based violence against individuals who are perceived to have been active in that protest movement.

Although the state of emergency that followed the coup was lifted in May 2022, abuses that had been justified under it have continued, including regular arbitrary arrests of protesters. In December, an agreement was entered into by the pro-democracy side and the country’s top miliary leaders, but progress still needs to be made. Even though the general principles for the formation of a transitional institution and the promotion of freedom and rights have been outlined, there is no clear timeframe and no benchmarks for reform of the justice and security sector.

Amidst that appalling array of human rights violations and political division, the religious minorities, and indeed minorities that do not subscribe to a religious faith, have continued to suffer from discrimination. My hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire spoke powerfully about the experience of the very small Jewish minority, and she is absolutely right: all religious minorities are feeling persecution. The Christian minority is one of the largest of the minorities, at 2 million people. That is a substantial number, but they make up only 4.3% of the country’s population.

All Members have said that the impact of all this repression is that Open Doors has now relisted Sudan in the top 10 of its world watch list, after it had dropped out and progress had been made, as the hon. Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) rightly said. Regrettably, it has gone backwards. Sudan now sits alongside Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen in that list. Interestingly, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya and Yemen are all countries for which the Home Office will now apparently allow refugees to fast-track their applications through the use of a questionnaire. I think that is quite telling, and I may come back to that point towards the end.

As we have heard, the persecution that religious minorities and particularly Christians are experiencing comes in many forms. Sometimes it is brutal and violent beatings and gender-based and sexual violence, as Open Doors has reported; sometimes it is what we might call oppressive or repressive—the disappearances and arbitrary detentions and imprisonment. Waging Peace gave an example of the head of a Christian youth organisation in the Gezira state who was abducted and tortured by the country’s general intelligence service, then simply dumped in an open area of land.

Sometimes it is insidious, such as the confiscation of Church properties or selling off of Church land; CSW has reported that that is something that has happened to the Sudan Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Even in the home, we hear that converts to Christianity are being shunned or ostracised by their family members—and that is to say nothing of the examples we heard from the hon. Members for Strangford and for Congleton about the state oppression of people who have chosen to convert from Islam to Christianity or another religion. Freedom of religion or belief is a fundamental human right, as everyone in this room recognises. We must resolve to do more to ensure that that right can be exercised by everyone, including those being persecuted in Sudan.

There is much that the Government of Sudan themselves could start doing to demonstrate willingness to respect those fundamental human rights as some of their predecessor regimes have done. As the hon. Member for Strangford said, there are legitimate questions about their role and position on the UN Human Rights Council but, as the hon. Member for Congleton said, they are actually accountable through the UN Human Rights Council as well, through the universal periodic review process. Member states and parties to that process, including the UK Government, should ensure that it is effectively holding international Governments to account—just, indeed, as the UK Government are held to account through that process.

The UK Government could be doing more on their own initiative. There is widespread support, even among their own Back Benchers—not least from the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), when she was Foreign Secretary, and the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns)—for the Government to fully commit to and properly resource an atrocity prevention strategy. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire said, that could focus support among embassies to be able to report and monitor the risk of atrocities in their countries, and prioritise preventative efforts that support stability and good governance in those difficult parts of the world.

Of course, all that must be resourced properly. The reality is that the impact of cuts to the aid budget is now being seen and felt in many different areas, such as this. I do not think it is good enough for the Minister to roll her eyes—that is the reality of the situation. The Conflict, Stability and Security Fund has been cut by hundreds of millions of pounds in recent years. It was supposed to be a flagship programme of the UK Government; it was going to share cross-departmental expertise and make aid work smarter and harder to prevent violence and the abuse of human rights around the world, but if the money is not there, it is all just talk and posturing. Meanwhile, it is the people in the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the world that are hit the hardest.

If the Government do not want people to come here on small boats, and if they do not want to spend money on asylum seekers in hotels, maybe they should spend money helping to build peace and stability in otherwise oppressive regimes, so that people do not feel the need to flee war and conflict. If Christians and other persecuted minorities in Sudan and elsewhere in the world could freely practice their religion and go about their daily lives in safety, perhaps fewer of them would find themselves so desperate that they need to seek a new life beyond those borders.

[Kirsten Oswald]

It is a point worth making that we have these debates about freedom of religion and belief in various countries across the world, and they are always very consensual. That is a really good thing; it is a really important subject, and I am glad that we tend to agree largely, but we cannot get away from some of the factors that have an influence on that. It is right and proper that my hon. Friend raises that, and I hope the Minister is able to see the connection between what he is saying and some of the difficulties that people face.

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Last Tuesday, I met refugees and asylum seekers in Glasgow as part of the Maryhill Integration Network. None of them were Albanians, and none of them were economic migrants; they were people who had come from difficult situations in Syria, Turkey and Iran, where they were in fear for their lives. They came here because there were established communities or because they respected the UK and understood that it could be a place of sanctuary for them, and the experience that they have had since coming to the United Kingdom makes them wonder whether it was worth while. Imagine thinking it would be better to go back to Iran and live in fear, rather than having to stay crammed into a hotel room with four other people in Glasgow city centre.

That takes us slightly away from the subject, but it speaks to the wider point that we all have a role to play. These debates are important as accountability mechanisms for the Government, so the Government need to show that they are committed to supporting persecuted Christians and other people of minority faiths and beliefs, or none, in Sudan and around the world.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Joint Committee

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Mr Deputy Speaker,

“It’s like the entire country is being held hostage.”

That is how my constituent Abdul Bostani, the chief executive of Glasgow Afghan United, described the situation in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. One of those trapped was his own brother, a UK citizen who had travelled back to visit his wife and children because the Tory Government’s arbitrary earning thresholds for visas meant that he had not been able to bring them to the UK for a family reunion. Thankfully, they were among the lucky ones who got out in the airlift, but they should have been here years ago.

Likewise, Abdul has friends who served as interpreters for the UK armed forces who are still in Afghanistan because they were employed by a security company and not directly by the British Army. There were told that they were therefore not eligible for schemes to resettle in the UK. The Minister for the Armed Forces offered to look into that earlier this week, but again, they should have been here years ago.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

There is also a great deal of confusion over the treatment of British Council staff. It is still unclear why they were excluded from ARAP; they should certainly be here. It is unclear what will happen to those staff in the future, how many were special cases, and how many still remain in Afghanistan. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is another issue that really needs to be clarified?

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend is right and the Minister should respond to that.

I fully support the Labour motion for a Committee of inquiry. The Government have pretty thin reasoning for opposing that. Technically, the establishment of a new Committee is a House matter, so there should be a free vote for their Back Benchers tonight.

Hundreds of my constituents have been in contact with me since the US withdrawal began, distressed at the scenes in Kabul and across Afghanistan, and demanding action from Governments in the UK and wanting to express their solidarity. I have spoken to constituents who are particularly concerned about the treatment of women, girls and minority groups, as we all are. Expat constituents from Afghanistan have emphasised that Afghanistan is not a lost cause. Resistance to the Taliban remains real and the UK Government need to be aware of that.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Patrick Grady

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

No—which is exactly what the right hon. Gentleman said to me on Second Reading.

The UK Government need to clarify what involvement the EU’s digital single market, which is vital for supporting highly paid jobs in an exciting growth sector, will have. They have been completely silent on the digital single market, which will be one of the most important sectors of our economy—like tourism, which also comes under the remit of the DCMS. Approximately 20,000 EU nationals work in Scotland’s hospitality sector—12% of the total. What will be the impact on them?

Amendment 79 calls for the Chancellor to publish a report on matters relating to the pensions of UK nationals living and working in the European Union. Again, that is an area of great uncertainty, and I have heard about it from my own constituents. Some 400,000 UK nationals living in the EU receive a pension from the United Kingdom Government, and they are incredibly concerned about the impact of Brexit. The Government have done nothing to reassure them.

Amendment 80, one of the most important, calls on the Government to publish an equality impact assessment. We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) about the whole range of minority and interest groups in our society—faith groups, LGBT groups and so on—that are completely absent from the UK Government’s White Paper. That is why it is important that we hear about them in an impact assessment.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s failure to include an equality impact assessment is very distressing? It is completely contrary to their words of support for equality, which are so often let down by their actions.

[Patrick Grady]

Of course. Equalities are at the heart of the European project, which the Brexiteers have wanted to rip us away from.

Amendment 82 calls for a regional and national economic impact assessment.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Patrick Grady

Thursday 21st January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is an honour to be speaking in this debate today. We have heard many very moving and thoughtful contributions from Members across the House, and it is evident that this is a topic of great concern to all of us. I must add my voice to those commending the outstanding work of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

It is an honour for me to represent East Renfrewshire. My constituency is home to Scotland’s largest Jewish population, as well as to other engaged and active faith groups. Their congregations and leaders add so much to our local communities, promoting positive relations and the importance of working together and learning lessons from the past.

As a number of Members have rightly pointed out, as fewer and fewer holocaust survivors are able to share their story, it is more important than ever that we take steps to make sure that their stories continue to be told, and it is fitting that the theme of this year’s commemoration is “Don’t stand by”. The message this gives could not be clearer or more important. It is about us all: we must not stand by—and we must also be aware, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) and others, that these terrible acts often involved ordinary people.

I am very proud of the diversity of modern Scotland. It makes us all better to live in a diverse, vibrant country, but we can never take the diversity and tolerance of our society for granted. Scotland’s Jewish community is a vital and important part of our society. Every member of that community has the right to feel safe and we on the SNP Benches join the others here today who have condemned anti-Semitism; it is wholly unacceptable.

We have heard about our duties to refugees from the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and, as Europe struggles to get a grip on the refugee crisis stemming from Syria, we must not stand by and ignore cries for help from men, women and children fleeing not only the barbaric control of Daesh, but the evil regime of Assad.

In 1999, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair asked Jewish community leaders in Britain whether they felt it would be a good idea to have a Holocaust Memorial Day. They told him that they themselves did not need one, because Jews already had Yom HaShoah, a memorial day on which the whole community remembered all those who had been lost. However, they pointed out that it was important for our whole society to have a Holocaust Memorial Day for the Jewish people and for the other victims of the holocaust, including Roma people, trade unionists, people with disabilities, gay people and Jehovah’s Witnesses—all those who, along with the Jews, were so terribly singled out for the crime of being different, as the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) said. This is important for wider society too, so that we have the opportunity to listen and to learn.

It was a huge honour for me to be invited to march with the Jewish war veterans at the Remembrance day service in Newton Mearns in November and then to join the community at the Newton Mearns synagogue for an excellent, thoughtful service at which their brave and selfless contributions and the losses and sacrifices of so many were remembered.

We must remember not only the horrors of the second world war but the subsequent genocides, including those in Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia. This year marks the 21st anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica, which has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). The cemetery there has more than 8,000 obelisks marking Muslim graves. Organisations including Remembering Srebrenica and the Mothers of Srebrenica work to ensure that we remember and help us to try to learn.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I attended the Srebrenica memorial service last year, and one of the most moving parts of the service was when I went out at the end and saw the thousands of schoolchildren who had gathered in the nave of Westminster Abbey to learn and to witness that remembrance. Does my hon. Friend agree with the other Members who have spoken in this moving debate about the importance of educating future generations, and young children in particular, so that we and they never forget and never stand by?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I entirely agree with him.

I am pleased that in Scotland our Government have made a clear commitment to understanding and protecting faith through education, and to the importance of holocaust education. Our young people must have the opportunity to really understand what happened. We have heard about Scottish students and teachers participating in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s valuable Lessons from Auschwitz project. I have met some of those young people, and their commitment to understanding and sharing the story of the holocaust is very important.

Our First Minster, Nicola Sturgeon, reflecting on our annual Scottish interfaith week, described Scotland as a country where all people can live together in harmony, follow their religion or belief and achieve their potential. Our diversity is a strength, as the First Minister emphasised when she recently came to speak to the Scottish Jewish community at the Giffnock and Newlands synagogue. She said that with that strength comes the responsibility on us all not to stand by but to speak up against anti-Semitism and discrimination in all its forms.

Holocaust Memorial Day allows schools, colleges, faith groups and communities all over Scotland to consider that, and to remember the 6 million men, women and children who were murdered by the Nazi regime in occupied Europe. Six million people. That is more than the entire population of Denmark. But even when I make comparisons such as these, it is still impossible to comprehend the numbers. As the hon. Member for Ilford North pointed out, however, we really need to try to do so, so that we can understand the terror and magnitude of that genocide, and its repercussions and impact on all of us, on those who survived and on the generations who came after, such as the family of the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick).

This time last year, I was fortunate enough to be at a holocaust memorial service at the Giffnock reform synagogue, where I heard the son of a holocaust survivor speak movingly about the impact of his father’s experience on him as a person. It was an incredibly moving testimony, and it illustrated very well the broad effects of the holocaust, which extend much further than even the terrible magnitude of the number of victims would suggest.

Yesterday, I visited the Kindertransport statue at Liverpool Street station. There is no doubt that the Kindertransport saved many thousands of young Jewish lives, and those children and their families have added greatly to our society and made huge contributions to our understanding. But it was heart-breaking to learn that at the end of the war, when the British Government committed to taking in another 1,000 unaccompanied children, they could not do so because only 732 orphaned children remained.

The plight of children at that time also exercised the mind of Jane Haining, a farmer’s daughter from Dunscore in rural Dumfriesshire. A devout Christian, she was inspired by a job advert she saw in Queen’s Park church for the post of matron in a Budapest school run by the Church of Scotland’s Mission to the Jews. The school was popular with Jewish parents because of the quality of education that all children, particularly girls, received. As the political situation in Hungary became increasingly precarious, with the Jewish population steadily stripped of its freedoms, the Church of Scotland sent her repeated letters urging her to return home to Scotland for her own safety. Jane refused, and wrote back saying:

“If these children needed me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in these days of darkness?”.

As Hitler’s troops marched into Hungary, Jane Haining is said to have wept as she sewed yellow stars on to her charges’ clothes. This sympathy was known, and very soon she was informed upon, arrested and held in a local prison. She was soon moved to Auschwitz and taken to the labour camps. The treatment being so brutal, she survived for just two months before dying at the age of 47. Many years afterwards, after a 10-year investigation and an initiative by Queen’s Park church, Jane was named as Righteous Among Nations in Jerusalem’s sacred Yad Vashem, recognising her quiet sacrifice for her Jewish children.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), I want to talk briefly about the late Rev. Ernest Levy, previously the cantor of the Giffnock and Newlands synagogue in my constituency. In 1938, when he was a child, he and his family had to flee to Hungary from their home in Bratislava. When Germany invaded Hungary, they were deported to the concentration camps. Ernest was held in seven concentration camps in all, including Auschwitz. His brothers had to dig their own graves. His sister was gassed to death. Ernest only just survived and he was found lying in the dust in Bergen-Belsen. He ultimately returned to Budapest, before making his home in Scotland, marrying Kathy Freeman, a fellow concentration camp survivor, in 1965.

Rev. Levy worked with the Holocaust Educational Trust to launch his holocaust testimony, “The Single Light”, in the Scottish Parliament. He brought a sardine tin with him. This tin had literally been his guiding light. During a forced march to Belsen, towards the end of the war, he picked up the tin, discarded by a German guard, made it into a wick and lit a flame. He and his fellow inmates gathered round the flame to sing a hymn. In Holyrood, he again lit the wick in the sardine tin, telling assembled MSPs and guests:

“We sang, and it gave us hope. This tin gave us light.”