Libya

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Charlotte Leslie

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I am trying to say—in many ways, it is the crux of this debate and nearly any debate about the middle east—that we have our own ideals and our own sense of what the rule of law and due process are, yet the realities on the ground in many instances bear no relation to the theoretical aspirations and structures that the international community constructs. I am trying to grope towards some way in which we can accommodate or harmonise our intellectual construct and method with what is happening on the ground.

The reality is that there are something like 1,700 militias. General Haftar is probably the biggest military presence, and many of our allies openly support him. My hon. Friend asks an interesting question: why do we not just support General Haftar? I do not propose to answer that definitely today. It is a difficult question and there are lots of balancing factors. The fact is that General Haftar is not universally popular. We have big issues with militias in Misrata. A number of other tribes on the western side have said openly that they are not prepared to tolerate rule by him. Their belief is that, if we support Haftar, we will be substituting one military dictator for the former military dictator, Gaddafi.

Be that as it may, I want to talk about my hon. Friend’s suggestion. Our strategy has not moved the country forward in five years. The financial situation is such that whatever oil reserves Libya had are rapidly dwindling. Libya’s GDP was something like $75 billion in 2011 and is now something like $41 billion—it is roughly of that order; that figure is from a couple of years ago, but it is the latest we have. We are talking about an economy that has essentially halved in five years. GDP per capita was something like $12,500 in 2011, at which point Libya was one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. It was seeing some degree of material progress. Today, GDP per capita is about $7,000. No country in Europe has seen such a diminution of its wealth, including Greece. That has huge implications for the security situation in the region and outside.

Not only have people become a lot poorer, but the political institutions in many instances have broken down. Whatever Gaddafi’s strengths and weaknesses were—let’s face it, he was a tyrant—he had a degree of control over the country’s borders. Those who know geography will know that Libya is an enormous country with something like 4,000 miles of borders. To stem the flow of migration, it was very important that a centrally constituted Government—a central authority—could control the borders. That has now completely collapsed, which is why hundreds if not thousands of people come from very poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa through Libya and find themselves on boats in the Mediterranean going to Italy, in many instances ending their lives there.

I did not want to talk about the EU—we have had plenty of debates in this place about it—but one of the failures it needs to address is the lack of a co-ordinated plan for Libya. There is no point pretending it is going to go away, because it is not. The problem will get worse.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this timely, topical debate. Does he agree that, although focusing on Libya’s coastline is very important to prevent the tragedy of human trafficking, it is also important to look at Libya’s southern borders, where people are coming up from sub-Saharan Africa? Perhaps we could be doing more to understand what is going on there and to tackle trafficking at its source.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As is often the case, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That goes to the heart of the question. There is no centrally constituted Government or central power to hold the country together and control the borders that she talks about, which are pretty porous.

I secured the debate because I have spent time in Europe speaking to German colleagues and MPs and politicians from other countries, and I am struck by the fact that there does not seem to be any real plan of action. Nothing has happened for five years. The country is not in a state of chaos—that would be an exaggeration—but it is certainly not stable. Its oil reserves are dwindling. It is still fairly rich by African and developing country standards, but its wealth is being depleted, and if it diminishes further the problem will get worse. It is no use pretending it is simply going to go away, because it is not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng). People always refer to debates as timely, but this debate has special merit because it shines a light on an area that is often forgotten in the shadow of the atrocities in Syria, but that has a huge role in the region’s stability.

I did not vote for a no-fly zone in Libya in 2011; I abstained. I wondered then whether that was to my shame. Sadly, on balance, I do not think that it was. Back then, as a new MP, I was not sufficiently confident that there would not be mission creep, I could not see a concrete plan for what Libya would look like were there to be mission creep, and I looked at the west’s track record of removing nasty dictators, and it was not good. It is easy to be wise after the event and rehearse mistakes that were made. We can say that lessons will be learned—that cliché is often used—but we can perhaps best demonstrate that we are going to learn the lessons by tackling the situation properly and realistically now.

I am often surprised that Libya does not feature more in the media and political discussion, particularly on compassionate grounds. Libya is well known as a haven for people traffickers, who often traffic people to their deaths in the Mediterranean. When I was in Sicily last year helping to redecorate and renovate a migrant hostel, some young men from Africa told me that they were kept locked like animals in storage containers in Tripoli for two weeks and were basically forcibly starved. One man speculated that that was to ensure that they were smaller so the traffickers could fit more people on the boats. Those are the kinds of human atrocities that are happening, but they do not seem to be attracting Twitter hashtags commensurate with appalling human rights abuses. What are we doing on Libya’s southern border to prevent such atrocities from happening at source? Once people are at the coast, it is in a sense almost too late, although we must of course take action there too.

Libya is obviously of strategic importance. We know that it has become a fertile breeding ground for IS and other violent Islamist groups. It would be a mistake to limit our attention solely to Daesh. We might eradicate Daesh, but the ideology that it espouses will be articulated in another way. Let us not be simplistic and attach ourselves to defeating just a name and not an ideology. The chaos—some call it chaos; some call it deep instability—in Libya is deeply destabilising for neighbouring nations. The last thing that we want is a destabilised Egypt, which has its own challenges. Having a neighbour in such a situation as Libya is in is deeply destabilising for Egypt. As a nation, we are partially responsible for creating that situation, so we have a responsibility to engage energetically in trying to return some form of stability to Libya.

I am far from an expert, and I am aware that I am in the company of far greater experts, so I will make a few observations and then ask some questions of the Minister. We backed a revolution, which is always a risky business. Revolution is very different from reform. In many ways, having taken the actions that we took, we cannot be surprised that we are where we are in Libya.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend mentions that we backed revolution. That is precisely the point: we had no idea what was going to come after the revolution. We simply thought that things would right themselves on their own, and that once we had destabilised the situation, Humpty Dumpty would somehow just come back and reform almost spontaneously.

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend refers to a nursery rhyme; I was going to say that we have a slightly short attention span and in many ways a fairytale view of foreign policy—“It’s all going to be fine and everyone will live happily ever after once we’ve done the nice thing that the Twitterati will approve of.” We are where we are.

We in the west in general—I do not intend to label any one person as responsible—make two mistakes. First, we tend to see situations in a binary way. We are quick to call the good guys the good guys and the bad guys the bad guys. That has led us to be allies with questionable people just because we want to defeat Daesh. Does that really mean that we should align ourselves with Islamists who perhaps have ideas not that different from Daesh? The reason that they are anti-Daesh may be that they see it as a competitor in the region, not that they share our values.

Egypt: British Support

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Charlotte Leslie

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I refer right hon. and hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I too have been able to visit Egypt to inform myself about what has been and is now going on. I associate myself with and echo the concerns hon. Members have expressed about the tragic fate of Giulio Regeni and other human rights abuses, which I will discuss further later in my speech. Recent events in Egypt have fundamentally disturbed us and have challenged us to think about the dynamics underlying the Arab spring, posing basic questions to western politicians which have been played out in Egypt on a global stage. In many ways, events in Egypt fundamentally challenge our sometimes lazy notions of democracy and challenge us to consider the realities of the balance and tensions between freedoms and the merits of stability.

We should not underestimate the uniqueness of Egypt’s position. Look at its neighbours, which also experienced the Arab spring tidal wave in 2011. In Syria, horrific, blood-stained chaos is suckling the diabolical death culture of Daesh. It is a humanitarian catastrophe and a centre of global tensions, the effects of which include not only untold numbers of inhumane acts of cruelty against individuals, children, and homosexuals, but the destabilisation of the whole of Europe. Look at Yemen, sunk beneath a flood of war, and Iraq, struggling against the onslaught of Daesh. Libya is now a failed state and an arena of warring militias and jihadists. These are Egypt’s neighbours and it is important to consider Egypt’s actions and challenges in that context.

By contrast, look at Egypt. There was an uprising in 2011 and Mubarak was removed in February. In June 2012, Egypt held elections and Morsi was elected, but then the direction that Morsi began taking dramatically alarmed the country, including many of those who had thought that the Muslim Brotherhood would prove genuinely moderate. Between January and the summer of 2013 public protest reached boiling point, and on 30 June Morsi was removed. In May 2014, after some constitutional preparations and changes, General el-Sisi, a Muslim who was appointed by Morsi, was elected as president to serve as a Muslim who wants a secular state. At the time, the west described that as undemocratic, but this is one of those times when we should step back, take a reality check, and consider our priorities and where our judgment should lie.

A close friend of mine who is half-Egyptian and whose Copt family lives in Alexandria and Cairo reported to me the rapidly growing mortal fear felt by Copts, as members of their congregation began to disappear and churches were attacked. The culture of fear under Morsi escalated quickly and alarmingly. Egyptian Muslims have anecdotally told me that they also became frightened when the Muslim Brotherhood appeared not to be what it originally said on the tin. They became alarmed at Morsi’s attempt to make himself constitutionally unchallengeable. We can all think of a great leader—perhaps not so great—in the last century whose first challenge to Europe was to make himself constitutionally unchallengeable. In that growing fear and alarm about oppression, Egypt simply rejected the path to political Islam that it was being hurled down with brute force.

We have to remember that democracy was never going to happen in Egypt as it does in Tunbridge Wells. To think otherwise is to demonstrate the naivety that the west sometimes displays when it tries to impose on other countries standards and structures that took our countries several hundred years of bloody war to establish, and then becomes judgmental. When travelling around Egypt, I looked for the results of the process that Britain called undemocratic. I was lucky enough to be at the opening of the new Suez canal expansion, which was achieved in less than a year—necessary, but far from sufficient in aiding the Egyptian economy to stabilise and thrive. This is anecdotal, but in the city of Cairo I observed nothing but tangible relief that at last someone had taken control of a country people had felt was teetering over into oblivion. To my surprise, that feeling was expressed by conservative Muslims as well. That fundamental sense of relief was echoed by mothers, students and taxi drivers—yes, there was apprehension for the future, but there was fundamental relief that Egypt was finally under some kind of control. Ironically, although not democratically elected as the west might have preferred, Sisi, as far as we can tell, enjoys a popularity that many elected leaders in this country would do a lot for.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Sisi was democratically elected. Although some of the returns were impressive—something like 90% or 95% of the vote—there was a democratic process.

[Charlotte Leslie]

I thank my hon. Friend for clarifying that. There was of course a democratic process after considerable institutional and constitutional preparations were made for the transition, which, given the context, was quite remarkable, particularly compared with the fates of other countries surrounding Egypt. I was referring to the fact that many people did not want Morsi to be removed; they wanted him to hang on and then elections to take place. From what I saw of people living in Egypt—I admit this is only anecdotal—the idea that elections would take place in a free and fair way in that culture of fear was optimistic at best.

I do not want anyone to think that I am describing a rosy situation—it is far from rosy. The younger population is very concerned and, interestingly enough, their concerns chime with the concerns about human rights abuses and clampdowns that we have heard in the Chamber today—concerns about the imprisonment of journalists and the appalling, tragic and diabolical treatment of the Italian Cambridge student. I do not have to take up valuable time in expressing how abominable that case is, because other hon. Members have done so far better than I could. Interestingly, students and young people said that it was not only abominable, but politically unnecessary, because Sisi enjoyed sufficient popularity not to need to clamp down in that heavy-handed way.

That brings me on to my next point: that such human rights abuses are not only fundamentally morally wrong, but dangerous for the country itself. Human rights abuses foster the kind of radicalism, extremism and takfiri thinking that Egypt is fundamentally pitched against. In looking at radicals such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, we see the detrimental effect that prison torture plays in radicalising budding or existing extremists. If we think that we have an incentive to crush extremism, look at Egypt’s neighbours and see just how urgent the crushing of that extremist takfiri mentality is to them. How can Egypt become more successful in eradicating extremism? My impression is that, in common with many countries that are facing modernisation and a perhaps already modernised younger generation, Egypt is experiencing the counterintuitive paradox of needing to grip less tightly in order to be stronger.

We had the great privilege and interesting experience of meeting many Members of the nascent Parliament. I remember the confusion in this Parliament—a great institution—when in 2010, for the first time in a long time, we had a coalition Government. Everyone ran around not quite knowing what was going on. Imagine a completely new Parliament, a set of 200 or so pieces of legislation that had to be reviewed in a short space of time and the establishment of much of the constitution—something we take for granted in this country. That is a Parliament that is really trying to get off the ground, so it would seem bizarre for Britain, which has such an established Parliament, not to take a lead in helping and nurturing that fledgling to fly and to become the solid institution that is so important to form a politically stable Egypt. The country is a brave and resilient one, trying to form a bastion of democracy amid a sea of hostility.

There are also deep concerns about Egypt’s economy. With oil prices falling, support from the Gulf is waning, and that is worrying. To create a healthier economy, Sisi has to perform a difficult balancing act by weaning the country off subsidies, while avoiding the public protests that would emerge to destabilise Egypt were prices of bread on the street to go up. Tourism accounts for 10% to 15% of the Egyptian economy—about 1% to 5% is from Britain. If we want Egypt to remain stable and to flourish, we need Sharm el-Sheikh flights to resume as soon as possible. The work there must be concluded quickly. In assessing the security of Sharm el-Sheikh flights, obviously we must put the safety of our citizens first, but we should also consider the security implications of not resuming the flights. An awful lot of Egyptian people depend on tourism. If they are left jobless and feeling spurned by Britain, we have to consider where they might turn for a livelihood and security. We do not want them to turn to extremism.

The stakes are high. If Egypt crumbles economically and social disorder breaks out, the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe that we fear now and this summer will increase dramatically. The exchange rate of the Egyptian currency is artificially high and floating the currency on the open market is a frighteningly risky prospect for the country. It would be a leap of faith, and in making any leap everyone needs to feel surrounded by friends who will help. Furthermore, if we do not help Egypt to modernise, social disorder will feed and nurture Daesh and other pro-Islamic State players.

We can do so much. We have a rich experience of democracy, so we can help Egypt to form a Parliament and functioning state institutions. Education is also vital. The broken-down education system in Egypt needs almost a complete revamp. That, too, is something in which Britain has expertise and experience. As we all know, education and forging a future for young people is one of our key weapons in preventing young people from falling prey to the predatory nature of extremist and takfiri thinkers. If we are not proactive in forming such a relationship with Egypt and in helping it to become the democratic nation that it is trying hard to be—not perfectly, but it is trying—other nations will step into that gap. I am not sure that we especially want Russia to in and to be seen as the primary friend of Egypt. We need allies in the region, so we need to support them.

When looking at the human rights abuses, which are appalling, we need to ensure that we are measuring carefully what it is that we are concerned about. If we are concerned about human beings and their suffering, the metric of our judgments and actions on human rights abuses must be the number of people enduring such suffering. It can be easy to focus blame on the locus of responsibility, whether a Government or an institution, but much less easy to blame a failed state, because there is no one there to blame. We are, however, concerned about human beings and their lives, so we need to look at where the most human rights abuses take place: in a stable state or in a failed state.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

With respect to human rights abuses, it is important to mention Giulio Regeni, a research student who I believe lived in the constituency of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner). I followed the case and it seems difficult to apportion blame directly, because not only are the Government responsible for some abuses, but there are rogue elements within the security apparatus. One thing that we have not mentioned is the fact that the Egyptian military is broadly involved in ramifying branches of economic and social life, business and so on. When people talk about the Egyptian Government, the notion is complicated.

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend makes the case most eloquently. The more that we can help the Egyptian Government to stabilise institutionally and to have a better grip on its institutions, the more we can help the security services to operate in a way that we in the west like to see our security services operate. The more the security service and its activities can be aligned with the state, the more stable the country will be.

To go back to the point I was making, just because it is hard to allocate blame in countries such as Syria and Libya and to solve the problem that is causing untold numbers of human rights abuses, we should not let the fact such abuses are taking place under a Government deter us from tackling them where they are happening on an abominable scale. It is easy for us to put our own moral virtue, in liking to blame someone, ahead of our concern for human welfare.

My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) made a powerful case for the need for stability in Egypt. We owe it to the Egyptian people, to the British people, who are concerned about stability and the migrant process, to Europe and to everyone everywhere, whether moderate Muslims, Christians or of any religion, not to sit and condemn and carp at a country that is certainly not doing everything well and that certainly gives rise to much concern, but to help it to obliterate the things that cause us concern—to help one of the lone islands of stability attempting democracy that has not succumbed to instability and an Islamic takfiri alarming state to thrive and flourish. That is in the interests of all of us.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Charlotte Leslie

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Leslie]

The right hon. Gentleman has made an interesting point, which I will take on board.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was talking about comparisons between 1999 and today. I just wanted to put that on the record.

[Charlotte Leslie]

My hon. Friend makes a point that I was not going to make for the sake of making progress in my comments, but I thank him very much for that clarification.

Some clarification is required in respect of the Bill as well. There is not some kind of compulsion whereby politicians are driving schools to claim these freedoms. The Bill simply seeks to lift the lid on the ambition, desire and passion that already exists, such as in outstanding schools whose head teachers have said to me, “Isn’t it amazing that if I was at a bad school I’d be able to get the freedoms I want to run my school, but we are just doing too well to have them?” The Bill removes that perverse incentive, and it enables parents and—to mention a group that we have not discussed enough in our debate—teachers to act: it enables parents and ideologically driven teachers who want to help the most vulnerable in our society by starting small schools, along the lines of the American charter schools, in those communities that most need them.

Many of the people who express an interest about this subject to me are those very teachers. They are the kinds of teachers who may be involved in Teach First and the Future Leaders programme. They are people who desperately want to improve the lot of those children who are on free school meals in the most deprived parts of our communities. It deserves a little more recognition in this debate that the Bill aims to lift the lid on passion, belief and desire that already exist to improve education. It is not about compulsion; that is not what we on these Benches are all about.

I understand the concern felt on the Opposition Benches that it is the good schools that will benefit from academy status. I would share those concerns if very substantial amounts of capital investment were to be going into those very good schools, but that is not the case. The good news is that there can be improvement without enormous injections of taxpayers’ money; after 13 years, that obviously comes as very good news to all Members. That improvement will allow good head teachers who lead outstanding schools to have the freedom to innovate, and also to offer their innovations to struggling schools. One aspect of the Bill that I particularly welcome is that it will not only encourage but require good schools that take on academy status to link up, not with outstanding schools as the shadow Secretary of State rather oddly implied, but with the weakest schools that most need that help. That point needs reiterating.

Another aspect of the Bill that should be highlighted is the fact that, for the first time, academy proprietors and sponsors will be subject to freedom of information legislation. Freedom of information has, of course, made the past year and a bit extremely rocky for this House, but, all in all, I think it is an extremely good thing and I am extremely pleased that that kind of public accountability will apply to academies and free schools so that we have a proper test of whether they are actually doing what we want and expect them to do.

I was around in the corridors of this House—although not as a Member, and nor, alas, in the corridors of power—when the Education and Inspections Act 2006 was making its progress as a Bill, and I remember that when the concept of trust schools was first floated there was a huge amount of sincere panic on the Labour Benches that that would open the floodgates and that it would be the end of the educational world and we would all be going to hell in a handcart because local authorities would not be able to control schools as they had previously. Now, four years on, has the world ended? No. Four years on, has trust status enabled Orchard school in my constituency to link up as a trust with the Bridge learning campus, which is driving very good improvements? Yes it has. Therefore, I say to Opposition Members that there was a lot of panic about the 2006 Act, and I also suspect that a lot of what is being said now is conjecture and expressions of fear about the liberation of forces that are not Government forces. I hope that alleviates some of the concerns among those on the Opposition Benches.

It is important not to see this Bill in isolation. We cannot solve everything through structural reform alone. It is certainly part of the equation, but we need to remember that there are far more measures in the coalition manifesto that tackle standards issues—and standards issues in respect of struggling, weak schools. If we were to see this Bill alone as the sole coalition offering on education, some of the concerns expressed by Opposition Members might carry more weight, but it does not stand alone. We also have reforms for improving discipline in struggling schools, which is one of the things that makes teaching in such schools so very difficult. Also, the pupil premium will send money directly to those children who most need it; of course there is work to be done on that, but that is what this House exists to do.

One development that I find particularly concerning, and scandalous, is that over the past 10 years pupil referral units have become repositories for children with special educational needs at the same time as special schools have been closed. I know no one wanted that to come about, but the House must address that tendency, and I hope the added responsibility for new academies to take care of children with SEN will improve the situation. I also hope that some of the measures we will be taking forward will look at pupil referral units alongside other society and voluntary organisations that can perform that function better.