Anglo-Russian Relations
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Daniel Kawczynski
I am sorry. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will come on to say, the Scottish fishing industry is suffering greatly as a result of the sanctions imposed, as is the dairy industry. The Shropshire dairy industry is on its knees as a result of bovine tuberculosis and the lowering of prices that our farmers are paid by supermarkets. My Shropshire dairy farmers are going out of business in unprecedented numbers and all their exports to Russia—not just cheese and milk, but other dairy products—have been wiped out as a result of the sanctions.
I direct the Minister to some information I received from France the other day. Last week, the French National Assembly adopted a non-binding resolution inviting the French Government to lift the economic sanctions and other retaliation measures imposed on Russia by the European Union. The resolution was presented by a conservative Member of Parliament called Thierry Mariani. Although non-binding, several of his fellow conservative Members of Parliament have welcomed the move—in particular, former French Prime Minister François Fillon—and it will clearly put pressure on the French Government ahead of the next review of sanctions in July 2016.
Through their Foreign Ministry, the French Government factually stated that EU sanctions remain linked to the implementation of the Minsk agreements, and expressed their willingness to ensure the unity of the EU on this matter. That is very important. The French National Assembly’s resolution gives me the impression that many in the French Parliament want sanctions to be rescinded, and that they could be lifted if the Minsk agreements are implemented. What is the British Government’s perspective on that? The key question I would like the Minister to answer is: were the Minsk agreements implemented, would the British Government support the removal of EU sanctions? Or do they have an extra requirement, as I have been led to believe in the past: that Crimea would have to be returned to Ukraine before they would support the removal of sanctions?
In all my interactions with Foreign Office Ministers, I have been given the impression that the British Government would not support the removal of sanctions unless the Minsk agreements were implemented and Crimea were returned to Russia. As somebody who has visited Crimea on several occasions, I have to say that there is not a cat in hell’s chance of the Russians returning Crimea to Ukraine during the course of my political or biological life, and I will eat my hat if they do so.
Sanctions should be in place only with something tangible and achievable as the end result. I genuinely believe that, if the implementation of the Minsk II agreement were secured, that would be the sensible moment for us to start to talk to the Russians about getting rid of sanctions. If the Government’s attitude is, “No, we want Crimea returned,” they are doing us a great disservice by putting our constituents, ourselves, our prosperity and the likelihood of improving relations in jeopardy and peril.
I know others want to speak, so I will try to wind up quickly, but I want to say how pleased I was with the Iran agreement. We were facing the insoluble, difficult and highly complex problem of nuclear proliferation in Iran. I pay tribute to the Foreign Office and its diplomats for the leadership they displayed in securing the agreement. There is no doubt in my mind that the agreement would not have been achieved without the unique contribution of British diplomacy, but Russia was also a part of the agreement. It made an extraordinary contribution and is doing the heavy lifting on the agreement to protect the region and to protect peace.
The American Secretary of State, John Kerry, said in a press release:
“A number of commercial transactions made this shipment possible, with many countries playing important roles in this effort. Russia, as a participant in the JCPOA and a country with significant experience in transporting and securing nuclear material, played an essential role by taking this material out of Iran and providing natural uranium in exchange.”
That goes to show that, if we work with the Russians constructively, they can bring different things to the table. They have different experiences and different contacts. If we can work with the Russians on securing this vital deal with Iran, why can we not work with them in other important theatres such as Syria?
Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He has spoken at some length about his background and heritage and, indeed, about the welfare of cattle and the potentially lucrative nature of the cattle business in his constituency. He mentioned the Minsk agreement but said nothing whatsoever about the reasons for that agreement, which were Russian aggression, the conduct of hybrid warfare and thousands of lives being lost in eastern Ukraine and, to some extent, Crimea. That cannot be simply brushed under the carpet. The Minsk agreement and the sanctions are there for a good reason. Will he address those points?
Daniel Kawczynski
We all know what led to the conflagration and the difficulties that ensued in Donetsk and Lugansk. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am focusing on trying to secure peace now. Implementing the Minsk agreement and getting back to normalised relations are more important than what specifically led to the conflagration in the first place. I am glad he intervened. As I discussed with him yesterday, as a fellow member of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, he has said in the past that he thinks the British Government ought not to have ruled out military action over Crimea. He has stated that Britain should have potentially got involved militarily. Well, if he wants a third world war and nuclear destruction of both entities, he is going the right way about it.
Mr Hendrick
The point I made was that I felt it was unwise of the Prime Minister at the time to verbally rule out military action, not on the part of Britain but on the part of NATO or anyone else. Saying nothing is far better than saying we will not do anything.
Daniel Kawczynski
Let us agree to disagree on that. I think that that sort of sentiment is highly dangerous and could lead to significant destabilisation in our relations with Russia.
The Russians believe we have acted unilaterally in the world, and they have seen some of the terrible difficulties we have got into with Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. They want to ensure we can work constructively with them to bring peace about in Syria. As I have said, the Russians bring different things to the table. We need to compartmentalise the relationship. We can still disagree with the Russians profoundly over Syria and Ukraine, but let us get back to dialogue over matters of security and energy security while we continue to disagree with them. [Interruption.] I will wrap up my comments because you have indicated, Mr Davies, that I have spoken for long enough.
Russia has watched our disastrous intervention in Libya and our prevarication over Syria. Russians would argue that their intervention in Syria has helped to stop or temper the ongoing bloodbath of the past five years and that they have saved the European Union the misery and suffering of having to deal with hundreds of thousands more migrants coming across the sea to Greece.
When I think of the tremendous work done in Tehran, which I visited recently, between Churchill and Stalin to put their differences aside in fighting fascism during the second world war—when we had even more differences of opinion with the Soviet Union than we do with Russia today—I think to myself that we ought to also have the courage and vision to put our differences aside and work with the Russians to fight modern-day fascism. ISIS poses a similar threat to both entities in Syria, Libya and on the streets of European capitals, with the bombing and terrorism that is taking place. Let us put our differences aside and work with the Russians to deal with that threat.
My final statement is this. On 15 March, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) said:
“The Foreign Secretary said that he has not talked to Mr Lavrov. Is that because Mr Lavrov is refusing to take his call, or that he has not yet tried? If it is the latter, why not?”
The Foreign Secretary’s response—I want you to remember this, Mr. Davies—was:
“Again, experience is the answer. I have not tried to make the call, and I am in no doubt that I could predict quite confidently the outcome of such a call to Foreign Minister Lavrov. I have had many conversations with him over the course of our regular meetings at Syria-related events, none of which has been fruitful.” —[Official Report, 15 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 800.]
What a terrible statement to make: “None of my discussions with Mr Lavrov has been fruitful, so there is no point in making a telephone call.” No, no, no. The Government have got to change their stance and engage with the Russians, for the security of our country and the international community.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Our relationship with foreign powers is, I believe, totally inconsistent. We chide Russia for abuses—and, by the way, nothing I say is pro-Putin; I am not getting involved in that. I am just talking about double standards. We chide Russia for abuses but kowtow to China, whose abuses are far worse. If we were outside observers looking at that situation, what conclusion would we draw? That there is a double standard; and that is the only conclusion that Russians draw. We in the west have failed totally to take into account the Russian mentality when dealing with these problems. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) on the way he moved the motion, and on trying to understand how Russians think. That is important in framing our foreign policy.
Ukraine is a perfect example. The country is ideally placed as a bridge between the two worlds—Europe and Russia. Indeed, in Russian, Ukraine means “borderland”. To Russians, Ukraine is not a foreign country. Russian orthodoxy, as far as they are concerned, was founded in the Kievan Rus 1,000 years ago. We may not agree with this, but for them Kiev is as much the spiritual home of Russian orthodoxy as Canterbury is to us the home of the Anglican Church. Clever Ukrainian statesmen could have held a fine balance, playing one side against the other for the good of their country, as of course India did during the cold war. Instead, Europe and the west had to barge in with, I believe, an insufficient understanding of Russian or, indeed, Ukrainian history, or people’s thinking in the region.
We in the European Union invested millions of pounds, euros and dollars to influence Ukraine away from Russia and towards the west. Because one side insisted on owning the bridge and the other side, naturally, would not let it, now the bridge is in tatters and burning; and it is the ordinary people of Ukraine—and of Russia, subject to sanctions—who are suffering. Of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham says, Russia will never in our lifetime give up Crimea. After all, the Russians believe and know that the overwhelming majority of people in Crimea want to be part of Russia. So they believe that we are playing with double standards. They all remember that Krushchev signed away Crimea to Ukraine with a stroke of a pen in the mid-1950s.
The psychotic zeal for permanent expansion of the western European sphere of influence, at Russia’s expense, gains us nothing. Actually, all we have done is significantly destabilise our eastern flank; and what about the good of Ukraine? Crimea is now permanently lost to it. We know that—it is a reality. The eastern regions are enveloped in a low-level violent conflict. Whatever we may think of Mr Putin or the Russian Government, clearly our interference has not worked out for the benefit of people living in Ukraine. Russia can, we all know, with little effort or cost to itself—I am not defending it, just describing the reality—support and maintain a constant low-boil conflict in eastern Ukraine for some time.
Therefore, any real effort to secure peace, stability and the rule of law in Ukraine—and peace and stability is what we should be about, is it not?—must of necessity take into account Russian fears and interests. That is the reality on the ground. If it does not, and if we just take an absolutist line, imposing sanctions, putting the Russian embassy in London and the Russian Government into deep freeze, and not talking to Mr Lavrov, we will achieve nothing and there will be no prospect of success. What would that mean for the relationship between our two countries? Our strategy for Anglo-Russian relations should be to engage, engage and engage. By all means be firm, but engage.
Last week, I chaired an investment forum—I am chairman of the all-party group on Russia—and there is significant interest among British and European businesses in strengthening their presence in Russia. The Governments of Germany, France and Italy are actually increasing their business, unlike our Government. Given our historical alliances with Russia, the Russians cannot understand why our Government and our Prime Minister are outriders. They are way beyond the Americans, the Germans and the French in their anti-Russian stance. The Russians cannot understand it. Let us remember for a moment who, frankly, saved our bacon in two world wars. How many tens of millions of Russians died in Nazi Germany’s invasion? We should remember that, with the unfortunate exception of the Crimean war, Russia has for centuries been our natural ally. We are two powers on the eastern and western extremities of Europe.
If we respectfully and confidentially engage with Russia, we will get the most out of that relationship and start making constructive advances. Blind and mindless Russophobia gets us absolutely nowhere. We should build economic links, strengthen cultural links and seek to work together on issues such as defeating Daesh, where UK and Russian interests overlap. Daesh is our enemy; Russia is not. Russia poses absolutely no strategic threat to the people of the United Kingdom. It does not and never has done in our entire history, but Daesh does.
Mr Hendrick
What is the hon. Gentleman’s reaction to the fact that Russian military aircraft regularly come into UK airspace in the full knowledge that it is UK airspace?
Sir Edward Leigh
Of course Russia is a great power, and it naturally tests defences as part of its training of its own people, but does anybody in this Chamber seriously believe that it poses a strategic military threat to the United Kingdom? We are no longer in the cold war; it is over. I do not defend Russian aircraft approaching the United Kingdom, but I do not think for a moment that there is the remotest chance of their actually engaging in military action with us.
Daesh is our real enemy. Allowing its reign of terror to continue simply because we dare not co-ordinate our plans with nasty Mr Putin is cutting off our nose to spite our face. The only winner in that scenario is Daesh.
Sir Edward Leigh
That is precisely what my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham and I are saying and what we are trying to urge on the Minister. Assad and the Russians are not going to go away. As the Minister said very eloquently in the House of Commons yesterday, since the second world war, Russia has viewed Syria as an essential ally. I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. On every level, we must be constructive, confident and respectful—and I mean self-respect, not just respect for the other side. The way we kowtow to China can reach demeaning levels, which is why I say we are engaging in double standards.
Mr Hendrick
The hon. Gentleman made a good point when he said that Russia fought on our side in the second world war. So did the Chinese. To illustrate the significance of this issue, Xi Jinping, on his visit to the UK, was very complimentary about British membership of the European Union. Although the Russian Government have not made an official statement about their position, President Putin is known to believe that the UK should be outside the European Union.
Sir Edward Leigh
That is a remarkable statement. How do we know what Mr Putin thinks? All I can say is that I have discussed that with the Russian ambassador, and he gives the correct line on behalf of his Government. Mr Putin has made absolutely no comment, certainly in public—we have no idea what he says in private. There is simply no evidence that Mr Putin is somehow engaged in some massive conspiracy to encourage Great Britain to leave the European Union. I rather think that in practical terms he has other things on his mind. Russia has made no statement in public. It is neutral on this matter.
Constructive, confident and respectful engagement is the best way for our two countries to flourish together. If we engaged in that way, the appalling conflict in Syria might have some chance of being brought to a conclusion. Assad will not go away and the Russians will not go away, so the Minister should pick up the phone and encourage his boss to pick up the phone to do what Kerry is doing and speak to Lavrov every week. That does not in any way mean support for everything Mr Putin does, but only with constant engagement in building relationships can we make some progress towards peace in Syria.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Foreign Secretary give us his assessment of the current strength, effectiveness and numbers of the Free Syrian Army, a subject on which he has been very quiet recently? We want to get rid of ISIL and Assad, but there has been no mention of the FSA.
Mr Hammond
There are many groups, running into the thousands, operating in Syria, and they form together in various alliances and umbrella organisations. The non-ISIL, non-al-Nusra part of the opposition probably has a fighting strength of about 80,000 soldiers deployed across the country. That is my latest estimate.
Iran: Nuclear Deal
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
As I think I have made clear before, we have no specific commitments. Iran will have access, over time, to about £90 billion-worth of frozen assets. That will not happen overnight; it will happen over a period of many years. No doubt, the IRGC will have ideas about recommending how some of the money could be spent, but so will people in many other parts of the Iranian system. Iran has a huge infrastructure deficit. If it is to increase its oil-exporting capacity, which it will want to do, it will need to invest very heavily in the oil industry, and we would expect a fair amount of the unfrozen funds to go into that sector.
Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
How confident is the Foreign Secretary that Iran will comply with the terms of the deal, that it will in future become a constructive international partner and that it might even become a partner in the battle against ISIL?
Mr Hammond
The hon. Gentleman has asked three separate questions. How confident am I that Iran will comply? I believe that I am highly confident that it will comply with its specific obligations under the deal. How likely is it that Iran will become a partner in the battle against ISIL? I believe that it is likely, because Iran shares our view that ISIL is an existential threat. How we collaborate will have to be managed very carefully, because of the legacy of mistrust and the challenges of co-operation, but we are strategically aligned in relation to ISIL.
How confident am I that Iran’s behaviour in the region will change? That is a bigger question. I think that it is a potential prize, but we have not yet gained it. We have to build trust, and we have to show Iran, by our actions and not just by our words, that collaborating and acting reasonably works for both sides and provides benefits for both sides.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Ellwood
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Although the maritime component has much the highest profile, it is the transit and trafficking operations that need to be stopped. Parties and stakeholders in Libya are coming together in Morocco—in fact, the conversation started yesterday under United Nations envoy Bernardino León—and we hope they will finally be successful.
Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
The problem in Libya obviously stems from much further away than Libya itself, so the stabilisation of Libya is not the solution. What will the Government do to make sure that people do not need to flee to southern Europe, because that is the root of the problem?
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Gentleman is right in part, but as I have just pointed out, it is not simply the transit issues that are important. There is a maritime component, on which we are working with Operation Triton, and there is also the source countries, so there are three parts to the solution. However, if Libya is able to provide the stability that is needed and to provide its own security, the trafficking operations can be curtailed.
European Union Referendum Bill
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that in what is now the European Union, it is quite usual for member states to pool sovereignty? Like the democratic process that he talks about, Members of the European Parliament are democratically accountable to their electors and can make decisions on behalf of their constituents in exactly the same way.
John Redwood
States cannot pool sovereignty. They are either sovereign or they have given their power away. The British people do not think the European Parliament exercises control or power over the Brussels machine in the way that this Parliament at its best exercises power over the British government machine. That can be seen from the way that the British electors do not turn out on anything like the same scale in a European election, because they do not believe in that Parliament and they understand that that Parliament has very limited influence over the unelected bureaucratic government in Brussels.
Now that we are in the EEC and it has evolved into the European Union, the fundamental condition that one Parliament cannot bind its successors has been removed. That has completely undermined one of the basic pillars of our democracy. We had the rule that any new Parliament can amend or repeal any law of a previous Parliament. It can reverse or change any decision relating to the future about the expenditure of moneys or the development of policy. The British people now do not have that full sovereignty. If they elect a new Parliament, the new Parliament discovers, as this one is doing, that there are a large number of areas where we cannot change things to reflect the will of the British people because it would be illegal under European law to do so. We find that, because so many vetoes have been removed, we can no longer prevent things happening from the European government that we do not want. Worse still, because there is a whole body of agreed European law and treaty that we inherit as a new Parliament and a new Government, there are very large areas where we cannot fulfil the will of the British people and we therefore cannot please them.
Fortunately, Britain still has a fairly powerful Parliament because we stayed out of the euro. Those countries that went into the euro are discovering that they now have puppet Parliaments. We see the terrible tragedy in Greece, where the Greek people have understandably said that they want a complete change of economic policy. They want to get away from unemployment and recession and austerity from the European Union and have a pro-growth policy at home, and they are told that they cannot do that because it is against European rules.
Mr Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
May I start by congratulating you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on taking the Chair? It is well deserved. May I also congratulate those new Members who have made their maiden speeches today? They have caused many of us to cast our minds back to our own maiden speeches.
I rise as a Member of the Labour party, which did not want a referendum. I did not think that a referendum was necessary, and it is my view that we are better off in the European Union, with its current faults, if there are any. Indeed, whatever future circumstances arise, I think it is inconceivable that the UK could leave the European Union. I am happy with the status quo.
The reality, however, is that we lost the general election, there is now a Conservative majority and a referendum will go ahead, whether we like it or not. This is not, therefore, a policy change that has been brought about because we have suddenly had a change of mind, but a recognition of reality: there is going to be a referendum, whether we like it or not, so the best thing we can do is take part in it and do our best to ensure that Great Britain, or the UK, stays in the European Union.
The reason for the referendum has nothing to do with the high-minded argument that, “It’s about time we had a decision.” Some of the speeches made by Government Members have been beyond credibility. They seem to be suffering from collective amnesia and to have forgotten that the Prime Minister was dragged kicking and screaming into having a referendum because many of his own Back Benchers were talking about making a pact with the UK Independence party so that UKIP candidates did not stand against Conservative candidates. Some of those Back Benchers—one of them is here today—chose to jump ship and join UKIP, and the Prime Minister was scared to death of seeing his own party falling apart before his very eyes. No Government Member has mentioned that simple fact.
The reason we are here today has more to do with holding together the Conservative party in the run-up to the last general election, and the next two years will also be spent trying to hold it together, to the detriment of all the other issues of state that this Government should be dealing with. That puts today’s debate about the referendum in context.
Mr Carswell
Does the hon. Gentleman imagine that his party may have done better had it actually allowed voters the choice that other parties gave them?
Mr Hendrick
I think we may have done slightly better, but I do not think it would have greatly affected the measure of our defeat—let me put it that way.
Conservatives for Britain, which now has up to 60 members, neglects Britain’s interests in remaining in the European Union. Our place in Europe is about Britain being an outward-looking nation that sees the way in which the world is developing and that recognises globalisation and the opportunity offered by the 21st century and the modern economy. It is not an inward-looking Britain, which is what is suggested when some Members hark back to the days when we had an empire and then a commonwealth. Some Government Members give the impression that they still wish we had that empire, and some do not seem to have realised that the second world war is over and that the Germans are no longer the enemy. In my constituency, for example, we are working with the Germans to build military aircraft to fight other possible future foes. I come from a constituency that spent 100 years building aircraft to fight Germany, but now we build aircraft with the Germans to fight potential enemies elsewhere.
What is happening in the world is that nations are coming together and deciding that it is better to work as closely together as possible. Britain is not the little but extremely powerful nation it once was; it is a less powerful nation working with a much more powerful bloc of European countries—now 28 countries, with more than 500 million people—that can now take on, economically and politically, the likes of the United States and can start to compete with massive developing nations, such as China, India, Russia and Brazil. This is a new world for the 21st century. For Conservative Members still looking back at the loss of empire and our past relationship with European countries, we are a world away from that. They should sit down and think about that.
I have no problem whatever with ever-closer union. The more we can do to enhance our effectiveness through working with European partners on legislation that affects all of us, the better. People say that we could manage on our own, but we would not manage as well. People say that the European Union is not as strong as it was in the past and has a lesser share of trade. Perhaps it has, but it still has far more trade, business and clout than we ever had in the past or ever will have on our own. We must look at superpowers such as the United States and China, as well as the emerging powers I have mentioned.
I genuinely believe that the referendum will be won by the yes camp. By our staying within the European Union, we will see a Europe emerging that is not a united states of Europe, but a unique Europe that will ensure Britain has stability, a voice and a bright economic future and that Britain counts on the world stage in the way it will not if we leave. This debate is a very historic occasion: we will soon have a referendum on our future. I look forward to the debates during the referendum, even though I did not think that it would be necessary and I think it is a shame to spend two years fighting on an issue that I see as a no-brainer.
Palestine and Israel
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is very easy to call anyone who opposes the views of the Israeli Government an anti-Semite. Does my hon. Friend believe that building a wall and separation barrier on Palestinian land and building settlements that now house some 400,000 settlers is any way forward and gives the international community any confidence that Israel is willing to go through any sort of peace process? Does she also agree that this vote today is going to send a message to the Israeli Government that this Parliament and this country feel very strongly about their attitude towards Palestine?
Ms Abbott
I entirely agree about both the walls and the continuing proliferation of settlements.
In this debate we have heard what has almost been a mantra from Members opposed to the motion: “Make Palestine a state, but not just yet.” It is absurd for opponents of this motion to argue that it undermines negotiation. There is so much to negotiate, so much to do, so much for both sides to talk about. It is almost disingenuous to say that recognising Palestinian statehood cuts across any negotiation, and the idea that recognition of Palestinian statehood should be conditional or a bargaining chip must be wrong.
I believe that the time for justice for the Palestinians has come and the time to recognise Palestinian statehood is tonight in this House of Commons, and I believe that our own constituents, and above all Palestinians overseas, are looking to this House tonight to do the right thing.
Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
I will come in a moment to the measures we are taking to support eastern partners, but my hon. Friend will know that Lithuania, along with all the other 27 NATO members, signed up to the defence spending commitment at last week’s NATO summit. That was a huge triumph for British diplomacy.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Foreign Secretary believe that a man who spent 16 years rising to the top of the KGB and who is currently the President of Russia will be deterred by economic sanctions when it is clear that Russia has territorial ambitions, as we have seen elsewhere in Europe?
Mr Hammond
These sanctions are having an effect: they are exacerbating an already negative trend in Russia’s economy. Russia’s economy shrank by 0.5% in the first quarter of this year. Its largest bank has downgraded forecasts of growth from 2.3% to 0.2%. Russian sovereign bonds have been downgraded to one notch above junk bond status, and capital flight is continuing, with an estimate that it could reach £80 billion. Although I understand absolutely the hon. Gentleman’s question and his attempt, quite rightly, to analyse the emotional side of Mr Putin’s approach, he will not be able to be blind to the impact these sanctions are having on Russia’s economy.
We have also supported NATO measures to reassure our eastern allies who feel most exposed to Russian pressure, including through the provision of RAF jets to undertake an air policing role in the Baltic area. We are clear about the collective security guarantee that NATO offers to our eastern NATO partners, and Mr Putin should be clear about that, too.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth). I will carry on in that vein. As he rightly said, Putin has reneged on the Budapest accord. To develop my argument, I will talk about Russia’s past and what will happen in future.
The UN estimates that, since the Russian annexation of Crimea in April, nearly 2,600 people have been killed in fighting between pro-Russian separatist rebels and the Ukrainian army in eastern Ukraine. The UN figure does not include the 298 passengers and crew of Malaysian Airlines MH17, which was shot down in the area by separatist rebels on 18 July.
Ukraine is not the first conflict to be frozen and it will not be the last. For some years, Russia has become increasingly uneasy about the expansion of both NATO and the European Union. As the EU has become bigger, Russia has seen the buffer of states between her borders and those of EU states dramatically reduced. In the north-east of the EU, they are non-existent. Many in Russia believe that the west reneged on an informal agreement in 1990 not to expand NATO eastwards. That misunderstanding or breach of trust is the basis for the current instability in eastern Europe.
It is not the first time Russia has used proxy forces to destabilise countries and create frozen conflicts. In 1992, during the break-up of the Soviet Union, the newly created country of Moldova was destabilised when its large ethnic Russian population of 200,000 people chose to break away and join Russia. As in Ukraine, pro-Russian separatists fought Government forces to a standstill. Russia committed 150,000 so-called peacekeepers to Transnistria. They are still there today. Transnistria held a referendum in 2006 similar to that we saw in Crimea, voting heavily in favour of joining Russia. The region’s status has still to be decided.
For Georgia, the current crisis in Ukraine and Crimea has clear parallels with its own conflict with Russia in 2008. After its application for NATO membership, ethnic Russian separatists rose up in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and there were reports of “unidentified troops” posing as local insurgents in Georgia’s separatist regions. Russia intervened under similar auspices, claiming the citizens’ right to self-determination, separation and Russian protection under international law. As in Moldova, the statuses of the two breakaway regions are still to be formally decided. Although they are so-called independent regions, they are effectively now as much a part of Russia as Crimea.
The current rebel advance has raised fears that the Kremlin may seek to create a land corridor between Russia and Crimea. As with Moldova and Georgia, analysts have speculated that Putin does not want a Crimea-style annexation, which would be expensive and militarily difficult, but instead wants to create a “frozen conflict” that would give Moscow permanent leverage in Ukraine. Only time will tell whether eastern Ukraine will be annexed, too.
I feel that the west has seriously misjudged Putin and does not seem to understand where he is coming from and what he hopes to achieve. In many Russian minds, Ukraine is a part of Russia. Putin has certainly reflected that view in public with recent press conferences referring to Ukraine as either little Russia or, in some cases, new Russia. He says that part of Ukraine’s territories are eastern Europe, but that the greater part are a gift from Russia.
Putin witnessed first hand the mismanagement of the Russian economy, open corruption and the economic hardships that the collapse of the USSR and market forces brought to Russia. It is with the period that saw the decline of the Soviet Union and of Russia in mind that Putin has said quite openly that he regrets
“the passing of the Soviet Union”
and that the blame for much of the past lies squarely at the feet of the west.
Article 5 of the NATO treaty considers an attack in terms of “armed force”, yet Russia is currently inciting an insurgency.
Sir Gerald Howarth
The hon. Gentleman is talking about the Baltic states. He will know that Kaliningrad is a part of Russia on the Baltic sea, surrounded by Poland and Lithuania. Does he fear that Russia might try to produce a land link between itself and Kaliningrad?
Mark Hendrick
I think that is perfectly possible and I concur with the hon. Gentleman. I think that, even though Ukraine is not an article 5 member of NATO, it poses many questions about NATO members, particularly the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Kaliningrad, like Crimea, is strategically very important to the Russians and if the west does not take strong action at some point, possibly going beyond sanctions, the west, particularly countries such as the UK, will suffer and might enter a third world war. The situation is far more serious than it has been painted. It is at least as serious as what is happening in Iraq and Syria for the stability and future of Europe. I hope that the west sees Putin for what he is and treats him not as a former economic Minister but as a former head of the KGB.
North and West Africa (UK Response)
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
I want to highlight a wider aspect of this issue: the ongoing conflict within Islam, which is taking place not only in north and west Africa; it is a global struggle. It is not helpful to refer to moderates and extremists, because there are complex historical religious disputes and power struggles in which individuals are using religion to try to gain political or economic power.
There was a justified intervention in Libya in 2011, to save the people of Benghazi from being killed, as Gaddafi intended, house by house, like rats. One unfortunate consequence of that intervention was that the country, which was in many senses an artificial creation—as are many countries in the middle east, too, lines having been drawn on maps in the colonial period—has ceased to function in any way as what we would regard to be a state. Because of the weaponry stockpiled by Gaddafi’s regime, and the way he used mercenaries and citizens of other states as part of his elite forces, an unintended consequence of that intervention has been that masses of weaponry have come out of Libya, much of it going to other parts of north and west Africa, but some is going to Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim Arab world.
We have already heard mention of the instability in Mali as the Tuaregs swept across the desert and reinforced the incipient disaffected insurgency in the north of the country. I went with the Select Committee to visit both Mali and Nigeria, and we also visited Algeria. It is very revealing to visit a country and get the sense that the lines on the map have created an absolute nightmare. In terms of its borders, Mali must be the strangest country of almost any. There is a round part at the bottom and a triangle going out at the top. There is a completely ungovernable desert area, called Azawad, and the River Niger bending round. All the population lives alongside the river, and there are huge areas of desert and ungovernable space. In any state where the mass of the population is in the capital in the south, I do not know how any Government would be able to govern areas hundreds or thousands of miles away, with virtually no people—except small communities living in areas with access to water, and nomadic populations—and lots of poverty. How any Government, even the most advanced, with massive economic resources, would be able to govern that space effectively is beyond me.
The Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), quite rightly referred to the attack on the BP facility in In Amenas in Algeria. People swept across from desert areas and launched a terrorist attack; workers were taken hostage and killed, and there was the terrible long-term consequence of instability in the region.
We now have a nexus of robbers, bandits and criminal bands who would normally be smuggling tobacco or other products across the desert, or smuggling people to the coast to try to board the very same vessels heading across the Mediterranean that were referred to earlier, and that nexus is linked to Islamist ideology and the weaponry that has come out of the Libyan conflict. The Governments in the region face enormous, insurmountable problems.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend said “linked”; what is the link between criminal gangs that are smuggling, arms dealing and dealing in drugs from south America, and those who claim that their movement is about faith, ideology and the Islamic religion? What is the connection between the two? I cannot see one, so how does my hon. Friend make that link, and, for that matter, how do they make links with each other?
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), rightly highlighted the three case studies in the report: Mali, Algeria and Nigeria. We wanted to establish the principal causes of the extremism that we saw in those countries and what we, in Britain, could do about it. We found a heady mix. As I am sure is of no surprise to many people in the Chamber, the combination of poverty, inequality, corruption and misgovernance contributed to the situation we found in Africa. Those things are not unique to Africa, and they occur in the middle east, Asia and many other parts of the world where terrorism is beginning to flourish. They are a recipe for instability.
If we look back to 19th and 20th century Europe, we see that, from the beginning of the industrial revolution through to the nuclear age, there was affluence and wealth but a huge difference between rich and poor. That mix spawned the revolutions and instability of those centuries. We are seeing the same in the 21st century, but it is much worse and on a global scale. We particularly see that in Africa, where there is newfound wealth from oil, gas, valuable materials, diamonds and gold. Africa has become a battleground extraordinaire between rich and poor because it is a continent where, in many ways, economic development seems to be going backwards while there is huge wealth and potential prosperity from which very few people benefit.
Different things happened in our three case studies. There was French intervention in Mali. In Algeria we particularly looked at the In Amenas incident, and I still get inquiries to this day from people who work for oil companies attached not only to Algeria but to other parts of north Africa. I can draw on what members of the Committee learned from travelling to Algeria. The third country that we looked at, Nigeria, has hit the headlines at the moment. Visiting Nigeria had a big impact on me, as it did on my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne). To see the rampant and explicit nature of the terrorism in northern Nigeria was indeed a shock, and of course since our return it has become much worse; I will refer to that development later.
One of the conclusions of the report is that north and west Africa has become a new front line. We all knew about the existing front line. In the east, it started around Chechnya, in what was a southern part of the Soviet Union; it reached through to the middle east and north Africa; and it covered Somalia in eastern Africa. Now it has extended across to north and west Africa, the region that we are considering today. It is an arc reaching from north-eastern Europe through the middle east and across the whole of Africa, and it is encircling Europe. The UK is obviously a bit further afield because of our geographical location, and I will discuss the UK later. Nevertheless, the effect is being felt not only in mainland Europe but in the UK, as we are already beginning to see; my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) mentioned that earlier.
The report outlines many of our findings, but let me go through some of the events that have taken place in Africa this year alone. I believe that there is no end in sight to the current instability in the region of north and west Africa, particularly in the three countries we looked at but further afield as well. In Libya, we have seen continued instability, with political assassinations and attempted coups, and there is now fighting in the capital between the rebels and the army. On 11 January, the deputy Industry Minister, Hassan al-Droui, was shot dead during a visit to his home town of Sirte, which is east of Tripoli. The identity of the shooters is still unknown. On 20 February, Libyans went to the polls to elect a panel to draft a new constitution. Just 1.1 million of the 3.4 million eligible voters went to register, compared with the more than 2.7 million people who participated in Libya’s first free election in July 2012.
When Labour was in Government and Mr Blair went to embrace Colonel Gaddafi, Libya quite openly and willingly discarded its nuclear weapons. We thought that would possibly be a new beginning in Libya. Since then, however, we and the French have intervened in what was the beginning of a civil war. Afterwards, when we thought we had what we would call a result in Libya, the situation became even worse, and currently there is great instability.
Two coup d’état attempts have been made in 2014 by forces loyal to Major General Haftar, the commander of the Libyan ground forces. First Haftar took control of Libya’s main institutions, before announcing on TV that he had suspended the General National Congress and the Government and made a constitutional declaration. On 18 May, it was reported that the Parliament building had been stormed by troops loyal to him.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South said, there are consequences of intervention, even if it is very difficult to say what they are. Then again, we know the consequences of non-intervention, because the people of Benghazi would have been slaughtered by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces if the west had not intervened in the way that it did and he had remained in power.
We have seen the ousting of the sitting Prime Minister, and on 11 March the rebels sold oil to North Korea; the Morning Glory tanker reportedly took at least 234,000 barrels of crude oil there. It was the first vessel to have loaded oil from a rebel-held port since the revolt against the Tripoli authorities erupted last July. Such unchecked activities are going on in the background, and a rogue state such as North Korea can receive support from a country such as Libya. There has been further fighting by rebels in Libya, too. We could not have predicted what is going on today, and that is the problem with intervention.
The French intervened in Mali. In May, the ceasefire was broken with clashes between the two sides in the northern city of Kidal, which killed at least 36 people. Mali’s army launched an operation to seize Kidal but was defeated by the rebels, who then seized two more towns. Also in May, the fragile truce with the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad separatists broke down in the north of the country, and the separatists seized control of Kidal and the towns of Menaka, Aguellok, Anefis and Tessalit.
In Nigeria, things are also getting worse. On Tuesday, the military said that it had broken up a Boko Haram cell that had masterminded the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in April, but hours before that a bomb blast struck a busy market in Maiduguri, the capital of the Islamist insurgents’ home state of Borno. At least 2,000 people have been killed this year, compared with an estimated 3,600 in the four years since the insurgency began. This year alone, there have been 20 attacks by Boko Haram that have been officially reported, in which at least 1,158 people have been killed, and an estimated 12,000 people have died so far in the five-year insurgency.
As I said at the beginning of my contribution, the link between economic inequality and extremism is well known and well developed. Nigeria has the resources to beat Boko Haram if it was determined to do so, but most of its staggering oil wealth—up to $70 billion annually—is held by a small, politically connected elite, who remain insulated from Boko Haram’s terror tactics and seem almost indifferent to the war. As far as many people in Lagos are concerned, Boko Haram is Muslims killing Muslims. Those people in Lagos are Christians, so do they care? No, they do not. That attitude permeates the political realm in Nigeria.
When we were in Nigeria and spoke to people there, we learned that Nigerian MPs are paid a salary 10 times that of a Member of this House, and if they are not corrupt people think that there is something wrong with them as a politician. It is the sort of society where corruption is endemic and self-serving politicians are rife, so what is going on in the north of the country is of little or no consequence to people in Lagos.
Nigeria has nearly 16,000 millionaires, a number that has jumped by 44% in the past six years. As I have said, much of the wealth is concentrated in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, where the northern rebellion by Boko Haram feels like a distant rumour. The divide between the Christian south and the Muslim north is huge, and the extent of relative poverty and inequality in the north has led several analysts and organisations to argue that socio-economic deprivation is the main factor behind Boko Haram’s campaign of violence there.
The communities of northern Nigeria are being wrecked by poverty, deteriorating social services and infrastructure, educational backwardness, rising numbers of unemployed graduates, massive numbers of unemployed youths, dwindling fortunes in agriculture and the weak and dwindling production base of the northern economy.
As for Mali, after Gaddafi’s fall in Libya the Tuareg people who had fought for him went home to Mali. Poor and with no livelihoods, within months they had tipped northern Mali into full-scale armed rebellion and there was a takeover of the region by Islamist fighters. The Tuareg have traditionally been a nomadic people with little personal wealth.
As I have said, Libya is reliant on oil and much of the current fighting is about the oil revenues going to the capital and not to other parts of the country. There is a strong argument in many places for greater autonomy. What the Tuareg separatists in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Islamist rebels in Libya all have in common is a desire for their own state, as we have seen in Syria and Iraq with ISIS. Extremist as they may be, they feel that they are not getting a fair deal from the existing establishment. A lot of that stems from the growth inequalities that I have spoken about. Ultimately, they desire to govern their own affairs.
In Mali, the separatist movements demand greater autonomy for the north, which they term Azawad, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South mentioned. Yet Governments in the region continue to be mistrustful of Islamists in politics, as they would put it. The Prime Minister of Mali, Moussa Mara, said:
“Say we give the Kidal region more resources and a lot more decentralized power, and they elect a jihadist to lead Kidal. That means we would have given our territory to jihadists, and democratically. This is what we want to avoid”.
A similar sentiment is offered by many Governments throughout the region and the throughout the west.
We know that boundaries in many of these countries do not reflect historical tribal land occupations, religious differences that exist between groups and locations of resources. In the aftermath of colonialisation, the development of cities and the exploitation of resources do not take account of population needs. That is the reason for the current conflict.
What can we do? Diplomatic effort by the UK in Africa may have a little effect, but many African countries remember the colonisation of Africa by the United Kingdom. As much as Britain has good intentions, given that history, it is not always trusted in Africa.
We have tried intervention in Libya and Iraq. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South said, we have also tried inaction sometimes, and non-intervention, for example in Syria, although that is not a response. It seems contradictory and inconsistent to have invaded Iraq, as we in the west did with the Americans, where there were no weapons of mass destruction and no chemical weapons, but not to have invaded Syria when we had the option to do so, albeit from the air or by helping separatists, when there were chemical weapons.
Maliki is blaming Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia is blaming Maliki. In America, the Republicans are blaming Obama and the liberals are blaming Bush. Everybody is blaming each other when looking at the separatists, whether ISIS or terrorist operations in Africa. Everybody in every country has to take some responsibility.
Aid is helpful if it is targeted, but there are governance problems and corruption. In Africa and elsewhere around the world, post-colonialism, there was a move towards nationalism, whether in Africa or in the Arab middle east—Assad in Syria, Gaddafi in Libya, Mugabe in Zimbabwe. However, many nationalist leaders have, as a result of impoverishment and inequalities, now been swept away by religious movements. People are now saying, “Perhaps we should have supported Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein or Assad, because what we are seeing now is much worse.” We will never know the answer. However, we are now sure that pure military intervention is no solution.
A long-term solution may be to shape events, win hearts and minds and try to secure economic development where it is needed, but that cannot be done by Britain alone. Many of us think that because of our colonial past—hon. Members can see that I am a product of our colonial past—Britain has all the answers. However, we do not and neither does the United States. Although we have good intentions, the future of this country’s wider international influence is in helping people shape events for the greater good, rather than just attacking or intervening because we do not like people or standing back because we are too scared about public opinion. We have to be brave about this. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess, and it has been a pleasure to listen to the debate.
I thank the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), and Committee members for undertaking this inquiry and producing an incredibly valuable report, which I found helpful, dealing with profound issues affecting this region. As we have heard, it is difficult to limit discussion of the region to this geographical area alone. As hon. Members have indicated, many themes and big issues confront us within this region and beyond it; these are common and reach across into north-east Africa and the middle east. These are some of the major issues of our time, which we must confront. The Committee Chair’s introduction was valuable.
I should like to make a point that I do not think has been emphasised enough in this debate. This area of the world has a great deal of potential. When visiting Algeria, I was struck, on meeting a huge number of young people at the university of Algiers, by the fact that they were intensely ambitious and knowledgeable about the world, including the United Kingdom. They were keen to develop close links with the UK in particular, especially through the medium of the English language. This has been recognised by our ambassador to Algeria, for example, who is working hard to try to develop better connections. There is also a good, developing relationship between Morocco and the UK in terms of trade and education, which is a force for good, and a way that we can try to begin to address some long-term issues.
The Committee Chair made an important point, which I, too, would emphasise, about Algeria and Morocco being natural partners. These two countries in the region are stable, albeit that they have different histories, and we know that they are rivals. During my visit to Algeria and Morocco, I had constructive discussions with politicians in both countries, until I mentioned either Morocco or Algeria. My hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) mentioned the European historical context; their relationship reminds me of the French-German relationship. For example, the Western Sahara situation has parallels with Alsace-Lorraine.
It would be a major step forward if those of us developing good relations with both Algeria and Morocco could emphasise the importance of trying to find a way forward on the Western Sahara issue. The border between Algeria and Morocco is still closed. We cannot conceive of a good trading relationship and real economic development in that region while that situation pertains.
Mark Hendrick
Some 30 years ago, when I was a student in Liverpool, many students on my electrical engineering course were from Algeria. I think that Algeria is relatively stable now because many of those students who came to the UK and elsewhere in Europe to study engineering went back with degrees, although they had little opportunity to exploit and use them. The experience of the tremendous upheavals in Algeria 20 years ago has made it much more stable and more resistant to terrorism than many other countries in the north of Africa.
Ian Lucas
There was indeed a dreadful civil war in Algeria that predated the Arab uprisings, and stability there is a product of recent history. There is an opportunity in Algeria, which is on the cusp of change, in my view, having had various discussions about it. There have to be better relationships within the region—that is important—and we must try to find, within the region, improved mechanisms for dealing with issues, because the people who are most profoundly and immediately affected by all the instability that the report outlines are those who live in the region.
Another country that has not been mentioned is Tunisia. It is an important country that has struggled hard since the beginning of the Arab uprisings, which started there. It has managed to accommodate different viewpoints and, through hard work in difficult times, it has created a constitution that will hopefully lead to elections in the near future. I would like to see Tunisia work together with other countries, along with those of us who wish for this part of the world to stabilise, to make progress. I know—there have been references to this—that there is profound unease in Tunisia and Algeria about the instability in Libya, and that unease extends to Egypt, as the Chair of the Select Committee knows. The instability in Libya is a real worry, and it is affecting many countries in the region.
The debate has highlighted the different pressures and the seriousness of the situation, but there is an opportunity, through the more stable countries in the region, to build an approach that confronts many of the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) raised. They are profound issues for us all, and he is right to emphasise that they are not distant from us. Anyone who has been to the strait of Gibraltar knows how close Europe is to Africa. In the days of the Roman empire, the quickest routes to Africa were across the sea from Italy to places such as Libya. Such places as Leptis Magna show the common culture that existed in that part of the world. Instability in north Africa will inevitably affect all of Europe—not just southern Europe. The important issues highlighted by my hon. Friend are part of why we need to engage so strongly with young people in places such as Algiers, Morocco and Egypt, in order to encourage them and understand why some people—not just in north Africa; it has happened in the United Kingdom—are radicalised and commit heinous crimes.
It is important that we deal with the economic disparities in the region. On Nigeria, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) focused on because she joined the Committee when the inquiry was looking at that country, it is intensely frustrating that a country that has so many millionaires, and so much wealth and potential, seems incapable of administering the area that it governs. That must play a part in why some people feel that they have no stake in that country and see extreme ideologies as offering something that is not being offered by the Government.
The issues are long term, but the questions of economic stability and economic opportunities for young people are urgent. In these days of the internet and global connectivity, a common theme among young people is ambition, and a common theme across north Africa is the number of highly educated young people who have great capabilities and talents that are not supported sufficiently by the number of jobs created in the local economy. They and their families are not being offered the real opportunities to progress that they need. Those big questions—I am sorry that they are such big questions, because big questions have complex and protracted solutions—mean that we have to be in this for the long term. There are not a million miles between the Minister and me on these issues. It is important that the United Kingdom stays in this for the long term and devises the best approach, so that we can play a positive role. I have met with members of the ambassadorial teams, who have an ambitious role, but the report is right to highlight that the reality does not match the rhetoric.
Another point that the report picks up on is the ministerial organisation within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I am shadow Minister with responsibility for Africa and the middle east. The Minister’s remit is the middle east and north Africa, and there is a separate Minister with the remit of Africa. The FCO splits the remit of Africa between two different teams because of the Sahara. The report states:
“A common thread in UK policy appears to be a weakness of analysis in relation to crises straddling North Africa and West Africa: the Sahara may form a departmental barrier within the Foreign Office, but it is not one for terrorists.”
That is a sharp observation. I find it helpful that I have to cover the whole of Africa, because so many of the issues relating to Africa extend from north Africa down to Nigeria and the band right across the continent from Somalia in the east to Mauritania and Morocco in the west. In the Foreign Office, thought should at least be given to that, and whether the current organisation of areas reflects the massive challenges. I have thought about that point, and it was picked up on by the Committee.
We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock about the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) has been doing. I attended the meetings and the Adjournment debate last night on the young women abducted in Nigeria. That horrific series of incidents has troubled us all in the House, and my right hon. Friend should be commended on his superb work. He put it interestingly when he referred to this being a civil rights issue for girls. I was struck by that terminology. This is not only an issue in Nigeria; there are threats to girls’ future right across the region. Many of the people I have met in Algiers and during my visits across north Africa have been women—highly educated women with massive potential, who can offer much to their countries. The idea that they should be prevented from contributing to their future, and the future of their family and country, simply because they are women is so abhorrent that we should see it as a civil rights issue. It should motivate us, right across the political spectrum and the world, to confront this.
We need to look for long-term solutions, and to learn from the report, which I commend again, how to develop a better analysis. Our connection with the region is perhaps lesser, historically, than our connections with many other parts of Africa. There is more of a French connection, historically. I have been struck by Morocco and Algeria wishing to have closer relations with the United Kingdom, and we need to build on that. Our education system provides the key to the door. We need to be passionate in our advocacy of women as part of the future of the region. Tunisia is a potential beacon of open democracy in the region, so can we please ensure that is has support? It was able to create a constitution and can work with partners across north Africa to secure a more stable situation in the years ahead.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hague
We obviously regret Gazprom’s decision to do that. Such decisions damage the credibility of Russia in supplying energy elsewhere across Europe. It is another argument for the diversification of European energy supplies over the coming years to give greater energy security, not only to Ukraine but to many nations of the European Union. We support fully the role of the European Commission in trying to facilitate an agreement, and it will continue to work on this.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Given the fact that the Russians have recently switched off the gas to Ukraine, what does the Foreign Secretary make of the discussions that took place during the D-day commemorations between newly elected President Poroshenko and President Putin? Were they a waste of time?
Mr Hague
It is never a waste of time for the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine to talk together. It was important that they did so, and I believe that they have since had a further conversation on the telephone. We encourage Russia to continue to talk bilaterally to Ukraine, but of course those talks have been damaged by the bringing down of a Ukrainian aircraft and the death of 49 people only a few days ago. That underlines the need for Russia to cease its support for illegally armed groups that are very seriously damaging the prospect of Russia and Ukraine working together.
Ukraine
Mark Hendrick Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hague
We have not declared a trade war or a boycott of Russia. There are British companies with huge investments in Russia that made those investments in good faith. If it comes to the adoption of more far-reaching economic, trade and financial measures, that will have an impact on some of those companies. However, any such message is for that point. We are not declaring an economic boycott of Russia today.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
In just over three weeks, there will be presidential elections in Ukraine. The Foreign Secretary said in his statement: “NATO agreed a set of measures to provide reassurance and confidence to NATO allies.” Are any NATO measures under consideration to give material military help and support to Ukrainian forces if Ukraine’s eastern border is invaded by Russia in order to disrupt those elections?
Mr Hague
No, not as things stand. As the hon. Gentleman knows very well, Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Our response to the situation has not been military outside NATO’s borders. Our additional assurance is to NATO members and relates to our collective defence. That does not extend to a military guarantee to Ukraine.