Human Rights

Mark Simmonds Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

I am delighted to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr Chope. The debate has been stimulating, well informed and productive. We have heard significant contributions, none more so than that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who in a detailed and articulate speech highlighted several of the key aspects of the FCO and FAC reports on the important subject of human rights. He was also right to put those in the context of some of the Foreign Secretary’s remarks. The Foreign Office has listened carefully to the Committee’s constructive suggestions.

I will try to reply to the many issues about which hon. Members spoke, if they will bear with me. I apologise if I do not deal with everything that was raised, but I shall ensure that hon. Members’ important points are followed up in writing so that all who participated in the debate receive specific responses.

My right hon. Friend and others raised the important matter of deportation with assurances arrangements. I put on record that DWA is entirely consistent with our human rights obligations under international law and our policy of working to prevent torture overseas. The Government will not deport someone if there are substantive grounds for believing that they face a real risk of torture or other cruel, degrading treatment in their host country. DWA enables the UK to reduce the threat from terrorism while meeting domestic and international human rights obligations.

My right hon. Friend and others were right to mention Burma and the plight of the Rohingya. The Government are highly vocal in expressing concern about that plight. When President Thein Sein visited the United Kingdom in July last year, the situation in Rakhine state was at the heart of discussions between him and the Government. In December 2013, our ambassador in Burma visited Rakhine state and discussed human rights with authorities. We have been clear with the Burmese Government that people must be held accountable when serious crimes have been committed. We continue to lobby the Burmese Government that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights be allowed to open an office in the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), who is the Minister of State at the FCO with responsibility for Burma, is engaged with human rights issues in that country.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South also highlighted the interruption of broadcasting. The UK Government strongly support an open internet that is accountable to all, providing not only access to information, but mechanisms for individuals to communicate. We strongly condemn deliberate interference, and the Government support work to encourage satellite providers to adopt technology that counters uplink jamming.

The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) was absolutely right to refer to the importance of more analysis and evaluation. The content of the report that is made public is inevitably only the tip of the iceberg of the thorough and detailed analysis and assessment. It is underpinned by an FCO-wide analysis, which the Government have further strengthened through the network of expert human rights advisory groups on thematic issues, which are chaired by the Foreign Secretary and Baroness Warsi.

The right hon. Lady was also right to highlight the importance of the evaluation of programmes and focusing on outcomes. We carry out extensive, in-country evaluations on all projects that we fund through the human rights and democracy programme to ensure that lessons are learned and applied in future programmes. We are about to launch the 2014 bidding round and have made several improvements to the process in the light of the evaluation of previous years. I emphasise the importance that all Ministers in the FCO attach to civil society, which was an important point of hers. I assure her that as my ministerial colleagues and I travel around the globe we insist on meeting civil society organisations and representatives of civil society not only to provide them with moral and sometimes financial support, but so that we can lobby host Governments in an informed manner.

The right hon. Lady and others were quite right to state the importance of the preventing sexual violence initiative. We are keen to engage with all hon. Members, not just those on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and we desire expert and enthusiastic engagement. I urge the right hon. Lady to request official information about the summit in June, which will hopefully be a watershed moment that lifts the stigma from victims and pins it on the perpetrators, ending the atmosphere of impunity that has lasted for far too long. I assure her that the summit will be open to all who are interested, passionate and enthusiastic about this agenda.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) was right in his outline of the universality of human rights. I assure him that that will be our guiding light as we take up our seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council this year and the common factor—the golden thread—in all the initiatives that we take there. He has a particular knowledge of and interest in export licensing architecture and arrangements. In response to his point, the United Kingdom has one of the most stringent arms export control systems in the world. The export licence applications for everything, including in the Syria chemicals case that he raised, were properly assessed against the consolidated criteria, taking into account all relevant information. There was no evidence of a link to a chemical weapons programme and we have seen no subsequent information to suggest that the goods were diverted to such a programme.

My right hon. Friend also referred to the important issue of Bahrain. We continue to have concerns about human rights, but improvements made since 2011 should be noted, especially progress in judicial and security sector reform. I acknowledge and accept, however, that more needs to be done. We regularly raise our concerns both publicly and in private with the Bahraini Government.

My right hon. Friend also mentioned children’s rights. It is correct that the advisory group’s membership should remain limited for practical reasons that he will understand. That should not, however, be interpreted as underlying evidence that the protection and promotion of children’s rights do not form an integral part of the FCO’s wider human rights agenda, because they do. The FCO provides financial support to programmes in this area and works to ensure that international commitments on child rights are fully implemented. Our embassies and high commissioners have a responsibility to monitor and raise human rights issues including, importantly, children’s rights. Only this week, I held a meeting with representatives of the NGO community with a particular interest and expertise in children’s rights, including on preventing sexual violence against children and children serving in armed forces—whether state or non-state—to find out what more the Government, NGOs and wider civil society can do to try to make even faster progress in conjunction with multilateral institutions such as the UN.

I want quickly to address the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South and others about Sri Lanka. When launching the human rights report in Westminster earlier this week, the Asia director of Human Rights Watch said that the Prime Minister was right to go to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Sri Lanka and commended the Government’s determination to secure a tough resolution at the March UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, which included a mechanism for an international inquiry. I want to ensure that the House understands that if a credible domestic process has not properly begun by March 2014, we will use our position on the UN Human Rights Council to work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and call for an international investigation. We will play an active role in building international support for that approach ahead of the March meeting. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) is right, however, that we face an uphill struggle to secure the passage of an appropriately robust resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, but I assure him that the FCO network is already hard at work with the resolution’s main sponsor, the United States, to mobilise opinion and the necessary majority, and that our campaign at the Human Rights Council will be led at ministerial level.

There are many other aspects that I could cover in response to the speeches of right hon. and hon. Members, but I want to pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne). I want to assure those hon. Members who still harbour worries that the criteria for selecting countries of concern have become subjective. They have not; they remain objective. We continue to prioritise our efforts on the basis of our influence, not our interest, and that will remain the case.

The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made some good points but, if I may, I will respond to him in writing, given the time pressure that we are under. Some of what he said about the universal periodic review of rights is absolutely on the right lines. I will also respond to the hon. Members who made points about Russia and elsewhere.