Greenpeace Activists in the Russian Federation

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing the debate. He was, to some extent, tactful in what he said about Russia, and he did not mention some of the other significant human rights cases, such as those of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Platon Lebedev and the late Sergei Magnitsky, and the disproportionate treatment meted out to members of Pussy Riot. I understand his reasons for being tactful, but there is an issue for Russia to take notice of: its reputation for human rights abuses, and the damage being done in that regard, is significant and cumulative. It is doing more and more damage to its international reputation through disproportionate responses to events such as those that we are discussing.

Russia’s response is disproportionate, as the hon. Gentleman also, less tactfully, said. There is a level of irritation that comes with politics; he conceded that he is sometimes irritating to me. His ability to remind everyone that we went to school together is one of his more irritating habits, although I suspect that the fact that he went to Cheltenham college does him more political damage in Rhondda than it does me in Cheltenham.

We in this Parliament have been subject to Greenpeace actions. Members of Greenpeace were on our roof in 2009, unfurling banners about climate change. They climbed Big Ben—or the clock tower, in deference to the hon. Gentleman’s reputation for pedantry—in 2004.

[Mr Gray]

The Elizabeth tower.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood]

Indeed, but then it was still the clock tower. Those protests were met, in large part, with good humour, even though they were probably more significant security breaches in one sense than anything that the Arctic 30 have done in the waters close to Russia. However, they were met with good humour and a proportionate response by the authorities. People were arrested, but they were not charged as terrorists. It was understood that they were peaceful political protests. That is what the Arctic 30 were also engaged in.

The hon. Member for Rhondda was absolutely right to draw attention to the United Nations convention on the law of the sea. Article 101 has two fundamental aspects to its definition of piracy. The first is use of violence, and the other is, as he quite rightly pointed out, the fact that it is done for private means. Piracy is a criminally violent act, and that, as even President Putin clearly said, is quite clearly not what the Arctic 30 were involved in.

I will go a little further than some other hon. Members and say that there is an environmental issue in addition to a human rights one. That is, after all, what Greenpeace was seeking to highlight. As we turn to more and more novel means of extracting fossil fuels, and go into more and more extreme environments in our pursuit of them, we are taking higher and higher risks with the environment. The lessons from the gulf of Mexico are clear, and there are lessons to be learned not only by Russia, but by this and other western countries, about novel means of extracting fossil fuels. My comments are therefore not directed solely at Russia. If the Arctic 30—certainly those placed under arrest—have inspired future generations of environmental activists to highlight such issues, and if they have helped to generate a debate about the risks of more extreme extraction of fossil fuels, their action will not have been in vain.

The Minister made a written ministerial statement on 9 October, which was welcome. However, it had the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s traditional consular emphasis; the FCO is diplomatic, but I think it is occasionally diplomatic to a fault. There seemed to be, in the statement, something of a reluctance to pass judgment on whether it was appropriate to prosecute these people for the act of piracy. There seemed to be great reluctance, as there was in other cases, to contemplate any kind of sanctions against Russia for its actions. There was the rather significant inclusion of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in lobbying the Russian Government, but not of the Prime Minister. When British citizens are involved, I think it is appropriate for the Prime Minister to have some personal involvement.

The FCO always puts a great premium on discreet persuasion, but there are limits to that. At some point, we need to hear from the Government what further concrete and proactive steps they are taking to make progress on the issue—most obviously in partnership with our European Union friends and other like-minded democracies—and how they will try more strongly to encourage Russia to take a different path.

Many hon. Members and people involved in politics the world over were deeply inspired by Russia’s transition from communist dictatorship in the 1980s and ’90s. It is a matter of immense sadness that Russia’s reputation, particularly in human rights, seems to be slipping backwards towards that era. I hope that, collectively, we and supporting organisations such as Greenpeace can encourage Russia to make this issue a turning point, and not to carry on treading this dangerous path.