Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Swire
The hon. Gentleman will know that we are very keen to get a date for the annual human rights dialogue. That is the right architecture within which to raise individual cases. However, we will continue to raise individual cases of human rights abuse, and if there is no human rights dialogue, we will have to increase that.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
22. Can the Minister tell us exactly what action he is taking to question the Chinese Government about their brutal persecution of those who peacefully practise Falun Gong, particularly in relation to the live harvesting of organs?
Mr Swire
We have raised concerns about reports of organ harvesting, as well as about the torture and mistreatment of detainees, during the annual UK human rights dialogue. We will continue to do that at the next round. Equally, we pay close attention to the human rights situation in China and we remain extremely concerned about restrictions placed on freedom of religion or belief of any kind, including Falun Gong practitioners.
EU Membership: Economic Benefits
Mary Glindon Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
It was really good to hear the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) make the case for the EU in terms of the economy, agriculture and the environment.
It is very easy for me to support this motion on behalf of the people of North Tyneside and, I hope, the wider community of the north-east, because over the years our region has received billions of pounds in investment from Europe. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) said, our region is entitled to more European funds than any other English region, and in the next five years it is due to receive £726 million in European funding. The single market has been hugely significant for business development in the north-east, with more than half our exports going to the EU and 160,000 jobs relying directly on that trade.
Mary Glindon
I will carry on, if my hon. Friend does not mind.
It is no wonder that in a recent survey the North East chamber of commerce found that the majority of the region’s businesses wish to remain in the EU. The same survey highlighted the frustration that businesses feel about having to deal with EU regulations, but the conclusion was that the single market remains the region’s most important market and that it will continue to be so well into the future.
The benefit to the north-east is further illustrated by a study by The Chronicle in Newcastle, which found that the north-east has received an average of £187 per head in EU funding since 2007, compared with £82 in the rest of the UK. The generous funding from the EU to our region stands in stark contrast to how we fare when it comes to receiving funding from this UK Government.
I remind the House that it was a Tory Government who forced the closure of the Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend in the mid-1990s, with devastating consequences for Tyneside. However, thanks to money from the EU, the yard is undergoing a massive transformation. North Tyneside Council was awarded £6.7 million of European regional development funding to part-fund enabling infrastructure works at the former shipyard, which has opened up development on a strategically important enterprise zone site.
Between 2007 and 2013, under the European structural fund programme, North Tyneside Council was the accountable body for nearly £13 million in our region. That money part-funded the refurbishment of a new centre for innovation on our enterprise zone site, creating flexible start-up and business incubation space for small and medium-sized enterprises. Some £1.8 million of ERDF funding was used towards funding business support to enable start-up support, particularly in our disadvantaged areas, resulting in a rate of 400 start-ups per year.
The council is already undertaking work to maximise European structural and investment funds from the current programme to meet the EU 2020 strategy ambitions of achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The newly funded business support programme, Made in North Tyneside, will bring great benefits to the local community and businesses alike. In addition, the council is working with partners on a community-led development to help the most disadvantaged communities in the top 20% most deprived areas to utilise both ESF and ERDF funding to achieve economic growth in their own localities.
I hope that the north-east will not be fooled by those in the Brexit camp who claim that we would be better off leaving the EU. Since 2010, the north-east has suffered huge public spending cuts right across the board under the Tories—from the police and fire services, to the closure of Government offices—all of which have cost jobs and a loss of income to our local communities. The truth is that the future prosperity of my constituency and the north-east region is inextricably linked to the EU. Being unrepentantly parochial, I say that that is reason enough to remain.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
No, and if the hon. Lady looks at our record, particularly when this Government held the chairmanship of the Council of Europe, she will see that, on the contrary, we upheld the standards and values embodied in the convention and successfully negotiated sensible, pragmatic reforms to the way in which the convention is implemented that are in the interests of all states.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
22. What does the Minister think this session’s high-level panel on the death penalty can achieve, particularly when so many Human Rights Council members use the death penalty?
Mr Lidington
It is true, of course, that many of the members of the Human Rights Council, who have been elected by the membership of the United Nations generally, still have the death penalty. The United Kingdom, both at the UN Human Rights Council and in our bilateral and multilateral relationships of all kinds, continues to stress that we regard the death penalty as completely unacceptable.
Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security
Mary Glindon Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
I recognise my hon. Friend’s gentle scepticism, shall I call it? Many figures within the newly announced Government are not new faces. However, the programme set out by Dr al-Abadi does represent, on the face of it, an approach that is far more inclusive and far more willing to recognise the aspirations of the separate communities within Iraq than that of the previous Iraqi Government. Of course, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We will be looking at this very closely and providing every support we can. We and other allies will be applying all pressure that we can on the Iraqi Government to pursue diligently the course that they have set out in that programme, and we very much hope they will deliver on those commitments.
Mr Hammond
I must make some progress now because we have a wide range of issues to cover.
While we have been facing an ideological challenge to our fundamental system of values from ISIL in Iraq and Syria, we have also faced a fundamental challenge to the post-cold war system of international relations in Europe.
For more than two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the west has opened a door to Russia and sought to draw her into the international rules-based system, offering partnership, trade, investment and openness. By its illegal annexation of Crimea and its aggressive destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, the Russian leadership has slammed that door shut. It has chosen the role of pariah rather than partner, and in doing so it has undermined the long-term security architecture of Europe.
The tactics that President Putin has adopted—from covert disruption to the first deployment of deniable irregulars and unbadged Russian military personnel to capture sites in Crimea, through to the transfer of heavy weapons and equipment to Ukrainian separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk, and now, more recently, the deployment of formed Russian military units on to Ukrainian soil—reflect a pattern that we have seen elsewhere. However much it is denied, Russia’s direct responsibility for the situation in eastern Ukraine is undeniable.
On 17 July, the irresponsibility of Russia’s behaviour reached its terrible apotheosis, with the shooting down, from separatist-controlled territory with a Russian ground-to-air missile, of flight MH17, with the loss of 298 totally innocent lives. Their blood is on the hands of Russia’s leaders.
The Government, together with our international partners, have been clear from the start: whatever the provocation, there can be no purely military solution to this crisis. The solution must be political, based on negotiations between Moscow and Kiev but upholding the fundamental principles of respect for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and of the right of the Ukrainian people to decide their own future. There can be no Russian veto on democracy in Ukraine.
The international community has a clear role to play by exerting the greatest possible pressure on Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukrainian soil, cease its support for the separatists and enable the restoration of security along the Ukraine-Russia border with effective international monitoring.
Russia has used asymmetric warfare to further its ends, exploiting the relative advantages of its ability to act quickly, decisively and without transparency. We must respond to that by using our relative advantages, most notably the enormously greater strength and resilience of our economies compared with Russia’s, with its terrible demography and its structural over-dependence on oil and gas exports.
The UK has been at the forefront of efforts to leverage that economic strength through the imposing of far-reaching economic sanctions. As the Prime Minister announced to the House on Monday, the latest European Union sanctions, building on the previous measures, will make it harder for Russian banks and energy and defence companies to borrow money; prohibit the provision of services for the exploration of shale, deep water and Arctic oil; and widen the ban on dual-use goods such as machinery and computer equipment. Additionally, a new list of individuals to be included on sanctions lists has been agreed, including the new separatist leadership in Donbass, the Government of Crimea and key Russian decision makers and oligarchs.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
11. What recent reports he has received on progress in uniting Syrian opposition forces around a credible transition plan for a post-Assad Syria.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
We judge that co-operation between opposition groups is increasing, but there is much more to do. They need to unite and to appeal to all Syrians, regardless of religion and ethnicity. Our special representative is in constant contact with opposition groups and there will be a further meeting with them in Doha next month—next week, in fact—to work on that more united position.
Mr Hague
The first thing to say is that our assistance is non-lethal. We are providing to the opposition equipment such as generators, communications equipment, water purification kits and things of that kind. We make every effort to track such equipment and ensure that we know where it is going, but as I have explained to the House before, the risks that we take in this area are outweighed by the risk of not giving any assistance to such groups and to civilian populations in Syria, who are in a dire situation. The balance of risk suggests that we should give assistance to them.
Mrs Glindon
Can the Secretary of State say what progress he is making with the Governments of Russia and China on their position, which is clearly proving a stumbling block to action by the UN Security Council?
Mr Hague
We continue to try to make such progress. I and all the EU’s Foreign Ministers met the Russian Foreign Minister two weeks ago for a further discussion about this in Luxembourg. There is no change in the position of Russia as things stand, which is a tragedy for Syrians and the world. In fact, since the last attempt to pass a chapter VII resolution was vetoed by Russia and China, more than 13,000 people are thought to have died. This is a major block on our diplomatic progress. In the absence of that, we are giving non-lethal support to the opposition, we are the second largest bilateral donor of humanitarian aid, we work with other nations to prepare for the day after Assad and we continue to assist the opposition in coming together as a more coherent force.