Oral Answers to Questions
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Hague
The removal of Mr Assange from the embassy would be easy to secure if he walked out. He will be arrested, in line with our law, if and when he does that. I had cordial talks yesterday with the Foreign Minister of Ecuador and explained again our legal obligations: we want a diplomatic solution, but it has to be within our law and we are legally obliged to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden. We did not make any breakthrough or substantive progress, but we have agreed that our officials will meet again to see how we can find agreement.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
What action is the Foreign Secretary taking to increase the proportion of posts in the senior management ranks of the FCO, including those of high commissioner and ambassador, that are held by women?
Mr Hague
I have, subject to the agreement of the Prime Minister and the Queen, appointed a higher proportion of women to those posts. I feel strongly about the subject and often discuss with the senior management of the FCO the need over the next few years to ensure that a higher proportion of senior positions, including senior ambassadorial positions, are held by women. I will continue the internal pressure over the coming months.
G8 Foreign Ministers
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Hague
Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right, particularly with regard to the attempts of the DPRK to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology. The effects of the decisions that we are making about a successor to Trident will last for decades. We have to provide for the security of this country over several decades to come, and we must therefore, absolutely, have at the forefront of our minds the fact that we cannot predict—even a few years out, as he says—the threats that we might face. We can imagine that anyone in 1913, rather than 2013, who was trying to predict the threats they would face into the 1940s would have struggled very seriously to do so.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the Foreign Secretary and all those involved in securing the declaration on preventing sexual violence in conflict. Will he say a little more about the development of the protocol that the UK will be leading on? Does he envisage any role at all for parliamentarians? If so, will he agree to seek a debate in Government time on this very important issue?
Mr Hague
Yes, there is absolutely a role for parliamentarians. Indeed, as we work on the protocol over the next few months and take it to the United Nations, I would welcome informal meetings and informal consultation with hon. Members of all parties. Of course, we would have to speak to the business managers about debates. We did have a short debate that covered the subject on 14 February, and there was enthusiastic support for this measure across the House. However, I am sure that as the year goes on—indeed, during the forthcoming debate on the Gracious Speech—there may be opportunities for us to look at this together.
Syria
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Hague
Of course, the increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict is one of our great concerns. That is why we have to do everything we reasonably can to shorten the conflict, as that will only get worse as the conflict goes on. As my hon. Friend says, the conflict in Syria is already militarised and weapons have already been obtained and are being obtained by all the factions fighting in Syria, including the military council, working with the national coalition. I fear that the longer the conflict goes on, the more sectarian it will be in nature and the more opportunity there will be for extremists to take hold there. Giving our assistance to moderate forces and not to extremist forces is therefore one way in which we can try to shape the situation in a more sensible direction.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
What consideration, if any, has been given to the possibility of implementing a no-fly zone?
Mr Hague
A no-fly zone is sometimes advocated, including at international meetings. The greatest difficulty with a no-fly zone is, of course, that it is a response of a totally different nature. It is a military intervention of the sort that we have been talking about and against which many hon. Members have warned. It would require military force externally on a substantial scale. A good argument of principle can be made for that on the basis of relieving human suffering by doing whatever is necessary, but the willingness of nations around the world to implement such a military intervention is limited, for understandable reasons. Indeed, such a no-fly zone could be achieved in practice only with the full participation of the United States of America, so major practical difficulties are involved. What we must not get into is saying that there are protected areas or humanitarian corridors, but then not being able to protect people. There is a sad and tragic history of those things. We should only take the step that the hon. Lady is talking about if the world and the international community were truly ready to bring it about.
Kurdish Genocide
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I refer to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
It is an honour to speak in this important debate. Over the past five years I have been involved with the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq, which I am now proud to co-chair with my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who eloquently set out the reason for this debate. The all-party group is very active and has an excellent website with a range of views and news. Members can look at the issues relating to Kurdistan and to this debate on that website at www.appgkurdistan.org.uk.
Genocide, as my hon. Friend said, is the methodical killing of all the people from a particular national, ethnic or religious group. Today’s debate is an important milestone towards persuading this House, the wider public and the international community to recognise the attempted genocide of the Kurdish people in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. As my hon. Friend said, an estimated 1 million Iraqis have disappeared since the 1960s, all presumed murdered by the regime. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Anfal genocide operation against the Kurds, including the dreadful chemical attack on Halabja, as well as the 30th anniversary of the killing of 8,000 male members of the Barzani clan.
The scale of these atrocities is clear and not seriously challenged, but few outside the Kurdistan region understand what was involved in the mass slaughter, and fewer still understand the organisation and methods used in what has been described as “Saddam’s killing machine”. It has been referred to as a prison above ground and a mass grave beneath. The targeting of the Kurdish people living in northern Iraq was designed to remove any possibility of opposition to the vile regime. Last night, I watched again two DVDs that have been produced by the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights about the terrible crimes committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime: “Execution of People” and “Dust Talks”. They include pictures of some of the atrocities filmed by the regime, including shootings, beatings and the severing of ears of young men who had deserted the army. They show the devastation of the way of life of the Marsh Arabs by the deliberate draining of the marshes, and of course the chemical attacks at Halabja and elsewhere.
Today we have only words to try to describe what happened, and I fear that they will fall short of portraying the full horror. These monstrous events have a contemporary relevance. Many families still do not know if a father, brother or sister is dead or not, and do not know where their body may be buried, perhaps in some undiscovered mass grave. Not knowing about the fate of a member of the family weighs heavily. The impact of the killing continues and will continue for many, many years to come.
It is important to remember just how closed and controlled a society Iraq was. There were few opportunities for contact with the outside world. After the no-fly zone was imposed over Kurdistan in 1991, people at last had the opportunity to begin to develop their own democracy and to make their own decisions, but sustained contact with the outside world really began only after the 2003 invasion. Only then did we slowly begin to understand the true scale of the horror. According to the International Commission on Missing Persons in 2006, there were 270 mass graves, each estimated to contain between 10 and 10,000 bodies. Since then, many, many more mass graves have been uncovered.
Of course, it was not just the Kurds who suffered under Saddam Hussein. The impact of 35 years of dictatorship is still very evident in all sections of the Iraqi population. I have visited Iraq a number of times and have been privileged to meet the politicians who are building their democracy. Some have shared with me their experiences of that dark time: family members killed, tortured or simply missing. The number of widows in the country is simply huge. In Kurdistan today, many children are affected with cancers caused by the chemical weapons. Others live with the effects of barbaric torture.
Ten years after the fall of the dictator, the health services are far from adequate to meet the needs of the population, but they are improving. In the UK, we have benefited from the Iraqi doctors who came here to work during the time of exile, and it is encouraging to see that many have returned and are now working to improve health services in their home country. Indeed, it was an Iraqi doctor in Sheffield who began the process which has led to significant partnerships between Sheffield Hallam university and the Iraqi Ministry of Health and Iraqi universities to provide much-needed skills for the health service. A strong partnership has also developed with the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
Great support has also been given by members of the Newcastle-Gateshead medical volunteers, led by Deiary Kader, who, as well as the people from Sheffield, have been going over to Kurdistan to treat people for a number of years. Next month, they will go there for the eighth time. Over those years, thousands and thousands of people have benefited from the relationship that we have developed between our two countries.
Meg Munn
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing that partnership to the attention of the House. It is true that in the UK there are very many doctors of Iraqi and Iraqi-Kurdish origin. While they have continued to serve and provide support for our community, they are also doing such things as my hon. Friend described and doing what they can at a time when the health services in Iraq still need a great deal of investment to develop to serve an ordinary population, let alone one that has suffered the kind of trauma, torture and chemical attacks that have been suffered in Iraq, particularly in Kurdistan.
Alongside the physical impact of repression on the population, we must not underestimate the psychological effects: living with the grief of lost family members, remembering the terror of attacks and, above all, the constant fear. As a woman says in one of the DVDs I mentioned, Iraqi people had no dignity because they had to sell out their consciences to Saddam Hussein to stay alive.
Thirty-five years of dictatorship are not easily forgotten, but there have been positive moments since the 2003 invasion. We remember the TV pictures of the purple-stained fingers shown with pride when the Iraqi people were able to exercise the right to vote—something that we take for granted. They were excited about being able to take part in the first democratic elections. But of course voting is only the first act; building the institutions and democratic habits are much more difficult—all the more so when people have not been allowed to make their own decisions, and acting on their own initiative was a risky thing to do.
My involvement with the Kurdistan regional and Iraqi national parliaments has shown me just how difficult this task is, but it is a task to which many brave Iraqis are committed. To take on these tasks and build a new society is complex and demanding; it will take time, dedication and determination. We should continue to support them in this. An important way to do that is formally to recognise what happened to them. Former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner argues that
“human rights should mean that people are protected within their own countries”.
When these rights are violated, it is the duty of the international community to honour victims and to ensure that history cannot repeat itself. If democratic Governments cannot be clear about genocide and say that such crimes must be stamped out, then who will?
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank my hon. Friend for the interesting points she is making. Does she accept that there is systematic discrimination against Kurdish people, culture and language in all the neighbouring countries—it is a product of the break-up of the Ottoman empire at the end of the first world war—and that those countries have to reckon with a multicultural, multilingual and multi-ethnic society if there is to be long-term peace in the region?
Meg Munn
Building the kind of society described by my hon. Friend, which recognises people’s rights to their own language and culture and to celebrate their background, is enormously important and very much part of this process. Although building democracy in Iraq and working with Iraqi parliamentarians is difficult, it is encouraging to see Iraqis across all political groups and backgrounds working together. The services and reconstruction committee of the Iraqi Parliament will visit us next week. It is chaired by a Kurdish-Yezidi woman and is comprised of people from different backgrounds who are working together to try to build things for the Iraqi people. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend has said.
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend spoke eloquently of the position in France and that of the French Foreign Minister. Does she recall that just a few weeks ago three Kurdish women were shot dead in Paris? That conveys the continued concern that we should all have about Kurdish people as they go about their business in Europe. It also illustrates not only why we must recognise genocide, as has been said, but that these are a people who continue to be routinely oppressed.
Meg Munn
My right hon. Friend is right. I have particular concerns about the position of Kurdish people and, indeed, others. More than 70,000 have died in Syria and there is an ever-present fear of chemical weapons being used by that regime, which is a frightening reminder of the Halabja gas attack. As has been said, some of the effects of the 16 March 1988 attack on Halabja are still with us, including disease, birth defects and other health complications. Can we easily accept the possibility that more victims of these weapons could arise today in Iraq’s neighbouring country?
We know of the genocide perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazis during the second world war and the excellent work undertaken by organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust to educate new generations about the horror. Every year we have Holocaust memorial day to honour the dead and ensure that they are not forgotten. The story of the Kurdish genocide has yet to be fully told and is not yet fully understood, but the Kurdish people should not have to wait any longer for justice from the international community. Iraq has officially recognised the killings as genocide and the rest of the world must do the same.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
I should like to start by praising the modern-day Bard, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), for successfully securing the debate, and those wonderful people on the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to hold the debate today. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for the work they have done on this issue.
Three decades ago, most of us in our places today were not Members of the House and what was happening in Iraq was only part of the background to our lives—perhaps not so much for the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon because of his personal links, but most of us had other things to occupy us. The issue did not get the attention it should have had at the time. Perhaps if we had been as actively involved as we became two decades later, things might have been different. If we had had a different attitude to the Iraqi Government at that time, things might have been different and we would not be talking about the issue today.
Let me focus on the impact of what happened back then on real human beings. My interaction with Iraq started in 2003, when I was the president of Unison—the biggest trade union in Britain at the time—and a member of the general council of the TUC. Like most people in the labour movement, I was completely and utterly opposed to the invasion of Iraq. I believed that the reasons for going into Iraq were not justified, that the argument about weapons of mass destruction was not proven and that we had gone in far too early, with Hans Blix doing good work on the ground, despite the obstacles put in his way. Nothing should have happened until his work had been completed.
I remain convinced today that the leader of my party and the Prime Minister at the time decided to go into Iraq alongside the Americans for two reasons. First, he passionately believed that Saddam should be got rid of, and, secondly, he wanted to keep good relations with the Americans. I believe that the Americans went in for different reasons. They wanted to get rid of Saddam, too, but they also wanted to gain control of the oil wealth in that part of the world and, even more important for the American Republican party, they wanted to ensure that George Bush got re-elected 18 months after the invasion. I remain convinced that that was why, no matter what we did, the Americans would have gone into Iraq around the time they did, as it was a perfect way of winning the election that lay some 18 months ahead.
After the military action had finished, my role in my trade union was to ask, “What do we do now?” One benefit of Saddam’s removal was the re-emergence of a trade union movement in Iraq—a movement that, before Saddam’s reign, had been one of the most active and one of the largest from Europe to Australia but that had been suppressed. We took the decision as a trade union to do all we could to try to help people who had not been involved in real trade union activity for at least four decades to get involved in that role in the world again. We started a training scheme for trade union stewards and we brought people from Iraq—basically Kurdistan because no one could get out of the rest of Iraq—to London. This was a training scheme for a small group of trade unionists who could then go back and train the trainers.
Mr Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend, and I am very well aware of it. I shall refer later to a member of the delegation I led in 2006. She was the treasurer of NASUWT at the time, and she also chaired the TUC task group on Iraq.
That training programme was so successful that we ended up expanding it. Instead of bringing people out of Kurdistan to London, we got them out of there to Amman in Jordan, which was much easier in terms of the numbers. I was really proud when we were finally able to establish a trade union training school in Irbil in Kurdistan in early 2006.
As a newly elected MP, I was delighted to receive the backing of the trade union movement to take a delegation out to Irbil in early 2006. There were eight of us, including members from the NASUWT, the journalists’ union, Unison, local councillors and others active in supporting the Iraqi cause for many years. We went out there to see what we could do to develop trade unionism on the ground. Straight away, I was immensely struck by the attitude of the trade unionists we met. To me, they were comrades. The fact that they were from another part of the world was irrelevant to me. They were my friends, standing up for working people and trying to develop their skills so that they could look after people properly.
The first thing that those trade union members said to us was, “We need your help. We need your Government to start investing in this country, because if they do not invest we will not have work, and if we do not have work we do not have a trade union movement.” That was a very simple equation. When we asked what practical help we could give, they arranged for us to meet their labour, equality and health Ministers and the Minister responsible for matters relating to the Anfal genocide. That was the first time I had really been exposed to what had happened.
The other thing that those people said to us, very clearly, was “We thank you, as a nation, for what you did for us in 1991, and we thank you even more for what you did for us in 2003, when you liberated us.” That was a shock for me: it was a slap in the face. I had seen what happened in 2003 as an invasion. However, it was all very well for me, sitting in the comfort of Blaydon, to say that it was really, really wrong. It was not me who was being wiped off the face of the earth, it was not my parents who were being buried alive, it was not my village that was being flattened, and it was not my real life—my community—that was being devastated and destroyed. That was happening to these people. Listening to what they said did not change my view that we went into Iraq for the wrong reasons, but what became very clear to me, and has remained clear to me ever since, was that we should have done it 20 years earlier. Why on earth did we not do that? If we had, this disgraceful thing would not have happened.
What were we doing 20 years earlier? Unfortunately, we were doing the bidding of Saddam Hussein. We were, to an extent, sitting on our hands and supporting the Americans yet again while they, and the rest of the world powers, were sitting back happily watching the Iranians and the Iraqis wipe out 1 million of their own citizens, using them as pawns. If, as a by-product, we saw the Marsh Arabs being wiped off the face of the earth and the attack on the Kurds, we just had to ignore it. It was a price worth paying if Saddam was able to keep the ayatollah and his acolytes under control. Was it worth it in terms of the international situation? Well, other people will decide when it is history, but, looking back and seeing what I see now, I think that it was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
We were not just sitting back innocently. As was said earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North, we were actively engaged: we were selling arms to that regime. In fact, we were selling arms to both regimes, and it was the wrong thing to do. It may have been very grandiose in the big scheme of things, but it did nothing to help the people on the ground.
Since that first visit to Kurdistan, I have been back there, and have also been to Baghdad. On both occasions, I was hugely impressed by the generosity and warmth of the people. That is typical of people in the middle east, but it is even more noticeable in Kurdistan. They were like people from the north-east of England, who, as everyone knows, are always much warmer, more generous, more humorous and more giving. Everyone understands that, wherever they are from.
Other Members who have been to Kurdistan have mentioned the “red house”, the torture chamber in Sulaymaniyah. No one who goes there can fail to be struck by it. The first thing that struck me was what a huge building it was. It is a huge building in the main street of one of the biggest cities in that part of the world. No attempt was made to hide from the public what went on in that place. Indeed, everything that was done was documented. The holocaust was mentioned earlier; exactly the same methods were used in this case. There were documents on everyone, and all the documents were in triplicate. Wiping people from the face of the earth was seen as a normal thing to do by people who did not care about them and just wanted to replace them with their own people. It was absolutely unbelievable.
One thing stuck in my mind particularly. In 2006, as we were walking out of the “red house”, we saw five Kurdish guards in the reception area, sitting around watching television. On the television screen, live, was the trial of Saddam Hussein. I felt that that was real history in the making. For those people, it was life-changing: it would give them a chance to get their lives back. As I said earlier, for people such as me who had not wanted this country to go into Iraq, it was a huge wake-up call, making us ask what we could do. I think that what we can certainly do is promote what we are doing today.
Meg Munn
My hon. Friend is right: the regime did document these events. The most shocking aspect of the DVD I mentioned is the fact that the footage of what happened—such as people being shot—is taken by the regime. The most horrific thing I saw—I am not sure why this was more shocking than seeing somebody being killed—was a man being held by several other men while having his wrist beaten until it was broken, and at the end someone came along and moved his arm but there was no connection between the two parts. It is just brutal, and there is no excuse for our not recognising this, as the evidence is there.
Mr Anderson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There was never any attempt to pretend this was not happening; it was just hoped that the rest of the world would not care that it was happening and would turn a blind eye, which is exactly what we in the international community all did. Today, we have a chance at least to make amends in a small way, and it is very important that we do that.
As well as visiting the “red house”, I visited some of the villages in the north-east of the country, where people saw their way of life totally terminated. Not only did the perpetrators take the men away from their homes and kill them, but what really shocked me was that many of these people were buried alive. They did not even give them the justice of putting a bullet in their brain. They put them in trenches and covered them over using bulldozers. That is how little feeling, and how much contempt, they had for these people.
I discussed with families and friends their despair. I visited what effectively had become a concentration camp in the capital, Irbil. Only young men and women were held there. They had been taken from the agricultural area, which had been the bread basket of Iraq and which is now devastated. All these young people want is to go back home. Sadly, however, if they go back home they will not know how to start getting the farms up and running again, because they have lost contact with the farming industry. Their fathers were taken away and killed 20 or 25 years ago, so they have nobody to tell them how to do things.
We visited a place in the north of the country. I spoke to a village elder, who thought I was my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown); I do not know where he got that idea from, or who was more miffed, me or Gordon. This elder explained to me how passionately he had welcomed Baroness Lynda Chalker in 1991, who had gone there in her capacity as overseas aid Minister and had built some temporary accommodation. He remembered that 17 years later, and he felt such gratitude for my country for having helped his country in that way that it made me very proud to be a Member of this House, but it also made me frustrated, as we had not kept up with the work of supporting those people as we should have done. The big question asked of us was why we had not helped them earlier. I have talked about that, and I hope today’s debate will remind us of why we should have.
I want to read out a letter I received from a very close friend of mine, Hangaw Khan. He is a trade union leader in Kurdistan, and is someone I am very proud to call a comrade. He asked me if I would go and visit his mother and father, and I said, “Certainly I will”. I did not realise there would be a three-and-a-half-hour ride up into the mountains, but it was well worth doing. They were so proud of what their son had done. When we began our campaign with colleagues from across the House, he sent a letter on behalf of his trade union executive in which he thanked us for starting the campaign and said:
“Kurdish United Workers are well aware of all the genocide which has been committed against Kurdish people in Iraq. Moreover, our (KUWU) members are made aware that the Kurdish people are still suffering significantly from the genocide effects on all their life aspects.
We really appreciate your invaluable efforts along side other different parties and groups to ask the government urgently not to ignore all the crimes against humanity which had been committed against our nation for decades and to recognise it as genocide.
In fact, having recognised this genocide against our nation will enter the history for ever and will be the proud step in the view of human beings especially the Kurdish people. Also, there is no doubt that this act consider as a voice of conscience of humanity.
Finally, let us thank you very much in the name of our burned country, the pure pink blood of our genocide martyrs, buried alive innocent women and children, burned and drowned thousands Kurdish by chemical gas. As we are part of human beings, we do hope that all of us & the governments and nations will be aware of recognising any genocide which is committed anywhere in the world.”
That was sent from the Kurdistan United Workers Union last September.
In the past 50 years, millions of lives have been wasted in Iraq. Billions of pounds have been wasted and trillions of words have been wasted. I hope that the words of Hangaw Khan are not wasted and we should listen to him today. I am convinced that the House will pass this motion, which will be a huge statement, but, to be honest, although that is important it is not as important as our Government saying that they support what we are trying to do. I ask those on both Front Benches to think about what has been said in today’s debate.
I know that there are legal issues and that people will say that they want to deal with this, but they cannot. We have seen this week the rebirth of that horrible phrase “weasel words”. I have nothing but respect for those on both Front Benches and I know that they are both committed to the work they are doing. Unless we do something other than saying well done to those who have spoken in the debate and unless we get a commitment that our Government will lead this campaign, as we should, the debate will have been meaningless. No disrespect to the intention of the people who led the debate or those who supported us in bringing it together, but we need real action.
We must also bear in mind that 25 years ago, if we had taken real action, we as a nation could have stopped this. We chose not to. Let us not repeat that mistake today.
Ian Lucas
The hon. Gentleman speaks with passion and eloquence from his own experience, which we all respect. We recognise the humanity of what he says. We need to consider how best we can together use the hope behind what we are doing today to ensure that incidents on the scale of a genocide do not happen again. That is what we need to try to achieve. We should reflect on what has been said and consider how best we can prevent genocide from ever occurring again. One genocide is sufficient. We never want to see it again.
Meg Munn
I understand the legal issues that my hon. Friend has raised and I am sure that the Minister will address them. I am concerned that the apologies that Governments now often make for things that happened many years ago are not terribly relevant, because they relate to something that somebody else did. In this instance, however, a Government could recognise genocide. That is not particularly something that this or any previous Government have done, but perhaps now is the time, on the back of this debate, for Opposition and Government parties to come together and ask whether this and future Governments should have a process to recognise genocide, because that is important.
Ian Lucas
It certainly is important that such matters are dealt with collectively. We are an international community with international institutions and, in international situations such as the one we are discussing, the appropriate approach is to work through international justice bodies to recognise when certain circumstances amount to a genocide. We then need to use our institutions to establish the facts and their implications in law. The legal implications of recognising any set of events—not just those under discussion—as a genocide are considerable. They constitute a particular crime under international law, which imposes obligations on states to prevent and punish with regard to such circumstances.
If something that has happened in the past—such as the events under discussion—is defined as genocide, the question arises of whether retrospective action can be taken. It would be helpful if the Minister clarified whether it is his understanding that a statement that an act was genocide would have a retrospective effect and allow action to be taken against anyone who is held responsible for actions that took place in the 1980s.
We heard about the considerable progress that Kurdistan has made. That has built on the relationship that exists between this country and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. I hope that this debate will add to that relationship. There is a strong group of Members of this House who have spoken eloquently today and who have great respect for Kurdistan and the Kurdish people.
We must work together to reflect on our discussions today. We must also look at what action is being taken in other countries, whether by their Parliaments or Governments, on this issue of genocide in the Kurdish region and see what is the appropriate forum to take that forward.
Alistair Burt
I will happily do so. I thought that it might be helpful to set the region in context before turning to some of the tougher parts that were described. If I may attempt to relate my remarks to Iraq in general, not forgetting the Kurdish region, we should also take a moment to remember, as the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war approaches, those who died during the war, including 178 British service personnel, and of course many Iraqis and other nationals. That sacrifice has contributed to the relative peace of the region now and our ability to look back and evaluate the circumstances of the time.
The anniversary is also a time to reflect on Iraq’s present, and its future. During my recent visit, I saw both the challenges and the opportunities that Iraq faces. Fundamental political issues remain unresolved. Human rights standards are low, and public services, infrastructure and employment opportunities are inadequate. But Iraq has the chance to be one of the success stories of the coming decade as a stable democracy, with the patient work being done on democracy building throughout the rest of Iraq, the engagements we have with Ministers there, and the efforts they are making to confront some of the very difficult political challenges—I met a range of Ministers, including my good friend Foreign Minister Zebari, who chaired a ministerial trade council with me—and improve the future for all in Iraq. As we remember the past, and consider the challenges of the present, I hope we can also look forward to a future for Iraq that is more stable, democratic and prosperous, and that the UK can play a role in making that a reality in the years ahead.
Turning to today’s motion, I shall set out the Government’s position on whether we should recognise the terrible events of the Anfal campaign as an act of genocide. I am aware of the commendable support of my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon for the victims of Saddam’s dreadful campaign against the Kurds and his call for Saddam’s crimes to be recognised as genocide by the international community. I have heard today, as we all have, that this view is shared by many other hon. Members, some of whom could not be present today, and by many members of the public who signed a petition that was submitted to Parliament by my hon. Friend.
My hon. Friend and other Members will be aware of the Government’s position on the principle of genocide recognition—indeed, he and the hon. Member for Wrexham stated it. I am greatly sympathetic to the motion. The Government do not in any way oppose it and I have no doubt that Parliament will respond to the views expressed in the motion by my hon. Friend. It is currently the Government’s view, as we stated in responding to my hon. Friend’s e-petition, that it is not for Governments to decide whether genocide has been committed in this case, as there is a complex legal position. The hon. Member for Wrexham was quite right: it has implications for both today and yesterday. An international judicial body finding a crime to have been genocide often plays an important part in whether the United Kingdom recognises one as such. Whether or not the term “genocide” is applicable in this case, it is clear that appalling atrocities were perpetrated under Saddam Hussein against the Iraqi Kurds. His final conviction by the Iraq tribunal was for his crimes against humanity.
Meg Munn
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I genuinely call him an hon. Friend in this and in many other circumstances. I understand the issues he is raising, and he will have heard the point that I made to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). In taking this issue seriously, will he and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office commit to campaigning on this issue and raising it with other people, including international bodies? He knows just how strongly hon. Members feel.
Alistair Burt
Let me get a little further.
So many suffered as a result of Saddam’s criminal activities, and we should remember all the victims of the regime. I reiterated that view in my foreword to the programme for the KRG’s recent conference on the issue. It is also a reminder that any use of chemical or biological weapons is abhorrent and that responsible countries consider their ongoing production, stockpiling or use to be completely unacceptable. It is our moral duty to join the international community in its efforts to prevent future atrocities. We will continue to call, at every opportunity, for all countries to respect minority rights and for the full implementation of the chemical weapons conventions.
Of course, these issues form a part of our dialogue with the Kurdistan Regional Government, in particular with the Minister for Martyrs and Anfal Affairs. In May last year, our then consul-general spoke at a ceremony alongside the Minister to mark the reburial of 730 Kurds killed in 1988 by Saddam’s forces as part of the Anfal campaign. More recently, our consul-general in Irbil discussed Saddam’s Anfal campaign with the Minister for Martyrs and Anfal Affairs in November. He will represent the UK at future ceremonies and express the UK’s remembrance of these tragic events. I had the opportunity to speak to the Minister myself when I was there recently.
The Government’s position is therefore clear, but it is not necessarily comfortable or sufficient. To the horror, no doubt, of officials, I have listened very carefully to the debate. In line with the hon. Member for Wrexham, I am sure our briefs said exactly the same thing: be very careful. There are implications and I make no bones about that. This is not a casual decision to be made at the Dispatch Box while listening to a debate with an understandable emotional undertone with all the horrors spelled out, and I am not going to do that. However, I have listened very carefully and I do not think that I would be respecting the mood of the House and the way in which this issue has been debated if I were simply to say, “Look, this is our position, which you all know very well, and that is where we are.” I do not think that that is what the hon. Member for Wrexham said either. I think we both know the implications, but I think we both recognise that we would like to go a bit further.
I have listened carefully, with whatever compassion I may possess, to the case that has been made. I do not doubt that the Foreign Secretary will read the debate with exactly the same sense. I am sure the Government will find the vote of Parliament helpful when further representations are made, as they will be.
The hon. Member for Wrexham resisted an easy hit: he could have simply responded to the motion and said, “This must be done.” Conscious of the obligations on the Opposition, he could not go that far, and neither can I. However, I take on board his view that if there is not an easy way to bring this matter to international judicial tribunals—and there may not be at the moment —we need to consider what more we might be able to do, taking into account the other things that have been said. The hon. Member for Islington North made it clear that others have similar things to consider, so we are dealing with a lot of implications.
Listening to and understanding the case gives one a sense that there might be more we collectively ought to be able to do to recognise the horror and severity of what was done, which was clearly targeted on a group of people just because of who they were. If I may, I will accept the hon. Gentleman’s offer to think collectively about how the United Kingdom might be able to take things forward. There is no change in our policy for now, and we are correct in taking that approach, but the issues that have been mentioned will be raised again, so we may have to think more about them. We will certainly have to talk to other Parliaments and Governments about how things have been done and be fully aware of the concerns. That is a reasonable way for us to respond.
If I may, I will take a couple of minutes to address one or two of the particular points that have been made. It is important that other Parliaments have recognised these events as genocide, but that is a matter of principle for them and, understandably, such decisions cannot be internationally binding. However, we will try to investigate what is behind them. As has been said, we have not been able to recognise the Iraqi criminal tribunal’s decision to see these events as genocide. The Government consider legal judgments by appropriate courts in deciding whether such atrocities should be designated as an act of genocide, but the judgment of the Iraqi criminal tribunal was that of a national tribunal.
My hon. Friends the Members for Stratford-on-Avon and for Harlow both referred to the Dutch court. We have examined this issue carefully and we are happy to look again at the Dutch court of appeal’s decision in the van Anraat case, but we understand that although the court considered the question, it concluded that there was not a genocide. We understand that Mr van Anraat was convicted for complicity in war crimes. In a sense, that is a detail; the point is made and we need to look at how these matters might be dealt with.
In conclusion, a debate such as this is particularly painful, as we all know that even as we speak someone, somewhere in the world, is being killed, not because of anything that they may have done but simply because of who they are. They are being killed on the basis of their clan, their faith or their ethnicity; above all, this is happening simply because of their otherness. The ability of people to stamp some grotesque caricature of power or superiority over others through violence and torture is an unsated appetite. All too often that is made still worse by the inability of others ever to do enough, or even to do anything, to prevent it.
We may differ on our view of how atrocities such as those visited upon Iraq’s Kurds come to be designated, but I made it clear that I share the view of all hon. Members that Iraq’s Kurds suffered a terrible and prolonged injustice under the previous Iraqi regime. Accordingly, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the appalling atrocities perpetrated against the Kurds at Halabja and elsewhere, it is important that we take a minute to reflect on the suffering caused and to reflect with some shame on that phrase “Never again”. However, we need to find, somewhere in our remembrance and recognition of the past, a more meaningful way to confront the horrors that form the raw material of the senseless killing that occurs throughout the world all too regularly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Swire
My hon. and learned Friend makes a good point. My response can be divided quite neatly into two parts. First, in the short term, humanitarian access, co-ordination and security must be improved for the Rohingya people in Rakhine. I have seen that for myself and I am satisfied that that is happening. Secondly, in the longer term, those responsible for the violence must be held publicly to account for what they have done. Ultimately, the Burmese have to deal with the issue of citizenship, and that matter is being reviewed at the moment. The Bangladeshis need to play a better part in helping out those Rohingya who are on that side of the border.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The continued suppression of minority ethnic groups in Burma is clearly incompatible with the development of a proper democracy there. We all wish to see such a democracy developing, but what are the Government doing through their contact with the Burmese to stress that we cannot continue to support democratic development and the development of trade without the Burmese addressing those important issues?
Mr Swire
The situation in Burma is complex, as the hon. Lady will accept. The country is coming out of a period of military rule. We believe that the President has embarked on the right journey, although he could move more quickly to deliver some of the reforms. The solution to 10 out of the 11 outbreaks of violence has been a ceasefire, but we have not yet seen that happen in Kachin state. This Government are helping out, through the Department for International Development, by being the largest bilateral donor of aid. We have also had many exchanges involving Burmese parliamentarians coming here to Westminster. The more engagement that British parliamentarians have with the Burmese authorities to show them how we do things here, the better. Perhaps that might include you, Mr Speaker, if you were able to find time in your diary to show the Burmese what we do here at Westminster and show them what a true democracy can look like.
Oral Answers to Questions
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Swire
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The issue was raised by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary during a meeting with the Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, on 28 July. The former Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), raised it with Prime Minister Hasina on 12 August. My noble friend Baroness Warsi raised it with the Bangladesh Foreign Minister, Dipu Moni, in October 2012 and the British high commissioner has also raised it in Bangladesh. It is important that we get aid to that part of Rakhine and that the Bangladeshis make it possible for that aid to reach the people.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The development of democracy in Burma will be successful only if it is pluralistic—a position that has long been held by the British Government. Is the Minister satisfied with the position that is being taken within the European Union, and what discussions has he had with his counterparts about ensuring that the common position does not move too quickly towards removing all sanctions and developing trade with Burma until all ethnic groupings are properly involved in its democracy?
Middle East
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Hague
There is an important role for the European Union and its nations, but for the moment or for the coming months, we must not take our eyes away from the goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the United States playing a leading role. The US still has a unique degree of leverage over all concerned and a particular influence on Israel, so it is important for the Americans to be able to lead such efforts. The EU should act in a way that buttresses and supports those efforts—unless they are not made or come to an end.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The Foreign Secretary has rightly drawn attention to the impact on children. The 13,000 rockets fired into Israel since 2001 have led to many children and young people suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, while the children in Gaza must fear the terror from the Israeli action and also from Hamas. I urge the Foreign Secretary to redouble his efforts to call for peace, because of the impact of these events on these children’s future, which will be lifelong.
Mr Hague
Yes, the hon. Lady makes a very important point. That is why we support the current efforts to bring in a ceasefire. I pay tribute again—I referred to it in my statement—to the efforts of the Egyptian Government over the last few days. This is a new Government with a new presidency and a new system of government. Our impression is that the presidency, the Foreign Ministry and other Egyptian agencies have worked together cohesively, talking both to Hamas and Israel to try to bring about a ceasefire. We have to support their efforts.
Oral Answers to Questions
Meg Munn Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Alistair Burt
We would like to see Libya as the partner of choice in a range of commercial activities. The work done to date, following the re-establishment of the UK Trade & Investment office in September last year, has been to look at key sectors of mutual benefit to us both, such as health care, education and civil security. UKTI has led some 12 trade missions over the last year—about one a month—and has a further 27 planned.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The development of democracies in this region will take a long time. Many organisations, including the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, are involved in this, and they are learning from the experience of what works in those countries and what help they will need in the future. Will the Minister ensure that the total learning from all that work, funded by the Arab partnership fund and others, is brought together so that parliamentarians and, equally, people who work in the Foreign Office understand exactly how we can best support that process?
Alistair Burt
The hon. Lady makes a good point. I pay tribute to her work and that of other parliamentarians involved in the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. It is indeed the case that the various non-governmental organisations have different skills to apply, and it is important that we learn all the lessons from them. We have learned, as if we needed it told, that each of these countries is different, following slightly different paths and requiring different skills to be applied. The value that this country’s really good NGOs and parliamentarians can provide to the development of the democratic system will stand these countries in good stead. We certainly need to make sure that we have pooled all the lessons learned.
Foreign Affairs and International Development
Meg Munn Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Hague
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing that out. Never before have our ambassadors been described in this House as “sizzling”, so I am delighted by his description—an accurate one—of their commitment to promoting British businesses overseas. They are now backed by the biggest drive to build up the Foreign Office’s diplomatic skills and capabilities that the Department has seen in modern times, with a new language training centre training up to 500 diplomats a year, more economic and commercial training and a new economics unit. Following his intervention, I pay tribute to the men and women of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, who work tirelessly day after day in support of our country.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I understand that many of the more junior posts overseas will now be filled by locally engaged staff. How will the Foreign Secretary ensure that staff going on their first posting overseas once they get higher up the scale will have the necessary experience if they have been unable to gain that in other postings?
Mr Hague
The hon. Lady is right to say that that is one of the changes in the administration of the Foreign Office. We are saving £100 million in administration, and it is not possible to do that without making some important changes, such as the one she refers to for A and B-band staff. Most of the staff who work overseas, of course, come in at a different level and did not acquire their previous experience at the A or B-band level. Those staff affected by the change will, in many cases, have the opportunity to seek promotion to higher grades—I strongly support that—so we are trying to mitigate the effect on their careers.
I announced to the House on 11 May last year that we would substantially reinvigorate Britain’s diplomatic presence overseas. I believe that there will never be any substitute for a strong British diplomatic service that advances the interests of the United Kingdom, centred on a global diplomatic network.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I want to take the opportunity offered by the debate on the foreign affairs and international development aspects of the Queen’s Speech to raise again, as hon. Members will have guessed, climate security. I want the House to recognise that climate change is an issue of security and that it should not just be tucked away under the heading of environment and then forgotten about. On that subject, it is interesting that we do not have a day to discuss the environment and energy aspects of the Queen’s Speech, perhaps because there are not very many of them. I was struck by the fact that this time around we do not have a day when those aspects of the speech might usefully have been covered.
I want to place climate strongly in the framework of security issues and to say how sorry I am that ambitious measures to address the climate crisis were conspicuous in their absence from the announcements about the forthcoming legislative programme. That is an extraordinary omission when successive Governments have acknowledged that climate change poses one of the greatest threats to our collective security. Indeed, the coalition Government acknowledged as much in the foreword to last year’s national security strategy, which states:
“The security of our energy supplies increasingly depends on fossil fuels located in some of the most unstable parts of the planet. Nuclear proliferation is a growing danger. Our security is vulnerable to the effects of climate change and its impact on food and water supply.”
Meg Munn
I support what the hon. Lady is saying about this being an important international issue. When I was a Minister at the Foreign Office, climate change was seen as one of the key priorities and I found that our missions around the world also took it very seriously. A great deal was being done at that time.
Caroline Lucas
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am pleased to hear that, because at the moment it feels like there is real tension in the Government about where climate change sits, as the Chancellor clearly sees it as an obstacle to his economic development plans and there is not much of a fight back.
The absence of such matters in the Queen’s Speech is a tragedy, because there are so many opportunities to pursue a green agenda at the same time as pursuing jobs and a stable economy. Indeed, by investing in a green economy, which is far more labour-intensive than the fossil fuel economy it replaces, we can get those jobs and get the economy stable again.
Hon. Members will know that climate change is already affecting many of the poorest communities around the world, undermining their livelihoods through changes in temperature and rainfall patterns and through the increased frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. It has been estimated that climate change is already responsible for about 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300 million people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming from Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum.
Although the impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately on the global south, this argument is not just about poorer people in far flung places. Increasingly, extreme weather events are happening much closer to home as well, such as the 2007 floods in Britain, which saw the largest ever civil emergency response since the second world war. From our riverside location at Westminster, we should perhaps take comfort from the fact that the Thames barrier is being prepared to cope with the sea level rise of 1.9 metres that is being projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the full range of its climate scenarios. Frankly, I am alarmed that we are having to consider such a sea level rise and that such measures are not being planned elsewhere.
The truth is that growing recognition of climate change as a serious threat to our national security, our economy and international development is not resulting in commensurate action domestically or internationally. What in the Queen’s Speech could help us? The new energy Bill, if it were significantly more ambitious than proposed, could play a role. Investment in major power infrastructure today will be with us for decades to come, but there is a real risk that rather than the “secure, clean and affordable” electricity system that we have been promised by the Government, we are more likely to end up with an insecure, dirty and expensive one. To avoid that, we need four crucial elements to be introduced into the electricity market reform proposals.
First, and most importantly, the energy Bill must contain a clear and absolute commitment to decarbonising electricity generation by 2030. That is not a radical green proposal, but is based on the advice from the Committee on Climate Change. I hope that the Prime Minister will ensure that that happens, given his own explanation of the crucial role of the committee. He said that it exists to
“take the politics out of climate change and show our intention to get to grips with the problem.”
Here is a perfect opportunity for him to demonstrate exactly that.
The second thing missing from the EMR proposals to date is the vast untapped potential of energy saving. We could argue all night about the various costs of low-carbon technologies, but I think that those on both sides of the House would agree that it is often a lot cheaper to save energy in the first place. The energy Bill must therefore introduce mechanisms to equalise support for demand reduction and energy saving, such as a feed-in tariff for energy efficiency. That should be the priority, not planning to subsidise EDF’s nuclear-generated electricity to the tune of £115 per megawatt hour. That is the level of subsidy that would be necessary based on EDF’s recent announcement of a new £7 billion price tag per nuclear power station. Let us remember too that subsidising nuclear power would fly in the face of the coalition’s promise not to provide taxpayer subsidy for nuclear. As the City analyst Peter Atherton has succinctly concluded, the only way that new nuclear could be built is
“if the construction risk was transferred to the taxpayer”.
I am extremely concerned that that is exactly what the Government will try to do.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
Women have always played a part in war and peace, sometimes as arbitrators, sometimes as appeasers and at other times as agitants. As far back as the 7th century BC, Homer writes about my namesake, Helen of Troy, causing the launch of a thousand ships. Be it in fact or fiction, we know that throughout history women have not only driven men to defend the homes, their honour and their livelihoods but have also been drivers of peace. They are often the first to call for an end to fighting.
It surely follows that the inclusion of women at the official peace table is both logical and rational and reflects the needs of society as a whole. I am pleased to say that our Foreign Secretary has promoted that stance. He said at the launch of the “No Women No Peace” campaign in 2010:
“No lasting peace can be achieved after conflict unless the needs of women are met.”
Yet in the 16 peace processes undertaken since 2000, female involvement has been minimal. In five cases, no women at all were involved. Excuses include lack of knowledge, lack of experience and lack of negotiating skills, but those same criteria are rarely applied to military and political men, who continue to make the domain their own.
Notwithstanding those attitudes, there are many examples of women around the world who have been central to positive change—Mo Mowlam, Rosa Parks, Mary Robinson and Aung San Suu Kyi to name but a few. Their courage has created international awareness of women as peacemakers, a role that was recognised and adopted 10 years ago in UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Although the resolution is yet to be rewarded with widespread change, I welcome the Government’s recognition of its importance in their national action plan, which was first published in 2010 and revised earlier this year.
Mrs Grant
The hon. Lady makes a very good point, but the Government are putting resources behind their words, and if she waits a little longer she will hear me give some examples of those resources and the Government’s action.
Correcting gender imbalance in conflict resolution is a very effective use of overseas aid and a rightful aspect of our foreign policy, but in some countries a seismic movement in male culture is needed before the empowerment of women can take place and the benefits be fully realised. South Sudan, the world’s newest country, is one such place, as I witnessed for myself on a parliamentary visit during the Easter recess.
Blessed with immense mineral wealth and fed by the waters of the White Nile, South Sudan has the potential to become one of the great breadbaskets of Africa. I saw a truly mammoth UN operation, supported by a raft of foreign aid. It should be a place with a future, but it soon became clear that some of the leaders were more intent on conflict over oil revenues. Tension was everywhere and the smell of catastrophe was in the air, yet throughout many discussions with influential politicians, not once did I have political dialogue with a South Sudanese woman. All such meetings were exclusively populated by men.
If we drill into the culture, the reasons behind that become plain. Under the “bride price” dowry system, women are regarded as the property of their husbands and fathers, turning them into economic objects. They are married off at a very young age and have to leave school, which is why 84% of women are illiterate. They are expected to bear many children, and one in seven women die in pregnancy or childbirth, the highest maternal mortality rate in the world.
Meg Munn
Is not the hon. Gentleman illustrating the fact that there is quite a narrow focus on international issues? As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) said, there is no overriding theme running through the Foreign Office. Surely our diplomatic efforts should be about more than just trade. Did not the Government come unstuck in that way before, when the Prime Minister went abroad to promote trade at a time when there were real problems in the middle east that needed to be addressed through a much wider diplomatic effort?
Jeremy Lefroy
I would take a slightly different view, having worked with the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development and served on the International Development Committee. I have seen a joined-up approach between DFID and the Foreign Office; more so than ever before. I also see Foreign Office Ministers taking such issues as human rights and the environment extremely seriously. Perhaps that has not come out in some of the debates so far, but my experience on the ground is slightly different from that of the hon. Lady.
Tackling the trade deficit is not just about increasing exports, however. It is also about doing more at home in areas where we have traditionally been large importers. Let us take food and drink as an example. The trade deficit in 2011 was £17.8 billion on food and drink alone. Ensuring that UK farmers have a fair deal from their customers would give a significant boost to agriculture and horticulture, creating many jobs in the process, which is why producers in my Stafford constituency welcome the legislation to establish an independent adjudicator between supermarkets and their suppliers.
In recent years, we have been told that the UK can no longer compete in standard manufacturing, and that we must concentrate on high value-added products. I disagree. It is not either/or; it is both/and. As wages rise in developing countries and as the cost of transport increases, there is an advantage in being close to our markets and not bringing everything in from the other side of the world.
That brings me to a subject that, as a Conservative, I perhaps should not raise—but I will. As a nation, we need to be prepared to identify strategic areas of business and to back them—not to the exclusion of common sense, but with more than warm words. Germany and France do that, and we can hardly say that their economies are less competitive than ours. As a result, state-backed—perhaps I should say “encouraged”—French and German companies have taken over swaths of British manufacturing and service industries. Many are good businesses that invest heavily in the UK—Alstom and Total are examples in my constituency—and they reap the rewards, but we do not see the reverse happening to nearly the same extent. Is it that our companies are less adventurous, or is it that they have lacked support and encouragement from successive UK Governments and face obstacles at the other end that the single market is supposed to prevent? Sometimes I think that there is a single market in the EU, and that that single market is the UK. I will believe otherwise when I see Severn Trent running the Paris water supply and Virgin Trains operating on Deutsche Bahn.
The UK’s role in helping with security in troubled areas is underplayed. Understandably, we concentrate on Afghanistan, where our forces—including the Tactical Supply Wing, the 22nd Signal Regiment and 3rd Battalion the Mercian Regiment from my area—have done so much in working for stability for the people of that country and to make our nation safer. However, trainers from the UK armed forces work in many other parts of the world. Recently, several colleagues and I were privileged to see the work of the British Peace Support Team in Kenya. The UK is also involved in training peacekeepers from the Ugandan and Burundian armies who are undertaking the vital and dangerous UN mission in Mogadishu. The question is often asked: what will our armed forces do once operations in Afghanistan are over? One of the answers is that they would do more of the training of peacekeepers, at which they excel. They are the best in the world.
The Gracious Speech states that the Government
“has set out firm plans to spend nought point seven per cent of gross national income as official development assistance from 2013. This will be the first time the United Kingdom has met this agreed international commitment.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 May 2012; Vol. 737, c. 3.]
As hon. Members have pointed out, that commitment has been around for 40 years, since the Pearson commission in the late 1960s. The UK’s aid programme makes a huge difference to the lives of millions. As the Prime Minister said:
“The last Session of Parliament also made an impact not just at home but around the world. We fed more than 2.5 million people facing famine and starvation, we supported over 5.5 million children to go to school in the poorest countries of our world and we immunised a child against diseases every 2.5 seconds of the last parliamentary Session.”—[Official Report, 9 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 17.]
It is a privilege to serve on the International Development Committee under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who I see in his place, and to see the effects of the good use of UK taxpayers’ money on the lives of the poorest: children able to study in classrooms for the first time, and deaths from malaria plummeting when UK Government money supplies bed nets, rapid diagnostic tests and artemesinin in combination drugs. This is a programme that looks to the future, helping growth in the private sector so that jobs are created and income generated, supporting tax authorities so that Government revenues grow and reduce the need for aid.
If I were to highlight one area that has been neglected over the years and is now more important than ever—my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) referred to it—it would be agriculture, in particular smallholder agriculture. We are seeing substantial investment in agriculture by large corporations across the developing world. Where this is done alongside and in co-operation with existing landowners, particularly the small ones, it can work very well, as I saw on recent visits to Zambia and Malawi, by increasing production, productivity and employment. Sadly, however, this is sometimes not the case, as we see examples of large land grabs that leave people destitute.
Some have expressed disappointment that the Queen’s Speech does not mention legislating for 0.7%. I have to say that I do not share their disappointment, as I am keen first of all to reach that amount by showing through action that we can achieve it. Perhaps we could legislate afterwards, having shown the way. What has become increasingly clear to me over the past two years on the International Development Committee is that what matters is that we keep our commitment to the amount, that it is well spent on the poorest and, most important of all, that the countries we are helping make every effort to reduce their dependence on aid. Countries such as Zambia and Rwanda have set out their clear intention to eliminate their need for aid. I welcome this and suggest that the Government ask this of every country we work with.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I want to contribute on a number of issues, starting with international development. I support the aid target of 0.7% of GNI. It is a useful target. As others have said, it has been in place for many years, and it can help to identify an amount over time and enable us to compare what different countries are achieving. It is a real credit to the campaigners outside Parliament who pushed for our Governments to get to this stage, and it is a real credit to the last Labour Government that they set in motion the work to achieve that figure. It is also a real credit to this Government that they have retained the target. I have greatly enjoyed hearing support for it right across the Chamber, from Members of all parties. Let us remember that when the Labour Government came to power in 1997, international development aid had fallen to a quite low amount. From then onwards, we saw a steady increase towards the point when this Government have set out this firm commitment.
There are two issues to discuss about the figure of 0.7%. Much of the discussion about international aid both within and without Parliament tends to focus on achieving that figure, but in my view we do not focus enough on what is being done with the money and why. Members have had the opportunity to see some of the projects in action—I saw them when I travelled overseas—but many people outside Parliament have not. We need not only to give more publicity to what is being done with that money in their name, but to be assured that it is being spent in the best possible way. Aid needs to be effective. While we focus on this figure, I think we need to talk more, plan more and do more in seeking clear outcomes. That is why clear goals such as the millennium development goals are important. We must develop the capacity of beneficiaries to become sustainable and productive economies.
I would like to provide some examples from a United Nations Development Programme report that has just been released—the “Africa Human Development Report 2012: Towards a Food Secure Future”. It tells us that 40% of African children aged under five are malnourished because while there have been impressive gross domestic product growth rates, these have not led to the elimination of hunger and malnutrition. The report also identifies that simply focusing on agriculture will not be enough. An approach that works with the whole community is important, including building rural infrastructure and health services.
Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend talks about the problems of malnourished children. It is important to realise that when children are malnourished, it amounts to a life sentence, as they are disadvantaged for the rest of their lives by being malnourished when they are born or in their earliest years.
Meg Munn
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. That is why it is so important that we learn from successes such as Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African country to achieve the millennium development goal of halving hunger, and Malawi, which, through a subsidy programme for seed and fertiliser, has moved within two years from a food deficit to a food surplus.
I do not think that the target needs to be put in law, as each Government put a Budget forward, and each Government have to make a case. Support has to come from parliamentarians, who need to explain why we need that figure. I do not think we should have lots of civil servants running around trying to find the money that qualifies for the target. I have heard people use a terrible term when they have asked whether this or that spending is “ODA-able”—does it count, and can we put it within the 0.7%? Do we need to be that prescriptive about the exact amount? Let us focus on the outcomes. I would also like to see greater focus on investing in improved governance. In the context of effective use of aid, good governance delivers better outcomes for populations.
Let me speak briefly about the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, of which I have the honour of being vice-chair. I am delighted that the Department for International Development, in conjunction with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is putting funds into the Westminster Foundation for Democracy for more work of this kind to be done. It is the 20th anniversary of this organisation. It works with Parliaments and political parties, which are essential to building democracies that are responsive to their populations. It is not only a legitimate focus for aid, but an essential one if we are to see long-lasting changes.
The Prime Minister reiterated that our troops will no longer be in Afghanistan in a combat role beyond the end of 2014. I want to restate my concerns about women in Afghanistan, and the importance of the Government speaking up for women. Anyone who has met women MPs from Afghanistan will know how brave they have to be, often even standing up against their families just to run for election to Parliament. I therefore welcome Ministers’ previous expressions of support in this House, but more can, and should, be done. Women’s safety and security, and guaranteeing their rights, needs more than a passing mention in speeches. Just two months ago, Afghanistan’s leading clerics declared the worth of women to be secondary to that of men, and President Karzai publicly endorsed that decree, despite the new constitution enshrining in law equal rights for women. We know that, despite significant improvements having been made for women and girls in Afghanistan, many women face danger or are the victims of violence, and often they are punished for reporting crimes against them, rather than supported as victims. I therefore ask the Government to say today that they will insist on women’s involvement in all levels of the Afghan peace process, and will consult Afghan women, who know what is happening in their communities, and will explicitly include women’s safety in all discussions on security.
I welcome the changes in Burma. We need to encourage and support them, but I want to offer a word of caution: we must not rush forward too quickly. The Foreign Secretary said there was a plan to open a business office in Naypyidaw, but we should not be too quick to say that that is our No. 1 priority. We want to see democratic processes put in place, and we want all the ethnic groupings in Burma to have the opportunity to take part in them fully. There is still a great deal to be done, therefore. There have been human rights abuses, as well as forced labour, arbitrary taxation, extortion, forced relocation and extrajudicial killings—a litany of problems that have long beset Burma, and have been the effect of the regime. That is not going to change overnight. Many minorities have been persecuted, and forced into camps on the Thai border. For example, for many years people from the Karen community have come to the UK—many to Sheffield. That was supported by the UN, because they were living in terrible conditions, and could not continue to do so. We must not rush to develop our trade with Burma, therefore. Instead, we must continue to offer support, and look at how we can encourage the embedding of democracy in that country, where the people so greatly deserve such changes.
Finally, I want to say a few words about the UK’s overseas territories. I welcome the fact that we are to have a new White Paper on the overseas territories, and I look forward to reading it. I hope we will continue to support our overseas territories through our international aid budget and that they will continue to have first call on that budget. Although there are many countries and situations around the world that are deserving of our support and aid, these are our overseas territories, and we therefore have an extra responsibility towards them. I have welcomed the agreement to develop an airport in St Helena. As the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said, we should support and help countries and territories that need aid now. Without an airport, I am certain that St Helena would continue to need our ongoing aid well into the future.
For as long as we continue to have a responsibility towards our territories, we should continue to ensure that human rights are respected in them. We must continue to enforce the tight child protection procedures in the Pitcairn islands, for example. There may well come a point when some of our territories decide that they wish to become independent, however. In such circumstances, I would like our Government to give help and support so that territories can make that decision for themselves.
It is enormously important to reiterate that point in relation to the Falkland Islands. The Falkland islanders have long expressed the view that they wish to be British. The current behaviour of the Argentine Government, in trying to undermine their self-determination and their wish to remain British, is appalling.
Oral Answers to Questions
Meg Munn Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Browne
My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the appalling abuses of human rights that have been taking place in Burma for many years. I think it reasonable for us to acknowledge that progress appears to have been made in recent months, and, when appropriate, to reward it, but we should not anticipate further progress before it has happened. Our ambassador and others, including Ministers, are keen to continue to press the Burmese Government to liberalise society further in that country.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The progress in Burma is very welcome, and no doubt the Burmese Government will want to see changes to the current sanctions regime. I was pleased to note that the Minister said that it was probably too early for that to happen, but what discussions have been held with our European counterparts about the issue?
Mr Browne
A decision is likely to be made in a few months’ time. I think it right for Britain to maintain a position on trade with Burma which is very tough, and which takes account of the concerns about human rights abuses in the country that are expressed frequently in the House, but we want to maintain a common European position, because we feel that that is an effective way in which to proceed. We will maintain that position with a hard-headed attitude which I hope will meet with the hon. Lady’s approval.