Europe, Human Rights and Keeping People Safe at Home and Abroad

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Never mind “Project Fear”, what about project paranoia? I was not in any way referring to the exit campaigners, but simply observing that some people have suggested retrenchment. As my hon. Friend has taken me in that direction, I will answer his question. We enjoy free trade with 53 nations by virtue of free trade agreements negotiated by the European Union. Those campaigning for exit tell me that if we were to leave the EU we would rapidly negotiate new free trade agreements, with the EU itself and then with the 53 countries with which that Union has free trade agreements. Our experience in the real world is that these agreements take a lot of time to negotiate—the EU-Canada free trade agreement has been seven years in the negotiating and is still not ratified.

Another small problem that my hon. Friend should think about is that we do not actually have any trade negotiators. We would be seeking to negotiate those 53 plus one trade agreements from scratch, because for the past 40 years, for better or worse, the European Union has negotiated all our trade agreements on our behalf. We do not have civil servants experienced in this field of activity.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Has the Foreign Secretary made any assessment of how many additional members of staff would be needed by either his Department or the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to deal with this problem, or of how many years it would take to train them?

[Mr Hammond]

The latter point is more important than the former, if I may say so. It is not simply a question of nipping out and calling up the jobcentre to say, “Could you send us some experienced trade negotiators to hire?” We would literally be starting from scratch. I look across the Atlantic to the world’s largest economy and its trade negotiation team, under Michael Froman; that is an extremely good team, but it is very small and has struggled to carry out two trade negotiations in parallel. I am afraid that the idea that in a matter of months, or even years, we would have negotiated a massive deal with the European Union and 53 separate trade agreements with other countries around the world—before starting on the ambitious expansion programme referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron)—is, to quote the Prime Minister, “for the birds”.

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[Hilary Benn]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and he has given me the opportunity to add to his point. We are the most successful country in the European Union—more successful than Germany, more successful than France—in attracting foreign direct investment. There are a number of reasons for that, some of which I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, which the Chair of the Select Committee welcomed; but there is no doubt that one of the reasons is the fact that we are part of a single market consisting of 500 million people.

[Mike Gapes]

My right hon. Friend mentioned the free trade agreements. Is it not a fact that since the European Union signed the free trade agreement with South Korea, the UK’s trade with Korea has massively increased? We also have massive Korean investment in this country.

[Hilary Benn]

That is indeed the case, and it shows that we can have the best of both worlds because we are gaining from the trade deals that the European Union has negotiated at the same time as increasing our trade with other countries with which Europe does not currently have a trade deal.

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[Alex Salmond]

And a human rights issue, as the hon. Lady rightly says. The Home Office is turning its face against the massive support of just about every parliamentarian from Scotland and refusing to accept and acknowledge that this family came to our country on a Government-sponsored scheme. I do hope that Ministers will find it in their heart to look at this case in the next seven days.

Secondly, I come to the subject of Libya. The Foreign Secretary referred a few minutes ago to his visit to Tripoli, where he said the UK was ready to provide training to the new Administration’s armed forces. He said that

“it will be possible for us and our partners to support the military training programme.”

Such a mission would not require a Commons vote because, he said:

“That does not extend to non-combat missions.”

The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who is in his place, rejected the idea of a training mission, stating that:

“Even if you say it is just a training mission rather than a combat one, any foreign troop presence in Tripoli will be seen as a Western intervention.”

The commander of Libya’s air force warned:

“If any foreign soldier touches our soil with his foot, all Libyan people will be united against him. Our problems will be aggravated with the coming of foreign troops.”

Interviewed in RT, former UK ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles warned against “loose talk” of military intervention in the collapsing state. He said:

“There’s been talks for weeks and months of the possibility of military intervention. But I don’t think it’s helpful at the moment because intervention is not what they need.”

Following the Foreign Affairs Committee’s visit to north Africa in mid-April, the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), wrote to the Foreign Secretary accusing him of being “less than candid” and

“deliberately misleading to the uninformed reader”

over plans to send British troops to join an Italian-led training mission.

In a few weeks’ time, on 6 July, the Chilcot report will be published. One of the key issues that many of us hope will be identified and brought out in that report is that of pre-commitment—what commitments were made in 2002 by the then Prime Minister to the American President that dictated all his subsequent actions. I ask the Foreign Secretary for a straight answer to this question: what, if any, commitments have been made in relation to intervention in Libya at this stage—not just on combat roles, which the Defence Secretary referred to earlier—or is it genuinely the case that, before any such commitments are undertaken, there will be a debate and vote in this House to ascertain the wisdom or otherwise of such an intervention?

Finally, I come to the European campaign and to “Project Fear”. The term was actually devised in an internal briefing in the Better Together campaign in the Scottish referendum, where the writer self-described the campaign as “Project Fear”. I want briefly to discuss why I think that is entirely the wrong campaign and the wrong tactic to adopt.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has substantial form on the matter. On 13 November 2011 he gave an interview on BBC Scotland television in which he predicted a collapse in inward investment in Scotland because of the referendum of 2014. That was followed by record years of inward investment in Scotland in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. The current Secretary of State for Scotland had the brass neck in a statement on 17 June last year to claim the credit for the record inward investment figures of 2014. No one in the leave campaign should be surprised by the nefarious activities of Her Majesty’s Treasury, given the even more nefarious activities it engaged in during the Scottish referendum campaign.

My question today is whether this sort of material wins hearts and minds in a referendum campaign. I do not think it does.

[Mike Gapes]

You lost the referendum.

[Alex Salmond]

I hear from the Labour Benches that we lost the referendum in Scotland. That is a matter of fact and record.

[Mike Gapes]

You lost; we won.

[Alex Salmond]

Yes, that is true. That referendum was launched with the yes campaign at 28% of the vote. The eventual vote for the yes campaign was 45%. The present campaign on Europe has been launched with a much tighter margin between the two sides, and if the remain campaign loses 1% a month during the campaign, the result will not be as I or the hon. Gentleman would wish.

[Mike Gapes]

Is it not the case that the right hon. Gentleman wants remain to lose because he could then pursue his agenda of holding another referendum on independence within two years? His party is hardly doing anything to campaign to remain in the United Kingdom and for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. [Interruption.] Order. No. Mr Gapes, senior Member you are, with a lot to offer, but you also want to speak, and I do not want to be the man who puts you at the bottom of the list. Between us, we can all get there. Short interventions if you must, but it would be better if you did not intervene.

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[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The referendum on 23 June will shape this country’s future international relationships probably for the rest of the century. Whatever the result, there will be serious consequences. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee produced a report recently that concluded that

“leaving the EU could result in the UK becoming a ‘smaller”’ or less influential international player, especially in the context of increasing pressure from rising powers on the post-1945 global economic and governance frameworks.”

We see those rising powers in Asia. The Americans have just agreed to sell arms to Vietnam. We see massive territorial disputes between China and almost all its neighbours: the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam. The rising powers of Asia, including south-east Asia, believe—rightly—that the global institutions that we did so much to shape in the immediate post-world war two period do not reflect the growing economic importance of other parts of the world. If we were to leave the EU, the British permanent seat on the UN Security Council, currently defended by our 27 EU partners, who see Britain and France as having worked together consistently in the UN system to protect European interests, would no longer be seen as protecting European interests. France will have that role, but we will not.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I was under the impression that the European Union was seeking to take France’s and the UK’s position in the Security Council and act as one, which is not how the hon. Gentleman presented it.

[Mike Gapes]

That impression is wrong. The reality is that there is general acceptance—at this moment, grudgingly in some cases—that the UK and France work collectively and consult their European partners within the UN system. That, however, might well be put in jeopardy if we leave. There would be big question-marks for the future.

We live in a world, as already mentioned in the debate, in which Russia is nationalist and assertive under the Putin regime and that led to the annexation and invasion of other territories—not just Ukraine, but Georgia—along with cyber-warfare against NATO members in the Baltic states. We have seen aircraft either going very close to or entering other countries’ air space and, of course, the buying of political parties, including the Front National in France. Then there is Putin’s propaganda channel, which pumps out every day through Freeview a completely distorted view of what is happening in many countries around the world, without ever referring to internal Russian problems. We see all that today.

Some countries around the world have started to take action on the money laundering and other activities going on from Russia. I hope that the Bills that will come out of this Queen’s Speech will lead to more robust action against the money that is being put into our financial institutions by the kleptocracy in Moscow.

I do not have time to refer to it in detail, but the Home Affairs Select Committee heard evidence from William Browder, of Hermitage Capital Investments, in the early part of this month. This needs to be looked at and studied by Members to understand how Sergei Magnitsky died in very strange circumstances. The United States Congress has, of course, passed the Magnitsky law. Interestingly, human rights was mentioned in this debate. Last week, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives agreed a proposal for a Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act to extend the sanctions against people involved in corrupt activities to those who abuse human rights globally. That is an interesting concept. If for good reasons we are not prepared or do not wish to stop trade with certain countries, but nevertheless wish to target the individuals who carry out human rights abuses, perhaps we should consider a similar proposal in this Parliament.

Let me highlight one other area in the time left available to me. The European Union provides a democratic vision. The shadow Foreign Secretary referred to the peace and co-operation we have had since the second world war, but we also act as a magnet for those countries coming out of authoritarianism, out of fascism or out of domination under the Warsaw pact. We need to maintain these standards, but if Britain leaves the EU, we will weaken that process in our continent.