The UK’s Relationship with Africa

Debate between Mike Gapes and Hugh Bayley

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

In view of your requirement for brevity, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have thrown away half my speech. I had intended to speak about the excellent report that the all-party group on Africa recently published, “Democracy Soup”, and some issues to do with conflict, but I will focus my remarks on the latter so that there is time for others to contribute to the debate.

I am a Europhile, but also an Afrophile, if that is the word to use, and I greatly welcome what the chairman of the all-party group, the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), had to say about the need for optimism about Africa’s future. It matters to us because Africa is our nearest neighbour and because of the great trade opportunities in both directions between our country and Africa.

There are problems of organised crime and people trafficking. Some 5,000 African women are trafficked to Europe every year. We have a Bill to deal with the problem of modern slavery, and this is modern slavery because the vast majority of those women end up against their will as sex slaves in the sex trade.

Our Government have wisely decided to earmark 30% of our bilateral aid to conflict and fragile states, because they rightly take the view that conflict undermines development. According to the latest International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook, Africa’s four poorest states are the Central African Republic, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia, and they have all experienced conflict in recent years.

It is not just poor states that face conflict, however. Libya, of course, was engulfed by civil war a few years ago, and it is one of the richest countries in Africa with a per capita income of over $10,000 a year.

I welcome the Government’s focus on conflict. Trying to avoid conflict is a good thing for its own sake. The United Nations’ responsibility to protect places an onus on countries to intervene where the Government of a third country fails to secure the safety and human rights of its own citizens. One should respond initially by non-military means where one can, by using soft power—aid, UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions. The use of military force should always be the last resort.

Sometimes, however, a very low level of military commitment can make an enormous difference. I remember going some years ago with the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) to Rumbek in southern Sudan just one week after the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement that led to the independence and separation of South Sudan some five years later. A small contingent of six or 10 British servicemen with a couple of Land Rovers were doing an immensely valuable job, keeping hundreds of Government of Sudan soldiers and hundreds of Sudan People’s Liberation Army fighters apart. Perhaps I should add in this World cup week that they organised football matches between the two teams to try to deal with male testosterone, while a peace framework was constructed.

There are also enormous risks in deploying hard power—military force—however. We know from recent campaigns in Africa and elsewhere that for a well-equipped and well-trained military such as ours, or those of other NATO countries, winning a military victory is usually easier than building a sustainable peace.

In Libya, faced with an imminent threat made by Muammar al-Gaddafi against civilians from his own country in Benghazi, the UN Security Council passed a resolution permitting a coalition of the willing—led by NATO, but including other countries, including Arab states—to use military force to protect civilians in Libya. This force eventually toppled the Gaddafi regime, which led, not through our willing it, to the killing of Gaddafi himself. Almost three years later Libya is still awash with militia and state-sponsored armed groups, who refuse to disarm and who are intent on grabbing a share of power and a slice of Libya’s immense oil wealth.

In September 2012 the United States ambassador and three of his staff were killed. In October that year Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was kidnapped, threatened and forced to change his policy. The country still has no national army. Prime Minister Zeidan subsequently left the country and went into exile. His successor, Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani, appeared to resign after gunmen attacked his house, but then different gunmen attacked the Parliament to prevent his being replaced. For a time, Libya ended up with two Prime Ministers: al-Thani running an Administration in eastern Libya and Ahmed Maiteg, an individual who is close to a number of Islamist groups, running an Administration in Tripoli until his election was ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court. Now, former general Khalifa Haftar is using military force to try to take over the country, but the security situation is clearly deteriorating. Benghazi is once again a war zone and a curfew has recently been introduced.

When the United Kingdom—and the international community—engages in military action, I believe we have a responsibility after the action is over to help pick up the pieces, and I do not think we have heard enough from the Foreign Office about post-war reconstruction and development in Libya, so I suggest to the Minister that we should have regular, perhaps quarterly, reports on the political situation in Libya and on what the UK and other institutions, including the European Union and NATO, are contributing to that. They could, perhaps, be written reports—I am not necessarily saying they should be statements to the House—but I do think we need to be kept more informed than we currently are.

I also want to say a few words about Mali. It was once seen as a beacon of democracy in Francophone west Africa, but in 2012 it faced three interlocking crises. First, there was a Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, fuelled by arms which many Tuareg mercenaries who had worked for Gaddafi in Libya brought back to Mali when the Gaddafi regime fell. Secondly, there was a political and institutional crisis precipitated by a military coup against the then President. Thirdly, there was an influx of extremist Islamist groups into the northern regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, which established very harsh and abusive rule in those parts of Mali.

At the end of 2012, those northern armed groups moved very quickly towards the capital in the south, Bamako, and the French launched Operation Serval, supported militarily by the UK, the United States and others. It swiftly defeated the uprising, creating conditions for a new President, President Boubacar Keita, to be elected, and set about retraining Mali’s army. I have seen British soldiers engaged in training—jointly, as it happens, with soldiers from the Irish Republic, which must be the first time British and Irish soldiers have worked together in a single military unit for many years.

Mali faces many long-term development challenges, including the need for job creation, for security sector reform, and for tackling trafficking and organised crime, which funds the activities of the insurgents and extremists. A year ago, there was a pledging conference, where some €3.25 billion was pledged by donors to fund Mali’s plan for sustainable recovery. The UK was a very small player because we do not traditionally have a bilateral programme in Mali. The trouble with our bilateral aid programme is that it is largely built around countries. In parts of Africa, we need to complement those country programmes with regional bilateral development programmes. Ever since decolonisation, many Africans and indeed Europeans have pointed out that Africa’s national borders make little sense; they were imposed as a result of colonisation with little reference to local and regional languages, ethnic differences, kingdoms or even religions.

The Islamists who created such a threat to Mali have been dispersed by Operation Serval, but many of them have slipped over the poorest borders and are regrouping in southern Algeria.

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

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Hugh Bayley]

I think, as so many Members are trying to get in, I will continue.

The point I made to the Minister is that to confront the problems that we face in the Sahel, we need to have a transnational response—a transnational response to transnational terrorism and transnational crime—and to promote growth across the region. We should be working with regional African organisations such as the Economic Community of West African States and the West African Economic and Monetary Union. I wish to see a proportion of British aid to Africa being allocated regionally, so that much of the money, though continuing to be spent by national Governments, could be spent on transnational projects, such as road and infrastructure, trade promotion, training and joint international security arrangements. The Department for International Development’s special areas of expertise in health education and water could be brought to bear in Francophone countries, and other countries’ expertise could be brought to bear in those former Commonwealth countries where most of our bilateral programmes remain.

Finally, the Africa all-party group submitted evidence to the last UK strategic defence and security review about security risks from Africa. A new review is imminent, and I hope that, within it, there will be a chapter looking at the African security risk. Indeed, there have been two military operations embarked on during this Parliament, both of which have been in Africa, and so those issues require some attention in the security review.

NATO

Debate between Mike Gapes and Hugh Bayley

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley]

If we go back to the time of the cold war, we can see why it was relatively easy to explain why we needed collective security.

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

I do not wish to delay my hon. Friend, but I thought it important to intervene following the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) to point out that one of the sub-committees of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will visit Greenland in September, which shows NATO’s interest. British Members of this House, including me, will participate in that visit.

[Hugh Bayley]

I am glad that my hon. Friend will be on that visit, discussing the matter with colleagues from other NATO countries. I look forward to hearing from him when he reports back.

During the cold war, it was fairly easy to explain why we had NATO and why we needed to work jointly with allies to defend ourselves. Europe was divided by an iron curtain. We in democratic states to the west wanted to preserve our freedom, our human rights, trade union rights, property rights, freedom of speech and freedom to protest while the states in the east—the USSR and its fellow travellers in satellite states—did not share those values. The Soviet Union was well armed with conventional and nuclear weapons and demonstrated that it was prepared to use those military assets to crush the Hungarian uprising in 1956, to blockade Berlin, to invade Czecho- slovakia in 1968 and to try to destroy the Solidarity movement in Poland. It was quite clear to most of the public why we needed military assets to protect ourselves and why we needed to co-operate with other countries to do so.

That was long ago. We still have foreign policy differences with Russia—for instance, over Syria.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Bayley]

rose—

[Mike Gapes]

I give way to the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

[Hugh Bayley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the new military co-operation between Britain and the Irish Republic. When I was in Mali, just a week or two before him, I saw a training unit led by a British major and, from the Irish Republic, an Irish captain. However, my hon. Friend made a slip of the tongue: he referred to the Royal Irish Regiment, but of course those forces were from the Republic of Ireland.

[Mike Gapes]

I am grateful for that intervention.

Let me turn to some of the other issues that have been raised. An important point was made about the internet and cyber-warfare. NATO has a facility in Estonia—I have visited it with the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and I know that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has also visited it—to bring together best practice for dealing with cyber-warfare. As we have seen from the media headlines in the last few days, we will face significant challenges, not just from states but, I suspect, over the coming decades from private interests and private companies spying and stealing data and commercially sensitive material. We also know of reports—I am not in a position to say whether they are true—that the Iranian nuclear weapons programme was seriously set back because of the activities of some countries and the so-called Stuxnet, and there are other areas where these matters are also of great importance.

International security is enhanced by co-operation, not just in hardware and personnel but in intelligence and security sharing. We need to be honest: these are not issues that can be dealt with by simplistic headlines in The Guardian or any other newspaper. They have to be looked at seriously. There needs to be international co-operation to deal with threats to our security, which might come not from terrorist bombs but from somebody sabotaging a banking system or undermining the supply of electricity or water to our major cities by making a minor change to a software programme, albeit one with potentially disastrous consequences. We need to look at those issues. I believe that NATO has a role in that respect.

My final point relates to the United States, which has already been referred to several times. We have heard about the so-called pivot towards Asia, President Obama’s strategy of leading from behind and all the other concerns that we have as Europeans. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly provides one of the few forums for members of the US House of Representatives and the Canadian Parliament to come to meetings at which we can have regular discussions with them. Sadly, given the nature of the insane political system in the United States and two-year elections to the House of Representatives, it is difficult for its members to get abroad very often, because they have to spend all their time raising election campaign money or fighting re-elections, normally in their primaries.

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is important, because it means that there is a group of Americans from the Republicans and the Democrats who have had contact with and learnt about European politics. In the same way, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly provides a way for people from European countries to understand the politics of other countries better. The current President of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for many years. I am sure that that was important, given that he comes from the AK party, which comes out of an Islamist tradition. He has clearly learnt a great deal and built confidence and understanding with other European parliamentarians and those from across the Atlantic.

The forum that is provided, the specialist committees and the reports that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly publishes provide members of Parliaments in different countries with vital information that they would not always get from their own Ministries of Defence—I am glad that the Minister is in his place to hear this. In the more than 10 years that I have been attending meetings of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I have found that the access we get to high-level meetings and the information we get in those meetings is often far superior to the level of information I used to get as a member of the Select Committee on Defence or the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is not something to be proud of.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Mike Gapes and Hugh Bayley

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes]

Thank you, Mr Hoyle. I will, as always, take your sagacious advice.

We need to look at the consequences of the way in which our economy is integrated globally, and the knock-on consequences of our competitive position in European markets. We need a review of fuel taxation, taking account of the position of the haulage industry and the discrepancies and disparities between different parts of the UK—I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) said about the north-east region. There are difficulties and we need to look at this issue in the round. It is eminently sensible to have a comprehensive review of fuel taxation policy, as called for in the amendment.

Everybody agrees that the current arrangement is not working well. There is a huge amount of public disquiet—all of us receive e-mails and letters on the subject, and the Federation of Small Businesses and others write to us. People are concerned about high fuel prices. There are things we can control, such as not increasing VAT on fuel, and there are things we cannot control, such as the impact of global events, but as long as we have an economy that is dependent on fossil fuels and oil, we will always be vulnerable to such things. The debate embraces wider issues than are dealt with in the terms of the amendment. I will not talk about those issues now Mr Hoyle, but it is important that we address them in a comprehensive review of fuel taxation policy. I therefore support the amendment.

[Hugh Bayley]

First, I want to compare the records on fuel taxation of the most recent Labour Government and the previous Conservative Government. My view is that the Labour Government were a great deal kinder to the motorist, and the following figures are provided by the current Government. Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that in 1990, when the Conservatives were in power, 59% of the price paid at the pump by the motorist and road haulier for unleaded petrol was taken by the Government in fuel taxation, and that it rose to 75% during the following seven years of Conservative rule; the Government therefore took more and more and more in taxation. When Labour was in power, however, the proportion of the price of unleaded petrol taken in fuel taxation fell to 65%. The figures for diesel are almost the same. Under the Conservatives, the tax take rose from 57% to 74%, whereas Labour brought it down to 64%.

I would like the Economic Secretary to the Treasury to answer one question in her response, on the following subject. Since the general election, Government policy—not just Conservative policy, but Conservative and Liberal Democrat policy—has been to increase the tax on fuel by about 3p a litre through the increase in VAT and to give back roughly a third of that, 1p a litre, through the reduction in duty. That policy will slightly help road hauliers, because the duty element will reduce. The VAT element increases, but hauliers are able to recover the VAT, or at least pass it on in the VAT they charge their customers. So the effect of the Government’s policy will be to clobber the private motorist to the tune of 2p a litre, because they will have to pay the VAT increase out of their own pockets, while providing slight relief to businesses, particularly hauliers. I say “slight” because the price of fuel has increased as a result of a number of factors, including the increase in the cost of oil and the fall in the value of the pound on the international exchanges. So motorists and hauliers have been clobbered by the market and by the Government, but hauliers are being hit slightly less hard than the private motorist because they are able to recover the VAT increase.

My question to the Economic Secretary is as follows: is it a deliberate act of Government policy to make life slightly easier for businesses but to clobber the private citizen, or is it just an accident that that has happened? This is one of the things that ought to be studied in the review that the Opposition amendment proposes. We should examine the relative merits of taxing fuel for vehicles through VAT as opposed to through fuel duty, and who the gainers and losers are.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) made a very powerful speech about the impact that the increase in VAT on fuel has had on family budgets, and the impact that inflation generally, and fuel inflation in particular, is having on families who are having their earnings squeezed. My Front-Bench colleagues’ amendment proposes that the review ought to consider that matter.

I would like such a review also to consider one other issue, because I do not believe that the Government have yet done so—although I would be delighted to be corrected if they have carried out the sort of analysis that I propose. The review should also examine the impact that taxation has on the demand for fuel. The previous Conservative Government, one and a half decades ago, introduced a fuel price escalator. I understand that their reason for doing so was environmental: they wanted to increase the price of fuel to depress the demand for it, and so reduce carbon emissions. That was the policy intention, and it is one of the reasons why Conservative policies cost taxpayers and consumers so much. I mentioned that the fuel tax take rose from 59% to 75% in their last seven years in office. I wonder whether the Minister can tell me whether that sharp increase in fuel taxation under the previous Conservative Government actually did depress the demand for fuel, because that is an important consideration. If we change the marginal rate of fuel taxation, economics suggest that there should be some elasticity in demand.

The Government say that they want to be the greenest ever, so they ought to consider the carbon emission consequences of changes to fuel duty and VAT on fuel. I hope that Treasury Ministers have taken advice on that from both the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Transport. They ought to have done, if they really are—[Interruption.] Does the Financial Secretary to the Treasury want to intervene? No, he is back in his seat. The Government ought to take advice before they make such proposals, so that they can assess the environmental impact of a fiscal measure. I am waiting to hear from a Minister, but it sounds as though that has not happened. It ought to if the Government are serious about the environmental consequences of their fiscal policy.