Sri Lanka

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It is early days, but I spoke to Foreign Minister Marapana yesterday, and our Prime Minister is due to speak to the Sri Lankan Prime Minister this afternoon. Our offer is there to support them in any way possible, but one of the things that we can do is what this House is doing this afternoon. We have had a nearly full house of people from all political parties wanting to show their solidarity with our friends in Sri Lanka, and I think that that is something of which we can be rightly proud.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I should like to associate myself with the comments of my Mancunian colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), and to send my deepest sympathy to Lord Keith Bradley and his family today. There are 1.2 million Catholics in Sri Lanka who will be frightened to go to mass this coming Sunday. The Church aid agencies are saying to me today that the two priorities are security intelligence, to help the Government there, and expertise to help to rebuild family lives. The Foreign Secretary eloquently covered those two matters in his statement, but will he personally undertake to look at how well the Foreign and Commonwealth Office does in those two areas, to help to inform the Mountstephen review?

[Mr Hunt]

I would of course be happy to do that. Sadly, what happened in Sri Lanka will colour the review and make us consider the issues around terrorism more fully. When we originally set up the review, we were perhaps not thinking that that would be such a big focus, but I think it must be.

Gaza Border Deaths: UNHRC Inquiry

Mike Kane Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The former Foreign Secretary’s letter made reference to “familiar parameters” in relation to the middle east peace process—the two-state solution, the 1967 borders and the like—because it appeared in the first instance that the envoys, Mr Kushner and Mr Greenblatt, wanted to take a different approach. They took the view that the cleverest minds in the world had been at this for 50 years without finding an answer, and that just maybe it was worth while looking at something different. They started with that approach, only to be reminded by everyone in the region that, while their approach had an honesty of its own, they could not neglect history, they could not neglect what had happened over the years and they could not neglect Oslo. What the former Foreign Secretary was seeking to do with states was to remind us that they still provide a foundation, whatever imaginative ideas the envoys might come up with and which we should encourage. Consequently, those talks have continued but they have not happened in a manner to bring everyone together, because the time is not yet right for that. However, the UK—myself and the current Foreign Secretary—remain of the view that the middle east peace process absolutely has to be at the top of the agenda in the region, and we will do everything we can to work towards that.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that in this polemic debate there is still a role for neutral mediation in finding Israeli and Palestinian peace, even though some of our world partners have abandoned that notion? What steps can the UK practically take with our partners to fill that void?

[Alistair Burt]

Good question. I might want to do more of that in the future myself, and I am interested in this whole process. Everything in relation to the issue gets pushed into the binary sides, and that suits those who wish to see the conflict continue—of course, there are people who wish for that. I suspect that what needs to happen is that the envoys should come up with a proposal and we should then get behind what elements we can. With the United States no longer being the sole broker, there will be a role for others. The EU, and the United Kingdom, I hope, will have a role, and I commend the UN envoys who work so hard. We need a willingness on both sides to say that they want to bring it to an end. I used to say in relation to almost everything that you cannot want peace more than the people involved, but sometimes you can. We need to keep working on this, and some of us will have a role to play in that in the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

The UK Government unequivocally condemn the appalling terror attack in Pulwama on 14 February. We are actively encouraging the Governments of both India and Pakistan to find diplomatic solutions and to refrain from actions that could jeopardise regional stability. We are also working in the UN Security Council to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I have a wonderful Chagossian community in Wythenshawe. In the light of yesterday’s International Court of Justice decision, what does the Minister have to say to that community?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I repeat what I said earlier: the court decision yesterday was an advisory opinion, not a judgment. We will continue to uphold our commitments, as we have frequently stated in this House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

11. What recent discussions he has had with his Turkish counterpart on that country’s military operations in Syria; and if he will make a statement.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

13. What recent assessment he has made of the political and security situation in Syria.

[The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)]

I discussed Afrin with the Turkish Government last week in Ankara, and stressed the importance of humanitarian assistance and protection for civilians. We welcome the progress made against Daesh in Syria. However, violence continues across the country and the humanitarian situation is dire. None of these challenges can be sufficiently tackled without progress on a political solution under the UN Geneva process.

[Alistair Burt]

Apart from changing the aphorism to include the right hon. Lady as a friend of the Kurds as well, I would say that the situation there is complex between the various parties. We recognise the concerns that Turkey has about terrorism against its borders, but we have been very clear in stressing that there should be a de-escalation and a political settlement of the issues that affect it.

[Mike Kane]

Christian Aid is saying that there are now 98,000 internally displaced people in Afrin. What assessment has the Minister made of our relationship with Turkey on this matter?

[Alistair Burt]

As I indicated, the conversations I had in Ankara last week covered humanitarian assistance and the need to be able to get in to provide that, although the situation remains one of some risk. Afrin has a number of improvised explosive devices and booby traps, which has made progress and humanitarian access difficult. I made very clear the concerns about both humanitarian assistance and the protection of civilians in any ongoing incursion in the area. We stress the need for a de-escalation as quickly as possible.

Syria: De-escalation Zones

Mike Kane Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

Well, as I told the House, there are still substantial numbers of people in Syria—around 4 million, which is around a quarter of the population—who are not under the regime’s control. Furthermore, the hon. Lady should remember that the Assad regime is basically a minority regime that seeks to impose itself on a Sunni majority in the country. It is sowing the seeds of its own destruction by its continued brutality. It is not a strategy that can work in the long term, which is why a political process has to begin now.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

On Friday, I was pressed by the Afrin diaspora in my constituency about the Turkish bombardment and invasion. I understand that today President Macron picked up the phone and spoke to President Erdoğan to remind him that the humanitarian truce applies. From what the Foreign Secretary has said, though, I am still not clear what representations Her Majesty’s Government or the Prime Minister have made to President Erdoğan to underline that the truce does apply.

[Boris Johnson]

I remind the hon. Gentleman of what I think I said pretty clearly to the House just now. Yesterday morning, at my initiative, I had a long conversation with my Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, about what is happening in Afrin, the suffering that is taking place there and the UK Government’s strong desire that restraint should be shown—notwithstanding Turkey’s security concerns, which we all understand—and that the primary focus should be on the political process in Geneva and on the defeat of Daesh.

Points of Order

Mike Kane Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Far be it from me to rain on the hon. Gentleman’s parade after he has shown such considerable ingenuity and sense of humour to raise this matter. The convention, of course, applies only to visits that are undertaken on official business, but I am glad the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter. I am pleased to say that, so far, no Member of Parliament representing a Manchester constituency has been so unkind as to raise with me the fact of my own team’s defeat at Wembley yesterday.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that I have not brought on a trickle, still less a flood. I was admiring the forbearance and courtesy of the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane). I hope that he is enjoying his day, possibly more than I have been enjoying mine.

Bill Presented

Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary Greg Clark, supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Secretary Chris Grayling, Secretary Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom and Claire Perry, presented a Bill to make provision for the imposition of a cap on rates charged to domestic customers for the supply of gas and electricity; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 168) with explanatory notes (Bill 168-EN).

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I thank my hon. Friend for a really excellent question. It is one thing for us to drive Daesh out of Mosul and Raqqa, but we must ensure that the reasons it sprouted in those cities do not recur and that the Sunni minority in Iraq have conditions of governance that give them confidence in the future of their country.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

T5. Not since the Suez crisis have the United Kingdom Government been so comprehensively defeated at the United Nations as they were last week over the Chagos Islands. In this week’s spirit of bipartisan co-operation, should the Foreign Secretary not just grant the right of return?

[Boris Johnson]

I respectfully disagree with the hon. Gentleman. In point of fact, we secured rather more positive votes than we expected. As it happens, the other side of the case got fewer than half the members of the UN in support of its cause. Most impartial observers would agree that that side of the case had been substantially weakened as a result—not that it was a strong case to begin with.

Chagos Islands

Mike Kane Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My hon. Friend answers his own questions in a way. Yes, the islands are low-lying and so do face some of the perils of climate change, although I hope that recent decisions and the actions of Governments will stop the water level rising any further. He is correct in saying that there is an understanding that we would cede the islands to the Mauritians in the event that they were no longer needed for defence purposes.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I believe this decision to be wrong. I also believe that the FCO has not comported itself well in how this information has come out. This morning I spoke to my constituent, Louis Elyse, who is the leader of the small Chagossian community in Wythenshaw and Sale East. He is utterly heartbroken and said that it was cruel and unusual that the KPMG report gave so much hope only for it to be undermined in such a way by Government yesterday.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

It is not entirely fair to say that the KPMG report was undermined by Government. The report gave a whole range of possible scenarios, and consultation then followed. I say again that only 25% of the 832 people who responded after further discussions indicated that they would want to return. These are very, very small numbers that would, under the KPMG report, trigger a very high cost per capita. I very much hope that the package we have announced will benefit those of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents who qualify for assistance as Chagossians. It is on those people on his own doorstep that I would like to concentrate the expenditure of this money. We are very happy, in the FCO and DFID, to discuss how that might take place.

Aleppo and Syria

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who has been such a powerful, consistent and long-standing voice on these issues in the House. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for securing this important debate.

The situation in Syria is truly horrendous, and I want to focus on the humanitarian catastrophe. In Aleppo and the Idlib governorate, 2 million people are living without water or electricity, and there are attacks on health facilities. Across Syria as a whole, there are 470,000 people who have lost their lives, 8 million people who are internally displaced and more than 4 million refugees.

We can rightly be proud of our role in providing aid in the region, and I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for International Development to his place. We have seen £1.35 billion in UK aid to the region since 2012—money well spent. However, concern has been raised by a range of humanitarian, civil society and human rights organisations that the Assad regime is controlling deliveries of aid to the detriment of rebel-held areas. That raises serious questions for the United Nations—questions I would like the Government to raise with it.

May I echo what the right hon. Gentleman said about the heroic efforts of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey in coping with the massive numbers of refugees coming to their countries? The International Development Committee recognised that in its report in January on the Syrian refugee crisis. We also said in that report that we would welcome a decision by the Government to resettle 3,000 unaccompanied children. I would like an update today from the Government on what progress they are making on the former Prime Minister’s pledge to take 20,000 vulnerable people through a resettlement scheme, on the pledge to take 3,000 vulnerable children from the region and on the pledge to take children from Greece, Italy and France. I raised that yesterday with the Home Secretary, who said that around 50 children have been accepted so far. I would like to see that accelerated, because we have a duty to act here, in the same way that we have a duty to act there.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an extraordinarily powerful point. However, the resettlement programme is absolutely stuck in the mud. In Greater Manchester, agreement cannot be reached between the city authorities and the Government because the Government refuse to pay the money that is required to get these children and other Syrian refugees to Manchester, where we are willing to accept them. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Stephen Twigg]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. The people of Liverpool have made a similar pledge, as have the city council and the mayor of Liverpool. The National Audit Office published a report last month on this very issue, in which it praised the progress made by local government in the last year but pointed to some of the issues my hon. Friend has highlighted—not least that it is not clear what funding will be available to support local authorities beyond the first-year costs.

Will the Foreign Secretary address another aspect of the current crisis? Some 70,000 Syrian refugees are currently in what is known as the “berm”, which is a demilitarised zone between Syria and Jordan. Those 70,000 people are, effectively, being prevented from going to the safe space of Jordan. Our former colleague, Stephen O’Brien, who is now the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has described conditions at the berm as truly dire. My understanding is that a plan to deal with the crisis has been agreed by the United Nations but not yet by Jordan. Will the Foreign Secretary use his good offices to pursue this as a matter of urgency with the Jordanian Government?

Earlier this year the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield and another former International Development Secretary, Clare Short, brought to the International Development Committee’s attention the issue of the unintended consequences of counter-terrorism legislation for the delivery of aid. Several non-governmental organisations have been in touch with the Committee in recent weeks to raise that question and, in particular, two areas that require action from the Government.

The first area is the need to ease the concerns of banks. My understanding is that even when NGOs are fully compliant with counter-terrorism legislation, banks are sometimes nervous about lending, leading to delays in processing payments and the aid not getting delivered. The second is the need to use our good offices with Turkey. My understanding is that it is not always easy for NGOs to function on the Turkish side of the border region between Syria and Turkey. For example, Syria Relief UK has told us that it has been waiting for its application to establish an office in southern Turkey to be processed, and that the Turkish authorities can be overly restrictive about the means by which they allow funds to be transferred to Syria. I realise these are rather technical points, but they are about how aid can most effectively be delivered, and I would be grateful to Ministers if they addressed those points during this debate.

The scale of the challenge is truly enormous. The heartbreaking scenes mentioned by colleagues on both sides of the House, particularly those in Aleppo, touch us all. They touch our constituents and they touch people in all parts of this country. I am pleased that several speakers have reaffirmed the important principle of the responsibility to protect, which arose from what happened in the 1990s in Rwanda and the Balkans. In the meantime, we need urgent action to secure the safe delivery of aid to all parts of Syria.

Syria

Mike Kane Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I will answer just the latter point, for brevity. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we pay tribute to the British capability, which I have seen with my own eyes in places such as Srebrenica. It is important that we gain the intelligence that is needed to hold these people to account, so that the verification processes actually take place. That can only be done, as we saw in Ramadi, once the area has been made safe from all the booby traps. That work is commencing as we speak.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

May I say that the Minister has comported himself well at the Dispatch Box today? If there is no cessation of violence in this instance, is there a plan B?

[Mr Ellwood]

I think it is best to avoid discussion of a plan B. We need to make this work, because the situation has gone on for too long. I began by saying that we are now in our sixth year. There is a recognition that the international community is coming together around the table for the first time. We have not previously had a situation in which Iran and Saudi Arabia—and, indeed, Russia and the United States—have been at the table. We are facing a number of difficulties and complexities, but that should not mean that we do not try to find solutions for the stability of Syria in the longer term.