Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Owing to the debate under Standing Order 24 that has just ended, the time available for the debate on the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill has been reduced. It is therefore the Government’s intention, if necessary, to make more time available to complete the debate that is about to commence at a later date. I will give more details in the business statement tomorrow.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that clarification.
Iran
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. May I remind Mr Baron that he has already taken 20 minutes? This is an over-subscribed debate, and we will impose an eight-minute limit on speeches after the Front-Bench contributions. He would be generous to his colleagues if he began to draw his remarks to close.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Will hon. Members resume their seats? I will explain the procedure to be applied so the House can follow what is going on. I will call an Opposition Member next. The Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, whom I will call after the first speaker from the Opposition side. I will then call another Opposition Back-Bench Member, then we go to both Front Benches. The time limit will then be formally applied. I say to those Members whom I call before that if they exceed eight minutes, plus two minutes for interventions taken, I will cough loudly. I may become even more explicit than that. I call Michael McCann.
Mr McCann
Sadly, it is a consistency that runs through the regime, like lettering through a stick of rock, alongside all the actions of the Iranian Government and the Iranian leadership. What it tells me about the leadership that we are dealing with is that we must consider all possible measures to determine how to move forward.
Do I believe, as the motion suggests, that the use of force against Iran would be wholly counter-productive? I do not know the precise answer to that question, but what I do know is that ruling it out would be counter-productive. It would say to an extreme set of people that their tactics have paid off, and the willingness of the Iranian regime to ignore the international community and six UN Security Council resolutions, and to repress the Iranian people’s rights, tells me that diplomacy and sanctions should not be our only options. The Foreign Secretary pointed out on television yesterday, quite properly, the complex nature of the threat, and for those reasons, nothing should be ruled out.
I appreciate that many wish to speak, so I will finish on this point. Two weeks ago at a local high school in my constituency, I listened to a gentleman named Harry Bibring, who, as a 12-year-old in March 1938, witnessed Nazi troops march into Vienna. Days later, the persecution of the Jews started in that city. In that same year, the Peace Pledge Union, a British pacifist organisation, asked people to make this pledge:
“I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war.”
I am sure that all would agree that those are laudable aims and that all of us would be prepared to sign up to that pledge to remove all causes of war. But I am also acutely aware of Edmund Burke’s quote:
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
That is why I oppose the motion and will support the amendment.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Thank you for your self-restraint. I am sure that Sir Malcolm will do likewise.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Panetta was probably referring to the consequences of an Israeli attempt to damage Iranian nuclear capability which, because the Israelis do not have cruise missiles or bunker-busting bombs, would clearly have a much more limiting effect, even if it had some limited success.
In the interests of time, I shall share my final point with the House. Sometimes the inference of those who argue against even the option of a military response is that the world would be a much more peaceful, happy and gentle place if only we renounced the use of force, even as an option, in resolving this dispute. I say to my hon. Friend, however, that we have to contemplate— for a very brief moment, Mr Deputy Speaker—the consequences of Iran becoming a nuclear weapon state. There is not just the one response, to which my hon. Friend referred—whereby the Saudis themselves, pretty certainly, feel obliged to become a nuclear weapon state, Egypt and Turkey perhaps follow them and, therefore, the middle east, which is already the most dangerous part of the world, becomes incredibly volatile for all the perfectly obvious reasons that I do not have to go into. The only alternative, which my hon. Friend touched on, is that in order to discourage any Saudi, Egyptian or Turkish response of going nuclear the United States would have to give a nuclear umbrella guarantee to the Arab and Gulf states of the region, just as it has to NATO members, to Japan and to South Korea. In each case, when the United States gives such a guarantee, however, the guarantee is not credible unless the United States has bases in the area, as it has had in western Europe and has in the far east.
My hon. Friend’s view leads to the point that, if Iran became a nuclear weapon state, to have any prospect of discouraging the Saudis and others from becoming nuclear powers themselves, we would have to envisage not just for a few weeks, a few months or the odd year or so, but for the indefinite future, the middle east as a region where the United States, far from disengaging, became more committed and involved than it ever has—committed by guarantee not just to go to war, but if necessary to use its nuclear weapons in the defence of what would then be its allies, in the sense that NATO is an alliance, alongside the need for bases in the region, with all the inflammatory consequences of American troops in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf on a permanent basis.
The stakes are very high, and my hon. Friend cannot just sleep quietly, saying, “I don’t think we should have the military option, and everything would be peaceful if only people accepted the judgment that I have come to.” It has to be an option. We must hope that it never comes to that, but it cannot be ruled out at this stage. It is no one’s interests that it should, and therefore I commend the amendment to the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I call Mr Jack Straw. The same unofficial time guidelines still apply.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Do I understand you correctly that the time limit is now on, Mr Deputy Speaker?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The eight-minute limit now comes into effect, with the usual injury time for interventions.
Somalia
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Nine Members are trying to catch my eye. The winding-up speeches will start at 5.36 pm, so if hon. Members take roughly between seven and eight minutes each everyone will have an equal footing. If Members cannot show self-constraint, I will help them.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I am not prepared with a suitable Shakespearean quote to follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), but I want to pick up on his last point about humanitarian assistance. Somalia, of course, was the country worst hit by the famine in the horn of Africa. Just as one cannot deal with the famine without looking at the underlying security issues, one cannot approach the security issues without taking into account the famine and the circumstances that led to it.
I want to make a couple of points on the famine in the horn of Africa. It has been said time and again that it was both predictable and predicted. I am sure that Members will have seen the excellent report recently produced by Save the Children and Oxfam, which concluded:
“There were clear early warning signs many months in advance, yet there was insufficient response until it was far too late.”
There was a failure to respond at many levels—by international organisations, international agencies, countries throughout the world and countries in the region. The UK Government were one of the first to respond, and their role was very positive, but together the world community did not act, in spite of the repeated warnings that many Members will have read and heard about over the past year.
The question must be: why was there such a failure to act in time when there were such clear warnings? Several features had their role to play, including a lack of flexibility among the system in place to respond to the crisis and, in Somalia in particular, the non-existence of state organisations and a lack of security for NGOs and other actors, but the report from Oxfam and Save the Children makes another important point: when such information from early warnings systems is produced, action has to be based upon those early warnings, and it has to take place at that point, not when one is certain that there is going to be a crisis. If we wait until there is certainty, we will find that the crisis is well upon us and much harder to deal with.
Governments and NGOs have a difficult issue to deal with in their approach to crises. The resources of countries and NGOs are of course limited, and I can well foresee the criticism that would be made if emergency supplies were put in place and then not fully utilised, but we must accept the conclusion is that, if necessary, a risk must be taken by making early preparations to avert such famines. That is why the proposals in the recent humanitarian emergency response review, the Ashdown report, are relevant. Its recommendations on stockpiles of supplies and the means to deliver them have to be considered and put in place in Somalia and elsewhere, so I should be interested to know how the Government will apply the report’s conclusions in their approach to the conference in a couple of weeks’ time.
We are focused on Somalia, but there are increased warnings of another hunger crisis breaking out elsewhere in Africa, in the Sahel region. This debate is of course about Somalia, but it is noticeable and concerning that many features that are described as contributing to the potential crisis in the Sahel are similar to those that we heard about a couple of years ago in relation to the crisis in the horn of Africa. We are told that there were late and poor rains in 2011, that food prices are now too high for people to afford at markets and that instability is arising both from internal factors and from the knock-on effects of developments elsewhere in Africa. I should therefore be interested to know also how the Government will ensure that the international community responds in advance of any crisis in the Sahel.
That point relates to the Somalia issue, because, as we have seen in the horn of Africa, famine can destabilise a much wider area than the one most badly affected. Given that we face also a worrying increase in the tension between South Sudan and Sudan, we in the world community could well be faced with a massive area, stretching from west to east Africa, of hunger, disease and instability, which, as well as damaging the countries and peoples directly affected, is bound to have effects on neighbouring countries, including those that have recently made substantial economic, developmental and political progress.
Those are big issues, and there are limits to what the UK can do. This country has been a major provider of emergency aid under this and the previous Governments, but we have to get the world to mobilise and to focus consistently on the issues. The Save the Children and Oxfam report makes the point that one reason for the international community’s lack of response to the developing crisis in the horn of Africa might have been other events, such as the Arab spring, the global recession, and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and I am sure that that is right, but there are certainly as many—if not more—crises affecting the world now as there were two years ago, so there has to be some way of providing a continued focus on the long-term solutions that are required to prevent such crises from developing in the first place.
I do not have time to develop all the points that I would have made. However, we need to consider the kind of proposals that were outlined in the Save the Children and Oxfam report, such as the proposal for a charter to end extreme hunger. That would look at longer-term solutions to ensure, above all, that countries have resilience so that when crises and natural disasters happen, they can respond internally without having to rely on emergency assistance on every occasion. There is obviously also a need to resolve the security issues.
Finally, the role of the African Union is extremely important. It should not be seen just as a proxy by which richer, western powers can get forces in on the cheap; it must be something much more than that. At the end of the day, African countries, leaders, peoples and organisations, such as the African Union, will have to provide the long-term support to deal with immediate security crises and other crises. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what further support the UK can give the African Union, both in its organisation and for specific missions, so that it has the ability to respond to crises, such as those that we are seeing in the horn of Africa and that we may see in western Africa. Clearly, it will not provide the sort of development assistance that comes from richer and more developed countries, but its role can be important, and should become increasingly important, in providing security, technical and political support. I hope that it will have the full support of the UK Government as it develops that role.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I am extremely grateful to you for taking note of the time constraints, Mr Lazarowicz.
Sarah Newton
I do not believe that my point reflected negatively on the vast majority of Somalis living in our country, who make a very positive contribution. That point has been made well by Members this afternoon and I concur with it. However, we must not put our heads in the sand and ignore professionals who are accountable to this Parliament and the professional advice that they give us.
I welcome what the Government are doing to re-establish an embassy in Somalia and the efforts of the UN to re-establish its base in Mogadishu.
In the weeks around the forthcoming major conference on Somalia, hosted by the Prime Minister, I hope that our media play their part in helping people up and down the country—especially people in places such as my constituency, who do not have day-to-day contact with the Somali community—to understand why it is important that they support Britain’s continued involvement in Somalia. As we are all in the Chamber today, it is clear that all parties understand that, but a large percentage of the people who have sent us here do not really understand it and have reservations about why we are continuing our support. That is quite understandable, because people are often susceptible to compassion fatigue, especially when their standard of living is being squeezed and some people are losing their jobs. Many fear that good money is being wasted. With so many conflicts erupting around the world, they might tire of even trying to keep up with what is going on. As taxpayers’ money is being spent, it is vital that we all do our bit to make the case for support. I believe that people will want to support our efforts in Somalia if they understand the risks to our national security and believe that we are really making a positive difference on the ground.
Today, I want to share with colleagues the positive difference that humanitarian aid is making to thousands of people in Somalia, who, we must not forget, are among the poorest and longest-suffering on the planet. I have mentioned ShelterBox in the House before. It is a great Cornish emergency humanitarian aid charity that provides boxes containing shelter, basic cooking equipment, water sanitisation equipment and tools. Its ingenuity in responding to different situations has enabled it to deliver a remarkable array of services in Somalia in its sturdy boxes. The boxes are all packed in and distributed from Cornwall, and enabled by donations and volunteers. Over the past few years, several thousand boxes have been sent to Somalia, and nearly a further 500 boxes, including 50 classroom boxes, are currently en route. That shipment of direct aid is enough to provide shelter for about 1,000 families.
Due to the security risks of working in Somalia at the moment, ShelterBox does not actually have any volunteers on the ground there. It is instead working with a partner agency, a French medical charity called Women and Health Alliance International, which has a long history of working in Somalia. At the main displacement camp in Mogadishu, it has already set up a health centre, where there is a hospitalisation facility using the disaster relief tents donated by ShelterBox. It is providing primary health care consultation rooms, a delivery suite and even a small hospital. The ShelterBox tents not only provide a clean, sterile area for the medical staff to work in but allow patients to be hospitalised while staying with their families rather than being separated. Pregnant women also have privacy while they are having their antenatal consultations and giving birth. The facility has been described by the doctors on the ground as having made
“a dramatic difference to the well-being of hundreds of Somali families in dire need of assistance in Mogadishu.”
ShelterBox’s success in helping people in Somalia is a result of having worked around the world for many years building effective working relationships with local organisations that do not have the bureaucracy and inefficiency of some of the multinational agencies. Wherever it works in the world, it works with locals and, in doing so, it tries to build capacity in those nations to deal with future disasters.
Working in partnership with other countries’ aid efforts and with people in the countries that we are supporting, so that they can develop their own capacity, is rightly at the heart of the Government’s humanitarian aid response. That theme was echoed in a recent report published by Oxfam, which stated that the UN and international non-governmental organisations provided only part of the answer to crises from Haiti to the horn of Africa.
When the Minister responds to the debate, I would appreciate his reassurance that the Government’s admirable plans to publish information on how taxpayers’ money is spent in Somalia will be implemented so that all can see it, just as donors to ShelterBox can go online and see how their money is being spent so well. Publishing that information would go some way towards reassuring my constituents that their money was being well spent and, as a result, build public support for the essential work that Britain needs to continue to do in Somalia.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
In my lifetime, Somalia has probably been the biggest and most tragic basket case in the world. It has had severe problems since well before 1991—indeed, I can recall them from when I was a boy living in Aden. However, the 2011 drought, which, as the Foreign Secretary has explained, caused the deaths of between 50,000 and 100,000 people, did, to use a pun, “take the basket”. Half of those who died may have been children, and it is time that we did something about this. Somalia’s government simply is not working and it has not worked at all since 1991. Given those sorts of conditions, it is hardly surprising that piracy flourishes; it flourishes in anarchy. Somalia’s long coast offers the perfect opportunity for attacks on shipping. Of course, shipping is vital to our nation and to many others.
On top of all that, al-Shabaab started to take over Somalia in 2006. Someone born a Somali in Mogadishu must curse. Thankfully, last August, al-Shabaab was ousted from Mogadishu but it is still a huge force in the south. That terrorist organisation imposes very violent rule. As we know and as has been mentioned, it is blocking aid to many starving Somalis. It has unrelenting belligerence, it rejects any possible peaceful political settlement and it is imposing a brutal sharia regime on the people of Somalia. It seems that Somalis are getting very tired of all this and are beginning to turn away from these people, so perhaps opportunity knocks.
With the London conference on 23 February, we must push as hard as we can to try to make a start on sorting this basket case out. The main aim of the conference must, of course, be to try to start on the road to peace and security, and getting some form of decent living standards for Somalis. The situation in Somalia is very difficult, but we must do all we can to help our fellow human beings who are unlucky enough to have been born into it. We are so lucky and they are so unlucky, so let us try to do what we can to help them.
What is really needed in order to help Somalia? What steps shall we try to aim for at the London conference? I see the Minister looking at me and wondering where this is going, so I will do my best to be on message. First, the Security Council resolution we already have does require reinforcing. The international community must show its determination. We already have a chapter VII enforcement action Security Council resolution, but we need the international community to have the courage—I was going to use a different word—to do something about it. We need enforcement action to be taken, in some form or other, to sort out Somalia and we need effective funding for all aspects of that action. I have seen what happens when we have unpaid UN battalions in the field—they flog their petrol and sell their food. There has to be proper funding and the humanitarian operations have to be supported by international action.
A timeline for action is already in place, as the end of the interim Government arrangements are scheduled for August. That gives us five months and, as I know from my own experience, quite a lot can be done in that time. However, quite a lot of that time is needed to sort out a plan. First-class leadership by international organisations and military forces on the ground is of course required. The military forces that go into Somalia must have effective, well-thought-through, practical rules of engagement. The one thing they must not do is back away from a confrontation; they must deal with any confrontation. If they back away once, they will destroy their mandate. We have to be robust about imposing a solution. First-class leadership is required, particularly on the ground, and it must be supported internationally by all Governments.
The initiative also has the continuing problem of piracy. One solution—I am not suggesting it is ideal—might be for the international anti-piracy efforts to be put on the ground in headquarters located in a port in Somalia. That might be considered during the conference, as I said when I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile).
What we require most of all at the London conference is what the Germans call a schwerpunkt, which is a Clausewitzian term that I learned in the military. It means a point of concentrated effort, and the point of concentrated effort of the London conference is to make sure that, internationally, we establish determination to sort out the problem of Somalia. That requires everyone to attend with the determination to apply the Security Council resolution to which they have already signed up and to provide the assets, resources and money to help the poor, wretched people in what is, as it stands, a dreadful country. Somalia is not blessed by God, but, my goodness, we must do our very best to try to sort things out for the people who live there and help them.
I wish the Foreign Secretary the very best of luck at the London conference. He will need it. Right now, with al-Shabaab on the back foot, this is probably the best opportunity that the international community has had for a generation to get in and help the people of Somalia. I wish the best of luck to our team at the London conference.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I call Laura Sandys and ask that she sit down no later than 5.36 pm.
National Referendum on the European Union
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Sir Stuart Bell
The hon. Gentleman can sit down because I am not giving way to him.
Teesside is the third largest port in our country. We face out to Europe and we export to Europe. The point has been made many times, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), that 50% of our exports go to Europe. Why did Nissan come to Sunderland? It is because it has the Tees and so can export to Europe. Many years ago, I heard Hilary Marquand say that in Europe we take in each others’ washing. That is perfectly true. We trade among ourselves and that trade is a rising tide that, as John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, “lifts all boats”.
The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) touched on a significant point, which I put to the Prime Minister. He mentioned that the 17 eurozone members at the weekend elected their own president, the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. The 17 members of the European Union that are in the eurozone will have their own meetings, outwith the 27 countries of which we are a member. Mr Van Rompuy said:
“Rest assured that we will narrowly and closely inform all the preparation of the summits we shall have in the eurozone, and we shall advise of the results.”
As I said carefully in my question to the Prime Minister, Mr Van Rompuy will have Germany on one side and France on the other, so where will we be? We have opted for a two-tier Europe and we have opted out. I am sure that the Prime Minister will do all that he can—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Please resume your seats. We have had 23 speakers so far, and considerably more Members than that still wish to come into the debate. To accommodate as many as we possibly can, the time limit is being reduced to four minutes, still with injury time for two interventions.
Mr Field
I disagree with that. Part of the reason for rearranging our procedures in the House and giving the Backbench Business Committee more power was to try to strike a new relationship with the electorate. What has happened? We are now having a debate that the Government presumably did not want us to have, and they are railroading their Members into supporting them with a three-line Whip. The same is happening on our side of the House.
The truth is that the Government have scored an own goal. The second big change in the House in the years I have been here, along with the cancerous effect of Europe on our democracy in this country, is that the Conservative party has changed radically. People watching the debate tonight need only look at the number of Conservative Members who wish to participate and the number of Labour Members who wish to participate. When I first came here, if someone raised the issue of Europe regularly they were cast as being slightly bonkers or very bonkers. Now we see that the Conservative party has genuinely changed on the issue. Thanks to the Government’s ham-fisted approach in imposing a three-line Whip, the country will not see how significant that change has been and how in tune the Conservative party now is with both Conservative and Labour voters in the country.
I make a plea to Members on my own side of the House. We are getting it wrong on the issue of the representation of England and appear to be a party controlled by our Scottish colleagues. Increasingly, the question will be how England is represented in this Parliament, and so far we are on the wrong side of that debate. Again tonight, by trying to force Members into the Lobby in support of the Government stance, we are in danger of alienating many Labour voters.
When I first stood for election, the turnout was 85%. Last time, it was 60%. How have we managed to turn off 25% of the electorate? It comes down to our conduct as politicians. We were going to make a small move by having debates that we, Back Benchers, could control, but the Government decided it would be better to clobber us with—
Mr MacShane
In the spirit of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), tonight I shall vote for parliamentary democracy and against plebiscites, and I urge all hon. and right hon. Members to do the same.
Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have just received a communication from an Indian paper called Daijiworld. The headline reads, “India reacts strongly to British parliamentary debate on Kashmir”. We have not even had the debate and already a parliamentary democracy is telling us that we should not be having it. That is not quite a point of order, but this really is an insult from the Indian journalists who say we should not even be debating this in our own House of Commons.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Thank you, Mr MacShane. Perhaps you have just introduced a new practice in which people stand up and say, “Nearly point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker.” You are quite right: it was nearly a point of order but it certainly was not one for the Chair. However, it has been put on the record.
Steve Baker
I am most grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution.
As I was saying, we must not deceive ourselves. Moving on to issues of freedom of movement, of association, of speech and so on, I want to mention a report by Amnesty International entitled, “India: A ‘lawless law’: Detentions under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act,” which contains a number of allegations regarding the use of preventive, administrative detentions. The contents include:
“Violations of the principle of legality…Delayed and secret reasons for detention…No access to judicial authority…Restrictions on access to legal counsel…Indefinite detention of foreign nationals…Immunity of officials…Incommunicado detention …Torture…Detention without any legal basis”.
That Amnesty International report deserves an answer.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Before the hon. Gentleman responds to that intervention, I remind him of the guidelines about the length of his contribution.
Steve Baker
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have taken my last intervention. The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) makes a good point, although I have not read that report. I am seeking to be even-handed, but even so, I have to enter this into the record for the sake of discussion. The “lawless law” report states that by using the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act
“to incarcerate suspects without adequate evidence, India has not only gravely violated their human rights but also failed in its duty to charge and try such individuals and to punish them if found guilty in a fair trial.”
I wish to express considerable humility on this point, because the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act is very much in line with the principle at least of our own control orders and terrorism prevention and investigation measures. The House should therefore not be too quick to condemn the principle of what India is doing. It is very much in line with what we have done. In my Second Reading speech on TPIMs, I condemned administrative detention outright and then withheld my vote from it, so I hope that I will escape the accusation of hypocrisy.
We need to consider how these measures arise. Why do democracies turn to such measures? I suggest that when democracy is denied, people turn away from it and end up seeking violence. I am proposing, for the people of Kashmir, a comprehensive policy of non-aggression, peace and democratic self-determination under the terms of the UN resolutions. I accept that the situation in Kashmir can only, and must, be resolved by Kashmiris, India and Pakistan, but we must acknowledge in this place the absolute moral, legal and political equality of the Kashmiri people and take whatever steps are appropriate to secure demilitarisation, democratic self-determination and a prosperous and secure future for Kashmir. I hope that the Government are listening and will take whatever steps they can.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I remind Members that there is a five-minute limit on speeches.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I have only two minutes left, so I am going to speak very fast. I wish to refer to an article written by Dr Angana Chatterji, the associate professor of social and cultural anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Along with her cameraman and a number of other people, she went to Jammu and occupied Kashmir. Her article states:
“Dirt, rubble, thick grass, hillside and flatland, crowded with graves. Signifiers of military and paramilitary terror, masked from the world. Constructed by institutions of state to conceal massacre. Placed next to homes, fields, schools, an army practice range. Unknown, unmarked. Over 940 graves in a segment of Baramulla district alone. Some containing more than one cadaver. Dug by locals, coerced by the police, on village land. Bodies dragged through the night, some tortured, burnt, desecrated. Circulating mythology claims these graves uniformly house ‘foreign militants’. Exhumation and identification have not occurred in most cases. When undertaken”—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Sadly, we have to start the wind-ups now, and I apologise to the hon. Lady.
European Union Bill
Nigel Evans Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 3.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Lords amendments 5 to 13 and 15.
Mr MacShane
Does the right hon. Gentleman recall the referendums on Scottish and Welsh devolution in the late 1970s, which required a threshold that was not reached? That was a grotesque humiliation for the Labour Government and was an exultant moment of glory for the Conservatives as Mrs Thatcher swept forward to victory. You really should not bury your successful past so quickly.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I am not trying to bury my unsuccessful past.
Mr Lidington
In 1979, I was still a university student and had other things on my mind than the devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales. If one takes the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the imposition of the threshold then and looks back at the history of the decade after, which resulted in no move towards satisfying what were genuine aspirations for a greater degree of devolved government in Scotland and Wales, it made the public disconnection from Westminster of the people in those two countries greater over the subsequent years. But this is a matter that historians can argue over.
Mr Lidington
I think that I would test the House’s patience if I were to go into that in detail, particularly as there was a debate on bail-outs a few weeks ago, in which I think my hon. Friend participated, and to which my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury responded at some length. I am sure that there will be other opportunities to question Treasury Ministers about that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. For the convenience of the House, I remind Members that just because the debate has the word “Europe” in the title, that does not mean that we can have a wide-ranging debate on European issues. Some latitude has been given, as Mr Cash knows, but could we now please look at the specific amendments?
Mr Lidington
The amendments to clause 6 would introduce huge inconsistency in the referendum lock. They would make the method used to transfer competence or power the determining factor in deciding whether or not a referendum should be held, rather than the fact of the transfer of competence or power itself. There are four ways of amending the treaties to allow transfers of power and competence from the United Kingdom to the European Union. First, there is the ordinary treaty revision procedure. Secondly, there is the first part of the simplified revision procedure, which was the method used recently to agree the recent treaty change on the eurozone stability mechanism. Thirdly, the British veto could be given up using the second part of the simplified revision procedure set out in article 48(7) of the treaty on European Union. The fourth and final way is through the use of a decision or passerelle without formal treaty change.
The Lords amendments seek to remove the last two methods from the referendum lock. I do not see the logic in this. For example, the amendments would mean that were a future UK Government to decide to give up their veto over foreign and security policy under the ordinary treaty revision procedure, there would first have to be a referendum, but if they decided to give up that veto under the passerelle decision in article 31(3), which would have exactly the same effect as a change under the ordinary revision procedure, there would be no requirement for a referendum. I do not think that the British public would understand being able to vote on a treaty change that gave up the veto but not having a say over a passerelle that did exactly the same thing, and there are other such examples. As my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Howell argued, this would be tantamount to locking the front and back doors of a house but leaving the kitchen window open. It is not the way to restore the trust of the British people.
The amendments would also draw an artificial distinction between a possible future agreement on a common European defence that would involve the creation of a single, integrated military force and other similar decisions that would not. The amendment suggests that the only controversial element would be a decision to develop a “single, integrated military force”, but there would inevitably be confusion over the extent to which such a force would be established. For example, would the establishment of an integrated command structure, an integrated unit or integrated budgets count? That lack of clarity could allow each step to be presented as “not quite” leading to a single integrated military force, and therefore “not quite” justifying a referendum. It is important that we hold to the principle that were a British Government to decide to opt in to a common European defence, that should ultimately be subject to a decision by the British people. A common defence could undermine the pre-eminence or capability of NATO, notwithstanding any assurances provided in the EU treaties. Maintaining that pre-eminence has been a long-standing concern of this and previous British Governments.
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. A time limit of eight minutes will be imposed, plus two minutes for injury time. However, I caution Members to frame a six-minute speech in their heads, because that is what they are likely to be allotted by the time they are called.
North Africa and the Middle East
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. This is a well-subscribed debate. There is a 10-minute limit on speeches with the usual injury time for two interventions.
European Union (Amendment) Act 2008
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The debate will finish at 8.41 pm, so there is slightly over half an hour left. There will be no wind-up, so the allotted time is for Back Benchers. However, there is no time limit on speeches, so if Members could please show discipline and restraint, more people will get in.
European Union Bill
Nigel Evans Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Cash
I would very much welcome the idea of having, for example, European questions in the House. I have many proposals that would make the system more efficient. I remind my right hon. Friend of the current Home Secretary’s pamphlet, which recommended not only that European Committees should have their proceedings properly advertised, but that if, for example, 150 Members decided that they wanted to have the matter in question debated on the Floor of the House, there should be a free vote on a motion to overturn a decision taken in the Council of Ministers, whether or not the Government had approved the provision there. Some of us would be more interested in the results of a vote than in a mere discussion.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Can we bring the debate back, please, to new clause 1?
Mr Lidington
I will try to bring this part of my speech to a conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker, by saying that this has been an interesting discussion of the broader themes involved. We have heard allusions to various Scandinavian models of European scrutiny.