Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Nusrat Ghani

Report stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you. I call the Minister to wind up.

[Ms Ghani]

I thank everybody for their contributions, which have been measured and passionate. Many important points have been raised and I shall do my best to respond to as many as I can.

We have had quite a long list of speakers: the hon. Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Stirling (Alyn Smith); the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn); the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous); the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford); the hon. Members for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Arfon (Hywel Williams), for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for Reading East (Matt Rodda), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), and for Bath (Wera Hobhouse).

We also heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash), for Watford (Dean Russell), and for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker); my right hon. Friends the Members for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), and for Clwyd West (Mr Jones); my hon. Friends the Members for Yeovil (Mr Fysh), for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici), and for Waveney (Peter Aldous). I will try my best to respond to as many issues raised as I can.

Obviously, I am here to support the Government’s amendments, and I will go through in detail the amendments tabled by the Opposition. They fundamentally misunderstand that this is an enabling Bill, or they are deliberately trying to delay, deny or dilute what we are trying to achieve, which is, basically, delivering the Brexit that we promised the public: the promise that we would free ourselves from EU law and make UK law sovereign. Laws and regulations that manage our lives should be rooted here in this country and that is a law that should be supreme. Fundamentally, that is what we are trying to achieve.

Much has been said about the dashboard. I should be clear: at the moment, the figure we have identified and verified for EU law is 3,200 and we expect it to be 4,000. So it is what we were expecting and the dashboard will be updated. As I said earlier, officials have been working for more than 18 months and they will continue to work with officials across all Departments and with officials in devolved authorities.

Afghanistan

Debate between Nigel Evans and Nusrat Ghani

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the armed forces, especially those who reside in my constituency of Wealden. I also want to take a moment to pay tribute to all those Afghan men and women who were brutalised for 17 years under the Taliban, did everything that they could to rebuild their country, and once again will have to face a Taliban without us by their side.

There are many who have served in Afghanistan on these Benches. I had a very brief moment in Kabul. For 17 years under the Taliban, no female voice was heard in the Afghan Parliament, the Loya Jirga. I worked for the BBC World Service and we rounded up some very brave women to make sure that female voices were heard for the first time in the Loya Jirga. We did that under the threat of the Taliban, but I had a British passport, and I knew that I could come home and be safe. I was naively optimistic in thinking that these women’s lives would be improved for the better. I am now receiving phone calls telling me that it is game over.

It has taken 20 years to have 69 female MPs and they will watch us speak here today knowing what will happen if we cannot get them out, and soon. They cannot wait for five years. It is not just them, but their families, everyone who has worked with them, and everyone in an NGO who has worked to un-Talibanise the laws and processes in Afghanistan who are now targeted. It means that, after 20 years, we will have to start all over again. This has been catastrophic, cack-handed, cruel and humiliating. This is the watershed moment of the west’s failure.

I want to say two very quick things, hopefully to try to be constructive. I need to understand how our intelligence has failed, how the imagination of those providing the intelligence has failed, and, if we are relying on this intelligence now going forward, how we can be assured that they know to do the right thing, whether it is in relation to our regional partners, the Taliban or any further security issue. I would like to have a better understanding of where our parameters are when it comes to dealing with the Taliban, of what leverage we have to ensure safe passage, and of whether any aid funding will reach the people whom it needs to get to.

My final point is about the radicalisation that is going to emerge from Afghanistan. There will be not just the extremism that the Taliban will promote, but a fight in the middle east and Asia about who represents Islam. Members may not agree with me, but some countries have been trying to become more liberal since 9/11 to take away the taint around Islam. Will they now have to become even more conservative and brutal to compete with the Taliban? That will bring forward a new version of extremism where we cannot rely on any safety and security for women in the middle east or in any Islamic state.

Finally, may I ask anybody listening—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Sorry, but more than half the people are not going to get in—I do apologise. I call Layla Moran.

Beijing Winter Olympics and Chinese Government Sanctions

Debate between Nigel Evans and Nusrat Ghani

Thursday 15th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

I must put on record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) for cutting his speech short to allow me to speak this afternoon; I am incredibly grateful for his generosity. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton)—my good friend—for bringing this very important debate to the House. He has been a very passionate and powerful campaigner on Tibet, Hong Kong and the Uyghur, and his integrity on some of these key issues of the day continues to be a source of inspiration to all of us.

Before my words are misinterpreted, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not generally for boycotts—that is not the kind of Conservative I am. I am rising to speak in favour of a diplomatic boycott, which is very different from a sporting boycott. A diplomatic boycott of the Olympic games is nothing new, as has been mentioned in many speeches today. I also put on record the fact that these Olympics will no doubt take place and that I will be supporting our British athletes and hoping that they win gold in every competition that takes place. But that is very different to supporting the CCP as it sportswashes what is happening in Xinjiang.

As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am one of the MPs sanctioned by the Chinese Communist party, and not for committing gross human rights abuses or being a terrorist or a warlord—unless my colleagues who have been sanctioned too have something that they wish to share about themselves—but speaking up against genocide. If my Government think they have any way of persuading the CCP to conduct itself any differently in the face of our values and norms, I am afraid they have lost the plot completely.

If there is any confusion on this House’s views on genocide, let me say that just three months ago this Parliament took an unprecedented decision, based on the evidence, to unanimously declare that all five markers of genocide were being met at the hands of the CCP against the Uyghur in Xinjiang. Let me just remind people about this. Of course one of the markers is killing members of a group. Others are causing serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births—we know that is happening, with the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women; and the barbaric act that is taking place against Uyghur families, with Uyghur children in their hundreds of thousands being separated from their parents. That is what is taking place in China and this is what they do not want us to talk about as these games take place.

Of course we are signatories to the 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which is why I would never use the word lightly. Before the Minister at the Dispatch Box has to hold the embarrassing position that only the UN can declare genocide, I must point out that we know the UN is broken when it comes to preventing or even researching genocide when it comes to China.

We should also reflect on what this House has said. We are not the only ones in the world who recognise that the evidence exists that genocide is taking place. The Netherlands, Slovakia, Canada and the Czech Republic have all debated their own motions, and Biden’s Administration have continued to declare the situation in Xinjiang an ongoing, active genocide. More importantly, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wonder whether you could take a message back to Mr Speaker, reflecting on what the US Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said about the Olympic games. She is on the record as saying that she supports a “diplomatic boycott” on those grounds. Mr Speaker may have an opportune moment at some point to let us know what his position is, because somebody in this place has to reflect the view of this House; unfortunately, I am worried that the Government may not be bold enough to hold that line.

My anxiety is that if we have diplomats and politicians attending the Beijing Olympics—the genocide Olympics, as they have been referred to—it enables the CCP to sportswash what is happening in Xinjiang and it makes a mockery of everything we stand for. When the Foreign Secretary talks about:

“Internment camps, arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labour, torture and forced sterilisation—all on an industrial scale”—[Official Report, 12 January 2021; Vol. 687, c. 160.]

what does it mean if we then turn up to these genocide Olympics? I know it is difficult for the Government, but politics is about choices and at some point we have to defend our values and our British laws. A diplomatic boycott will have an impact and is a low-risk, high-reward way of establishing global Britain’s values. As the Foreign Secretary has already been on record to say

“We have a moral duty to respond.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2021; Vol. 687, c. 160.]

And we can, by making sure that we do not have a diplomatic presence at the Olympics.

Such a measure is nothing new. A former Prime Minister, David Cameron, did not attend the 2014 winter Olympics after the country in question passed anti-LGBT laws. Let us remind ourselves that the CCP believes that homosexuality is a mental illness and it is killing or destroying millions of Uyghur people. The situation is no better—I would argue it is much worse—so we should not be turning up diplomatically at the genocide Olympics.

There is some anxiety that we cannot take action unilaterally, but that is also nonsense. Many Parliaments around the world are currently debating, discussing or putting motions in place to ensure that politicians and diplomats will not be turning up at these Olympics. It is also quite exciting to note how forceful and bold the Biden Administration are being on this. Just last night, a motion was moved in the Senate to declare that all goods coming in from Xinjiang are slave labour goods and will now be blacklisted and not allowed to be imported into America. These are the motions we should be moving in this House; our position should not be to say, on the one hand, that this is an industrial-scale version of human rights abuses and, on the other hand, that there is nothing we can do.

Politics is not for the fainthearted. Every decision has consequences, but a diplomatic boycott would enable us to stand by what this House and our allies believe—that a genocide is taking place in Xinjiang.

The games last 16 days, or about 1.3 million seconds. That is a second for every Uyghur imprisoned, abused or forced into labour under President Xi. We as global Britain have to make a stand. Do we stand by those oppressed, or do we stand by President Xi? A lifetime ago, the 1936 Olympics were not boycotted, and that did not stop the slaughter of millions of Jews. We cannot make the same mistake again. I urge this House to support this motion and push for a full diplomatic boycott of the genocide games.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Gavin, I do not know whether you got the message. You have up to eight minutes.

Human Rights: Xinjiang

Debate between Nigel Evans and Nusrat Ghani

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

I thank hon. and right hon. Members across the House for speaking with one voice and the appropriate tone in considering the crime of all crimes, genocide. There is absolute recognition that all five markers of genocide have been met. The House, I hope, will speak with one voice in a few moments and unanimously support my motion. Unfortunately, that puts the Government in a very difficult position because at some point they will have to undertake their UN obligations.

China sanctioned us for opposing its crimes against the Uyghur. Parliament must now prove that it will not be cowed and back my motion unanimously. We will continue to stand up for the Uyghur people.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House believes that Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide; and calls on the Government to act to fulfil its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and all relevant instruments of international law to bring it to an end.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Could those Members now leaving do so in a covid-friendly way? We are going to move to the next business. My suggestion is that, while Mr Fletcher is speaking, we sanitise the Government Dispatch Box only.