Integrated Activity Fund: Transparency

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I say to the Minister through you that we need three things. First, we need a direct answer to the question of why the Government will not provide the information that has been asked for over the years, not just, “It’s the spy clause” or whatever else it may be. Why has not the information been made available in the way it would be on virtually every other element of Government spending, whether through the Cabinet Office, the FCO, the British Council or the Home Departments?

Secondly, how can MPs and the public judge the effectiveness of the programme if they do not know what the money is spent on? We can all produce a list of things that we would like money to be spent on, whether in these fields or others.

The third issue, which is the underlying one, is the transparency process. One of the Minister’s predecessors, Alistair Burt, was very sympathetic and helpful as far as he could be as a Minister when I and others worked with the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy on some of the Opposition activists whose experience of the Bahraini justice institutions was appalling.

I have been in Parliament for some time. Two periods have been under Labour Governments. I would class myself as an Opposition activist. There are times when I have been on the streets protesting about things—whether it is trying to help drug dealers by imprisoning the social workers or a whole range of issues, when I have challenged either our fiscal politics or our justice system. We have to believe in the rule of law, but the law is not always justice. A campaign to change the law or constitution is something that ought to be allowed and encouraged. I take pride in living in a country where I can stand outside No. 10 Downing Street and shout abuse, or at least say to a Prime Minister, “I think you ought to be a different person or a different party.” That is part of opposition and we find that, without the kind of dictatorships we had 400 years ago and without the slaughter of political opponents, we have developed a better system—not perfect, but capable of improvement and recognising mistakes when they are made.

My judgment on the limited information that is available in public is that the Government have made a mistake in not being more transparent about this fund. I think we probably knew more about its predecessor fund than this one. It is interesting that it has not always been spent. The average spend is only about two thirds of the allocated £20 million a year.

This debate is not just about effectiveness, transparency and the other things I have talked about. The fund is also a way of introducing those countries where it may be spent on co-operation and all kinds of things from institutional changes to aquaculture and the like, to the idea that we are interested in their trying to make fewer of the mistakes that we made in our past so that they will make fewer of the mistakes that they are making in their present. If we are going to be effective collaborators and we can put our weight of different kinds, be it military, diplomatic or economic, behind the states that are trying to resist some of the more powerful and worst elements in that region—we understand the difficulties they are facing—we would like to know that public money and public process is working in a way that allows us to understand what is going on, so we can support the money being properly spent. That is why we need to have greater transparency and greater effectiveness from the money.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, for the first time. I hope it all goes well—from both sides.

Some people might think this is something of a niche debate concerning relatively small sums of public money in the context of overall Government spending. We have heard that it has been about £20 million a year for the past five years, although there were predecessor funds and not all of that was spent. Having said that, we could pay for a lot of free school meals in the holidays with the money that is going to what many people will think is a rather prosperous region of the world.

I pay tribute to other sponsors of the debate, the hon. Members for Glasgow East (David Linden) and for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). I remember a lot of Conservative Members—I exonerate the hon. Member for Worthing West from this—complaining that the former Department for International Development funding regime wasted money by sending it to countries such as India and China. I wonder whether we will hear the same about money being sent to Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. That in itself deserves some explanation.

I thank the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, which has been mentioned, and Reprieve, which has helped with briefings for the debate. It sometimes seems like a thankless task, but they and other human rights organisations labour constantly to bring to light abuses of human rights in Gulf countries. The crux of the issue—I think it has already been said—is to do with secrecy. There have been few statements about the fund. Initially, there was no admission of the fund at all. It was like the security services used to be—it did not exist. When it was finally introduced to the public, the distinguished former Minister, Alistair Burt, said:

“The IAF provides funding in support of a range of programmes across the Gulf Region. These include, but are not limited to, activities focusing on aquaculture, sport and culture, healthcare and institutional capacity building.”

What could sound more benign than that? Aquaculture sounds like a wonderful thing to spend British taxpayers’ money on in Oman. “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is perhaps a sorer point.

However, that is not really the full extent of it, is it? With all due respect to Alistair Burt, for whom I have a great deal of time, it emerges that about a third of the projects could be euphemistically called “justice projects”: they are related to justice, security, imprisonment and other similar issues. Despite the plethora of FOIs, the Library briefing is almost entirely made up of questions with inadequate answers to them—some from the Minister, who I am sure will give us a far more candid response. We have a whole list of UK Government Departments that are spending the fund’s money, but we do not know how much each is spending or, indeed, on which projects. We do not know which of the Gulf countries are in receipt of the money and how much each of them is given. I notice that a written answer to the noble Lord Scriven said,

“All IAF-funded project work undergoes assessment and review. We are not able to disclose information related to particular IAF projects in greater detail as we have a duty to maintain the confidence and confidentiality of our partners.”

It appears that they do not want us to know what they are doing in the aquaculture field.



A couple of months ago, I asked a question that drew attention to the contrast between the funding of Bahrain through the IAF and the two prisoners who had undergone abuses through the Bahraini justice system, Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa, who are still on death row. Again, the reply simply said, “Yes, we object to the death penalty being used in these circumstances, but we are designing to support Bahrain-led reform in areas including human rights.”

I return to the question asked by the hon. Member for Worthing West: how effective is that? The answer must be, not very effective. The record on human rights across the board is getting worse year on year in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, which is much larger and more proactive in the region—although, UAE is becoming increasingly so—draws a lot of the attention. We have heard about the 184 executions, quite a number of them by crucifixion and other horrific practices. We know about those protesting for women’s human rights who were locked up and tortured. All of that is happening now under the current Saudi regime.

However, we also know that Bahrain lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in 2017, has executed six people and has a further 26 on death row. Those are the headline figures, but the practices and conditions in prisons, which are squalid, lead to epidemic-level outbreaks of illness. Prisoners do not get treatment for serious health conditions. Many of these individuals are long-standing human rights campaigners going back decades. They are now quite elderly, but they are locked up. Despite having serious health conditions, they do not receive any health treatment.

The situation in Bahrain has gone downhill since the Arab spring, when there was a popular uprising, which was supressed using Saudi forces. Since then, anyone speaking out on human rights has been dealt with in a summary fashion. Civil liberties in these countries are virtually non-existent now. Things that we would take for granted, such as a free press, the right to assemble and the right of opposition political parties to form—most of them have now been dissolved—do not exist. In Bahrain, unlicensed gatherings of over five people are illegal and public protests are supressed with violence.

I ask the Minister, how are our attempts, funded by the British taxpayer, to improve human rights in these countries going? It all seems to be going in the opposite direction. I do not have time to go over the many individual cases, but there are cases of people—such as Ali Al-Hajee, Ali Al-Wazir, Hassan Mushaima and all those on death row—who should be held up as supporting human rights and arguing for better conditions of life, but who are being supressed by entirely oppressive regimes.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It would be a good idea if the Minister could say that some of this fund was used to help support human rights organisations in some of these countries.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that obvious point, which I wish I had thought of. Now that it is on the record, perhaps the Minister would like to respond to it. Why are we supporting the organisations that we have heard about today, such as the special investigations unit and other human rights bodies in Bahrain? They all have wonderful names, such as the ombudsman. The problem is not just that these organisations are ineffective, despite the money they receive from the UK, but that they collaborate with the prosecuting authorities. They provide a shield against proper investigation and often turn down investigations on little or no evidence, which puts the individual whose case they are reviewing in a worse position than when they started. Yet those are exactly the organisations that we are supporting.

When I was shadow Justice Minister, I put it to the then Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), in very strong terms, that we were selling prison services—this is a peculiarity of our relationship with Gulf countries: half the time we seem to be giving them money, and half the time we seem to be selling them services—through what was called the Saudi prison contract, when in fact what was going on in those prisons was torture, abuse and appalling conditions. To his credit, he ended the contract that had been started by his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), which was exactly the right thing to do.

If mistakes have been made in the past, look at them again. How effective are they? Are they, in fact, giving cover to repressive regimes? Are they, in fact, making the situation worse? We cannot answer those questions because of the secrecy surrounding this and other funds. It is simply outrageous that the Government continue to use national security or other measures to disguise the use of money that they say is for entirely benign purposes. We look to the Minister for some answers today, but what we would actually like is a proper review of whether this is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I remind the Chamber of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I chair the all-party parliamentary British-Qatar group. I am struggling to remember, but I think I am also an office-bearer for the all-party parliamentary group on Kuwait, but other hon. Members will know that the amount of commitment that those offices bring with them is, shall we say, variable. My engagement with those APPGs has, however, given me, I hope, a small measure of insight into engagement with Gulf countries—those in the Gulf Cooperation Council in particular, although I am not sure that there really is a functioning GCC at present.

I am not without sympathy for the purposes behind the idea of such funds. As I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), I am not really persuaded that the deficiencies in civic Government, human rights and even in agriculture—rarely does a debate come up where the MP for Orkney and Shetland cannot talk about agriculture—are necessarily down to a lack of funding. However, I am also always aware that when one engages with countries that have deficiencies in those and other areas, it is best always to do so from a starting point of a measure of humility. We rarely achieve much by lecturing and preaching to people in other countries. Understand a bit of their own history and how they have come to the point they are at today.

To draw on my experience with Qatar, for example, I have been genuinely impressed in recent years to see some of the progress that has been made in relation to labour rights. The abolition of the kafala system and the opening of an International Labour Organisation office in Doha are significant achievements, and we should be pleased. When I speak to people in the Qatari Government, of course we want to talk about those things, as they inevitably do—every Government always want to talk about where they have made progress—but we also have to be mindful that there is still a significant way to go in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, for example. To engage with any measure of integrity with these countries, we have to be able to tell them that, while appreciating the progress they have made, we see other areas where progress still has to be made.

I am always very conscious of the fact that in Britain the abolition of the death penalty and the legalisation of homosexuality both happened in the course of my life. Both date back to the 1960s, so we should engage and encourage, but we should be mindful of the fact that we have not always had the greatest story to tell. On labour rights, for example, let us not kid ourselves, because we still have a problem with human trafficking in this country, notwithstanding the gangmasters legislation that we have now had for about 10 to 15 years. So humility is the order of the day.

That said, engagement must bring with it other things. The most important of those, as the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said, should be transparency and accountability. It is in the operation of the IAF that we find a worrying lack of both transparency and accountability, and I fear that permeates other aspects of our engagement with Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Although it is not necessarily directly on point in relation to the operation of the IAF—at least I suspect that is the case, but who knows?—I am very concerned that the police chief in Dubai appears to be a front-runner for the presidency of Interpol. Nasser Ahmed Al-Raisi was in charge of the police service that detained a British academic, Matthew Hedges, for around six months on trumped-up charges, bluntly, which Matthew has always denied. I understand that he was eventually forced to sign a confession in Arabic, which he just did not understand, and in that time he was tortured. The engagement with the United Arab Emirates in relation to that case, for example, is not one that in any way, shape or form can be seen as working in the interests of United Kingdom citizens.

It is because of the lack of transparency and accountability that the business of engagement with GCC countries looks, from time to time, as if it is operating on double standards. We criticise China—I am 100% behind the Government’s new policy on China—but at the same time we seem to find it very difficult to criticise the Saudi Government, notwithstanding, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) outlined, their truly appalling human rights record. Yes, they have recently passed legislation allowing women the right to drive, but at the same time they are jailing those who actually campaigned for that very right. They also use the death penalty for people who would have been minors at the time they committed any crimes. They seem to continue on an almost unrestricted basis, including—God help us—having crucifixions.

If UK taxpayers’ money is being spent in such countries, the UK Government have a duty to account to taxpayers for where it is being spent and what it is being spent on. The little that we do know about the operation of the IFA, particularly as it relates to Bahrain, is that it involves sentencing reform and alternative sentencing there. That is a cause that I am prepared to support—indeed, it is a drum that I have beaten for many years in this country. That is certainly something we should support. However, if we consider the way in which alternative sentencing policy is pursued in Bahrain, we find very quickly that in fact there is no benefit for the political prisoners there. The beneficiaries of alternative sentencing are all within the country’s criminal justice system. I would have thought that one of the things we would want to promote is equal treatment, at the very least, of criminal prisoners and political prisoners. We should of course be pursuing a situation in which there are no political prisoners, but for those who find themselves imprisoned in Bahrain, any advances should be equally available to all.

There is a case for doing at least some of the work associated with the IAF, but I cannot think of many areas of public expenditure, even at this scale, that are allowed to be maintained in such conditions of secrecy. It is totally lacking in transparency and accountability. If the money is genuinely being spent on capacity building, we should expect it to be spent through non-governmental organisations, which I know is not easy in Gulf countries. However, they are there and they do operate, and they would seem a more obvious route for channelling support through, as we do in virtually every other theatre in which we spend overseas development moneys.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

This fund is not part of our aid budget; it is overseas spending.

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed, which is why I deliberately did not use the terms “overseas aid” or “overseas development assistance”. However, to the hard-pressed British taxpayer, it is money that is being spent overseas, and the objectives set for the IAF would not look out of place in our overseas development assistance budget. If the objectives are the same, there would have to be some compelling reason why, on this occasion, we are effectively giving money to state actors, rather than non-state actors.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in this regard. I fear that it is a topic to which the House will continue to return for some time to come.