Overseas Territories

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I am delighted to be called to speak in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) on securing it. Much of what I will say in the next few minutes will reflect what I heard yesterday at the parliamentary conference on the OTs, because, in the absence of any formal representation of the OTs in this House, of which we have heard much, I believe that today is an opportunity for them to have their voices heard through the medium of right hon. and hon. Members. On a personal level, I have long supported the OTs, as is evidenced by my membership or vice-chairmanship of several of the relevant APPGs and, equally, by the tie from the Falkland Islands that I was gifted when I was there in February.

The word that has resonated loudest this week in the various events for the OTs has been “family”. The OTs are members of the British family, and, as in any family, each member has its own characteristics, its own strengths and weaknesses, its own identity and its own uniqueness. It was put far more eloquently than I can put it yesterday by Gibraltar’s Environment Minister, who said simply:

“there is superpower in our diversity”.

Like any family, each member will need support at different times of their life. As one Minister suggested yesterday, there has been a feeling that the OTs have sometimes been victims of a situation where others try to define their problems and find solutions to them, whereas they need and want to do it for themselves, with support offered and available but not imposed.

For many of the overseas territories, there are shared challenges and threats, while others are individual. We have heard a good deal about the shared threat from climate change, which, in some cases, is existential. However, not all challenges are common, and I have been particularly struck this week by the experience of two territories—Turks and Caicos Islands and Pitcairn—for very different reasons. As the Premier of Turks and Caicos put it, his people live perilously close to the failed state that is Haiti. Illegal immigration into Turks and Caicos is rife, and that is exacerbated by drug running and gun running. The authorities there are working extremely hard to protect their islands from the waves of uncontrolled numbers of people flooding their homeland, but I hope that the Government here will offer help that can be taken up if that is so desired.

The risks to Pitcairn are entirely different but just as severe. With a current population of only 36 people, there are serious questions about the long-term viability of the islands. Sadly, the school has just closed because there are no young children left on Pitcairn. There are very few people of working age, and the population is ageing. Pitcairn’s Mayor talked to me of the recognition of the need to adapt to survive. His hope and that of other islanders is that more people will see the opportunity of a life in Pitcairn. It struck me when he remarked yesterday that, as one person from Pitcairn who was in the United Kingdom, more than 2.5% of the population was here—that is how small the population is.

In talking about challenges, I recognise that we must be careful not to imply in any way that the OTs are helpless dependants. The truth is very different, as they are all rightly keen to point out. To take just one example that was made to me yesterday, according to analysis by Capital Economics, the British Virgin Islands supports jobs, prosperity and Government revenues worldwide, especially as a result of its role as a centre for financial and professional service firms.

Having covered a considerable amount of the globe in the last couple of minutes, I would like to say a little bit about the Falkland Islands. It was absolutely right that Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister sent a taskforce to liberate the islands in 1982, just as it remains absolutely right today that we maintain a strong military presence to defend the right of islanders to self-determination. During the trip with the armed forces parliamentary scheme in February, we saw how all three services of our armed forces play crucial roles, both separately and working together.

There are now new threats to the Falkland Islands, though. Fisheries account for approximately 40% of the islands’ GDP, but are under threat, particularly from illegal fishing by Chinese supertrawlers just outside Falklands territorial waters, so it is important that the Falkland Islands’ economy diversifies. One potential solution is the extraction of oil. Of course, that must be done extremely carefully, given our commitment to net zero, but I very much hope that the Treasury will give the proposals that are currently in front of it—known as Project Sea Lion—extremely serious consideration.

[Alicia Kearns]

Does my hon. Friend share my concerns that the Argentinian Government’s current rhetoric regarding the Falklands, funnily enough, falls in an election year, and is it not utterly abhorrent that a politician would use individuals’ right to determine their own futures for their own political gain?

[Rob Butler]

As with pretty much everything else she has said this afternoon, my hon. Friend is absolutely on the money. She is completely correct, and the way that the Argentinians have behaved in what is—as she rightly points out—an election year is truly outrageous and incredibly offensive to the people of the Falkland Islands. I know from talking to their representative over the past couple of days that the Falkland islanders are very grateful that we have recognised that in this place in recent weeks.

To conclude, the OTs afford us a tremendous global footprint of strategic and economic significance. Gibraltar’s Minister rightly remarked that through, and thanks to, the OTs, we have already had global Britain for many years. Let us not forget that there are plenty of hostile nations that are looking for new friends, especially in strategic locations, so we should not take our traditional allies for granted. Let us be clear that, as the premier of the BVI pointed out, even in smallness, there is opportunity. The mayor of the smallest OT, Pitcairn, summed it up perfectly: the overseas territories matter because they are British, because they are part of our family.