International Freedom of Religion or Belief Day

Robert Courts Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. May I join the chorus of congratulations for the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate and making such a passionate speech about his cause? He is a tireless campaigner on this issue and many others, and I thank him.

This is an extremely timely debate, particularly in the light of International Freedom of Religion or Belief Day tomorrow. I congratulate the APPG and the hon. Gentleman on their report. I have looked through it. Hon. Members who have had a chance to look at it will have seen on page 6 or 7 a picture of the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. If anyone has not had a chance to visit that memorial, I recommend they do so, because it is an extraordinarily moving experience that really illustrates everything we are talking about today. You start at ground level and descend into the centre of the memorial, as you are overwhelmed by the blocks on either side, which of course is deeply metaphorical for the horror that overwhelms societies—Europe in this century, and many other places, sadly, throughout the world today—when we see such religious intolerance. It is an extremely moving experience. The ground is also worthy of note, because it has bumps, to symbolise the bumpy path that all countries have to go down on the way to religious tolerance.

I dwell on that for a moment to echo the comments made by a number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), about recognising that it was not so long ago that we had religious intolerance in this country. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) quoted Elizabeth I’s famous saying that she had no desire to have windows into men’s souls. Without going into a history lesson, Elizabeth I was really speaking out of political expediency rather than religious tolerance, as Catholic emancipation was still to come.

Indeed, it was only the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 —the Duke of Wellington’s last great battle, as it were—that enabled Catholics to stand as Members of Parliament. That ought to give us all pause. In 1834, the whole Palace burned down, which means that very few Catholic MPs sat in the old Palace of Westminster and the vast majority of Catholic MPs served in the same Chamber that we all serve in. To me, that brings home that religious tolerance in this country is a relatively recent phenomenon. That tradition now is happily long standing, but it was not always so.

Around the world, there is so much more work to be done in so many areas. That is a reminder for us all that religious tolerance is not just a moral absolute, although clearly it is the right thing to do, but has a practical benefit as well. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) said, religious tolerance so often leads to political intolerance. If we have freedom of religion and expression of any religion or none, we also tend to have free, prosperous and stable countries, and we see much less of the violence that has sadly blighted so much of the world and continues to do so today.

I will dwell in these short remarks on some of the areas around the world today where much more work needs to be done. One example is Egypt, which the Foreign Office has made a human rights priority country, as I hope the Minister will confirm. Daesh continues a campaign against Christians in that country. There were the Palm Sunday attacks only recently, where two churches were attacked, 44 people were killed and many, many more were injured and maimed. There is perhaps some promise in the fact that so many people from other faiths rushed to help in the course of those attacks, showing that tolerance is always there, in the human spirit. However, we need to work and use our good offices as much as we can in this place to ensure that Governments around the world allow people to do what, in my view, they naturally do, which is to allow others to worship in their own way.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and sorry that I cannot stay for the whole debate. We have talked about the work done in this Parliament and by the APPG and my hon. Friend—I call him my hon. Friend—the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Does he agree that the fact that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has felt it necessary to make remarks about turning away from extreme interpretations of Islam is a measure of the importance of keeping up pressure on the human rights front on Governments that, until now, have been excessive and repressive?

[Robert Courts]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for that excellent intervention and I entirely agree. There is a real job that we can do in keeping up the pressure. It just shows that when we do that, results can be achieved.

Another country about which there is much concern in this country and around the world in respect of human rights is Iran. President Rouhani took office in 2013, and we have seen an increase in the persecution of religious minorities—people imprisoned because of their faith—and an increase in harassment and arrests. Of course, that causes enormous concern to all of us in the House. There has also been an increase since the elections earlier this year.

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

The situation of Syria and Iraq has touched all of us in the House and, indeed, the entire country. I have met in my constituency in west Oxfordshire the six families whom we have settled. Of course, the situation has a special impact when one has met families and children who have had to flee their home and their country and find and make a new home elsewhere. It is also a fresh reminder to us—we have already touched on this—that religious intolerance is not just between faiths, but inside faiths. It has occurred between Christians, between Protestants and Catholics, in our own culture and among the different strands of Islam, which we have also touched on today. When we hear about the abduction, torture, rape, loss of property, destruction of property and forced conversions in Syria—500,000 Christians have been forced to flee that country, and I think I am right in saying that 230 are still in captivity—we realise how much there is still to do in that country before we can see a happy and tolerant place where people are free to practise their religion as they see fit.

I welcome all the work being done in the House by the APPG under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Strangford, and everything that the Government are doing. I am pleased that freedom of religion or belief is integral to everything the British Government do, and I thank the Government for all that they are doing. Of course the Minister will freely acknowledge that there is more to do—it is perhaps trite for me to say so—but I want to put it on the record that there is much more to do throughout the world. We all recognise that freedom of belief or religion and, indeed, the freedom to have none at all is the foundation of everything that we are in this House and in this country, and we must do all that we can to ensure that the blessings of tolerance are spread further throughout the world.