Charging for Access to Parliament

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Burrowes

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head. In my conclusion, I will repeat some of the things that he said. He points to a very great danger as regards what our Parliament may become.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

My hon. Friend rightly talks about the different suggestions as to why Big Ben is called Big Ben. I do not want him to lose sight of part of the argument, which is that Big Ben is not just for Parliament but for the wider populace, and part of popular culture. Indeed, many say that Big Ben was called Big Ben because of Benjamin Caunt, a prize fighter who had a rather large stomach. That shows its attraction to the public and why we must make it as accessible as possible.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend, who has been a friend for many years, is absolutely right. It is clearly not true to say that Big Ben is an adornment and is not part of our democracy. Moreover, those who claim that it is not part of our democracy and then say that we do not charge for tours elsewhere might ask themselves why we charge for tours during the summer and at weekends.

As I said, the proposal is unprecedented but creates a dangerous precedent. Now that this has been suggested., what will happen in a few years’ time when it is proposed to charge to go through Westminster Hall or to see the Royal Gallery? The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, the Leader of the House, the Speaker and so on will say that of course nothing like that would ever happen. I agree with them, in the sense that they are benign individuals, but who is to say that in future years there will not be such benign individuals and that these decisions will not be made?

Treatment of Christians

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Burrowes

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It is an honour to take part in the debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson). Although we are on opposite sides of the Chamber, I agreed with much of what he said on numerous policy areas. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who is an outstanding representative of the Church in the House of Commons and who has been of enormous help to me in my constituency over a Church issue. Equally, I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on his excellent speech.

Wherever there is tyranny and oppression in the world, the persecution of religious groups is never far behind. That is why this debate is important. We are always focused on persecution, but because Christianity is a mainstream western religion, its members do not always get the same attention as other minorities, as the hon. Member for Upper Bann highlighted. Outside the western world, however, Christians face a constant barrage of murder, imprisonment and persecution.

I have heard the Secretary of State for Education say that we can judge a country by how it treats its Jews, and the more democratic a country, the more equally the Jewish people are treated. The same goes for Christians in the developing world. I am here, not as a Christian, but as a Jewish person. However, because of what happened to many members of the Jewish people, it is my duty as a politician to help other peoples who suffer genocide and persecution. It gives me enormous pleasure to be standing next to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), who is a former school friend. He attended many Friday nights at my house, just as I attended many Church services with him and learned about Christianity as we grew up.

We have talked a little about China. Six weeks ago, 100 peaceful members of the Shouwang Catholic church were arrested by the People’s Republic just for holding an outdoor service. In Uzbekistan, armed officers from the Government’s national security service raided the home of a Christian pastor and confiscated 250 Bibles. A few days later, he was convicted of illegally owning Bibles, organising Christian worship and preaching the gospel. He was fined more than 80 times the minimum monthly wage. We have also heard about Nigeria, where a church was burned to the ground. I could mention other nations, such as Sri Lanka, which has a particularly evil Government; indeed, I attended a memorial service for the Tamils last week in Trafalgar square. Sri Lanka has a tough anti-conversion law, and people there are not allowed to convert others to Christianity.

The tragedy of such stories is not how isolated they are, but how common they are. Nowhere is that truer than in the middle east. I am a senior officer of the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq. Earlier in the year, I went to Kurdistan, and I am going back there for three days next week. The all-party group’s latest report on Kurdistan, which I helped to publish in March, states:

“Iraq’s Christians once numbered about 1.5 million. There are now just 850,000. Many families have fled to Kurdistan from Baghdad, Mosul and other areas, according to the United Nations refugee agency. The Kurds know much themselves about being a persecuted minority and have opened Kurdistan to Christians fleeing from the rest of Iraq. For example, their universities have offered free places to Christians fleeing Mosul.”

I met many Christians in Kurdistan. It has become a progressive Muslim nation that has provided sanctuary for Christians in Iraq who are being treated brutally. That was confirmed to me by the Archbishop of Erbil and the other Christians I met, and I hope to meet some more next week.

Kurdistan is one of the beacons of hope in a troubled region, but it is doing what it can with limited resources. I urge the Government to do more to support Kurdistan because of how it has offered sanctuary to Christians from Iraq.

[Mr Burrowes]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s contribution to this important debate. Is it not a tragedy that Christians are fleeing for sanctuary from an area where they have historically had a presence? They do not simply want an enclave to practise their religion, but want to express it freely, which has historically involved being part of a community, for example, in Pakistan where Christian schools have Jewish, Hindu and Muslim pupils. There are shafts of light, for example, in Baghdad, where fantastic vicars such as Andrew White do what they can to open their church to all communities and to support them, despite war, repression and fear.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is right. Why should Christians have to flee from one part of Iraq to another for safe haven, when they should be able to practise their religion wherever they are?

In Gaza, there were lots of reports of Christians disappearing or being shot dead if they were caught trying to preach the gospel. Although Hamas officially condemns the attacks, it very rarely makes arrests. During the elections a few years ago, Hamas forces were linked with an attack on the Catholic Rosary Sisters’ school and church, which were assaulted with rocket-propelled grenades and then burnt down. The ancient seafront of Gaza once had a thriving Christian community, but that community has now shrunk to 2,500 people.

Britain has a stake not only in the economic wealth of our neighbours, but in their freedom and self-determination. The question before us is, what role will Britain play before this story unfolds? Psalm 102 encourages us to

“hear the groaning of the prisoner, and set free those who are condemned to death.”

I am sure that hon. Members present will not mind me quoting the Old Testament as opposed to the New. I accept that the Prime Minister confronted human rights issues with the Chinese authorities during the trade mission to China last year and I am glad that the Foreign Secretary has continued to uphold the export restrictions that prevent lethal weapons being sold to China, but the problem is not just about selling guns. Britain and its NATO allies have an array of soft powers that they could use to bargain with states that are dependent on western imports. One key factor in the fall of Soviet communism was not the atom bomb or the space race, but the fact that Ronald Reagan refused to export wheat to Russia. That is a lesson for us today, as we confront the persecution of Christians and religious minorities around the world.

Intolerance towards religious minorities does not happen by itself, but is propagated by vested interests and evil regimes. In the middle east, the worst examples of that are Iran and Saudi Arabia. In the face of rising commodity prices and recession, many despotic Governments have tried to deflect their country’s grievances. That lies behind much of the extremist propaganda against the Christian west and the antagonism towards Israel in Arab League countries, but we have an opportunity to demand change. Saudi Arabia is apparently our ally and it depends on western imports, but it is also a despotism in which honour killing is legal, homosexuality is punishable by death and Wahhabist textbooks in state schools preach hatred of Christians, Jews and other religious minorities. As was recently reported in the papers, women are not even allowed to drive cars.

From Ethiopia to Indonesia, Saudi Arabia’s oil money is fuelling the persecution of Christians and other minorities, and the destruction of their property. Only last Wednesday, Christians protested outside the US Saudi embassy, demanding that Saudi Arabia stop financing radical Islamists, including the Salafis, who have been largely responsible for attacks on Christians in Egypt. Surely we can do more to ask the Saudis to give their people the freedom and security for which they are crying out? In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia produced more than 4 megatonnes of wheat a year—more than enough to be self-sufficient—but now it has exhausted its water supply and by 2016 it could produce no wheat at all. Nearly 50% of all Saudi Arabia’s imports—primarily, machines, cars, textiles, chemicals and foodstuffs—now come from the US, the EU and close allies, such as Japan and South Korea. In short, it cannot live without us.

If we believe that ethics is as important as economics, we must demand a higher price for trade with the western world, and that price must be free speech, democratic reforms, property rights, freedom of association, freedom of movement, respect for women and, most importantly, religious tolerance. Those are the foundations of a free society on which our hopes for peace in the middle east depend.

In conclusion, intervention—and I am an interventionist—does not have to mean war. I accept that military action is sometimes unavoidable, but I urge the Government towards a policy of fair trade. If a regime kills its citizens for their faith, Britain should not do business with it. We already refuse to sell most of those countries guns, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, but we should not sell those countries butter either. If a state imprisons minority groups without charge or trial, it should become a pariah state and be excluded from the world economy.

In the middle east, 10,000 children are born every single day. Unless the Arab spring leads to lasting economic and social reforms and protection for minority groups—including minority Muslim groups, such as those in Kurdistan—then the 10,000 children born today are more likely than ever to grow up in a barren region, which has no jobs, no bread and no security. We have to act now with fair trade to pressure those countries into change. That would transform the treatment of Christians and religious minorities around the world and it would be in our national interest as well.

Anti-Semitism

Debate between Robert Halfon and David Burrowes

Thursday 20th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon]

As always, the hon. Lady puts her finger on the button. She has a strong track record in dealing with those issues, and I agree with her completely.

Hon. Members may recall that last autumn the director general of the office for security and counter-terrorism, Mr Charles Farr, was reported as pledging his support for the extremist Mr Zakir Naik to enter the country. That was in complete opposition to the views of the Home Secretary, who barred Mr Naik from entering the UK. We also hear in the news today that Ken Livingstone is now an employee of the Iranian Government’s English propaganda channel, Press TV.

What are the effects of extremist culture in the UK? One consequence, which I raised with the Prime Minister, is that Britain has become an exporter of terrorism. From Afghanistan to Sweden to Israel, extreme Islamists from the UK have been travelling abroad with the intention of causing mayhem and murder. Closer to home, we all remember the attack on the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). In the Jewish community there is a constant climate of fear. There are growing reports, as has been mentioned, of Jewish students being spat at and beaten up, and having their rooms vandalised, and the incidence of recorded anti-Semitic events on university campuses has spiked in recent years. The CST recorded nearly 1,000 major anti-Semitic incidents in 2009—the highest annual total since it began records in 1984. Guards are now posted outside many synagogues and Jewish schools. Hate literature and terrorist propaganda are now sold openly in many book stalls or religious outlets.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend as a friend who many years before coming to the House helped me to gain an understanding of the impact of anti-Semitism within the Jewish community. Does he agree that there is no room for complacency in our universities and schools? That was brought home to me this week when my son came home feeling concerned, and unable to understand why his locker had been etched with the words “Jew” and “gay”. That is a horrible but timely reminder, as we approach Holocaust memorial day, of the deep and evil hatred and intolerance at the root of the holocaust, which we must counter today as we have in the past.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend, who spent many a Friday night at my house in our childhood, and who knows a lot about the Jewish community, is exactly right. He has been a great friend of the Jewish community for many years. What happened to his son is a tragic symbol of an incident that happens all too often. I should mention that the kind of people concerned do not just attack Jews; they then move on to the next thing. It is noteworthy that the words written were “Jew” and also “gay”.

The usual excuse for what is happening is the state of Israel, or the Iraq war. That is the reason that we are given for Islamism. However, I believe that that worldwide movement of extreme intolerance uses Israel and Gaza as an excuse for anti-Semitism and violence. Of course there are difficulties between the Israelis and Palestinians, but that is not the root cause of extremism. The reality is that even if the Gaza conflict were to be solved tomorrow, with Israel retreating mostly to 1967 borders, the Roshonara Choudhrys of this world would still exist. The objective of extreme Islamists is not a peaceful resolution to the middle east situation, but jihad; it is an ideology that believes that Israel and, by extension, Jews should be wiped off the map. President Ahmadinejad, as I have mentioned, makes no local distinction between the west bank and Tel Aviv. It is the catch-all Zionist entity that must be destroyed. When Ehud Barak offered almost everything to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000, far from discouraging Islamists, it emboldened them. Extreme Islamism exists because of dogma and ideology, not policy goals. Our public institutions must stop appeasing that threat.

There are now security guards outside many synagogues and Jewish schools for 24 hours a day. The Education Secretary has had to spend £2 million to fund tighter security measures for Jewish faith schools in the state sector. Is it tolerable in a free democracy that a religious minority is under threat? I remember being in a London synagogue—not as recently as I should have been—where the rabbi said to the congregation “Please do not congregate outside, because of the terrorist threat.” That was in London. I thought, “How can it be that you go to synagogue and cannot walk outside, like any normal religious faith, and chat outside with family and friends?” When I think about it, it makes me weep. I thought it was wrong of the rabbi to say it, despite the security threat, because we do not live in 1930s Germany. We live, proudly, in the Britain of 2011.

I welcome the Government’s response to the all-party inquiry into anti-Semitism, which contained many strong and positive measures, such as the £2 million from the Education Secretary to protect Jewish faith schools in the state sector, and £750,000 to educate British students about the holocaust, through organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust. I did not agree with the previous Prime Minister on much, but I very much respect the work that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) did in that respect. However, at the same time there is quite a lot of Sir Humphrey—or perhaps in this case Sir Humphrey Cohen—with draft scoping documents, diagnostic toolkits, cross-Government working groups, focus polls of staff and students about their experiences of higher education, self-audit performance schemes, conferences, and stakeholder engagement forums. I am sure that some of that will be valuable, but the original report of the all-party inquiry put a heavy emphasis on the problems on university campuses, and that is where the Government need to take bold action.

The academic Michael Burleigh wrote in The Spectator, in January 2010:

“Waffling on about free speech and forming committees is no way to deal with nascent terrorists”.

He went on:

“Last weekend, it was revealed that British students have been visiting Somalia to fight for the extremist group Al-Shabab…while the Sunday Telegraph reported that Yayha Ibrahim, an extremist preacher barred from America and Australia, was planning a speaking tour of British campuses. This just weeks after underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, an alumnus of University College London, attempted to murder 289 people on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit.”

The writing is on the wall. The problem is clear. If we delay action, we will allow it to continue. The poison of extreme Islamism is not something that can be talked into submission or bubble-wrapped in bureaucracy. Its imams are preaching the most ideological and embittered form of anti-Semitism in the UK. The fundamental right of Israel to exist and of Jewish families to live in peace should not be a matter for debate.

The Education Secretary has often said that a democracy can be judged by how a country treats its Jews, and I completely agree with him. When it comes to extremism and anti-Semitism, the time for words and appeasement is over. Extreme Islamic groups must be proscribed. Hate preachers must be prevented from coming to the UK by a zero-tolerance policy. The Charity Commission needs to improve the monitoring of these extreme groups’ finances, as many have charitable fronts. Finally, there must be a financial penalty for university campuses that do not put their house in order.