Human Rights: Xinjiang

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart). All the speeches so far have been moving and powerful. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling the debate and particularly congratulate the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) on the passion and determination that she has shown on this issue over many months, along with members of the APPG on Uyghurs. I know that this is an issue of great importance for many of my constituents. They want to see MPs and this Government stand up for human rights across the world. One constituent who wrote me to said that we need to

“demonstrate Parliament’s commitment to upholding basic human rights.”

Every year on Holocaust Memorial Day, we confirm that we have a shared responsibility to fight the evils of genocide. Today’s debate is about showing our fundamental commitment to human rights and specifically making clear our opposition to the horrific treatment of the Uyghur people and the other ethnic groups in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Members have described the state-sponsored arbitrary detention, displacement and forced labour of the Uyghur Muslims and others in the Xinjiang province.

I have time to address only two issues today. The first is the impact of Chinese state policy on women. As was said on foreignpolicy.com,

“Uyghur women are the most vulnerable…Their bodily autonomy has been violated through sexual, medical means and forced labor.”

The evidence is available in numerous reports from many sources which have found that the Uyghur women are raped, sterilised and forced to have abortions. Just reading those reports makes my blood run cold—a feeling that I am sure is shared across the House.

Secondly, I want to touch briefly on trade and the recent report by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee which looked into the supply chain, particularly the concerns that companies across the world were profiting from forced labour in the province of Xinjiang. The link between global consumption and such atrocities is, sadly, not new and has been going on for centuries. I will give just one example. At the turn of the 19th century, we saw slavery in the Belgian Congo, along with forced displacement, arbitrary arrests and many other horrific crimes, while at the same time goods such as rubber flowed out of the Congo into Europe. Back then, campaigners from the Congo and activists across civil society—including, I am proud to say, a member of my family, William Cadbury—stood up in opposition to those atrocities and urged Parliament to act. It is therefore right that today Parliament considers our duty and our role on the world stage in standing up to these horrors.

However, our Government fail to address these serious concerns. On one hand, the Foreign Secretary describes what is happening in Xinjiang as

“barbarism we had hoped was lost to another era”—[Official Report, 12 January 2021; Vol. 687, c. 160.]

and says that we should not be doing trade deals with countries committing human rights abuses

“well below the level of genocide”—[Official Report, 12 January 2021; Vol. 687, c. 168.],

and yet the Government whipped their MPs to vote against the genocide amendment to the Trade Bill. Furthermore, legislation such as section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 needs to be amended to ensure that all companies have a responsibility to prove that their supply chains are free of forced labour, and we must strengthen the sanctions for non-compliance.

I was pleased that my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) on the Opposition Front Bench called on the Government to impose Magnitsky-style sanctions on officials responsible last year, and the Government finally listened and acted just last month. I welcome the Government’s acting, even if they did take rather a long time to do so, but they need to do more. The Biden Administration have described what is happening in Xinjiang as “acts of genocide,” yet the UK Government struggle to engage constructively in the debate and have to be forced to respond.

If the UK is to be a serious player in the world, our Government need to show leadership, demonstrate our British values and no longer see the issue merely through the prism of protecting the UK’s trade. I will not stand aside and Members here today will not stand aside. Our Government must no longer stand aside in the face of these appalling crimes.

Official Development Assistance

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I rise to speak on the merger of DFID with the Foreign Office. It is an estimates debate, but the decision as to whether International Development and the Foreign Office should be one Department or two is not about money. Even if it were, to expect it to happen now, at the height of the pandemic when civil servants should be focusing on the UK and world recovery, is an appalling waste of already overstretched resources. No, it is not about money: it is fundamentally about how the UK views its role in the world. It is about values and whether we pursue our obligations as a relatively wealthy country to do right by the poor and most marginalised of the world, while also pursuing our foreign policy, but as distinct objectives. I fear we will subsume those obligations to the poor of the world into the Foreign Office, whose priorities are not about development.

The Prime Minister indicated recently that there is now likely to be a reprioritisation of aid spending. He said

“We give as much aid to Zambia as we do to Ukraine, although the latter is vital for European security”.

He added that the UK must use its

“aid budget and expertise, to safeguard British interests and values overseas.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 667-8.]

What are those values? To me, development is not about national security interests. I believe it is about how we demonstrate our moral compass in the world—

[Harriett Baldwin]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I am not going to give way, because many others want to speak.

The Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 created DFID, following the Pergau dam scandal. It demonstrated our Labour values in its record subsequently on international development and poverty reduction, improving sanitation for over 1.5 million and lifting 40 million children out of poverty. But in the past 10 years DFID’s role in overseas development aid has gradually been reduced. Now DFID spends only 73% of ODA, the rest being spent by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, BEIS and so on. To be fair, DFID has been a shining light and demonstration of the UK’s moral values around the world. DFID has also been rated as the most effective and transparent of Government Departments, delivering real value for money and spending only 2%, of its spend on administration. Meanwhile almost half of the FCO’s spend on ODA goes on administration.

So many key people have criticised this move, including three former Prime Ministers and all the NGOs, bar one, in the field. DFID was created by the incoming Labour Government in 1997 to create a distinct policy line. I am proud of our experience, which has provided life-changing and life-saving support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

Whether the Government plan to ring-fence the budget for official development assistance in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Whether the Government plan to ring-fence the budget for official development assistance in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Whether the Government plan to ring-fence the budget for official development assistance in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Duddridge]

Yes.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Those with long memories will remember the Pergau dam scandal of the 1990s, where the High Court found that the Government had unlawfully provided aid in exchange for a lucrative arms contract. That was one reason why the Labour Government made the Department for International Development a separate and independent Department from the Foreign Office. What steps will the Government be taking to ensure that we do not see a repeat of the Pergau dam scandal in the future?

[James Duddridge]

We do not need a separate Department to learn lessons from the past, but that type of transaction would be wholly inappropriate and would not happen under this ministerial team.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend. We are facing a challenge we have not faced for decades in recent memory, and it is a national effort and a team effort. The critical ingredient is that the country comes together, as it has done, in this incredible national effort and national mission to defeat coronavirus. Like him, I pay tribute not just to the NHS workers, the carers and all those on the frontline, but to those in the voluntary sector and the people who we are understanding more and more are really also part of the key workers in our economy and our society—the delivery drivers, the people working in the supermarkets and all of those who are steering us through this time of national crisis. Together, we can rise to the challenge, and I am absolutely confident that we will rise to the challenge and come back, as one United Kingdom, stronger than ever.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab) [V]]

For weeks, there has been a significant gap between promises from the Government and the reality that has been experienced by our constituents, so when will the Government learn from the delays they have experienced so far, learn from other countries and learn from the success of the speed at which the Nightingale hospitals were delivered? When will they learn from the best in crisis decision making and start to deliver solutions that fit the promises?

[Dominic Raab]

First, the hon. Lady is absolutely right: with an unprecedented crisis, of course we will learn lessons; there is no country in the world addressing this crisis that does not. But she is also right to refer to the Nightingale hospitals—an incredible achievement in this country. People said that we could not build a hospital in this country at that kind of speed, and we have built several, with more to come. People have said that we would not be able to get the 1 billion items of personal protective equipment; that is exactly what we have done. So we do not say that there are no challenges, and she is absolutely right to make the point that we need to learn the lessons as we go, but we are absolutely convinced that going along in a very deliberate way—learning the lessons, listening to the medical evidence, listening to the advice from the chief scientific adviser; not just abandoning it, but following it consistently—is how we will get through this crisis.

It is worth noting that one of the big risks as we go through this peak was the fear that we would find the NHS overwhelmed: it has not been overwhelmed. If we look at critical care capacity and at the ventilators that we have managed to secure, we can see that the NHS, as an institution—there have of course been heroic individual achievements—has held up well. That is a good example of how we have risen to this challenge, and we will continue to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern. I read a moving report about a pastor in Chengdu who has suffered greatly. We raised these concerns during the universal periodic review that we did with China in November 2018, and I regularly raise concerns about human rights issues with my Chinese counterpart. One of the reasons for doing the review is to ensure that I am properly informed on matters of religious freedom.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Given the Minister for the Middle East’s earlier expression of support for UNRWA and the concern about the alternative education that Palestinian children might receive if UNRWA pulls out, will the UK Government consider filling the vacuum resulting from the withdrawal of US leadership in this important service?

[Alistair Burt]

In reference to the question from the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), I am appropriately wearing my tartan tie to celebrate this week.

As I indicated earlier, we support UNRWA’s work and work hard with the organisation in case reform is needed. In the long term, UNRWA’s future will be about the future of refugees and their final settlement status. In the meantime, we cannot completely plug the financial gap left by the United States, which is why we are working with others, but leadership is vital, as is trying to get it across to the world that UNRWA is doing important work, and the UK will remain a champion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Could we have a couple of one-sentence questions, perchance?

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Will the Minister insist as a matter of urgency that Kurdish representatives are allowed to attend the peace process meetings on the future of Syria?

[Alistair Burt]

Kurdish representatives are already included with the representatives of the Syrian opposition. Any further invitations are up to Staffan de Mistura, who is responsible for the negotiations, but the hon. Lady is right that it is absolutely important that Kurdish interests are represented.

Gaza: UN Human Rights Council Vote

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

It may come down to resolutions at the end of the day, but an agreed mechanism, whereby we can find out what has happened in order to ensure that the circumstances do not arise again, is more likely to be effective. However, that would involve a whole series of other issues that relate to Gaza, as I mentioned earlier, and much determination among the leadership of both Palestine and Israel to ensure that the circumstances do not arise in the future.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Protesting adults and children have been shot in the back and shot while standing hundreds of metres away from the border fence. The Israeli authorities are clearly killing and maiming people in Gaza who pose no threat to them. If this was happening in Iran, the Government would completely and utterly condemn it, so why will the Minister not condemn the Israeli authorities for such actions?

[Alistair Burt]

I will repeat what I have repeated before—this is clearly set out in the United Kingdom’s concerns about the whole process:

“The loss of life, casualties and volume of live fire presents a depressingly familiar and unacceptable pattern. This cannot be ignored.”

The hon. Lady comes to her own conclusions about what she thinks has happened, but others have different narratives. It is clear that the extent of the live fire has caused casualties that raise prima facie questions about what has happened, which is why we must find out what the answer to that is.

Palestinian Communities: Israeli Demolitions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree that the situation looks bleak. The question is: how can we ensure that the next generations of young Israelis and Palestinians see any merit in supporting the rule of law and democracy and believe in peace with the other side? With the wall, the demolitions, the continuing land grab, the forced displacement and the isolation of Gaza, both sides seem to be further away from peace and security than ever before.

In my opening remarks I mentioned that this year is the 25th anniversary of Oslo, but there is another anniversary that we must recall, which is that 2017 marks the centenary of the Balfour declaration. One hundred years on from Balfour, I urge every hon. Member of this House to recall the particular responsibility that our country bears for what has come to pass. With that in mind, I would implore us all to revisit the historic significance of the declaration’s words, which acclaimed that

“the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the comments of Economy Minister Naftali Bennett a few months ago that they “returned” to the west bank

“in order to stay forever, without conceding land and without foreign sovereignty”

are at variance with the Balfour declaration?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I think that a number of statements from senior Israeli Government officials are not helping and are not making a constructive contribution to the peace and security that we want to see for both Israel and Palestine.

My contention is twofold. First, not only are the Israeli Government failing to uphold the principles and stated aims of the Balfour declaration; they are actively undermining them on an almost daily basis. Secondly, our Government are utterly failing to live up to the responsibilities bequeathed on them by Balfour. Therefore we must, working in partnership with our international allies, deploy every diplomatic and commercial tool at our disposal to put pressure on the Israeli Government.

It is 100 years since Balfour, 50 years since the beginning of the illegal occupation and 25 years since Oslo. There have been moments along the way when it looked like things might change and that negotiations might forge a path to peace. Tragically, those moments proved to be false dawns. Rather than be disheartened, we should learn from those experiences and mistakes, rather than continue to do the same thing expecting different results. Just recently, Tony Blair admitted that our policy of isolation and disengagement with Hamas in Gaza was wrong. We should embrace that view and actively look for ways to support the present reconciliation efforts between Fatah and Hamas.

Another lesson to learn is that condemnation alone is not enough. What has decades of condemning illegal settlement expansion led to? A mushrooming of settlements across the Palestinian territory and 600,000 illegal settlers. We have to disincentivise the settlement enterprise and put a cost on the violation of international law. We in this House can no longer stand by and do nothing. We, as international actors, have a duty to act, and part of that is holding duty bearers to account, whether it is the PA, Hamas or Israel as the occupying power.

Generations of Palestinians have grown up with diminishing rights and freedoms, so how can we expect them to have faith in conventional politics, believe in the rule of law and continue to hope for peace? Let us not forget that beyond the statistics and legal arguments, these are ordinary communities and families who have the same basic aspirations that we do: to live in safety and security, to protect their families and loved ones and to enjoy their basic rights, whether in education or economic opportunity. But we will also see the continued pollution of the Israeli body politic by divisive figures and ideas with no interest in peace, unless we speak up for, and assert, norms of internal and international decency and justice. Otherwise, injustice, on both sides of this conflict, will escalate and spiral out of control. So let us stand and speak up today, and let us make our voice heard.

Occupied Palestinian Territories: Israeli Settlements

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I should like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling this debate. I visited the west bank and Jerusalem in January, and I should like to draw the House’s attention to what will soon appear in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: the support of the Britain Palestine Communication Centre, the President’s office and the Palestinian Mission. Every Palestinian we met—Palestinian Authority members, elected city leaders, political activists and young people—subscribed to the two-state solution and wanted help in ensuring that it is achieved. I saw, as did other colleagues, the settlements marching across the hills over expropriated land, usually illegally. I saw the diverted roads, which Palestinians are not allowed to use, and I saw the march of the fence and the wall through old fields. I saw the occupation and destruction of the old city of Hebron, and the closed businesses there. Yes, the settlements are the issue of today, but if we want to address stone throwing and other violence by Palestinian children, we need only to look at the daily incidents of brutalisation to which they and their families have been subjected for decades.

We visited the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which provided us with accurate, factual information showing that 43% of the west bank is out of bounds to Palestinians. Its maps show a Swiss cheese of disjointed areas of Palestinian land, with the Palestinians effectively excluded from the rest, even if they have historical ownership over it. Hours after meeting our Prime Minister recently, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu returned to Israel to vote on a law that allows the Israeli state to seize land privately owned by Palestinians on the west bank and to grant Jewish settlements exclusive use of the properties there. The decision on 24 January did indeed order 40 or 50 families to be moved from the Amona outpost, but in the same week, approval was given for 2,500 new dwellings on the west bank and 566 new settlement houses in East Jerusalem, taking over thousands of acres of Palestinian land.

The recent legislation imposed Israeli law on Palestinian inhabitants of the west bank, which is not sovereign Israeli territory. The Palestinians living there are not citizens of Israel and do not have the right to vote, but the Israelis living there do. Israeli civil law applies to settlers, affording them all sorts of legal protections, rights and benefits not enjoyed by their Palestinian neighbours, who are subject to Israeli military law. Palestinians should not be made to go through the indignity of negotiating over territory that should be theirs in a future state. This should be an international negotiation in which our Government should play a major part.

Changes in US Immigration Policy

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I also want to thank the right hon. and hon. Members who have secured this debate this evening.

Speakers at Hounslow’s civic commemoration of the holocaust this morning reminded us of the importance of compassion and refuge in the face of hate. Council leader Councillor Steve Curran celebrated the diversity of the people in that room—people from all backgrounds from all over the world—and made the link between Hounslow welcoming people in the room and all the people who live in Hounslow now from all over the world. They have included Sir Mo Farah, who arrived and was welcomed in Hounslow aged eight in about 1990.

We also heard from Susie Barnett, who was born in 1938 in Hamburg. She told us of her family’s moving and incredible story, of fleeing the hate and discrimination of Nazi Germany at the end of 1930s and arriving separately in the UK as refugees. That family story of personal relationships and tragedy brought home to us the link between world events and what happens to families and ordinary people in these circumstances.

After the service this morning, I thanked Susie for her moving story and was able to tell her about the petition demanding that the invitation to President Trump be withdrawn. I told her that while she was speaking the tally on that petition tipped over the 1 million mark. She said, “Right, when I get home this afternoon, I am going to sign it.” That petition is still being signed at the rate of 10 signatures every second, and by the end of this evening the figure could hit 1.5 million.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) referred to the rules on movement and the safety of refugees that emerged from the ashes of world war two. The President of the United States is trying to rewrite these rules. He is fuelling fears, and a local Muslim activist phoned me this morning worrying about the implications of the feelings that President Trump is spreading in the US: what will that mean for the Muslim community here in the UK and in Hounslow?

The Executive order was directed at Muslims and at refugees, but the President is also effectively demonising many others—Mexicans, women, refugees from all over the world and now, we hear today, green activists, who among other things are trying to save the American bald eagle, symbol of the United States. We have to stand up against this prejudice, before it leads to mass injustice.

I shall finish with a quote from Martin Luther King, written when he was in jail:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”