Iraq Inquiry

Debate between Sandra Osborne and Martin Horwood

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

I shall be brief, not least because I am anxious to take part in the next debate, which is very important to my constituency. I concur with the final comments of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about the sacrifices that were made and where the whole debacle leaves us in relation to legitimate intervention and our general foreign policy approach.

We are here to talk about the delay in publication of the report and to press for its early publication. I welcome the debate on this very important matter and, as we know, the Government have said that the report will not be published before the general election if submitted after the end of February. Whether we agree with that or not, the reality is that the general election has effectively already started in all but name—one aspect of a fixed term Parliament that is different from what went before.

The report should have been published long ago, and I recognise the pressure to question its delay. I particularly recognise the work of the Public Administration Committee which has tried to get to the bottom of what is holding up the publication, as well as looking more widely at the use of inquiries by both Parliament and Government. That is something that should be followed up again after the report is eventually published. What has more than £10 million of public money actually achieved, when the families still have no chance of closure or moving on all these years later and the public are becoming more cynical by the day, if that is possible? We seem to see this so often with inquiries—it takes years to persuade Governments to hold them and that is followed by lengthy delays and often unsatisfactory conclusions, leading people to think it was all a waste of time and money.

I agree with the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway)—he never said a truer word—that this House is to blame. We should have pressed much more firmly for the report to be published long ago. We did not apply enough pressure.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The problem is not just one of administrative delay and cost, but that on this time scale of 17 years or more so many of the actors will have left public life. It becomes an exercise in history, not accountability.

[Sandra Osborne]

I agree, and that has happened time and again, leading to public cynicism. I hope that, after the publication of the report, the Public Administration Committee will look at that issue again.

It is not good enough, 90 days before a general election to call this debate. Welcome though it is, it should all have been done long ago. Publication of the report was never going to happen before the general election, however. I hope that when he comes before the Foreign Affairs Committee next week, Sir John Chilcot will be able to give an indication of time scale, but I am not holding my breath.

Foreign Affairs Committee (Hong Kong Visit)

Debate between Sandra Osborne and Martin Horwood

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point and I will come back to it. There is an argument for us to comment on universal human rights and thereby try to influence their conduct throughout the world. To that extent, I think we are trying to influence events, but my hon. Friend is right to say that the focus of this debate is on, in a sense, the opposite situation, which is the Chinese Government’s unjustified attempt to curtail a parliamentary inquiry. It is true that we are not seeking in this debate to change anything in Hong Kong immediately.

The accusation of unjustified interference is wrong on two counts. First, as many hon. and right hon. Members have pointed out, we are party to an international agreement—the 1984 joint declaration—which refers in article 3(12) to the

“basic policies of the People’s Republic of China regarding Hong Kong”.

Article 3(4) states:

“The chief executive will be appointed by the Central People’s Government on the basis of the results of elections or consultations to be held locally.”

That is not the strongest wording in the world, but it is repeated in the Basic Law that was also implemented by the joint agreement. Article 3(12) goes on to state that those policies would

“remain unchanged for 50 years.”

We are clearly within that time scale, so the British Parliament has a perfectly legitimate right to look at how the Basic Law and joint agreement are being interpreted in practice in Hong Kong, particularly in the light of the Beijing Government’s announcements in August.

The second reason it is wrong to criticise the Foreign Affairs Committee is that we are all party to the United Nations universal declaration of human rights, which affirms that human rights—from Iran to Colombia and from China to Britain itself—are inalienable for all members of the human family. It is legitimate for any member of the United Nations to look at, comment on and take an interest in the conduct of human rights worldwide, and no Parliament or democratic assembly anywhere in the world should feel inhibited from doing so. It is common for this Parliament to comment on human rights in a variety of countries. Indeed, the Government publish an annual human rights report, in which they comment on human rights in many countries around the world.

As Lenin once said, what is to be done? First, we have to be clear that the Foreign Affairs Committee should continue to highlight the issues raised by events in Hong Kong, to investigate them thoroughly and to draw reasonable conclusions without fear of intimidation. We need to be clear that everyone in this Parliament supports its right to do that and encourages it to continue its inquiry.

Secondly, it is important that the British Government continue to raise concerns about China’s interpretation of the Basic Law and the joint declaration, and in doing so draw on the expertise of the Foreign Affairs Committee and its eventual report.

Thirdly, this country needs to adopt a deeper and more sophisticated policy towards China. Parliament and Government have tended to address China as if the only important thing we want it to do is buy and sell more widgets. The view has been that trade and capital investment are important, but almost to the exclusion of other considerations, and many hon. Members have reinforced the point that that is not the case. Trade and capital investment are important, but policies have to be wider and more sophisticated than that.

Part of that policy has to be an understanding from our side of China, its sensitivities and history, and the progress it has made. That means acknowledging that our shared history with China has not been particularly glorious on the British side on many occasions. We have to acknowledge that our role as a colonial power in events such as the opium wars was, in retrospect, disgraceful. We have undervalued contributions such as that of the 96,000 members of the Chinese Labour Corps during the first world war. They behaved with complete heroism and lost thousands of their number, but they were treated pretty disgracefully at the time and, equally disgracefully, their heroism and contribution to this country during the first world war have been neglected. A broad-based campaign is seeking to rectify that omission and obtain a memorial in this country to the Chinese Labour Corps. I hope that will attract Government support.

We have to acknowledge our own failure to deliver democracy in Hong Kong. We were the administrators and rulers of Hong Kong for many years, and we never delivered a Chief Executive who was elected by the people of Hong Kong without interference. We appointed colonial governors, and I am sure that some of them were very skilled, talented and caring, but in a sense it was a benign colonial dictatorship. It is difficult for us now to turn around and criticise China on how it behaves towards Hong Kong, and we have to be sensitive to that.

[Sandra Osborne]

It is important to remember that the Committee has not come to any conclusions about the rights and wrongs of the situation. We are protesting about being refused access to Hong Kong.

[Martin Horwood]

I completely accept that point, which the hon. Lady is right to emphasise. I am talking in a wider context about how we need a sophisticated approach to China. We should not constantly hector the Chinese for any failings we detect on their side, without acknowledging that over the long period of history—their approach is very much to look at the long picture—there have also been historical failings, injustices and omissions on our side. We have to be honest and acknowledge that.

A sophisticated policy towards China must include firmness in the face both of contraventions of human rights on Chinese territory, and of the militarisation and the sometimes unjustified indulgence of dictatorships in different parts of the world. That firmness should include the way in which the Chinese allow the perpetuation of wildlife crime in pursuit of markets for things such as ivory, which the International Fund for Animal Welfare has highlighted in the House of Commons only this week. In our pursuit of trade and investment, there is a risk that not only the UK but democracies all over the world will find ourselves divided and perhaps to some extent ruled by a Chinese foreign policy that seeks to intimidate smaller democracies and to influence our discussion of their affairs.