Daesh: Genocide of Minorities

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Chris Green

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

I appreciate the contributions made by hon. Members so far, especially that of the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who made a powerful case. I thank the Backbench Business Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for allowing us to recognise in this debate that what we are seeing in parts of Syria and Iraq is the genocide of Yazidis, Christians and other religious minorities.

As we debate the nature of what is going on in Iraq and Syria, we must understand the nature of the organisation perpetrating the crimes. Daesh and its followers have a particular interpretation of Islam, which they use to attack those who do not subscribe to the same religion or interpretation of their religion, meaning that, in addition to the targeted persecution of Christians and Yazidis, Shi’ite Muslims are also killed and persecuted, as are many Sunni Muslims.

When the Sinjar disaster happened, 200,000 Yazidis were driven from their homes, with 40,000 trapped on Mount Sinjar, where they faced either slaughter by Daesh if they came down or dehydration and death if they remained. The number of Christians in Syria has dropped from 2 million to 1 million, and their number in Iraq has dropped from 1.4 million to fewer than 260,000.

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

Like other Members, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for securing the debate. The figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) cites are very much an example of the fact that Christianity is dying in its cradle, which is why so many of our constituents who are fellow Christians have contacted us about this genocide. Does he agree?

[Chris Green]

Absolutely. This is why many people in Britain are leading the debate, because they recognise this to be a genocide, and I appreciate that many, if not all, Members in this Chamber agree with so many of the British people.

Daesh is creating what it would deem to be the caliphate, targeting those who do not fit into that vision. We have seen the systematic persecution, torture, enslavement, rape, kidnap and murder of a number of groups solely because of their religious identity. Daesh’s desire to establish a caliphate in the territory it holds is only a starting point; it is intending to draw many more Muslims from across the region, Europe and beyond. Clearly, Daesh is an expansionist organisation that has far greater territorial ambitions than to hold on to the land it currently has, and so, given the opportunity, it will take more land and subject more people to the systematic persecution and killing with which we have become familiar.

Transport Infrastructure: Lancashire

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Chris Green

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Seema Kennedy]

Lancashire County Council is aware of the great desire for the bridge in the area. I have been having ongoing discussions with the council, and that is one of the things about which I have spoken to its representatives.

The Ribble bridge is clearly a regionally significant piece of transport infrastructure. I shall now touch on a project that, although much smaller, would bring enormous benefits to two villages in my constituency, if it were completed. For those who do not know South Ribble, the western part of the constituency comprises the flood plain of the Ribble. Thirty-two per cent. of land in the constituency is grade 1 and 9% is grade 2 agricultural land, making it the seventh highest-ranked constituency in England in terms of the proportion of such land within its boundaries. Hundreds of people are involved in the vegetable and salad industry, which is growing and reckoned to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds to the area.

During the winter there is the traditional farming of brassicas and potatoes, as well as some salads under glass. Such work has been going on for centuries. The vegetables used to be carried on small wagons or tractors, but of course this growing industry is now year round. Foods such as prepared vegetables and stuffed mushrooms —hard-pressed Members of Parliament might be familiar with such comestibles—are assembled. Salads, which of course cannot be grown in our country during the winter, are imported from Spain and Portugal and brought to the pack houses, where they are packed for the British consumer. The two small villages of Tarleton and Hesketh Bank in my constituency are now overrun with gargantuan heavy goods vehicles from Spain and Portugal that bring salads to the growers and take the assembled bagged items to the supermarkets.

Supermarkets demand a 24-hour service, which means that the HGV drivers cannot avoid peak times such as rush hour or school runs. The main B road through the two villages sees domestic and commuter traffic competing with large tractors—they are much bigger than they used to be—and HGVs. Road surfaces and pavements are under constant stress. There have been several near misses in which HGVs have overturned. It is only by the grace of God that nobody has been killed in one of these accidents. The solution to the traffic tribulation in Tarleton and Hesketh Bank is the proposed Green Lane link, which would take traffic out of the main roads through the villages and on to the A59. The link is in the West Lancashire highways and transport masterplan.

At this point I should pay particular tribute to Tarleton and North Meols parish councils, which commissioned an excellent report outlining the safety and environmental benefits that the Green Lane link would bring to those villages. I am happy to provide a copy of the report to the Minister. I must also mention a tireless local champion of the link, County Councillor Malcolm Barron, who has assisted me greatly over the past two years in understanding not only the safety and environmental imperative for the link but its absolute economic necessity in supporting our local agricultural industry.

I want to speak briefly about rail links in Lancashire. The north-south links have improved greatly in the more than 20 years that I have regularly been using the line between Euston and Preston. There is one service that takes only two hours, compared with three hours in the early 1990s. I politely suggest to the Minister that Preston is the natural next staging point for HS2. We would be happy to begin the works in the north, rather than the south.

The Library briefing tells me that by 2033 the journey time should be a mere 77 minutes using HS2, which will be another boost for investment. However, before that can happen, Preston station, which currently has only six platforms, will need considerable modernisation and expansion. I will be grateful if the Minister can expand on any plans to do such work. Although north-south connections are improving, the links between Lancashire towns and Manchester are still poor.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

The electrification of the rail line between Manchester and Preston is very welcome, but does my hon. Friend share my concerns about the one-year delay? The line is very congested at the moment, so we need additional carriages and services on the track over the coming year until the electrification process is finished and the upgrades are completed.

[Seema Kennedy]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is from Bolton in the real Lancashire—the extended Lancashire area—for that intervention. Many of us have spent a bone-shaking hour travelling from Preston to Manchester. I understand that there were complications in the tunnelling works at Farnworth. The sooner the situation is improved, the better.

Such rail links result in more people taking to their cars. The A59 used to be the main road between Liverpool and York. It is my constituency’s main artery. In days gone by, there were two branch lines—one from Preston to Southport, and the other from Preston to Ormskirk. The first line was sadly completely dismantled and built over, but the second is intact. I pay tribute to the Ormskirk, Preston and Southport Travellers’ Association for helping me with my research.

At the moment, my constituents in Rufford and Croston who wish to carry on to Liverpool have to take a diesel train to Ormskirk and then get on an electric train to continue their journey because the line is broken. That train line also goes through the village of Midge Hall, whose station was closed in the 1960s. At Midge Hall, one witnesses a scene straight out of “Thomas the Tank Engine”: the driver gets off the train and exchanges a token to drive down the rest of the line. Although it is picturesque, it is inefficient, prolongs the journey time and persuades more of my constituents into their cars. There are compelling reasons to reopen the Midge Hall station. It is estimated that if it were reopened, 80% of Leyland residents—Leyland is a town that will expand as a result of the city deal—would be within walking distance of a railway station.

Although I have concentrated my comments on schemes in my constituency, they are relevant to the surrounding areas and the whole of Lancashire. Connectivity is crucial to the idea of the northern powerhouse—the notion that northern towns and cities can conglomerate to compete with London. If that is missing in Lancashire, we will be left out of what I believe can be a great northern renaissance.

Middle East

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Chris Green

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

I begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) for securing this important debate, and by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it to take place.

We meet a time when Britain’s role in the middle east is on the front pages for the reason of war, but the same could be said of almost any day in the last 100 years. If we want to have an effective role in the middle east, which I believe we can have, we need to learn from the past, consider the present and look to the future.

The majority of right hon. and hon. Members have understandably touched on Syria and our role in the coming days and months, but I would like to consider a broader theme. I want to speak directly to those in this place and outside it who say that we should insulate ourselves, turn away and “leave them to it.” To them, I would say quite simply that the links between Britain—or, as it then was, England and Scotland—did not begin with the invasion of Iraq, with Sykes-Picot or the crusades. The Judaeo-Christian underpinnings of our nation were born between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the fact that Indo-European languages are spoken as far east as Afghanistan shows our common and shared history. That is something we cannot ignore.

The debate is often framed in terms of trade, and how we can benefit from it, and war, but the links are deeper and more complex, to do with culture, religion and family. I am not the only Member of this place, or indeed of the other House, to have family links with the region.

Britain has centuries of diplomatic and scholarly understanding of the middle east. It needs to use that understanding to support stability, with the aim of eventually building a region in which democracy will thrive, and to help our most important ally, the United States, to understand the whole area. I would caution, however, that this will not be the work of one Parliament or of two. It will be the work of centuries.

The immediate threat, which is on all our minds this week, comes from the sadistic cult known as ISIL/Daesh. The origins of ISIL, al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab are complex, but I believe that one reason for the fact that they have survived and thrived is the existence of dysfunctional economies in most of the middle east. Where there is corruption, where there are monopolies and raging youth unemployment, there is an ideal recruiting ground for jihadi fighters. I want to elaborate on that a little, particularly in relation to Iran, which is the country in the region that I know best.

After the war, the Ba’athist, socialist command economies of Syria and Iraq, much of the Levant, and north Africa were unable to compete with the far east, which had much nimbler markets, and growth and per capita income declined in relative terms. The petroleum-rich nations of the region are only now reaching the conclusion that they must diversify their economies in order to become more resilient, and to build a wider base for employment.

People often forget that the 1979 revolution in Iran was as much socialist as it was Islamic. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) referred to central control by the conservative leadership, and, indeed, many of the cronies of the conservative leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps now hold much of the country’s economic power. In 1979, there were 105 rials to the dollar. Now there are 30,000. In 1976, Iran’s growth rate was 16.9%, but, according to the International Monetary Fund, it is likely to fall to 0.6%. I am not suggesting that the picture was uniformly rosy under the Shah, because by the end he had definitely become too dependent on oil revenues, but at least there was a thriving private sector.

During the revolution, 80% of all industry was nationalised, including the spinning mill that my father built from scratch and ran between 1971 and 1980. During that period, 380 men worked at the mill, and every day they produced 14.5 tonnes of top-quality yarn. It was sequestered by the Islamic regime in 1980, after which it employed twice as many people and produced half as much yarn, which was of such low quality that it could not be sold on the domestic market, let alone exported. The mill closed in 1992, and every single job was lost.

As we know, unemployment in Iran and, indeed, all over the region is sky-high, particularly among young people. Ahmadinejad propped up the companies of his cronies with $26 billion of cheap debts, which will never be paid off because they were given to flabby, uncompetitive firms. It was the youth of Iran who took to the streets in 1999 and 2009. Rouhani was elected on a mandate of providing sound finances, but the IMF estimates that it will take $10 billion of investment to achieve the 10% growth that is needed to lower the country’s chronic unemployment.

I think that we may be betting a little bit too much on the success of the nuclear deal, and on its inevitably improving the economy. The picture is not so simple. Countries throughout the middle east need fundamental internal economic reform.

[Chris Green]

We often hear about modernisation in Iran. Does my hon. Friend believe that it is making good progress in that regard, or does she think that that is more of a front, and that the Supreme Leader is not quite the moderniser that people would hope?

[Seema Kennedy]

I do not think anyone would say that the Supreme Leader was a moderniser. The President is, but the problem is that, under the constitution of Iran, there are different pools of influence and they are pulling at each other all the time.

The role for Britain is to nurture these nations and to encourage them to build competitive economies in which pluralism can thrive and in which Islamism will naturally fade away. We need to look at our own history, in which the free market and, eventually, freedom and democracy prospered. The primary building block in this edifice is property rights. Nations prosper when private property rights are well defined and enforced. Britain has an important role to play through its international aid budget, and I am glad to see the renewed focus on supporting fragile states to build strong property institutions.

Touching briefly on our interaction with the US—I have made this point in interventions—we need to use our knowledge to influence the date and to push it forward. Our role is to support our ally and to foster in the middle east the evolution that has led to freedom and democracy in the UK. It is a job of work that will continue into the lives of our children and grandchildren, but it is a job of work that is worth doing.