Yemen

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Stephen Doughty

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

Colleagues have used the phrase “forgotten war” a number of times during the debate, so I pay tribute to many hon. Members on both sides of the House who keep bringing the issue of Yemen back to the Chamber to ensure that it is not forgotten.

There is an acute humanitarian crisis. I do not want to go over those details again, as many hon. and right hon. Members who have spent time in Yemen have detailed that. However, I would like to put on the record my thanks—and, I think, the thanks of us all—for the Government’s great contribution to helping the Yemenis, including the £100 million of Department for International Development money that has been spent. [Interruption.] I cannot, unfortunately, hear the sedentary interventions. I am proud that we have made our 0.7% commitment. It says a lot about this Government, the previous coalition Government and our commitment to being an outward-looking global nation, which is very important, particularly after the referendum result.

We are all here to discuss stability and peace in Yemen. That is our aim and it is what is right for the people of Yemen. However, I would argue that it is greatly in the interests of all our constituents as well. We have seen that terrorist organisations thrive in war zones and failed states. There was Afghanistan. Then it was Syria, where Daesh grew. Now that it cannot get a foothold in Syria, it is moving over into Turkey. We are providing people who want to kill our constituents with a training ground, so the stability of the state of Yemen can only be in the best interests of our constituents.

[Stephen Doughty]

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady. She is making a very important point. Does she share my disappointment that there continues to be a small—I am glad to say that it is only small—number of Members in the House who continue to say that we should scrap all the aid budgets and scrap DFID? It is actually very much in our national security interests and in the interests of the people who are suffering in those countries that we continue to provide funding.

[Seema Kennedy]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman and I can see a little bit of cross-party love coming through. I do not think he will agree with the rest of my speech, but we totally agree on this point.

The conflict is having a profound effect, of course, on the people of Yemen, but it is having a wider effect on Saudi Arabia, which is suffering from the effects of migration, disease and terrorism on its borders. As I said in my intervention, Saudi Arabia is a state that has existed only for decades, to which its people might say, “Well, as a Persian, of course you’d say that.” It is in a state of transition. We have heard that some of its leaders are starting projects to think about how it will move towards further democracy and have more representation from women and other groups. As an ally, we should support the state in that and we should support its Government.

I was heartened when the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister came to speak to hon. Members before Christmas. He was open about recognising that there is a great challenge for his country, because we do not want a situation where Jeddah and Riyadh are controlled by Daesh or al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The war is legal, but we can argue about how effective President Hadi is as the leader in Yemen. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) and I differ on the role of selling armaments to Saudi Arabia, and I would echo some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) on that. One must understand that relationships take a long time to build up in the middle east and they are reliant on trust, so we must keep talking to people. Historical relationships through trade and diplomacy take an awfully long time to build.

Trade Union Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Stephen Doughty

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Doughty]

I think that it is important to test this point. The hon. Gentleman is referring to decisions that have statutory implications, are regulated and so on, but these methods are also used by major financial institutions. For example, the Nationwide Building Society, the Yorkshire Building Society, J.P. Morgan and others—

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

rose—

Trade Union Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Stephen Doughty

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Doughty]

I absolutely agree. In fact, I was just about to make that very point. Because of clause 4, employers will know when industrial action, if it is agreed upon, would start before the ballot is run. The information is there. There is already the five-week period, which is lengthy, and most people would consider it reasonable. Again, I believe that this measure belies the Government’s real intent. In my view and the view of the Opposition, the extended notice period will serve no legitimate purpose other than giving the employer additional time to organise the agency workers that the Government want to allow them to undermine the strike or industrial action, and to prepare for the legal challenges and the lawyers’ charter that the Bill provides.

[Seema Kennedy]

The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have made great play of the fact that Government Members have very little experience of trade union activity. Personally, I accept that; I do have not very much. But I do have experience—as does my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk—of running a small business. There is cost, inconvenience and, most importantly, damage to the employee’s goodwill when they go to law. The idea that we are all rushing off to lawyers is a misunderstanding, certainly of what I would have done as an employee and of what the majority of British businesses do.

[Stephen Doughty]

I regularly speak to many small businesses up and down my constituency. I have a very positive relationship with them, and I have a good degree of understanding of the challenges they face. As I have repeatedly said in this Committee, we want to avoid situations in which industrial action takes place. That is not under dispute in this debate or in our discussion about the whole Bill, but we believe the Government are going too far on the restrictions on reasonable rights.

Trade Union Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Stephen Doughty

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Doughty]

Q 133 I assume you both also deal with complaints about passenger fares, increases and issues around ticketing and so on. Would you be able to comment on the role that trade unions have played in highlighting passenger concerns similar to those you are representing on the rise in fare complexity and so on?

David Sidebottom: Particularly through the research that we have done, we know that value-for-money ratings on Britain’s railway are a lot lower than overall satisfaction with rail journeys among passengers. As we get around to January, the time of year when regulated fares increase, we will see the unions do what they do and be quite vocal about the need for reinvestment in the railway. What we articulate is the view of the passenger, particularly through poor value-for-money ratings. That is something we challenge the Department on, in terms of franchising, individual operators and improving the lot for passengers.

Janet Cooke: In terms of the unions, we do not formally engage with them, but the unions have done good work over the years in essentially being proxy passengers if you cannot talk to passengers themselves. Our board has never called them to give evidence or to speak to the board formally, but if there is a board meeting—particularly one where we are looking at such things as applications to change ticket office opening hours or, more recently, TfL’s proposals to close ticket offices—it is usual for the unions to attend and be in the public gallery. At the chair’s discretion, they might be invited to say something giving the passenger perspective through the unions’ eyes, and our chairs have usually allowed them to do that. It has probably been helpful.

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q 134 It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. This is a question for both witnesses. You have spoken about the threat of action on the railways in particular. Do you have experience of people saying to you, “I am worried about the strike”, and perhaps changing their travel patterns and pushing traffic on to the roads and off the railways and the underground—all parts of TfL and the commuter lines—because of the threat of action?

David Sidebottom: On the slightly broader subject of disruption generally, we know that passengers crave timely information that is targeted at them specifically. In the early part of the summer, with the potential strike by Network Rail, both sides were able to negotiate right to the wire. The railway planning system is not sophisticated or agile enough to get emergency timetables up on the system and taken off again at short notice.

People are trying to make decisions about whether to take a journey. I have no evidence of people shifting on to the road, although I suspect that they probably did. They were thinking, “I need to be somewhere in two weeks’ time and there is a threat of a strike on that day.” That is the slight difference with the threat of strike action—bargaining seems to go right to the wire, which is probably inevitable in the game that is played, but for passengers that creates more uncertainty than engineering works on a bank holiday weekend. At least with engineering works, passengers know that it will happen, although they may not like it, and information can be put out to help them.