Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [Lords]

Debate between Stephen Crabb and Peter Grant

Report stage
Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I am listening closely to the hon. Member’s argument, but I am afraid I just do not accept the points he is trying to string together in what is a fairly strange argument. The reason this amendment is so important and the reason we do not expect council chambers to be dabbling in foreign, defence or security policy is precisely that they are not given the competences over those policies. It is the same for the Welsh Senedd, and the Scottish Government have a limited number of competences. Yes, we want them to exercise their powers fully in those areas where they are given competence, but it is a complete diversion of activity and attention to say that we want councils to be getting involved in incredibly sensitive and complicated subjects of the kind that my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) has already described.

[Peter Grant]

I certainly cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman. As I have made perfectly clear, how the British system works is that Ministers have the authority to take policy decisions, and Parliament is right to hold Ministers to account for that. Parliament has the ultimate right to decide what becomes law. If nobody else is allowed to discuss it, and councils are not allowed to express views in the interests of the people they are there to represent, the whole system starts to fall flat on its face.

It is as plain as the nose on my or anyone else’s face that decisions on foreign policy can easily have a disproportionate impact on residents in some parts of these islands. Certainly, decisions on defence policy can have a significantly greater impact on some places than others. Remember that councils are directly democratically elected by local people to represent their views. Are we suggesting that they should not be allowed to debate matters of foreign policy simply because they do not have the right to take the final decision? If that is what Government Members are saying, why is it that almost every Tory MP who pops up on their hindlegs at Prime Minister’s questions to ask a planted question invites the Prime Minister to interfere in local democratic decision making? We have had two examples today, with the right hon. Member for Newark expressing his views on possible decisions by councils that, with respect, are nothing to do with him, because they are not the council area he represents.

I do not know whether Wirral Council or Hertfordshire will take the right decision, but I am happy to trust the good people of the Wirral and Hertfordshire to sort out councillors who get it wrong too often. That is what local elections are about. I do not like to see the Government, having substantially stripped back the powers of local authorities, then deciding to give local authorities the power to take decisions they agree with, but taking away the power for local authorities to do things that might go in a different direction.

Among all this, we are losing sight of the vital fact that as a matter of law, the trustees of a pension fund are a completely different organisation and a completely different entity in most cases from the organisation whose current and former employees are members of that fund. My wife has for many years been a trustee of the Fife Council pension fund, as well as having clocked up nearly 30 years as a councillor. The decisions that the trustees of the pension fund make are completely different from the decisions many of the same people will take as members of Fife Council. Nobody believes that the decisions of the pension fund reflect the views of the council; the council is not allowed to try to whip pension trustees, for example.

UK Relations with Qatar

Debate between Stephen Crabb and Peter Grant

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant]

Not being an Arabic speaker I do not watch al-Jazeera in Arabic—I seldom watch it in English—but as reported by the BBC, some of its coverage of the terrorist murders of innocent hostages, for example, was highly insensitive. It appeared to be designed to give a propaganda victory to the terrorists, which we cannot condone.

Mention was made of the close military links between the United Kingdom and Qatar, and the current Emir and his father who preceded him are both graduates from Sandhurst. One reason—not the main one—why we must hope that the current diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and Qatar does not escalate into anything else is that both countries use British planes and pilots who were trained in Britain by the RAF. It would be terribly ironic if a conflict that cost lives in the Gulf involved two parties using British-made technology against each other. That is a salutary lesson, and we must be a bit more careful about who we are prepared to sell weapons and military hardware to. We cannot always be sure that those weapons will be used against the people we might wish them to be used against.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to his difficulty in imagining the need for air conditioning at a football match. He is one of four or five of us in this debate who, if we were fanatical football fans, would find it difficult to imagine a situation in which it mattered a jot where the World cup was being played—I can just about remember the last time that Scotland went, and I do not think Wales have been there since 1958. I hope they will get there at some point.

Qatar is obviously using the World cup to try to persuade the rest of the world that it is moving forward, but we must ensure that progress continues after 2022. I welcome a lot of the promises made last year about improved protection and rights for workers, but we must ensure that those promises start being delivered this year, and continue to be delivered not just until 2022, but into the late 2020s, the 2030s and beyond. The improvements and changes must be permanent.

Mention has been made of some of the demands that the Saudis and their neighbours have made on Qatar, but as I said when I intervened on the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, a lot of those countries need to examine their consciences about some of the groups that they have supported in other countries. It is, for example, a bit much for Saudi Arabia to object to the fact that Qatar appears to be supporting unpleasant acts in other countries, while it is bombing civilians to death in Yemen and elsewhere.

Although some of the demands and requests appear to be reasonable, Qatar is being asked to break all contact not only with terrorist groups in certain countries, but with political opposition groups. Imagine if the United States Government asked us to stop sending parliamentary groups over to meet Democrats at the time of a Republican President, or to stop going to European countries and speaking to Opposition politicians as well as those in the Government. That is effectively what the Saudis are asking for, and although some of the demands are perfectly reasonable—any allegations of state funding of terrorism anywhere must be independently investigated by an international court or tribunal—we must also say to our friends in Saudi Arabia, “Just wait a minute, you’re going a wee bit too far with this.”

Some of the rhetoric we are seeing from the Saudis and some of their allies reminds me of some of the inflammatory language that we have become far too used to in the claims and counter-claims between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours. They are not just talking about digging a ditch to physically cut off Qatar from the rest of the continent; they are talking about deliberately dumping nuclear and toxic waste on the Qatari border, where the potentially lethal impact will affect Qataris as much as—or more than—anybody else. That sounds to me like a threat of chemical and biological warfare. It might simply be rhetoric, and perhaps the claims are being made more for the consumption of the Saudi Arabian population, to convince people that their Government are standing up to Qatar, but any such threat should be dealt with by a firm response from the international community. Saudi Arabia should be asked to explain itself at the United Nations. All too often in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, once people start talking the language of atrocity the action of atrocity follows quickly afterwards.

We should call on all sides in the dispute in the Gulf to tone down their language, resort to diplomacy, and look to get some kind of agreement. We must also make it clear to Qatar that if there are credible allegations of serious crimes against international norms, whether or not the Government are directly involved, it must be open to having them investigated.

[Stephen Crabb]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech. Has he sat down with any of the diplomats at the embassy in London and had this discussion with them? If he has, what feeling did he get from them?

[Peter Grant]

I have not personally had such discussions, although I would be perfectly happy to.

As I was saying, we should be prepared to seek independent investigations into alleged funding or support for terrorism by Qatar, but we should also seek independent international investigations into the 150-plus allegations of war crimes against Saudi Arabia. It is not good enough for the UK Government to say that we should just let the Saudis investigate themselves. Although I hear some of the optimistic noises about new trade with Qatar and other countries after we leave the European Union, I hope we can get an assurance from the Minister that if we seek to increase our trade with any country, that will be done in terms that recognise the need for improvements in human rights. Trade should not simply mean a trade in weapons that can be used for the wrong purposes, or a trade in infrastructure that benefits the wealthy royal family of Qatar at the expense of the working conditions and lives of native born Qataris and permanent or temporary migrants.

In some countries, people live in difficult situations because that country is intrinsically poor, and we have a responsibility to help lift those countries out of poverty. Qatar, however, does not have that excuse. Any poverty or poor conditions endured by anyone in Qatar are a deliberate choice by the Government of Qatar, and at times we must call them out for that and say that we expect things to improve.

I am pleased to have contributed to the debate, and I would be happy to take up any offer to meet representatives from the Governments of Qatar or Saudi Arabia, should they want to explain their countries’ policies to me and my colleagues. I hope the Minister will assure us that although a large part of Qatar’s relationship with London is about money, when it comes to the crunch it will not just be money that talks, and that the lives of people in Qatar and its neighbouring countries will be seen as being at least as important as the money that flows in from the coffers of the royal family.