Illicit Arms Trade (Africa)

Debate between Stephen Phillips and Jim Shannon

Monday 16th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He will know that we have signed and ratified the arms trade treaty, and that a number of countries have done the same, though it remains for many other countries to do so. I am sure he would join me—this is what I think his intervention is really about—in encouraging the Minister to ensure that others sign up to the treaty, as 48 countries have without yet having ratified it, and ratify the treaty as well.

The point that I was coming to is the need to ensure sustainability and stability in our world, especially in Africa. Across Africa, a politician who loses an election, or at least fails to stuff the ballot boxes sufficiently, hands out weapons to their supporters. A politician who experiences disenchantment at the hands of those supporters as a result of economic failure, all too often caused by corruption, fabricates an enemy and deflects criticism by directing armed violence against the scapegoats created. If someone sees the wealth of others and wonders why their own life is mean and brutish, they arm themselves and use violence to take what they should have. All that is made possible by the ready availability of arms too often diverted from the stockpiles of state actors without the means properly to control them.

The electoral violence experienced in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 and 2011 is as good an example as exists. Following the disputed presidential election of 2010, supporters of both rival candidates armed themselves, a crisis ensued, thousands died and the UN and its peacekeepers had to become involved. Côte d’Ivoire is a long way from the United Kingdom, but notably, in both 2011 and 2012, this country and our allies across Europe saw a marked increase in asylum claims and illegal immigration by Ivorians. What goes on in Africa matters directly here—maybe not immediately, but inevitably in due course.

Monsieur Diakité, the president of the west African network on small arms and himself an Ivorian, told the United Nations of his experience:

“I was peacefully sleeping in my room at the University of Bouaké, where I was in my first year of law school, when I was abruptly awakened by weapon fire from all sides. Some frustrated individuals who had been denied Ivorian citizenship had decided to take up arms—too readily available—to make their claim. We were terrorized for days, hunted like animals, without water, without food, without receiving help, constantly living in the fear of being killed. And we were not the only ones. The rest of the inhabitants suffered as well, regardless of age, sex or status. We all paid the price, but for what? And why? When I returned to the neighbourhood, one of my neighbours was forced, in order to feed her family, to yield to the intimidation and threats of armed individuals. I will never forget the tears on her face depicting her pain and the shame of having been a victim of forced prostitution and rape.”

The truth of the matter is that the availability of illicit small arms across Africa is such a problem that it has become part of the way of life. The question for the Minister, as I have hinted, is what he will do about it given the billions of pounds that British taxpayers pour into development aid in the continent with the best of motives, which are naturally undermined by the threat to stability and security that those arms pose.

I have used the Ivorian crisis as an example and it is a good one, but I have mentioned it for another very good reason. The arms and ammunition that have fuelled the violence over the last decade in that country have come not just from illegal sources internationally, but from so-called leakages from the stockpiles of state actors and the abandoned arsenals made readily available following the fall of al-Gaddafi in Libya.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. and learned Gentleman on bringing this very important subject to the House for its consideration. I have friends who are involved in security in the middle east and who have been active in Libya. They tell me that Libya is awash with illegal arms and that some of those arms have made their way to France. I am not saying that they were involved in the terrorist attacks over the past few days, but I tell the House that some weapons from Libya have made their way to France and are in the hands of terrorists. Does he agree that we need to put pressure on the Libyan authorities, such as they are, to use what power they have to ensure that the illegal trail of arms is curtailed?

[Stephen Phillips]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, to which I will turn shortly. The arms that were in Libya have been available to terrorists not only in west and sub-Saharan Africa, but across the world. Indeed, it seems that those arms may well have been used in Paris and elsewhere in terrorist attacks. Today, those arsenals continue to flow into west Africa. They fuel terrorism in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon. The borders are porous.

There are three specific questions that the Minister will wish to consider answering when he replies to this debate. First, what are the Government doing to make sure that no more of these weapons reach sub-Saharan Africa? Secondly, what is being done to deprive terrorists, in particular Boko Haram and al-Shabaab, of the weapons they have already got their hands on? Thirdly, what strategy do the Government intend to deploy to ensure that next time a heavily armed regime is overthrown in Africa or elsewhere, its weapons do not find their way into the hands of those who would harm either us or their fellow countrymen?

In truth, however, although these are specific issues on which the Minister will wish to reflect, there is a much broader question that he needs to answer: what is being done, and what more can be done, to stop the flow of illicit light weapons and small arms more generally? What efforts are the Government making to disrupt supplies internationally and deal with the glut of assault weapons to which I have already referred—a glut that, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has made clear, may well have made it easier for the terrorists who carried out the attacks in Paris last week? What support—both direct budget support and technical assistance—are the Government giving to countries across Africa to ensure that arms and arsenals are properly protected and do not suffer the leakage rates, estimated to be as high as 5% annually, that place small arms into the hands of black marketeers, criminals and terrorists?

The Minister will wish to discuss those issues, in so far as he has not already done so, with his counterparts in the Department for International Development. Indeed, he will have to do so, for hidden among the probably too numerous sustainable development goals to which we and the rest of the world have just signed up, he will find in goal 16 the need to promote peaceful and inclusive societies. That cannot happen without the scourge of highly mobile weapons that kill being removed from circulation, in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. It certainly cannot happen without action being taken to suppress an illicit trade that places light weapons and small arms into the hands of any disgruntled faction or individual minded to take steps to acquire them.

Manufacturers and brokers operating at the borders of the law, if not beyond it, but at present able to buy their way out of any difficulties they face, must be dealt with. So too, as I have already said, must the security of arsenals and stockpiles. Again, lest it be thought that this does not matter to us here, let me say that it does. It is the taxes of our constituents that fund the international aid that the UK deploys; it is their security that demands that we tackle the root causes of migration and terrorism; and it is their future that mandates that we avert the sorts of crises that fuel the scourge of terrorism threatening us all.

I want to end my remarks with a reference to another country that should be in the headlines of the world press but is at present largely not, although for perfectly understandable reasons, given the events of the past week: Burundi. There is growing evidence, as I told the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary last week, that if a genocide principally involving the use of small arms against civilians has not yet started, it is on the cards. Libération, the French newspaper, has said that it has started already. The President of the Senate of Burundi has reportedly called on supporters of the Government to “pulverise” and “exterminate” opponents who he described as “good only for dying”. Cockroach metaphors familiar to those who recall the Rwandan genocide of 1994 have been used. The ultimatum given to opponents of the Government to disarm and fall into line ended yesterday.

That this matters—not least because once a civil war starts, as the experience of Rwanda teaches us, it is almost impossible to stop—is obvious, but it also matters in the context of this debate, because Burundi, with its history of past conflicts, is awash with small arms, despite past efforts to ensure the disarmament of the civilian population. Yesterday, according to the mayor of the capital, Bujumbura, his house was attacked with grenades and automatic weapons. There were other attacks across the capital and, reportedly, four deaths, all from small arms or grenades.

Not only is Burundi in a bad way, as the Minister no doubt knows, but it is in a place that, if the violence does get worse following President Nkurunziza’s decision to secure a third term on the face of things barred by the constitution, is likely to descend into armed violence and humanitarian crisis at speed—and if Burundi, then maybe Rwanda, and maybe, given porous borders, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The real point for tonight’s debate, however—separate, I accept, from the need to act over Burundi recognised last week by the Security Council—is that if the country was not awash with the illicit arms that the five outbreaks of mass violence since independence from Belgium have ensured, we would have to worry a lot less about the current situation.

It is those illicit arms that fuel violence, threaten civil society, undermine development aid, drive migration and render us here in the United Kingdom a lot less safe. For all those reasons, the Government need to be clear what they are doing and to focus on this issue rather more than I suspect is at present the case. I look forward to hearing from the Minister tonight that that will happen.

Sub-Saharan Africa (Corruption and the Economy)

Debate between Stephen Phillips and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Let us begin our journey in almost any country—certainly far too many countries—on the world’s poorest continent, a continent bordering Europe: that of Africa. We sit in the office of the procurement manager of a Government Department—it matters not which one, for they are all much the same. Outside, not 100 feet away, a mother sits in the stifling heat with her children engaged in whatever business she has, selling mangoes, or coconuts, or smoked fish to passers-by perhaps. She survives and provides for her family on an income of less than a dollar a day. There is no father, for he passed away some time ago from a virus with which many in the developed world live full and long lives. Whether the mother has HIV, whether she will survive to see her sons grow to manhood, neither she nor we know. But our world, and even the world of our procurement manager, is a world wholly unknown to her experience.

In the office in which we sit, the procurement manager, who is tasked with spending donor funds from the developed world, is negotiating a contract for the supply of expensive photocopiers to the Department in which the brother who appointed him is the Minister. His salary is a few thousand dollars a year, a fortune to the vast majority of the citizens he is supposed to serve. Yet below the cuff of his crisp white shirt, we find the essential element of the uniform of the Government procurement manager in any sub-Saharan African country: the gold, diamond-encrusted Rolex, yours for only $40,000 at any good airport en route to the nation in which we find ourselves. How on earth was it paid for? Was it perhaps a gift? No. It was paid for by the official himself from cash given to him, which secured another lucrative Government contract for another supplier—funds paid not to the Government, but to the official himself. It is, we are told, something we must accept; it is the way things are. But it is the way things have been for far, far too long.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, if you want to do business, you must pay to oil the wheels. You must pay if you want to avoid the consequences of laws designed to protect the most vulnerable from the exploitation of the natural resources that lie adjacent to homes. You must pay if you want to drive unmolested past makeshift roadblocks manned by real police officers employed by the state. You must pay for almost any interaction with the officials of the state. For if you do not, you will find your life much more difficult than it needs to be—if, that is, you are fortunate enough to have the cash to ease your path.

If you are rich enough, you can change that; if you are rich enough and you want to—and many businesses do—you can change the laws that inconveniently prevent you from exploiting the resources Africa possesses and, even better, from paying tax on your profits. If you are rich enough, you can always buy yourself out of any trouble you find yourself in.

Corruption in sub-Saharan Africa is therefore endemic; it is part of the way of life; it is how things are. But—and this is the point with which the House needs to be troubled—corruption stifles legitimate investment, kills economic growth, maintains and supports poverty, and because it does all those things, it also threatens the security of this country and of the developed world as a whole.

The poorest people—and it is the very poorest and the most vulnerable in our world that we are talking about—will risk all in an attempt to make their way to the developed world. And some of them, seeing the quality of life we have and they do not, are also ripe for a radicalisation that endangers the security of our citizens overseas and, as we have seen, here at home as well.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I sought permission beforehand to intervene. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman feel that there is perhaps a need for Department for International Development projects that come from the backing of this Government—my and his Government—to be monitored in respect of project delivery for the people on the ground to ensure that they are correct? Does there need to be oversight of DFID projects by the Government to stop corruption?

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and he is absolutely right. I shall come on to his point in due course.

Corruption in the developing world has been a hidden problem for too long, though it is now beginning to be brought home to us by the constant threat to our security and by an untrammelled immigration that sees fires set at the entrance to the channel tunnel in France. It is something that requires effort from every Government across the world to challenge, but it is also something that I fear is still too far down the political agenda across the world to be effectively tackled.

Nothing much is changing in terms of advancing the anti-corruption agenda. On 9 December 2013, on international anti-corruption day, the UN Secretary-General pointed out that

“corruption suppresses economic growth by driving up costs, and undermines the sustainable management of the environment and natural resources. It breaches fundamental human rights, exacerbates poverty and increases inequality by diverting funds from health care, education and other essential services. The malignant effects of corruption are felt by billions of people everywhere.”

Ebola

Debate between Stephen Phillips and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

On 18 June, before the House rose for the summer recess—and in part prompted by the better half of team Phillips then working in the Ministry of Finance in Sierra Leone—I asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development about the then little known issue of an outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic virus in west Africa. It is a topic I had already mentioned to her informally, as she acknowledged in her response. I wanted to know what the Government were doing to deal with what I described, with a prescience in which I take no pleasure, as a very serious issue for the affected countries and, given the risks to us here, for the citizens of the United Kingdom. So it was that, in June this year, the House received assurances from my right hon. Friend that a great deal was being done, specifically in properly funding the World Health Organisation and in the provision of other support to raise awareness, and to ensure the containment, of the Ebola outbreak.

Five months have passed. When I raised the issue, fewer than a hundred cases a week were being reported to the WHO in the principally affected countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. In the last week of October, more than 3,000 new cases were reported. Not only are there more infections but the rate of infection in most regions of the principally affected countries is accelerating.

These are not mere assertions. They are the data and, if things continue as they are, they tell us the horrifying story of what is going to happen. On 14 October, the WHO assistant director-general, Dr Bruce Aylward, warned the international community that, by December, infection rates may well be running at 10,000 cases a week. The outbreak is, in the words of the WHO,

“the most severe acute public health emergency seen in modern times.”

The WHO is in part responsible for this. The outbreak has laid bare the incompetence of too many of its senior staff appointed because of political influence in Africa, an issue that we will need to tackle when we have dealt with the outbreak.

Initial WHO estimates that the total number of cases could be contained at around 20,000 have therefore proven to be woefully wrong, as just about every epidemiologist said they would when they were first made. If the international community acts now, as it has begun to do, it will be at best months before the outbreak is under control, but there will have been, I venture to suggest, many more than 20,000 cases. Indeed, many tens of thousands of people may be dead.

Clearly, therefore, despite our best efforts, the action that has been taken by us and by our international partners so far has proven ineffectual. So that we are clear, that threatens not only those living in the three principally affected countries and their neighbours—some of the very poorest people in the world—but us here, too.

Although the UK is now playing its part in ensuring that we try to contain the outbreak, the first thing I want to hear from the Minister tonight is what, precisely, he and his colleagues in the Foreign Office are doing to ensure that our international partners are playing their part. In so far as I was not clear in June, I want to be clear now: the issue threatens not just west Africa; it threatens us all. This is only the third time the WHO has declared a disease outbreak as a public emergency of international concern, and if that does not give hon. Members pause for thought, I do not know what will.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for bringing this matter to the House and I did ask beforehand whether I could intervene. Last weekend, I had an opportunity to meet some of the Territorial Army soldiers involved in the medical corps who are going to Sierra Leone. Their job is to show people how to avoid catching the Ebola virus. Due to the lack of vaccination, soldiers have been told to use their “common sense and training” to prevent themselves from becoming sick. Unsurprisingly, their families are deeply concerned, as indeed are the soldiers. I share that concern, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman does, too.

[Stephen Phillips]

Of course I share that concern. I think that if soldiers, whether they are reservists or regulars, are being sent to Sierra Leone or, indeed, to any of the affected countries, they must be given proper training so that they do not expose themselves in any way to the possibility of infection.

Although a large section of the media has begun to shift the spotlight to other issues in recent days, I fear, as many do, that things will get worse before they get better. However, there is some good news. Following the Prime Minister’s Cobra meeting to discuss Ebola a month ago, the UK is now helping to lead the international response. That could, of course, have come sooner, but come it has. I understand that we are now one of the largest donors, that we have committed £125 million to the effort, and that we have, in Freetown, not only the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Argus with its hospital facilities, but several hundred military personnel. We have a good reputation in the region, and those heroes—which is what the personnel who have gone to Sierra Leone are—along with everyone else who travels to west Africa to help its people in this dreadful time, deserve our thoughts, our prayers and our support.

No doubt the Minister will tell me whether I am correct, but I assume that France, which I understand is taking the lead in Guinea, and the United States, which I understand is fulfilling a similar role in Liberia, are playing similar roles in the countries where they are leading the efforts. But is that enough? For our part, here in the United Kingdom, it may be, but when we hear of the efforts being made by other countries, it would seem not. The position may well have changed, and I should be glad to hear from the Minister that it has, but to learn that Canada, for instance, has pledged the equivalent of only £18.6 million is profoundly depressing, although it is doubtless a matter for Canadians. We learned this morning that Australia, which had originally given the equivalent of £6.2 million, is now doing rather better, having agreed to commit funds for the construction of a 100-bed treatment centre that the UK is building, but does that mean extra funds, or funds that the UK would have been providing in any event? Perhaps the Minister will tell us.

In September, the Secretary-General of the United Nations indicated that $600 million would be required just to fund the WHO road map to bring the outbreak to an end. No doubt the Minister will wish to update the House on where current international commitments have taken us. However, he will be aware not only that many consider that sum to be an underestimate, but that it is feared that very little of what has been committed appears to have paid for very much in the affected region. It is not just a question of money, or of promises which, all too often, appear to be poorly translated in practice; it is a question of how money is spent.

Young Drivers (Safety)

Debate between Stephen Phillips and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I am grateful to have secured this important debate. I tried to do so having learned the tragic story of Emily Challen, a 17-year-old constituent of mine who was killed in a car accident this time last year. Her death has left a void in the lives of her parents and family that few of us can begin to imagine. I pay tribute to her parents, Keith and Jennifer, for their bravery and dignity in telling Emily’s story and in trying to ensure that some good comes of what their family have been through.

On 15 February 2013, Emily was travelling to school as one of three passengers in a car driven by an 18-year-old friend, when the car ran into the back of a stationary lorry on a slip road. Emily was pronounced dead at the scene. In a few short moments, her promising young life, and the happiness of many whose lives she touched and enriched, were extinguished.

We cannot, of course, undo what happened that day. What we can do, and what we should be doing, is to try to reduce the chances of what happened to the Challen family happening to anyone else. In short, how can driving be made safer for young drivers? What lessons can we learn from other jurisdictions where young drivers cannot simply pass their test and enjoy the same access to the road network as those who have been driving for years? How can we minimise the chance of other families having to suffer what the Challen family have been through?

Road crashes are one of the biggest unnatural causes of death for young people in the UK. The figures are appalling and they speak for themselves. Young drivers are involved in one in four fatal and serious crashes, despite making up only one in eight holders of driving licences. One in five new drivers has a crash within six months of passing their test, and we all know that young male drivers have much higher crash rates than young female drivers.

Why is that so? The reasons are not, perhaps, obscure, but they deserve restatement. As anyone who has been driving for a while knows, young people are more likely to take a number of the deadliest risks on our roads, including speeding, overtaking blind and not wearing a seat belt. Young drivers, especially young men, are more likely to seek thrills from driving fast and cornering at high speed than their older counterparts. Although young people quickly pick up the physical skills of driving and, as a result, feel they have mastered the art and are very confident about their abilities, that is simply an illusion. Young drivers drive unsafely, but they do so believing that they are in control.

Young drivers do all that when, as anyone who has been driving for years knows, although some hazards on the road are easy to identify, many are not. It often takes experience to notice the hidden hazards, and owing to inexperience, young people may be poor at noticing them and reacting in time to avoid them. The research indicates that, since driving is a new experience for young people, they tend to use most of their mental energy on the immediate tasks, such as gear-changing and steering, rather than on general observation of the potential hazards ahead. Inexperience means that they have a poorer ability to spot such hazards; youth means that they are particularly likely to take risks.

As hon. Members will know, that is not the end of the story. Perhaps most worryingly, young drivers are more likely to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. So it is that drivers under the age of 25 have the highest incidence of failing a breath test after a crash. Any amount of alcohol in the bloodstream can affect a person’s ability to drive safely, as it impairs reaction times and affects the ability to judge speed and distance accurately. Alcohol or drugs, combined with a lack of experience on the roads, is therefore a particularly dangerous mixture.

Of particular concern to Mr and Mrs Challen, given the circumstances of Emily’s death, is the research that shows that having passengers in the car can cause even higher crash rates among young drivers. Peer pressure can encourage bad driving and result in drivers showing off to their passengers, as well as cause distraction. Research in the United States has shown that the already high crash rate for teenagers when driving alone is greatly increased when passengers are present. With two or more passengers, the fatal crash risk for 16 to 19-year-old drivers is more than five times greater than when they are driving alone.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for bringing this important matter to the House for consideration. Is he aware that between the hours of 2 am and 5 am, accidents among young people increase by 17%? Does he feel that the Government should perhaps consider a restriction on young drivers between 2 am and 5 am, to reduce accidents and improve safety?

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I was not aware of the specific figure that he has given, but I will certainly come on to what the Government might do, and what I—and indeed others—think they ought to do.

The Minister will, I suspect, know the figures I have given to the House, but neither this Government nor their predecessors have taken the action necessary to ensure the safety of young drivers on our roads, as well as that of those who travel with them and other road users. Why? I do not know. I want to hear tonight that the Minister and the Department for Transport will take a fresh look at the issue before more young lives are wiped out in an unnecessary and untimely fashion.

What can be done to make things safer? Although I accept there is a balance to be struck with social and work mobility for young people, the fact remains that we have to do something. I, and others such as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), have been extremely concerned that the Department has delayed its Green Paper on young driver safety, apparently indefinitely. Let me make it clear to my hon. Friend the Minister that not only is that not good enough, but he needs to tell the House why that decision has been taken and, frankly, either reverse it or face the consequences of not doing so, and what that will mean for death and serious injury to young drivers in the future.

Graduated driver licensing exists in many other countries, and at present I see no good reason for why it does not exist here. Exact requirements vary slightly, but the main aim, which any licensing system ought to share, remains the same: to build up the ability and experience of young drivers in stages on a structured basis, to minimise the risks that they face. That means limiting the exposure of new drivers to the dangerous situations I have mentioned. Novice drivers going through graduated driver licensing could be subjected to certain restrictions and conditions, including restrictions on the number of passengers they can carry, driving at night and alcohol consumption. A graduated licence system would also go hand in hand with road safety as a compulsory part of the national curriculum in schools, where we should be teaching young people about the risks that they face as novice drivers or young passengers and how to minimise them.

Presently, we allow eager young 17-year-olds to be out unsupervised on public roads exceptionally quickly. In the UK, drivers can go from never having driven at all to being fully licensed in months or even weeks. Each year, 50,000 17-year-olds pass their driving test with fewer than six months’ driving experience. That gives them very little time to develop experience while under the relative safety of some form of supervision.