Saudi Penal System

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee for making that point. Governments always have to balance the vital importance of upholding human rights with necessary security considerations, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the confidence he places in the Government’s decision in this case.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

The power of the urgent question indeed. This is a victory, if we believe press reports, for the Secretary of State himself, but also for the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, which has been vociferous in challenging the decision.

This is not, of course, an easy issue. The contract was being negotiated against a backdrop of a Government who have beheaded more people than Daesh, who are about to lash a British pensioner 350 times, potentially crucify a teenager and have sentenced a blogger to a slow death sentence, so I can genuinely understand why a Government would seek to involve themselves in changing how they manage the justice system. However, questions need to be asked about the whole approach to and relationship with Saudi Arabia, and about why the Government have dropped abolishing the death penalty as a priority in their international work abroad. What assistance did this Government give to the Government of Saudi Arabia so that they could chair a committee on human rights within the United Nations? Why did the British Government sanction flags flying at half-mast when the King of Saudi Arabia died—something that the Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson called

“a steaming pile of nonsense”?

I welcome today’s move, but this cannot be the end of our examination of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. One thing the Justice Secretary could do would be to place all papers relating to this deal in the public domain, so that Parliament can examine them retrospectively.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his detailed questions. Some, of course, strayed into diplomatic matters, which are not the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice, but I can confirm that whenever any monarch of any country dies, the flag is flown at half-mast. It is a long-standing convention—one that has been honoured in the past and continues to be honoured.

The hon. Gentleman’s broader point about the administration of justice within Saudi Arabia was well made. We have profound concerns about the respect accorded to human rights within Saudi Arabia, but it is also the case—I must stress this—that the most effective way of ensuring that human rights progress can be made in Saudi Arabia, both for its citizens and for others, is to allow the Foreign Office to continue its diplomatic work, which balances the strong relationships built up over time with an absolute insistence that in all countries and at all times, we oppose the death penalty. We will never resile from that.