China: UK policy

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It will not surprise colleagues or the Minister that I want to focus on issues of human rights, persecution and freedom of religion or belief. I agree that we should reach out with a hand of friendship to China, but a true friend does not flinch from telling another what might be unpalatable truths. I welcome the assurances from the Foreign Secretary on 2 April that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been raising the issue of human rights abuses with China, and his assurances that it will

“raise those concerns with China at every opportunity.”—[Official Report, 2 April 2019; Vol. 657, c. 916.]

However, I am concerned that that is simply not enough.

In June 2016, the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, which I have the privilege to chair, launched a report on human rights in China entitled, “The Darkest Moment: China’s Crackdown on Human Rights, 2013-16”. At the launch, an MP who knows China well expressed agreement with all our findings. His one criticism was with the title. It was, he said, premature: “It will get even darker.” From what I have observed over the past three years, he was right.

Last week, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom published its 20th annual report. It is an independent, bipartisan, US federal Government commission. It monitors the implementation of the right to freedom of religion or belief around the world in accordance with international law standards, and it makes policy recommendations to the US Government.

In its 2019 report, it identifies the ever-deteriorating situation of different religious groups in China. I will mention a few of its findings. First, the Chinese Government continues to take steps

“to ‘sinicize’ religious belief”,

which not only diminishes or prevents the right to freedom of religion from being in anyway meaningful, but is also erasing

“the cultural and linguistic heritage of religious and ethnic communities”.

The groups mentioned as particularly affected are the Tibetan Buddhists and Uyghur Muslims, about whom we have already heard today.

Secondly, in the summer of 2018, reports emerged that the Chinese Government were detaining hundreds of thousands, possibly up to 2 million Uyghur and other Muslims in Xinjiang, in so-called re-education camps, allegedly to address the issue of extremism. Continuing reports come from those camps of abuse, primitive living conditions and disappearances.

Thirdly, it reports that more than 900 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in 2018 simply for practising their beliefs or distributing literature about Falun Gong. The Government have also raided or closed down hundreds of Protestant house churches, including Zion church, Rongguili church and the Early Rain Covenant church. I will go into a little more detail about this, if I may.

Churches are being destroyed. Christians are being arrested, imprisoned and tortured. Members of the family are under surveillance, Christians are forced to deny their faith and young pupils in schools are investigated for their religious backgrounds. In the case of the Early Rain Covenant church in the city of Chengdu, police arrested more than 100 of its members in December 2018, including the pastor, Wang Yi, and his wife, Jiang Rong. They are being charged for inciting subversion, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. A statement signed by 500 house church leaders says authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang Chinese flags and sing patriotic songs, and barred minors from attending. Indeed, one of the most disturbing issues in recent developments is that the Chinese regulations on religious affairs, which were implemented last year, banned five categories of people from attending church, including children under 18.

I know I have said some of this before, but I was interested to hear the Bishop of Truro being interviewed on Radio 4 on Sunday. He has just issued his interim report on the persecution of Christians worldwide—the interim report of the inquiry instituted by the Foreign Secretary himself—and has said that he is shocked by the scale, scope and severity of the persecution of some 250 million Christians worldwide. Almost 100 million are in China, and one of the things that I was interested in was that he said, “A lot of this has been out there, but it’s not really being heard.” That is why we have to keep repeating these issues.

Bob Fu, the founder of China Aid, told me last year that:

“Last year’s crackdown”—

on Christians—

“is the worst in three decades.”

The pastor of Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church, Huang Xiaoning, said:

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. But according to the Bible only God is God. The government is scared of the churches.”

The tragedy is that the authorities in China now see faith as a threat to their authority.

Those statistics are just the tip of an iceberg of issues that are identified in the report I have mentioned, and which are happening all over China. Many Members of this House will be aware of the Open Doors organisation, which produces a watch list of persecution across the world. It rates countries according to the level of persecution. In the 2019 list, which was launched in January, China jumped from 43rd place in 2018 to 27th. Bearing in mind what I have just said, I do not believe that that will change. If anything, I think China will make its way closer to the top of the list.

Open Doors emphasises the Chinese Government’s plans to contextualise the Bible to make it more culturally acceptable—in other words, to rewrite it. However, the Bible is a sacred text. We hear of Christian preachers who are being required to adapt their texts to include the core values of socialism, and to have their sermons pre-checked by the authorities before they deliver them. Facial recognition cameras are being placed in front of pulpits so that the authorities can check on who is attending services and ensure that no one from the five forbidden categories is there.

In October 2018, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China counted at least 1,422 prisoners of conscience in Chinese prisons, which does not include the mass detention of the Muslims in Xinjiang. The violations of human dignity that are involved in mass surveillance in China should cause us real concern. Apparently, 13 million Uyghurs are being monitored and watched in Xinjiang, often by smartphone technology and facial recognition cameras, as I have mentioned. An app is used by police to assess China’s integrated joint operations platform, or IJOP, which is a mass surveillance database gathering information from checkpoints on the street and in gas stations, schools and workplaces. It monitors individuals’ every action and triggers alerts to the authorities. Some of this very sophisticated intelligence can actually monitor the facial traits of categories of people such as the Uyghur Muslims.

A recent data leak from Chinese police contractor SenseNets revealed that the IJOP app had collected almost 6.7 million GPS co-ordinates in a 24-hour period, tracing 2.6 million people, mainly in Xinjiang. We hear that China has plans to have 400 million CCTV cameras in place across the country by the end of 2020. Is it not reasonable that we have concerns about Huawei and what it proposes to do by using its technology in the UK?

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. We have two more Members who wish to speak, so could the hon. Lady kindly bring her remarks gently to a close?

[Fiona Bruce]

I certainly will.

Having heard some of these findings, I question what religious freedom is in China. Does it mean anything, and are we doing enough in the UK to challenge what is happening in China? Other states have taken a stronger stance on the issue. In response to the situation in Xinjiang, the US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, has called on China to allow international observers to visit, and for the release of people imprisoned there. He has mentioned that if China does not comply, the US could invoke sanctions. May I suggest that our Government should look to take much stronger steps on challenging human rights grievances in China?

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

I had not actually intended to participate when I decided to come to this debate, but I find that I really want to. Although I accept that there are very considerable issues about the treatment of various groups in China, it seems that there is a much larger issue, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) began to attend in moving the debate. It really is very important that we should begin to attend to it.

The fact is that the world is being remade before our eyes. Between them, China and India are very likely to be the dominant features of our globe in the latter half of the current century, and they might simply reassert a position that was the norm until the industrial revolution. We should remind ourselves that after the industrial revolution, we in Britain were among the leaders in a period of imperialism and colonialism, and of aggressive mercantilism, in which appalling scandals were visited on both India and China. We inherited power in India at a time when the country accounted for 23% of world GDP; when we left, it accounted for 3%. I declare an interest in this issue: I am leading a project on India and China at the Legatum Institute—incidentally, I am the vice-president of the Great Britain-China Centre. Actually, one need not be involved in these things at all to know what the history looks like.

On China, the opium wars, which have been mentioned, were correctly described by an independent observer of the scene—namely William Ewart Gladstone in this House—as probably the most awful scandal that had ever until that time occurred in the relations between one country and another. We fought a war in order to force very large numbers of people to accept the export to them of a dangerous drug. It is not surprising, therefore, that India and China have certain issues with the west, and Britain in particular.

Nor is the construction of the so-called international rules-based order, which has been referred to, anywhere near as unequivocal as people often imagine. It is, in point of fact, a construct of the western liberal victors of the second world war. The whole international rules-based system, which is being replicated in a completely different way in the institutions surrounding the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, has embedded in it western liberal values to which I happen to subscribe, but which are not at all the values of the entire tradition of Indian thought and postcolonial Indian thought from Nehru onwards, nor of Chinese thought, ancient or modern.

The abuses and problems in China that have been referred to are reminiscent of things that went on in our country for many centuries. It is helpful in many respects to think of Xi Jinping’s regime as a kind of Tudor monarchy. The Tudors in this country, operating in part from this building, engaged in torture and religious persecution, and did all sorts of things of which we now do not approve. They also presided over the most vibrant cultural and economic renaissance that this country has ever seen, which gave great benefits to the world. They also initiated what became an industrial revolution—the greatest explosion of human progress and development, in economic terms, that had ever happened until the Chinese outdid it.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, in the past few years China has brought out of poverty the greatest number of people that has ever been brought out of poverty anywhere in the history of the world. It may in due course be overtaken by India, but unless and until that happens, it has a striking world record in improving the quality of life of its people. The fact that it is doing so in a way that does not wholly meet with the approval of western liberals is, first, no surprise, and secondly, something that, although I agree it should not be ignored, should not lead us to think that the major issue is what we think about China.

The major issue is a quite different one. My hon. Friend quoted Kevin Rudd, who happens to be one of the most sober-minded and sensible of the commentators, but in certain circles in Washington a powerful narrative is developing—this is why I asked him whether he really thought the Department for International Trade should be advising him to invent his own foreign policy vis-à-vis China—that foresees, almost as if it welcomes it, the prospect of an encounter, which actually means a world war, between the United States and China as China rises. Some of the more pessimistic texts have analysed cases in which one power has risen and succeeded the hegemony of another, and have found that rather few of such encounters have been peaceful. When Germany rose and sought to supplant Britain in the early part of the 20th century as the world’s leading economic and colonial power, the first world war eventuated. There are many other cases of such shifts occurring, not because of ideological difference, but simply because one power overtakes another. That thesis is now prevalent in some parts of Washington. Alongside climate change, I think it probably constitutes the biggest single danger to our children and grandchildren.

What therefore seems overwhelmingly more important than our criticisms of China’s internal arrangements, which we have a right, albeit a limited one, to criticise, is that we work with our allies to ensure we fashion a world for our children and grandchildren that does not disappear in a wholly unnecessary nuclear conflagration. That is a much bigger issue for humanity. Unless we start taking China and India seriously—not just in this country but in the west as a whole—unless and until the west as a whole recognises that it cannot expect to maintain hegemony in a world in which, on a very wide reckoning, there are 1 billion westerners and 2.6 billion Indians and Chinese, and unless we reconcile ourselves to a peaceful coexistence based on a radical reassessment of the whole post-war structure, which was designed around the principles of western hegemony, we are heading for a very great catastrophe. That above all is the issue that we need to debate.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I call Julia Lopez—no more than five minutes, please.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on securing this important debate, and on setting out a very wise and thoughtful approach to relations with China. Too often in this place we concentrate on short-term issues that are driven by the news cycle, while entirely overlooking critical strategic questions that will have a massive impact on our constituents over many years and decades. That shortcoming contrasts with China’s approach. I hope that we can find a way of addressing it as we seek to reform our political system as we leave the EU and start to think with long-term vision about the UK’s place in the world and our relationship with key allies and new partners.

The focus on the UK’s relationship with China under the previous Administration, driven by Chancellor George Osborne, was welcome, if perhaps prematurely enthusiastic in certain sectors. It has reaped tangible benefits—notably, the impetus to make London the biggest renminbi trading hub outside China. However, Chinese influence within the UK is not without risk, and other big policy announcements deriving from that effort, such as the Chinese investment in Hinkley Point, threw up tricky questions about security and dependence. Broadly, we have a decision to make about our approach: do we wholeheartedly embrace the relationship with China; do we welcome what it can bring but handle with care; or do we take a cautionary approach that would exclude whole sectors of our economy from Chinese input, even if that means that we do not gain an understanding of its technological advances or benefit from its investment?

The Huawei case encapsulates that dilemma and highlights some of the trade-offs at play in our relations with critically important allies such as the United States. It should also make us ask why the western world got so behind in the development of 5G technology that it became reliant on Chinese telecoms firms. I would be grateful if the Minister could let us know whether there is work under way within Government and with allies to identify strategic areas in which China is gaining a competitive edge, particularly in autonomous weaponry and cyber-warfare, and how that edge might be leveraged in future.

Similarly difficult questions must be posed about the impact of Chinese wealth as that nation moves more decisively on to the world stage. China has a population of 1.4 billion, so even a tiny percentage of the most mobile and wealthy Chinese citizens will have a profound impact on global cities. I have travelled to Australia several times in recent years, and I was taken aback by the marked change I saw on my most recent visit due to growing Chinese influence, particularly due to the affluent student population and tourist numbers. That can be enormously positive, but how that wealth is handled— particularly in relation to investment in domestic property markets—has the potential to cause public unease in the years ahead. Skyrocketing house prices in Auckland, New Zealand, have led to a ban on foreigners buying homes there, and there are already stringent rules on overseas investors in the Australian and Singaporean property markets in response to such concerns. London may have to review its own openness.

Antipodean nations are at the sharp end of some of those policy dilemmas. They are keen to have a positive relationship with a strategically important near neighbour, but nervous of dependence or exposure. That nervousness is something we can both learn and benefit from as we seek a new role in the world at the same time as allies step up efforts to diversify risk. In that regard, although new free trade agreements with the likes of Australia and New Zealand may derive only modest benefits due to their market size, both countries have valuable experience from which we can learn. New Zealand was the first country to strike an FTA with China, and each antipodean nation has suggested smarter ways in which we might work together—for example, by fulfilling the demands of the burgeoning Chinese middle classes for safe, high-quality agricultural produce. I welcome my hon. Friend’s tremendous exposition about pork markets.

We must be realistic and pragmatic about the power dynamic at play. We must place our relationship with China neither on an outdated sense of economic or technological superiority, nor on fawning weakness that leads us to be cautious about upsetting the apple cart. With respect to the latter, we should not underestimate what we bring to the table or allow ourselves to be cowed when we think that China gets it wrong, including on the kinds of issues that have been discussed, such as religious freedom.

China is aware of the growing unease about its expanding global influence and seeks credibility of the kind the UK can lend. That is partly why the Hinkley investment was so critical to Chinese ambitions in nuclear power. Last week the International Trade Committee heard from the Institute of Directors, which, in response to growing demand, is considering setting up a Chinese branch where Chinese directors could be trained in corporate governance. The picture is similar for UK corporate law firms.

Worries about the structure and terms of Chinese investment—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady please bring her remarks to a close, in order to leave time for the Front Benchers?

[Julia Lopez]

Certainly. I was going to say that my views on the belt and road initiative are similar to those of the hon. Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid). I also wanted to touch on my own observations from an all-party parliamentary group visit to Huwei’s Shenzhen facility in November 2017. I was rather alarmed by how some of the facial recognition technology was deployed, which woke me up to some of the issues that we will have to handle.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot for securing such a fantastic debate. We really need more time to discuss such issues, which will be critical in the years ahead.

Russian Annexation of Crimea

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

History is everything and the history of Crimea is a lot more complex than today’s debate has so far suggested. Crimea was annexed by Catherine the Great in 1783 and was Russian for the best part of two centuries. After the Russian revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Crimea was part of the Russian, not the Ukrainian, Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Changes to boundaries in the USSR were of course arbitrary and were decided solely by Moscow, with no reference to the peoples of the Soviet Union.

In 1946, Crimea was stripped of its status as a so-called autonomous republic and reduced to a mere oblast of Russia, equivalent to a county. In another entirely arbitrary move by Khrushchev, the oblast of Crimea was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954. Needless to say, not a single Member of the House of Commons or the House of Lords objected to that arbitrary denial of the right of self-determination of the people of Crimea.

During the fall of the USSR, we recognised self-determination as the paramount factor. That is why we supported the independence of Kazakhstan, Belarus and other federative republics. The Crimea oblast also wanted self-determination and in January 1991, Crimean voters voted to be an equal partner in Gorbachev’s new union. A few months later, of course, Ukraine voted for independence. We never recognised the Crimean right to self-determination.

As we know, Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. I am sure the referendum was inadequate and we have heard all about that, but no one doubts for a moment that for a considerable part of its history, Crimea has been part of Russia and that the overwhelming part of the population, following heavy immigration over the best part of two centuries, is Russian. The people of Crimea would probably—although we really have no idea—rather like to be independent of both Ukraine and Russia. Ideally, there would be a referendum held under independent international scrutiny and that would be the result, but we do not know.

The situation is extremely complex. Russia is not going to give up Crimea. I do not condone that, and I do not condone the annexation. I have argued against the annexation in the Council of Europe. With my colleagues, I have argued that the Russians should not be allowed in just because of the blackmail to which they are subjecting the Council of Europe. We should stand firm. I think the Council of Europe would benefit from restructuring and becoming a leaner place, and after that, of course, we on the Council of Europe have to decide whether Russia should be readmitted, despite the fact that it will almost certainly never give up Crimea.

That is why the Minister’s summing-up speech is all-important. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) said, the Council of Europe has simply stripped Russia of its voting rights; it has refused to present its credentials, but it is still a member of the Committee of Ministers. The Minister must now tell us what the attitude of the United Kingdom Government is. Do the Government believe that Russia should stay in the Council of Europe as a member of the Committee of Ministers? Following the debate we had in the Council of Europe a couple of weeks ago, the decision on whether Russia should be readmitted to the Parliamentary Assembly will almost certainly depend on the Committee of Ministers. Frankly, the Government can no longer be mealy-mouthed about this. They can no longer have good relations with Russia but say that we should bear the brunt in the Council of Europe for its exclusion. We look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I hope that everyone in this Chamber is in favour of the consistent application of such rules across the world, be it with Israel or with Russia. That consistent application is essential if we are to defend what is widely known as the rules-based international order.

Many of those responsible for the annexation have been sanctioned. We have imposed stringent restrictions on doing business in Crimea, for instance. Importing goods from Crimea is illegal and exports to key sectors are banned. We will not legitimise the annexation by making it easy to do business there.

Following the visit to Odesa in December by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, the UK also extended and deepened our military assistance to Ukraine through the Operation Orbital training mission. NATO measures to enhance allies’ capability and presence in the Black sea will also contribute to an increased regional deterrent.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Is it the Government’s view that the Russian Federation should be expelled from the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

When we have something to say, we will choose the time to say it. This is not the forum in which to comment on the Council of Europe, because the debate, as on the Order Paper, is on Crimea.

With respect to the human rights situation, the UK continues to provide funding to Crimean human rights non-governmental organisations and to the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine, to help document and highlight human rights abuses.

It is testament to the bravery and fortitude of Crimean civil society that it continues to speak out in the face of relentless harassment. I know that some hon. Members took the opportunity to meet some remarkable Ukrainian human rights activists in Parliament last month. They were here for the screening of a documentary—partly funded by the UK—that highlights Russia’s human rights record in the peninsula, and the plight of over 70 political prisoners. Among such prisoners is Oleg Sentsov, who has been detained since 2014. The Foreign Secretary and I have consistently voiced our serious concerns about his welfare and deteriorating health. We have also condemned Russia for failing to provide Pavlo Hryb and Edem Bekirov with the urgent medical care that they need. They have been detained since August 2017 and December 2018 respectively.

Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol, and its continued interference in Ukraine, are illegal under international law. Ukraine chose a Euro-Atlantic future, and Russia must respect Ukraine’s sovereign decision, its independence and its territorial integrity. Until that happens, there can be no return to normal relations with Russia. That is why we will work to strengthen the resolve of the international community to stand firm against behaviour of this sort by Russia, to keep Crimea in the spotlight, and to expose Russia’s human rights violations.

We will continue to work with the Ukrainian Government to support its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We welcome the peaceful conduct of the presidential election on Sunday, and I congratulate Ukraine on holding the elections in an open and transparent manner. I offer my personal congratulations to Volodymyr Zelensky. Not only are the Prime Minister and the President-elect both Jewish, but they are both called Volodymyr. I also express gratitude to President Poroshenko for his leadership over the last five years in the face of the unprecedented security and foreign policy challenges for Ukraine. I welcome the strong partnership that we have built with Ukraine, in which we will continue to invest considerable energy.

In her call with President-elect Zelensky, the Prime Minister reiterated that the UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine. We will continue to remind the world that Crimea and Sevastopol are Ukrainian, that we will not recognise Russia’s illegal annexation, and that Russia will continue to face costs for its flagrant disregard for international law.

Libya

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The Lincolnshire knight: Sir Edward Leigh.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)]

Here we go again, making the same mistakes as we made in Iraq and Syria. I agree with everything the shadow Foreign Secretary said. The Government of national accord is actually a Government of national chaos, deeply infiltrated by jihadism. Does the Minister think that Egypt is safer, and the people happier, with the Government of General Sisi or the Government of the Muslim Brotherhood?

[Mark Field]

As a relatively new boy to this brief, I will not speculate on that issue. On the point my right hon. Friend alluded to, which came up earlier, I am afraid the truth is jihadists are playing a part in almost all of these organisations. Things are much more factionalised than meets the eye, so compromises are always being made in supporting one side or another. There is an elected Government in Syria headed by the Prime Minister, Fayez al-Serraj, and we are rightly doing our best to support that Government.

Commonwealth Day

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his constructive words. I do not know whether he picked up on this, but I learnt today that according to the findings of a recent survey, 46% of people living in Scotland are actively involved in the Scotland-Malawi partnership or know someone who is, which is something to be celebrated. He will have heard what I said to the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) about the issue of the armed forces and our gratitude to all who have served in them. He refers to last week’s decision by the International Court of Justice. As he will know, we are currently evaluating that decision and will respond in due course to the issues that it raised. He will know that the UK considers this to be a bilateral matter, which we will resolve bilaterally with Mauritius.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the incredibly important subject of climate change. It extends well beyond the 53 countries that we are discussing today, but many small island states are members of the Commonwealth, and I believe that a centre has been set up in Fiji to address the causes of climate change in the Pacific small island nations. The UK itself has pledged, beyond the Commonwealth, to spend £5.8 billion on tackling climate change during the current spending review period, and we have already helped 47 million people around the world to develop their resilience and ability to cope with its effects.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May we Back Benchers record our thanks for the magnificent commitment and work of the head of the Commonwealth over 60 years? It is truly astounding.

Our debates about free trade deals go round in circles. At the beginning of the 20th century, we were talking about imperial preference. Many of us were rather disappointed that in 1972, when we joined what is now the European Union, the Commonwealth was treated somewhat shabbily. May I have a commitment from the Government that they will work full time—as the Government of an independent country that is able to engage in a free trade deal outside the European customs union—to make the Commonwealth the greatest free trade area in the world?

[Harriett Baldwin]

I am sure that the whole House will join me in endorsing my right hon. Friend’s tribute to Her Majesty’s work as head of the Commonwealth. She has performed that duty, among others, in an exemplary way. It was a great pleasure for Heads of State from around the world to be able to spend time with her last year when they attended a private dinner at Windsor castle.

As for the trade matters raised by my right hon. Friend, some very important work is being done. It was announced last year at the Heads of Government meeting that the UK-funded Commonwealth trade facilitation programme would help member states to implement the World Trade Organisation’s trade facilitation agreement. The programme will help the developing and least-developed Commonwealth countries to adopt faster and more efficient customs procedures. My right hon. Friend rightly identified the potential for enormous increases in UK trade and investment activity with the other 52 member states of the Commonwealth, and that is one of many examples that I could give.

Russia and the Council of Europe

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Russia and the Council of Europe.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I thank the many members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe who have joined me to discuss this issue. It is a great pleasure to see them, and I am grateful to them for turning up to speak.

I start the debate by making two declarations. Neither is required for financial reasons, but they will offer some context to the debate. First, I am a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. To set the scene a little, the Council was established to promote the rule of law, democracy and human rights throughout post-war Europe. It is no less relevant today than it was 70 years ago. It has become the premier human rights forum in Europe for its now 47 member states. That will be important when we discuss Russia.

The Council is a bicameral institution, with member countries from across the wider Europe—not just the European Union—including Turkey and countries from the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, some of which I will mention during my speech. It also includes a number of partners in democracy and other observers, including Japan, the US, Mexico, Canada, as well as other important countries, such as Israel, and the representatives of the Palestinians.

The Council also has a relationship with a number of other institutions, including the European Court of Human Rights. It is important to remember that the Assembly elects judges to the European Court of Human Rights, which gives the judges, and therefore the whole Court, significant democratic legitimacy. That will also be relevant when we discuss Russia.

If the United Kingdom is to be part of the wider Europe, the Council offers a tailor-made vehicle for doing so. Rather than seeking to reinvent the wheel, we need to strengthen and to maximise the UK’s unique status within the Council, including on matters relating to Russia.

The second thing I wish to declare is that, before entering Parliament, I was the principal private adviser on matters eastern European, including the former USSR, for successive UK Governments of both colours. In that role, I helped to set up and steer the technical assistance programmes that helped those countries to develop. We worked on a range of activities, including on privatisation throughout the region.

Russia is also a member of the Council, but it has chosen not to put its delegation forward to the Assembly for approval. That is worth repeating: Russia has chosen to absent itself from the Assembly by not allowing its delegation to be questioned and approved, presumably for fear of the reaction to its continued occupation of large parts of Ukraine—not only Crimea, but eastern Ukraine, including Donbass.

Russia subsequently chose not to pay the Council its annual dues, which, as a grand payeur, were originally set at €33 million, so the Council is running short by €33 million. The Council is now under tremendous pressure to readmit Russia so that it will start paying again. In other words, we are being asked to sacrifice principle for cash.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

To be absolutely fair, we took away Russia’s voting rights.

[John Howell]

The Council took away Russia’s voting rights because of the invasion of Ukraine. That was not the first time Russia had done something like that; we are dealing with a serial offender. It has now also lost its right to elect judges to the European Court of Human Rights, following its annexation of Crimea and its action in eastern Ukraine. The Russian ambassador to the Council wrote that it was the “free choice” of the people of Crimea to become part of Russia and that the Assembly had so restricted the rights of its representatives that they could not continue. The first part of that is, frankly, laughable.

It is possible to argue, with the benefit of hindsight, that when the USSR broke up, we should not simply have accepted the countries based on the former component states of the USSR. However, to do otherwise would have complicated an already complex situation and would have delayed the emergence of independent nation states. I remember discussing this issue at the time and passing it by.

Russian activity in the Donbass and in Crimea has badly affected the human rights of Ukrainians there, some of whom are held as political prisoners. Members may recall our opportunity to meet Nadiya Savchenko—an Assembly member and Ukrainian air force pilot who had been imprisoned by the Russians. She addressed the Council after her release. Whether one agrees with Nadiya Savchenko’s politics is irrelevant; the fact is that she gave a moving account of her imprisonment by the Russians.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell]

I will come on to that, but I wonder whether the hon. Lady means that we should consider admitting Russia or excluding it. I put the Novichok case to the Croatian Prime Minister during the last public session of the Assembly, and I asked whether he thought that his decision to send away a Russian member of the Foreign Office based there was justifiable. His response was that the evidence Britain had produced was so strong that he would do it again. That is important.

Crimea is not the only source of disagreement. The Council of Europe has passed a resolution about the serious, systematic and widespread persecution, discrimination and harassment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Chechnya, which has caused more than 100 people to flee that country. The Council of Europe called on Russia to conduct an independent national investigation, and for the extreme discrimination to end, but Russia has done nothing.

We have already mentioned Georgia, and the Council of Europe has criticised Russia for the abuse of human rights in the occupied regions. That abuse effectively extends to the use of war in that country, Russia’s non-recognition of the borders of Georgia and its treatment of people who live there, whose human rights have been abused. As the Georgian ambassador to the UK recently wrote, after 10 years of Russian aggression, Russia continues its occupation of regions of Georgia, undermining international law and the rules-based system, with massive infringements of human rights.

Another issue is the Smolensk plane crash, which killed the Polish President, Lech Kaczyński, and the Russian refusal to return the wreckage. The Russians claim that the return of the wreckage will simply fuel Polish conspiracy theories. They may be right, but returning the wreckage would also prove beyond doubt what happened in that plane crash, so the Russians should do it.

Ukraine has become the cause célèbre of this debate. A paper produced at the last meeting of the Council of Europe stated that 64 Ukrainians have received politically motivated convictions and are effectively prisoners of war whose human rights have been killed off.

The secretary-general of the Council of Europe said that the continued absence of Russia from the Council affects the rights of ordinary people in Russia to access the European Court of Human Rights. Perhaps that statement can be believed, but I think it is so far from the truth that it is difficult to justify in terms of what can occur. The number of cases involving Russia that have been brought before the European Court of Human Rights is large, but is also worth considering Russia’s total disregard for the ECHR’s judgments, and the claim by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation that Russia should not be bound by those judgments. We know from the judgment in the Yukos oil company case that following the rules of the ECHR and putting right a case on which it has already opined will be expensive. I am afraid, however, that I regard that as a fair price to pay for the wild west nature of Russia that we helped to create after the fall of communism.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

No one doubts that Russia’s human rights record is egregious, and one can go on listing its faults forever—it has as many faults as countries such as Azerbaijan, which is in the Council of Europe. Surely, however, my hon. Friend is not suggesting that the Foreign Office should stop talking to or engaging with Russia. Similarly, in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, if one engages with the Russians, despite their faults, one might at least have some chance of persuading them or informing them of our point of view.

[John Howell]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but we are not simply engaging with Russia as a third party. We are talking about Russia’s inclusion in, or readmission into, the very body of which we are part, and for which we were, in 1949, an inspiration. Those are completely different circumstances to the description that my hon. Friend gives, whereby we should talk continually to Russia. This is about admitting Russia into our family home, as it were, and about it being part of that. In that situation, I think different rules apply.

I was speaking about our role in the fall of communism. We got it right in Poland and in the Czech Republic, but I fully acknowledge my part in getting it wrong in Russia. We await with bated breath the promise to amend the Russian constitution to allow judgments to be implemented.

So what do we do? The first thing that is not going to happen is the lifting of sanctions that we imposed against Russia’s voting rights at the Council of Europe or the restoration of those voting rights. The second thing that I do not believe will happen is the sudden withdrawal of Russia from the Donbass or Crimea.

Can it be right for a member of the Council of Europe to invade another’s territory, to conduct hateful campaigns elsewhere in the region, to have a casual attitude to human rights and to suffer no consequences? Are we simply to roll over and readmit Russia to the Council of Europe without any effects? Is the cost of keeping Russia out of the Council of Europe completely out of kilter with the benefits of bringing it back in? I think the answer to all these questions is no. Is it true that the Council of Europe cannot survive without the presence of Russia? Again, the answer is no.

The Russian Ambassador to the Council of Europe said:

“in seeking to ‘punish’ the delegation of the Russian parliament in 2014-2015 for the free choice by the people of Crimea to become part of Russia, the Assembly restricted the rights of Russian parliamentarians to such an extent that it made it impossible for them to continue their work in PACE.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Russians have chosen to exclude themselves. The ambassador goes on to describe the actions of the Parliamentary Assembly as “thoughtless”, but they were not. Those actions were a deliberate reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the Council of Europe can hopefully help to reverse.

Depriving the Council of Europe of €33 million is a serious matter, but it should not stand in the way of the wholesale reform for which many of us have argued. It cannot be right to simply sit and plan for nothing to happen at the end of next year—that is not a realistic option, and neither is it realistic for the Council of Europe to have no contingency plan for what will happen if the Russians continue in this way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

That is one of the confusions that has arisen, because the rules and regulations about what happens to a country that is in Russia’s position are unclear. I think that Secretary-General Jagland has a great deal of work to do to clarify the position, because the Russians coming back to the ad hoc committee has caused a great deal of consternation among many of our colleagues and not least to myself, because we cannot understand why they still have the right to sit at the table when we are in this hiatus where the money has been withheld and they have removed the rest of their delegation from participation in any of our committees and activities.

It is widely agreed that the violation of the sovereignty of states arose from an illegal referendum. I want to dwell on that for a moment, because I serve as the vice-president of the committee on political affairs and democracy and am also the rapporteur for the new rules on referendums. We have just completed a large report in this country, under the auspices of the constitution unit at University College London, looking at the rules in the United Kingdom on referendums. The independent commission on which I have served for the past nine months has come up with a series of recommendations for changes to legislation in this country. I am working with Dr Alan Renwick, who is now the international adviser to the Council of Europe’s political affairs committee on this matter, and I am working with the Venice Commission as it updates its rules on referendums, which is badly needed after 10 years, to try to bring more clarity to the situation.

That we have Russia in the Council of Europe at all is one of the key achievements of the post-cold war period. When it ratified its membership of the European convention on human rights in 1998, there was a real welcome for its inclusion, but in December 2015 it passed a law to allow Russian courts to overrule the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, because it disliked those decisions. Russia was particularly exercised, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley mentioned, by being told to pay $2 billion to shareholders of Yukos, but there have been many judgments that have irked both President Putin and the ruling party, and some of their behaviour has resulted from that. More than one third of the cases that come before the European Court concern Russia. To put that in perspective, in 2017 the Court dealt with 8,042 applications concerning Russia. Even though 6,886 of those were declared inadmissible, it delivered 305 judgments concerning 1,156 applications, and in 293 of those there was a finding of at least one violation of the European convention on human rights. Before I arrived in the Chamber I looked up the figures for 2018, and already 5,975 applications have been allocated to a judicial formation, of which 579 have been decided by judgment. There are currently a further 9,191 applications pending a judicial formation. That is a heavy workload, and is a reflection of the human rights situation.

The Council of Europe is no stranger to the practice of bringing together representatives of countries that have political and diplomatic tensions, and it acts as an important partner in the soft diplomacy required to bring resolution to intractable problems. What we are discussing is probably one such problem. We need to seek a remedy for the situation because at the moment 140 million Russians will be denied access to the European Court of Human Rights, and that is not something to be taken lightly. We should not capitulate and accept an unconditional deal, as that would set a precedent for those countries that are often accused of backsliding on democracy. It is important that the founding principles of the Council of Europe should not be held to ransom as it faces complicated financial issues.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. However imperfect the Russian Government’s attitude towards the Court, at least there is a chance that the 144 million Russians will continue to have access to a genuinely independent human rights court. That is why Russia must maintain its place on the Committee of Ministers—so that at least there is a chance of ordinary Russians getting access to the Court.

[Dame Cheryl Gillan]

The unilateral withdrawal of the funds that are important for running the Council of Europe and the Court is to be deprecated, and I should like those funds to come back, but I do not believe we should give in to the current blackmail. We need to stiffen the resolve of the Council of Europe and of Secretary-General Jagland. Money should not be more important than the democratic principles by which we all want to live. I hope for a resolution to the problem that does not involve rolling over and giving in to the Russians.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I fear I will be the grit in this debate, but maybe it will produce a pearl of a speech from the Minister—like him, small, but perfectly formed. I will see what I can do to put an alternative point of view, at least for the sake of debate. I am not one of Lenin’s useful idiots. I have no illusions about President Putin. Like everybody here, I could list all the appalling human rights abuses.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. The three Front-Bench spokespeople have indicated that they are prepared to take a little less time, so we should have enough time for people to complete their speeches, although they will still have to be fairly brief.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Thank you, Mr Howarth; I will try to make these points as quickly as I can. As I was saying, nobody doubts Russia’s abuses. We did suspend their voting rights because of Crimea.

Without getting into all the history, I should say that the history of Crimea is complicated and somewhat different from that of Gibraltar. Nobody, as far as I know, in the Council of Europe, the House of Lords or the House of Commons objected when Khrushchev wrested Crimea from Russia in the 1950s and transferred it to Ukraine by decree, against the wishes of the people. I am just now repeating the common view among Russians—it is important that we understand it. No one doubts that the Russian community in Crimea is in the overwhelming majority. Despite all the doubts about the exactness of the referendum, nobody doubts, surely, that the people of Crimea, having been part of Russia for hundreds of years, wish to remain part of Russia. This history is complicated.

Were we right to suspend their voting rights? I do not know. The Russians are a proud people. Russia is not a developed democracy like France or Germany. We cannot expect instant success. As a proud people, it would surely be too much to expect them, having had their voting rights suspended, to say, “Fair enough. We will carry on turning up without voting rights.” None of us would do that here, would we? If we had our voting rights suspended, none of us would agree just to sit around. That is their point of view and we have to understand it.

What of the future? I believe it would be wrong to kick Russia out of the Council of Ministers. As has been said, it is a bicameral system. The delegation and our ambassador talk the whole time. He engages robustly with the Russians. He puts across our point of view. We engage robustly with the Russians through our Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary.

The Council of Europe is not the European Parliament, nor is it this Parliament; it does not have executive authority. It is primarily, in my view, an inter-parliamentary union. When we admit people to that union, we accept that we have to take them warts and all. We know, for instance, that Azerbaijan has a bad human rights record and, although it has been found to be corrupting the Council of Europe, it is still a member. Surely it is better to engage—to have jaw-jaw not war-war—and at least make some effort to influence them. It would be a dangerous development if those 144 million Russians had no access at all to the European Court of Human Rights. It may be imperfect access, as I have said. The record of the Russian Government in obeying its judgments may not be up to standard, but at least it is some way forward.

I hope that, in those terms, we can view this in a moderate, middle-of-the-road way. We should constantly attack the Russians, stand up to them and condemn all their human rights abuse, but at least engage with them. I would be grateful if the Minister said whether he thinks that our ambassador, in doing all this work in the Committee of Ministers in the Council of Europe, is fulfilling a useful role.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

Thank you, Mr Howarth, for calling me to speak and for your chairmanship of this debate.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) for securing this debate, because I genuinely welcome this opportunity to put on the record my appreciation and the Government’s appreciation of his contribution and that of all other hon. Members who are active members of the UK’s delegation to the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, many of whom are here today. As a rapporteur, my hon. Friend has been at the forefront of the Parliamentary Assembly’s work on press freedom, and I know he was particularly active during the last session in highlighting Russia’s failure to honour its human rights obligations, notably in illegally annexed Crimea. I am also grateful for the contributions from all the hon. Members of all parties who have spoken today, in what is a very cross-party and enlightened endeavour in relation to the Council of Europe.

The defence and promotion of human rights is a fundamental part of our foreign policy. That is why the Council of Europe is important, as a pan-European institution working to advance human rights, democracy and the rule of law across the whole of Europe.

Russia has signed up to Council of Europe standards relating to human rights, democracy and the rule of law, but the Russian Government routinely disregard them. The Council of Europe provides a means to hold Russia to account, both in the Committee of Ministers and in the Parliamentary Assembly. I should just put on the record, to clarify matters so that anyone watching our proceedings understands the situation, that Russia continues to play an active role in decision making in the Committee of Ministers—it is properly called the Committee of Ministers and not the Council of Ministers—including on the Council of Europe’s budget, albeit that Russia is not paying towards that budget, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe did not suspend Russia’s rights to participate in debates, just its voting rights, as has been already explained.

I and ministerial colleagues regularly instruct the UK’s permanent representative at the Council of Europe to condemn the Russian abuse of human rights and to do so in the Committee of Ministers, and our permanent representative has worked hard to secure language in Committee decisions that binds Russia to those decisions.

The Committee of Ministers also requires Russia to execute judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, yet Russia continues to have a woeful record, both in front of the Court and in terms of executing the Court’s judgments. Most recently, the Committee of Ministers reaffirmed its stance on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex discrimination—a decision that binds the Russian Government to combat discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Establishing and upholding internationally accepted standards in multilateral organisations is the absolutely fundamental starting point to improving the lives of the repressed and those who are discriminated against in countries where human rights are not routinely respected. Their failure to do so completely undermines the rules-based international order.

Europe’s parliamentarians play a key role in the Council of Europe in upholding European values. In April 2014, in response to the illegal annexation of Crimea, the Parliamentary Assembly decided to restrict the Russian delegation’s participation in the Assembly by suspending their voting rights. Ever since, the Russian delegation has chosen not to participate in the Parliamentary Assembly.

My predecessor at the Foreign Office welcomed that action by the Parliamentary Assembly and the strong stance taken by the UK delegation at the time. I am grateful to UK parliamentarians for their efforts to maintain sanctions on the Russian delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly and for their continued work to shine a spotlight on Russia’s transgressions.

The Russian Federation’s decision in July 2017 to withhold its budget contribution to the Council of Europe was particularly egregious. The figure mentioned earlier today was €33 million, but I am advised that the figure is now higher, because Russia has missed three payments. The amount that Russia now owes is about €54 million. Its absence from the Parliamentary Assembly is entirely self-imposed, and its failure to meet its financial obligations also undermines the rules-based international system.

I have made it clear to Secretary-General Jagland that the UK wants Russia to address the reasons that led to the suspension of its voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in the first place before its delegation can enjoy all the rights that other delegations enjoy. Regardless of the sanctions applied in the Parliamentary Assembly, Russia must make all outstanding payments, including interest, in line with its obligations. If it does not, it will face further sanctions in the Committee of Ministers in July 2019 under the Council of Europe statute.

The international community has shown increasing resolve in dealing with Russian aggression and belligerence, and to reward Russia’s blackmail tactics in the Council of Europe would undermine that institution and the wider purpose of global foreign policy. Of course, the Council of Europe is not alone when it comes to being subjected to Russian pressure. We have all seen the actions that Russia has taken to undermine countries and other international institutions—institutions that have kept us safe since the end of the second world war. Russia flouts international law—most egregiously in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Georgia. It interferes in other countries, whether that is the botched coup in Montenegro, the repeated cyber-attacks on other states or seeking in a malign way to influence others’ democratic processes.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Those are warm words, which is absolutely fine, but what is the substance? Is it the view of Her Majesty’s Government that Russia should be expelled from the Committee of Ministers in the Council of Europe?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

It is not for me to make a judgment of that sort, and if I might say so, the words I have been uttering have not been—and should not be—particularly warm. We see it as the intention of Russia to exploit instability wherever it sees it. Whenever it sees a problem, instead of trying to solve it—as we would in our foreign policy—it tries to make it worse in order to divide. It seems to be the widespread policy of Russia to try to drive a wedge between the core alliances that protect the UK and our partners.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the Minister now reply to my question, please?

Nord Stream 2

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing this debate. I can only lament that more Members are not present to take part in it, because it is without doubt important, and the timing should be on all our minds. We sit here on the fourth anniversary of the shooting down of MH17. Four years ago to the day, 298 people were killed, and only last week G7 Ministers said that Russia needs to account for its actions in that murderous affair. In May of this year a Dutch-led investigation concluded that the Government of Russia were, without doubt, responsible for the incident.

In his opening remarks, the hon. Gentleman said that it might seem peculiar that we are having a debate about a pipeline that is many hundreds of miles away, but in the rest of his speech he outlined why it is not peculiar at all. Indeed, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group, the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) followed up on that. The debate is an important one for all of Europe and, indeed, for anyone who believes in western democracy and democratic institutions—to which I shall return later.

Earlier this year, just a couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Ukraine with colleagues from the Scottish National party. We spent time in the capital and in eastern Ukraine, going as far as Avdiivka, much to the horror of the British ambassador in Kiev—I can see the Minister looking at me disapprovingly, but I made it back. Nord Stream 2 came up all the time—in fact, literally from the first meeting we had—with the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament, the Foreign Relations Committee, the British-Ukrainian friendship group, several other Members of Parliament and civil society activists. All of them wanted to talk about Nord Stream 2, very much in the same terms used by the two previous speakers.

The big question is: where will the money go? What will it be used for? What will this instrument of hybrid war be used to do? Yes, of course it will be used to deteriorate further the situation in Ukraine—there is no doubt that it will be used economically and politically against Ukraine—but I believe, as does the Speaker of the Parliament of Ukraine, that the money will be used to further undermine western democracy and democratic institutions across the western world.

It is popular in some quarters to be anti-western, but I think that western democracy is something worth fighting for—[Interruption.] I rather suspect that I am about to be cut off, but I shall keep going until you tell me otherwise, Sir Edward. The Government must have made an assessment of the situation. It cannot simply be the case that they believe that Nord Stream 2 is not really a matter for them. It must be, given the clear and obvious danger that the Government of Russia present.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I understand that there will be two Divisions, so we will resume as soon as all the participants in this debate get back to this Chamber after the second Division.

Council of Europe

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Vernon Coaker]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has been one of the Members of this House at the forefront of championing the rights of children. That is one example of what the Council of Europe seeks to do. Helped by the hon. Member for North Thanet, I have put down my own resolution on trafficking and slavery, which we hope will help us to make progress.

Is it not also great that we have a body in Europe that has many of the former countries of the Soviet Union as members? We talk to and discuss with them and they are part of a democratic process. There are still issues in some of those countries—I know Members will have been to some, observed elections and seen some of the problems—but we are trying to help and support them and build their democracy. It is just not possible to expect a country that has no democratic traditions or history of inclusion and tolerance, and that still has ethnic clashes, suddenly to pass a constitution and the next day become a beacon of democracy for the world. That is not the real world. The important point is that those countries need help, support and challenge and the Council of Europe can provide that.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Talking of countries of the former Soviet Union that have problems with democracy, one must not forget Russia. Does the hon. Gentleman share my view that jaw-jaw is better than war-war, and that one of the advantages of bringing Russia back into the Council of Europe, however much we disagree with its present Government, is that we could at least engage them in some way and perhaps encourage them into better behaviour?

[Vernon Coaker]

I think that it is really important that the Council of Europe has standards and says that it will not compromise on its principles. I also believe that it is extremely important to continue to talk and discuss with people. I agree absolutely with that, but not with saying, “We will not worry about that, on the basis that we want to keep talking to you.” We have to be tough and say, “This is what we believe,” but that does not mean it is impossible for us to continue to have dialogue with people even if we do not agree with them. That is what I think about Russia.

It is astonishing that even in Europe—this continent that holds itself up as an example to the rest of the world—there are still examples where we have to defend the principle of freedom of expression. It is astonishing that in some countries in Europe journalists have been imprisoned simply for criticising the Government of the day. It is hard to believe. When the Council of Europe was set up in 1949, would those who went to its first meeting believe that we would be here in 2018 and that there would still be people locked up for what they say or write? I do not believe that they would have. The Council of Europe says to the Governments of its member states that they cannot lock people up simply because they criticise a Government, however much they disagree with what has been written or said. It is a fundamental principle that people can organise, write and demonstrate peacefully for something they believe in. Here again, the Council of Europe is standing up and demanding that.

I do not want to speak for too long, because I know that others want to contribute, but I have a couple of further remarks to make. The challenges that the Council of Europe has faced and is facing should not hide its achievements. Sometimes it is criticised for being a talking shop. There is a lot to be said for talking shops. Where else would we bring that collection of countries together and force them to listen to opinions that they might not agree with?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am proud to be a member of the Council of Europe, especially as I have been reincarnated. I wear it as a badge of honour that I was sacked by David Cameron for voting for a fair referendum and purdah. Let me say to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) that I want to nail the lie that the Council of Europe is used by the leadership of various parties to dump people who disagree with them. That is an outrageous slur.

The Council of Europe is a noble concept. As we know, it was founded by Winston Churchill, who was clear that although he wanted continental countries to join some sort of justiciable entity, he did not think that appropriate for Great Britain. We are proud of the work that we have done right through the ’50s, and particularly in the 1990s with bringing eastern Europe back into democracy. However, I think that the Council of Europe and the Court of Human Rights have lost their way, and the Court in particular has become too intrusive. It was founded to counter fascism and extremism, but as we have seen, particularly with the row over prisoners’ voting rights, it is becoming too intrusive in the internal workings of democracies. In a sense, the Council of Europe has also lost its way, and we have heard about the corruption scandals and money problems.

Where do we go now? I am not in favour of just letting Russia in after all its depredations in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. Of course the Council of Europe is not for sale, but it is not just a question of money. Other countries in eastern Europe, and particularly Turkey, have also been playing games with money. It is not just Russia; a lot of people should be criticised for this issue. The trouble with expelling a country such as Russia is that eventually it has to be let back in. The Council of Europe is not like the European Union; it is primarily a parliamentary assembly that enables countries that come from different directions, with different forms of democracy and different problems, to talk to each other. Many countries in the Council of Europe, especially Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan are not shining lights of democracy. Indeed, Azerbaijan and Armenia in particular have really been engaging almost in a state of war.

Where do we go from here? I do not have any obvious solutions, but the Minister is present, and the Council of Europe and the Committee of Ministers is attended—the Russians do turn up. It is not quite true that we have expelled the Russians from the Council of Europe. They do turn up, and I know from speaking to our ambassador that he engages with them. It is a conduit of discussion. I do not know what the solution is, but I understand from my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) that the Russians are sending a representative to the Parliamentary Assembly next week. There are wheels within wheels, and ways—without forgetting our principles—to try to bring them back into some kind of democratic assembly. I shall leave it there, because that is what the Council of Europe is surely about: whatever our disagreements, it is better to talk than to make war.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Government Policy on Russia

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I think all Members would concede that, in the case of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, we need to await the outcome of the investigation. Let us wish them every possible good fortune in their recovery. The Government are obviously going to look very carefully at whatever we can do to stop such a thing happening again. If things are as suspected by Members on both sides of the Chamber, we may have to come forward with much tougher measures, but we obviously cannot prejudge the investigation. The most important point is that the UK is in the lead around the world in standing up against Russia. It may well be that that explains the particular hostility we are currently having to endure. All I will say to the House is that it is worth it for this country to carry on with what it is doing to stand up to Russia, even if it exposes us to this kind of threat and challenge.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Over the years, I have tried to understand the Russian position, and particularly the Russian attitude to the right of self-determination of the Russian majority in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but the way to preserve peace with Russia is by having peace through strength. There is no point in giving commitments to the Baltic states without hardware and men on the ground. Will the Foreign Secretary echo the words of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who is sitting next to him and who said in the estimates debate last week that spending 2% on defence was not enough?

[Boris Johnson]

I am not going to join my hon. Friend in calling for an increase in another Department’s budget right now, although it is absolutely right that we should be spending at least 2%. I should say, though, that out of that 2% we are able to fund—[Interruption.] The shadow Foreign Secretary says that we should spend it properly; we are, for instance, spending it on the 800 UK serving men and women in Tapa in Estonia, on the frontline with Russia, who are giving reassurance to a vital NATO ally. That is what the UK is doing. Believe me, the Russians know that we are doing that and that we are in the lead in calling for France and other EU countries to step up to the plate and deploy in the Baltics. The Russians know that we are in the lead in standing up for our friends in that part of the world. Yes, it may be that we in this country are paying a price for that, but we are not going to resile from that commitment.

Freedom of Religion or Belief

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

We should congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on how he introduced the debate and his work over many years to highlight these issues. I have joined him in many debates over the years. As usual, he spoke up in a powerful and noble way. I am grateful to all those who spoke before me, and I adopt all their points. I do not disagree with anything anyone said.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) rightly described the persecution of Ahmadi Muslims. I was astonished by the reaction of the Iranian parliamentary delegation to this country that my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) mentioned. I agree that there are examples of politically correct magistrates and police officers being over-zealous in dealing with Bible preachers, and everything she said was right, but to equate that with a criminal regime in Iran that hangs and persecutes people and treats minorities with complete contempt is ridiculous. When we speak out, we should attack the really evil regimes around the world. There are forces for good that are trying to resolve difficult cases.

I say to the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) that the papal nuncio has visited Parliament. We have been talking to him and to our ambassador to the Holy See in the past week, and the all-party group on the Holy See is going to the Vatican. The situation with the underground Church in China is unbelievably complex, but there is no question of the Catholic Church deserting those brave people. We hope some sort of compromise or consensus can be achieved with the Chinese Government.

The honest truth is that the people who are persecuted in the world are overwhelmingly either Christians or members of minority Muslim communities who are persecuted by majority Muslim communities. There are of course very bad examples of discrimination by Christians, but I hope that the Minister will not use the usual rather easy Foreign Office line that there is persecution everywhere in the world. I agree that there is persecution in too many parts of the world, and all persecution is terrible, but the people whose lives are made a complete and utter misery and who are overtly oppressed are overwhelmingly either Christians or members of minority Muslim groups.

We are going to stand up one by one and attack various Governments for persecuting people, so let me start with a good news story from Israel. Recently, the Israeli Parliament considered a private Member’s Bill that would have granted expansive powers to confiscate church property in Jerusalem. Astonishingly, it would have allowed the municipality to confiscate even properties that had previously been sold by church bodies. Such ex post facto laws are almost unheard of in Israeli jurisprudence. Indeed, traditionally, Christian communities have been protected in Israel.

The Christian community in the holy city united in protest and even closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the first time in decades. Luckily, the Knesset suspended its consideration of the Bill, but the Israeli Prime Minister’s role in having it stopped is noteworthy. He stepped in, as The Jerusalem Post reported:

“Netanyahu became involved after it became clear that the closure of the church had the potential to cause Israel considerable diplomatic damage”.

Our Government should take heed. Diplomacy can work, and Her Majesty’s Government should not be afraid to protest or condemn, even when our close friends are involved.

Let me deal with one aspect of the persecution of Christians. There is a Christian Solidarity Worldwide briefing many pages long from which one could take numerous examples, but I want to deal with the persecution of Christians in the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq, mainly because I know the region and have visited it. All but one of the Christian villages I visited in the Assyrian plain near Mosul were overrun. The Iraqi Christian population numbered more than 1.4 million in the 1980s, before our disastrous invasion of Iraq. By mid-2015 it had declined to 275,000, and it had further declined to 200,000 by last year.

The Syriac Orthodox patriarch, Ignatius Aphrem II, told the recent Budapest international conference on persecuted Christians:

“I am afraid the day will come when our visitors come to see us as dummies in a museum, placed in old churches or monasteries. I fear that, in failure of the necessary steps, we may only become memories of the past in a very short time.”

If one goes to ancient Christian communities in the middle east, one hears the mass said in Aramaic, which is the language of Jesus Christ—the original language. However, we should listen to what the Syriac Orthodox patriarch said about Christians being driven out of the foundation place of Christianity.

The situation is not entirely hopeless. Many refugees who were only internally displaced have tried to move home and rebuild their communities.

I recently received a memorandum on the current status of Christians in northern Iraq from a member of the senior leadership of the Christian Church community in northern Iraq. I have met this gentleman and talked to him at length, but for security reasons I cannot give his name, because he is resident in the region. The fact I cannot do that, as he is scared for his safety if I read out his testimony, says something about the problems we face. Anyway, our friend in Iraq writes:

“The displaced Christians from the historically Christian towns of the Nineveh plain are in the midst of a gradual, often halting, return to their homelands. Of the…100,000 Christians originally displaced from the region, approximately 30,000 to 40,000 have begun efforts to move back. Of these, many have also still retained some form of residence in the greater Irbil region, where they took refuge during their displaced status. As such, there is continual movement back and forth between greater Irbil and the slowly rebuilding towns of Nineveh. ”

However, he goes on to point out that there has been almost no return of Christians to Mosul, because of justified fears for their safety in the city. I went to Mosul and saw the Christian communities there before ISIL—because of the appalling events there, nobody in their right mind would have gone anywhere near that city in recent times. Because of the security concerns there, Mosul’s Christians remain displaced. They cannot return home and rebuild their lives, and they cannot help Iraq return to some sense of normality and stability. Our correspondent notes that they

“are dependent largely upon the resources of the Christian churches and aid groups.”

Again, not all is hopeless; there are signs of progress. I am relieved to hear that the United Nations Development Programme has changed its previous policy and is now starting to work more closely with Church leadership in Nineveh, which provides almost the only real local government in the area. Hungary has been strong in its work in this field: in addition to appointing an ambassador-at-large for persecuted Christians, it has donated €2 million to help reconstruction in the villages of the Nineveh plain.

What can we do? How can the United Kingdom help? I turn to the Minister. Our friend on the ground in northern Iraq has given me concrete suggestions, which I put to the Minister and to which I hope he might respond. First, the UK Government need to put pressure on the leaders of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central Government in Baghdad to resolve their disputes peacefully and swiftly. That is an easy ask, Minister, but it may be more difficult to achieve. The travel blockade that prohibits international air travel to Irbil is particularly debilitating and has had a disastrous effect on humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts.

Secondly, we need to encourage the Iraqi Government to remove all paramilitary forces from the Nineveh plain and replace them with regular Iraqi army and security forces. The Hashd al-Shaabi units there are mostly Shi’a from southern Iraq, with Iranian backing, and their continued presence adds to uncertainty and insecurity about the future. Thirdly and finally, our Department for International Development needs to examine closely as a potential model the new co-operative relationship building between the United States Agency for International Development and the UNDP.

Our friend on the ground notes:

“In particular, we need to examine the structural forms of co-operation and co-ordination which are ensuring that practical and efficient working relationships are being established in which the Christian minorities are properly involved in the rehabilitation process. DFID should not be allowed to simply provide boilerplate representations regarding the effectiveness of the prior UNDP programs which the UN itself has admitted need to show greater responsiveness to the reality on the ground, a reality in which the Christian churches continue to provide the de facto local government leadership in their region. ”

My correspondent cites the example of the $55 million donated by USAID being deployed around the Nineveh plain in a co-ordinated approach, with close contact between the office of the UNDP director for Arab States and the Christian leadership in northern Iraq. He notes:

“This new approach has shown great early promise at improving efficient use of aid funding, and has significantly improved the confidence of the Christian minorities in the UNDP efforts.”

Yes, 3,557 houses have been burnt down, 13,088 houses have been severely damaged, 8,297 have been partly damaged, and reconstruction is very slow. We can be guilty of exacerbating these appalling problems because of our previous foreign policy. I do not want to go on about that—oceans of ink have been spilt on whether it was right to invade Iraq and to destabilise Saddam, Assad or Gaddafi—but all I will say, as I have said before, is that, in our perfectly justifiable attempts to improve democracy and undermine authoritarian regimes in these countries, we have unleashed totalitarian forces, and the victims of those forces have been the minority Christian communities. I hope the Minister will forgive me if I dwelt at some length on northern Iraq, but it is one of the most horrible, most pitiable and most terrible parts of the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

The hon. Lady is right to detect the disruptive hand and the destabilising agency of Iran in the region and certainly in the supply of missiles to Hezbollah and weapons to the Houthis. What Iran is up to is well chronicled and, together with our friends and partners, we are working at the United Nations and elsewhere to bring maximum pressure on the Iranians to cease and desist from their activities.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May we erect a new doctrine—perhaps we could call it the Johnson doctrine—that we have learned the lessons of our military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria and never again will we attempt to use military force to remove unpleasant authoritarian regimes and replace them with disastrous totalitarian movements?

[Boris Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes—I am afraid—an excellent point. Of course we must push back on Iranian disruptive behaviour—it is entirely the right thing to do and this Government will continue to do it—but we must also be intellectually honest and recognise that collectively over the past 20 years or so western foreign policy has helped to create the conditions, alas, in which Iranian influence has been capable of expanding.