British Children: Syria

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I am really pleased that the hon. Gentleman has raised that point. He is absolutely right to say that safeguarding will be vital when these children return to the UK. He is a constituency MP, as I am, and he will understand that local social services are principally responsible for the care of vulnerable children. That will remain the case in this case. We would be working with the statutory agencies to ensure that children who are repatriated to this country and who may be traumatised in ways that most of us can barely imagine are given every care that they require. I suspect that the process will be ongoing and very lengthy.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Can the Minister clarify whether there is a legal distinction between children born in the so-called caliphate and those who have been taken there? For the avoidance of doubt, will he also clarify that the Government are talking solely about unaccompanied and orphaned children? If we are introducing an element where a parent is involved, that will open up a whole range of other possibilities and challenges.

[Dr Murrison]

My right hon. Friend is right to touch on the legality, which is complicated. We are clear that there are British nationals in camps in Syria who have the rights that he would expect any British national to have. If they are born to British parents, they would naturally be expected to have British nationality, just like any other child born in any other country. To deal with the distinction between unaccompanied children and others, which other Members have mentioned, our principal concern and priority must be unaccompanied and orphaned children. They are the most vulnerable, and that is where our attention chiefly is at this moment. However, I would say to my right hon. Friend, who has some experience in these matters, that this is a bigger piece of work that I hope will be made considerably easier in the event that we have a sustained ceasefire when the current ceasefire ends this evening.

Britain's Place in the World

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, I start by warmly welcoming the announcement you have just made and offering our congratulations on behalf, I am sure, of the whole House.

This could be the most important week in Parliament for decades: a first Saturday sitting since 1982, only the fifth since the second world war, and obviously huge decisions to be made. What a shame it is that we start the week with a Queen’s Speech that is so manifestly not fit for purpose—a political stunt, not a credible programme for government. It is the first time that I can remember a Queen’s Speech being introduced by a Government who have no means to implement it, and frankly little intention of doing so.

The Queen’s Speech includes seven Brexit Bills. The Prime Minister made a great deal of that yesterday, pretending that they are the centrepiece of the Queen’s Speech, but close examination tells a very different story. The 2017 Queen’s Speech said that

“my Government’s priority is to secure the best possible deal as the country leaves the European Union.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2017; Vol. 783, c. 5.]

This year’s Queen’s Speech says that the Government’s priority is

“to secure the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 October 2019; Vol. 800, c. 2.]

Abject failure of Government for two and a half years.

What are those seven Brexit Bills? On analysis, five of them are identical to those introduced in the last Session. Five of the seven are exactly the same Bills: the agriculture Bill, the fisheries Bill, the trade Bill, the immigration and social security co-ordination (EU withdrawal) Bill and the financial services Bill. All five started life in the last parliamentary Session. All five were then dropped when it became clear that there was no chance that they would get a majority. This Queen’s Speech indicates that they will all start again on the same track. We cannot dress up a step back as a step forward.

Then we have the WAB—the European Union (withdrawal agreement) Bill—the implementation Bill, which was floated in the last Parliament but never introduced. Again, it was not introduced, because the numbers were never there for it, and that was before the Government had a minority of minus 45.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will in just one moment. The reality is that, of the seven Bills paraded as the centrepiece, five were exactly the same as the ones that have just been dropped and one is the same as the one that the Government would not introduce because they did not think it would win. That only leaves the lonely old private international law (implementation of agreements) Bill.

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[Keir Starmer]

I will in just one minute. The private international law Bill is undoubtedly important; it deals with commercial law, family law and private law. But if that is the summit of the Government’s new proposals and approach to Brexit, it just underlines how absurd and unnecessary it was to have this Queen’s Speech.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman, in his typically eloquent way, has merely rehearsed why this Government and this Parliament are in a state of paralysis: because we are reintroducing these Bills time and time again, and it is groundhog day every day now. The public are looking on in blank amazement as we continue to procrastinate. Where does he stand on the subject of a general election? It seems to me that the only way that we can act properly as a Parliament is to try to get a majority, of whichever party, in order that we can enact this legislation.

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention, mainly because it double-underlines the point I am trying to make. This is the second day of the debate on the Queen’s Speech, and I am challenged on whether we should have a general election. This is supposed to be the opening of a new parliamentary Session. The point I am making is that this Queen’s Speech is a pretence. Those Bills got stuck because there was not a majority for them, so we are now reintroducing them.

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[Mrs Main]

rose—

[Sir Hugo Swire]

rose—

[Keir Starmer]

Let me just finish this point.

Those arrangements are far more effective in so many respects. The ability to share intelligence with our EU partners is on a different footing from that which we share with other countries across the world. Enforcement mechanisms provide a simple example. Every terrorist cell that I have ever ended up prosecuting operated across borders, and one of the vital questions in those circumstances is: do you have the necessary arrangements to carry out the arrest of that cell and assess its intelligence together as a group? Those are available through Eurojust. Then there is: do you have a strategy for making sure that your arrests are all carried out at the same time; do you have a protocol for deciding where the prosecution will take place so that it is likely to be successful; and, equally, do you have rules about whether evidence captured in one country can be used in the other? All of that is available to us as a member of the EU, and all of that falls away, particularly on a no-deal Brexit. Technical it may be, but save lives it did—in huge numbers.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

On the subject of intelligence, the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows full well that our many intelligence allies under Five Eyes are not actually within the EU, but he makes an important point. Of course, it is important that we continue to share intelligence on everyday matters with the EU, and I, for one, do not believe that the EU will not want to do that, otherwise the United Kingdom will be the weak link in its chain. He makes, if I may say so, a fundamental mistake when he presents his argument as a binary choice in terms of trade between the EU and the US, thereby neglecting about two thirds of the world, including some of the fastest emerging markets in the world, which are not in the EU and are not the US. They are the Commonwealth countries and other countries further afield. Those countries are where our future markets lie.

[Keir Starmer]

I well understand the Five Eyes arrangements in terms of intelligence sharing, but even with the Five Eyes countries, we have problems with extradition. I did many extraditions to the US; they take years. They are hugely complicated. The evidence has to be tested in a different way here before someone can be extradited to the US, and vice versa. Sometimes one cannot extradite, because there are conditions around the process. Let us compare that with EU extradition, which takes just days. As we all know, we had bombings in London—the 7/7 bombings. We forget that two weeks after that bombing, there was another attempted bombing, which did not succeed only because the explosive devices were damp—all five of them. One of the individuals who tried to detonate a bomb in Shepherd’s Bush ran off to Italy, and we had him back here within 60 days under EU extradition arrangements. He was then tried in Woolwich and is now serving 40 years. That is what happens under a European arrest warrant and extradition. We simply do not have those arrangements with Five Eyes countries. I am not doubting the intelligence side of it; I am talking about the practical enforcement of counter-terrorism measures. That is the reality. That is why this suggestion of “do or die, we will leave without deal” is so wrong for our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Swire Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

The hon. Lady has raised an incredibly important point. We are working on nutrition with a range of multilateral agencies, and my ministerial colleagues and I continue to engage in discussions with them. At the United Nations General Assembly, it was announced that £61 million would be provided to develop crops that are better adapted to grow in higher temperatures and that can withstand drought. That is the sort of work that will make a long-term difference when it comes to food insecurity.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the Rohingya situation and tell us what discussions he has had with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Government in Dhaka about the situation in Cox’s Bazar?

[Alok Sharma]

My right hon. Friend did an enormous amount of work in this area as Minister for Asia, and I pay tribute to him. He will know that the major humanitarian crisis is caused by Myanmar’s military. He will also know that we recently announced the provision of an extra £87 million for food, healthcare and shelter, not just for the refugees but for those who are hosting them. The Minister in the House of Lords, Baroness Sugg, is currently in Bangladesh looking into these issues.

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[Dominic Raab]

I say to the hon. Gentleman, the Chairman of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, that we are absolutely committed to boosting bus services in his constituency and indeed infrastructure right across the country. That includes transport, that includes broadband, and that means making sure that we have a more balanced economy that can boost jobs, reduce deprivation and ensure we can fund the precious public services we need. On the specific point he raised, I will ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to write to him personally.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Within the last 24 hours, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has launched a ballistic missile, possibly from a submarine; if so, that would be the first submarine-based missile it has launched in three years. It is its ninth launch, I believe, since June. Has my right hon. Friend had an opportunity to talk to other leaders in the region? Given that this comes a few days before the resumption of talks with the United States, what assessment has he made of the continuing threat of the DPRK to the region and the wider world?

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for his time at the Foreign Office; he was a very effective Minister, and he continues to make the case from the Back Benches. We are concerned about the situation in North Korea and we regularly raise it with our international partners. There has been a series of missile tests by Pyongyang, which are deeply troubling. We continue to make it clear that it must show restraint and adhere to its legal commitments. Of course, there is some bluff and bluster in the lead-up to the talks with the US. We would like to see a de-escalation of tensions and a route to denuclearising North Korea.

Iran

Lord Swire Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady for her long-standing interest in this area. I remember visiting Tehran under the former reformist regime of President Khatami when I was a Foreign Office lawyer before coming into this House, and working on behalf of the UK Government for a bilateral investment treaty. I am afraid that we have taken a significant series of steps back since those days, but it does show that there is a path for Iran to come in from the cold, to get international respectability and to prosper as a result of it.

In relation to the dual national cases and that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, we need to be very careful. We are absolutely clear that Iran must release our dual nationals who have been detained on a whim unconditionally, and that there is no deal to be done—no linkage. As much as I would love to see all of the detainees reunited with their families, there would be acute moral hazard if we allowed ourselves to be blackmailed. All that we would find is that, shortly after the return of those detainees, a whole number more would be picked up; Iran would take the wrong lesson from our actions. We need to be very careful, and we will campaign unflinchingly and unwaveringly with our allies to secure the release of the detainees, but we must also be mindful of not creating the moral hazard to which I have referred.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

The United Kingdom is involved in this, whether we like it or not, and we have already seen the effects on the price of oil resulting from the attacks on the Aramco field. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that in any contingency planning, the Foreign Office is considering the wider effects on the region? The United Kingdom has huge investments—people and companies—right across the Gulf. I hope that is being considered if anything gets worse there.

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend served with distinction in the Foreign Office, and I am mindful of his experience in this area. He is absolutely right that we need to bear in mind the wider implications of a military conflagration. That is not our strategic objective. We want to de-escalate and dial down the tensions, and to see Iran moving to re-establish confidence that it can be a lawful and respectable member of the international community, and that is what we are working towards.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

Given the urgency of this matter, I will of course meet the hon. Lady.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

As the Foreign and Commonwealth Office reconfigures its global representation by beefing up embassies and opening other embassies post-Brexit, will my right hon. Friend undertake to conduct an audit into other Departments that are represented abroad to ensure that they are all brought under the ambassador or high commissioner in that country?

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s expertise in this area. He is absolutely right to stress that when we speak internationally, we do so with one voice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I just point out to the hon. Lady that the person who is coming to this country for a state visit is the Head of State of the United States of America. There is no free pass for policies on which we disagree with the Trump Administration—climate change is one, and the Iran nuclear deal is another. We discuss all of them the whole time, but that does not mean that we should not respect the office or the country.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is precisely right, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) on his new ministerial post, which he will fulfil very well. May I perhaps gently remind those who do not accept this that America remains, and is likely to remain, our most important ally in the world? We may not agree with everything that it does or everything that it says, but this invitation is from our Head of State to its Head of State. We should accept that—we should not be condescending—and these barbed comments, driven by anti-Americanism, are extremely embarrassing.

[Mr Hunt]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. It is very important to recognise that even today, even under this Administration—we are very open; we do not agree with them on everything—about a third of the cost of defending Europe is met by American taxpayers. We should recognise that contribution, and recognise that the security blanket that the United States has provided for the world over the past 70 years or so has been absolutely fundamental to our prosperity.

Sri Lanka

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I agree. That is the fundamental challenge. When we are trying to answer the important question of how we prevent this kind of thing from happening, the most important first step is to properly understand the motives of the people who try to perpetrate these attacks. We do not know that at this stage, but it seems clear that one was a religious motive to try and set faith against faith, and one was a cultural motive to try and target western tourists who are visiting Sri Lanka. We have to be alive to both of those, but the shadow Foreign Secretary was absolutely right in saying that one of the things that we can do to support Sri Lanka is—obviously subject to travel advice, which is very carefully kept under review—to continue to visit a country that depends on tourism to show our support and to show that we are not going to be put off by this kind of terrorism.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Whoever perpetrated these hideous crimes and whatever their warped ideology, they are murderers, and cowardly murderers at that. Will my right hon. Friend therefore convey to the high commissioner James Dauris, his staff and to the Government of President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe that we want to show our solidarity and sympathy with our Commonwealth cousins at this extraordinarily difficult time? Will he confirm—it may be premature to do so—that many of those arrested to date appear to have connections of one sort or another with Syria? And if that is the case, will he look very carefully at extending whatever assistance he is giving to the Government of Sri Lanka to include offering similar assistance to the Government of the neighbouring Maldives, where there is also a problem with returning foreign fighters from Syria and where we have many British tourists on holiday at any given time of the year?

[Mr Hunt]

As I would expect, my right hon. Friend, being a former Minister for Asia, makes an important point. He is right that there are early indications of Islamist extremism that we need to investigate properly, and the Maldives is a very young democracy to which we want to give every support, so I will take his point away.

Exiting the European Union (Sanctions)

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am afraid I have taken the exact contrary interpretation to the Minister of what this debate is about. I wish to comment in detail on all four regimes, rather than go over again the debates we had on the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill a year ago.

To start with Burma, I do not quite understand why the Burma sanctions are called Burma sanctions, not Myanmar sanctions. Anyway, they are called Burma sanctions. On behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition, I want to say that we agree it is right to roll over the EU sanctions. The human rights abuses perpetrated by the Myanmar regime are terrible. It is only 18 months since 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled the country, subject to an attempted genocide and systematic terror. We have debated that on several occasions but the more representations that I hear from Burma, the more it becomes clear that this is one of several problems. The Myanmar Government have simply not come to terms with the fact that they are in a multicultural, multi-ethnic country and they are perpetrating abuse in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan states against several minorities.

Fundamentally, we want to see the implementation of the Annan commission’s recommendations on citizenship law. There will be elections in 2020, so there is not much time for that. On sanctions, when the Minister or the Foreign Office come to look at how an independent British regime might operate, we would suggest strengthening of two kinds—first, by extending the trade sanctions to the significant part of the Myanmar economy that is controlled by the military, and secondly, by introducing Magnitsky-style sanctions for key military figures, including, in particular, Min Aung Hlaing and Maung Soe.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that until the fact that the Tatmadaw retains a fixed percentage of the Parliament is addressed, we will see continuing oppression from the military, because it has such control over the rest of Government?

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[Helen Goodman]

That is true as well. I was going to go on to say what, more positively, we would like to see. We would like to see free elections. We support the position of the Lima group of neighbouring countries, and we want to see dialogue between the parties who are in conflict in the country.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

On the Lima group, what pressure does the hon. Lady think that we can all bring to bear on Mexico? President Obrador has, very regretfully, withdrawn from the Lima group. We have invested a lot in relations with Mexico and we have good relations with it, but he really must come back and play a leading role in the Lima group.

[Helen Goodman]

It would not be helpful to go along with American calls for, or the suggestion that there might be, military intervention. I suspect, although I do not know because I have not discussed this with the Mexican embassy, that Mexico was reacting adversely to the hints that were being given by the American Government in the last few weeks.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister specifically on the sanctions, but he might need to write to me, because I think that the way in which the debate works means that he does not get another go at the Dispatch Box. May I seek your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker? Does the Minister get another opportunity to speak in this debate?

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[Theresa Villiers]

That is a serious problem. Iran is the single biggest threat to stability in the whole region, and it is concerning to hear from my hon. Friend that that extends to Bahrain as well.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

I do not want to turn this into a geography lesson, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the part that Iran allegedly plays in sanctions-busting with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is also very concerning?

[Theresa Villiers]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point that further strengthens the case for supporting the continued imposition of sanctions on this brutal regime.

The IRGC and its notorious al-Quds force are responsible for multiple human rights abuses both in and outside Iran. I hope that our Government will consider following the example set by Washington and list the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.

I believe that there is the strongest of cases for retaining the sanctions regime against the Government of Iran. There is arguably a case for making it tougher, and reversing some of the changes that were made to relax the regime after the nuclear deal was agreed. The regime of the mullahs in Iran is responsible for horrific human rights abuses, it is a major sponsor of terrorism, and its involvement in conflicts around the middle east and beyond, as we have heard, make it the biggest single cause of regional instability. It is an evil regime.

I hope very much that one day we will see reform and change in Iran, so that the people there can live in freedom and democracy in a society based on equality and respect for their human rights. I commend the motion to the House.

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[Peter Grant]

I stand absolutely by my statement that there have been occasions in this House when Members on the Government Benches have used the failure of the economic policies of the Chávez Government as a direct jibe against the Leader of the Opposition, and those comments have been welcomed on the Conservative Benches. [Interruption.] I will now move on.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman may well wish to move on, but he has just changed what he originally said. Can you inform the House how we can stop the Scottish National party making these wild accusations and get the hon. Gentleman either to substantiate his wild claims or to apologise to the House?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman has put forward his view and corrected the statement. The fact is that it is up the hon. Gentleman to decide whether to withdraw the comment; he has chosen not to and he wishes to carry on.

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[Mark Menzies]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hear your guidance and I know that there is much pressure on our time.

I encourage the Government to enact this statutory instrument on sanctions for Venezuela and to ensure that, while we are still a member of the EU and while we have reach through the United Nations, we ensure that the sanctions regime targets those in the military and the senior members of the Maduro and Chávez regimes who have stolen billions from Venezuela, in order to get that money back to the people where it belongs.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend does in Latin America. Does he agree that Petrocaribe provided another way for Venezuela to launder its money and that it caused absolute mayhem in many vulnerable countries of the Caribbean?

[Mark Menzies]

Absolutely. That point stands well on its own.

This should be an opportunity for the House to come together and send a message of solidarity to Juan Guaidó and the democratically elected members of the Congress, which Maduro has now sought to supersede with his own puppet arrangements. The suffering in Venezuela is something that no one should ever have to experience, and any sanctions must be clearly targeted on the instigators of this corrupt regime.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Swire Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I had a chance to speak directly with Lord Ricketts in a radio studio a week ago. He recognises, I think, the difficulties that we face in dealing with the Brexit negotiations. I have been out not just to Brussels, but to the OECD in Paris recently. Again, I was very struck, as I worked with counterparts, by the fact that there is an important agenda, and that many European countries recognise the importance of the UK. We need to have the strongest of relationships. Clearly there are uncertainties about the precise nature of our departure from the European Union, but that is a part of it.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend commit to speaking with his other partners in the Government to try to obtain more funding for the GREAT campaign, which plays an extraordinarily important role in promoting the UK—and our products and companies—globally?

[Mark Field]

The GREAT campaign is a fantastic success. Part of my role is to deal with communications, representing the Foreign Office on a cross-departmental basis. We recognise the importance of this particular campaign and work strongly on it, particularly with the Department for International Trade.

The Modern Commonwealth: Opportunities and Challenges

Lord Swire Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge]

I thank my hon. Friend for that and extend thanks to Jon Davies and his team of 30 people who work here in the UK, off Westminster Hall, and overseas.

To give an idea of the volume of activity, in 2017-18 there were 15 outbound delegations, 35 inbound delegations and nine multilateral delegations. As I look around the Chamber, I see people who have been involved in inbound and outbound trips in the last month. There have been trips to Fiji, the Seychelles, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The CPA was also very much involved in election observing, particularly in the overseas territories. As a committee, we have formed our strategic priorities. We decided that we could not do everything exceptionally well, so we are concentrating on five key themes: women in Parliament, public finance scrutiny, modern slavery, trade and security.

This debate is about opportunities and challenges facing the modern Commonwealth in its 70th year—“modern” because the Commonwealth existed in various guises before the 1949 London declaration, but it was a free association of independent member countries. Quite how we got away with that as part of the European Union, I do not know. Crucially, the Commonwealth gave an equal say to all its 53 members, regardless of size—at one end is India, with a population of 1.3 billion, and at the other is Nauru, with a population of only 13,000. Of the states, 31 have populations of fewer than 1.5 million and five have populations of fewer than 1 million.

They are nations all around the globe. There are 19 in Africa, which I know and love well, and others are in parts of the world that I know less well, with seven countries in Asia, 13 in the Caribbean and the Americas, three here in Europe and 11 in the Pacific. It is so popular, and it is expanding, to Cameroon, Mozambique and Rwanda—more of Rwanda later. It was good to see the Gambia come back into the Commonwealth in February 2018, and I was able to travel there.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most welcome developments in the Commonwealth’s expansion in the past 70 years is that its members now include countries that have no historical links with the United Kingdom, such as Mozambique and Rwanda?

[James Duddridge]

Absolutely. That shows the strength of the Commonwealth. It is of course Her Majesty who leads the Commonwealth and makes the final decision, before they come in, on whether such countries share the same values, but it is certainly an expanding and very diverse organisation. I have mentioned that Her Majesty the Queen is the head of the Commonwealth, and we also have the secretary-general, Baroness Scotland, leading its work.

It is Commonwealth Day on Monday. It is always in the second week of March each year, and I asked myself why? It was the Canadians’ idea. They wanted the Commonwealth to be about the future and about young people, and they wanted it to be celebrated by schoolchildren. They worked out that we have different term times all around the world, but the most likely time when all children will be in school is the second week of March, and that is why we celebrate it at that particular time.

Here in the UK, there will be a week of celebrations, including at Westminster Abbey and Marlborough House. There will be cultural events, civic events and school events. Flags will be raised across the United Kingdom, and there will be some street parties. Anyone who has not invited me to their street party should feel free to email me at the House of Commons.

One of the big issues in the Commonwealth recently has been the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, where all 53 members come together. There are normally one or two that, for various domestic reasons, cannot make it. It was particularly good to see Prime Minister Modi of India at CHOGM here. CHOGM is not a one-off event: the country that hosts CHOGM is then responsible for the operations leading up to the next one in two years’ time. We are passing the mantle from London to the Rwandans in Kigali.

One of the things I very much hope to do is to work with the Rwandans to have a Commonwealth forum. CHOGM is dominated by the Executives, and we in the UK felt that parliamentarians should lobby the Executives. Parliamentarians from around the Commonwealth came together to talk, and then went back to our Executives before CHOGM to lay out the issues we cared about, and that was powerful. It was not perfect, and we have lessons to learn on what we did with the parliamentary forum. Almost 50 parliamentarians met about a month before CHOGM here in the UK, and this is something we would like the Rwandans to do.

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[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

“Hear, hear” to the concluding statements of the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), with which I completely concur.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge). I would like to think that it was our joint time in the Foreign Office that gave us a deep respect and a certain understanding of the Commonwealth. Being Minister for the Commonwealth for over four years was one of the most enjoyable parts of my political career to date. I was, however, always aware that one had constantly to remind the Foreign Office that it is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. While I am enormously pleased to be taking part in this debate before Commonwealth Day, which falls on Monday, I regret and lament the fact that we do not debate the Commonwealth more regularly. It is not something that we should pick up and dust down once a year; it is something that we should embrace and encourage. The Commonwealth is only as good as its constituent members and we have a lead to give. I do wish this place would take the Commonwealth a little bit more seriously.

When I left the Foreign Office, I wanted to continue doing something for the Commonwealth, so I took on the deputy chairmanship of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council—I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In the time available this afternoon, I want to focus on some of the economic issues surrounding the Commonwealth. I think the opportunities are huge, although I agree with my hon. Friend; I would never think that trade with the Commonwealth could replace trade with Europe. It is an “also”, not an “instead of”. I made that point during the debate on Brexit, at a time when I was arguing for remain. We would be foolish to ignore the statistics for the Commonwealth, because it is so self-evidently in our interest to take it all a bit more seriously.

While the growth of the populations and the GDP of the United States, the EU, China and our other traditional partners has been stagnating, Commonwealth economies continue to grow, along with the disposable income of their consumers. Let us take, for example, Commonwealth Africa, which is dear to my hon. Friend’s heart. Since 2000, GDP growth in sub-Saharan African nations has been much faster than the global average and the growth of the more prosperous north African nations, with the IMF projecting the region’s GDP to have increased by 468% between 2000 and 2022—a staggering statistic. The African Development Bank estimates that Africa’s middle class has grown to 350 million since 2010, with private consumption increasing by an average of 3.7% year on year in the same period. Consumer spending is estimated to account for 50% to 60% of the growth in Africa’s economy and is expected to rise from $680 billion in 2008 to $2.2 trillion by 2030.

That is just Commonwealth Africa. Let us move across and look at Commonwealth India. India has outpaced China to become the world’s fastest-growing economy. According to the United Nations, its population is projected to overtake that of China by 2022. In the eight years culminating in 2012, the size of India’s middle-class population is estimated to have doubled, to 600 million. Between 1990 and 2015, the number of households with a disposable income of more than US $10,000 has risen twentyfold, to nearly 50 million, and its middle-class population is predicted to overtake that of China, the US and the EU by 2027. That is manifestly good, both in terms of addressing the issues of poverty and in the opportunities that that presents for British companies and exports.

The UK recorded a trade surplus of £7 billion with the Commonwealth in 2017. UK exports of goods and services to the Commonwealth stand at £56.3 billion. UK imports from the Commonwealth stand at £49.3 billion and the UK has recorded a trade surplus with the Commonwealth every year since 2010. The problem, and one of the challenges, is that India, Canada, Australia, Singapore and South Africa currently account for 71% of the UK’s total trade with the Commonwealth. I would like to see total trade grow, obviously, but I would also like to see it much more widely spread right across the Commonwealth.

In 2020, as my hon. Friend pointed out, we have the next Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Rwanda. In addition there will be the Commonwealth Business Forum, which, I am pleased to say, the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council will again be organising. That is a huge opportunity to truly display the strengths and the potential of often-overlooked Commonwealth markets. Rwanda should be praised for its commitment to gender equality—that is important after our previous debate. Only Iceland compares to Rwanda’s gender pay gay. No other country’s Parliament approaches Rwanda’s gender balance of 68% female MPs, and 26% of Rwandan small and medium-sized enterprises are run by women. Those statistics would also have stood well in the previous debate.

Rwanda also ranks within Africa’s four least corrupt nations, according to Transparency International, placing it—amazingly—above Italy. When we think where Rwanda has come from, that is a truly extraordinary position for it to be in. To say nothing else, the fact that such an independently successful nation with no historical connection to the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth would choose to join the organisation as recently as 2009 speaks to the understood value of the union to those who take advantage of it. I am always particularly pleased that the French are always looking at the Commonwealth to see how they can do their equivalent—which is a poor equivalent—better.

The question that we all have to ask ourselves is one that we should ask ourselves of everything: if something does not exist, should we invent it? Should we invent the Commonwealth, if it did not exist? I think that not only should we invent it, but we should spend much more time talking about and supporting it. I believe that the opportunities are huge. We can do more for the smaller Commonwealth nations, representing them at the UN on the Security Council. When we leave the EU, there will still be two EU countries—Cyprus and Malta—that are also Commonwealth countries. The United Kingdom must be careful not to over-dominate the Commonwealth, but at the same time it must show leadership. The potential is absolutely huge. This is a Commonwealth of nations of people who wish one another good will, who wish to share education and values, and who want to trade with one another. We can do much, much more and it is in our interests so to do.