Colombia Peace Process

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jo Stevens

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jo Stevens]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. I think that we have covered off all six areas of the peace agreement in detail. I thought all the contributions, whether speeches or interventions, were made in a very thoughtful and knowledgeable way, and I am very grateful to colleagues for their participation. I also thank the Minister for his response. There were some very helpful and useful suggestions from the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), which I hope the Minister will take up with the Colombian Government, although I might have got my timings wrong about when the Minister was seeing President Duque today—

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Twice today, and again tonight.

[Jo Stevens]

That is good. That is excellent. So he will be able to raise with the President the points that we have raised today. We all have a shared interest in the peace process and its success, so when we raise our concerns it is because we are genuinely concerned about what will happen to Colombia in the future. I thank, again, all colleagues for participating in the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Colombia peace process.

Exiting the European Union (Sanctions)

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jo Stevens

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Again, I think that is straying into detailed analysis of the working of the sanctions, which is not the subject of these statutory instruments.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He will know that, since the implementation of those sanctions, the International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into the Burmese atrocities. What does he know about the status of that investigation? Does he anticipate an increase in the sanctions on Burma when this instrument comes into effect?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Again, the purpose of this debate is not to look at the way the sanctions are working; it is merely to set up the legal framework in which they can be allowed to work under our autonomous regime.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I am not as keen as you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to open the envelope quite so far, because I do not actually deal with Burma. However, if the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) has a really good question on Venezuela, I can give her chapter and verse. The responsibilities of Ministers are geographical in some respects and thematic in others. As she knows, I am in charge of sanctions law, rather than the operation of all geographical sanctions. I do not want to risk in any way giving the House information that is inaccurate or ill-informed.

[Jo Stevens]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Perhaps he could ask his colleague who is in charge of Burma relationships whether he could write to me to let me know the answer to my question.

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I would be delighted to put that obligation on him—it causes me no difficulty whatever. Of course I will do that. In Foreign Office questions and in Westminster Hall, we have many discussions about issues of that sort—indeed, I encourage them, and we like to participate in them by giving as much information as we possibly can in response to any motion moved.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jo Stevens

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

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

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has spent much of the summer travelling across Europe and meeting his European counterparts. Through EU membership, the UK is part of around 40 international agreements covering 70 countries. We are committed to ensuring continuity for existing EU trade agreements as we leave the European Union and to building up the closest trade agreements that we can with countries in the Commonwealth.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

T7. I thank the Minister of State for Europe and the Americas for meeting me just before recess to hear my concerns about the Colombian peace process. I visited Congressman- Elect Jesus Santrich in prison in Bogota last month. He has been on a 41-day hunger strike. He is very frail, and has been denied access to doctors and to medication—the only medication that he has had is through his lawyers. Will the Minister please speak to the new Colombian Government not just about access to medication for him because he is frail, but about his continued administrative detention?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I hope to make the hon. Lady’s comments of even greater value by saying that I will have such conversations and that I will put in calls to Colombia. I know that our mission in Colombia, in Bogota, is always doing its best to make representations of this sort.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)

Debate between Alan Duncan and Jo Stevens

Thursday 1st March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Sir Alan Duncan]

If something has to happen three times as frequently, it will take up a lot more resource.

I hope that the arguments I have put to the Committee have convinced the hon. Lady that the compulsion to have a review every year is superfluous, given all the other layers and safeguards that exist in the Bill.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

If the Minister cannot tell us what the triple cost is, can he tell us what this costs at the moment?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

We do things as part of the EU, so it is not possible to segregate the cost in the way the hon. Lady asks. What we are doing is setting up an autonomous regime instead of being part of a collective regime.

I hope that the arguments that I have put to the Committee have persuaded the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland to withdraw her amendment.