Egypt: British Support

David Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. At the centre of this issue is the fact that we have to deal with a very fine balancing act in Egypt, which is why this debate is so important. On the one hand, we have a fragile situation in the region and a country that has gone through enormous economic pressure and two destabilising revolutions in four years. On the other hand, it is a country that is crucial to the stability of the region. There is the need for order and stability, but there is also a Government who have a mixed record, if I can put it that way, on guaranteeing human rights and the pressure and force they have applied in domestic situations.

We in Parliament have to appreciate that very fine balance, because frankly we do not understand the immense pressures that the Egyptian people have gone through. One startling fact is that in 1952 the population of Egypt was 20 million. I have spoken to Cairenes who remember those times, and they remember a completely different Egypt. Cities such as Cairo and Alexandria were much smaller, yet much more spacious. In many ways they were much more luxurious than they are today. Over the past 60 years, the Egyptian population has more than quadrupled. That demographic pressure constitutes Egypt’s greatest challenge.

As can be imagined, in a country where more than 50% of people are under the age of 25, there needs to be employment, a degree of economic progress and a Government who recognise the ambitions and aspirations of their young people. In that context, government can be very difficult. Against that backdrop of a growing population and economic pressure, there is also the rise of, for want of a better phrase, political Islam and the complications that radical Islamic thinking—takfiri thinking, as it is called—bring to the political mix.

While I am talking about the demographics in Egypt, we also should remember that there are nearly 10 million Copts—Egyptian Christians who have been there for 2,000 years, since the birth of Christianity—who comprise something like 10% of Egypt’s population. They will point out that they have been there for longer than Islam has existed as a religion, so they have a deep historic connection to and experience of the country of their forefathers.

I have had the privilege of visiting Egypt a number of times in the last six years. In that time, I have seen four or five different Heads of State and three different Governments, and I have had the privilege of speaking to several Ministers. In the brief period after the Muslim Brotherhood took over and were running the country, it was clear to me there was huge pressure on the Copts. Churches were being burned and Coptic people were being attacked. No community breathed a greater sigh of relief when the Muslim Brotherhood was removed, as it were, from government than the Copts. No group of people was happier to see a restoration, as they would see it, of some kind of order under the form of General Sisi.

For us in the west looking at that development, we can quibble about the details and say that, like Mubarak, Sisi is some kind of military dictator, but that is to overlook a lot of the changes that have happened in Egypt. We had the privilege of meeting Egyptian parliamentarians, who treated us and hosted us incredibly generously and respectfully in their Parliament. They were very keen to adopt the best parliamentary practices from Britain and apply them to their new Parliament, which met less than two months ago. They are absolutely committed to building a form of parliamentary democracy. That process might take a long time. Egypt’s parliamentary democracy is certainly not perfectly formed, but few parliamentary democracies can claim to be perfect and fully formed. We have just been considering how the House of Lords operates in our country. Parliament has existed for hundreds and hundreds of years, yet we are still evolving and trying to look at the nature of the two Houses and how they co-ordinate with each other.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, although Egypt has had its unique problems since the Arab spring—or the Arab winter, as it is called in some quarters—the fact that the Egyptian Government are forcefully putting forward a democratic mandate is a good thing for the region?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think my hon. Friend is right. People will dispute the extent to which Egypt is a full, participatory democracy—people can have different views—but it is clearly going in the right direction. We can discuss where along the road we think it is, but the movement is positive. Many of the elections that were held in Mubarak’s time were far more tightly controlled than the parliamentary election we have just witnessed in Egypt. The nature of political life in Egypt is evolving. That goes to the core of what I am saying. Stability—some degree of law and order in the streets—is absolutely essential. Anecdotally, we were told that at the time of the Muslim Brotherhood there was practically a self-imposed curfew in Cairo. Now people are beginning to go out—they feel a bit more secure and safer—and a civic society is growing.

I have talked briefly about political developments and aspirations, about structures and about Parliaments, but we need to think about a basic economic question, which I alluded to when I was talking about the population increase. Demographic pressures and the economy are absolutely crucial. Anyone who knows anything about Egypt will know that, broadly, about 20% of its economy is based on tourism. One thing that we can do directly to help Egypt to build up its economy is to help tourism. Our delegation learned that the suspension of British flights to Sharm el-Sheikh was a matter of grave concern to Egyptian businessmen and the Egyptian Government. I recommend that the Government look seriously at that—I know we are doing that and are inching towards lifting the ban and stopping the suspension of flights. If that were to happen, sooner rather than later, it would be an immense boon to Egyptian tourism and its economy.