Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ellie Reeves and James Cleverly

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I recently had the opportunity to speak to the Indian high commissioner on this and a number of other issues. We recognise how this portrayal of the Indian Government has played out in India. I made it clear that the BBC is independent in its output, that the UK regards India as an incredibly important international partner and that we will be investing heavily in that relationship in the coming decades.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

During Colombia’s national strike and protests of 2021, gender-based violence was used as a tool of repression by the national police to punish those who dared to speak out. This included the rape and torture of girls who were detained and the targeting of LGBTQ people. With a new Government in Colombia who are committed to the peace process, will the Minister do everything he can to support them to ensure the police never again use these tactics?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ellie Reeves and James Cleverly

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa (James Cleverly)]

FCDO Ministers are in regular contact with Cabinet colleagues on a range of trade-related issues and we are clear that more trade does not have to come at the expense of our commitment to human rights. The UK will continue to show global leadership in encouraging all states to uphold international human rights obligations and will hold to account those who violate human rights. Since the inception of the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020, we have used those powers to impose sanctions on 78 persons involved in human rights violations. The UK has a strong history of protecting human rights and promoting global values. By having a strong economic relationship with partners, we can have more open discussions on a range of issues, including human rights. We continue to take a balanced and proportionate approach with partners to deliver the best outcome for the UK and to maximise the benefits of trade, while ensuring that we promote our core values.

[Ellie Reeves [V]]

The UK has a free trade agreement with Colombia that contains a human rights clause, but we have just heard that in recent months protesters in Colombia have faced brutal violence at the hands of Colombian police, with human rights organisations documenting 43 protesters potentially killed by the police. Given those abuses, and the Colombian Government’s repeated attempts to deny and minimise the crisis, will the UK Government signal their commitment to human rights and, rather than turn a blind eye, ensure that this human rights clause is actually upheld?

[James Cleverly]

Colombia is an FCDO human rights priority country, and we take the growing reports of violence against social leaders and human rights defenders extremely seriously. We consistently raise our concerns with the Colombian Government and in multilateral forums. The point that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), has just made is still very much the case. When we export our products and services, we also export our values and buy the right to have serious conversations with partners around the world.

Finance Bill

Debate between Ellie Reeves and James Cleverly

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

Although, as I am reminded, there is an NI implication. Again, I have heard a number of anecdotes about conversations with departing employees from not the most honourable of companies in which things have been said such as, “If this complaint were to gently disappear, I am sure we can squeeze a little more money into your severance payment, using this route or that one.” This is one of the areas where simplicity and clarity are important, because companies may be using massaging methods to try to get a bit more money into the pocket of a departing employee, so that employee does not to have recourse to the law where inappropriate behaviour has taken place. Dangling some cash in front of them may be being used as an enticement not to take a constructive dismissal case, for example, and that is exactly the kind of thing we want to avoid.

In conclusion, I will be generous in spirit and assume that these amendments are just poorly thought through, rather than anything that is attempting to be more damaging. They would undermine the core direction of travel of the Bill, so I will not support them.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. Before entering this place, I was an employment rights lawyer for more than a decade, so this issue is very important to me. I represented dismissed and discriminated against employees for many years, and saw at first hand the devastating effect that the way they had been treated had on their lives. The Bill clearly seeks to narrow the scope of termination payments. Of course tax avoidance should be clamped down on, but the Government’s own consultation did not reveal evidence of widespread abuse. The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) said that there was tax avoidance on an industrial scale in this area, but that simply is not borne out by the evidence or indeed my experiences as an employment rights lawyer.