Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point. Thankfully, President Trump’s writ does not run in this country. We run our own affairs, we make our points to the President of the United States, and we do so with vigour where we disagree. The Prime Minister and I disagree with what he has been doing over the separation of kids from their parents. It is right for the UK to speak out over that and we will.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

May I first sympathise with the Foreign Secretary that, due to his emergency duties abroad, he was unable to join last night’s fight against Heathrow expansion? Four years ago, the Foreign Secretary was asked what was the biggest lesson he had learned—[Interruption.] Four years ago, he was asked what was the biggest lesson he had learned from his supposed hero Winston Churchill. His answer was:

“Never give in, never give in, never give in”.

For some reason, Churchill did not add, “Unless you can catch a plane to Kabul.” The Foreign Secretary clearly has a new hero, and we know who he is—the clue is in the hair. He said on 6 June that he is “increasingly admiring” of Donald Trump. He has begun to tell us some of the reasons why, but could he help those of us who are yet to be convinced by telling us three things about the current President that he increasingly admires?

[Boris Johnson]

I hesitate to say it, but I have anticipated the right hon. Lady’s question. I have pointed out, No.1, that it was admirable that Donald Trump’s Administration responded after the chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime supported by the Russians. It is a good thing that the United States is trying, and trying very hard, to solve the problem of a nuclear-armed North Korea. I admire at least the President’s efforts in that respect. It is also a good thing that the President is encouraging our European friends and partners to spend more on their own defence. We will certainly assist in that effort.

[Emily Thornberry]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his attempt to answer that question, but even he surely knows in the depths of his soul that when we have a President such as Donald Trump who bans Muslims and supports Nazis, who stokes conflict and fuels climate change, and who abuses women and cages children, it is not a record to be admired, but a record to be abhorred. I simply ask the Foreign Secretary not just why he joked that a man like that should be in charge of our Brexit negotiations, but why he seriously thinks that he should have the honour in two weeks’ time of visiting Chequers, Blenheim Palace and Windsor Castle, and of shaking hands with Her Majesty the Queen.

[Boris Johnson]

I have given several examples already of the ways in which our views coincide with those of the current American Administration. I have also said that, where our views differ, we are not afraid to say it. The fundamental point, on which the right hon. Lady and I are in complete agreement, is that it is right that the United Kingdom should welcome to this country the Head of State of our most important and most trusted ally. She is on record as saying that in the past. If she now dissents from that view, it would be surprising, and I would be interested to hear it from her own lips.

[Emily Thornberry]

I would like to answer but unfortunately I do not have any more time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

May I begin by thanking the Foreign Secretary for leading our cross-party efforts over the last two weeks to destroy the Prime Minister’s “customs partnership” proposal? I trust that he finished off the job earlier this morning. Unfortunately, however, that leaves us with his own crazy Mad Max—I mean max fac—proposal. May I ask him a very simple yes or no question, which has already been asked several times by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee? Does he believe that cameras are physical infrastructure?

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising this matter, because it may provide her with an opportunity to elucidate the Labour party’s policy on the customs union for the benefit of the nation. I seem to remember that at the last general election, Labour Members campaigned on a platform to come out of the customs union. Now they say that they want to stay in “a” customs union—a customs partnership. Their policy is absolutely clouded in obscurity. If the right hon. Lady wishes to part those clouds of confusion, this is her moment.

[Emily Thornberry]

We are quite willing to exchange places with those on the other side of the House. All we would ask of them is that they call a general election.

I do not think that that constituted even an attempt to answer the question that I asked. Like the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary seems to be unable and unwilling to state the blindingly obvious. So much for plain-speaking, bluff authenticity.

Let me try another key question about the max fac proposal. Can the Foreign Secretary confirm—[Interruption.] He does need to listen, otherwise he will not understand the question and will be unable to answer it. Can he confirm that if the technology on which his proposal relies takes five years to become fully functional, the UK will be obliged to remain part of the customs union, and to be bound by single market rules, until at least 2023?

[Boris Johnson]

The right hon. Lady had an opportunity to be clear about what Labour wants to do. Conservative Members have been absolutely clear. The Prime Minister has said it time and time again: we are coming out of the single market, we are taking back control of our borders, our laws and our money, and we are coming out of the customs union. In her Mansion House speech, she gave plenty of indications of how we will deal with the problems that the right hon. Lady has described.

Iran Nuclear Deal

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement.

I am sure that there will come a time to debate whether the Government’s approach to Donald Trump since his election in 2016 has been the right one, but today is not the time, because instead I believe that the whole House, and indeed the whole world, should stand united in condemning Donald Trump for the reckless, senseless and immoral act of diplomatic sabotage that he has committed. Every independent inspection has confirmed—even the US Defence Secretary James Mattis admitted this last month—that the nuclear deal is working and Iran is complying with it in full.

Yes, there are other important matters that must be addressed with Iran—its regional activities, its ballistic missile programme, and its record on human rights—but the platform for that dialogue, and the foundation on which future arrangements could be reached, was the nuclear deal. Instead, by seeking to scupper the nuclear deal, Donald Trump has destroyed the platform for future progress and risked triggering a nuclear arms race in the middle east, handing power to the hard-line theocrats in Tehran and pushing Iran back into isolation. Donald Trump is taking all those risks without a single care, without the slightest justification and without the simplest rational thought about what will come next; and in doing so he is sending a message to North Korea that any agreement it reaches with the US will be worthless.

While we could talk all day about the recklessness and idiocy of what Donald Trump has done, the key question is this: how should the world react? And here I believe there are three challenges. First, there is the challenge for the other signatories of how to best preserve the deal. For Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia that means providing urgent legal and financial protection for companies and banks in our countries engaged in trade and financial transactions with Iran so they can continue doing so. As for Iran, it must have the patience and resolve not to respond in kind to this act of belligerence, but to continue working with the other signatories to try to keep the deal alive.

The second challenge is equally serious: how to stop a descent into conflict. Iran is a country nine times the size of Syria with a population as big as Germany’s. The idea of Iran racing to develop a nuclear weapon and the US Administration seeking to stop it through military means does not bear thinking about. Yet we know that that is exactly what the Trump Administration are thinking about. In February, The New York Times published an important comment piece accusing the Trump Administration of employing exactly the same playbook used before the Iraq war to manufacture a pretext for war with Iran. The article was written by Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, and he warned simply:

“I helped sell the false choice of war once. It’s happening again.”

And that was before the appointment of John Bolton. So while we rightly focus our efforts now on trying to salvage the nuclear deal, we must also be alert to stop any further steps the US may take to escalate its confrontation with Iran.

The third and final challenge I want to mention today is equally profound: if we did not know it beforehand, what yesterday’s announcement confirmed is that as long as Donald Trump remains President we must get used to a world without American leadership—a world where efforts to secure peace and progress on the great challenges facing the planet must be made not just without American co-operation but often in the face of the Administration’s active opposition. That is the challenge we now face in relation to Iran, as it has been on climate change, the refugee crisis and the Israel-Palestine peace process. But starting with the consensus in this House today, I hope we can all play our part in ensuring Britain rises to that challenge.

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful for the right hon. Lady’s point that there is no merit in any reckless and counterproductive attacks on the United States today, and I am sure that she will continue that spirit when the President makes his visit in July and trust, too, that she will communicate that to the rest of those on the Labour Benches and, indeed, to the Labour party in London. She made a good point when she said that the Iranian Government and the Iranian people have not walked away from the deal. They remain in compliance, and it is our duty, as the UK Government with our European partners, to help them to remain in compliance and to assist in the survival of the JCPOA.

To be fair to the US Administration, they have decided that there is another way forward. They have decided that the limitations that they see in the deal—the sunset clauses, Iran’s malign behaviour in the region and the problem of the intended Iranian acquisition of intercontinental ballistic missiles—can be met by bringing all the problems together and having a big negotiation. The UK Government have long taken a different view that the essence of the JCPOA was to compartmentalise—to take the nuclear deal and solve that—but the President has taken another view. It is now up to Washington to come forward with concrete proposals on how exactly it intends to bring the problems together and address them collectively. Our posture should be one of support in that endeavour, although, as I say, we have been sceptical about how that is to be done.

As for North Korea, the whole House will want to wish the President of the United States every possible success in his endeavours and convey to him our admiration for the vigour with which he has tackled the matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman will know that under the Criminal Finances Act 2017, which came in last April, there is provision for unexplained wealth orders to be made against those whose assets might have been corruptly or illicitly obtained, and he can be in no doubt that the National Crime Agency and the national economic crime centre are looking intently at what avenues to explore. However, I stress that this is not something for political direction or control; we in this country operate under the rule of law.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

At the end of an excellent debate on Russia yesterday, I am afraid that the Foreign Secretary failed to answer a single one of the dozens of questions he was asked over the course of four hours, so may I repeat just two of them? First, will the Government now initiate a case against the Russian state at the European Court of Human Rights for its clear extraterritorial violation of human rights in relation to the Salisbury attack?

[Boris Johnson]

I believe that the right hon. Lady has legal training. We must wait for the investigation to be concluded.

[Emily Thornberry]

I do not really understand that answer, but I hope that the Foreign Secretary will give it some consideration. After all, a third of all cases currently before the Court relate to Russia, and its rulings have been used by leading opposition figures, such as Alexei Navalny, to send a powerful message about the Russian state’s abuses.

Let me ask a second question that the Foreign Secretary failed to answer yesterday. Given the justified criticism of Donald Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker for congratulating President Putin on his re-election, will the Government guarantee, for the sake of consistency, that they will not congratulate President Sisi of Egypt on his sham re-election when it is confirmed next week?

[Boris Johnson]

If I may say so, I think that it is a bit much to bash America and the Trump Administration today, as much as that is the right hon. Lady’s instinctive reflex. The United States has just led the world in expelling 60 Russian spies. If she had an ounce of grace, she might concede that that was a very considerable gesture in the right direction. As for any future elections that might take place, we do not anticipate the outcome of any election.

Government Policy on Russia

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is indeed correct that Russia is engaged in a host of malign activities that stretch from the abuse and murder of journalists to the mysterious assassination of politicians. I am glad that he mentioned Mr Nemtsov, as in December I was privileged to pay tribute to his memory at the site of his murder on a bridge in Moscow.

It is clear that Russia is, I am afraid, in many respects now a malign and disruptive force, and the UK is in the lead across the world in trying to counteract that activity. I must say to the House that that is sometimes difficult, given the strong economic pressures that are exerted by Russia’s hydrocarbons on other European economies, and we sometimes have difficulty in trying to get our points across, but we do get our points across. There has been no wavering on the sanctions regimes that have been imposed by European countries, and nor indeed will there be such wavering as long as the UK has a say in this.

A cross-Government review is an interesting idea that I will take away and consider. As my hon. Friend knows, the National Security Council has repeatedly looked at our relations with Russia, which are among the most difficult that we face in the world. I assure him that we will be looking at it again. We must be very careful in what we say because it is too early to prejudge the investigation, but if the suspicions on both sides of the House about the events in Salisbury prove to be well founded, we may well be forced to look again at our sanctions regime and at other measures that we may seek to put in place.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. I thank the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), for securing it.

We are all extremely concerned about the incident in Salisbury yesterday, and I am sure we all hope for the recovery of Mr Skripal and his daughter. I am sure both sides of the House will join me in praising the professionalism and frankly, given the nature of previous poisonings, the bravery of the emergency services that dealt with this incident.

As the Secretary of State says, the incident has disturbing echoes of the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko 12 years ago, and it comes after the exposure last June by BuzzFeed News of the fact that, since 2012, 14 individuals considered hostile to the Putin regime have died in mysterious circumstances on British soil. However, the investigation of this particular incident in Salisbury has only just begun, and I do not believe it is appropriate for us to indulge in speculation while the investigating authorities are still doing their job, so I will not ask the Secretary of State any specific questions about the incident or the Government’s response, although I am sure the time for those questions will come soon.

I have two related questions for the Secretary of State. He talks about working across Europe in relation to sanctions. As we leave the European Union, how will we continue to work with our European allies on sanctions?

Secondly, on the issue of Russian human rights abuses, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill is currently upstairs in Committee where, right now, the Government are resisting an amendment that would enable Britain to sanction individuals who perpetrate gross human rights abuses, such as those who tortured Sergei Magnitsky to death in a Moscow jail in 2009. Can the Secretary of State explain why the Government are taking such a negative stance against our Magnitsky amendment? Surely they should be supporting it.

Thirdly, the Secretary of State will, like me, surely have heard President Putin’s speech and have been disturbed to hear Putin boasting about the proficiency of Russia’s new nuclear weapons systems, all in response to Donald Trump’s planned expansion of America’s nuclear arsenal. Both are driving a coach and horses through the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. What are the Government doing to urge all parties to renew their compliance with that vital international treaty?

[Boris Johnson]

The right hon. Lady is right to place that emphasis on the breaches of the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty that we are now seeing and on the risk to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is one of the great achievements of the post-war order. The UK is active in New York, and, with our American friends, we are making the case that it is time to bring the Russians firmly to heel. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of anxiety about what is now happening. Fundamentally, it is not in Russia’s interest.

The right hon. Lady makes an interesting point about so-called Magnitsky amendments. Members on both sides of the House are interested in tabling such amendments to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, which, as she rightly says, is now in Committee. We will look at all such proposals with an open mind. We are very interested in trying to address the issue of those who grossly abuse human rights, which is what everybody wants to achieve. As currently framed, the Bill, a fortiori, tackles such gross abuses because it tackles all those who abuse human rights. I am conscious that the House wishes to go further, and we are happy to look at that.

Syria: De-escalation Zones

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

Many people in this country will share my hon. Friend’s sentiments, and many people will believe that the United States of America did exactly the right thing when it responded to the abomination of the attack at Khan Sheikhoun in April with the strike at the Shayrat airfield. If the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons produces incontrovertible evidence of the further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime or its supporters, I would certainly hope very much that the west will not stand idly by.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) for securing it.

During the Opposition day debate in the House a month ago, I warned of the Assad regime’s impending criminal assault on eastern Ghouta. Sadly, that is exactly what we have seen in recent weeks. Whatever words we use to describe the assaults, and even if we say, as UNICEF said last week, that there are simply no adequate words, one thing must be made clear: because of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, the targeting of hospitals and medical centres, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, and the alleged use of chemical weapons, the assault is simply a war crime and there must be a reckoning for those responsible.

In the brief time I have, may I ask the Foreign Secretary three questions? First, all hon. Members welcome the UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate ceasefire, but it was clear to anyone reading the text with care that it in fact excluded military action against terrorists. That will allow Assad and his allies to justify continuing their assault against the jihadist armies of Jaysh al-Islam and Tahrir al-Islam inside eastern Ghouta. It will also allow Turkey to justify continuing its assault on Afrin. To stop the assault on eastern Ghouta, therefore, should the UN not instead be clear that there must be a temporary cessation of all military action within Syria, and not the conditional cessation that Assad and his allies are using to justify continuing their assault?

Secondly, I ask the Foreign Secretary what practical discussions there have been at the UN and elsewhere about opening a corridor from eastern Ghouta to Mleiha or Harasta, both to allow access for humanitarian relief and to allow civilian safe passage out of the city.

Finally, while I appreciate that it is the view of some in the House that the suffering of eastern Ghouta can be stopped only by yet more western military intervention, I believe that that would simply prolong and deepen the war. Ultimately, we can end this dreadful conflict and the suffering of all the Syrian people only through genuine peace talks involving all non-jihadi parties and the agreement of a political solution, so may I ask the Foreign Secretary this: what is Britain doing to drive this process forward?

[Boris Johnson]

As I am sure the right hon. Lady will appreciate, United Nations Security Council resolution 2401 was, in fact, a considerable success of diplomacy, given the position that the Russians had previously taken. I think that it represents a strong commitment to a ceasefire on the part of the entire international community. It is now up to the Russians to enforce that ceasefire, and to get their client state to enforce it as well. That is the point that we are making, and the point that we will definitely make to ambassador Yakovenko. As for the issue of humanitarian corridors, I think that all these ideas are extremely good and we certainly support them, but it will take the acquiescence of the Assad regime to achieve what we want.

The right hon. Lady asked about the UK Government. The UK Government have been in the lead in Geneva and the United Nations in driving the process of holding the Assad regime to account through Security Council resolutions, and we continue to do that. We are calling again for the Security Council to meet to discuss the failure to implement resolution 2401 today. As the right hon. Lady knows, the UK Government are part of the Syria Small Group, which is working to counterbalance what has turned out to be a doomed—or perhaps I should say “so far unsuccessful”—Russian venture at Sochi. That is because we think it is our job to bring the international community together. I am not talking about the Astana process or the Sochi process. We should bring the members of the international community together, as one, in Geneva, with a single political process. That is what the job of the UK Government is, and that is where we will continue to direct our efforts.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

It has been pointed out that the Foreign Secretary’s Brexit speech last week was 5,000 words long, but it did not once include the words “Northern” or “Ireland”. That is perhaps the biggest problem that the Government need to tackle, yet the Foreign Secretary did not even mention it. Will he belatedly take the opportunity to explain in simple terms how it is possible for the UK to diverge from the EU in regulations, tariffs and other aspects of trade while retaining the current arrangements on the Irish land border? Will he enlighten us? What is the plan?

[Boris Johnson]

As the right hon. Lady knows very well, there is no reason whatsoever why we should not be able to exit the customs union and the single market while maintaining frictionless trade not only north-south in Northern Ireland, but with the rest of continental Europe. That is exactly what the Government will spell out in the course of the coming negotiations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

In addition to looking harder at the visa applications, we are looking harder at the engagement of the Muslim Brotherhood and its associates in charities in this country. I would be happy, pursuant to the answer I gave just a moment ago, to supply further details to the hon. Gentleman of what we are doing in respect of Muslim Brotherhood visas.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Oman, UAE and Iran

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for giving me advance sight of his statement. I also thank him for the obvious efforts that he has put in over recent days on these issues, which are of such great concern to this House and beyond.

Let us start, as we must, with the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. I have no wish to go over old ground concerning the Foreign Secretary’s remarks to the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is right that he has finally apologised for those remarks and admitted that he was wrong. It is also right that he has finally met Richard Ratcliffe, and that he has spent the weekend in the region attempting to atone for his mistake and get Nazanin released. We welcome the tentative progress that the Foreign Secretary has made in that regard. As Richard Ratcliffe himself put it,

“it doesn’t change the fundamentals but it makes the change in the fundamentals more likely.”

I appreciate that the Foreign Secretary cannot give a running commentary, but I should like to ask him two specific questions on this issue. First, did he seek meetings during his visit with representatives of the revolutionary courts, the Interior Ministry or the Ministry of Justice? In other words, did he seek to meet those who, in Richard Ratcliffe’s words, have the power to “change the fundamentals” in Nazanin’s case? Indeed, did he seek a meeting with Nazanin herself while he was there? Secondly, in the Foreign Secretary’s meetings with President Rouhani and others, did he make it perfectly clear to them personally that his comments to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which were widely publicised in the Iranian state media, had been mistaken?

Turning to the Iran nuclear deal, we welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary raised this issue, and he spoke for all of us in reassuring Iran that whatever other bilateral differences we may face, Britain will continue to honour our part in the nuclear deal as long as Iran continues to do the same. But of course, that is not where the real problem lies. As with so much else, the real problem lies in the White House. Can the Foreign Secretary tell us what the plan is now? What is the plan in relation to persuading President Trump to see sense and stop his senseless assault on the Iran deal? What is the plan to get President Trump back on board? Or is this yet another area in which the Government are forced to concede that they have no influence to wield?

Turning to Yemen, we welcome the fact that, as well as visiting Tehran, the Foreign Secretary visited Abu Dhabi and Oman and raised the issue of Yemen there as well. While we welcome the talks, we are bound yet again to ask the question: what is the plan now? What is the plan to get the blockades fully lifted and enable full access for humanitarian relief? What is the plan to secure a ceasefire agreement and make progress towards long-term political solutions? And where is the plan for a new United Nations Security Council resolution, 14 months since the UK first circulated its draft?

Last week, the UN Security Council cancelled its scheduled open meeting on Yemen, and instead held one in private. Britain’s representative, Jonathan Allen, said that a closed doors session was needed so that

“Council members could have a frank conversation”.

We appreciate that the best progress is often made behind closed doors, but the people of Yemen have been waiting for two years for any kind of progress and for any sort of hope of an end to the war and to their suffering. Instead, things just get worse and worse. Does the Foreign Secretary accept that people are tired of hearing that progress is being made behind the scenes, when things are getting ever worse on the ground? In the wake of his talks this weekend, in the wake of his meetings with the Quint, and in the wake of last week’s closed Security Council session, will he now spell out what the plan is for peace?

I am sure that many other regional security issues were discussed on the Foreign Secretary’s trip, from the tensions with Saudi Arabia to President Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, but may I ask specifically what conclusions he reached from his discussions on the prospects for a political solution to end the fighting in Syria? Is Iran ready to accept, as an outcome of the Astana process, that it will withdraw its forces from Syria, and will Hezbollah and the Shi’a militias do likewise, provided that President Assad is left in place, that all coalition forces are withdrawn, and that Syria is given international assistance with its reconstruction? If that is the case, will the UK Government accept that deal, despite the Foreign Secretary’s repeated assertion that President Assad has no place in the future government of Syria? If they will not accept that deal, will the Foreign Secretary tell us when it comes to the future of Syria, as on everything else that we have discussed today, what is his plan now?

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for the spirit in which she poses her questions. I can tell her that in Tehran I met Vice-President Salehi, the head of the Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, the Speaker of the Majlis Ali Larijani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and had long discussions with President Rouhani. In each of those conversations, I repeated the case for release on humanitarian grounds, where that is appropriate, of the difficult consular cases that we have in Iran, and that message was certainly received and understood. However, as I said to the House, it is too early to be confident about the outcome.

The right hon. Lady asked about the plan in Yemen, and she will understand that the plan certainly was until last Saturday that Ali Abdullah Saleh would be divided from the Houthis, which seemed to be the best avenue for progress. Indeed, Ali Abdullah Saleh was divided from the Houthis, but he then paid the ultimate price for his decision to go over to the coalition. We are left with a difficult and tense situation, and what we need to do now, the plan on which everybody is agreed, is to get Hodeidah open, first to humanitarian relief, to which the Saudis have agreed, but also to commercial traffic, too.

I heard the right hon. Lady’s question about the use of the UN Security Council. Resolution 2216 is still operative, but as penholders in the UN we keep the option of a new Security Council resolution under continuous review. It is vital that all parties understand, as I think they genuinely do in Riyadh, in Abu Dhabi and across the region, that there is no military solution to the disaster in Yemen. There is no way that any side can win this war. What we need now is a new constitution and a new political process, and that is the plan that the UK is in the lead in promoting. As I said to the right hon. Lady, we had meetings of the Quad last week, again last night in Abu Dhabi, and we will have a further meeting in early January.

As for the UK’s role in Syria, the right hon. Lady asked about the Astana process and whether it would be acceptable. Our view is that if there is to be a lasting peace in Syria that commands the support of all the people of that country, it is vital that we get the talks back to Geneva. I believe that that is the Labour party’s position. Indeed, I believe it was also the Labour party’s position that there could be no long-term future for Syria with President Assad. If that position has changed, I would be interested to hear about that. However, our view is that it is obviously a matter for the people of Syria, and we will be promoting a plan whereby they, including the 11 million or 12 million who have fled the country, will be given the chance to vote in free, fair, UN-observed elections to give that country a stable future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was listening to my last answer, because I said that the increased diplomatic representation that we would make in the rest of Europe would be dispersed not just in Brussels, but around the rest of the capitals. Of course, each and every one of those individuals will be working on our common foreign and security objectives, and making the case, which I made in an earlier answer, that our support for European defence and security is unconditional.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

It is now nearly 50 long years since the start of the troubles in Northern Ireland, and none of us who lived through that era ever wants to go back to it again. In February 2016, the Foreign Secretary gave his guarantee to BBC Northern Ireland that a vote for Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border, and I quote, “absolutely unchanged”. There were no caveats, and no “I hope that this will happen”; there was just an unequivocal commitment that nothing would change. Can the Foreign Secretary give us the same promises today?

[Boris Johnson]

I think, if I may say so, that the right hon. Lady is right to ask that question. I was recently in Dublin talking to all the political groups there, and there is no question but that the issue of the border is very live in Irish politics. I repeated exactly the pledge to which she refers: there can be no return to a hard border. There can be no hard border. That would be unthinkable, and it would be economic and political madness. I think everybody, on both sides of this House, understands the social, political and spiritual ramifications of allowing any such thing to happen. That is why it is so important that we get on to the second phase of the negotiations, that we get sufficient progress at the European Council in December and that we are able to debate these issues properly.

[Emily Thornberry]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for that answer. No one will have missed the fact that, like on so many of his initial promises over Brexit, he has turned this from an unequivocal guarantee to an aspiration dependent on a successful deal—[Interruption.] I did listen to the right hon. Gentleman.

It seems to me that, like his jogging partner from The Sun, the right hon. Gentleman is now saying that it is up to the Irish to find a solution, but why should that be? It was his promise that border arrangements would not change, so it is up to him to make sure that that works. That is why I want to challenge the Foreign Secretary today. In September, he laid down four personal red lines for the Brexit negotiations. None of them related to the Irish land border, which is a crucial issue to 1.8 million of our own citizens and 4.8 million of our friends south of the border, so may I—

[Emily Thornberry]

Let me urge the Foreign Secretary to announce a fifth red line today by promising unequivocally what he promised last year—that Irish border arrangements will not change—and to say that if those arrangements do change, he will refuse to stay in the Government.

[Boris Johnson]

If I may say so, I think the right hon. Lady prepared her supplementary question before she heard my first answer. There can be no return to a hard border. We do not want a hard border north-south, or indeed east-west.

Zimbabwe

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

We are certainly encouraging restraint on all sides. In common with our international partners, we are urging all sides in Harare to refrain from violence of any kind.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Thank you for granting the urgent question, Mr Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) for securing it.

Events in Zimbabwe have moved incredibly quickly over the last 48 hours. As recently as Monday, here in the Chamber, I referred to the abuse of power by Grace Mugabe; two days later, that power appears at the moment to have been taken away, although the situation seems highly volatile.

Will the Foreign Secretary assure me that the 20,000 British nationals in Zimbabwe will be given all the assistance that they need during this dangerous period? I understand that in the past, at times of great tension, there have been Cobra plans for British nationals to be evacuated if necessary; I wonder whether thought will be given to such a process on this occasion.

I hope the Foreign Secretary agrees with me that three key points of principle apply to these events. First, a descent into violence and reprisals from any direction in the dispute must be avoided at all costs. Secondly, if all that this represents in the long term is the replacement of authoritarian rule by one faction by authoritarian rule by another, that hardly constitutes progress. Thirdly, we know that the only way forward is for the Zimbabwean people to choose their own Government and shape their own future through elections that are free, fair, peaceful and democratic. Whatever happens in the coming few days and weeks, let us keep that ultimate goal in mind.

In September last year, Dr Alex Vines of Chatham House published an excellent study of the scope for a peaceful transition beyond Mugabe. He warned that western Governments were too complacent about the status quo, and had failed to create a dialogue with different factional leaders and the kingmakers in the military. I shared Dr Vines’s concerns with my parliamentary colleagues at the time, and I am sure that the Foreign Secretary himself was equally concerned. May I ask him what the Foreign Office has done over the past year to establish a dialogue with Mr Mnangagwa—or whichever of the factional leaders who will, along with the military, now be in charge? We must all hope for a more constructive relationship with them than we had with Mr Mugabe, and we must urge them to take the correct path towards democracy and peace.

[Boris Johnson]

I agree very much with what the right hon. Lady has said, and I thought that her earlier remarks on the subject were very commonsensical. She asked about British nationals in Zimbabwe. As I said in my response to the urgent question, there are about 20,000 of them. The FCO crisis centre has been working overnight to ensure their welfare, and, to the best of our knowledge, there have been no reports so far of any injuries or suffering. I talked earlier to our head of mission in Harare, who said that, as far as he understood, UK nationals were staying where they were and avoiding trouble, and I think that that is exactly the right thing to do.

The right hon. Lady asked about our representation in Harare, and about UK engagement with the political process in Zimbabwe. All I can tell her is that most observers would say that we have a more powerful representation in Harare than in any other country. We have an excellent ambassador and an excellent high commissioner, and we engage at all levels in Zimbabwean politics. I think that this is one of those occasions on which the right hon. Lady and I are absolutely at one about what we want UK representation to achieve: to encourage the people of Zimbabwe on their path towards free and fair elections next year.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to make a statement on the case of British-Iranian national Ms Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)]

I should like to make a statement on the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in response to the right hon. Lady.

The whole House will join me in expressing our deep concern about the ordeal of this young mother, who has spent the last 19 months in jail in Iran. Every hon. Member will join the Government in urging the Iranian authorities to release her on humanitarian grounds.

I spoke by phone to her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, yesterday, and we agreed to meet later this week. I told Mr Ratcliffe that the whole country is behind him and we all want to see his wife home safely.

In view of the understandable concern, I propose to describe the background to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case and the efforts the Government are making to secure her release. In April last year, she was visiting her relations in Iran, along with her daughter, Gabriella, who was then only 22 months old, when she was arrested at Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran while trying to board her flight back to the UK. The British Government have no doubt that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran on holiday and that that was the sole purpose of her visit. As I said in the House last week, my remarks on the subject before the Foreign Affairs Committee could and should have been clearer. I acknowledge that words I used were open to being misinterpreted, and I apologise to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family if I have inadvertently caused them any further anguish.

The House should bear in mind that Iran’s regime, and no one else, has chosen to separate this mother from her infant daughter for reasons that even it finds difficult to explain or describe. On 9 September 2016, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was brought to a secret trial and sentenced to five years in prison, supposedly for plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic. The House will note that so far as we can tell, no further charges have been brought against her and no further sentence has been imposed since that occasion over a year ago.

Eleven days after Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister raised her case with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in New York on 20 September 2016. Two days later, I raised her case with my Iranian counterpart, Mr Zarif. For the sake of completeness, the House should know that the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, raised Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment with President Rouhani on 9 August 2016, and my predecessor as Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), wrote to the Iranian Foreign Minister about her plight, and other consular cases, on 29 August 2016. [Official Report, 14 November 2017, Vol. 631, c. 1MC.]

At every meeting with our Iranian counterparts, my colleagues and I have taken every opportunity to raise the cases of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other nationals held in Iranian jails. We have expressed our concerns at every level—official, ministerial, and prime ministerial—on every possible occasion during the 19 months that she has been in jail. In addition, Mr Ratcliffe has held regular meetings with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), formerly the Minister for the Middle East, and with the current Minister for the Middle East, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).

A situation where a British mother is held in these circumstances is bound to cast a shadow over Britain’s relations with Iran at a moment when, in the aftermath of the agreement of the nuclear deal in July 2015 and the easing of sanctions, we had all hoped to witness a genuine improvement. So I shall travel to Iran myself later this year to review the full state of our bilateral relations and to drive home the strength of feeling in this House, and in the country at large, about the plight of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and other consular cases. In order to maximise the chances of achieving progress, I would venture to say that hon. Members should place the focus of responsibility on those who are keeping Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe behind bars and who have the power to release her whenever they so choose. We should be united in our demand that the humanitarian reasons for releasing her are so overwhelming that if Iran cares about its reputation in this country, then its leaders will do now what is manifestly right. I commend this statement to the House.

[Mr Speaker]

Just for the avoidance of doubt, the Foreign Secretary has responded to an urgent question in the course of which he has very properly made remarks, but it is important, as others in the House can testify from past experience, to distinguish between a response to an urgent question, on the one hand, and the proffering by Government of a statement, on the other.

[Emily Thornberry]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. How unfortunate it is that we need to ask an urgent question as opposed to getting a statement.

Let me say at the outset that whatever strong feelings we have about Iran’s actions in this case, I am sure we are all joined in sending our thoughts to those affected by yesterday’s earthquake on the Iran-Iraq border. I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for returning from Brussels to answer this urgent question. Perhaps he reflected that the last time a Minister of State was asked to answer an urgent question on behalf of a Cabinet Minister, the Cabinet Minister lasted only 24 hours.

I hope that we can make more progress today than we were able to make on the same issue last week. Let us start by clarifying the points on which there is absolutely no difference between us. First and foremost, we all want Nazanin to be brought home as soon as possible. No one who has listened over recent days to the heartbreaking testimony of Richard Ratcliffe can be in any doubt about how urgent it is, for Nazanin’s mental and physical health, that she is returned to her family immediately.

Secondly, if that can be done, as has been suggested, by conferring diplomatic status on Nazanin, that would obviously be welcome, although I would be grateful if the Foreign Secretary clarified how that could be achieved—how we can free this innocent British mother without opening up a Grace Mugabe precedent, which might make it possible to use the same tactic in Britain to help a guilty foreign national to escape justice? Thirdly, we can all agree that the responsibility for Nazanin’s incarceration and mistreatment lies entirely with the Iranian authorities, and we all unite in urging for her freedom to be restored.

On those points, we are in full agreement, but let me turn to two key issues on which we have so far differed and, frankly, we continue to differ. First, the Foreign Secretary argued last week that his comments to the Select Committee did not have “any connection whatever” with the latest threats by the Iranian authorities to extend Nazanin’s sentence, and that it was simply untrue to suggest otherwise. That is entirely contradicted by what was said by the Iranian courts last weekend, and by what was said on the Iranian judiciary’s website and on Iranian state TV. All of them said explicitly that the Foreign Secretary’s remarks were the basis of their renewed action against Nazanin. We know from the evidence of Richard Ratcliffe that when Nazanin was told of the remarks and saw how the Iranian authorities would exploit them, she became hugely distressed and upset. So will the Foreign Secretary today accept the impact that his words have had and the distress that has been caused to Nazanin, and apologise properly for that—apologise not for upsetting people, but for getting it wrong?

Secondly, last week the Foreign Secretary was asked several times to do one very simple thing, and that was simply to admit that he had made a mistake—not that his remarks had been taken out of context or misconstrued, but that they were simply wrong. He has, so far, refused to make that clear, and that refusal was compounded yesterday by his good friend the Environment Secretary. Even after all the debate on this issue, the Environment Secretary still, incredibly, claimed that we “don’t know” why Nazanin is in Iran. We do.

It is not good enough. If it is a matter of pride that the Foreign Secretary is refusing to admit that he made a mistake, I feel bound to say to him that his pride matters not one ounce compared to Nazanin’s freedom. After a week of obfuscation and bluster, will he finally take the opportunity today to state simply and unequivocally, for the removal of any doubt either here or in Tehran, that he simply got it wrong?

[Boris Johnson]

I am more than happy to say again what I said to the right hon. Lady last week: yes, of course, I apologise for the distress and the suffering that have been caused by the impression that I gave that the Government believed—that I believed—that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran in a professional capacity. She was there on holiday, and that is the view of—[Hon. Members: “Say sorry!”] I do apologise, and of course I retract any suggestion that she was there in a professional capacity. Opposition Members must have heard that from me about a dozen times.

The right hon. Lady asked an important question about diplomatic protection and how that would work. She is absolutely right that that is a question that Richard Ratcliffe himself has raised with me. All I can say is that I will be answering Mr Ratcliffe. I cannot give her an answer today; I would rather answer Mr Ratcliffe in person. I am delighted to say that I am seeing him tomorrow, and I will be explaining the position on diplomatic protection. As I said last week, he has requested to come to Tehran. I do not know whether that will be possible, but we will see what we can do.

Balfour Declaration

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Monday 30th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement. As we approach the centenary of the Balfour declaration, Labour Members are glad to join him in commemorating that historic anniversary and expressing once again our continued support for the state of Israel.

In 1918, Labour’s first Cabinet Minister, Arthur Henderson, said:

“The British Labour Party believes that the responsibility of the British people in Palestine should be fulfilled to the utmost of their power…to ensure the economic prosperity, political autonomy and spiritual freedom of both the Jews and Arabs in Palestine.”

The Labour party has adopted that position, not least in recognition of the egalitarian goals that inspired the early pioneers of the Israeli state. We think, in particular, of the kibbutz movement—a group of people dedicated to establishing a more egalitarian society free from the prejudice and persecution that they had experienced in their home countries. Even today, despite the challenges that I will address in respect of its relationship with the Palestinian people, modern Israel still stands out for its commitment to egalitarianism—in particular, its commitment to women and LGBT communities in a region where these groups are far too often subject to fierce discrimination.

Today, it is right to think about the successes of Israel, but we must also be aware that 100 years on, the promise in the Balfour letter cited by the Foreign Secretary—that

“nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”—

remains unfulfilled, and we have more to do. I urge the Foreign Secretary to take the opportunity of the centenary to reflect once again on Britain’s role in the region, as his predecessor did 100 years ago, and ask whether we could do more to bring about lasting peace and stability in the middle east. Can we do more to ensure that the political rights, as well as the civil and religious rights, of Palestinian people are protected, just as Mr Balfour intended all those years ago?

On that point, as the Foreign Secretary well knows, I believe that there is no better or more symbolic way of marking the Balfour centenary than for the UK officially to recognise the state of Palestine. We have just heard the Foreign Secretary talk in explicit terms about the benefits for both Israel and Palestine that the birth of Palestinian statehood would bring. Surely we can play more of a part in delivering that by formally recognising the Palestinian state.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman knows that in 2011, one of his other predecessors, William Hague, said:

“We reserve the right to recognise a Palestinian state…at a moment of our choosing and when it can best help to bring about peace.”—[Official Report, 9 November 2011; Vol. 535, c. 290.]

Almost six years have passed since that statement—six years in which the humanitarian situation in the occupied territories has become ever more desperate, six years in which the cycle of violence has continued unabated and the people of Israel remain at daily risk from random acts of terror, six years in which the pace of settlement building and the displacement of Palestinian people have increased, and six years in which moves towards a lasting peace have ground to a halt.

Will the Foreign Secretary tell the House today whether the Government still plan to recognise the state of Palestine and, if not now, when? Conversely, if they no longer have such plans, can the Foreign Secretary tell us why things have changed? He will remember that on 13 October 2014, the House stated that the Palestinian state should be recognised. The anniversary of the Balfour declaration is a reminder that when the British Government lay out their policies on the middle east in black and white, those words matter and can make a difference. With the empty vessel that is the American President making lots of noise but being utterly directionless, the need for Britain to show leadership on this issue is ever more pressing.

Will the Foreign Secretary make a start today on the issue of Palestinian statehood? As we rightly reflect on the last 100 years, we have a shared duty to look towards the future and towards the next generation of young people growing up in Israel and Palestine today. That generation knows nothing but division and violence, and those young people have been badly let down by the actions, and the inaction, of their own leaders. Will young Israelis grow up in a world in which air raids, car rammings and random stabbings become a commonplace fact of life? Will they grow up in a country in which military service remains not just compulsory but necessary, because they are surrounded by hostile neighbours who deny their very right to exist? Will young Palestinians grow up in a world in which youth unemployment remains at 58%, reliant on humanitarian aid and unable to shape their own futures? Will they inherit a map on which the ever-expanding settlements and the destruction of their own houses make it harder and harder to envisage what a viable independent Palestine would even look like?

I do not know whether the Foreign Secretary agrees with the Prime Minister about whether it is worth answering hypothetical questions, but as we mark the centenary of the vital step taken by a former British Foreign Secretary in recognition of Israeli statehood, I ask this Foreign Secretary how he believes he will be remembered in 100 years’ time. Will the Government in which he serves be remembered for recognising the statehood of the Palestinian people and taking a similarly vital step towards correcting an historic wrong? I can assure him that if the Government are not prepared to take that step, the next Labour Government will be.

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for the spirit in which she addressed the questions. She asks, if I may say so, the right questions about the way ahead. The UK is substantially committed to the support of the Palestinian Authority and to building up the institutions in Palestine. British taxpayers’ cash helps about 25,000 kids to go to school, we help with about 125,000 medical cases every year and the Department for International Development gives, as she knows very well, substantial sums to support the Palestinian Authority with a view to strengthening those institutions.

When it comes to recognising that state, we judge, in common with our French friends and the vast majority of our European friends and partners, that the moment is not yet right to play that card. That on its own will not end the occupation or bring peace. After all, it is not something we can do more than once: that card having been played, that will be it. We judge that it is better to give every possible encouragement to both sides to seize the moment and, if I may say so, I think the right hon. Lady is quite hard, perhaps characteristically, on the current Administration in Washington, which is perhaps her job—

[Emily Thornberry]

It ought to be your job, too.

[Boris Johnson]

Indeed, and I am hard where it is necessary, but there is a job to be done. At the moment, as I think the right hon. Lady would accept, there is a conjuncture in the stars that is uncommonly propitious. I will not put it higher than that, but there is a chance that we could make progress on this very vexed dossier. We need the Americans to work with us to do that and we need them to be in the lead because, as she will understand, of the facts as they are in the middle east.

We need the Palestinian Authority, with a clear mandate, to sit down and negotiate with the Israelis and do the deal that is there to be done, and which everybody understands. We all know the shape of the future map and we all know how it could be done. What is needed now is political will, and I can assure the right hon. Lady and the House that the UK will be absolutely determined to encourage both sides to do such a deal.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

At our last session of questions, the Foreign Secretary agreed with the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) that if the EU demanded a single penny in the Brexit divorce bill, then they could “go whistle”. A month later, the Foreign Secretary said—[Interruption.] I appreciate that accountability is difficult for the right hon. Gentleman, but he ought to listen. He said:

“We are law-abiding, bill-paying people”

who will

“meet our legal obligations as we understand them”,

so can he clear up this issue today? Does he accept that there will be a divorce bill or not, and if so, how much should the bill be?

[Boris Johnson]

I must very humbly and apologetically correct the right hon. Lady, because she is not faithfully representing what I said. [Hon. Members: “She is.”] She is not. What I said in answer to an hon. Friend on these Benches was that some of the sums I had heard spoken of were, in my view, or in the view of my hon. Friends, eye-watering and far too high. The figure I heard was €100 billion. Would Labour Members cough up €100 billion? Would you, or you, or you? I think they would, the supine, protoplasmic, invertebrate jellies. I think that is the sort of money they would readily fork out. I think it is too much.

[Mr Speaker]

I hope the Hansard reporters caught the full flavour of that. We will inspect the Official Report tomorrow.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

Let me just quote again from the last session of Foreign Office questions, when the Foreign Secretary told the House:

“There is no plan for no deal”.—[Official Report, 11 July 2017; Vol. 627, c. 141.]

Five days ago, he said that

“we must make the right preparations…for a no-deal scenario.”

We know that the Cabinet cannot stop fighting about the Brexit that they want, but it would be a start if our flip-flopping Foreign Secretary could stop fighting with himself.

[Boris Johnson]

rose—

[Emily Thornberry]

I have not asked the question yet, Boris. Which is it: the Telegraph article or the Florence speech—the lion roars or the lion wants to stop this malarkey? Apart from his own fading ambitions, what exactly does the Foreign Secretary believe in?

Korean Peninsula

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

Before I respond to the Foreign Secretary, I am sure the whole House will join me in sending our thoughts to the families of all those killed over the summer in the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and across the world, including seven-year-old Julian Cadman. Given the subject we are discussing, it does us all well to remember that some 8 million children like Julian, under the age of 10, live on the Korean peninsula today.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement, and I join him in unreservedly condemning North Korea for the flagrant breaches of international law that have brought us to this sorry pass. I have three questions prompted by his statement. First, although he mentioned the new sanctions regime agreed on 5 August, he will know that we are still in the early stages of enforcing the last set of sanctions agreed last November. Indeed, only 80 countries have so far submitted implementation reports on the new sanctions regime, so how does he propose to ensure that these new sanctions are implemented quickly and effectively and given time to work?

Secondly, on the strategy outlined by the Foreign Secretary, he will have seen the article today by his predecessor, William Hague, considering whether the strategic goal will eventually shift from preventing North Korea achieving nuclear capability to accepting that that capability exists and seeking, in some form, to contain it. Does the Foreign Secretary agree with his predecessor? Has the Foreign Office planned for that scenario?

Thirdly, given the threat to Japan and South Korea, the Foreign Secretary will be aware of the suggestion that they should now be allowed to develop their own nuclear weapons as a response to Pyongyang. Does he agree with me that that would be utter madness? Surely it cannot be a serious suggestion that the world’s response to North Korea breaching the non-proliferation treaty should be to encourage other countries to do the same. Surely our goal must be the denuclearisation of the entire region.

Beyond the substance of the Foreign Secretary’s statement, I welcome its careful and judicious tone. After a summer of utterly reckless rhetoric from Washington and Pyongyang, we urgently need some cool heads and calm words, especially now that we have drifted from that dangerous escalation of rhetoric into the even more dangerous escalation of actions. With every ratcheting up of words and deeds, the risk grows. That escalation will lead to miscalculation and a war will begin, not by design but by default.

Faced with that situation, we are told that all options remain under consideration and that no options have been ruled out, but if any of those options risks 10 million people in Seoul being, in the Foreign Secretary’s words, “vaporised”, or similar devastation in North Korea and Japan, we have to say that those options should be in the bin. The reality is that the only sane option is, as William Hague wrote today, dialogue and diplomacy. That means a deliberate de-escalation of rhetoric and actions, it means properly enforcing the new sanctions regime, and it means restarting the six-party talks to seek a new and lasting settlement.

Yet we have a US ambassador to the UN who says,

“the time for talk is over.”

We have a President who says,

“talking is not the answer”.

Although in his case I would usually be inclined to agree, for the US to turn its back on diplomacy at this stage is simply irresponsible and, as its closest ally, we must be prepared to say so.

Although we welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, the real test is what comes next. Will Britain be a voice of calm and reason on the world stage? Will we ally ourselves with Angela Merkel? She told the German Parliament today:

“there can only be a peaceful and diplomatic solution”.

If the answer is yes, and if that is the route the Government take, they will have our full support; but if they pretend that military options involving decapitation, annihilation, fire and fury belong anywhere but in the bin, and if they swear blind loyalty to Donald Trump no matter what abyss he drags us towards, they will be risking a hell of a lot more than just losing our support. I urge the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues to remain calm and judicious in their approach, to discount all so-called military solutions and to steer a course towards the only options that work: dialogue, diplomacy and peace.

[Boris Johnson]

I join the right hon. Lady in the sentiments she expresses about the victims of terror across our continent over the summer months. There is a lot in her reply with which I agree, and she is certainly right to commend a measured tone in these things. In her focus on Washington and the pronouncements of Donald Trump, it is important that we do not allow anything to distract this House from the fundamental responsibility of Pyongyang for causing this crisis. It is a great shame that there should be any suggestion of any kind of equivalence in the confrontation—I am sure she did not mean to imply that—and it is important that we do not allow that to creep into our considerations.

The current situation is so grave because it is the first time in the history of nuclear weaponry that a non-P5 country seems to be on the brink of acquiring the ability to use an ICBM equipped with a nuclear warhead. This is a very grave situation, which explains why we are told, and we must agree, that theoretically no options are off the table, but it is also essential—the right hon. Lady is right about this—that we pursue the peaceful diplomatic resolution that we all want.

In the history of North Korea’s attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon over the past 30 years there have been flare-ups and crises, and then they have been managed down again. We hope that in the UN, with the help of our Chinese friends and the rest of the international community, we can once again freeze this North Korean nuclear programme and manage the crisis down again. I share the emphasis on peaceful resolution that the right hon. Lady espouses.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

It is not for me to comment on the ability of the Labour leader to control his own party. I take it that Labour Members are all following official Labour party policy, which is to come out of the EU and the single market. If they are not, they can stand up now and, by their questions, betray their real position, but as far as I know they are supporting the will of the British people as expressed last year. If they wish to dissent from that, now is the time.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

May I start by welcoming the new Foreign Office Front Benchers to their positions? Back in July last year, they chastised me when I wrongly accused them of being an all-male team. If only I had waited a year, I would have been correct after all.

Talking of female Tory MPs, the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) used a disgusting, racist phrase in her comments at the East India Club, and I hope the Foreign Secretary will join me in condemning them; I hope he will agree that derogatory, offensive language deriving from the era of American slavery has no place in modern society. But the hon. Lady was at least trying to ask a valid question—a question about what would happen if Britain failed to reach a deal on Brexit. So may I ask the Foreign Secretary to answer that question today? Can he explain what that no deal option would mean for the people and businesses of Great Britain?

[Boris Johnson]

As I said before, the chances of such an outcome are vanishingly unlikely, since it is manifestly in the interests of those on both sides of the channel to get a great free trade deal and a new deep and special partnership between us and the European Union. That is what we are going to achieve.

[Emily Thornberry]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for that answer, but unfortunately it leaves us none the wiser. This is slightly baffling because it was, after all, the Prime Minister—the Prime Minister for now, at least—who decided to put the no deal option on the table. She could not stop using the phrase during the election campaign. But now, when we ask what it would mean in practice, the Government refuse to tell us. The Foreign Affairs Committee said in December:

“The Government should require each Department to produce a ‘no deal’ plan, outlining the likely consequences…and setting out proposals to mitigate potential risks.”

It went on to state that anything less would be a “dereliction of duty”, and that we cannot have a repeat—

--- Later in debate ---

[Emily Thornberry]

Given that a plan for no deal would be worse than that dereliction of duty, will the Foreign Secretary spell out publicly what no deal would mean? If he is not prepared to tell us that publicly, can he reassure us that at the very least he has a detailed private plan to manage that risk?

[Boris Johnson]

There is no plan for no deal, because we are going to get a great deal. For the sake of illustration, I remind the right hon. Lady that there was a time, which I am old enough to remember, when Britain was not in what we then called the Common Market.

--- Later in debate ---

[Boris Johnson]

I hesitate to say it, but we certainly regard as very considerable the Prime Minister’s achievement in getting the US President to sign up to the G20 agreement on climate change, as she did.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

What?

[Boris Johnson]

Absolutely right. The Prime Minister was instrumental in getting the Americans to sign up to the communiqué. Members on both sides of the House will appreciate that whatever their disagreements with the current incumbent of the White House, the President of the United States is the leader of our most important ally, and he therefore deserves this country’s respect and consideration.

Brexit and Foreign Affairs

Debate between Emily Thornberry and Boris Johnson

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I have already congratulated the hon. Gentleman on his remarks about our armed forces. I am glad that he at least among Opposition Members supports our armed forces. He will know that we are committed not only to spending 2% of our GDP on defence, but to a further 0.5% increment every year until 2020. As my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary has pointed out, we will maintain the size of our armed forces, which are superb and the best in the world.

Even more important than our military firepower and throw-weight, however, and even more important than our vast aid budget, is Britain’s soft power—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) interjects from a sedentary position to suggest that our aid budget is not vast. Having spent a year in this job and having flown around the world, I can tell her that the world is lost in admiration for how much this country spends on international development and for the efficacy of British aid spending. She should be proud of what the Department for International Development does. It is a huge, huge sum of money. By the way, the only question is how we can ensure that that wonderful aid budget is used so as to deliver the political and economic objectives of this country more effectively, and that is what we are working on.

Even more important than our vast aid budget is our soft power—the sometimes invisible network through which this country’s ideas and values are projected around the world. It can be seen through our partnerships and friendships in Europe, and with the overseas territories and dependencies. A couple of hon. Members asked about the future of Gibraltar. Let us be absolutely clear that the sovereignty of Gibraltar is inviolable and will remain so for as long as this Government are in power.

[Emily Thornberry]

The right hon. Gentleman is probably aware that the question for Gibraltar is not sovereignty, but what its trading relationship will be, and how people will be able to move backwards and forwards from Gibraltar to Spain and continue to trade. It is the continuing economic position that is important.

[Boris Johnson]

As the right hon. Lady will understand, we are absolutely bound to protect the economic interests of the people of Gibraltar, not least—this point can be made in respect of the whole argument about Brexit—because of course a strong Gibraltar and a robust Gibraltar economy are in the interests of Andalucia and the rest of Spain. We will get that done.

We have many networks around the world, not only in the territories and dependencies, but in the 52 Commonwealth nations that will come to London next year for a landmark summit, and through our languages, universities and broadcasting. It is a stunning fact that we sell £1.3 billion of TV programmes abroad. That is almost 10 times as much as the French, I am delighted to say—without in any way wishing to be chauvinistic about this. Indeed, our biggest single market for UK TV programmes in Europe is France. I am absolutely delighted that it is.

We project ourselves through our music, and the broadcasting of that music and great musical festivals, in which this country specialises. When this weekend the BBC broadcast Glastonbury around the world—[Hon. Members: “Glahstonbury?”] It is “Glahstonbury”; it is in the south-west. Of course, I know it was perhaps different for the people who spent £285 to go and be among the crowd there to watch elderly people such as Kris Kristofferson, but I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that when those extraordinary scenes on the stage at Glastonbury were broadcast, friends and admirers of this country around the world were genuinely alarmed that at a time of such uncertainty, the leader of the main Opposition party in this country should have exercised such an orphic spell on those who had previously been his opponents that they have meekly acceded to his desire not just to run down our defences but, as he said on the stage of Glastonbury—“Glahstonbury”—to scrap our nuclear defence. That was what he said, and it will have gone around the world.

It will have gone around the world that the leader of the main Opposition party in this country is actually committed to getting rid of the fundamentals of our nuclear defence, imperilling—this is the crucial point—not merely our own safety, but the safety of our friends and allies. That is not this Government’s way, and that is not the right way for this country. That is why we need a strong, open, confident, outward-looking and global Britain—for the good of our people and for the good of the world. I commend the Gracious Speech to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Craig Whittaker.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.