Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Swinson and Martin Horwood

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

T2. Does the Secretary of State share my concern that the family brand name Weetabix is closing its packet printers Vibixa in my constituency, with inevitable consequences for more than 100 employees and their families, after the company was denied the sales force that could have widened its customer base? Does he agree that when a profitable company closes a profitable subsidiary, it should offer the best possible redundancy terms to its employees, some of whom have served Weetabix for more than 35 years, and not something barely above the statutory minimum?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern. I am sure that everyone’s thoughts will be with those individuals who face this very difficult decision at this time of year. He is right to highlight the fact that the statutory minimum is indeed just that; it is a minimum, a floor. It is not the best scenario. One would not expect a profitable employer that cares for its staff to go for the minimum when it can afford to pay more to recognise long-standing service.

Iran (Human Rights)

Debate between Jo Swinson and Martin Horwood

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood]

I am now even more grateful to serve under your extremely lenient and enlightened chairmanship, Dr McCrea.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) on choosing a subject that is even more topical today than she probably realised it would be when she secured the debate. It is clear that the human rights situation has worsened since the contested elections in Iran in 2009. Amnesty International’s recent report states:

“The authorities maintained severe restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly. Sweeping controls on domestic and international media aimed at reducing Iranians’ contact with the outside world were imposed. Individuals and groups risked arrest, torture and imprisonment if perceived as co-operating with human rights and foreign-based Persian-language media organizations. Political dissidents, women’s and minority rights activists and other human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists and students were rounded up in mass and other arrests and hundreds were imprisoned. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees were routine and committed with impunity. Women continued to face discrimination under the law and in practice. The authorities acknowledged 252 executions, but there were credible reports of more than 300 other executions.”

It is almost inevitable that the true total is higher.

The situation for human rights defenders, lawyers, protestors, trade unionists and ethnic minorities seems to be getting worse. The regime’s intolerance of not only dissenting political beliefs, but, as many hon. Members have pointed out, dissenting personal beliefs is increasingly clear: secular teachers at universities have been purged; Ahwazi Arabs have been sentenced to death for enmity to God; and Amnesty has drawn attention to the plight of Sunnis, dissident Shi’as, Christian converts and evangelists, and the Dervish and Sufi communities, who all suffer discrimination, arbitrary detention and attacks on community property.

By drawing attention to the plight of those of the Baha’i faith, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside has shown that she is particularly well informed. The faith is not even recognised as a legitimate religion in Iran, so the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) was right to say that discrimination against the Baha’i is systematic and institutionalised. My small group of Baha’i constituents have shown me great hospitality in my constituency, and I promised them that I would take every opportunity to support the rights of the Baha’i in Iran. I am happy to fulfil that pledge today.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

My hon. Friend reads out a devastating roll-call of abuses. However, the situation is even worse than he outlined. He mentioned 252 executions, but in 2011 that number included the execution of a juvenile. There are currently 143 juvenile offenders on death row in Iran, in complete defiance of international law.

[Martin Horwood]

My hon. Friend makes a devastating point in support of her argument.

The last faith group in Iran that I shall mention is the Jewish community, which is extremely long-established. There is a history of tolerance of the Jewish community in Iran, but there is increasing evidence that anti-Semitism is growing there, and that the small Jewish community there is being blamed for the actions of the Israeli Government. Those actions are beside the point; an unfair collective punishment is, in effect, being imposed.

I support the consistent calls from the United Kingdom Government and the European Union for an improvement in the human rights situation in Iran. Certainly, the decision by the EU in October to increase targeted sanctions on officials—those identified as responsible for particularly grave human rights abuses—was exactly right. The sanctions regime is interconnected with the nuclear programme in Iran, but targeted sanctions relating to human rights are every bit as justified, in my view, as those relating to the nuclear programme.

It is important, as the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned, that we do not pursue a path that leaves the regime no escape route and inadvertently strengthens the hands of the hard-liners in the regime. Iran is not North Korea. Iran is not a monolithic society; it has human rights defenders, courageous and independent-minded writers, filmmakers, journalists, bloggers, lawyers and young campaigners; it does, in effect, have opposition; and, above all, it has a young population that is quite aware of what has happened in the neighbouring Arab countries in the Arab spring, and is aware of what democracy really looks like—and what oppression looks like.

Of course, Iran has a tradition of vigorously contested elections, even though they are not democratic in the sense that we would recognise. That tradition of independent thought and resistance should be reinforced and supported wherever possible. That means that the exercise of soft power can have some effect, can still be deployed and is likely to have positive effects.

The jamming of international radio and TV broadcasts—I cannot remember which hon. Member mentioned that—is an important issue. I draw attention to it again and ask for ministerial support to raise it at the International Telecommunication Union world radio conference in Geneva, which begins on 23 January. The jamming of the BBC Persian TV service has resulted in that service being taken off the Hot Bird satellite, which is the main satellite for the region. That illegal censorship is, in effect, denying freedom of information and human rights to the Persian-speaking population. I welcome Ministers raising the profile of that issue in advance of the conference.

The Persian people, like their Arab neighbours, have the potential to tackle the human rights issue once and for all themselves, through their own resistance and traditions of championing freedom. We should do everything we can to support them.