Traidcraft and Fair Trade

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Traidcraft and the future of fair trade.

It is a pleasure to open this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group for Fairtrade, for their support in making the application to the Backbench Business Committee.

In one of those strange coincidences, when I was thinking about my Christmas card competition for local primary schools last summer, an officer from Gateshead Council—my local authority—telephoned the office and suggested that this year the theme should be fair trade. That seemed an excellent idea to me. Gateshead prides itself on being a Fairtrade authority. In Traidcraft, a Fairtrade company and charity based on the Team Valley trading estate, we had a real local connection and a topic that would get pupils thinking about just what fair trade means for us here in the UK and for producers who grow, create and supply fair trade goods and products, especially in the lead up to Christmas, when we think of gifts and rich food.

I was shocked to hear in September that Traidcraft was in difficulty, facing potential closure and consulting its 60-plus staff based in its Team Valley warehouse and offices on potential redundancies. Traidcraft has a personal significance to me. Over many years I have been a Traidcraft customer, and its craft products are scattered around my home. Some may even have appeared as raffle prizes over the years. Indeed, I have been a trader, although sadly not a very successful one.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I could share many happy memories of buying Traidcraft goods from the late 70s. My sister used to run a stall for Traidcraft in her church, St Robert’s in Morpeth. She ran an evening at the place where I worked in North Shields. It is not just about getting gifts and helping people to have nice things from abroad; what was crucial was the raising of awareness for people who otherwise would not be aware of the need for fair trade.

[Liz Twist]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Fairtrade traders, through Traidcraft, have worked to sell goods and, importantly, to raise the social and fair trade issues around those goods.

Freedom of Religion or Belief

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. It is quite difficult to follow the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). He has provoked a lot of questions on why we think religious freedom is important and why we need to move forward with it and for the Government to do more to support oppressed people.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on persuading the Backbench Business Committee that we needed to have the debate at the time of the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for having been persuaded by him in his inimitable way.

I first heard about the Baha’i faith when I met Mr Dan Wheatley, who is a member of the community here and is a persuasive and strong advocate for that community. I subsequently joined the all-party parliamentary group on the Baha’i faith, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) is the chair. The faith has been spoken about today. It is actually the world’s youngest independent religion. It was started in Iran, and it now has 188 communities around the world, all of which I consider follow a noble and caring teaching faith. Its teaching includes the oneness of humanity and, particularly, the equality of men and women.

However, like many other faiths that have been spoken about, the Baha’is have suffered periods of violence and oppression, in Iran and beyond, as has been eloquently described. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Iranian Government have persecuted the Baha’is. In 1991, a Government memorandum, prepared at the request of the supreme leader, urged that the community should be treated in such a way that

“their progress and development shall be blocked.”

That memorandum, which established Iranian state policy towards the Baha’i community, remains in force. Other hon. Members may be aware of the document and the actions it mandates to repress the Baha’i people. I will focus particularly on one area: restrictions on the right to work. We talk a lot about how important employment is for everybody, not only in the economic but the social sense. A direct result of the memorandum is the Iranian Government’s discriminatory policy to prohibit and restrict the Baha’is’ right to employment—a policy that has been expanded over the years—which has had such an effect on the people in the community.

The hon. Member for Strangford rightly paid tribute to the life of Asma Jahangir, who was the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran at the time of her tragic death last month. In her last report, dated 14 August 2017, she noted:

“Baha’is continue to be systematically discriminated against and targeted, and efforts are afoot to systematically deprive them of the right to a livelihood.”

It is also notable that Iran’s actions are in contravention of a recommendation that it accepted from Sri Lanka at the start of the UNHCR’s last universal period review. Recommendation 138.88 stated that Iran should:

“Continue its national policy to promote equal opportunities and treatment with respect to employment.”

There are many examples of how Iran has failed to implement that recommendation, and I will highlight but a few. On 20 April 2016, 17 shops belonging to Baha’is were sealed for being temporarily closed on Baha’i holy days. Days later, on 28 April, four additional shops in the same province were sealed for the same reason. Later that year, after Baha’i-owned businesses throughout the province, in cities including Sari, Qaem Shahr and Bandar Abbas, were temporarily closed on 1 and 2 November to observe a Baha’i holy day, Iranian authorities sealed a total of 124 business premises belonging to 132 Baha’is.

Again, in July 2017, 16 Baha’i-owned business premises in Khuzestan province were sealed following the observance of another holy day. It was a small relief that, two months later, after great effort by the business owners, 14 of the sealed business premises were unsealed. In the same month, the business premises of a non-Baha’i in Ahvaz were sealed for employing a Baha’i. The owner of the business was forced to dismiss the employee and, after being provided with an assurance of non-co-operation with the Baha’is, the authorities issued an order to unseal the business. Further, on 1 May, the business premises of 18 business owners in a city were sealed by Amaken—the public places supervision office—again because they were closed on a religious holiday.

For us, it would seem impossible for that to happen in our country. There would be an outcry. But these Iranian citizens, who are simply trying to make a living while staying true to the faith that they have chosen to follow, are being treated in this way. I admire their courage and perseverance. I do not know whether I or anyone else in the room who has never had to suffer for their faith could endure such persecution. I confess that I would never want to be tested to such a degree. We all need to think about how we would deal with persecution and whether we would we be able to withstand it for our faith. The people who have been mentioned today, wherever they are, deserve our admiration.

In view of Iran’s failure to adhere to accepted international human rights standards, including commitments that their own Government have made within the framework of the universal periodic review, I urge the Government to continue to support, co-sponsor and lobby for the resolution on human rights in Iran at the Human Rights Council.

Finally, I support the request made by the hon. Member for Strangford that the UK raise the situation of the Baha’is in Iran in an agenda item 4 statement at the UN Human Rights Council, given the sad fact that Asma Jahangir is no longer with us. We are all united in this today. The fact that so many people have turned up on a cold afternoon, perhaps not knowing whether they will get home this evening, shows that we ardently feel that religious freedom should be upheld.

Kurdistan Region in Iraq

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) on securing the debate, on his excellent and passionate speech and on being elected chair of the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

Unlike many Members here, I have not yet visited the Kurdistan region, but I have attended many all-party group meetings with the Kurdistan Regional Government’s High Representative, Karwan Jamal Tahir, and others, to gain insight into the region. I, too, would like to thank the peshmerga for their bravery in resisting so-called Islamic State, and I am relieved that Mosul is near to full liberation from a ghastly organisation whose brutality is beyond reasonable comprehension.

Through the all-party group I have heard disturbing direct testimony about girls who were enslaved and raped multiple times but managed to escape. Sadly, I am sure that their psychological traumas will last forever, but at the very least they can be treated. I understand there is just one university department of clinical psychology in Kurdistan. I fear that the department will be overwhelmed by the anguish that will become ever clearer and more in need of urgent attention over the coming weeks. Therefore, I appeal to the Government to play any role they can in increasing the number of clinical psychologists in Iraq and Kurdistan. Those young women—those victims—deserve nothing less than being able to look forward to a future when they can at least manage their traumas, and so manage their lives.

We know that there are more than 1 million internally displaced persons—IDPs—currently accommodated in the Kurdistan region, as well as more than 200,000 Syrian refugees. Resettlement is limited because of poor security and the lack of basic services. However, the Catholic Church, working in the region, has played a significant role in helping IDPs and refugees since the beginning of the crisis. The diocese of Irbil currently supports about 70,000 people with accommodation, subsistence, education and employment. Many of those people are from religious minorities, including Christians and Yazidis. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, has welcomed the Government’s recent decision to extend the vulnerable person resettlement scheme to non-Syrian refugees in the region. I hope that the Minister can say what support the Government plan to provide, during this Parliament, for Churches and religious communities that are helping IDPs and refugees in Kurdistan.

I join colleagues in supporting the right of the Kurds to express their self-determination through the referendum in September. I commend the Kurdistan leadership’s decision to ask the people for a mandate to negotiate full independence and new relations with Iraq. I also understand the position of the British Government, as set out by the Foreign Secretary, who visited Kurdistan in January 2015 as the then Mayor of London. He visited British troops training the peshmerga and was even pictured alongside one of them with an AK47. He wrote that he had previously met

“a dynamic and forward-looking young politician”—

Nechirvan Barzani—

“the prime minister of the fledgling state of Kurdistan.”

He further stated:

“Then we should help because we have a moral duty to that part of the world. It was the British who took the decision in the early Twenties to ignore the obvious ethnic divisions, and not to create a Kurdistan”,

which he described as

“one of the few bright spots in the Middle East.”

I accept that such solidarity and the right hon. Gentleman’s recent statement as Foreign Secretary are not incompatible, but I also recognise that the referendum will proceed. We will see whether the long negotiations achieve independence or a firm guarantee of equality in a new Iraq. It is not for me to say what is best for the Kurds, but I suggest that the UK and its diplomats use their experience and expertise to facilitate progress.

I want to highlight how the struggle of the Kurds has captured the hearts and minds of many ordinary British people who are practising their own version of diplomacy, and I am proud to speak about an example from the north-east. The Newcastle Gateshead Medical Volunteers have held charity fundraising events in both Gateshead and Newcastle. Its founder, Kurdistan-born Professor Deiary Kader, mobilises health professionals from the north-east to visit Kurdistan two or three times a year, to provide free orthopaedic care. He and his colleagues are literally putting Kurds back on their own two feet through many free hip and knee operations, which are beyond the capacity of the health system there, or for which people would have to wait many years. The charity undertakes formal educational events to raise the standard of surgical care, as well as providing blankets and winter clothing to the Yazidi refugee camps in Duhok. The charity is also building a connection between Kurdistani doctors and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Lebanon, to transfer war-injured casualties to the committee’s war-wounded trauma reconstruction centre there.

Although I have yet to visit Kurdistan, I am an enthusiastic advocate of deep and broad links with our friends in the Kurdistan region, which is inclined to friendship with us and describes us as a partner of choice. The Minister has travelled to Kurdistan in his former official capacity and on an all-party group delegation. He was prepared to put aside Foreign and Commonwealth Office briefings to meet the passionate pleas of many Members here when the Commons discussed and agreed to formally recognise the genocide by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds. I hope his wisdom will enable him to understand that the Iraqi Kurds have a special place in British hearts and do his best to help ensure their freedom, equality and justice.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we are very keen to get a date for the annual human rights dialogue. That is the right architecture within which to raise individual cases. However, we will continue to raise individual cases of human rights abuse, and if there is no human rights dialogue, we will have to increase that.

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

22. Can the Minister tell us exactly what action he is taking to question the Chinese Government about their brutal persecution of those who peacefully practise Falun Gong, particularly in relation to the live harvesting of organs?

[Mr Swire]

We have raised concerns about reports of organ harvesting, as well as about the torture and mistreatment of detainees, during the annual UK human rights dialogue. We will continue to do that at the next round. Equally, we pay close attention to the human rights situation in China and we remain extremely concerned about restrictions placed on freedom of religion or belief of any kind, including Falun Gong practitioners.

EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

It was really good to hear the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) make the case for the EU in terms of the economy, agriculture and the environment.

It is very easy for me to support this motion on behalf of the people of North Tyneside and, I hope, the wider community of the north-east, because over the years our region has received billions of pounds in investment from Europe. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) said, our region is entitled to more European funds than any other English region, and in the next five years it is due to receive £726 million in European funding. The single market has been hugely significant for business development in the north-east, with more than half our exports going to the EU and 160,000 jobs relying directly on that trade.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mary Glindon]

I will carry on, if my hon. Friend does not mind.

It is no wonder that in a recent survey the North East chamber of commerce found that the majority of the region’s businesses wish to remain in the EU. The same survey highlighted the frustration that businesses feel about having to deal with EU regulations, but the conclusion was that the single market remains the region’s most important market and that it will continue to be so well into the future.

The benefit to the north-east is further illustrated by a study by The Chronicle in Newcastle, which found that the north-east has received an average of £187 per head in EU funding since 2007, compared with £82 in the rest of the UK. The generous funding from the EU to our region stands in stark contrast to how we fare when it comes to receiving funding from this UK Government.

I remind the House that it was a Tory Government who forced the closure of the Swan Hunter shipyard in Wallsend in the mid-1990s, with devastating consequences for Tyneside. However, thanks to money from the EU, the yard is undergoing a massive transformation. North Tyneside Council was awarded £6.7 million of European regional development funding to part-fund enabling infrastructure works at the former shipyard, which has opened up development on a strategically important enterprise zone site.

Between 2007 and 2013, under the European structural fund programme, North Tyneside Council was the accountable body for nearly £13 million in our region. That money part-funded the refurbishment of a new centre for innovation on our enterprise zone site, creating flexible start-up and business incubation space for small and medium-sized enterprises. Some £1.8 million of ERDF funding was used towards funding business support to enable start-up support, particularly in our disadvantaged areas, resulting in a rate of 400 start-ups per year.

The council is already undertaking work to maximise European structural and investment funds from the current programme to meet the EU 2020 strategy ambitions of achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. The newly funded business support programme, Made in North Tyneside, will bring great benefits to the local community and businesses alike. In addition, the council is working with partners on a community-led development to help the most disadvantaged communities in the top 20% most deprived areas to utilise both ESF and ERDF funding to achieve economic growth in their own localities.

I hope that the north-east will not be fooled by those in the Brexit camp who claim that we would be better off leaving the EU. Since 2010, the north-east has suffered huge public spending cuts right across the board under the Tories—from the police and fire services, to the closure of Government offices—all of which have cost jobs and a loss of income to our local communities. The truth is that the future prosperity of my constituency and the north-east region is inextricably linked to the EU. Being unrepentantly parochial, I say that that is reason enough to remain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

No, and if the hon. Lady looks at our record, particularly when this Government held the chairmanship of the Council of Europe, she will see that, on the contrary, we upheld the standards and values embodied in the convention and successfully negotiated sensible, pragmatic reforms to the way in which the convention is implemented that are in the interests of all states.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

22. What does the Minister think this session’s high-level panel on the death penalty can achieve, particularly when so many Human Rights Council members use the death penalty?

[Mr Lidington]

It is true, of course, that many of the members of the Human Rights Council, who have been elected by the membership of the United Nations generally, still have the death penalty. The United Kingdom, both at the UN Human Rights Council and in our bilateral and multilateral relationships of all kinds, continues to stress that we regard the death penalty as completely unacceptable.

Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I recognise my hon. Friend’s gentle scepticism, shall I call it? Many figures within the newly announced Government are not new faces. However, the programme set out by Dr al-Abadi does represent, on the face of it, an approach that is far more inclusive and far more willing to recognise the aspirations of the separate communities within Iraq than that of the previous Iraqi Government. Of course, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We will be looking at this very closely and providing every support we can. We and other allies will be applying all pressure that we can on the Iraqi Government to pursue diligently the course that they have set out in that programme, and we very much hope they will deliver on those commitments.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hammond]

I must make some progress now because we have a wide range of issues to cover.

While we have been facing an ideological challenge to our fundamental system of values from ISIL in Iraq and Syria, we have also faced a fundamental challenge to the post-cold war system of international relations in Europe.

For more than two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the west has opened a door to Russia and sought to draw her into the international rules-based system, offering partnership, trade, investment and openness. By its illegal annexation of Crimea and its aggressive destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, the Russian leadership has slammed that door shut. It has chosen the role of pariah rather than partner, and in doing so it has undermined the long-term security architecture of Europe.

The tactics that President Putin has adopted—from covert disruption to the first deployment of deniable irregulars and unbadged Russian military personnel to capture sites in Crimea, through to the transfer of heavy weapons and equipment to Ukrainian separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk, and now, more recently, the deployment of formed Russian military units on to Ukrainian soil—reflect a pattern that we have seen elsewhere. However much it is denied, Russia’s direct responsibility for the situation in eastern Ukraine is undeniable.

On 17 July, the irresponsibility of Russia’s behaviour reached its terrible apotheosis, with the shooting down, from separatist-controlled territory with a Russian ground-to-air missile, of flight MH17, with the loss of 298 totally innocent lives. Their blood is on the hands of Russia’s leaders.

The Government, together with our international partners, have been clear from the start: whatever the provocation, there can be no purely military solution to this crisis. The solution must be political, based on negotiations between Moscow and Kiev but upholding the fundamental principles of respect for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and of the right of the Ukrainian people to decide their own future. There can be no Russian veto on democracy in Ukraine.

The international community has a clear role to play by exerting the greatest possible pressure on Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukrainian soil, cease its support for the separatists and enable the restoration of security along the Ukraine-Russia border with effective international monitoring.

Russia has used asymmetric warfare to further its ends, exploiting the relative advantages of its ability to act quickly, decisively and without transparency. We must respond to that by using our relative advantages, most notably the enormously greater strength and resilience of our economies compared with Russia’s, with its terrible demography and its structural over-dependence on oil and gas exports.

The UK has been at the forefront of efforts to leverage that economic strength through the imposing of far-reaching economic sanctions. As the Prime Minister announced to the House on Monday, the latest European Union sanctions, building on the previous measures, will make it harder for Russian banks and energy and defence companies to borrow money; prohibit the provision of services for the exploration of shale, deep water and Arctic oil; and widen the ban on dual-use goods such as machinery and computer equipment. Additionally, a new list of individuals to be included on sanctions lists has been agreed, including the new separatist leadership in Donbass, the Government of Crimea and key Russian decision makers and oligarchs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Glindon Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

11. What recent reports he has received on progress in uniting Syrian opposition forces around a credible transition plan for a post-Assad Syria.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

We judge that co-operation between opposition groups is increasing, but there is much more to do. They need to unite and to appeal to all Syrians, regardless of religion and ethnicity. Our special representative is in constant contact with opposition groups and there will be a further meeting with them in Doha next month—next week, in fact—to work on that more united position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hague]

The first thing to say is that our assistance is non-lethal. We are providing to the opposition equipment such as generators, communications equipment, water purification kits and things of that kind. We make every effort to track such equipment and ensure that we know where it is going, but as I have explained to the House before, the risks that we take in this area are outweighed by the risk of not giving any assistance to such groups and to civilian populations in Syria, who are in a dire situation. The balance of risk suggests that we should give assistance to them.

[Mrs Glindon]

Can the Secretary of State say what progress he is making with the Governments of Russia and China on their position, which is clearly proving a stumbling block to action by the UN Security Council?

[Mr Hague]

We continue to try to make such progress. I and all the EU’s Foreign Ministers met the Russian Foreign Minister two weeks ago for a further discussion about this in Luxembourg. There is no change in the position of Russia as things stand, which is a tragedy for Syrians and the world. In fact, since the last attempt to pass a chapter VII resolution was vetoed by Russia and China, more than 13,000 people are thought to have died. This is a major block on our diplomatic progress. In the absence of that, we are giving non-lethal support to the opposition, we are the second largest bilateral donor of humanitarian aid, we work with other nations to prepare for the day after Assad and we continue to assist the opposition in coming together as a more coherent force.