World AIDS Day 2017

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Doughty]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. “It ain’t over” was the central message from STOPAIDS when we met last week. We need to get that message out there loud and clear. The challenge has not gone away, although we have seen much progress.

On the domestic front, I want to mention two issues. I would be grateful if the Minister reflected on them and perhaps discussed them with his colleagues in the Department of Health. First, we have seen the fragmentation of services. The all-party group published a report last year called “The HIV Puzzle”. It looked at some of the fragmentation of services in England since the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and some of the resulting challenges for people in accessing treatment and prevention services locally. Some worrying statistics are coming out about treatment availability in some areas. Secondly, while we welcome the trial of pre-exposure prophylaxis in England and the announcement in Wales and Scotland, in England PrEP will be available to only 10,000 people over three years. What will happen when we reach 10,000? Will we suddenly stop making PrEP available? Surely that cannot be the case. The many organisations that campaign for PrEP want to see it available to all those who need it.

I conclude by thanking all the Members who have come here today to support the debate on World AIDS Day 2017. We will never forget the millions of lives lost to AIDS, and we will continue to fight in their name for HIV and AIDS to become a thing of the past.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

This is an hour-long debate that will finish at 5.30 pm. Six Members are seeking to speak. I am obliged to call the first of the Front-Bench spokesmen at seven minutes past 5. There are guideline limits of five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister, with three minutes for Mr Doughty to sum up the debate at the end. [Interruption.] Mr Doughty is generously declining to have the full three minutes, but he will perhaps take a minute or so. I am afraid there will have to be a time limit of three minutes so that everyone has a chance to contribute. The next speaker will be Ross Thomson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) on securing this debate.

Members will be aware of the importance of the global fund, and I want to pay tribute to the important work the fund does in the diagnosis and treatment of HIV. It is clear today that without a supply of new medical tools, we are not going to meet our global goals promise to give young people the opportunity of a future free from AIDS.

In 2009 a trial showed for the first time that the risk of HIV infection can be reduced by a vaccine, and improved vaccine concepts are now entering new efficacy trials. There is no doubt that vaccine development is a long process, but vaccines are proven to be one of the most effective and cost-effective public health tools. With that in mind, I wish to pose two questions to the Minister about UK scientific innovation.

The Government recently published their industrial strategy, which placed life sciences at its centre. Will the Minister make representations to his counterparts in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about the need for research and development for new HIV prevention tools to be part of that?

There has been little, if any, discussion about how the industrial strategy will offset the uncertainties for UK science created by Brexit. In recent years, the European Commission has overtaken the UK to become the second-largest funder of global health research and development after the US, with many UK scientists benefiting from the pooled funding and collaboration. Will the Minister reassure UK scientists about what the future will hold?

I asked the Minister a question last week. I was grateful for his answer and for the correction yesterday to that answer for accuracy. HIV is still the greatest health challenge of our time. Although it does not quite command front-page attention any more, it must not be put to the back of the Government’s and people’s minds. Investment in research and development will keep the fight against this challenge alive.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

We now come to the Front-Bench speeches, the first of which will be Chris Law from the Scottish National party.

Rohingya Crisis

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your distinguished chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and a huge pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on her excellent speech. I had the privilege of going on the same CPA visit to see the Rohingyas as the hon. Lady, and it seemed to me that two responses were required from Her Majesty’s Government, who are so ably represented here by my right hon. Friend the Minister.

The first is the diplomatic response to the grossest example of ethnic cleansing that one could come up with. It is ethnic cleansing, pure and simple, and must be 100% condemned through all diplomatic channels available to us. I appreciate the sensitivities of the nascent democracy in Burma, but we must make it clear that the generals are responsible for this ethnic cleansing and that the international community will not put up with it. When it comes to the potential return of Rohingya refugees, returning stateless people to remain stateless in their country of origin is not good enough. These people require their nationhood to be given to them.

The second response required from Her Majesty’s Government is humanitarian assistance. Britain has a good record of providing financial assistance directly to the camps, but more will obviously be required. We must stimulate further contributions from other countries, particularly Muslim countries, because we are dealing with a Muslim population and there are lots of rich Muslim countries in the world that, frankly, should be stepping up to the plate rather more.

On the CPA visit to the refugee camp, we had the privilege of meeting some truly inspirational aid workers from the UNHCR and the International Rescue Committee. It was a privilege to meet them and see the fantastic work that they do.

[The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)]

Reflecting on what my hon. Friend just said, it would be very dangerous for this to be seen as only a Muslim issue. It is a global humanitarian catastrophe, and while I accept what he says—that we want to see all nations contributing—to try to frame it in an ethnic way would be the wrong way forward.

[Mr Hollobone]

The point I am making is absolutely right: yes, it is an international emergency, but the Rohingya are being expelled because they are Muslim. We must not ignore that fact. We also have to accept that there are very rich Muslim nations in the world that can step up to the plate. I do not think that the Minister and I disagree; help is great, wherever it comes from.

The international aid workers we met, many of whom have been international aid workers for a long time, told us that the Kutupalong camp, which we visited and which had more than 400,000 people in it, is the most congested refugee camp they have ever experienced. That is a huge problem because, as was certainly made clear to us, the outbreak of disease is a really big concern. When we asked what the solution is, they said they will simply have to create more, smaller camps in that part of Bangladesh, which will minimise the risk of a disease outbreak. If we can encourage the Bangladeshi Government to do that—they have been very generous—that would be good.

The aid workers made the point that we need to think about the medium term. There has been a rush of refugees into Bangladesh, but those people will not go back in a hurry and they will not go back in numbers, so we need to think five or 10 years ahead. The aid workers also told us that in absolutely no way should those people be returned to any unsafe situation, and that there must be an informed, safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return, or no return at all.

The Bangladeshis need to speed up the entry clearance process for refugee aid workers. Some of the pre-registration processes for refugee organisations are, frankly, taking too long; they can take six to 12 months. I am sure the Minister is on the case and will listen carefully to the debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

We absolutely agree that the Assad regime is horrifying in the way in which it treats civilians. It has an extraordinary record of brutality and murder. We will document very closely the abuses that it has committed. We continue to call on it through every single channel not to conduct these operations, and we will make sure that people are held accountable for their crimes.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Christian communities are under attack in a number of developing countries to which we give very large amounts of international aid, including Pakistan. What steps will the Government take to ensure that that aid is given on condition that these communities are protected?

[Rory Stewart]

That is absolutely correct. Indeed, Christian communities and many other minority religious groups are increasingly under threat across the world. That is true of Christian communities in the middle east. It is true of Christian communities in Africa. It is true of Christian communities in Pakistan. We will support civil society organisations. In Pakistan, we support the rights of Christian communities, Shi’a minority communities and other groups. We continue to advocate for them with the Government of Pakistan, and we will continue that civil society support.

Catalonia

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

As usual, not a lot. I agree that these things were illegal and against the rule of law. However, I disagree with how the right hon. Lady portrays this choice. This is not a binary choice in the way she describes; it is a binary choice between upholding the rule of law or not.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I perfectly understand my right hon. Friend’s reluctance to interfere in Spanish internal affairs and I respect the Foreign Office’s view that the referendum was illegal, although my constituents were disturbed to see Spanish police removing ballot boxes and people being prevented from voting. We do, however, have a strong legitimate interest in how Spain regards our sovereign citizens in Gibraltar. Will he confirm that Spain respects their wishes to remain British?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

My hon. Friend draws a false parallel between Gibraltar and Catalonia. I repeat that we fully support Spain as it upholds the working of its constitution and will stand with it in opposing illegality wherever we see it.

Balfour Declaration

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I think the hon. Gentleman answered his own question as he sat down. The Israeli Government need to stop the illegal settlements. They are not yet making it impossible to deliver the new map, but every time they build new units—as he knows, there are new units going up in Hebron in east Jerusalem—they make that eventual land swap more difficult and move us further from a two-state solution. That is the point we make to our Israeli friends—and, by the way, that is the point made by many allies around the world.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is clearly true that residents of the occupied Palestinian territories do not enjoy the full civil rights promised to them in the Balfour declaration, but is it not also true that neither do the more than 800,000 Jews expelled from countries in the middle east and north Africa? We must remember that 21% of the population of the current state of Israel are Arab Palestinians, whereas there has been wholescale ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab and north African countries, starting in 1948.

[Boris Johnson]

My hon. Friend has an excellent point and alludes to the third leg of the Balfour declaration. Balfour spoke of the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities and then of course of the rights of Jewish communities elsewhere around the world. As my hon. Friend rightly says, hundreds of thousands of them were expelled from their homes, too. They will also benefit from a lasting peace between the Arabs and Israelis. That is what we want to achieve and what we are pushing for.

Raqqa and Daesh

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

The short answer is that I do not know. I do not have a figure. We have worked on the number of relatively low hundreds, but we do not know. I will not put a figure on it—why pluck one out of the air? The numbers are not huge, and are not as great as some from other places. On dealing with people when they return, let me make it clear that there is no facility to return people—certainly not from Syria. We have no personnel there and we have no responsibilities in that regard. If people make their way back to the United Kingdom and are identified as having taken part in conflict in Syria or Iraq, they will be detained and will have to answer questions while it is found out exactly what they have done, which is right and proper, and those who have committed offences can expect to face justice.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

My constituents in Kettering are increasingly alarmed about the number of British jihadists who have been fighting our armed forces personnel in Iraq and Syria. My understanding is that about 850 of them have been identified, of whom about 400 are already back in the UK. Please correct me if I am wrong but I do not believe that there has been a single prosecution for any offence. Will the Minister try to understand that if no effective action is taken against these people in this country, it will send a positive signal to potential jihadists to Syria to say, “We can go off and fight British services overseas because nothing will happen to us when we return.”

[Alistair Burt]

Many terrorist offences have extra-territorial jurisdiction, which means that people can be prosecuted in British courts for terrorist activity in Syria or anywhere else in the world. Any decision on whether to prosecute will be taken by the police and Crown Prosecution Service on a case-by-case basis. That requires evidence of what people have done. It does not require rounding up people who have been in a particular place and detaining them without any legal process for doing so. It is essential that we find out what people are doing. That will require the sort of investigative work that I announced earlier that we have promoted through the UN. The investigations unit is entirely designed to uncover the evidence that will bring people to justice. It is a question of holding this number of people in reasonable bounds so that everyone knows that they have gone there, but that the numbers are not as great as those from other countries. There is a determination in the United Kingdom to make absolutely certain that if those who put the country at risk return, they can expect to be questioned, to be brought to the notice of the security authorities and to be subject to controls thereafter according to existing law. Where prosecutions are possible, people will be prosecuted and rightly so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

We must all be aware of the reality in Libya, and indeed in Sirte: there is a tragic absence of security and the problems of that city have yet to be resolved. But when they are resolved—they will be addressed, and are being, with the help of this country—the people of Libya will indeed have fantastic economic prospects, and that is the objective of this Government.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The power vacuum in Libya is sucking in economic migration from the rest of Africa, causing deaths in the Mediterranean as migrants try to flee to the European Union. What can the Foreign Secretary do to make sure that the international community recognises the scale of the problem that it faces in this benighted part of the world?

[Boris Johnson]

As I have been saying, the key thing is to bring together all the sides in Libya—the two halves of the country, Mr Swehli, Mr Saleh, Prime Minister al-Sarraj and of course General Haftar—to change the Skhirat agreement of 2014 to get a new political settlement and then to have elections, and through those elections to produce a unified Government that we believe offer the prospect of peace and security in Libya.

My hon. Friend also raises the problem of illegal immigration, which the UK is of course doing a great deal to combat.

Iran

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

I said earlier that Foreign Minister Zarif has made it clear to the other parties of the agreement that, had the agreement sought to go wider after the years of fairly torturous negotiations on the nucleophile, it simply would not have been signed. If it had not been signed, Iran would have been continuing to proceed on a path that we all felt might lead to the possibility of a nuclear weapon in the region, with all those implications. It was better to have that agreement signed on those terms and to continue work on the other things than it would have been simply to try to find such an all-embracing deal that it would never have been signed by Iran.

Let me spell out to the House the product of the deal. Iran has shipped more than 12 tonnes of enriched uranium to Russia to eliminate its stock of 20% enriched uranium; removed more than 13,000 centrifuges and associated infrastructure; removed the core of the Arak heavy water reactor; removed all excess heavy water to the Arak reactor to prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium; allowed greater IAEA access and the use of online monitoring; provisionally implemented the IAEA additional protocol; and agreed a procurement channel for authorised exports of nuclear-rated goods and services to Iran. All that was achieved by the deal. We would hold that—notwithstanding the extraneous matters, which are important and need to be dealt with —the product of the deal, as I have enunciated, has been good for the region, the world and the United Kingdom.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I recognise, understand and respect the cross-party consensus reflected in the vast majority of questions in favour of this agreement, but may I just put the alternative point of view to the Minister? This is not a permanent fix to Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Limits on that programme begin to wind down in just eight years’ time. In the meantime, Iran is looking to construct an airfield and a naval base in Syria, and is developing plans to send a division of troops to Syria. In 10 years’ time, we could face the prospect, with a 12-month breakout period, of Iran’s having a bigger military footprint in the region, and still being able to develop a nuclear weapon in no time at all. How does the Minister respond to that?

[Alistair Burt]

If the deal comes to the end with no further agreement about provisions for the future, Iran would still be subject to the nuclear proliferation treaty as it was before. Those provisions will stay in place. Having agreed this treaty, there is no reason to believe that it will not be possible to continue its terms and, clearly, the parties will want to achieve that.

My hon. Friend quite rightly mentions the other activities of Iran that cause concern in the region, and those concerns are very real. We all know enough about this place and politics to know that if everybody agrees on something, there is often a problem. It is right that we hear alternative voices and it is important to listen to things that might be contrary to what we wish if we are to ensure that what we wish for is what happens in reality. That is what the United Kingdom is very clear-sighted on—its relations with its partners, with the United States and with Iran.

Hurricane Irma

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Duncan]

As a Minister in the Department for International Development, I focused in great detail on the Turks and Caicos Islands, which was pretty well bankrupt and its deficit was growing. So, yes, part of the set of conditions that we set down for them for restoring their finances was to improve their tax base. I can point to a very positive record of this Government, answering exactly the question that the hon. Gentleman has asked. Implicit in his question is that, if we are to reconstruct a devastated island, we must ensure that it builds things that will withstand hurricanes in the future. If we have rivers that will not flood, riverbanks that have gabion baskets to make sure that they can contain the water and houses that can withstand a greater ferocity of wind, then out of this disaster can come an opportunity for better resilience in the future.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his statement, which, in its comprehensiveness and succinctness, was a model that other Ministers would be well advised to follow. In relation to his last point, we have an absolute duty to protect our overseas realms and territories from environmental disasters. Is there a plan to hurricane-proof as much as possible key infrastructure in these realms and territories?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I like to think that being short and precise is my hallmark.

Across many of DFID’s programmes around the world—for example, ones in Bangladesh, which suffers from flooding—building in resilience is a crucial part of its entire philosophy. In as much as that can also be incorporated into a country’s planning, it must be both welcomed and encouraged. I must point out to the House that we do not govern those countries, but we can encourage them to govern themselves in a way that introduces exactly the sort of standards that my hon. Friend has described.

Violence in Rakhine State

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I thank the hon. Lady for her words. Prior to taking on this role, I was vice-chairman for international affairs in the Conservative party and worked with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and although I did not specifically do work myself in Burma, I am well aware that a lot of work goes on in a cross-party, integrated programme. Yes, I accept that the citizenship issue is live. As the hon. Lady will be well aware, the sectarian divisions are very pronounced in that part of the world. As many will know, there was a suggestion that when Burma was formed in the aftermath of the second world war or when Bangladesh was formed in 1971, the Rohingya, as ethnic Bengalis, should have been in that part of the world. I fear that all those are very live issues in Burmese politics. They are very complicated issues for us to entirely make a judgment on, but that is not to say that there will not be an open debate on them from our diplomats on the ground.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Minister is right to say that it must be difficult to get reliable and accurate information on the ground, in which case his offer of a ministerial visit should come sooner rather than later. When he goes, will he make sure that he visits both sides of the border, with a particular emphasis on following the DFID aid stream to satisfy himself that our aid is getting to where it is needed?

[Mark Field]

Yes, I am obviously keen to see on the ground what is happening throughout Burma and also Bangladesh, which is a country I know well. I should perhaps point out that the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), is the Minister with DFID responsibilities in this regard. He visited only a matter of a few weeks ago and saw what was happening before the latest outbreak of inter-communal ethnic violence. He has been confident that there has been a positive flow of DFID money for a whole range of different projects, both in Bangladesh and in Burma. A lot of the DFID money that is spent, and will continue to be spent, in that regard is on much broader infrastructure and other projects that are going to make life better for all Burmese. That is not for one minute to say that we should not be focusing attention now on some humanitarian aid, but there is a huge amount of aid that this country can rightly be proud of in that part of the world that is making life better, and will do so for all citizens, for the decades to come.