European Union Referendum Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I shall give way one more time, to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), and then I shall make progress.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

On the question of European nationals voting in this referendum, will the Foreign Secretary confirm whether any of the referendums held in other European countries have been open to all other European Union citizens living in that country—[Hon. Members: “Scotland!”] It is not a separate member of the EU.

[Mr Hammond]

As far as I am aware, that is not the case. I note with interest that just this weekend it was reported that Luxembourg, an open and very pro-EU country, has decided not to extend its parliamentary franchise to the very many EU citizens who are resident in Luxembourg.

Although the central issue at stake in the Bill is simple and the three key variables—the date, the franchise and the question—are dealt with in the first two clauses, running a referendum is not straightforward. The remainder of the Bill, which includes 38 pages of schedules, deals with three important but technical areas. First, in clause 4(1) it establishes a power to set the conduct framework that will determine how the referendum will be run. Secondly, in clause 4(2) it creates the power to set more detailed conduct rules and combination rules to determine how the vote would be run alongside other electoral events should the chosen dates coincide with any. Finally, the Bill establishes the detailed campaign rules, updating the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 where necessary, taking into account the lessons of both the Scottish independence and alternative vote referendums and the recommendations made by the Electoral Commission.

The Bill also disapplies section 125 of the 2000 Act, and as this aspect has received some media attention I shall elaborate on the Government’s logic. Section 125 places statutory restrictions on Government publications in the final 28 days before the poll. There are operational and political reasons for disapplying it in this referendum. If left unaltered, section 125 would stop the Government “publishing” material that deals with “any issue raised by” the referendum question. In the context of this referendum, that is unworkable and inappropriate. It is unworkable because the restriction is so broad that preventing publication in relation to any issue raised by the referendum could prevent Ministers from conducting the ordinary day-to-day business of the UK’s dealings with the European Union and inappropriate because the referendum will take place as a result of a clear manifesto commitment and a mandate won at the general election.

That mandate is to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s relationship with the European Union and put them to the people in a referendum. In the light of the outcome of those negotiations, the Government expect to take a position, and if we have been successful, as we expect to be, the Government will want to explain what has been agreed and how the British people’s concerns have been addressed. We will want to make a recommendation on where the national interest lies, and Ministers will want to be able to continue making the case, up to referendum day, without being constrained by fears that, for example, the posting of comments on Twitter accounts could constitute publication.

Britain in the World

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Today, the sub-theme has been maiden speeches in Parliament, and it gives me enormous confidence in the future of Britain in the world that we have representatives of our constituents who will speak up fearlessly and with great clarity.

For me, the concept of Britain in the world is a conundrum today. On the one hand, capitalism is priced for peace and confidence; on the other hand, never have our global structures seemed so ineffective in coping with the challenges we face today. Organisations that coped well with the cold war, the iron curtain and the transition from colonialism to independence seem much less able when faced with rogue states and organisations that control vast swathes of territory with arms greater than those of the nation states around them. That presents us with huge challenges.

In his speech today, the Foreign Secretary laid out the ambitions that were summarised in the Queen’s Speech. Surely all of us would want us to be ambitious about our role in the world and would want our nation to be able to play its part, as it has done for so long. However, the challenges that we face are considerable, and my belief is that first of all we need to revisit those global structures and question whether they are still entirely fit for purpose and whether in this age—one in which Governments feel more fragile, less in control of our future and less sure about the value of our different unions—the world needs to change our organisations.

The specific challenges that were outlined today obviously include our future in the European Union, the future of Ukraine and the eastern border with Russia, and the whole of the middle east. Let me touch briefly on those issues.

On the EU, it has always seemed clear to me that we are at our most successful when we find allies who share our values and long-term goals, build our interests together and maintain the balance of power by overcoming the different threats, whether from sun kings, emperors, führers or Russian bears. That is what we must surely do if we are to win in our quest for reform of Europe in a renegotiation and present our constituents with a real option as to what future is best for us in Europe. As part of that, surely the Foreign Affairs Committee must play a role, alongside the Treasury Committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, in analysing the pros and cons—a real cost-benefit analysis—to our country of being a member, without interfering on each other’s patch, but building a strategic diplomatic analysis of what EU membership offers us. That would include, for example, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with America being negotiated at the moment.

On the middle east, the Foreign Secretary rightly said that President Assad was at the heart of the problem, but we have been better at analysing the rulers, organisations and terrorists at the heart of the problem, but not so good at winning the peace after we have removed them. That remains a great challenge for us, and the confidence of our constituents will not be great on action in the middle east until we can reassure them that we have real plans and ways of building nations after we have conquered them.

In summary, I believe that we can have a great future in the world—there is a great role for Britain to play—but we must refresh the international organisations, analyse carefully the pros and cons of being in the EU and play our part in the middle east in winning the peace.

Foreign Affairs Committee (Hong Kong Visit)

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The House debates today in unusual, if not unprecedented, circumstances. It is a matter of deep frustration, disappointment and regret to me not only that are we here to do that, but that I am here as an individual who has played a part in the events leading up to the debate. For it is not only the Foreign Affairs Committee that has been effectively prevented from visiting Hong Kong: a week ago my visa application to join the UK-China leadership forum in Shanghai was rejected, as a result of which the entire parliamentary delegation has pulled out of the forum.

We must ask ourselves why that has happened. The underlying answer, of course, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) rightly said, is that we have a serious disagreement with China over our ability to discuss and debate issues in Hong Kong. As other Members have said, it is sad that even before the Committee’s report has been drafted, let alone completed, China has concluded that it must be negative in principle because of its existence, rather than its content, which is as yet unknown.

In the same way, I was clearly penalised for having the temerity to organise a debate on Hong Kong on 22 October. In my speech on that day, I congratulated Britain and China’s leaders in 1984 on finding

“a formula, and later the trust, that maintained confidence within Hong Kong and by the world in Hong Kong. Thirty years on, the architects can congratulate themselves. Broadly, Hong Kong has thrived and remains special and successful.”

I concluded my speech thus:

“For the people of Hong Kong and we”—

meaning all of us in Parliament—

“have no interest, no advantage or no conceivable selfish purpose in any form of car crash with Hong Kong’s sovereign master, China. Rather, it is in all our interests, but particularly those of Britain and China in fulfilling the joint declaration, that Hong Kong continues to thrive and prosper, in a different world from that of 1984 or even 1997.”—[Official Report, 22 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 276-81WH.]

I do not believe that anyone in this House, or indeed anywhere, could take violent objection to the thoughts and beliefs behind that statement. However, I am afraid that there was an objection, which I received today in hard copy—it had insufficient postage and so arrived only today—from Ambassador Liu of the People’s Republic of China. He expressed severe displeasure and disappointment about a letter I had written to him some 10 days before the debate, outlining my reasons for holding it.

I will recap the crucial part of the reason. As chair of the all-party China group, I believe that I have two main responsibilities, as outlined on our writing paper and clearly laid out on our website: first, to provide a forum for debate on all matters of bilateral interest; and secondly, to help to inform parliamentarians through regular visits to China. I believe that by holding the debate on Hong Kong I was fulfilling the first objective.

Ambassador Liu wrote:

‘Matters related to Hong Kong are none but China’s internal affairs, where China is firmly opposed to intervention or interference of any kind by any country or any individual, including the House of Commons’ inquiry, debate and investigation involving Hong Kong. Your insistence on having the aforementioned debate in the House of Commons has in effect meddled in such internal matters of Hong Kong and sent out a wrong signal. Such moves, exploited by the opposition in Hong Kong, will only create an impression that Britain supports unlawful activities such as ‘occupy Central’.”

I have read out excerpts from my speech, and I do not believe that any objective reader could reach any of the conclusions reached by Ambassador Liu, least of all an impression that Britain supports unlawful activities such as those of Occupy Central, which did not feature in my speech at all.

Ambassador Liu’s letter went on to state that I, as chair of the all-party China group,

“charged with the responsibility and mission of advancing China-UK relations”—

that is not strictly my mission, as I have just explained—should

“refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of Hong Kong as well as China. I urge you to do more things to promote China-UK relationship, rather than disrupt or undermine its healthy development.”

It is true that relations between our two countries have improved considerably. My right hon. Friend the Minister and I were both part of the very successful delegation led by the Prime Minister to China a year ago, and earlier this summer we had a very successful visit by the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, to the UK. All of us here want to see positive relations between Britain and China for precisely the reasons I have outlined. We have much that is to our mutual benefit, much in the way of mutual challenges and much that we are doing together to make the world a better place.

I genuinely believe that the role of diplomats is to build bridges, not barriers; to solve problems, not to create them; to help bring our two countries closer together; and to strengthen the relationships between this Parliament and the National People’s Congress in Beijing. Let me, for the record, respond to Ambassador Liu’s comment that I should

“do more things to promote”

the China-UK relationship. For three years, I was this country’s British trade commissioner to China, and also our consul to Macau. Later, I opened the first merchant banking group office in China and listed the first Chinese company on the London stock exchange. In 1993, I was part of the Anglo-Chinese expedition to make the first ever crossing of the Taklamakan desert. During that expedition, I should, by rights, have died from amoebic dysentery. I was saved by some unbelievably strong antibiotics that meant I could not eat for five days while walking some 25 miles a day in the heat of that hitherto uncrossed desert, so every day since the winter of 1993 has, to some extent, been an extra day in my life. When I came out of the desert—so thin that my trousers fell down when I tried to pull them up—and went straight to Shanghai to open the office of my employers, I vowed that I would dedicate a chunk of my life to doing things that would continue to help relations between Britain and China.

Some two years later, my wife, Anthea, made me aware of what was happening in Chinese orphanages in Shanghai. She was, at the time, the person in charge of the welfare team of the Shanghai Expatriate Association. Many Members will know that, largely because of the one-child system, huge numbers of orphans, often predominantly female, were dumped on the doorsteps of orphanages and would spend the rest of their lives in an institution. This was a human tragedy. My wife’s dedication to helping two or three individual orphans led me to create a charitable company in Hong Kong called Children First and to get pledges of significant amounts of money from businesses in Hong Kong to support the creation of what would effectively become a foster care system in Shanghai.

At that time, talks with the Shanghai municipal government fell through, largely on the issue of trust about who would have control of the money. However, the relationship with the civil affairs bureau was so strong that when a British citizen, Robert Glover, arrived in Shanghai and was introduced to the bureau by my wife, he was able to take forward our original vision and create what is now Care For Children—the first ever joint venture Sino-British charity, now joint ventured with the central Government’s civil affairs bureau. To date, it has taken between 250,000 and 300,000 orphans out of orphanages and put them in foster homes. It is a remarkable success. I pay tribute to Rob Glover, who is in London this week, and all that the charity has achieved. I am proud to have been first its adviser and later a director.

That is one example of a personal commitment to improving things between Britain and China that I hope will show the House that far from doing things to disrupt and undermine the healthy development of the relationships between our two countries, I have consistently tried to enhance them.

In that context, I am deeply disappointed by what happened this summer when the Foreign Affairs Committee rightly decided, owing to the events in Hong Kong and to the six-monthly update report on Hong Kong by Her Majesty’s Government, that it was time for it to write a report on the state of the relations between the UK and Hong Kong. It is very disappointing that a China that is now in every way stronger, more confident and more robust than it was 35 years ago, when first I visited, has been unable to recognise that this should be seen as a positive and encouraging development that opens doors rather than closes them, and to welcome a report that, in many ways, may turn out to be a lot more positive than it expects.

Today’s debate is unfortunate in many ways. When my visa was rejected 10 days ago, I decided not to say anything about it because I did not want to contribute to a worsening situation. It was already, to me, a huge disappointment that a body like the UK-China leadership forum—which exists precisely to have the dialogue that two countries with different histories, cultures and systems of government and parliament must have in order to overcome their differences of opinion and views on the world at large—was having to be disrupted on the simple principle that China chooses its delegation and we choose ours.

This debate is essentially about the freedom that this House must have to fulfil our duties and obligations to our constituents. Our constituents are interested in a strong relationship with China. Of course, business and the economy are a vital part of that, but our constituents are deeply interested in other aspects of the relationship, many of which relate to human rights and animal rights. We must raise those issues and they must be debated and discussed. The all-party group cannot and should not avoid them; it must discuss them. We must recognise that there will be differences of opinion, but they should be aired in a sensible, responsible way that recognises the cultural differences. This debate is all about the ability of our House to discuss and debate—and ultimately to enhance, not disrupt—relations between these two great countries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) and my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who made a typically well-informed and moving speech.

I will start on a slightly sober note with a touch of realism. We in this Parliament are obviously not in a very strong position to influence events in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, it is absolutely right that we should support human rights and democracy for the people of Hong Kong and support the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway) and his Committee in stating very clearly that the accusation of unjustified meddling in the internal affairs of China is not justified. Indeed, it is not justified either to try to inhibit the work of the all-party group on China, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is being generous, both in what he says and in giving way, but I want to make a tiny point. He said that we may not have much influence over Hong Kong, but the whole point of this debate, of course, is that we are not trying to influence Hong Kong. We are trying to discuss the issues, but we are not trying to interfere, meddle, influence or anything else.

[Martin Horwood]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point and I will come back to it. There is an argument for us to comment on universal human rights and thereby try to influence their conduct throughout the world. To that extent, I think we are trying to influence events, but my hon. Friend is right to say that the focus of this debate is on, in a sense, the opposite situation, which is the Chinese Government’s unjustified attempt to curtail a parliamentary inquiry. It is true that we are not seeking in this debate to change anything in Hong Kong immediately.

The accusation of unjustified interference is wrong on two counts. First, as many hon. and right hon. Members have pointed out, we are party to an international agreement—the 1984 joint declaration—which refers in article 3(12) to the

“basic policies of the People’s Republic of China regarding Hong Kong”.

Article 3(4) states:

“The chief executive will be appointed by the Central People’s Government on the basis of the results of elections or consultations to be held locally.”

That is not the strongest wording in the world, but it is repeated in the Basic Law that was also implemented by the joint agreement. Article 3(12) goes on to state that those policies would

“remain unchanged for 50 years.”

We are clearly within that time scale, so the British Parliament has a perfectly legitimate right to look at how the Basic Law and joint agreement are being interpreted in practice in Hong Kong, particularly in the light of the Beijing Government’s announcements in August.

The second reason it is wrong to criticise the Foreign Affairs Committee is that we are all party to the United Nations universal declaration of human rights, which affirms that human rights—from Iran to Colombia and from China to Britain itself—are inalienable for all members of the human family. It is legitimate for any member of the United Nations to look at, comment on and take an interest in the conduct of human rights worldwide, and no Parliament or democratic assembly anywhere in the world should feel inhibited from doing so. It is common for this Parliament to comment on human rights in a variety of countries. Indeed, the Government publish an annual human rights report, in which they comment on human rights in many countries around the world.

As Lenin once said, what is to be done? First, we have to be clear that the Foreign Affairs Committee should continue to highlight the issues raised by events in Hong Kong, to investigate them thoroughly and to draw reasonable conclusions without fear of intimidation. We need to be clear that everyone in this Parliament supports its right to do that and encourages it to continue its inquiry.

Secondly, it is important that the British Government continue to raise concerns about China’s interpretation of the Basic Law and the joint declaration, and in doing so draw on the expertise of the Foreign Affairs Committee and its eventual report.

Thirdly, this country needs to adopt a deeper and more sophisticated policy towards China. Parliament and Government have tended to address China as if the only important thing we want it to do is buy and sell more widgets. The view has been that trade and capital investment are important, but almost to the exclusion of other considerations, and many hon. Members have reinforced the point that that is not the case. Trade and capital investment are important, but policies have to be wider and more sophisticated than that.

Part of that policy has to be an understanding from our side of China, its sensitivities and history, and the progress it has made. That means acknowledging that our shared history with China has not been particularly glorious on the British side on many occasions. We have to acknowledge that our role as a colonial power in events such as the opium wars was, in retrospect, disgraceful. We have undervalued contributions such as that of the 96,000 members of the Chinese Labour Corps during the first world war. They behaved with complete heroism and lost thousands of their number, but they were treated pretty disgracefully at the time and, equally disgracefully, their heroism and contribution to this country during the first world war have been neglected. A broad-based campaign is seeking to rectify that omission and obtain a memorial in this country to the Chinese Labour Corps. I hope that will attract Government support.

We have to acknowledge our own failure to deliver democracy in Hong Kong. We were the administrators and rulers of Hong Kong for many years, and we never delivered a Chief Executive who was elected by the people of Hong Kong without interference. We appointed colonial governors, and I am sure that some of them were very skilled, talented and caring, but in a sense it was a benign colonial dictatorship. It is difficult for us now to turn around and criticise China on how it behaves towards Hong Kong, and we have to be sensitive to that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Roy]

There is an argument for doing that. Unfortunately, the Committee would not be allowed to board the flight in London, because it is against the law for somebody to take a flight to somewhere they know they will not gain entry to.

[Richard Graham]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if a select committee of the National People’s Congress wished to visit Britain, it is inconceivable that we would decline its members a visa?

[Mr Roy]

Absolutely. Think of the uproar there would be if we suddenly said to Chinese parliamentarians, “You are not coming to this country. You are not coming into this building.” It does not take a huge brain to work out the uproar that would result from such a ban if it were the other way around.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting intervention and I will address his point directly in a minute.

It is unfortunate that we have to debate this situation, following the news that the Foreign Affairs Committee will not be granted entry to Hong Kong. As I said, I visited Hong Kong recently and paid visits to Mong Kok. I walked down Nathan road where I saw relatively few tents and protesters, and numbers were beginning to dwindle. Whether by coincidence or not, the situation seems to have flared up again in the last few days in conjunction with the proposed Foreign Affairs Committee visit.

Demonstrations have throughout been largely peaceful and without interference from the Hong Kong or Chinese authorities, and it is a tribute to both sides that they have managed to keep the protests within peaceful bounds. I absolutely understand the aims and aspirations of the demonstrators. My neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) secured a debate on Hong Kong in Westminster Hall the other day, in which I outlined the disparity between those in Hong Kong who have, and those who have not. People are finding it difficult to get on the housing ladder or get decent jobs, and in some cases it is difficult to get a decent education. The authorities in Hong Kong need to address those issues. It is not that Hong Kong is not dynamic or successful economically, it is that it is not benefiting everybody. There is a class—particularly some of the younger people—who are being left behind, and that is leading to demonstrations. People want a greater say in the way Hong Kong is run.

Wanting to ensure that relations between this country and China were not damaged, I met high-level representatives from the Chinese embassy in Parliament last week. I tried hard to convey to them a number of things, including that we have a separation of powers in this country, that right hon. and hon. Members of the House are representatives of the people and able to do exactly what they like and can form Committees to investigate matters around the world, and that my right hon. Friend’s Foreign Affairs Committee is entitled to investigate any matter in which the British Government have an interest, including Hong Kong.

I think I failed in that part of my discussions. It is hard for those in a Government run by a communist system, who say to representatives in the Communist party, “You will not do that”, to understand that Members of Her Majesty’s Government—I welcome the Minister to his place—cannot simply say to a Committee or Member of the House, “You will not do this; you will do that.”

[Richard Graham]

On that point, has my hon. Friend heard members of the Chinese embassy say, as they have said to me, that ultimately the Government decide what happens in Parliament, in Committees and all-party groups, and even in Buckingham palace?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is right—that is exactly what they think and they have conveyed that to me. Somehow we must keep on repeating the facts about how this country operates.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Pursuant to what the hon. Gentleman has just said, perhaps it would be helpful for the Chinese to realise, by being told in terms, that the decision to grant this debate is the decision of the Chair, and it is not interfered with or commented on, or the subject of representations by the Government one way or the other. I cannot be clearer than that. I know that, the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) knows that, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the House know that, and it is time the Chinese Government knew it as well.

[Richard Graham]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Would be in order for the Speaker’s Office to contact the Chinese embassy to put it straight on what the protocols are?

[Mr Speaker]

I think I have just done so, but I am happy to communicate as necessary with the Chinese, if the House would think that helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Swire]

Indeed, and there are many Members who have dedicated their parliamentary careers to furthering relations with China.

[Richard Graham]

My right hon. Friend mentioned that this year is the 30th anniversary of the signing of the joint declaration. What plans may there be to celebrate this important event?

[Mr Swire]

I shall look to my hon. Friend for inspiration as we look forward to commemorating the signing in good faith of that declaration. I am sure he will be full of ideas.

As I said in the Westminster Hall debate on Hong Kong on 22 October, which my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) secured, we strongly believe that it is the “autonomy, rights and freedoms” guaranteed by the joint declaration that underpin Hong Kong’s success. He is right, by the way, to raise the regrettable incident recently when he, too, was refused a visa, this time to China itself, and when he and other members of the UK-China Leadership Forum felt they had no choice but to postpone their to visit Shanghai for talks with the Communist party. We again made it clear to the Chinese authorities our view that refusing visas is no kind of solution. It is clearly counter-productive that these talks have not now taken place. The important thing is to pursue dialogue on issues, even where we disagree.

I would equally emphasise my understanding that the FAC inquiry is focused on the promotion of economic, cultural and educational links, too. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) stressed the importance of the economy and trading links. Last year, Hong Kong was the UK’s second largest export market in Asia Pacific, and Hong Kong was the UK’s 12th largest investor. In addition, Hong Kong is an important factor in the UK’s dynamic relationship with mainland China—for instance, as Hong Kong and London work together to develop the financial service infrastructure for the internationalisation of the renminbi. These links are beneficial to the UK, China and Hong Kong, and absolutely deserve the attention of the FAC.

My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) raised the issue of former British servicemen in Hong Kong, and we will look into this, although it is more properly a matter for the Home Department. It is the case, however, that around 250,000 British citizens live in Hong Kong, and a further 3.4 million people—approximately half the population—hold the status of British nationals overseas, giving us a clear consular interest.

For these reasons, I can assure the House and those following this debate that the Government have been emphasising the context and importance of the inquiry at senior levels through official channels in Beijing, Hong Kong and London. I am grateful for the suggestion made in the press today by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) that the Foreign Office should be engaging with our Chinese counterparts on this matter. I can tell her and others who raise it that that is precisely what we have been doing: our ambassador in Beijing, our consul-general in Hong Kong, myself and the Foreign Secretary have done so repeatedly.

Palestine

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall today. Our debate clearly will not solve the long-standing problems and end the violence in Israel and Palestine, but it gives voice to the many feelings and frustrations of our constituents, 150,000 of whom signed the petition. In having this debate, we place uncomfortable truths on the record; we contribute to the changing winds of international feeling towards what is happening in Israel and Palestine today; we influence our own Government; and we ask awkward questions of all sides. That in itself justifies today’s debate.

Since I last joined a debate on this unhappy part of the world, on 17 July in this Chamber, much has happened, and it is worth recapping. The war that took place was the worst of the three in the past seven years, with 2,100 casualties on the Palestinian side, some 500 of whom were children. There are investigations of some 99 potential war crimes, but no report has been issued yet. Demolitions of homes in East Jerusalem have resumed and increased, and the settlements, which now encompass 341,000 illegal settlers, have substantially expanded. Some 160,000 of the Bedouins have been pressured to move from their traditional homes, and the al-Aqsa mosque was stormed at the beginning of November. Last but by no means least, and perhaps most dangerous of all, an Israeli nationality law was proposed very recently that would legally define Israel as a nation state of the Jews and strip Arab citizens of their basic rights.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

It is important to know that that Government apartheid Bill is going to the Knesset on Wednesday of this week to start its passage to becoming law.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention on the timing of the debate in Israel on the proposed nationality law. He is right. As our own Prime Minister said, if that proposed nationality law became law, that would turn Israel into an apartheid state.

[Alistair Burt]

I have been careful about not intervening because so many other hon. Members want to speak, but this point is very important. As has already been said on both sides of the House, the Bill is not being proposed by the Government of the state of Israel. It is clear that the proposal has split opinion both in Israel and in the Government, but it is not being proposed by the Israeli Government. I think, bearing in mind the content of my hon. Friend’s speech, he should be very clear on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

I am very happy to be clear on that. I do not think I said anything that contradicted it. I was going to quote the President of Israel, who said very clearly that other groups

“should not feel as the Jews had felt in exile”,

signalling his own strong disapproval of it. But the very fact that the nationality law has been proposed—we will see how much support it has in the Knesset—indicates a significant change in events since the July debate that is well worth highlighting.

Other winds of change are blowing outside Israel, in the response of the world to some of those events. It is worth noting that eight EU member states now recognise Palestine officially; Sweden is the most recent. There have been non-binding resolutions not only in this country but in Ireland and Spain, and tomorrow the French Parliament will vote on a non-binding motion. That indicates that world views are changing.

In previous debates, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for International Development, has talked about the UK tiring of picking up the pieces from countless incidents of violence in Israel and Palestine and has called for “meaningful political change”. Today, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for the middle east whether he shares the concern of the author of the EU document circulated to all 28 countries that we are moving to a situation where a two-state solution may no longer be possible. Does he share the author’s belief that if that were the case, action on illegal settlements would be necessary? Does he share my belief that the tragedy of what is happening in Israel is that its actions—settlements, the demolition of homes, a hardening of attitudes and even the consideration of a nationality law—are seriously against its long-term interests and may do long-term damage to that nation state, which our country did so much to bring into being?

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I was in Doha last week and I raised this very issue. Qatar has what is called the kafala system, which is now being upgraded, and the hon. Gentleman may be aware of it. It is being replaced to give greater rights to migrant workers, of whom there are 1.3 million in Qatar, but it is also giving responsibilities to the employers to make sure that they look after them. It is something that will be raised this week when the Emir of Qatar visits this country.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I welcome the contributions by UK doctors and others to reconstruction in Gaza, but is not the cycle almost bizarre? We fund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to do valuable work in building schools and homes, the Israeli defence force destroys some of them, and then regularly we pay to have them rebuilt after a long period of argument about whether the cement will be used for the schools or for tunnels. What can we do to resolve this cycle?

Hong Kong

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to hold this debate on Hong Kong under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, in the year of the 30th anniversary of that unique international treaty, the “Joint Declaration of the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on the Question of Hong Kong with Annexes”, as well as to cover recent events. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on China and as a director of the Great Britain-China Centre, which is a non-departmental public body. Both of them receive sponsorship. I also refer the Chamber to the all-party group’s entry in the all-party group register.

The joint declaration was the result of hard work and creative diplomacy by some still in this Parliament, such as their lordships, Lord Howe and Lord Luce. Above all, in its encompassing philosophy of “one country, two systems”, the joint declaration was a bold political innovation by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Recognising what was most special about Hong Kong in its future change of sovereignty—that its core freedoms must be preserved and that the

“socialist system and policies shall not be practised”—

Britain and China together found a formula, and later the trust, that maintained confidence within Hong Kong and by the world in Hong Kong. Thirty years on, the architects can congratulate themselves. Broadly, Hong Kong has thrived and remains special and successful. Political boldness paid off.

The freedoms that Britain and China pledged to maintain—freedom under the law, an independent judiciary, a free press, free speech and the freedom to demonstrate—are delicate, and they all contribute to the existence of a free market, capitalist economy. There is no major international financial centre in the world that does not have a free press, however inconvenient that may occasionally be to Governments and individuals. The British Government’s commitment on behalf of the people of the United Kingdom, when they signed the joint declaration and made it valid for 50 years after 1997—that is, to 2047—is vital to Hong Kong’s success. If we allow any of those freedoms to be curtailed and if we say nothing about any dilution of Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, whether deliberate or inadvertent, we risk colluding in Hong Kong’s gradual—not immediate —decline, helping others in Asia who would swiftly take any opportunity at Hong Kong’s expense, and we would not be fulfilling the commitments that John Major, Robin Cook and, most recently, our Prime Minister have re-emphasised in the clearest terms.

That implies strong engagement with Hong Kong and China and frequent dialogue and discussions where, as joint signatories, we can and should exchange views freely, with the shared responsibility for doing what is in all our best interests: preserving the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. When I was a very young Member of Parliament, I was invited to go to Hong Kong under the chairmanship of Ian Mikardo, along with Jo Richardson and others, to evaluate the local response in Hong Kong to the agreement. I was very much involved in taking evidence and meeting people. We were part of ensuring that they understood the agreement, and I certainly have a real vested interest in what the hon. Gentleman is saying about guaranteeing those freedoms.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman brings a degree of long experience on these issues to the debate today and to our Chamber in general, matching some of the experience visible in their lordships’ House when they debated recent events in Hong Kong. It is important that we understand the continuity of that commitment, which he saw for himself. I was living in Hong Kong in 1984 and in 1997, and I was present at the handover. These things are real to him and me, but for others, who are younger, it is important that that commitment is not forgotten or allowed to wither.

Let me turn to recent events, Britain and China’s reactions and the role of this Parliament in holding our Executive to account and raising questions of interest on behalf of our constituents. In the consultation in Hong Kong on the arrangements for the election of the next Chief Executive in 2017, which took place earlier this year, it was already clear that many had concerns about the detail of what the universal suffrage promised in China’s Basic Law would mean in practice. Those concerns increased sharply after the Chinese National People’s Congress standing committee announced its decisions on elections on 31 August.

It is worth noting that the British Government’s first reaction on 3 September was to welcome the Chinese commitment to universal suffrage, but also to

“recognise that the detailed terms…will disappoint those who are arguing for a more open nomination process.”

There are two relevant aspects to that. First, that was not the sort of comment that would be made if it was anticipated that 800,000 people would demonstrate and occupy the centre of the world’s third financial centre for weeks. Those who saw the dark hand of foreign forces behind the demonstrations were well wide of the mark, as the statement on 3 September demonstrates. Secondly, the reaction in Hong Kong was not anticipated here, and perhaps not in the offices of the Hong Kong Government and the Chinese Government either. The reaction caught all three by surprise.

There is a question about why that is so, but it is my belief that most of those in Hong Kong who feel most strongly about the issues around the election of the next Chief Executive represent a new generation of Hong Kongers. They were mostly born after the joint declaration. They are not, as has sometimes been claimed, ancient colonial sentimentalists or those left by dark foreign forces to create disturbance after the colonialists had gone, but a new generation with a different take on life from their predecessors. They are more sure of their Hong Kong identity, less sure of their future prospects and less trustful of Government or leaders in whose appointment they still feel they do not have enough say.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour on securing this debate. Would he care to consider that some of the protesters’ motivation might be that they feel left behind by the current state of economic progress in Hong Kong? They are not participating in the economic miracle that has taken place there in the past two or three decades, which is strange when the latest economic plan in China envisages taking 10 million poor people on the mainland into the work force each year to increase prosperity.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend and neighbour takes a close interest in these matters, not least as chairman of the Conservative Friends of the Chinese. He makes a good point. There is a dichotomy. In simple terms, it is that while the generation of Hong Kongers immediately after the second world war were focused on rebuilding the territory and restoring their lives after a disastrous period in Hong Kong’s history and their children in the ’80s and ’90s were focused on economic progress, self-advancement and taking Hong Kong to an international stage, today’s generation perhaps feel that their prospects for mobility, owning property and enjoying a satisfaction with life comparable with their parents are less certain.

They have more questions, as I mentioned, and are perhaps more sensitive to issues that did not really exist 30 years ago, such as increasing environmental concerns and air pollution, which is a major issue throughout China, including Hong Kong, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) knows. There is more uncertainty, but I sense a strong feeling of identity among the new generation. They are Hong Kongers and want to celebrate that by having more of a civic say in decisions made on their behalf.

[Mr Sheerman]

Before the hon. Gentleman moves on to uncertainty, those of us who care about China believe it to be a vital and energising influence in the world. Does he agree that there are serious signs of a positive change in the leadership in China, which I have certainly noticed in the delegations from mainland China who visit this country and come to Yorkshire and other places? This positive wind of change should give some reassurance to us and the inhabitants of Hong Kong.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the winds of change have been blowing vigorously in China since the opening up under Deng Xiaoping in the late ‘70s, but they blow at uneven speeds, in different ways and in different sectors. The main wind of change was a huge desire for economic progress, which has led to a better standard of living for the hundreds of millions of people who have been lifted out of poverty. At the same time—the hon. Gentleman will have read the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s latest human rights reports—it is not yet clear whether the new regime in China will prove so open to changes that allow for greater dialogue and debate of political questions. Significant differences of opinion on human rights also still exist. We in this country tend to see a new and young generation of mainland Chinese, often coming here to study, who are extremely able and well-educated, but the winds of change are uneven in China, which is a concern to some in Hong Kong.

Returning to this summer’s events, just before September’s developments erupted in Hong Kong, the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs decided to do a wide and all-encompassing report on Hong Kong and our commitments, which we all look forward to reading in due course. It was unfortunate that some in China chose to represent that as interference in internal affairs. The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), said that

“investigating the FCO’s ongoing assessment of the implementation of the…Joint Declaration…is part of our role in oversight of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it is an entirely legitimate interest of the Committee.”

That is absolutely right. It is an entirely legitimate interest of this Parliament that we should debate our commitment to the joint declaration to ensure that we fulfil the international treaty that we signed up to with China and that we work together for it is in all our interests to do so.

During September’s demonstrations, the Government’s position came under question and it took some six weeks before a ministerial written statement was published on 13 October, which restated much more clearly what this Parliament stands for—specifically, that the election arrangements should meet the aspirations of the people of Hong Kong, should offer a genuine choice and should form a significant step forward for democracy. We encouraged the Hong Kong Government to resume consultation with both the people of Hong Kong and the Chinese Government on plans to implement universal suffrage. That statement was welcome, but the Minister may want to say something about why it took so long for the Government to produce it. Had the events not happened largely during the recess, the Foreign Secretary should have made himself available in the House to give a verbal statement on our position and on how the situation affected our commitments under the joint declaration.

Moving on to the issues that are hotly under debate in Hong Kong, I want first to focus on stability, which is different from continuity. Any territory’s stability is much stronger when its leader has the credibility of being chosen by a large number of voters, which gives the leader the ability to exercise a real mandate and carry through what will not always be popular decisions in the difficult circumstances that spring up. Business, too, has a vital need for political stability, but that also sometimes comes, like business success, from calculated risks according to the needs of new generations and new consumers. Yesterday’s investment strategies will not always work tomorrow, and it is the same in politics.

The Chief Executive of Hong Kong says that the 2017 election will

“empower the chief executive with a mandate not enjoyed by any leader in Hong Kong’s history”,

and it will if the election is real and not predetermined to produce a particular result. The value of any election is in the number of people who decide to vote. In that election, the people of Hong Kong will demonstrate their enthusiasm both for the election and for a new leader by turning out in high numbers. To implement universal suffrage in a way that does not offer real choice to the people of Hong Kong would risk a low turnout and would be a hollow achievement that gave the future Chief Executive a fragile mandate.

What is at stake in terms of this House’s interest in the 2017 Hong Kong election is not ultimately in the precise detail of what sectors are represented in the nomination committee, how they are defined and how many members the committee has, but in the result that is offered to the people of Hong Kong at the end of the deliberations, which should give them a real choice in who becomes Hong Kong’s future leader. That is the best guarantee of stability in this territory, which Britain and China are jointly pledged to support. Real choice, with a truly independent system of law and a high degree of autonomy, is what we are committed to—under Chinese sovereignty. It is a unique and special contribution to the evolution of China under that inspired phrase of Deng Xiaoping: “one country, two systems.” It was that that both our countries signed up to, and not to swap ideas or discuss regularly what progress is being made would be a breach of both our obligations and responsibilities. Let us think boldly and outside the box, in the same way that our predecessors did in the run-up to the joint declaration of 1984.

For example, Hong Kong’s constitutional arrangements mean that the system at the moment involves a Government—in effect, a Cabinet—but without a political party in the Legislative Council to back them up and to pursue their legislative agenda. That cannot be satisfactory. Is it not time for the next newly and successfully elected Chief Executive to create a political party that offers candidates in the next Legislative Council elections, so that his or her party may aspire to a majority and legislate for what it has campaigned on? That would surely provide longer-term stability to the governance of Hong Kong and give its people a larger say in what decisions are being made and by whom on their behalf.

As for Government’s responsibilities and commitments to fulfilling their obligations, I believe it is time for them to do more to debate what is happening in Hong Kong. I ask the Minister whether it is time for an oral statement to accompany the next biannual report on Hong Kong that the Foreign Office produces, rather than simply a written statement that is filed away. Is it not time for the Foreign Office to understand better the needs of the younger generation in Hong Kong, so that, as Ambassador Liu put it, we are working together to maintain the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong through understanding the younger generation’s needs? We might well disagree on some elements of what that involves and what “prosperity” and “stability” mean, but let us be honest: neither the Hong Kong, Chinese nor British Government anticipated exactly what has happened in Hong Kong over the last few months. Therefore, we need an imaginative response that captures the aspirations of most of the territory and enables its remarkable success to continue.

There are other aspects that should be touched on. Perhaps the Minister can let us know what the situation with the BBC is. I understand that the BBC is blocked in China, but I am not yet clear whether it is blocked in Hong Kong as well. That is part of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, which are so vital to Hong Kong’s success. I would like confirmation today that whenever the BBC is blocked, we raise the issue as a matter of principle.

Will the Minister also confirm when he is next travelling to Hong Kong and whether he will have the chance to engage with different groups there in order to understand better some of the questions about Hong Kong’s future stability? Will he also confirm that he has reminded our partner in the joint declaration of our absolute right in this Parliament to hold our Government to account on their commitments under the joint declaration and to hold debates of this nature? That is part of our constitutional arrangements, and it is important that the Chinese Government understand that.

In particular, will the Minister confirm today that stability for nations is not, in our eyes, about maintaining the status quo regardless, but about reaching out for greater involvement with the people—in this case, of Hong Kong—allowing them a greater say in choosing their leaders and, above all, trusting in the people? The people of Hong Kong and we have no interest, no advantage or no conceivable selfish purpose in any form of car crash with Hong Kong’s sovereign master, China. Rather, it is in all our interests, but particularly those of Britain and China in fulfilling the joint declaration, that Hong Kong continues to thrive and prosper, in a different world from that of 1984 or even 1997.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Weir, for allowing me to catch your eye in this debate. I should declare an interest: I am chairman of the Conservative Friends of the Chinese and a regular visitor to Hong Kong and mainland China, and I have always taken a close interest in Chinese and Hong Kong matters.

I congratulate my good neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), on securing the debate. He was absolutely right in his opening remarks to say that there might have been some misunderstanding among some of the Chinese authorities and that some might think that we should not be debating the subject. Under the terms of the joint declaration, however, we should be debating it. As I will come on to say, there are huge British roots in Hong Kong and a huge love of Hong Kong in this country. We want Hong Kong to prosper. What I have to say might be controversial to a small degree, but I hope that it will be seen positively as only wishing the best for Hong Kong and its people.

The debate is important, as my hon. Friend said, largely because of how vital an asset Hong Kong is to both the United Kingdom and mainland China. The United Kingdom and Hong Kong share economic, social and historic links. Those strong links are natural considering that only 17 years ago sovereignty over all parts of Hong Kong was transferred to China as a result of the joint declaration. That joint declaration between Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher was visionary and envisaged “one country, two systems”. The statement still endures today.

Hong Kong has continued to grow as an international powerhouse with strong links not only to the UK, but around the world. It serves as China’s financial centre and as a major part of the Chinese economy. The links between the economies of Hong Kong and the UK are huge: 40% of British investment in Asia goes directly into Hong Kong, which amounted to almost £36 billion at the end of 2012, including goods and services. We export £7 billion-worth of trade to Hong Kong.

British companies are always extremely welcome in Hong Kong and it is a fantastic place to do business, thanks to a system with low levels of bureaucracy, simple taxation and contracts based on English law. About 130 British companies have regional bases in Hong Kong, and many countries around the world see it in a similar light. Indeed, Hong Kong comes second in the world’s rankings for ease of business, while the UK’s place is 10th. The success of Hong Kong must be protected from any instability that could threaten further progress.

Hong Kong has prospered while maintaining its rights and protections under the joint declaration, of which we and mainland China are joint signatories, such as the rule of law, the high level of autonomy, the free press, freedom of speech and, importantly in the current situation, the right to demonstrate. That has all been achieved under the “one country, two systems” principle, which has clearly worked well, although perhaps not as imagined at the time of the handover in 1997. We must ensure that the principle continues.

Economic success, however, has created a divide between the business elite and the ordinary people of Hong Kong. That is what the protests are all about. Student protesters feel that the business elite have too much control. The rest are not participating fully in the rise of Hong Kong’s economic prosperity.

The suggested Selection Committee to choose suitable candidates for election as Chief Executive seems to be business-dominated: pro-Beijing and not representative of poorer citizens outside the business elite. As I said in my intervention, it is surprising that the PRC does not want poorer people to participate given the latest economic plan, the figures of which are worth repeating because they are so staggering. The latest economic plan produced by the new leader, Xi Jinping, envisages that GDP in China will grow from $6,600 a head to more than $9,000 a head, across its 1.25 billion people. That would be a staggering achievement within the plan period: the country will have to achieve a growth rate of 6.7% every year of the plan. Staggeringly, as I said to my hon. Friend, China will need to bring 10 million people—poor people—into the work force each year to achieve that.

It seems odd that the Government of the PRC want more and more poor people on the mainland to participate in the economic growth there, but are not yet permitting that to happen in Hong Kong. Our Government need to consider that carefully.

Although on the face of it the protests are about the progression of electoral reform, it is evident that they go deeper: they are about the desire of people outside businesses to be considered more. For example, there are only two dairy producers and two supermarkets in Hong Kong, which means high food prices for Hong Kong residents. As we know, high food prices affect poorer people the most—young poor people in particular.

The important message of this debate is that we want to see gradual change in the situation. As I have said to the Chinese press, ultimately this is an issue for the People’s Republic of China, the Government of Hong Kong and the people of Hong Kong to resolve. Electoral reform has progressed within the framework of the Basic Law, and universal suffrage is the ultimate aim. That process has been developing since the 1997 handover. Every election since then—I must stress this point—has been more open and democratic than the previous one. The Election Committee for the Chief Executive began with 400 representatives, was expanded to 800 and now has 1,200 from 38 subsectors. We want that progress to continue.

[Richard Graham]

On that specific point, does my hon. Friend agree that we want to see things change not because we have an obsession with a particular democratic model but because a situation in which the current Chief Executive is known as 689, referring to the number of people who voted for him in the previous election, is unsatisfactory when there is a population of around 7 million? The better the arrangements and the more people who can have a say in the election, the stronger the mandate and, therefore, the greater the stability that there will be for the leadership of the territory of Hong Kong.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend raised one of those issues in his speech. I agree that if the Chief Executive is elected on as open a mandate as possible, with suffrage that is as universal as possible, there will be a better perception of the process among the people of Hong Kong. I will come to what I think will happen if that does not occur. I agree that we need to move towards a situation in which the candidate elected as Chief Executive is perceived to be representative of all people and all sections in Hong Kong society, including the young and poorer people.

So far, the authorities have given little indication that they are willing to provide consensus in their current offer. The UK Government need to urge them to consider genuinely and listen to the protesters’ concerns. An open consultation is needed, as the problem will not go away. The Chinese Government must allow change and gradual reform to continue. If they do not provide for that, feelings of resentment will fester and when the issue comes up again in 2022—as it surely will—the feelings and protests could be much more serious, deep-seated and profound than they are at present. It is surely in everybody’s interests that we see gradual reform.

Electoral reform was always going to be gradual under the Basic Law. Everyone agrees that that is the best approach, including many pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong. It is also likely to be supported by the Chinese Government, who have their own concerns given the large number of Chinese visitors to Hong Kong. Step-by-step progress would avoid instability for wider China.

However, we need reassurances from the Chinese Government about the principles in the White Paper they recently produced for Hong Kong, which included an obligation for judges to swear an oath of allegiance to the state on election; those proposals need to be examined carefully. Judicial independence was one principle enshrined in the joint agreement and is of utmost importance to Hong Kong in maintaining its current success in the world. We must be clear that nothing should prevent the continuation of that independence, particularly in any case where an individual is challenging the state’s actions in the courts. Such cases must be allowed to continue, and judges must be able to judge them impartially.

It is encouraging that we have not seen large-scale attempts by either the Chinese or Hong Kong Governments to silence the protesters, although, as my hon. Friend said, the BBC website has been blocked in mainland China. That is regrettable. As he and I have both stated, one article in the joint declaration is a commitment to a free press. It is in everybody’s interests that nothing is hushed up by either side, so that we can have a full and fair picture. In this day and age, people will find ways around the jamming of electronic media, so we should encourage full openness. I am greatly encouraged that the current Chief Executive has extended offers to talk to the protesters, although those talks need real substance and should not be merely a smokescreen.

In conclusion, I reaffirm that Hong Kong is the economic jewel in China’s crown.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

That would be the ultimate aim, but I have been quite cautious in my speech. We want gradual change. I am not sure whether we will get to the point my hon. Friend sets out in time for the elections in 2017, but I would hope that we would do so by the elections in 2022.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), who is also a constituency neighbour, raises an interesting question. After the earlier consultations in Hong Kong, there was a recommendation by 18 academics that the authorities should look into a method for public recommendation of candidates. I believe that nothing in that idea runs counter to what has been announced by the National People’s Congress standing committee, so it could be an opportunity for the Hong Kong Government to tackle part of that issue. Will my hon. Friend comment on that?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend raises a very interesting point. I urge our Government to examine that plan and possibly hold discussions with the Chinese Government to see whether there might not be a way through on that issue, along the lines suggested by those academics.

As I said, Hong Kong is the economic jewel in China’s crown.It is surely in China’s interests to ensure that Hong Kong continues to prosper. Large business and capital are very portable in the 21st century. If financial and commercial communities conclude that the governance of Hong Kong is not going in the right direction, Hong Kong’s importance will surely diminish and competitors such as Singapore will overtake it.

It is in everybody’s interests to maintain Hong Kong as a strong financial and commercial hub. But I will say this: if the mainland Government of the PRC do not listen to the protesters’ concerns and work to bring about gradual, step-by-step change and peaceful electoral reform under the Basic Law, along with a situation in which all sections of society share in the prosperity currently enjoyed by the elites, Hong Kong will gradually diminish in importance. We need to ensure that all its millions of people share in its continuing and, I hope, increasing economic prosperity.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), my constituency neighbour, on securing this debate and on his measured, balanced and well-informed speech. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)—another neighbour—on his similarly well-informed speech. I also congratulate the Minister on meeting Martin Lee and Anson Chan over the summer. It was important that a British Minister did that. The Deputy Prime Minister met them, as well, something that was appreciated and recognised.

Some of the statements Martin Lee made in The New York Times earlier this month have been pretty shocking. For instance, he wrote:

“At 76 years old, I never expected to be tear-gassed in Hong Kong, my once peaceful home. Like many of the other tens of thousands of calm and nonviolent protesters in the Hong Kong streets last Sunday, I was shocked when the pro-democracy crowd was met by throngs of police officers in full riot gear, carrying weapons and wantonly firing canisters of tear gas. After urging the crowd to remain calm under provocation, I got hit by a cloud of the burning fumes.”

When such accounts reach the world’s media, it is important that we say unambiguously that we support the peaceful process being pursued by the Hong Kong people, as well as their aspirations for freedom and democracy and, quite specifically, their right to elect a leader without a vetting process that would fundamentally undermine the democratic process.

The news today is actually more promising. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester remarked, there is some suggestion that Mr Leung has started to make statements implying the possibility of negotiations and that, while the Hong Kong Government will try to save face by not unbundling the Beijing Government’s whole proposal, there may be some room for discussion about the democratic process behind the nominating committee. That is a positive first step, and we should recognise that.

However, Martin Lee was quite clear in his article in The New York Times that, if the negotiations are to succeed, we in this country and across the western world have a role to play. He said:

“In order for us”—

the Hong Kongers—

“to attain the rights that Beijing has promised, the rest of the world has to stand with Hong Kong. That includes the many multinational companies whose prosperity depends upon our free markets and open-and-honest society, but more important, it includes the world’s free democracies. Hong Kongers deserve more vigorous backing from Washington and London, which pledged to stand by us before the handover in 1997, when Beijing made the promises it is now so blatantly breaking.”

The crisis obviously has implications for Hong Kong, China and UK-China relations, but it also has implications for the international rule of law and the role of international treaties, which is what the joint declaration was—it was registered at the United Nations as such. To take a much more distressing example, the Budapest memorandum, under which Britain and the United States were joint guarantors of the independence of Ukraine, has turned out in practice to be hardly worth the paper it was written on. It is important that China treats the joint declaration much more seriously and that we reinforce respect for it as an international treaty.

[Richard Graham]

On that point, I am sure my hon. Friend, like the rest of us, is absolutely clear that there is nothing specifically in the joint declaration about the arrangements for these, or indeed any other, elections; it simply states that there shall be elections. The methodology is in the Basic Law, and it is entirely an issue for the Chinese and Hong Kong Governments. However, the Basic Law has been amended; like any law, it is not cast in stone for ever. Does my hon. Friend therefore agree that the real issue is the level of dialogue and trust between the Hong Kong Government and their people, and between the Hong Kong Government and the Chinese Government in turn, as they try to find the necessary compromises?

[Martin Horwood]

Yes, I would agree, and my hon. Friend put the point very well. However, this is also about understanding what universal suffrage really means and ensuring that the democratic process of choosing a leader for Hong Kong is free in a way that is understood by the Hong Kong people and by people in democracies around the world—and that does not include prior vetting by a one-party Government in another part of China.

We must be realistic and honest about the limits of our ability as a former colonial power—we did not actually deliver democracy when we were running Hong Kong—to influence this process. We must be persuasive, but we cannot be confrontational with the Government in Beijing. We certainly must be true to our values, but we must recognise that there are limits. We must try to persuade China that it is in its interests to have a stable and free Hong Kong; that is the basis on which Hong Kong’s prosperity has been built.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester rightly said, stability is not just about maintaining the status quo. It is in China’s interests that the process that emerges from whatever negotiations take place delivers a Chief Executive who is in tune with the Hong Kong people, not just through the formal process of democracy, but, for instance, in the sense of recognising issues of economic equality in the territory, as the hon. Member for The Cotswolds mentioned. The Chief Executive should not, for instance, make remarks such as those Mr Leung made about the Occupy Central movement when he dismissed it as being manipulated by external forces. That is dismissive of the aspirations of the community-based movement that has emerged in Hong Kong and would not be acceptable in most democratic leaders.

It is important that we try to persuade the Beijing Government not just to save face, but to move in a direction that recognises the aspirations of the Hong Kong people and to do better than we did as the colonial power—to outdo us—in its administration of Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s future stability certainly depends on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on obtaining this important debate, and the effective way in which he set out the Hong Kong position today.

Unlike my hon. Friend, or my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I cannot claim a long-standing interest in Hong Kong. I have a personal interest, which arises from the fact that my daughter has been resident there since 2010. She is one of 34,000 Britons who live and work in Hong Kong. She has told us how the situation has developed in recent weeks and we have seen things through her eyes. We had a fairly lengthy conversation at the weekend about her concerns, and those of her friends—young people who include both Britons and Hong Kong residents. For my part, I recall watching the handover in July 1997. It was a spectacular event on a wet and windy evening, when the 99-year period of British control came to an end.

I tried to understand a little then about the process by which Hong Kong would be returned to China. It seemed that there was a pretty effective agreement, which offered the best of both worlds to the Chinese Government and to Hong Kong residents, with the notion of a special administrative region retaining its free market economy and other freedoms. I understood at the time that that was broadly intended to last for 50 years after the transfer. Having watched the handover I was quite keen to see what life was like in Hong Kong and that led to my first visit as a tourist in 2007, en route to a holiday in Australia. We spent three days there and saw an ordered, dynamic and exciting place—just the kind of place that would be ideal for a young person starting their career. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds said, it was a fantastic place to do business.

With that in mind, when my daughter received the offer of a job with a role in Hong Kong, in 2010, my wife and I were enthusiastic in our guidance to her that she should take it. We based our advice on the fact that the place was secure—she would be both financially and personally secure there. The years that she has spent in Hong Kong have been very happy for her. She has had a great time and made many friends. She has learned a great deal about business and things have gone well. We have looked carefully at the news from Hong Kong and seen how protests have developed. The police we have seen on television have largely remained peaceful and we are still happy for our daughter to remain in Hong Kong, but it is a matter of concern that with substantial numbers of people protesting in a cramped and confined space the relationship between them and the authorities could deteriorate; so our advice to our daughter might change.

Of course, there are many places in the world where the response of the authorities to such protests would be less predictable, and there would be a fear of matters getting out of hand. We all want that to be prevented.

[Richard Graham]

The story that my hon. Friend is telling of his daughter working in Hong Kong, as one of almost 270,000 UK citizens there, reminds us of the enduring links between our country and that territory. Were he and his daughter surprised by the good nature, orderliness and above all peacefulness of that large demonstration a few weeks ago?

[Mark Pawsey]

I think the answer is that she was not surprised, because having spent so long there she has come to understand the nature of the Hong Kong people and authorities. She has been happy to observe, and to support—without providing physical support—the principles of those who are protesting. I understand that they are concerned largely about the erosion of what they expected in 1997, and the loss of many of the freedoms they expected. That led to the protests that began in September. My observation is that the protestors would like more democracy than the authorities are currently prepared to admit. That situation arises from the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on electoral reform, with respect to the election of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, which is of course a very high-profile post.

I understand that the NPCSC will identify two to three electoral candidates before the general public will be able to vote on them. That seems to me to go against the principles set out in the 1997 agreement. In that way, candidates that Beijing might consider unsuitable would be pre-emptively screened out. That would not be considered acceptable in most democracies, and the protesters describe it as fake democracy. That has given rise to the civil disobedience protests. The protesters have the objective of ensuring the right of all to vote; but they would particularly like the resignation of the existing Chief Executive, C.Y. Leung.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I will make a little progress before giving way again.

Every time we have this debate, Labour and Lib Dem Front Benchers simply prove our point, as they are doing today: the one party that can and will deliver a referendum on Europe is the Conservative party. I have to tell them that, as a Conservative, I am very happy to go to the country next year with that message, but I would still prefer, in the national interest and in the interests of our democracy, to move to a referendum as a matter of national consensus.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this morning we have heard a series of obfuscatory remarks from Opposition Members that have nothing to do with the Bill under discussion? That poses the very simple question of whether we should have a referendum and let the people of this country decide. Why does he think Labour Members are so frightened of letting the British people decide?

[Mr Hammond]

I have to say, in all candour, that I do not know why Labour Members are so frightened, but I think that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. The reason they are talking about everything else they can think of is that it is deeply embarrassing for the people’s party to have to acknowledge publicly that it does not trust the people. That is the essence of what we are hearing today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alexander]

I am happy, if it is what the hon. Gentleman wants, to move on to advice on electoral politics. It is the Conservative party, not this party, that has just lost two Members of Parliament to UKIP. It is the Conservative party that has not won a majority in a UK general election for 20 years. When the Prime Minister gave his speech at the Tory party conference nine years ago, it was back in the days when people believed that the Conservatives could win a majority. That was a long time ago. The Conservative strategy of first insulting UKIP, then ignoring UKIP and then imitating UKIP has proved to be an abject electoral failure. That is why there is rising panic among so many Conservative Back Benchers that, far from being able to secure a minority Government after the general election, they will be faced with an existential threat posed by their colleagues in UKIP.

[Richard Graham]

There is surely some reward for persistence in this House. I am grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary. He has talked about the effectiveness of statesmanship. Earlier, he said that the referendum would not be in the national interest. Will he therefore confirm two things for the record, for all those who might be thinking of voting Labour: first, that his party does not think that the Bill is in the national interest and that it does not want a referendum, and secondly, that his party will not vote against the Bill?

[Mr Alexander]

That was a valiant effort, but let us be clear that there is a difference between taking a conditions-based approach to a referendum by saying that when there is a transfer of sovereignty from Britain to Brussels, there should be an in/out referendum—

[Richard Graham]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that is what it said in the manifesto on which he was elected. Indeed, he walked through the Division Lobby in favour of that exact policy, with the caveat that the referendum would take place at that point. We have said that that should be strengthened, because we recognise that there would be a question over Britain’s relationship with Europe at the point at which the sovereignty lock was initiated. We would therefore strengthen the position by saying that there would be a clear legal lock, so that when there was a transfer of sovereignty from Britain to Brussels, a referendum would take place. It is therefore wholly wrong to suggest that the Opposition are opposed to a referendum on Europe.

If I recollect correctly—I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) will confirm this—the only party ever to give a referendum on European membership was Labour. We will go into the coming general election committed to providing an in/out referendum if there is a transfer of sovereignty from Britain to Brussels. That used to be the policy of the Conservative party. The party that has shifted under the weight of both internal political pressure and external electoral pressure is the Conservative party.

Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Sadly, that is one of the Back-Bench speeches that I missed.

I am grateful, in any case, for the hon. Lady’s intervention, as it gives me a little more time to refer to the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth). There is a huge difference between NATO members that are covered by the article 5 guarantee and other countries, no matter how sympathetic we are towards them, that are not. When I was 16, Czechoslovakia was invaded. I thought what a shame it was that while Czechoslovakia was temporarily free we did not scoop up this poor vulnerable country under the protection of NATO. But I was 16 then—I am not 16 now, and I know the realities. I know that what was done in the aftermath of the second world war was nothing more than a recognition of the reality that the west could band together to protect itself by means of NATO, but it could not, at that stage, protect the countries of central and eastern Europe. Russia had to be contained by means of the balance of terror involving nuclear deterrence.

Let me quickly move on to ISIL. We are not in a situation where we have a choice of good outcomes. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) set out certain conditions in hoping for a good outcome in relation to the choices that face us. I hope they are right, but the likelihood is that there will be no good outcome in these confrontations—that no good guys are going to come out on top, but only somebody of the stripe of an Arab dictator, on the one hand, or revolutionary jihadists on the other.

That is where we move on to containment by means of a balance of power, whereby sometimes there is no ally to be helped and all we can do is try to ensure that no one of a bunch of undesirable actors on the international stage gets to be dominant. That is what we have to do in this case. That is why I gently disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex about the vote that we had last year. I am absolutely delighted to look back on the fact that I was one of the people who made sure that we did not intervene to drag down Assad, atrocious though he is, because the upshot of that would have been similar to that of dragging down Gaddafi. The effect of the latter was not to further western strategic interests but the interests of our deadly enemies on the jihadist front.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the crucial things in some of the recent military adventures in the middle east is, perhaps, a lack of understanding that once a dictator goes there is no Government structure or stability and that, therefore, the rule of law and everything else we love are not possible?

[Dr Lewis]

Absolutely. As always, my hon. Friend, with his Foreign Office background, makes the pertinent point. Thanks to his courtesy of giving me more time, I would like to quote a recent editorial from The Spectator:

“Such is the march of Islamic fundamentalism that if you remove a dictatorship in the Arab world and you don’t end up with a western-style liberal democracy, you end up with a snake pit of competing religious factions, the most malign of which tends to dominate.”

What we are up against is a choice of the lesser of evils. Sometimes we will have to strike down one element of an evil choice, and sometimes we will have to suppress another. We should not, however, climb into bed with the enemy of my enemy on either occasion. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend; the enemy of my enemy can be my enemy as well. That is why we have to contain and control them and intervene from time to time, but we must not delude ourselves that there will be any perfect outcomes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Gapes]

Perhaps we can talk about a different wording later.

When I was in Perth three weeks ago, I visited the Black Watch museum, and after that I visited Edinburgh, where I was struck by a very interesting exhibition on the role of Scottish troops and Scottish diaspora troops in the British imperial forces during the first world war. Is it not sad that an organisation is campaigning on an anti-British platform when, historically, the British imperial army was, and the British Army today is, very much rooted in the contribution of Scots to many of our country’s distinguished regiments? That is another aspect that those of us from England, Wales and Northern Ireland should remind our brothers and sisters in the rest of the United Kingdom about when they vote next week.

The end of the first world war, nearly 100 years ago, led to the treaty that resulted in the creation of a number of states. Turkey, which came out of the Ottoman empire, has already been mentioned, and others included countries on its borders, such as Syria, as well as Lebanon and Jordan, and countries further away, such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Later came the establishment of the state of Israel and the consequences that were touched on earlier.

The Kurds, who were scattered among up to three, four or five countries in the region, did not get a state at that time. Events in Iraq have led to the establishment of an embryonic state in the form of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, which has its own flag and defence forces—the very brave but poorly equipped peshmerga, who are fighting so hard and who are now, I am pleased to say, going to be armed by the United Kingdom, at last, as well as by other European partners.

There will be ramifications as a consequence of current events, because the PKK in Turkey and the PYD in Syria, which has been fighting against Assad, have been co-operating with the peshmerga to get the Yazidis and others off Mount Sinjar to safety. Yet we know that Turkey, Syria and Iran are very much against an independent Kurdish state, because of what the consequences would be. Therefore, a very complex development is going on.

Some people have said that the Sykes-Picot line, which was drawn on the map by French and British diplomats nearly 100 years ago, is dead. It is not yet dead, and we must be very careful. I believe that we may need a comprehensive international conference in the region at some point to redraw the boundaries.

[Richard Graham]

Does the hon. Gentleman not consider that in the current environment of having so much instability in the region, which he is describing very well, to give encouragement to any particular group—however strong their cause, however powerful their case—might simply be the trigger for a further round of instability? Would not the fact that all sorts of others might want to redraw the boundaries, however ineptly they were drawn 100 years ago, contribute to the instability that we want to contain?

[Mike Gapes]

The instability is already there. We have to face reality. Will Syria continue as a state, or will it disintegrate into three or four component parts? If we take on ISIL and defeat and destroy it, I suspect that we will do so in alliance with a coalition of forces. Some of those forces will be non-state actors: the actors will not just be the Governments of the region, but groups such as the PYD, which is currently in effect in control of parts of Syria.

Whether we are talking about creating loose confederations, which may well be the outcome of the political discussions in Baghdad and the internal dynamics in Iraq, or about the outcome of what is happening in Syria, we need a little bit of vision in our thinking about how we can create a longer-lasting international framework for dealing with the issues. I am not saying that this is something for today—the priority today is to build a coalition to defeat the people who want to take the world back 900 years to some mythical Islamist caliphate—but we ultimately need to be aware that some issues coming out of this situation will have to be resolved.

In relation to people who want to take things back to what they were—the role of the man who admires the Soviet Union and wishes to recreate parts of it has already been mentioned—Russia’s policy now is an attempt not just to turn the clock back a few years, but to recreate some form of Soviet Union-style Russia as it was in the past. The so-called Eurasian customs union is the Putin model to rival the successful European Union, which has acted as a magnet for all the countries of central and eastern Europe. At the same time, Putin is espousing the very dangerous doctrine that Russia has a right to intervene in the internal affairs of any country where there are people who speak Russian. Following that logic is a recipe for renewed conflict all across Europe and in other parts of the world, so we have to resist it and stop it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

The hon. Lady will know that I went to the UNHRC to speak in favour of a resolution, which has brought about the inquiry. We still say that the Sri Lankan Government should listen to what is being suggested and should abide by the UN ruling. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady says from a sedentary position, “Will they?” Well, that remains to be seen. The answer is that they should. The UN has spoken. It wants an international inquiry, and Sri Lanka should respond.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Given the rise of religious intolerance, the violence in the middle east region and the ghastly widespread human suffering in Gaza, does my right hon. Friend agree that one notable exception to religious intolerance is the role of Christians and Christianity in Gaza?

[Mr Swire]

I pay tribute to Christians who are suffering oppression all over the middle east and the rest of the world. It must be extraordinarily difficult to be a Christian in Gaza at the present time.

Middle East and North Africa

Richard Graham Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to join today’s debate. The plaudits heaped on my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) have been considerable. I will not add to those, because he already knows of my respect for him. May I also warmly welcome my former colleague at the Foreign Office to his new place as Minister with responsibility for the middle east? He comes to the fray at a difficult and sensitive time, and we should all wish him good luck in his difficult task.

Today we debate a region that is large; its overall situation is dire and the scale of its humanitarian disaster is enormous. Britain’s contribution to dealing with some of the regional humanitarian crises is considerable. Let me focus, in the brief minutes available, on the situation in Gaza and Israel. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who I think has just left, referred earlier to an Israeli policy of “muscular enlightenment”. I have huge respect for my hon. Friend, who has led the way on several enlightened policies adopted by the Government, but I do not think that that phrase is his happiest one. Nor do I think that it is a good description of current Israeli policy.

The truth is that those who make play of the cynicism of Hamas in putting military assets beside, or even inside, schools and hospitals, to explain civilian deaths, need to provide a compelling explanation of how four children on a beach represent a threat, let alone a target. Those who make play of being a democracy answerable to the people need to be able to explain how immediate military action is taken, without charges, against those suspected of murdering three Jewish teenagers, when progress in resolving the murder and burning of a Palestinian teenager so soon afterwards looks very slow. Those who make play of the rule of law must explain what is legal about the entirely illegal settlements, the continued appropriation of traditional Palestinian grazing lands in the west bank, and the destruction of Palestinian homes, particularly in East Jerusalem. Those who make play of shared values cannot be surprised when British citizens, including Jews, who see the level of apartheid on the ground in cities such as Hebron say that that does not reflect our values.

Before anyone leaps to conclusions, my remarks so far are not the opening salvo in a pro-Hamas speech—far from it. Hamas’s continued commitment to the complete destruction of Israel, and its importation of military hardware from Iran, whose leaders share similar views, is intolerable. None of us who live in this country has to deal with the concept of a neighbour whose approach to us starts with the idea of our complete destruction. However, the violence and deaths on each side will achieve little. As the Israeli ambassador recognised the other day, there is no real victory to be had. When a truce is struck, as surely it will be—we must pray for it to happen as soon as possible—Hamas’s military capacity will have been significantly damaged; but its recruitment of enraged young teenagers in Gaza will probably expand, and the emotional support for it, from British Muslims and others, is likely to increase. We will have to see what the impact will be on international support, such as further Palestinian efforts to involve the International Criminal Court.

That will leave us all frustrated, though not, I believe, half as frustrated as the many peaceful citizens whom I have met both in Israel and in Gaza. I therefore think that the Minister is likely to face more pressure, first to support sanctions as described by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) against Israeli businesses based in illegal settlements; and secondly to support with intensity all efforts to get the peace talks started again. Thirdly, perhaps, there will be a question of pressure in some of the international areas that I alluded to. The months ahead, dealing with his new brief, will be difficult for the Minister. We can only hope that we will all try to stand back from being pro-Palestine, pro-Gaza, pro-Hamas or pro-Israel, and look at the issue as a monumental humanitarian disaster, from which few of us emerge with great credit.