Budget Resolutions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

In terms of grasping opportunities, does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that one in 12 people on this planet is an Indian under the age of 28? Does he agree that that is where the future lies, that that is where the opportunities for this country lie and that we can forge a trade relationship with those people only outside the customs union?

[Boris Johnson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I might point out to him as well that India is just one of 52 Commonwealth nations that together comprise 2.4 billion people and some of the fastest-growing economies in the world, with whom we can now do free trade deals, as he rightly says, outside the customs union. We will be strengthened in that endeavour by being able to build on the success—

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is very difficult to follow that speech, but on an upbeat note, I welcome this measured, balanced and forward-looking Budget, which, coupled with today’s industrial strategy, looks beyond Brexit with optimism and realism. Alas, the same cannot be said of the Momentum alternative from the Opposition. Only the shadow Chancellor, or perhaps Paul Daniels, could possibly have the chutzpah to claim that spending commitments of £330 billion already racked up, resulting in debt interest payments of £270 billion over the next Parliament—as predicted by the very forecasters whom the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) was so keen to quote earlier—would amount to nothing and pay for itself.

We cannot be complacent, and I certainly welcome the renewed urgency in tackling the productivity deficit and the industrial strategy, which concentrates on smart technologies, clean technologies, fast technology and preventive technology, because that is key. This year alone, China and India will each produce 1 million engineering graduates, many of them working in manufacturing and service sectors in high-tech industries. In 20 years, many of the growth jobs will be jobs that do not exist today, so education is key. That is why I welcome the investment in research and upskilling that is a hallmark of this Budget and today’s vote of confidence by the pharmaceutical companies in this country’s future in that area.

I welcome the help for business and the end of the staircase tax, which was feared. I welcome the help for small house builders in particular, with the extension of the home building fund to help more house building projects on small sites. I also welcome the commitment to more homes. We need to build more homes, as well as more new towns, so I welcome the stamp duty exemption for first-time young buyers. There are some unintended omissions. People will not qualify if buying a property jointly with somebody who has previously owned one or even somebody who has made a loss on previous properties. There are also question marks over how shared ownership is treated, but the principle is absolutely right.

However, we need to be more imaginative in promoting rent-to-buy schemes and creating incentives for the three quarters of a million empty properties that we still have in this country. There is also the bigger issue of fairness in stamp duty. The average price of a house in my constituency of Worthing is £327,000, while in Wrexham it is just £179,000 and in Wakefield it is £186,000, but the rate of stamp duty is the same. Should it not be based on size rather than price, depending on what part of the country people live in? We need to incentivise downsizing by older people to free up family homes, and they would still have to pay stamp duty under the current regime. We need to think smarter about incentivising imaginative intergenerational developments that encourage and enable families to stay closer to each other, rather than being priced out of the area where they grew up.

As chairman of the all-party parliamentary wine and spirit group, I should like to cite one world-beating industry: the wine and spirit industry. It supports 554,000 jobs in this country and generates £50 billion for the economy.

[Ms Ghani]

As my hon. Friend might know, the Foreign Office has 274 posts in 168 countries, and they are perfectly placed to export or promote English sparkling wine, specifically from my constituency of Wealden, as outlined in my ten-minute rule Bill, which he supported earlier this year.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend anticipates my next point. I am delighted that the Chancellor chose to freeze the duty on wines and spirits, but the duty on a bottle of wine is still £2.16, and the duty on a bottle of sparkling wine is £2.77. In France, the duty on a bottle of wine is 2p. Surely, after Brexit, we can give a boost to the English wine industry, which will be producing 10 million bottles, to allow our quality wines to compete even more on an international level. English sparkling wine beats French champagne hands down in blind tastings throughout the world. Also, why should there be a higher rate of duty on sparkling wine, when it is of a lower alcoholic strength than still wine? Surely that point has been conceded, given the action that is being taken on white cider.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Britain is producing excellent white wine, but there is a real problem with increased alcoholism and liver disease. Does my hon. Friend think that the solution would be to introduce unit pricing, to try to freeze young people out of the market for very high-alcohol drinks?

[Tim Loughton]

No, I think the answer is to encourage people to drink wisely and in a balanced and responsible way, and to drink higher value and higher quality English and British products.

I also welcome the extension of the rail discount card to those aged between 26 and 30. However, there is a flaw in that arrangement because the cards cannot be used at peak times, when many people need to travel to work. A bigger problem is the fact that many 16-year-olds who have to get to school or college or to their jobs often qualify for adult rate fares on buses and trains. I urge the Chancellor to have a look at that as well. I also urge him to look again at the case of the WASPI women, who continue to suffer the biggest injustice as a result of the change in pension ages. Perhaps at the very least he could extend the free bus pass to those women who would have qualified for their pensions at an earlier age.

Finally, one area that does not get much of a mention in the Budget relates to families and early intervention. I know that the Chancellor sympathises with this issue. Family breakdown in this country costs £49 billion a year and it is also one of the sources of the housing shortage, with families living in fragmented circumstances. We need to invest much more to deal with the problems of broken and troubled families, as well as with perinatal mental health and with child neglect, which alone costs this country £15 billion a year. Just as the Chancellor invests in roads, infrastructure and business in order to boost the economy, so we should invest more in our young children, as they represent the most valuable future of our nation and our economy.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Yemen

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). We share a border in Leicestershire and now we share a cause, and it is good to see someone who was elected only last year become passionate about an overseas country and become such an expert on it. I know that his interest in Yemen preceded his election, and I am glad to see him as a strong and effective vice-chair of the all-party group on Yemen. I speak not just as a Yemeni by birth, but as the chair of the all-party group for the past 27 years. I must rival President Saleh with the years that I have spent in office—that is not a good comparison, I know. It has been a huge honour to serve in that capacity and to be joined recently by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), both of whom are Yemenis by birth.

We now have three Yemenis sitting in the House of Commons. That should help everyone to understand that for us this is not just business; it is very personal. The situation matters greatly. My fondest memories of my childhood were watching the boats coming in. They went past Steamer Point as they were about to enter the Suez canal. Indeed, only Leicester beating Liverpool last Tuesday could match that kind of warm feeling that I had as a child. Sadly, those wonderful memories of our childhood have gone, and we face in Yemen a roll call of catastrophe, which was set out so eloquently by the hon. Members for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and for Charnwood.

I know that the Chairman of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), will have more horrifying statistics that we will struggle to understand—some 21 million in need of aid, millions of children without food and people starving to death. We hear such figures as if this is a piece of fiction, but it is fact.

I thank the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) who came on one of the all-party group’s last visits to Yemen. He caused us a lot of worry. He had been told to stay in the Sheba hotel, but, as everybody knows—especially the Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State who worked with him in Government—he cannot be told what to do. When we got up one morning and found that he was missing, we thought that he had been kidnapped. In fact, he was out in Sana’a, a world heritage centre, taking photographs. Like all visitors to Yemen, he had fallen in love with the country.

What is this country now? It is a country in poverty; a country facing the possibility of civil war; and a country that is being fought over by other foreign powers. It is not the people of Yemen who want this conflict. The conflict arises because those from outside want to topple the democratically elected Government of President Hadi, and because of that there is outside intervention.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I was touched by the care that the right hon. Gentleman showed for my welfare. It was indeed an extraordinary trip. Talking about children, at the time, the British Council was matching 1,000 schools in the middle east with schools over here. On our journey, I was able to twin a school in Worthing with a school in Aden. Does he agree that, as well as the killings and the injuries, one of the biggest tragedies is the fact that about half of all children in Yemen are not in education? So much is being done to ensure that Syrian children have some continuity in their education, but the situation in Yemen is so much worse. If we do not have the future in mind for those children, the future of the whole country will be in peril.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He is the House’s expert on education. When he talks about the need for education, he is absolutely right, because it offers a life chance. Some 1,500 people have died, and 9.9 million people are in poverty. The fact that the children cannot go to school will affect the rest of their lives, and childhood passes so quickly. They will not have the advantages of education, and we need to concentrate on that.

I join the hon. Member for Charnwood in praising the Minister—Members on the Opposition Benches do not tend to do that very often—because he deeply cares about the situation in Yemen. Whenever the all-party group has asked him to address us, whenever we have made suggestions, and whenever the right hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) has made suggestions, which I am sure that he does on a daily basis, the Minister responds. If he had half a chance, he would be on a plane via Dubai to Sana’a international airport to try to stitch together the patchwork of international diplomacy that now exists.

Much mention was rightly made by the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire of the involvement of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s involvement has been important; had that not happened, I believe that the country would have been overrun and that President Hadi would not have returned to Aden. We now need to pause. The all-party group, individual Members and the Minister have been clear that there has to be a ceasefire. The airstrikes have to stop, and we have to find other methods of trying to secure the country without the scenes that have taken place. Civilians may not have been targeted, but they have died. We need to make sure that we work with the Saudis, who are the regional power—we cannot do this without them—to make sure that we get peace in Yemen. They have a big responsibility to ensure that that happens. If Yemen falls, that will affect every other country in the middle east.

As the Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions, the frontline in Sana’a is the frontline in London. Many of the terrorist plots that I have come across as Chair of the Home Affairs Committee have come from people plotting in places such as Yemen. Indeed, many of the Paris bombers were involved in some way with what was happening in Yemen; I think one of them was trained there. We are not talking about a country far away that we do not need to care about; it really matters to our future, not just because of the humanitarian crisis but, more importantly, because of how it will affect Britain and the rest of Europe.

I thank this Minister and the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne), who has also listened carefully to what we have said. One of the great things about how the Government have approached Yemen is that they have continued what was started by the previous Government. There is no party politics in this; the whole House is united, as were the previous Prime Ministers, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, in ensuring a focus on Yemen. The current Prime Minister is also very focused on it. I have written to him on numerous occasions and his responses are detailed and relevant. He wants to make sure that peace is restored. We are all on the same side.

As I conclude, I have a few asks. First, as he also supports the ceasefire, will the Minister give a commitment to intensify the support of the UN to try to bring peace to Yemen and to ensure that we continue the dialogue with all sides, especially with Saudi Arabia? There has been a lot of criticism about the use of British weapons by the Saudis in this conflict. That will go on, of course; we live in a parliamentary democracy and we have to raise these issues. The Government have to respond, and they have.

However, we need to work with the Saudis and the Omanis. Oman has not been mentioned enough in these debates, but the Sultan in particular has a big role to play. Here is a border in the Arab world: to the north, Oman is as peaceful as a country can be but to the south is the turmoil in Yemen. The Gulf Co-operation Council also needs to be involved. It cannot be absent from the table.

It is not the Minister’s job to chase up debts, but I remind him of the great donor conference in London before the last but one general election. Billions were pledged but very few countries have paid up. We should go back to the countries that pledged and make sure that something is done.

Let me end by saying this. We still have a lot of friends in Yemen. My two children were very friendly with the son of one of the Yemeni ambassadors who came here. His name was Salman, and we have lost touch with him. The last time we saw him, he had come up to Leicester to see a football match with my young son. I think of that bright young boy and his sisters, who came to this country for a short time as the children of diplomats, and the bond of friendship that we formed with them. To think of them in a house in Sana’a without electricity, schooling or food is terrible. I hope that, if Salman is listening to this debate or hears about it in some way, he will contact us so that we know that he and his family are safe.

My real worry is that Yemen is bleeding to death. Unless we are prepared to stop the bleeding, the consequences will be horrendous.

From the bottom of my heart I beg the Minister to continue doing what he is doing, to make sure that this issue is centre stage. I thank parliamentary colleagues from all over the country, who have so much on their agendas, for coming here in such numbers to think and talk about Yemen. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who has just joined the Front-Bench team, for coming. He will be a wonderful shadow Minister. I hope he makes this issue a priority. I know we talk about the big countries, but Yemen matters to us. Please let us not allow Yemen to bleed to death.

EU Membership (UK Renegotiation)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, I think the two main factors behind the massive wave of immigration are, first, our membership of the European Union and the principle of free movement within it, and secondly, the Human Rights Act 1998, both of which mean that we are effectively unable to control our borders. If we want to control our borders, however, leaving the EU is an absolute prerequisite. We now have the farcical situation in which an unskilled Romanian immigrant can come to this country without our being able to do anything about it at all, and they get a job perhaps as a cleaner, but a skilled migrant from India who has a degree in astrophysics will find it very difficult to come to this country. We are going to get a sensible immigration policy back only if we leave the EU and get rid of the Human Rights Act.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point, but there is another point to add. Take the example of Poland—there are something like 15 million Poles living outside Poland. It has one of the best education systems in Europe and yet it is exporting people to work in jobs well below their skill level in the UK and other countries like it. Is not the point that getting control of immigration is good for countries such as Poland, so that they can make sure that more of their people want to stay at home and contribute to their economies? This is about what is good not just for Britain, but for eastern Europe and other countries from which many people are coming to the UK.

[Mr Hollobone]

As always, my hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. I think we want to allow into this country Polish people who have the skills that our economy needs, and we do not need in this country Polish people who do not have the skills that we need. At the moment, because of our EU membership, we are unable to control that and that will have implications, as he rightly said, for the Polish economy as well as for ours.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Gethins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the correction. Based on that, will the Minister tell us on which side he will be campaigning in the forthcoming referendum? Similarly, I do not want to be too hard on Labour Members. I sincerely hope that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) will be with us on the European portfolio by the end of today. I know how committed he is to the European perspective.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about what Ministers might be able to do. What will SNP spokesmen be able to do, and is it the policy of every single SNP Member that they are in favour of our continued membership of the EU?

[Stephen Gethins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, which leads me nicely on to the position of the only party in this House that is united on the European Union—[Interruption.]—notwithstanding our colleagues in Northern Ireland. The SNP has set out its position clearly. First, we are against a referendum, because we do not think that it would bring substantial change; Conservative Members seem to agree. The other reason, and a smaller point, is that it was in our manifesto not to have a referendum on the European Union. Since we won the election—it was the worst election result for the Conservatives in Scotland since 1865, 150 years ago—we have stuck to our manifesto commitments, revolutionary as that might seem, by voting against a referendum.

The SNP Government, joined by their partners here in London, have set out their position. The First Minister made a very good case in a speech on 2 June to the European Policy Centre. At the moment we see an opportunity for renegotiation, but as many Members have said, we think that the Government are doing a great job of losing friends and influence throughout Europe. Areas for renegotiation set out by the Scottish Government include public health; the Scottish Government have so far been unable to implement minimum pricing for alcohol. Whether or not others agree with it, it is the democratically elected Scottish Government’s way of tackling a specific public health issue.

Another area is fishing; obviously, although the Minister can confirm this, there will be no treaty change. Scottish fishermen can tell of the failings of the common fisheries policy; they were of course described by the UK Government when we entered the European Union as expendable in the pursuit of the UK’s broader interests, so they are well aware of the impact of UK membership of the European Union.

China (Human Rights)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swire]

We do speak out without fear or favour. The United States is responsible for making its own comments on various matters. I refer the hon. Gentleman to my earlier comment that we supported an EU statement on 15 July on the detentions in Zhejiang. We believe that that is the right place for us to do that, along with our bilateral discussions with the Chinese themselves.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

As we have heard yet again, freedom of speech and dissent in China are being brutally repressed, not least in Tibet, where the mere possession of a photograph of the Dalai Lama can result in imprisonment or worse. In the UK, our democracy is built on the principle of free speech, so can the Minister tell me why protesters in the Mall exercising their right to draw attention to human rights abuses in Tibet were this week corralled behind barricades at the back while Chinese state-sponsored cheerleaders were given “Love China” T-shirts, Chinese diplomatic bags and a prime position at the front?

[Mr Swire]

My hon. Friend is an assiduous campaigner for Tibet and he will know that, after the death of the senior Tibetan Buddhist, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, in July, we supported an EU statement and the remarks of a Foreign Office spokesman were carried in the media. Prior to Tenzin’s death, I continued to call for his release, including in parliamentary debates on Tibet in June and in December 2014.

Tibet

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Tibet.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I am delighted that we have the opportunity so early in this Parliament to debate a subject that is close to my heart and, I know, to the hearts of many Members of the House. When we last debated Tibet in Westminster Hall, about six months ago, it was for an hour and a half. I seem to remember that it was over-subscribed; there were far too many Members who wished to speak and far too little time for them to do so. That is why I asked the Backbench Business Committee, before the end of the last Parliament, for a three-hour debate, and I hope that we will have one now.

This week, as all Members present will know, we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta. Commentators here in Parliament and around the world have been eager to remind us of the importance of our tradition of democracy and the rule of law. Speaking about the anniversary, the Foreign Secretary said:

“The UK will continue to defend the values of the rules-based international system which can trace its origins to this landmark document.”

Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council on 15 June, just three days ago, the Foreign Office Minister of State, Baroness Anelay, said:

“It is our solemn duty to give voice to those whose rights have been violated and abused, to call for accountability and to work with those who want a different future—a future where universal values are not simply words in a UN treaty but a reality of everyday life… So in this year of anniversaries, eight centuries after Magna Carta, let us give a voice to all those whose views and fears are not heard. Let us ensure that our voice goes beyond words to action. Let us remember that universal values need to be truly universal, for everyone everywhere.”

Those are fine words, and I am sure that every Member in this debate and in Parliament would endorse them fully.

It is timely at the beginning of a Parliament to remind ourselves of the practical applications of those values and to illustrate our commitment by considering closely the position of one group of people whose rights have been violated and abused, and who might expect this Parliament, this country and our Government to speak out for them, to give them the voice that they are systematically denied. They are the people of Tibet.

Many Members present will have had a long involvement in the issue of Tibet, and I have no doubt are well informed about its history and the oppressions suffered by its people since the Chinese invasion in 1951, but many new Members who are just as interested might be less well informed, so I make no apology for giving an overview of the historical situation of Tibet and of the Dalai Lama, who will celebrate his 80th birthday—his 56th in exile—on 6 July, just two and a half weeks from now.

Tibet has had a tumultuous history, during which it has spent long periods functioning as an independent nation. An early example of British involvement in Tibet is the short-lived treaty of Lhasa, signed after a British colonialist excursion into that country under the leadership of Francis Younghusband in 1904. It is worth mentioning as evidence that, at least during that period, Britain regarded Tibet as an independent state with which it was legally possible to treat. That contradicts the view promoted by the Chinese Government that Tibet has never been more than a province or collection of provinces forming part of China. Indeed, Chinese official histories refer to the exchange of envoys between the Tang dynasty, which ruled China between the seventh and 10th centuries, and the Tubo kingdom, the ancient name for Tibet, suggesting that they were separate nations at the time.

What is not in question are Tibet’s unique cultural traditions. Ethnic Tibetans have a four centuries-long allegiance to the Buddhist tradition of which the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual leader. In the years before the Communist party came to power in China, Tibet was governed by a priestly caste and was a separate, independent state. When the Communist party came to power, the Chinese army invaded Tibet and attempted, but failed, to force the young Dalai Lama to act as a client ruler. However, after a popular uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama and his supporters were driven into exile in India following an alleged threat to his life. The Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, welcomed the exiled Tibetans to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, where they established a Parliament and Government in exile.

In May 2011, the Dalai Lama announced his retirement as the political leader of his people, but he will of course always remain the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. However, that step by the Dalai Lama has in no way diminished the fear and loathing with which the Chinese Government regard His Holiness. They describe him as a separatist, a supporter of terrorism, and—maybe worst of all in the lexicon of communist China—a splittist. Since the 1980s, the Dalai Lama has not pursued the aim of full independence for Tibet, but has sought only what he calls a middle way—full autonomy for the people of Tibet—although many Tibetan activists still believe in the possibility of a truly independent Tibet.

Meanwhile, the Chinese, having created what they describe as the Tibet autonomous region, or TAR, have done everything in their power to undermine that autonomy and to destroy the ethnic and cultural identity of Tibet. They have sought to isolate the Dalai Lama and have used their political and economic influence to bully the Governments and parties that support him. I aim to outline some of the ways in which they have done so and to explain why I believe that we have a moral obligation to support those suffering under the oppression that has resulted from the “Chineseification” of Tibetan culture.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my fellow officer of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet for giving way. I am sorry that I will not be able to stay for the whole debate and make a full contribution. Is it not ironic that the Chinese constitution recognises the diverse culture and heritage of the various peoples who make up the People’s Republic of China? Whatever arguments we may have about the politics of it, China is clearly failing to recognise and protect the culture, heritage and, indeed, language of the Tibetan people, which is being destroyed at the hands of the Chinese Government.

[Fabian Hamilton]

Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend, if I may call him that, and fellow officer of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet. In May 2006—more than nine years ago—I had occasion to visit Lhasa and the TAR under supervision by the Chinese Government, along with four other members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, to see for myself exactly how much change had taken place.

The Chineseification of Lhasa, through the encouragement of ethnically Han Chinese citizens to settle in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet, was extraordinary. We learned while we were there that Tibetan was not allowed to be the main language in schools in the city of Lhasa. Mandarin had to be spoken first, and Tibetan was, to all intents and purposes, outlawed by the mayor and provincial Government of the TAR. That was sad to see.

Many elements of Tibetan culture were being suppressed by the Administration and the local Communist party. I know that that has continued apace since the opening of the Chengdu to Lhasa railway, which has allowed many more people to travel much more easily to that extremely high city, where those who are there for only a few days suffer from altitude sickness.

I hope to show that events in Tibet have global implications, and that by failing to speak out against the political, environmental and economic oppression in the TAR, we risk allowing a bully to influence world events and undermine our values.

As an example of that bullying process, let us consider that the 14th world summit of Nobel peace laureates was scheduled to convene in South Africa in October 2014 to honour the late Nelson Mandela’s legacy. However, it had to be cancelled when several Nobel peace laureates pulled out after the South African Government failed to issue a visa to one of the laureates, the Dalai Lama. That is just one example of Chinese pressure; in fact, China went on to thank South Africa for not issuing the Dalai Lama a visa. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said:

“China highly appreciates the support offered by the South African government on issues concerning China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. We also believe that South Africa will continue to uphold this correct position and continue to support China in this regard.”

Let us remind ourselves that the Dalai Lama has been in exile since 1959. That a country such as South Africa should be so afraid of losing important Chinese investment that it was willing to renege on the solidarity offered by Nelson Mandela himself when the Dalai Lama visited Cape Town years ago is truly a tragedy.

China has tried such tactics on many Governments, our own included. In May 2012, David Cameron and Nick Clegg privately met the Dalai Lama in London, outside St Paul’s cathedral, where the Dalai Lama was being awarded the Templeton prize for his contribution to human spirituality. The Chinese Government made a formal protest to the British ambassador in Beijing, saying that that meeting had “harmed” China-UK relations and had

“hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”.

In addition, in a public statement, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, urged the UK

“to respond to China’s solemn demand and stop conniving and supporting Tibetan separatists”.

The Chinese Government then cancelled the visit to the UK of a top official, Wu Bangguo, Chair of the National People’s Congress.

In April 2013, David Cameron postponed an official trip—

[Fabian Hamilton]

I am so sorry. Thank you for correcting me, Mr Gray. Let me try again.

In April 2013, the Prime Minister postponed an official trip to China after Beijing indicated that senior leaders were unlikely to meet him, yet the Government have been clear on their position. They regard Tibet as

“part of the People’s Republic of China.”

Does that mean that Her Majesty’s Government do not support those Tibetans who call for independence? With their professed support for the right of self-determination and their commitment to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, would it not be more appropriate for the Government explicitly to support the Tibetans’ right to self-determination?

I ask the Minister to clarify the Government’s position on dialogue between Chinese and Tibetan representatives. Without such dialogue, the Dalai Lama’s call for genuine autonomy for Tibet cannot possibly be achieved. The Chinese Government have put obstacles in the path of such dialogue by requiring, in their own latest White Paper on Tibet, that His Holiness the Dalai Lama make a

“public statement that Tibet has been an integral part of China since antiquity”.

In the past, the Chinese maintained that a precondition for talks would be the abandonment by the Dalai Lama of his stance on independence. He has effectively done that, but after every concession made by His Holiness further barriers have been raised by the Chinese Government. I strongly hope that Her Majesty’s Government can and will resist efforts to force the UK to isolate the Dalai Lama.

However, this is not simply a debate about history. The rights of the Tibetan people—both collective rights, and the rights of individuals and families—have been horribly breached. Religious freedoms have been attacked for decades, and religious institutions have been suborned. Along with the call from the political head of the Tibet autonomous region for Buddhist temples to

“become propaganda centres for the ruling Communist Party”,

there are proposed new counter-terrorism laws that will allow sweeping measures to be taken to suppress religious activity. Many rites that are central to the traditional worship of the Tibetan people, such as the lighting of butter candles, will be treated as subversive acts, as they imply support for the Dalai Lama. Have our Government raised concerns about these proposed new counter-terrorism laws, which appear to contravene the protection of religious freedoms enshrined in international and—until now—Chinese law?

The Chinese Government have given themselves the right to interfere in spiritual life and to deny the approval of the reincarnate lamas named by Tibet’s spiritual leaders, all of whom they have forced into exile. A key role of the Dalai Lama is the obligation to select the successor to the Panchen Lama. The selection of His Holiness is Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who was a six-year-old boy in 1995—20 years ago—when he was hailed as the reincarnation. He was abducted by the Chinese authorities, along with his family. The Chinese authorities will not reveal his whereabouts and say that he is in “protective custody”. The Chinese authorities have decreed that another young man, Gyaltsen Norbu, will be the next Panchen Lama.

If Choekyi Nyima’s custody can be described as protective, he may be much more fortunate than the many other political prisoners being held in Tibet today for a range of offences, from displaying hand-drawn copies of the Tibetan flag to taking part in explicitly religious practices. For example, one monastic leader, Thardoe Gyaltsen, was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment for possessing copies of the Dalai Lama’s religious teachings and another, Geshe Ngawang Jamyang, was beaten to death in jail.

We should also be aware of the case of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, which I have raised with the Minister before. He was sentenced to death for alleged involvement in a bomb plot, for which there was no evidence. His sentence was later commuted to life in jail. He has served seven years and is believed to be in dangerously poor health. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to call for immediate medical parole for him, and to continue to press for answers on the whereabouts and safety of the Panchen Lama.

For these prisoners, as for other political prisoners, justice is very hard to achieve. At present, there are more than 600 known political prisoners in Tibet. Lawyers and human rights campaigners who take up the cases of such prisoners are threatened, and in many cases lose their licence to practise law. How do the Government propose to support their right under international law to a fair trial? Furthermore, with regard to the annual publication of Her Majesty’s Government’s report on human rights, do the Government review their policies in relation to countries of concern? How can the United Kingdom strengthen its policies on Tibet, so as to take a clear stance on the essential issue of human rights?

Tragically, in desperation at their situation, as many as 120 Tibetan activists have sought the ultimate expression of frustration and grief and committed self-immolation. Such actions are certainly not sanctioned by the Dalai Lama, who has spoken of his sadness and questioned the effectiveness of such actions in the face of the Chinese authorities, who treat them as criminal and immoral acts, punish the families of victims and portray such suicides as terrorist acts.

Of course, monks and nuns bear the brunt of Chinese wrath. Many are barred from their monasteries, and almost none can get visas to travel even within their home country. However, it is not only members of religious communities who suffer in Tibet. Other victims of Chinese displeasure include those Tibetans who have worked hard to preserve the country’s linguistic heritage. That falls foul of new regulations issued in many parts of Tibet, such as Rebkong, where new rules criminalising freedom of expression are being reinforced. They include rule No. 4, which prohibits

“establishing illegal organizations… under the pretext of ‘protecting the mother tongue’”

and

“literacy classes”.

Many artists, poets and musicians who have attempted to celebrate ethnic identity are among those who have been arrested, jailed and—in many cases—tortured. Meanwhile, across the world China promotes its own language and culture by interfering with the academic freedoms of universities, in which they have funded so-called Confucius Institutes. Those schools actively undermine western support for Tibet and Taiwan, and control the employment of staff within the institutes, often under employment law that conflicts with that of Europe and the United Kingdom.

What steps will Her Majesty’s Government take to ensure academic freedom and the human rights of staff in those institutes? Although it is hard for western Governments to protect the culture and human rights of minority groups in faraway countries, is it too much to ask that the Government take steps to control the spread of Chinese propaganda in the United Kingdom? The rigid censorship that the Chinese seek to impose on news media and the internet is well known. We must not allow similar restrictions on the freedoms of commentators, educators and students in our own country.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, as he always does on this subject. I have made representations to the Home Secretary on this issue, but does he share my concern that His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is visiting this country at the end of the month and again in September, has been afforded no police protection? During recent visits to other countries people have tried to disrupt his peaceful meetings and conferences, so there is the threat that many of his meetings may have to be abandoned.

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Dalai Lama’s free speech is being put at risk? What message will be sent to the Chinese people if the British Government do not afford him the protection that is normally afforded a dignitary of his stature?

[Fabian Hamilton]

I will mention that issue at the end of my speech. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am very concerned. People in the Tibetan community, supporters of the Tibetan community in the UK, supporters of the Dalai Lama, and Buddhists and non-Buddhists throughout Britain who love to hear the Dalai Lama’s words are extremely concerned that there is a threat to his personal safety. So far, the Government have offered no security for His Holiness’ visits to the United Kingdom. I thank my hon. Friend for taking up the issue with the Home Secretary. We need to put more pressure on the Government to ensure that the personal security of His Holiness is protected by our security services, especially as it is under threat.

Events in Tibet and our response to them have global implications that cannot be ignored. Many of those who have been shot at, arrested and intimidated in Tibet have been campaigning against the environmental exploitation of and damage to the fragile ecosystem of that beautiful country. That damage must certainly have global consequences. Almost half the world’s population depends on water from Tibet, and about 1.3 billion people directly depend on its major rivers.

The Chinese have increased the number of dams in the Tibetan plateau region, and further planned works will deprive millions of water in the downstream regions. In addition, unchecked mining operations in Tibet have been a major cause of environmental degradation and pollution of the water systems. Tibet’s glaciers are the fastest melting in the world, and many scientists regard Tibet as an environmental barometer. The opening of the Gormo-Lhasa railway, which I mentioned earlier, has not only sped up the Chineseification of Tibet by allowing a massive influx of ethnically Han Chinese, but enabled the swifter and more voracious exploitation of Tibet’s natural resources. Many rare native species of plants and animals will have to take their chances in a landscape that is at serious risk of destruction.

Protests against such pollution, exploitation and destruction—many of them by members of traditional nomadic groups that depend on the country’s grasslands and the purity of its waters—have been among those crushed by the Chinese. Many nomadic groups have been forcibly resettled, as I saw for myself in 2006. The US Special Co-ordinator for Tibetan Issues, Sarah Sewall, has said:

“Tibetans have an inalienable right to be stewards of their own cultural, religious and linguistic heritage”.

Will Her Majesty’s Government add their support to that of the US in encouraging the Chinese to live up to their international obligation to respect that right?

Many will ask what we in the UK can do to help the Tibetans in their attempts to preserve their language and culture, defend their spiritual freedom and traditions, and save their country from physical exploitation and damage. We should not underestimate our authority and resources. In China, a new law—the foreign non-governmental organisation management law—is being drafted, which seeks to restrict the activities of foreign NGOs and give the Chinese police the authority to enter their premises and seize documents and property. Those powers may have a massive impact on the work of groups that are working to promote health education and develop civil society in China as a whole and Tibet in particular. How will Her Majesty’s Government respond to those proposals, and what steps will they take to support the work of NGOs?

Many thousands of Tibetans now live in exile as refugees who depend on the welcome and support of host Governments and of campaigning and fundraising groups. We must continue to work with the groups representing Tibetans abroad. Will the United Kingdom Government continue to explore the possibility of cultural exchanges with Tibetans, whether from within Tibet itself or from the communities living in places such as India and Nepal? Programmes such as the Chevening scholarship, excellent as they are, have only a limited availability to Tibetans living within Tibet and are not available to refugees. If the UK Government were to extend that scheme and help refugees to take up degree and postgraduate courses in Britain, they would be better able to contribute to their host societies and help build civil society on their eventual and much desired return to Tibet.

The promotion and survival of the Tibetan language depend on it continuing to be heard. Will Her Majesty’s Government call on the BBC Trust to consider including Tibetan as one of the languages in which the World Service is broadcast?

The mention of those refugee communities brings me to my final, most topical, point. The terrible earthquakes in Nepal in April and May had a horrific impact on the Nepalese people, who are some of the poorest in the world. In the past, they have extended generous hospitality to their Tibetan neighbours who have continued to flee from the oppression in their homeland. At this time of crisis, it has become more difficult for them to do so. The catastrophe has heavily affected the Tibetan refugees in particular, as they are effectively stateless citizens. Many of them survive by making traditional Tibetan handicrafts, and many of the small factories in which they work have been destroyed.

There is grave concern, as recently expressed by Amnesty International, that the Tibetans’ lack of status within Nepalese society will make it hard for them to access the aid that is being provided by international communities. I recently had a case in my constituency of a British man of Tibetan origin, whose wife and child were made homeless by the earthquake in Kathmandu, but were having serious problems trying to obtain a visa to come to the United Kingdom because my constituent does not earn enough to support them. Meanwhile, over the border inside Tibet, there is some evidence that the Chinese authorities are using the earthquake as a pretext to redevelop parts of Tingri county against the wishes of local people, who are being forcibly relocated.

Finally, will the Government ensure the personal safety of His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he visits the UK at the end of this month to lecture at a Nepalese Buddhist temple? Sadly, one of the world’s foremost proponents of peace and compassion is the subject of threats from groups opposed to what he stands for. It is essential that when His Holiness comes to the UK we guarantee that he will be safe and secure. His message has huge resonance throughout this country and in every country in the world. We should value it more, and stand up more strongly to the bullying tactics of those who continue to oppress the Tibetan people and vilify His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

European Union Referendum Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, for three reasons. First, I congratulate you on your rightful elevation to the Deputy Speakership. Secondly, I congratulate the makers of three excellent maiden speeches, my hon. Friends the Members for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) and for Havant (Alan Mak) and the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott). They have certainly set the bar for quality high. Thirdly, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), who is not a Johnny-come-lately to the referendum campaign but has consistently been in favour of giving the people the vote and seems to be the only person who has spoken in this House today who voted no back in 1975.

Who remembers the words of the failed UK Independence party candidate for South Thanet, Nigel Farage, in the run-up to the general election, when he constantly hoodwinked the British public with his grandstanding with lines such as

“it is infuriating how the Conservative Party can string the British public along and constantly make claims over holding an EU Referendum when it was clear from day one that it would never happen”?

Not only is the European Union Referendum Bill already under way within days of the state opening of this new Parliament, but the Prime Minister has hit the ground running and toured EU capitals to start the serious business of renegotiating our terms of membership and the whole future of the EU, and the main Opposition party has belatedly come round to our way of thinking. Barring an affront to the democratic will of the people, in the upper House there will be a referendum on our future membership of the European Union, with a straight in or out vote, before the end of 2017 at the latest.

The only broken promises and stringing along of the public came from UKIP. Indeed, the biggest threat to a meaningful referendum came from UKIP. If we had listened to its siren voice and held a referendum immediately, all the polls suggest that it would have resulted in a yes vote to stay in before we had achieved any reform. It would probably have brought the nightmare scenario of the UK staying in a reformed EU, so that when the PM went to summits in search of reform in the future he would be met with a frosty “Forget it, chum, you voted to stay in the club. Like it or lump it.”

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s point reinforces why it will be so important that the facts are clearly laid before our constituents. Will he welcome the Church of England’s initiative to provide hustings so that our constituents can hear clearly and objectively both sides of the argument?

[Tim Loughton]

I absolutely welcome that, and I hope that one thing that will come out of this referendum is a full, frank and long debate engaging as many members of the electorate as possible, as was the case in Scotland, so that at last we can discuss the situation and familiarise ourselves with the facts.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this should not be an in/out referendum but a referendum on whether we want further and closer political union or a common European market for all our goods and services?

[Tim Loughton]

The argument about an ever-closer union has been won. That movement is dead, certainly as far as this country is involved. It will be a question of whether we can make the EU work not just for the UK but for the sustainability of the whole EU, or whether we are better going it alone. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to achieve genuine, lasting and sustainable reform of the EU, not just in our interests but in the interests of the whole EU.

Many of us believe that the EU in its current form is not working. It cannot survive in an increasingly globally competitive world. The status quo is just not sustainable. If one statistic tells that story, it is the fact that within five years the EU’s share of world GDP will be just 60% of the levels that we enjoyed back in 1990. We are shrinking while the rest of the world gets bigger, and we are not getting a slice of that cake.

Some of us have waited a long time for this moment. Many constituency Fridays were brutally sacrificed in vain in support of the valiant efforts of my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton South (James Wharton) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I am co-chair of the Fresh Start group, which was set up with the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) and for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). We have produced with Open Europe detailed work on the amount of change that it is possible to achieve. We have had scores of meetings with European Ministers and Members of Parliament from across EU countries. One thing that we need to appreciate is that the 28 members of the EU all have their own reasons for wanting to be part of the EU.

Finland shares a 1,500 km border with Russia. Poland and the Czech Republic talk about the relationship with Russia. They want a bulwark against Russia, which is why the EU is so important to them. Other countries want the agricultural and trading links. The reasons are all different, and we have gone wrong in the past by assuming that all countries have one reason for becoming and staying members of Europe. The scenario has completely changed. We have a clear and present prospect of a referendum by 2017, in which the British people could vote, if they choose, to leave the EU. The dynamics of EU reform have changed drastically.

Inevitably, this debate is less about the Bill itself—goodness knows, its progenitors were scrutinised exhaustively in this place. I support the detail of the Bill. I do not support extending the franchise in the actual vote, which has become a recent talking point. The main issue will be how the next months and years pan out up to the referendum, and how its passing will change the dynamics of the debate in Europe.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will not, because I have given way twice.

I have a few words of advice for the Prime Minister. We have made a great start. Go for maximum reform. Take it to the wire all the way to 2017. It will be a long, hard slog. He will find many detractors along the way and also many allies, but the major players in Europe who will shape its future—like Germany—desperately need the UK to be part of it, shaping it along with them. We will achieve some things that we want, and other things that we had not expected. That is how negotiation works, and we will inevitably have to compromise. As the Finnish Prime Minister said:

“The EU without Britain is pretty much the same as fish without chips. It’s not a meal any more.”

This is not just about a better deal for the United Kingdom, important though that is. It is about a sustainable future for the whole of the EU. There are encouraging signs already. The “ever-closer union” mantra of Monnet is dead. The French Economy Minister said this month that it was time to accept the idea of a two-speed Europe. The Prime Minister’s notion that we need the flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc, is gaining traction.

We need to remember why we joined the EEC in the first place and in particular the advantages of the single market that so attracted Mrs Thatcher, despite the warnings from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). Yet the single market is far from complete, especially in services. Services account for 71% of the EU GDP, yet only 22% of this is from intra-EU trade; there are still some 800 professions in Europe that are subject to country regulation; and only 11% of internet shopping across Europe is cross-border. There is still lots to do, yet we seem to spend too much time sitting around the table in Brussels, working out ways of making regulations more complicated for our businesses and citizens, rather than looking beyond Europe to see how, working together, we can secure a larger slice of the global economy for all 28 members, for our mutual benefit.

I could talk about a shopping list of what we want, but now is not the time to do so. Now is not the time to hamper the Prime Minister’s negotiation with emotional and artificial red lines. Now is the time to pass a Bill that will trigger a referendum, which will change the mindset of our EU partners to achieve sustainable reform for the whole of Europe. The Prime Minister’s every waking conversation, discussion, breakfast, lunch and dinner with EU leaders must focus on getting the best possible reform package for us and our European partners. This Bill, at last, is an essential part of achieving that and some sort of cross-channel state of nirvana.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Britain in the World

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I have to make some progress, because many Members wish to speak this afternoon.

We are clear that to be successful in the future the EU has to change course. It has to become more outward looking, more competitive and less bureaucratic. I am confident that that vision is increasingly shared across the continent. Through the renegotiation process, which the Prime Minister has now started, we have the opportunity to deliver change that will benefit all EU citizens, as well as addressing the long-standing concerns of the British people.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Does the Foreign Secretary share my concern at the forecast that in the next five years the share of world GDP by the EU will be just 60% of the level it was back in 1990? It is not just in the interests of the United Kingdom that we reach a settlement; it is in the best interests of the sustainability of the whole EU that it is reformed.

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are two parts to this agenda: reform of the European Union to make it more competitive, more accountable, more effective and more outward looking, which is in the interests of all of us; and Britain’s specific requirements for its relationship with the European Union. We will negotiate a package that embraces both those concepts, and crucially it is in everyone’s interests that we settle the issue of Britain’s relationship with the EU once and for all, and that it is the British people who make that important decision in 2017.

Yemen

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I want to say a few words in support of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who has brought a hugely neglected subject to the attention of the House. This is a neglected part of the middle east, yet, as he mentioned, it is crucial to the security of the region and, indeed, the wider world. It also has a strategic trade position. Some 5% of the world’s oil trade goes through the Bab al-Mandab strait. That is obviously an important trade route. Of course, the situation has greatly worsened in recent weeks, and there was the news just last week that the United Kingdom, the United States and France have closed their embassies in the country, so the ambassador would no longer be able to offer his bed to the right hon. Gentleman if the opportunity afforded itself again in the future.

I well remember the trip with the right hon. Gentleman some years ago. It was a fascinating journey. Yemen is probably the most extraordinary country that I have ever visited. The trip involved something of a pilgrimage to pay homage to the birthplace of the right hon. Gentleman at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Aden, where we were able, with the aid of several television cameras, to dig out his birth records. That was after an overland trip from Sana’a to Aden, which the right hon. Gentleman promised would take only three or four hours. We started off at 9 am and arrived at 11.30 at night. The noble Lord Kilclooney, who was among our number, was convinced that we had been kidnapped by a tribe at one stage of our journey. In fact, such was the security situation that the ambassador was allowed to travel only by air and not by land, but we, being mere dispensable MPs, were able to travel by land.

What we saw on the trip, apart from an extraordinary country apparently still deeply entrenched in the middle ages in many respects, was one that was deeply stricken with poverty. One could see the potential for the encroachment of extremism into some deeply impoverished communities who had little else to survive for and were easily tempted by extremist voices that offered, on the face of it, some form of hope out of their despair. It is that form of poverty that gives rise to extremism and everything that goes with it. That is why our international aid effort in the wider world but particularly in Yemen is so necessary. I think that we can take particular pride in the resources that we have put into alleviating poverty, malnutrition and the severe problems the right hon. Gentleman enumerated.

We also visited the port of Aden. It was one of the great ports of colonial times—it was the fuelling station for the British fleet travelling to India—and yet it is now in decay, with very little activity going on. It is a vast deep-water port that still has the potential to be a major economic player as a staging post in the middle east, so it was disappointing that the Dubai ports company DP World attempted to invest in the port in 2008 and obtained the concession, only for that concession to be relinquished in 2012 because it was said that Dubai was not investing in the port but seeking to mothball it because of the effect that it might have on Dubai’s own interests. I believe that the port offers major potential for regenerating economic growth in the country, which would have huge implications if we got it right.

When we visited Yemen some seven or eight years ago, large parts of the country were effectively no-go areas, and we were unfortunately unable to visit much outside Sana’a and Aden. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arabian peninsula, but it is the second most populous. In addition to all its current problems, its environmental problems can only get worse. It is a water-poor country and will run out of water resources in the next 15 to 20 years unless some serious investment is made in water management, including desalination plants. Unlike its wealthy neighbours, it has virtually no oil.

I was struck on our visit by the great links between our country and Yemen. The colonial links with Aden go back a long way. Veterans in my constituency remember being in the Army when it was withdrawn abruptly from Aden by the Wilson Government back in 1967, when things kicked off. There ensued some 25 years of chaos in the country, with various civil wars and the dismemberment of the north and the south before Yemen was eventually put back together in the 1990s. On our visit, we met many Cabinet Ministers who were highly Anglophile and highly articulate. Many had children who were at universities in the United Kingdom, if they had not done likewise themselves. They had interests in the United Kingdom and spoke fondly of it. It struck me as extraordinary that we did not have a closer relationship. Indeed, I wondered why Yemen was not part of the Commonwealth, given some of the culture and background that our countries share. There are, and there certainly were, people in positions of responsibility in Yemen who are an obvious channel for dialogue, discussion and potential co-operation with western nations and particularly with the United Kingdom. We have an open door for the British Government to continue to play a significant role in the future of that troubled part of the Arabian peninsula.

As the right hon. Member for Leicester East rightly said in his opening remarks, the future of, and the solutions to, Yemen are largely reliant on its partner states in the Arabian peninsula and the wider middle east. Yemen will require financial backing. We have heard about the abortive attempts to raise donor backing in the Friends of Yemen conference some years ago, in which we played such a strategic role.

Saudi Arabia has, from time to time, injected large quantities of money into Yemen to prevent economic collapse but also, of course, because many economic migrants from Yemen have come into Saudi Arabia. In the 1990s, at the time of the first Gulf war, the President of Yemen backed Saddam Hussein for extraordinary reasons and thereby managed to alienate himself from all the allied forces, Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries. Some 1 million Yemeni workers were expelled from Saudi Arabia and had to return to Yemen. That caused huge economic hardship. There was a further crackdown on illegal labourers in Saudi Arabia in April 2013, and hundreds of thousands of Yemeni workers were expelled back into Yemen, which has had huge economic implications.

The co-operation of Saudi Arabia is absolutely key to getting some form of economic stability in Yemen. At a time when the country is in the hands of militant Shi’a groups of one description or another, the Saudis are understandably loth to underwrite further loans to Yemen, because they do not know what its future will be. I gather that there are moves afoot to erect a 1,500 km fence across the whole Saudi-Yemeni border. That is a porous and fluid border, across which many al-Qaeda terrorists and others have moved from north to south and vice versa over many years. We also have to consider the role of Qatar, which invested a not insubstantial sum of money some years ago in real estate in Sana’a. One dreads to think what state that investment is in at the moment. The point is that the co-operation of those neighbouring Gulf countries, and their working in partnership, is absolutely key.

A point that hon. Members have only touched on is the strategic aspect—what might be termed the “great game” that Saudi Arabia and Iran are playing out for influence in Yemen, whether by backing a particular Government or providing other support. Yemen is in the middle of what has been called a Saudi-Iranian cold war, and the co-operation of both those countries is needed to find a solution in Yemen. It is not in the interests of Saudi Arabia or Iran for Yemen to become a training ground for terrorists who will wreak havoc in other countries—Arab and non-Arab—in the middle east and the wider western world. Yemen harbours terrorists, despite the intention of the previous democratic Government to try to clamp down on them. As the right hon. Member for Leicester East has said, the huge quantity of arms in Yemen gives rise to serious concerns. If we cannot contain and regularise the situation and bring back stability in Yemen, there will be a domino effect as terrorists trained on the streets of Sana’a—or, more likely, in desert training camps—try to do harm and wreak mayhem in the capital cities of Europe.

Yemen is a neglected and little-understood country in a location that is strategically and geographically important. As a matter of security, it plays a very significant role that we ignore at our peril. I applaud the efforts made over many years by the British Government, from whichever side of the House they have been drawn—this is not a partisan matter. It has been absolutely essential to be at the table and to try to broker partnerships to bring economic stability and security to Yemen. Hand in hand with that, the direct aid that we have given has played an essential part in trying to rescue some of the poorest people in the world, who are vulnerable to falling into the hands of terrorists.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. We are talking about a difficult and frustrating situation, in which we have seen many false dawns. It is essential that we continue to take a strong interest and a strong lead in Yemen. If we can bring about a solution, it will be a great tribute to the Government’s efforts. That can be done only in partnership with all the other nations in the region, and Britain is probably better placed than any other western power to bring it about.

Destruction of Historic Sites (Syria and Iraq)

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

At 2 o’clock I must chair the Public Accounts Commission, so I will not be able to stay for the debate. I apologise to the House and I will try to come back.

I very much wanted to take part in the debate to talk about my personal experience, having visited both Syria and Iraq. I also felt that it was right to support my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). I support everything he said in his most impressive speech and I will not repeat all the excellent advice that he has given to our Government.

This issue might seem a long way away, but it is of the most dramatic importance. It is not just a cultural catastrophe, as my hon. Friend has outlined, but a humanitarian catastrophe of the first importance. One cannot divorce the preservation of artefacts from the preservation of local community. Only on Monday, Archbishop Warda of Irbil was at a meeting in the House of Lords, which I attended. He also gave a sermon in Westminster cathedral yesterday. He spoke most movingly about the trauma suffered by his community, which is of appalling proportions. The problems we have in our own country, the issues we were debating and getting very heated about in Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday and the budget I will be discussing later in the Public Accounts Commission all pale into insignificance when one listens to a man such as Archbishop Warda talk about his local community.

Twenty-five thousand Christian families have fled the Nineveh plain and 125,000 people—men, women and children—are without their homes. That is not happening in 1915 or 1940; it happened in August of last year. I have been to these places and I shall describe them a little in a moment, because I feel passionately that having started all this we have a responsibility to finish it.

Let me first follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Newark was saying about Syria. I have been to Syria, but I must admit it was not a recent visit. I have also received an invitation to speak at Damascus university on the plight of Christians, but I think that perhaps discretion is the better part of valour in not going to speak in Damascus at present. However, I have been to Damascus in the past and I visited the house in Straight street where St Paul was converted in the home of Ananias. Apparently that house is in good order and has not been destroyed. Whether that is because it is in a part of Damascus that is controlled by Assad forces, I do not know.

As my hon. Friend said, the destruction in Syria has been truly appalling. According to the United Nations, 300 cultural sites in Syria have been affected by the civil war. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research has accumulated a great deal of knowledge on what has been going on. Focusing on 18 areas of particular importance, UNITAR found 24 sites destroyed, 104 severely damaged, 85 moderately damaged and 77 possibly damaged. Those are sites of world heritage status. Such status is not granted casually; they are vital sites.

In one world heritage site in Syria, the old city of Aleppo, UNESCO believes that 121 historical buildings have been damaged or destroyed—equal to 30% to 40% of the area covered by the world heritage designation. The minaret of the 11th-century Umayyad mosque has been toppled, while the citadel of Aleppo is being occupied by military forces and has suffered at least three violent explosions.

The oldest surviving Byzantine church, that of St Simeon Stylites, built on the site of the famed hermit’s pillar, is at risk given its location 19 miles north-west of Aleppo. There is also damage to Krak des Chevaliers, which was created by the Hospitaller order in the 12th century. I should declare an interest because I am a Knight of that order. We are still around after all these centuries, trying to do good work in hospitals around the world, particularly in the middle east, and the work is extremely challenging. Illegal excavations are occurring in the Valley of the Tombs and the Camp of Diocletian—some of them undertaken using heavy machinery, bound to do a great deal of damage. The damage in Syria has been absolutely appalling.

I now turn to Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was in power, I visited the Christian communities there. I also visited Babylon, which, of course, is one of the great wonders of the world. Alexander the Great chose it to be the capital of his world empire. Following the mistaken invasion of Iraq, the coalition, unbelievably, created a military base right on top of the archaeological site, 150 hectares in size.

Babylon is a strange place. There is a lot of pastiche renovation undertaken by Saddam, but the damage to Babylon has been appalling since the invasion and it is getting worse, so I think that we do have a certain responsibility. Looters have attacked cities such as Nimrod and Nineveh, whose names resound with biblical and literary echoes that have rolled down the centuries, and they are now at the centre of destruction.

Let me quote from the prophet Nahum, whose tomb I visited in the village of al-Quosh. Of all the villages that I visited in the Nineveh plain in 2008, only two of those Christian villages—and I visited several—have not been occupied by ISIS forces. They are the villages of al-Qosh and Sharafiya. In the village of al-Qosh one can still find the tomb of the prophet Nahum, and what he wrote all those years ago still resounds today:

“Take ye the spoil of the silver, take the spoil of the gold: for there is no end of the riches of all the precious furniture. She is destroyed, and rent, and torn: the heart melteth, and the knees fail, and all the loins lose their strength: and the faces of them…are as the blackness of a kettle.”

That was Nahum talking thousands of years ago, and his tomb is right there, in one of the only two Christian villages that have not been pillaged and had their population expelled and churches trashed.

Unbelievably, in 2008 I was saying much the same thing. I organised a debate in Westminster Hall on the plight of the Christians and the Christian sites in the Nineveh plains. I also quoted Nahum, who said:

“Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.”

I said in that debate—it is there in Hansard—

“When I went to the Nineveh plains, what struck me was that there was a sense of security in those ancient, entirely Christian villages. I met many displaced people who had come up from Basra and Baghdad to settle in the Nineveh plains, and I heard some absolutely heart-rending stories.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 26WH.]

I went on to describe them.

It is extraordinary that, having started all this mess, having invaded Iraq—Saddam, for all his faults, was protecting some of these sites—

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Nicking stuff from them.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, but they were not actually being looted and the population was not actually being dispersed. Although things were bad under Saddam—I am no apologist for Saddam—I can tell my hon. Friend that they are infinitely worse there.

Back in 2008 I was given various reassurances by the then Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Bill Rammell, who told me:

“It is difficult to separate this issue from the broader picture in Iraq which, as a result of improving security and progress towards reconciliation, is a far brighter one than we have seen for several years—certainly brighter than it was a year ago.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 41WH.]

We have a responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has given some practical ideas of what we can do, but I have visited those churches and I have listened, in those churches in the Nineveh plains, to services being held in Aramaic, the ancient tongue of our Lord, and I know that it is impossible to separate the expulsion of a people from the issue of the protection of those sites. ISIS, as a result of coalition bombing, has retreated from quite a few villages on the Nineveh plains. The Christian population could possibly be enticed to go back there—because the best way to protect the villages and the archaeological sites is to get the original population back—but they are too terrified to return because they do not trust the Iraqi army.

When ISIS enter a Christian village, they tell the Christians that they have three choices—“You leave, or you convert to Islam, or you die”—so most leave. If ISIS discover that someone is a Shi’a, they give them no choice; they kill them. I am afraid, however, that the Christian population in the Nineveh plains do not have confidence that the Iraqi army, dominated by Shi’as—because many Sunnis have joined or collaborate with ISIS—can protect them. It is therefore down to us.

I am not suggesting that we send some regiment from Aldershot to those burning hot plains where they will make themselves a target, but surely there must be a way forward. Having, in a sense, destabilised Iraq and put the Christian population at risk, can we just walk away and say, “We have fulfilled our side of the bargain by just putting in six planes”? I think we have to do far more than that. We have to arm the local Christian population; that is what they are asking for. I asked that question specifically of Archbishop Warda on Monday. He said, “That is what we want you to do—send in the international peacemakers, protect our people, let our people go back to our villages, and then we can protect their sites.” The same thing, surely—although it would be an infinitely more difficult and complicated picture—applies to Syria.

I will end on that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has done a great service to the House in directing our attention to the appalling problems and humanitarian and cultural disaster going on in that part of the world. I hope that people in our country feel that, given our history, we have some sense of responsibility.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to be able to speak in a debate such as this, which seems to be on a rather obscure and specialist subject. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) so ably put it, there are far greater ramifications of what is going on in the cultural pillaging of Syria and Iraq beyond the appreciation of culture and the great treasures that are gradually disappearing.

I declare an interest not only as the vice chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on archaeology and chairman of the British Museum all-party group, but as someone who has studied Mesopotamology at Cambridge. It is not often that one gets the opportunity to revisit one’s studies in this place. I have also visited Syria twice. On my last visit there, five years ago, we went to Aleppo, a city which I think we would find hard to identify now. I found the museum there and went in search of some of the excavations by the great Mesopotamologist Sir Max Mallowan, who went to school at Lancing college in my constituency and was, of course, married to Agatha Christie. When I eventually found some of the finds from Tell Brak—one of his great excavations—rather alarmingly, I was asked by the guard who was on duty which of them I would like to buy.

Preservation of antiquities in Syria and Iraq has always left rather a lot to be desired, but there is a sense of déjà vu about this issue. After the first Gulf war there was extensive looting of the regional museums in Iraq in particular—that cradle of civilisation, Mesopotamia, to which my hon. Friends have alluded. It is estimated that the museums in Basra, Kufa and Kut, the great Nebuchadnezzar museum in Babylon and the museums in Kirkuk and Duhuk lost between them something like 4,000 priceless objects.

After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and after the great museum of Baghdad was miraculously almost untouched by the bombing, in April 2003 it fell foul of the looters. That was one of the great museums of the world; it had one of the greatest collections of cultural treasures in the world—treasures from Ur, Babylon, Nineveh, Nimrod and Ashur, examples of the earliest writing, fantastic cylinder seals and cuneiform clay tablets. Some 15,000 objects from the Sumerian, Akkadian and other periods were pillaged, including 5,000 cylinder seals, and gold and silver objects. Among them was, famously, the great vase of Warka, from the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk, one of the great treasures of the world. It was found in the temple complex of the Sumerian goddess Inanna by German archaeologists back in the 1930s. It is one of the earliest known surviving works of narrative relief sculpture with human figures, going back to the fourth millennium BC. That vase was wrenched from its base in the cabinet in the Baghdad museum. Then it went missing.

There followed an incredible story which is probably much more interesting than what happened in that rather poor film, “The Monuments Men”, about a fascinating part of history. A small delegation of mostly reservists from America were put in charge of trying to retrieve some of those treasures from the Baghdad museum. An amnesty was issued and, remarkably, out of those 15,000 objects, some 4,000 gradually trickled back to the museum. That included, remarkably, the great vase of Warka. Its return was described in The Times back in 2003. Three unidentified men in their early twenties turned up outside the Baghdad museum driving a rather clapped-out red Toyota. The Times went on:

“As they struggled to lift a large object wrapped in a blanket out of the boot, the American guards on the gate”—

at the Baghdad museum—

“raised their weapons. For a moment, a priceless 5,000-year-old vase thought to have been lost in looting after the fall of Baghdad seemed about to meet its end. But one of the men peeled back the blanket to reveal carved alabaster pieces that were clearly something extraordinary. Three feet high and weighing 600 lb intact, this was the Sacred Vase of Warka, regarded by experts as one of the most precious of all the treasures taken”

during that looting.

The vase of Warka was returned. There was great concern because it was in about 20 pieces, so it was thought to have been damaged. In fact, when the Germans dug it up in the 1930s, it was in about 20 pieces, so with a lot of conservation work and a good deal of glue the great vase of Warka was put back together. Alas, I do not know where the great vase of Warka is at present; whether it has been taken to a site of safety, I do not know. Others may have more information on that.

We had a fascinating talk from one of the reservist colonels who led that group of American soldiers retrieving those objects, who came to Parliament some years ago. Indeed, a book has been published about the looting of the Baghdad museum. He told us the story of the red Toyota and he showed us some amazing pictures. The looters tried to get into the Bank of Baghdad, where many of the treasures had been taken for safety, the gold treasures in particular.

I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who has now left the Chamber, that quite a lot of things that were thought to have gone missing were in the private collection of Saddam Hussein and other members of the Government of Iraq, so Saddam did his bit for early looting.

Among the pictures is a photograph taken from the vaults of the bank in Baghdad where, apparently, some rather hapless looters used a rocket-propelled grenade launcher to try to get through a solid steel German safe door. All the picture shows is a small dent in the safe door and a pair of boots from a hapless individual who tried to gain access. Fortunately, the looters did not succeed and many of the treasures in that bank vault were later returned to the Baghdad museum.

So there is a history of looting in that country. In addition to the 4,000 objects which were returned during that amnesty, over subsequent months and years further objects were recovered from Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Italy and the United States. It is estimated that around half of those looted objects were returned. Where they are now, I do not know. Where the others went to, we do not know.

This debate is timely. We are about to see the release of a film about the amazing life of Gertrude Bell based on the book by Georgina Howell, “Daughter of the Desert”. Gertrude Bell was an extraordinary individual who, in her time, was the oriental secretary to the high commissioner for Iraq. She played a part in the Cairo conference in 1921, alongside Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence and others. She was part of those who created the constitution of Iraq and she was also responsible for the founding of the museum of Baghdad in 1926, the major hall of which is devoted to her memory.

What happened in the 1920s sowed the seeds of what we are reaping now—what has happened in recent decades in Iraq and the greater middle east, and the history that produced Saddam Hussein. So the debate is timely. The situation in Iraq and in Syria, as we have heard, is difficult to assess, because for obvious reasons we cannot get access. I, too, have been speaking with the British Museum, which has been liaising with the UK Border Force and other agencies in case any of those objects come into our geographical territory. I have also been speaking to Sam Hardy, to whom I think my hon. Friend the Member for Newark has spoken as well. He is an archaeologist who has spent a long time specialising in the illicit trade in antiquities.

We have limited information, but from the aerial photos it is very clear that so many of these important sites have been badly damaged and looted. There have been extremely disturbing reports, to which my hon. Friend alluded, of the cold-blooded execution of those who bravely guarded these great museums, in particular the museum in Nineveh, where the site guards lost their lives trying to protect those priceless objects.

The destruction of Syria’s archaeological sites has become catastrophic. There are unauthorised excavations going on, and the plunder of and trafficking in stolen cultural artefacts which is an escalating problem. Many of the objects have already been lost to science and society, and the context in which many of them are being dug up in unsupervised conditions will be lost for ever. The trading in looted Syrian cultural artefacts has apparently become the third largest trade in illegal goods worldwide. It is big business. Back in the 1960s it was a buyer’s market as there were few national collectors interested in Islamic art or other antiquities in Syria, but that has changed dramatically since the Gulf countries—Qatar and Abu Dhabi in particular—have become interested in the artefacts. There is also great interest in China and from Germany.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and a crossroads of trade and culture for countless centuries, has been especially hard hit. Its vast, labyrinthine souk—the largest covered souk in the world—was tragically gutted by a fire in 2012. The Citadel, a castle that dates back to 3,000 BC, has been damaged. The minaret of the Umayyad mosque was toppled by fighting in 2013. Hundreds of other sites have been looted. Shops selling Syrian antiquities dot the Turkish side of the border, just 40 miles north of Aleppo.

Another wonderful site is Palmyra. I remember my visit to Palmyra—one of the most beautiful and dramatic archaeological sites in the world. I got up to see the sun rise from the temple of Bel. I had the entire complex of that huge Roman city to myself. I fear the security there left a lot to be desired in those days, let alone now, open as it is. It is an ancient settlement founded in around 2,000 BC, made famous by the great Queen Zenobia—a caravan city during Hellenistic and Roman times, on the edge of the Roman empire. Serious damage has been happening there. Syrian authorities confiscated three busts from Palmyra dating from 200 AD that had apparently been hacked off a tomb.

The majority of looted artefacts from Syria are now being held in antiquity investment storage pits and other stash sites for future sale at higher prices once the buyer’s market glut of cultural heritage artefacts has dissipated. In effect, these objects are being warehoused for people to make a fast buck in future. They will re-emerge, but in the meantime we have little intelligence as to where they are or whether they are being looked after properly. I am afraid that while countries such as China have a ravenous appetite for these archaeological artefacts, this market will exist. We need to appreciate the scale of destruction that is going on, with priceless objects plundered and hidden, and sites destroyed, losing vital historical information and its context for ever.

Some hon. Members—not in your case, I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker—do not appreciate culture and the importance of the amazing sites and priceless antiquities that several of us have mentioned. However, there are also major implications for how we deal with terrorism, how we rebuild that troubled part of the world in future, and how we approach international aid. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newark said, people who buy looted artefacts from Syria or Iraq are feeding insurgencies, fuelling the purchase of arms, and financing foreign extremists and mercenaries, as well as all sorts of other criminality.

It is estimated that looting is IS’s second largest revenue source after oil sales. My hon. Friend alluded to 4,000—although I think the figure is nearer to 4,500—archaeological sites, including UNESCO world heritage sites, which are now under the control of IS. Iraqi intelligence claims that IS alone has collected as much as $36 million from the sale of artefacts. It is the equivalent of what the Taliban were doing through the cultivation and sale of heroin in Afghanistan to feed markets in the west. We took that very seriously, and it was a priority for the invading and occupying forces in that country. Yet the devastation and profit involved in the plundering of these sites and the sale of antiquities does not seem to register remotely as clearly on the radar of the world.

We are facing a quadruple threat. First, jihadists are looting these sites, claiming some sort of religious reason for doing so—my hon. Friend the Member for Newark alluded to the destruction of the Great Buddhas of Bamiyan—but they in fact, entirely hypocritically, profiting on international black markets from their destruction. Secondly, it is alleged that President Assad is knowingly selling antiquities to pay his henchmen. There are videos showing Assad’s soldiers at Palmyra, some time ago, ripping out grave relief sculptures and smiling for the cameras as they are loaded on to trucks. Thirdly, the Free Syrian Army, in its various different guises, is looting antiquities as a vital source of funding. Fourthly, an increasingly active part of the population is involved in looting. Ordinary people are looting Syria’s cultural heritage because they have no jobs, income or tangible economic prospects, and are increasingly turning to age-old plundering techniques, in some cases looting to order. As a result of the activities of those four different parties, the fantastic culture of Syria and Iraq is being systematically plundered, yet that is hardly featuring on the radar in the west. We are also having to face the consequences of the financing of terrorist organisations through the plunder of antiquities.

Looking forward to a day in future when peace, in some form, comes to the region, the looting also threatens to deprive Syria, in particular, of one of its best opportunities for a post-conflict economic recovery based on tourism, which until the conflict started contributed some 12% of national income. There is the fantastic site at Palmyra that I mentioned; Dura-Europos, a fantastic Hellenistic caravan city; Ebla, a bronze age site; the Hama water wheels; the third millennium city of Mari; and the cities of Raqqa and Ugarit.

What should we be doing? My hon. Friend mentioned some practical solutions that we need to address with a greater sense of urgency. Collecting looted antiquities is a white-collar crime. The 1970 UNESCO convention, from an international law perspective, is a rather weak measure that exacts, at the most, a slap on the wrist for violators. The 1995 UNIDROIT—International Institute for the Unification of Private Law—convention is stronger and could potentially enforce more robust international law. Yet, for that very reason, far fewer countries have ratified it, fearing that it might target their citizens’ auction houses and museums. Another problem is that the law frequently differs between the source country from which the artefacts are looted and the country to which they are smuggled and then sold. That is a defence lawyer’s dream come true.

After the maelstrom of violence in the region, a 2003 United Nations resolution called on all 197 UN members to stop the trade in Iraqi antiquities without verified provenance. That now also applies to Syria. The European Union has recently banned the import of antiquities from Syria, but, inexplicably, this prohibition has not been followed by the International Council of Museums. Interpol has drawn up red lists of material known to be stolen from Syria. UNESCO has held workshops on how to combat the illicit trafficking of cultural heritage property from Syria and elsewhere. One sign of progress, I hope, is a new law in Germany that could point the way forward in requiring a certified export licence for an antiquity in order to secure an import licence. That is encouraging, but it still does not tackle the situation in the Gulf states and in China, in particular, where such safeguards are not in place.

As my hon. Friend said, we need, on a practical level, a proper survey of exactly what is going on before we can come up with solutions. There is a pressing need for more training of more specialists who can work in customs offices and at airports and sea ports to intercept some of these things and investigate whether there is any information about their having hit the market. He also mentioned the draft resolution before the UN Security Council requiring all member states to prevent the sale of antiquities from Syria, similar to the measure passed 10 years ago on antiquities from Iraq.

My hon. Friend alluded to blood diamonds. Everybody knows what blood diamonds are. There was a very successful film about blood diamonds. They have ended up on everybody’s blacklist, and we understand why. We should apply the same criteria to antiquities of such importance from these countries. It should be easier to do that because they are more easily identifiable and we know their provenance, as opposed to one diamond looking very much like another. That is the approach that we should be taking. There should be no excuse for being any part of a trade in these illicit antiquities that have been taken from their rightful homes in Syria and in Iraq.

By participating in such trade, and by countries not doing everything they possibly can to clamp down on it, we are creating a rod for our own back, because it allows for the financing of terrorist activities, which have affected our everyday lives, not to mention those of the brave servicemen and women who go to fight the cause in the middle east and try to contain the turbulent situation in those two troubled countries. We ignore the pillaging of their cultural background at our peril. To those who think that those dusty sculptures from centuries ago are of no relevance, I say that they are absolutely key to how we deal with that part of the world and, most importantly, hopefully to how we restore peace to a particularly troubled part of the globe.

British Nationals in Goa

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a slightly obscure and rather distant subject. It is, however, a subject that has the potential to ruin the parents of one of my constituents and apparently affects many hundreds of western expatriates who have also invested in property in Goa. I am delighted that the Minister is responding to the debate in the absence of the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), who I know is abroad.

Many other Members have been involved in this issue and frustrated at the lack of action by Indian and Goan Government officials when some fairly blatant corrupt practices are at work. That is why I am raising the issue and putting it firmly on the radar. I hope that something will come from it.

I want to give a brief background on this particular case, which came to me from my constituent. Just over 13 years ago, Mr Leslie Medcroft and his wife purchased a hotel in Canacona, Goa. They were at pains to ensure—they had done extensive research—that they complied with all the rules and regulations. They complied with the money laundering laws. The funds came from legitimate sources and banks in the UK. They complied with all the residency conditions, which can be strict, and bought the business through a local company that was properly registered. They were buying an investment in an ongoing hotel business, with appropriate Government of Goa licences. They paid all the taxes due and had all the licences that were needed. Those licences were kept up over many years as they ran that hotel business.

Subsequently, it was claimed that the property had been purchased illegally because, among other things, the area was designated for agricultural usage, but no evidence for that was produced. In contrast, my constituent’s parents produced a forest of documentation to show that everything had been complied with and that the purchase and the running of the business were entirely proper and above board.

A couple of years ago, they became the subject of an investigation by the enforcement directorate. The ruling given on 12 February 2013—almost two years ago—by Mr Lotlikar, the deputy director of the enforcement directorate, was that the property of the Hotel Oceanic should be confiscated. He claimed that it had not been properly acquired, despite all the evidence produced to the contrary. My constituent’s parents understandably appealed the decision, but had a long wait, which caused them huge stress. They had given up their life savings and their jobs in the UK to start the business in India and spend their retirement years there.

Eventually, on 26 August 2014, my constituent’s parents received a letter stating that their appeal hearing was at last to be held on 22 August—four days before they received the letter. Fortunately, the advocate they had retained in Goa saw a copy of the letter in time to attend the appeal hearing. That was quite coincidental; his office happens to be next door to the enforcement directorate. The appeal hearing was further postponed to 4 September 2014.

On 2 September, the company accountant acting for Mr and Mrs Medcroft was approached by the special director of appeals in Mumbai, who said he would make a judgment in their favour if they gave him 10 lakh rupees. That is 1 million rupees, which equates to £10,800. There is a certain irony, not missed here, that the origin of the word “lakh” in the Indian numbering system is the amount of money that can be stuffed into a small suitcase, as no doubt those proceeds would have been, had they been forthcoming. It would appear that the request was made for the money not to be paid to the court, the legal system or a Government department, but directly into the pocket of said official. It was a thinly veiled threat that failure to comply with the demand for a bribe would result in a ruling against Mr and Mrs Medcroft and, ultimately, their property being confiscated.

My constituent’s parents were left in something of a dilemma, as we can imagine. Should they pay up, perhaps then getting recognition that they own the property they knew they already owned and had bought legitimately, and thereby condone corruption? Alternatively, should they pay up and risk the case not actually being resolved? As we know, blackmailers usually come back for more. Would they be charged as participants in corrupt practices for ostensibly bribing an Indian official? Should they not pay up and risk the confiscation that has been looming over them for some years? Whichever way we look at it, it appears that they cannot win.

My constituent’s parents were unable to raise the amount of money in the short term in any case, so they did not really have a choice: they did not pay the money. They were also unable to return to India—they were in the UK at the time, renewing their visas—before 17 September, but the appeal went ahead in their absence. The ruling from that appeal was that the argument they put forward was incomplete, despite their having provided comprehensive documentation in support. A further hearing date was set for 26 September, and they were subsequently told that on top of the bribe, they might have to pay an additional sum of £6,000.

“Where does it end?” you may well ask, Mr Hollobone. The case went to a further hearing and the presiding judge, Ajit Kumar, the additional income tax commissioner, very much expected my constituent’s parents to pay. In the absence of that, he deferred a ruling and apparently threatened to have them arrested in the meantime. Tape recordings of that conversation were taken as evidence. They were advised by their advocate that this process will go on indefinitely until they pay up and that they will have constant doubt and worry overhanging their business.

My constituent’s parents have invested their life savings. They were running a legitimate business that helps the Goan economy—tourism, in particular, on which Goa greatly depends. They have had to spend a lot of their money on lawyers, accountants and other professionals, first to ensure that they acquired the business legitimately and maintained all the licences and secondly to maintain their innocence against corrupt officials. If this case goes against them and their hotel is confiscated, they face ruin and a great deal more stress. They would probably have to return to the UK.

I gather, however, that my constituent’s parents are not an isolated case, and that is why I am raising the issue today. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) wanted to be here today, but she is receiving an honorary doctorate from the university of Birmingham—I am delighted to point that out, as she wanted me to. She was approached by some of her constituents who were lecturers. They took early retirement and invested through a direct foreign investment channel in a dilapidated old colonial mansion on the coast in southern Goa in 2005. They spent a fortune renovating it. It was originally set up as a business to cater for convalescing foreigners undergoing medical and dental treatment.

The project was successful and has become a general guesthouse business. In 2009, on having acquired the business, the hon. Lady’s constituents were summoned to Panjim to give assurances, initially on money laundering. In 2011, they received notices from the enforcement directorate claiming that they had illegally purchased agricultural land and that their business was illegitimate—similar circumstances to the case against my constituent’s parents. Yet they had documents to prove categorically that the land they had acquired was in a settlement zone, was listed in the Portuguese book of descriptions in 1905 as an urban dwelling and has absolutely no history of crop growth. Clearly, the charge of agricultural usage is entirely bogus. The business is properly owned by an Indian private limited company, regarded as resident in India for the purposes of FEMA, the Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999. It complies with all the regulations, but the parents of my constituent are facing a lengthy and costly court action and the threat of confiscation.

Only today, I received an e-mail from a member of the British nationals’ working party in Goa, who has been dealing with a number of other expats in similar situations. She told me that in the past two years she has been working on a number of cases and has knowledge of four in which confiscation orders have already been served on people. In one case, a confiscation order has been issued against a British couple aged 80 and 77 in relation to their studio flat. Another confiscation order was issued two years ago against a single British woman in her 70s who owns a small flat in a purpose-built complex in north Goa.

In addition, hundreds of British subjects have been prevented from registering their properties in Goa, having previously fulfilled the requisite legal processes, primarily because of restrictions on visas. In some cases, that has led to criminality and harm against foreigners when they have tried to obtain the properties, causing loss of investment. Some cases have involved extreme violence. Other people affected include those who came together to invest in Indian tourism and who have been prevented from trading due to altered interpretations of the law and, in tandem, prevented from registering their properties.

The problem seems to be quite widespread, with a number of British expats suffering such consequences. It has been suggested that there are in excess of 300 similar cases that we know about. Huge stress is being caused to people who legitimately went out to invest in businesses in Goa. In most cases, they are not wealthy, but have invested their life savings. The situation is proving to be a nice little earner for the Government in Goa, and various Government officials are pretty brazen in demanding money to make the problem, which is of their making, supposedly go away. We seem to have the Goan equivalent of the mafia.

It is surely entirely inappropriate for a fast-growing democracy such as India, which attracts, and needs to attract, large amounts of foreign investment as an important UK trading partner, to allow such practices to go on under its nose. The Indian Government should be keen to find out what is going on and to intervene. In the past few months, however, I have written to the Indian law Minister, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, and to the Chief Minister of Goa, Shri Manohar Parrikar. The latter responded and diverted my attention instead to Dr Rajan Katoch, the director of the enforcement directorate, who has also not responded. I have written to the Minister of Finance, Arun Jaitley, who is responsible for the tax commissioners, including the judge Ajit Kumar who I mentioned earlier.

I also wrote to the high commissioner in London, His Excellency Ranjan Mathai, no fewer than three times, and chased up with several calls and e-mails. I had no reply until yesterday—after I had secured this debate, coincidentally. The response came from the first consular secretary to the high commissioner, Mr P. K. Patel, and merely stated:

“You will appreciate that the High Commission cannot intervene in administrative judicial proceedings in India. If your constituent’s parents are aggrieved by Directorate of Enforcement actions, they may seek appropriate legal redressal of their grievances.”

They have been trying that, and they have not been getting anywhere. Clearly, they will not get anywhere with the high commission in London either, which is a great pity.

The British high commission in Delhi is aware of the problem and the Business Secretary, on a visit to the Indian subcontinent, raised it with Ministers. A high commission official has been dealing with British cases, but cannot get individually involved in them. I was also able to collar the British high commissioner James Bevan when he was about to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee on 15 October. He has been helpful and entirely sympathetic, saying that the high commission is aware of the problem. Action needs to happen, however, and things cannot be allowed to go on unchecked.

The Government need to use their good offices to impress on their Indian counterparts that that sort of practice does the reputation of Goa and India at large no service at all. It stands in the way of legitimate investment. It would be a great problem if that investment were deterred by obviously corrupt practices.

I hope that the Minister will be able to give assurances today, to my constituent’s parents and to the affected constituents of other hon. Members, that this matter will be looked into properly and further pressure will be brought to bear on the Indian Government. I also hope that His Excellency the high commissioner to London is listening intently; I am sure he would not want such practices to besmirch the reputation of the Indian Government. They are clearly doing so at the moment.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on the interesting way in which he has presented this complex and important case. To respond, we have a Minister who is responsible for about half the world, I think.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)]

Unfortunately, I am not specifically responsible for India and I begin by extending apologies that the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), is unable to reply to the debate. I know that he is aware of the issue, whether or not he is not able to watch the debate on the internet, and he will certainly want to follow the matter up with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

I thank my hon. Friend for initiating the debate. He has been and remains an advocate for British nationals facing difficulties in property disputes in India. As hon. Members will be aware, until 2007—my hon. Friend alluded to this—the rules governing purchases of property by foreigners in Goa were open to misinterpretation. Many foreign buyers fell prey to unscrupulous lawyers and property developers who took advantage of the ambiguity of the laws.

Although the purchases of properties were made in good faith by foreign buyers, in 2008, the Indian enforcement directorate served notices to about 400 foreigners who had been found to have violated foreign exchange and immigration regulations. Simultaneously, the Goa Government sent a notice to all registrars instructing them to close the registry to foreigners. There are about 750 British property owners in Goa, many of whom have been under investigation for six years and are still unable to register ownership of their properties or to sell legally.

Our policy on dealing with property disputes worldwide is clear: we cannot get involved in private disputes, as we are in no position to judge the facts of the cases and have no overseas jurisdiction to resolve such matters. It is the responsibility of the Indian authorities to regulate property laws and Her Majesty’s Government have no authority to intervene in matters concerning domestic legislation. We do not become involved in individual cases, nor do we take steps to recover any capital outlay in individual property deals that might have gone wrong.

That said, we do consider raising systemic issues by lobbying national and local Governments. I reassure the House that we take this matter seriously, as my hon. Friend can attest. We are assisting groups of British nationals who have been genuinely cheated by lobbying the Indian Government to seek settlement or a reasonable solution. I am pleased to say that, through our sustained lobbying of a range of interlocutors, the Indian enforcement directorate has cleared for registration a number of cases involving British nationals. The high commissioner in New Delhi and the deputy high commissioner for western India have discussed with the former Goa Chief Minister the problems faced by groups of British property owners and asked that the cases be considered carefully. The Chief Minister was receptive to finding a solution to the problems faced by British nationals and as a result set up a special committee to assess all outstanding cases.

In addition, during a meeting with the deputy high commissioner just last week, the new Chief Minister renewed the Goa Government’s commitment to finding a resolution to the issue. Consular officials regularly meet with all local authorities—the enforcement directorate, the property committee and the state registrar—that are assessing the cases of British nationals.

The authorities do not want to confiscate property and will act sympathetically where possible, especially where it is obvious someone has made Goa their permanent home, or when dealing with sick or elderly owners. However, they have made it clear that they cannot ignore cases where individuals have built properties on agricultural land or wilfully flouted rules on transferring funds or on visa regulations. We recognise that position.

In January 2013, we encouraged British property owners in Goa to start a working group. They have undertaken to lobby on individual cases, and we have facilitated meetings between them, the Chief Minister and local authorities, with some success.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful for what the Minister has said thus far, and I entirely appreciate, as the Foreign Office has told me, that it cannot involve itself in individual cases. However, could we not do more where there is systematic or systemic abuse, as he mentioned? We are talking about British citizens being denied justice. The rulings against them are not specifically saying what they have done and then proving it; they are constantly saying there is not enough information, so the case is deferred and deferred. In the meantime, money is, effectively, being demanded with menaces. If such corruption were happening in the United Kingdom, on the part of British officials dealing with Indian nationals, we would absolutely want to do something about it and to liaise with the Indian authorities.

[Mr Ellwood]

I will certainly relay that to the Minister of State. Perhaps I can put him on the spot in his absence and suggest that he and my hon. Friend meet so that, rather than the issue lying dormant after the debate, we can move the process forward.

Consular staff are dealing with the property issue at a wider policy level, engaging with the Goa Government and local authorities directly, and that must fit in with what my hon. Friend said about the difference between taking a systemic approach and looking at individual cases. That approach, which I hope will be joined up, has been effective, with approximately 40 cases being cleared of investigation over the last year. However, as has been reiterated today, many more outstanding cases need to be looked at.

We are aware of corruption allegations against local authorities in Goa. However, the matter must be dealt with by the Indian authorities. We have always advised British nationals to report corruption complaints to the Indian law enforcement system.

Although there has been some progress, I recognise that the issue continues to cause distress to British nationals. We will continue to lobby the Goa Government and local authorities on systemic issues relating to expatriate property disputes and to work with those who have been affected to find an appropriate solution.