Prisoners of Conscience

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Catherine West)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to respond to Members in what has been a fascinating debate. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing it, and I am very grateful for the contributions of other hon. Members. I will try to respond to all the points raised.

The Government stand in solidarity with those who are in prison solely because of their religious or other beliefs, and we call on Governments to ensure that the right to freedom of religion or belief is protected and promoted for all people everywhere. Societies that respect and uphold human rights, including freedom of religion or belief, are generally stronger, more stable and prosperous.

As many in the Chamber have articulated so eloquently, the scale of freedom of religion or belief abuses and violations globally is of grave concern. Article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights states that

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”.

However, the reality faced by many—including the Baha’i community in Yemen and Iran, the Ahmadis in Pakistan, the church members in Nicaragua who have been harassed and arbitrarily detained, and non-Muslims caught up in Sudan’s civil war—is far removed from that principle. Persecution, harassment, discrimination and arbitrary detention are sadly part of daily life for many.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and the spokesperson for His Majesty’s Opposition, the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), both mentioned the current issue of Armenians in detention following the recent conflict with Azerbaijan. Annette Moskofian has had a few mentions, because she is such an ardent believer in freedom of religion or belief, and is the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton.

For those reasons, we are working hard to highlight and address the scale and severity of freedom of religion or belief abuses and violations, including by lobbying for the release of prisoners of conscience. I shall set out some examples. Lorenzo Rosales Fajardo, a pastor and leader of an independent church in Cuba, was imprisoned for participating in peaceful protests in that country. The Foreign Secretary wrote to him in December last year to express solidarity and called on the Cuban authorities to release him. We were delighted to hear that he was released in January. As the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said, this must not be a counsel of despair; occasionally, we get good news in these cases.

Mubarak Bala has also been mentioned in this debate. A Nigerian atheist and president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, he was sentenced to 24 years for his belief. We regularly lobbied the Nigerian Government, including through letters to the Kano state governor and calls by Ministers for his release, and we were pleased to hear that he was also freed in January. Of course, there are many other examples, and I will try to set out what we are doing to support them.

The UK is determined to use its extensive diplomatic network to champion freedom of religion or belief on the international stage. As Members have mentioned, our human rights approach is being refreshed by the Minister for human rights in the other place, Lord Collins. He will come to Parliament in the usual way to set out that work when it is completed. I was very pleased to meet my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) earlier this week to discuss his role as the UK special envoy for freedom of religion or belief. To address the Bill proposing that we make that role statutory, while we recognise the benefits of the position, we do not believe that its value would be enhanced by making it statutory. As such, we will continue with the approach taken by the last Government under the excellent Fiona Bruce, maintaining the role as an office within the Foreign Office, but with a strong sense of challenge.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I welcome the tone in which this debate is being conducted. Given that the Minister will not make the special envoy’s role statutory, will she state very clearly that she will not make something else statutory—that she will not reintroduce a blasphemy law in the United Kingdom? She will recognise that the abolition of the blasphemy laws in the 1980s and 1990s meant that people could express whatever belief they happened to hold in a completely free way. That ended a level of oppression that had been possible, although not exercised for many years.

Will the Minister make absolutely clear that in no way will this Government support a blasphemy law, and that they will not allow police to introduce one through the back door by criminalising acts that would otherwise be covered by freedom of expression? Will she make absolutely clear that His Majesty’s Government stand for freedom of religion and non-belief, not just belief, and that that means the freedom to change one’s religion, to reject a previous religion, and to criticise any religion? Does she agree with that?

[Catherine West]

Of course I agree that freedom of religion or belief, or the right to have no belief at all, is critical and paramount. I know that organisations such as Index on Censorship, which the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) is part of, are very robust in that regard. It is crucial that we have the right to freedom of expression. On the finer points of the right hon. Gentleman’s question, if he would like to write to me, I will be very happy to write back using the particular language that he would prefer.