Cheltenham Liberal Democrats

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

(1) what research his Department has undertaken on the role of next generation electric storage heaters in decarbonising heating;

(2) what steps he is taking to encourage the uptake of next generation electric storage heaters to contribute to his aim of reduced energy use; and if he will make a statement.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change whether he plans to modify the inputs of his Department's 2050 emissions calculator in line with technological advances.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if his Department will raise the recent Russian trans-shipment of arms through Cyprus as an urgent matter at the next meeting of the EU Working Party on conventional arms exports.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what reports his Department has received on the release of a Russian cargo ship containing a consignment of munitions destined for Syria by Cypriot authorities on 11 January 2012; what representations he has made to the Government of Cyprus on this matter; and if he will raise this issue as part of the review of the EU Common Position defining common rules governing control of exports of military technology and equipment.

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his visit to Somalia and on Britain's proactive response to the crisis there. However, may I ask whether he will be joining Turkey, which has said that it will be approaching some of the wealthiest Muslim countries to see if they can make a more substantial contribution to preventing starvation in Somalia?

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what guidance his Department issues on the circumstances in which shipments of strategic goods identified as destined for an embargoed destination may be released when passing through UK ports.

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what powers the Government has to seize shipments of strategic goods passing through UK ports where they are bound for (a) embargoed and (b) non-embargoed destinations.

On Iran, did the European summit discuss the planned regional conference on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and does the Prime Minister agree that it might offer a vital pathway out of an increasingly dangerous stand-off?

The hon. Lady makes some of the points that I made several months ago and that other hon. Members sympathetic to the pro-European cause made at the time of the summit. Surely we have now moved on. The Prime Minister, in his remarks today at Davos, quite clearly stated;

"It fundamentally reflects our national interest to be part of the single market on our doorstep and we have intention of walking away. So let me be clear: we want Europe to be a success."

The process of re-engagement is under way.

On the subject of the right hon. Gentleman's support for the Prime Minister, will he join me in welcoming the Prime Minister's remarks this morning in Davos, when he said,

"Let me be clear. To those who think that not signing the treaty means Britain is somehow walking away from Europe let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth"?

I am not at all in favour of scrapping health and safety regulations or those designed to protect workers. They are extremely important. The point is not even necessarily to weaken health and safety and workers regulations in Europe, but to see whether they can be made more flexible and be applied more flexibly domestically. That is another area where the British agenda should be pushed.

There are signs that European Governments are increasingly seeing things our way; it is not just the 15 members of the like-minded growth group. Italy has traditionally been more renowned for a protectionist stance in Europe and has at times had a less than impressive record on implementing single market legislation, but it is now actively implementing measures to liberalise great swathes of its economy and is actively pushing a single market agenda in Brussels that is directly comparable to ours. Spain, under the new Government led by Señor Rajoy, is also moving to undertake major structural reforms domestically and is shifting its position in Europe accordingly. Ministers must build on such possible alliances, which seem to be growing stronger all the time.

There are other things that I probably do not have time to cover in great detail. In terms of promoting jobs and prosperity, it is important to push for the completion of the single market, particularly in the digital and services sectors. External trade is equally important. This morning, I was in a Committee that voted on a new framework agreement that included free trade with South Korea. It could soon be extended to Ukraine and possibly a range of other countries. That is the kind of thing that will drive jobs and prosperity in Europe, not an overly obsessive attitude to EU treaties and institutions.

I think that is right, although the point I am making is that the jobs and prosperity agenda should be the focus of such debates. If possible, we should get away from the obsession with structures and treaties. The British Government should be pushing

the jobs and prosperity agenda at the summit. I have suggested some areas for deregulation and the European Liberal leaders forum drew up a long list of legislation that should be reviewed for possible reform. It included the working time regulations, the temporary agency workers directive, the control of vibration at work regulations, fixed-term employees regulations, part-time workers regulations, control of noise at work regulations, road transport working time regulations and the transnational information and consultation of employees regulations.

I shall not be drawn into that. Critically, it is for the eurozone countries to address the crisis in the eurozone. The right hon. Gentleman highlights the important point that just by drawing up a treaty the eurozone countries do not solve some of the rather fundamental problems in the eurozone. In fact, the situation in Greece is becoming increasingly serious and it needs to be urgently addressed-that is even more the case now than in recent months.

The importance of the main business of the summit must not be neglected. Britain's re-engagement in European affairs is critical and it must be pushed forward. There have already been some successes. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills helped to create the like-minded growth group, which has pushed forward ideas such as lifting onerous accounting rules from the smallest businesses in this country. I think the group has helped to create a shift in Commission attitudes on the smallest businesses to the point where it has committed to review all existing EU legislation to look for other opportunities to lift onerous regulation from such businesses and to screen new legislation to see whether, wherever possible, the smallest businesses can be excluded. That is exactly the kind of agenda we should be pushing in Europe.

First, I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on selecting this topic for debate, although on this occasion I agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that it might have been better to debate this issue in Government time as it is critical for this country.

While I am on the theme of congratulations, let me congratulate Sharon Bowles, MEP, on her recent re-election as chair of the economic and monetary affairs committee of the European Parliament. She was once voted one of the top 10 economic regulators in the world and she has presided over innovations such as the attempt to introduce regulation on bankers' bonuses that would prevent someone like Fred the Shred from ever again walking away with a huge bonus from a failing bank. For that alone she deserves congratulation and I am pleased to see her retaining her place as one of the most influential Liberal Democrats in Europe.

I repeat my earlier congratulations to the Deputy Prime Minister on convening the European Liberal leaders forum on issues relating specifically to this

debate in London on 9 January. The forum agreed a programme of reform and competitiveness for Europe that would probably unite Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members of this House at least. That is a good example of how to build alliances across Europe and engage with Europe in a proactive way.

It is good to see Britain at the table for the summit. Clearly, there is the main summit, which is supposed to be focusing on prosperity and growth, but there is also the rather important sideshow of the 26 making further progress towards the fiscal compact, which is critical for Britain, and I am very pleased that the Government have made sure that Britain is an active participant in the process, albeit with observer status. I know that Ministers have been active behind the scenes getting Britain involved in the process and making sure, for instance, that the fiscal compact treaty does not spill over into areas outside its proper remit, such as the construction of the single market. As Liberal Democrats have pointed out, that is one of the risks of our relatively isolated situation in Europe.

In the light of the hon. Gentleman's attack on the role of the Liberal Democrats in all this, would he accept that the Deputy Prime Minister's hosting of the recent summit of European Liberal leaders-including two Prime Ministers, six

Deputy Prime Ministers and five European Commissioners -to try to bring together a bilateral plan to support jobs, growth and prosperity across Europe was a positive step?

I praise the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) for initiating this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and other hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, especially the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), who gave an eloquent declaration in defence of human rights and some well-made points about the rights of women and the valuable work of organisations such as B'Tselem, which I am happy to endorse.

While I am heaping praise on people, I would not mind praising Conservative Ministers-from the other side of the coalition, I guess-not only for producing human rights reports, which is the easy part of the process, but for the frequent declarations that I have heard in the House by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who ishere today, and by the Foreign Secretary, making clear Britain's absolute commitment to human rights in a wide range of contexts.

As a Liberal Democrat in the coalition, human rights are central to my political beliefs. I date human rights policy back to a Liberal campaign-the Midlothian campaign-by possibly the greatest Liberal, William Gladstone, who in 1880 explicitly balanced the national strategic interest with the rights of people who were not even British citizens at the time. In many ways, that was the origin of international human rights policy. I am proud and humbled to stand in that tradition. For that reason, I welcome many of the recommendations, some of them quite tough, in the Select Committee report.

I particularly like recommendation 3, which states that

"failing to take a stronger and more consistent stance against human rights violations by overseas regimes can carry risks for the UK. In particular, any suggestion that the FCO downplays criticism of human rights abuses in countries with which the UK has close political and commercial links is damaging to the UK's reputation, and undermines the department's overall work in promoting human rights overseas."

The report relates that to north Africa and the middle east, but it applies worldwide, although it was the Arab spring, as the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) said, which highlighted in some areas of policy, such as arms control, the weakness of some of our human rights checks on Government policy-not just this Government, but certainly the previous one, from whom we inherited the system. For instance, it appeared that, instead of a human rights check being carried out to consider the potential for arms to be used for internal repression, checks were made in respect of whether they were being used for repression at that moment, which effectively excused every regime in north Africa and the middle east, many of which had the most appalling human rights records. The report's recommendations relating to that are well made.

I welcome the Government's commitment to include Bahrain in the next human rights report and their response to the situation in respect of the Arab spring, which included cancelling more than 160 arms export licences, some clear declarations in the House of Commons and the declaration, in response to the Committee's report, that more work by Government was needed in this area.

First, in connection with the international arms trade treaty, we may possibly have some international collaboration that may contribute to some solution to that issue. What is the current state of negotiations on the international arms trade treaty? Does the Minister think that that could enable us to address human rights matters in the context of international arms sales? Secondly, if the Government have concluded that further work between BIS and the FCO is needed on this matter, is not it about time for them to agree on how that should be done and get on with doing it in some form? Thirdly, and finally, the Committee's specific recommendation that we review arms sales to Saudi Arabia is well made. That is potentially a lucrative market that is valuable in respect of growth, and so on, but it is morally unacceptable to sell arms to repressive dictatorships, which may use them on their own people and may already have used military matériel in helping to suppress dissent in a neighbour's territory.

I shall resist the temptation to do a world tour of human rights and will focus on Russia and China, two big, influential powers with domestic human rights issues, which are also major international players and permanent members of the Security Council and are therefore important in that respect.

In the case of Russia, I want to focus, first, on the appalling case of Sergei Magnitsky, who died in 2009. There is a campaign to bring his persecutors to justice but there is a sense among some of those who are campaigning on his behalf that Britain is perhaps a little behind other states in taking firm action on this case, despite the fact that Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer working for a British company and Bill Browder, who is spearheading the campaign to bring Magnitsky's persecutors to justice, is a British citizen.

In the US, the Netherlands and Switzerland, we have seen sanctions or progress towards sanctions, in the form of targeted visa bans or the freezing of assets, against the individuals implicated in the Magnitsky case. Moreover, because the Netherlands and Switzerland are part of the Schengen agreement, their action could close off most of Europe to those individuals. Nevertheless, I want to hear from the Minister if the Government are considering whether Britain should take similar action.

Then there are the cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, who are now widely acknowledged by many people as political prisoners. Khodorkovsky has never seen his granddaughter. When representatives of the media or other third parties visit him in prison, those visits are taken away from the number of visits that he is allowed to receive from his own family, so he is suffering considerably.

There also ought to be honourable mention of Vasily Aleksanyan, who was a legal counsellor to Khodorkovsky's company, Yukos. He died in prison last year, having turned down the offer of what was in effect a plea bargain, whereby he would perhaps have incriminated Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. He turned that offer down and it probably cost him his life.

I want Ministers not only to continue raising the cases of Magnitsky, Khodorkovsky, Lebedev and others, and consider imposing visa bans, but to reflect on some of the language that we are using about the European Court of Human Rights. Although I completely agree with the Government that the ECHR needs reform-the backlog of thousands of cases is clearly unsustainable

and there are real problems with the Court being used much too freely-the campaigners for these Russian human rights defenders have expressed concern that the type of language and rhetoric that we are using about the ECHR is remarkably similar to that being used in Russia. We must guard against giving domestic Governments too much power to decide which cases go forward to the ECHR, because we may actually see cases such as those of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev being caught in that trap. Those cases are in that queue of thousands of cases that are waiting to be heard at the ECHR.

I will very briefly discuss human rights in China, as I can see, Mr Rosindell, that you are getting a little impatient. I want to draw attention to the situation in Tibet, and the three deaths and the continuing disturbances there. They have resulted from what seems to be an increasing denial of human rights, particularly religious rights, in that part of China. It is very unhelpful for the Chinese Government routinely to condemn secessionist groups, because the current elected administration-in-exile of Tibet is not actually calling for secession any more but looking for peaceful dialogue, and that opportunity should not be lost.

In the case of both China and Russia, however, there are some hopeful signs. Both countries are now more open societies than they were in the past. In the case of China, it is maintaining the "one country, two systems" approach to Hong Kong and actually tolerating a very free society there, but it has a myopia about human rights worldwide and is implicated in supporting some fairly unpleasant regimes around the world. Also, although China and Russia went along with action on Libya, their failure to support a firm UN resolution on Syria does neither country any justice.

There are many brave human rights defenders around the world who look to the British Government for leadership. I hope that we will continue to provide leadership and that we will perhaps even go further, as the Select Committee has recommended.

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to discrimination against Dalits, and not just Hindu Dalits. There is continuing discrimination even among people who identify themselves as Christians, or even Buddhists or Muslims, who are from Dalit families and communities. However, he must acknowledge the long-standing campaign by the Government of India to reduce discrimination and provide work opportunities. The Government should take considerable credit for the progress that they have tried to make with an admittedly enormous social problem.

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I did not mean to imply even that the Committee had not found fault with DFID's programme. It has given a clear direction on things that in many cases must change, but it is welcome that the Government have accepted many of the Committee's recommendations straightforwardly.

The Secretary of State has said that the UK is in the final mile of its aid relationship with India, and that represents an honest assessment of Britain's maturing relationship with one of the world's leading new powers. Increasingly, the way in which countries such as Britain will help to alleviate poverty in India is not necessarily through aid, but through fair and open trade. The European Union's proposed free trade agreement with India-it might even be mentioned at the forthcoming European Council if we are lucky-is important.

India and Britain are allies on climate change and the ongoing United Nations framework convention on climate change, and I think both appreciate the risk to the poorest people in the world, including those in India, and the need to emphasise adaptation to climate change as well as mitigation in the international climate finance fund, and Britain's climate finance programme. They are collaborators on international peace and security, and they have shared experience on development issues, which could be valuable to countries around the world.

The time is coming when the last vestiges of a colonial relationship should be laid gently to rest and handed over to the historians. India and the United Kingdom now need to stand side by side in the world, standing up for shared values of democracy, respect for the rule of law, and human rights, and with deep concern for the world's poor and how to help them in practical and cost-effective ways through development assistance. Both countries have an enormous amount to teach the rest of the world about development. The eventual end of

Britain's aid programme to India, when it comes, will be a proud moment to be celebrated by both parties, but it should not be the end of the story.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, to follow the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), and to talk in a debate initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), whose expertise in this field is second to none in this Parliament. Moreover, he has been an enormous help to me in my role as chair of the Liberal Democrat committee on international affairs, although I realise that today he is speaking in a less partisan role.

I also bring a little bit of personal experience to this debate. I worked for a development agency in India during the 1990s. I was seconded by Oxfam in the UK to the fledgling organisation, Oxfam India, which already had a locally registered charity and an overwhelmingly Indian staff force. Indeed, we had a Hindi slogan, milka hum garibe per pa sekte heh vijay; if my Hindi is not too rusty, that means that together we can overcome poverty. It was an important message that that was not a western import, but something that mattered to all the citizens of India. With your indulgence, Mr Davies, and because I am sure that it is within the terms of the debate, as Oxfam is a DFID partner, perhaps I may congratulate Oxfam on the 60th anniversary this year of its presence in India, and congratulate Oxfam India on its admission as a full member of Oxfam International with an Indian board and a completely Indian staff. That changing relationship is, in microcosm, an illustration of the changing relationship between Britain and India.

Traditionally, India has been the largest recipient of UK aid, and the Select Committee and many other people, as my right hon. Friend said, have raised questions about the continuing nature of Britain's aid programme with India. India is now a middle-income country, but it still has more people living below the notional poverty line of $1.25 a day than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. The future DFID programme will focus on many of the poorest states in India. States such as Bihar and Orissa are among the poorest in the world, and would certainly be low-income countries if they were separate nations.

On nutrition, the Select Committee's report draws attention to some remaining alarming facts. India scored 23.7 in the 2009 global hunger index, putting it in a

category where levels of hunger are considered to be alarming; it is at a level comparable to that in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe. Almost half of Indian children are undernourished, which amounts to one third of the world's undernourished children. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon said, India is far from on track to achieve some of the millennium development goals.

Recent research by Andy Sumner of the Institute of Development Studies shows that 70% of people around the world who live below the poverty line live in middle-income countries, where income may be badly distributed, and there may be issues of equality as well as development and superficial growth. It may be attractive superficially to withdraw aid from middle-income countries, but it must be done carefully and gradually, because there are existing commitments to anti-poverty programmes, many of them involving, as my right hon. Friend said, public health, education and empowerment, and not simply providing goods and structures.

The Select Committee's report rightly noted the scale of the Indian Government's expenditure on things such as nuclear and space programmes, which have been controversial, but they identified them, rightly in many cases, as an essential part of India's development. They are fundamental to India's development of energy infrastructure, and to telecommunications infrastructure, and flood monitoring, which is a direct benefit to some of the poorest people in India. Without a satellite system and the so-called space programme, it would be difficult for India accurately to monitor the impact of flooding, and to map flood-risk areas. It may as well be criticised for developing a telephone system or solar energy. I am glad that the Select Committee agrees.

There seems to have been a large measure of agreement between the Select Committee and DFID; not only does the Committee support many of the emerging priorities for DFID, but the Government, in their response to the report, agreed with a large number of the Committee's recommendations-the focus on poorer states, sanitation, nutrition, and the priority given to maternal and child health, social exclusion, and working with the private sector.

I heard the comments of the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow on the relationship with the private sector, but when I lived in India and worked for a development agency there, I became aware that the contribution that organisations such as Oxfam, and even Government programmes the size of DFID's, make to poverty on a grand scale was dwarfed by the potential for the private sector to impact on people's lives, for good or ill. There are good examples of Indian corporations such as Tata pursuing effective social responsibility programmes that are much more developed than anything we in this country tend to call corporate social responsibility. The reality of poverty is often staring them in the face every day, and the Indian corporate sector has a proud record of poverty alleviation.

At the same time, other companies go in recklessly, especially to the poorest states, and exploit natural resources without properly consulting local populations, causing immense damage, sometimes environmental, often social and often costing many lives. The biggest and most famous example is Bhopal, but there have been others on a smaller scale since. Wearing my hat as chair of the all-party group on tribal peoples, I know that some of those examples involve tribal people in

states such as Orissa, where companies such as Vedanta Resources were exploiting aluminium potential through bauxite mining, and could easily have trashed the local environment that was precious to the tribal people there.

We must be cautious in our approach to the private sector, but DFID's instincts are absolutely right, and the private sector can sometimes bring light-footedness, flexibility and imagination to development, with an overall potential that is much greater than simple Government-to-Government development aid. That high level of agreement between the Select Committee and the Government is very welcome.

I welcome the European Council's robust stance, and the confirmation by the Council and the Foreign Secretary of the peaceful objectives of the process-the resumption of talks about the nuclear programme-but what active steps are the British Government or the European Union taking to facilitate the start of the talks and the de-escalation of this dangerous crisis?