The comments made by Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, on 4 May 2021.
The UK’s presidency of the G7 is an opportunity to bring together open, democratic societies and demonstrate unity at a time when it is much needed to tackle shared challenges and rising threats.
The addition of our friends from Australia, India, the Republic of Korea and South Africa, as well as the chair of ASEAN reflects the growing significance of the Indo-Pacific region for the G7.
The comments made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 4 May 2021.
Like every aspect of the UK-India relationship, the economic links between our countries make our people stronger and safer. Each and every one of the more than 6,500 jobs we have announced today will help families and communities build back from coronavirus and boost the British and Indian economies.
In the decade ahead, with the help of the new Partnership signed today and a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, we will double the value of our trading partnership with India and take the relationship between our two countries to new highs.
The comments made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 4 May 2021.
The UK and India share many fundamental values. The UK is one of the oldest democracies, and India is the world’s largest. We are both committed members of the Commonwealth. And there is a living bridge uniting the people of our countries.
In the last week the British people have stepped up in their thousands to support our Indian friends during this terrible time in a demonstration of the deep connection between the UK and India.
This connection will only grow over the next decade as we do more together to tackle the world’s biggest problems and make life better for our people. The agreements we have made today mark the beginning of a new era in the UK-India relationship.
The comments made by Alok Sharma, the COP26 President-Designate, on 6 May 2021.
With six months to go we are working hard to ensure COP26 will be a success and international partnerships will be key to this.
Denmark’s climate leadership, particularly its long-standing climate action across its economy, is very welcome.
The UK and Denmark will continue to work closely together in the run up to Glasgow as we look to raise ambition on climate action.
The joint statement issued by the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain on 6 May 2021.
We urge the Government of Israel to reverse its decision to advance the construction of 540 settlement units in the Har Homa E area of the occupied West Bank, and to cease its policy of settlement expansion across the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Settlements are illegal under international law, and threaten prospects for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If implemented, the decision to advance settlements in Har Homa, between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, will cause further damage to the prospects for a viable Palestinian State, with Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and a Palestinian State. This move, alongside settlement advancement in Givat HaMatos and continued evictions in East Jerusalem, including in Sheikh Jarrah, also undermines efforts to rebuild trust between the parties, following the positive resumption of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.
We call on both sides to refrain from any unilateral action and resume a credible and meaningful dialogue, to advance efforts for the two state solution and an end to the conflict.
The comments made by Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, on 6 May 2021.
These proposals from the US are welcome and it is vital that the UK government follows the Biden Administration’s lead and engages constructively to develop a workable plan at the WTO.
This is an important first step but if we are to deliver the massive global increase in vaccine production that is urgently needed we must also develop a plan to share our expertise, equipment and raw materials, and take action to identify, equip and finance the mass production facilities needed in every region of the globe.
So alongside today’s discussions, the UK government must begin work with the US and others on a comprehensive international agreement to bring about that step change in production, and replicate the speed, scale and success of the UK and US vaccination programmes in every country in the world.
The comments made by James Heappey, the Minister for the Armed Forces, on 29 April 2021.
This operation to transport vaccines to one of the most remote parts of the world, reaffirms our commitment to the people of our Overseas Territories.
The Armed Forces take great pride in supporting our people, at home or abroad, whenever and wherever needed. I am immensely proud of all Royal Navy and RAF personnel involved in this mission and the role they have played in helping to deliver vaccines to the people of Tristan da Cunha safely and quickly.
The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 28 April 2021.
Mr Speaker, India is in a Covid crisis of unprecedented proportions.
We will all have seen the haunting footage of families pleading with doctors to treat their loved ones or queueing to cremate their dead.
In the last 24 hours, India has once more reported the world’s largest single day total, with more than 360,000 new confirmed cases and more than 3,000 deaths. There have been more than two million cases confirmed in the last week. India now makes up around 40 per cent of all the new cases in the world and experts believe this is almost certainly an underestimate. The peak of this crisis may yet be weeks away.
This is not just a heart-breaking crisis for India, it is global emergency that has consequences for all of us. We all face the same disease. We are all in this together. We are in a global race between vaccines and variants. No one is safe until we are all safe.
Mr Speaker, for many of us in Britain, our ties to India are personal. My father came to this country from India, and being half Indian is an important part of who I am. Family ties between our countries are woven into the fabric of this nation. For the more than one million British Indians of different generations, this is a moment of fear and anxiety. So many British Indians will have gone to work today in the NHS, to which they make such a remarkable contribution. They have helped to carry this country through this crisis. Today many will be worried for loved ones, family and friends in India.
Mr Speaker, just over a year ago, when the UK was facing one of our darkest moments in this pandemic, the Government of India sent 3,000,000 packets of paracetamol to the UK to meet our needs. That was an act of solidarity and support. It is now our turn to help the people of India in this hour of need.
I’m grateful to the Foreign Secretary for outlining what support the government has already provided.
I believe we can and must do more. I would be grateful if the Foreign Secretary could assure me the government is exploring all avenues available in the following areas:
First, Medical supplies: including oxygen, but also empty canisters and cylinders, oxygen concentrators, ventilators; and surplus therapeutic medicine like remdesivir;
Second, Genomic sequencing and epidemiology: utilising the UK’s world leading capacity in genomic sequence to track potential further mutations and variants in the Indian outbreak.
Third, Vaccines: we need a much greater effort to ensure we ramp up production and manufacturing capacity and overcome barriers to expanding supply, the greatest challenge we face.
Fourth, coordination – working with the government of India but also partners in North America and Europe to ensure our contributions have the greatest effect;
Mr Speaker, this is a time for solidarity and common cause with the people of India. I hope that today we can come together as a House and show that we are doing all we can.
The statement made by James Cleverly, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, in the House of Commons on 27 April 2021.
Iran’s decision to sentence Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe on further charges is totally inhumane and wholly unjustified. This Government remain committed to doing all that we can to secure Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s return home to the United Kingdom so that she can be reunited with her daughter, Gabriella, and her husband, Richard. It is indefensible and unacceptable that Iran has chosen to continue this wholly arbitrary court case against Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The Iranian Government have deliberately put her through a cruel and inhumane ordeal. We continue to call on Iran in the strongest possible terms to end her suffering and allow her to return home.
Since her arrest in April 2016, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has faced terrible hardship and appalling treatment. This Government have relentlessly lobbied for an improvement to both the conditions endured by Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe while she was in prison and those conditions still experienced by others, including Morad Tahbaz and Anoosheh Ashoori, who are still incarcerated. Although Iran does not recognise dual nationality, and therefore views Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe as only an Iranian citizen, that has not stopped this Government from lobbying at every opportunity for their release, and her return home to the UK. We have never been granted sight of the judicial process, or consular access to our dual British nationals detained in Iran; however, that has not stopped our ambassador in Tehran consistently pressing for her full and permanent release with senior Iranian interlocutors, most recently today, 27 April.
Since I was last at the Dispatch Box, the Foreign Secretary and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office officials have been in regular contact with Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family. Our ambassador in Tehran has visited Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe at her parents’ home in Tehran to reiterate the Government’s commitment to do all that we can to secure her return to the UK. The Foreign Secretary has spoken with both Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband to underline the fact that the UK Government, from the Prime Minister down, remain committed to doing everything that we can to achieve that.
Since Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest in 2016, we have raised the case regularly at the highest levels of Government. The Prime Minister has raised it with President Rouhani, most recently on 10 March, and the Foreign Secretary’s personal ongoing engagement with Foreign Minister Zarif continues, with their most recent call being on 3 April. That lobbying of Iranian interlocutors at every opportunity has helped to secure the release of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe in March 2020 and the removal of her ankle tag on 7 March this year.
As I have said, however, what we ultimately seek to achieve, and what we are ultimately working towards, is the release of all British dual nationals held in arbitrary detention in Iran, and their ability to return home. The UK continues to take concrete steps to hold Iran to account for its poor human rights record. At the Human Rights Council in March 2021, we strongly supported the renewal mandate of the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and we made clear to Iran that its repeated violations of human rights, including those of foreign and dual nationals, are completely unacceptable. The UK Government also joined the Canadian initiative against arbitrary detention on 15 February. We continue to work with G7 partners to enhance mechanisms to uphold international law, tackle human rights abuses and stand up for our shared values.
I assure the House that the safety and the treatment of dual British national detainees in Iran remains a top priority for the UK Government. Iran is the one responsible for putting Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe through this cruel and inhumane ordeal over the last five years, and it remains on them to release her to be reunited with her family, and to release the others. We continue to stress that these second charges are baseless. She must not be returned to prison.
The speech made by Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on 26 April 2021.
We warmly welcome today’s announcement. We agree that corruption is a global scourge. It costs the global economy billions every year, it sustains rotten Governments, it protects the dishonest and the criminal, it tilts the playing field against businesses that do the right thing and it denies people around the world money that belongs to them and that should be spent on our shared prosperity, our healthcare and our opportunities. As I told the Foreign Secretary last June, the absence of measures on corruption left a huge hole in the global human rights sanctions. If we want to crack down of human rights abusers, we have to follow the money, so we are really pleased to see the Government following the standard set by the USA and Canada in plugging this hole today, and we will study the regulations and the policy note carefully.
However, I hope the Foreign Secretary can assure the House today that there will be resources to support investigations and enforcement, because the current rate of prosecutions for economic crime is woefully low, as he knows. To put it bluntly, if he is serious about what he is saying today, he needs to put his money where his mouth is and ensure that agencies such as the National Crime Agency have the resources they need, allow Parliament to put forward names to be considered for designation and, as I pressed him to do last year, allow parliamentary scrutiny of who is and, crucially, who is not designated, to ensure that there is no prospect or suggestion that big money can corrupt our politics and influence the decisions that are taken. That last one really matters, because while I welcome his words today, the mass of revelations that have come to light in the last few days alone have shown a tangled network of financial interests and cosy relationships at the heart of Government that appear to send a green light to many of the very regimes that he has mentioned in his statement. We need to know that this announcement it is not just a gloss on the surface of a grubby system that underneath signals business as usual.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Saudi, but may I ask him what message it sends to the Saudi regime when he sanctions officials implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi but we then find that all it takes is for the Crown Prince to WhatsApp the Prime Minister to tell him that relations will be damaged between our countries unless the path is cleared for him to buy a key economic asset in the UK, and that instead of standing up to it, he deploys his top aide to investigate? The Foreign Secretary mentioned sanctions against Chinese officials engaging in genocide in Xinjiang, but what message does it send to the Chinese Government when on Saturday we learned that a former Prime Minister could simply message the then Chancellor to ask for Chinese investment into the UK in areas of critical national infrastructure, such as energy, and could gain access, despite having been only 15 months out of office and despite this being in clear breach of the rules?
And for all the Foreign Secretary’s admirable words about Sergei Magnitsky, the UK still acts as a haven for the dark money that sustains the Putin regime, with more than £1 million in Russian-linked donations to the Tory party since the Russia report was handed to the Government, but not a single recommendation acted upon to safeguard our country in all that time. Surely the Foreign Secretary can see the problem. He signals an intent to crack down on corruption and human rights abuses by causing economic pain to those responsible, but just down the road those very same regimes can call up the Prime Minister to advance their own interests, even when those interests are at odds with the interests of the British people. The Foreign Secretary has used very strong words today, but while he is rightly pressing ahead with sanctions, he is either turning a blind eye to the real power relationships in Government or he is being played. We deserve to know which it is.