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Human Rights Annual Report 2005

I wish to introduce this debate on the report of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs on human rights, which was published in February this year and is our response to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s annual report on human rights, which was published in the autumn last year. Every year since 1998, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has published a report on human rights around the world. The Committee then takes evidence, either in writing or orally, including evidence from Ministers, on various aspects of the report. We are particularly interested in the response of human rights organisations, two of which—Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—gave evidence to us. We also received many other submissions for consideration before adopting our report. The report that we published in February was the first from the new Select Committee that was established following the general election. I pay tribute to my colleagues on the Committee. It has 14 members so it is more difficult to reach a consensus than in the previous Committee, which had 11 members. This report was agreed by consensus—not all are—which is a tribute to all its members and the responsible way in which the issues were approached. We touched on a range of areas and I have not got time to deal with all of them now, but I am happy to take interventions and hope that my colleagues will highlight areas that I do not mention. We looked at some topical and controversial issues, such as rendition, torture and the situations in Iraq and in the middle east. We also looked at a number of other aspects of the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I welcome the new Minister for Human Rights, my long-standing and right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), to his post and I hope that he will respond as far as possible to the issues that I raise. I want to place one issue on the record at the beginning: the concern, which is reflected in our report, that the Minister for Human Rights is again also the Minister for Trade. The Committee was concerned that there might be a conflict of interests between those two aspects of one ministerial role. In its response to us, which we received a few weeks ago and which was published on 2 May, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said:"““There is no tradeoff between a robust policy on human rights and promotion of trade.””" I want to press the Minister on that. For example, on a Government trade promotion visit to a country where human rights are a matter of concern, how easy is it to put on a human rights hat while trying to win hundreds of millions of pounds of contracts for British companies, British jobs and British investment? Can the Minister give a commitment that he will not moderate his criticism of a country’s human rights policies—as a new Minister, I am sure that he can give new commitments—and that he will be robust in his criticism on human rights matters rather than bowing to what will inevitably be a tendency in some quarters to say, ““Go soft on that because it might damage our commercial interests.””