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Mr. Mullin: What about Mobutu? Was he a Soviet agent?

Mr. Howarth: I do not suggest that the entire continent was subverted by the Soviet Union: I was merely agreeing with the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. Perhaps the Minister should have a word with his hon. Friend.

Sir Nicholas Winterton: As my hon. Friend considers the history of Zimbabwe—Rhodesia, as it used to be—in the 1960s and before, will he comment on what President Gumede from Matabele, who was President when Bishop Muzorewa was Prime Minister, said to me—"If the western world would allow us to sort out our own problems, we would get it right. As it is, we're going to get the wrong answer."?

Mr. Howarth: Those were prophetic words. Life was very difficult at the time and a strong anti-colonialist stance was popular, especially among Labour Members. I do not entirely blame the colonial powers for wishing to remove themselves from Africa, because that was the way things were going. I merely make the point that those societies were ordered, and what followed was a disappointment. I was an international banker before I became an MP and I saw at first hand the appalling corruption in Nigeria. It was desperate to see so much money being siphoned off and denied to the people. Nigeria had so much going for it, including tremendous agricultural and industrial potential, but it was all squandered.

One country that has so far survived the storm is South Africa. It owes its survival in large measure to the personality and strength of one truly remarkable man—Nelson Mandela. I probably would not have said that 15 years ago. In fact, I freely admit that I would not have said it, but I do now. He has set a magnificent example, and it is a great shame that it has not been followed as widely in the rest of Africa as I would wish. Thankfully, some countries that have suffered lately are showing signs of improvement.

Today's debate has been characterised by a consensus across the Chamber about the level of evil of the Mugabe regime, and the violence and abuse that it visits on its own people. I shall not repeat that catalogue, because my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) has described it. The right hon. Member for Swansea, East (Donald Anderson) and other hon. Members also set out the problems.

I do not know how many other hon. Members have heard Alastair Leithead's recent broadcasts for the BBC about life inside Zimbabwe. He has obviously taken some risks to make them, but those who have spoken to him have taken even greater risks. He has lifted the veil and no one can still be in any doubt about the brutal nature of the regime. That nature is encapsulated by the words of the Foreign Affairs Committee in a report on Zimbabwe. It refers to the Mugabe regime's

"use of torture, beatings, rape and starvation against its own people, and the threat which it poses to the prosperity and stability of southern Africa".

What an indictment of a country from our Foreign Affairs Committee.

Alastair Leithead's reports make the point that those who are suffering most are the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. We know that the white farmers are
 
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suffering: they are being beaten and dispossessed of farms in which they, and their families before them, have invested their entire lives to grow food not only for the people of Zimbabwe but for the rest of southern Africa. They have had a terrible time—but things are even worse for the ordinary Zimbabweans.

As the Archbishop of Bulawayo said:

"They"—

that is, the Government of Zimbabwe—

"have a plan here to starve people to death for political ends—to get everyone aligned to their party at all costs, which is absolutely diabolical and vicious".

I referred earlier to the remark by David Coulthard that in the recent by-election at Lupane, those who did not vote for ZANU-PF did not get the food. Such behaviour is disgusting. An aid worker says:

"Children are dying from starvation. We had children fainting and not able to even walk to get food as they were too weak. This country has been brought to its knees and it is slowly dying. All we are doing is holding our finger in the dam trying to stop the final disaster—but it's coming".

There is incontrovertible evidence that Zimbabwe is a country where the people are crying out for help. Why should we tolerate that? There are three reasons why we should not. First, this is our concern. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall said, we have historic ties with Zimbabwe. As the colonial power, we handed over a country in which our citizens continued to play a part in both Government and the economy, and thousands of our kith and kin—to use that old expression—remain there. The Government have seen it right to intervene in Sierra Leone and the Congo, so I find it curious that Mugabe is allowed to get away with what amounts to genocide and the destruction of his entire country.

Secondly, there is a steady exodus of asylum seekers. We have heard about the people streaming out into the surrounding countries. I dare say that, as the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey said, many of those are qualified people who will be well received in the neighbouring countries, but I must also point out that whereas in 1994 there were 55 applications for asylum from Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom, in the last four years there have been 14,000. People are streaming out of the country. Only recently, in my Aldershot constituency, I met a Zimbabwean applying to stay in the United Kingdom, and I have just been able to write and tell him that he will be able to stay. This country has an interest, because if the result of Mugabe's tyranny is that all those people are streaming out not only into the surrounding countries but into the United Kingdom, that is a matter of concern for us.

Thirdly, as the hon. Member for Vauxhall also said, we are paying for all that. Our constituents are paying for the rather futile attempts to help the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) said in the debate in Westminster Hall on 9 March:

"the Department for International Development has given the country £62 million in humanitarian assistance since the crisis began in 2001, and it provides further funds to help tackle HIV/AIDS"—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 9 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 387WH.]

That is a lot of British taxpayers' money going into that country.
 
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The Foreign Secretary said earlier from the Dispatch Box that once democracy had been restored we would be paying even more to put things right—and by then, the country will be in ruins. I believe that the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey said that that would take 10 years even if we could put things right today, so if things changed in two years' time, how long would it take to restore the country to normality?

It is clear that we must do something. The Foreign Secretary said that we had to avoid "playing into Mugabe's hands" by pitching ourselves against the rest of the world, but as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes rightly said from the Front Bench, in this case, quiet diplomacy has failed.

It is an indictment of other countries that they are unwilling to support the United Kingdom in concerted action to save the poor people of Zimbabwe when what is happening to them is transparently obvious. It must be in the interests of the neighbouring countries to join us in taking action.

The right hon. Member for Swansea, East (Donald Anderson) said that it was clear that South Africa had a great deal to lose from the complete implosion of South Africa, and that is true. Perhaps skilled people are currently well received by neighbouring countries, but if Zimbabwe continues to implode, a stream of people without such qualifications will develop, which will become those countries' problem. It is not often that I agree with the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), but in the spirit of consensus that is clearly breaking out in the Chamber today, I concur that we ought to give things a try. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes is to be congratulated on his five-point action plan to try to get something done. We owe it to the people of Zimbabwe, both black and white, to end the tyranny of President Mugabe's Government.

Several hon. Members have mentioned the cricket. The Foreign Secretary said grandly that it would be quite improper for the Government to intervene and that the private sporting body should make the decision on the matter. Those of us who are concerned about the problem, such as the hon. Member for Vauxhall, might like to take a leaf out of the Leader of the House's book. When he was masquerading as a Liberal, he brought about the Government intervention that stopped the South African cricket tour of 1970 by threatening to flash mirrors in batsmen's eyes and a load of other measures that were then called "direct action". I set up something called the Hain prosecution fund, so I am intimately familiar with the matter. Given that the Leader of the House was able to push the then Government into action, I am sure that he will be able to give advice on how we may be able to prevail on the Government to take proper action on the cricket tour.

I wish to raise a further issue in my capacity as honorary parliamentary adviser to the Overseas Service Pensioners Association. The Minister knows that we have a longstanding interest in the plight of the public servants who stayed on in Zimbabwe after the handover of power that followed the Lancaster house agreement in 1979 and 1980. I associate my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) with my comments. He is unable to be in the Chamber because
 
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he is engaged in important "warfare" work elsewhere in the country, but I know that he strongly supports the cause.

Some 1,200 people in this country should be in receipt of pensions from the Government of Zimbabwe. The pensions dried up in February 2003 and those people are seriously suffering. Even if they were paid, given the rate of inflation in Zimbabwe about which we have heard, such money that they would receive would not compensate them properly for a lifetime of public service to the people of Rhodesia and then the people of Zimbabwe. I am sorry that the Foreign Office has written to say that it has no duty of care or responsibility for those people who are genuinely suffering. I put it to the Minister and the House that if those people had not agreed to stay on and act as public servants to ensure that there was continuity of government and proper administration of the country following the handover of power, things might have been very different because the country could have been handed over to people without the qualifications or experience to run it. We owe a debt of gratitude to those public servants for what they did.

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