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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): I am delighted to wind up in this important debate. I entirely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) that it is a pity that the debate was not postponed. It is an important debate: we do not get many Foreign Office debates, and this afternoon would have been considerably enhanced by the presence of the Foreign Secretary.
I have great admiration for the Minister who opened the debate, but she was cast adrift today without an adequate compass or any warning of the dangers that were likely to beset her. It is a pity that she was not able to give the House some of the realistic answers that it expected today. I will come to some of those issues in a moment.
We had some knowledgeable speeches today from people who have been involved in Zimbabwe for a long time, notably my right hon. and learned Friend, who is a former Foreign Secretary; the hon. Member for
Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), former Minister for Africa; and the chairman and vice-chairman of the all-party Zimbabwe group, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton). They have had long experience of the issue and have bravely stood up for the people of Zimbabwe. The House should be grateful to them for sharing their knowledge of the issue today.
We have also been fortunate enough to hear from two new Members of the House, my hon. Friends the Members for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) and for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), whose contributions were eye-opening. I shall come to some of the issues raised in a minute.
I shall not read out a litany of things that are going wrong in Zimbabwe, as many others have done that. Suffice it to say that the situation in that country has reached a very low ebb. If the UN World Food Programme is to be believed, the current years bad harvest will lead to up to a quarter of the population requiring food aid next year. Already up to a quarter of the population may have fled, at least 2 million of them to South Africa. The intellectual brain drain will be one of the big problems facing Zimbabwe in the future.
I shall pick out some of the salient points of the excellent speeches we have heard today. I welcome the announcement by the Minister this afternoon when she confirmed Baroness Vaderas announcement in the House of Lords yesterday that an additional £50 million of aid was to be given towards food shortage alleviation and agricultural infrastructure building, and £3.3 million for civil society building. That is very important. If there is any way in which we can help to build civil society in all its aspects, that is to be greatly welcomed.
I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Vauxhall that the situation needs internationalising. Anybody who has any influence to bear should be brought in. Of course, ultimatelyas I said in a question to the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) on 26 Marchit must be an African solution for an African problem, but that does not mean to say that other international players and individual countries cannot add their expertise and help to bring about a solution.
The hon. Member for Vauxhall was also entirely right to say that we should look to the UN to implement its responsibility to protect. If the international community cannot find mechanisms to enable it to intervene more quickly in places such as Zimbabwe or Sudans Darfur province, where the suffering and human rights violations are so bad, there is something wrong.
I also agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett), the Liberal Democrat spokesman, who said that the problem may well get worse before it gets better. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southern, East referred to Operation Slash Prices, which follows numerous other difficulties in Zimbabwe. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield said that it amounts almost to the confiscation of businesses, when the Government take a 51 per cent. share yet still require them to sell goods in the shops below the costs
of production. The effect has been that supplies of the essentials of lifewheat, flour, bread and maizeare drying up fast.
I want to dwell on the remarks made by the hon. Member for Sunderland, South. What comes next? It is almost inevitable that Zimbabwe will collapse in the relatively near future, although it is difficult for us to envisage the form that that will take. The best thing might be that Robert Mugabe will announce that is he going to retire and that someone else will take over. That is unlikely, but it would also be an acceptable solution if the presidential elections due to take place in March next are free and fair and another person is voted in. However, further action by the people of Zimbabwe might be presaged if they are not free and fair, and that would leave a difficult situation that we would have to resolve.
The Under-Secretary of State for International Development, the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas), will respond to the debate, and he will have to answer the many penetrating questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson). I hope that he will also pay some attention to the thinking that the international community has devoted to a post-Mugabe regime. That is critically important.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, South raised a number of issues worth considering. One thing that is going wrong is Mugabes violation of the rule of law, which has all sorts of guises. For example, a change in the law means that Mugabe can manipulate Parliament to elect a president if anything happens to him. In addition, rules have been introduced that restrict peoples ability to assemble and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield said, new laws allow all sorts of private communications to be monitored.
We need to make sure that the rule of law operates properly in Zimbabwe. We know, for example, that solicitors representing people in jail are themselves being jailed. The rule of law is being brought rapidly into disrepute, and that is one of the first problems that will have to be dealt with.
As I have noted already, Zimbabwe will need a new constitution, and a new and independent electoral commission. I also hope that the electoral register will be properly verified before next years presidential elections, as it would be entirely unacceptable if we were to find that it had been gerrymandered, with the result that members of one party only were encouraged to vote. In that connection, I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will say whether he has given thought to getting the international community to bring pressure to bear so that the 3 million or so Zimbabweans in Britain, South Africa and elsewhere are allowed to vote.
The security and financial sectors will also need to be reformed. Increasingly, members of the police and armed forces are not being paid, and that is because the Zimbabwean Government are simply running out of money. Officially, inflation is running at 4,000 per cent., but unofficial figures put it very much higher.
We heard a lot in the debate about the governor of Zimbabwes Reserve Bank, but the bank has no foreign reserves apart from what it gets when it seizes the hard currency gained after a company manages to complete
some trade. It is essential that we have economic reform, a currency reserve fund, a contingency fund and a proper civil service that is able to administer money so that proper civil servants, members of the armed forces and the police are paid, and can do their jobs.
There will need to be emergency food aid. That is already under way. Some of my colleaguesthis happened in a debate yesterdaycriticise us for giving food aid because they say that it props up the Government of Zimbabwe. I say that we have to find a way of giving the starving people of Zimbabwe food aid without propping up the Government of Zimbabwe. Not to give them food aid would be unacceptable. We will need to find ways of making sure that everybody has enough food, and of ensuring that people have access to a proper health service and a proper education service, and are housed. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield about Operation Murambatsvinathe so-called Clear the Filth operationthat meant that 700,000 people were driven out of their houses in Zimbabwe. When the international community tried to provide tents for them because they were homeless, the tents were seized by the armed forces. That is the extent of Robert Mugabes regime.
We will need to find a solution not only to the internally displaced people I have just referred to, and many others, but to the refugees, who are mostly, but not exclusively, in South Africa. The sad fact about Zimbabwe at the moment, and perhaps one of the factors that will be quickest in bringing about collapse, is that the most able people are leaving the country. They are the very peoplethe brightest, the most intellectual peoplewho need to be retained in the country to run a realistic future.
Somehow, we will also need to come up with a solution to the land redistribution problemnot that that need be a problem in itself, but what needs to happen fairly rapidly is that somehow the farms need to be put back into proper production so that Zimbabwe can at last begin to feed itself and, even more importantly, in the medium term, not only feed itself, but start exporting food. That is one of the main parts of its economy and would mean that it could begin to earn hard currency again.
The hon. Member for Sunderland, South referred to something very interesting that I do not think has been addressed before: truth and reconciliation. Zimbabwe will need to have a truth and reconciliation commission similar to the one that we had under the auspices of the archbishop in South Africa. That will mean that those who have not committed gross crimes against humanity can be brought back into the fold and pardonedbecause we will desperately need to work with them. The international community and the people of Zimbabwe will need to work with people we would not necessarily want to talk to. A truth and reconciliation commission would be one way of doing that.
There will need to be a considerable package of assistance. I hope that the Minister who is summing up tonight can tell us not only what thinking there has been on how the country can be rebuilt, but who is going to provide that monetary assistance. There needs to be a mechanism, because when the collapse comes, it might come quite quickly. We need to be prepared. We
must not be left floundering around for weeks or months trying to come up with a package. The work needs to be done now.
I want to turn to the elections next year. Colleagues have mentioned this issue. There are some encouraging signs that the Opposition party, the MDC, is beginning to come together. I have good reason to believe that, in those presidential elections, Morgan Tsvangirai will be the only candidate. Having one Opposition candidate for the president and one in each electoral district will provide a much more powerful opposition and it will be much less confusing for the people of Zimbabwe. I hope that that happens.
We need to look at international re-engagement and at how the whole effort involving the South Africans and SADC is going to work. One of the most important suggestions that has come out of the Thabo Mbeki mediation process was that we should have a proper UN rapporteur to give added weight and emphasis to the situation. I hope that that can come about. At the same time, we need to send proper signals from the international community to the Mugabe regime.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea, a former Foreign Secretary, is exactly right to say that if the European Union aspires to have a common foreign policy that means anything at all, it needs a common foreign policy on Zimbabwe. That means that we must adopt a common position on who is subject to the travel ban and on the sanctions and assets freezes that are to be applied. While I am on that subject, might add that the assets freeze is pretty weak in this country. I understand that it covers only about 400 bank accounts containing £350,000. Surely the Government could do more in that respect.
We need to ensure that Zimbabwe features on the agenda at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Although Zimbabwe has been suspended from the Commonwealth, it was formerly a member and many of its neighbours are members. The Commonwealth could be better used, so the matter should be on the CHOGM agenda.
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury that we need to send out the right signals about sporting events. If a national team is to play in Zimbabwe, it is a national responsibility to give those teams a steer. It is no good saying that it is up to the UK cricketing body to make a decision, especially if it is going to lose out financially. It is up to the Government to say quite clearly, You should not be going to Zimbabwe. If you lose out financially, we will compensate you. The Governments position is anomalous. There was a sporting ban on South Africa, so why should there not be a ban on Zimbabwe, given the similarly dreadful situation there?
We have heard many interesting speeches made by hon. Members with experience. Suffice it to say that the situation is Zimbabwe is quite unacceptable. Zimbabwe is reckoned by some to be the fourth most likely nation in the world to fail. I agree that there will be a form of collapse in Zimbabwe in the near future. I just hope that, when it comes, the Government and the international community will be a little better prepared for it than the Government were for todays debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Gareth Thomas): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) in responding to this robust debate on the future of Zimbabwe. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), set out the Governments profound concern about the situation in Zimbabwe and the action that we have consistently taken to highlight our concerns and work for a better future for the people of Zimbabwe.
The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) led for the official Opposition. He echoed the Governments profound concern and asked a series of questions about our policy. I will come to those questions in due course.
My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) followed the hon. Gentleman. For many years, she has consistently focused attention, both inside and outside the House, on the plight of the people of Zimbabwe. I acknowledge and pay tribute to her long-standing interest in the issue.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett), who led for the Liberal Democrats, has considerable development expertise due to his work on the International Development Committee. He, too, asked a series of questions, and I shall address them during my speech.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) and the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) brought their considerable experience of service in the Foreign Office to the debate. The right hon. and learned Gentleman raised a specific point that was echoed by Conservative Members, especially, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall: attendance at the EU-AU summit. I will address that issue shortly.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) has shown a consistent interest in Zimbabwe throughout his time in the House. He highlighted the fact that he made his first visit to Zimbabwe in 1979. I cannot hope to compete with his interest in Zimbabwe or his number of visits to that country over such a long time. However, I remember the sense of optimism that he described about the future of Zimbabwe that followed the Lancaster House agreement. I share the profound frustration and disappointment felt about the fact that that optimism has not resulted in the progress that all Members wanted for Zimbabwe. He was right to say that aid alone cannot solve Zimbabwes problems. Aid has a place in helping to address those problems, but without improvements to governance, we cannot tackle the terrible plight of the Zimbabwean people.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield was followed by the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge), who highlighted the views of the one quarter of Zimbabweans who have left the country because of the terrible economic and political situation there, some of whom now live in his constituency. He was followed by the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), who highlighted the considerable courage of many people who are not members of Robert Mugabes circle, including those in the Church,
in civil society, and in political parties other than ZANU-PF. Despite considerable repression, they have continued to highlight the plight of Zimbabwes people. I join him, as I am sure the whole House does, in paying tribute to their courage.
Lastly, the hon. Member for Cotswold spoke. He joined other Members in describing the appalling governance that is at the root of the terrible suffering of the Zimbabwean people. There are disastrous economic policies on the one hand and significant appalling human rights abuses on the other. The hon. Member for Macclesfield and others referred to the fact that as the country has continued towards collapse, and as the leadership of Zimbabwe fears for its future, new acts of repression and intimidation, such as arbitrary arrest, beatings and torture, have been carried out. Nobody in Zimbabwean society has escaped that trauma. Journalists, business men, lawyers and trade unionists have all been victims, as hon. Members have described. I join the House in its collective condemnation of the terrible record of Robert Mugabes Government, who are responsible for the situation in Zimbabwe.
In the very short time that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been in post, he has already spoken to President Mbeki about the Southern African Development Community initiative, and has continued to highlight the British Governments concern about the situation in Zimbabwe. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has spoken to his opposite number in South Africa, and both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have had a series of discussions with a range of Governments, both within the European Unionthey have spoken to their German, French and Portuguese opposite numbersand within the SADC region. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will raise the British Governments profound concerns about the ongoing situation in Zimbabwe at the EU General Affairs and External Relations Council in Brussels next week. Right hon. and hon. Members will know that we have taken the lead in keeping Zimbabwe on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council, and we continue to ensure that the Security Council remains focused on the issue.
I shall try to answer the questions that hon. Members asked. Let me start with some of the questions asked by the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk. He rightly highlighted Robert Mugabes continuing attempt to present the dreadful situation in Zimbabwe as a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle, and rightly said that it is nothing of the sort. Contrary to the Zimbabwean Governments propaganda, we have not imposed economic sanctions on the country and its people. Indeed, we have made our support for the people of Zimbabwe clear through the substantial humanitarian assistance that we continue to provide to ameliorate the dreadful impact of failed economic policies.
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