That this House has considered transparency of the Integrated Activity Fund.
May I say from the outset that it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, and to see Members here for this Thursday afternoon debate? Many MPs from different parties have attempted to question the Government on this fund, only to be met with unclear and murky answers. This is a fund of up to £20 million each year to countries accused of human rights abuses, so the last thing the Government should be is unclear and murky.
I will raise several issues regarding the transparency of the fund, in the hope that the Government can finally provide some answers. We know that the fund is spent across the Gulf Co-operation Council states—Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. However, the Government have failed to provide a breakdown of spending in each country. Ministers reason that this lack of transparency is because:
“Many of the projects and programme activities were delivered regionally, so it is not possible to provide a breakdown by beneficiary state.”
It seems clear to me that a solution would be to outline the projects that the IAF supports, then we could understand how the money is spent across the region.
However, when MPs have inquired into the projects that the fund supports, the Government continue to be vague:
“The Integrated Activity Fund supported a range of non-ODA programmes and projects across the Gulf. These included, but were not limited to, activities focusing on culture, healthcare, youth engagement, economic diversification and institutional capacity building.”
I am afraid that that is not clear enough. The House deserves to know exactly what projects the UK Government are funding across the region through the IAF.
The hon. Gentleman is setting up the debate nicely here, but may I suggest that it might be helpful to go back to first principles and ask ourselves whether, in the areas he has just outlined, the need for any reform within the Gulf Co-operation Council countries may not necessarily be rooted in lack of money?
The right hon. Gentleman puts a good point on the record, and it is something I will attempt to develop later in my speech. In terms of first principles, he is perhaps right, and I am sure that when he speaks he will reaffirm that to the Minister.
Considering the accusations from human rights groups over the legitimacy of this fund, the Government should be obliged to publish the results of the risk assessment that they should obviously have undertaken. However, the Government will not even disclose to the House the beneficiaries or implementers of, or projects funded by, the IAF, giving Ministers and the public no idea how their money is being spent.
Members of this House and of the other House have repeatedly questioned the Government on the specifics of the Integrated Activity Fund. However, we have only received vague half-answers in response. I guess that begs the question: if the Government have nothing to hide, why will they not be completely transparent on the fund?
The question of transparency clearly links with a topic brought up by hon. Members across the House, that of human rights abuses in the gulf region. Hon. Members have brought up the fact that the UK Government funds projects in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where we know the death penalty, torture and political imprisonment take place. Indeed, the human rights situation in those countries is worsening; Saudi Arabia executed a record 184 people last year, while the indiscriminate Saudi-led bombing of Yemen is responsible for what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst man-made humanitarian catastrophe.
This is not the first time the Government have been criticised over their funding of projects in GCC states. A case in point is the controversial conflict, security and stability fund, the CSSF, which drew criticism from UK aid watchdogs for serious shortcomings in the way it operated. It was found to have been insufficiently rigorous in applying safeguards to prevent collaboration with foreign entities with suspect human rights records.
We have until about 2.40 pm for Back-Bench speeches before we bring in the Front Bench in and ask Mr Linden to wind up. If I do the maths, that is roughly nine minutes each.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I say to the Minister through you that we need three things. First, we need a direct answer to the question of why the Government will not provide the information that has been asked for over the years, not just, “It’s the spy clause” or whatever else it may be. Why has not the information been made available in the way it would be on virtually every other element of Government spending, whether through the Cabinet Office, the FCO, the British Council or the Home Departments?
Secondly, how can MPs and the public judge the effectiveness of the programme if they do not know what the money is spent on? We can all produce a list of things that we would like money to be spent on, whether in these fields or others.
The third issue, which is the underlying one, is the transparency process. One of the Minister’s predecessors, Alistair Burt, was very sympathetic and helpful as far as he could be as a Minister when I and others worked with the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy on some of the Opposition activists whose experience of the Bahraini justice institutions was appalling.
I have been in Parliament for some time. Two periods have been under Labour Governments. I would class myself as an Opposition activist. There are times when I have been on the streets protesting about things—whether it is trying to help drug dealers by imprisoning the social workers or a whole range of issues, when I have challenged either our fiscal politics or our justice system. We have to believe in the rule of law, but the law is not always justice. A campaign to change the law or constitution is something that ought to be allowed and encouraged. I take pride in living in a country where I can stand outside No. 10 Downing Street and shout abuse, or at least say to a Prime Minister, “I think you ought to be a different person or a different party.” That is part of opposition and we find that, without the kind of dictatorships we had 400 years ago and without the slaughter of political opponents, we have developed a better system—not perfect, but capable of improvement and recognising mistakes when they are made.
It is a pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Efford, for the first time. I hope it all goes well—from both sides.
Some people might think this is something of a niche debate concerning relatively small sums of public money in the context of overall Government spending. We have heard that it has been about £20 million a year for the past five years, although there were predecessor funds and not all of that was spent. Having said that, we could pay for a lot of free school meals in the holidays with the money that is going to what many people will think is a rather prosperous region of the world.
I pay tribute to other sponsors of the debate, the hon. Members for Glasgow East (David Linden) and for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). I remember a lot of Conservative Members—I exonerate the hon. Member for Worthing West from this—complaining that the former Department for International Development funding regime wasted money by sending it to countries such as India and China. I wonder whether we will hear the same about money being sent to Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia. That in itself deserves some explanation.
I thank the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, which has been mentioned, and Reprieve, which has helped with briefings for the debate. It sometimes seems like a thankless task, but they and other human rights organisations labour constantly to bring to light abuses of human rights in Gulf countries. The crux of the issue—I think it has already been said—is to do with secrecy. There have been few statements about the fund. Initially, there was no admission of the fund at all. It was like the security services used to be—it did not exist. When it was finally introduced to the public, the distinguished former Minister, Alistair Burt, said:
“The IAF provides funding in support of a range of programmes across the Gulf Region. These include, but are not limited to, activities focusing on aquaculture, sport and culture, healthcare and institutional capacity building.”
It would be a good idea if the Minister could say that some of this fund was used to help support human rights organisations in some of these countries.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that obvious point, which I wish I had thought of. Now that it is on the record, perhaps the Minister would like to respond to it. Why are we supporting the organisations that we have heard about today, such as the special investigations unit and other human rights bodies in Bahrain? They all have wonderful names, such as the ombudsman. The problem is not just that these organisations are ineffective, despite the money they receive from the UK, but that they collaborate with the prosecuting authorities. They provide a shield against proper investigation and often turn down investigations on little or no evidence, which puts the individual whose case they are reviewing in a worse position than when they started. Yet those are exactly the organisations that we are supporting.
When I was shadow Justice Minister, I put it to the then Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), in very strong terms, that we were selling prison services—this is a peculiarity of our relationship with Gulf countries: half the time we seem to be giving them money, and half the time we seem to be selling them services—through what was called the Saudi prison contract, when in fact what was going on in those prisons was torture, abuse and appalling conditions. To his credit, he ended the contract that had been started by his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), which was exactly the right thing to do.
If mistakes have been made in the past, look at them again. How effective are they? Are they, in fact, giving cover to repressive regimes? Are they, in fact, making the situation worse? We cannot answer those questions because of the secrecy surrounding this and other funds. It is simply outrageous that the Government continue to use national security or other measures to disguise the use of money that they say is for entirely benign purposes. We look to the Minister for some answers today, but what we would actually like is a proper review of whether this is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I remind the Chamber of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I chair the all-party parliamentary British-Qatar group. I am struggling to remember, but I think I am also an office-bearer for the all-party parliamentary group on Kuwait, but other hon. Members will know that the amount of commitment that those offices bring with them is, shall we say, variable. My engagement with those APPGs has, however, given me, I hope, a small measure of insight into engagement with Gulf countries—those in the Gulf Cooperation Council in particular, although I am not sure that there really is a functioning GCC at present.
I am not without sympathy for the purposes behind the idea of such funds. As I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), I am not really persuaded that the deficiencies in civic Government, human rights and even in agriculture—rarely does a debate come up where the MP for Orkney and Shetland cannot talk about agriculture—are necessarily down to a lack of funding. However, I am also always aware that when one engages with countries that have deficiencies in those and other areas, it is best always to do so from a starting point of a measure of humility. We rarely achieve much by lecturing and preaching to people in other countries. Understand a bit of their own history and how they have come to the point they are at today.
To draw on my experience with Qatar, for example, I have been genuinely impressed in recent years to see some of the progress that has been made in relation to labour rights. The abolition of the kafala system and the opening of an International Labour Organisation office in Doha are significant achievements, and we should be pleased. When I speak to people in the Qatari Government, of course we want to talk about those things, as they inevitably do—every Government always want to talk about where they have made progress—but we also have to be mindful that there is still a significant way to go in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, for example. To engage with any measure of integrity with these countries, we have to be able to tell them that, while appreciating the progress they have made, we see other areas where progress still has to be made.
Indeed, which is why I deliberately did not use the terms “overseas aid” or “overseas development assistance”. However, to the hard-pressed British taxpayer, it is money that is being spent overseas, and the objectives set for the IAF would not look out of place in our overseas development assistance budget. If the objectives are the same, there would have to be some compelling reason why, on this occasion, we are effectively giving money to state actors, rather than non-state actors.
I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in this regard. I fear that it is a topic to which the House will continue to return for some time to come.
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, Mr Efford. I am conscious that other Members have other places to go, so I will not dwell on my speech for too long. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for setting the scene, as he always does. He and I might have a difference of opinion on one big issue, but we agree on a great many other things, which is important. I am always glad to see the Minister in his place as well. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief.
I have long spoken in this House about the need to ensure that any funding for conflict zones should be traceable to relieving the effects of conflict on innocent victims, not to those who carry out the conflict. One example of that has been—I make no apology for this—the funding to the Palestinian Authority, who carry out campaigns against Israeli women and children, and who use education and propaganda to perpetuate hatred between the two nations. As the UK has not published a full list of the projects that the IAF supports, it is unclear whether we directly fund such textbooks. I seek clarification on that from the Minister, and receiving that today would be extremely useful.
The British Government have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Palestinian Authority. The text is regurgitated each time it is signed. Paragraph 2(i)i confirms that, to receive our support, the Palestinians must adhere to non-violence, yet they do not, but the money seems to keep rolling in. My concern lies in the fact that if the Government have difficulty in enforcing an agreement that sends tens of millions of pounds every year to people who endorse violence, what chance do they have of controlling and properly supervising the IAF, the budget of which is a fraction of the size? I have argued that we need more transparency, and I am very happy for this debate to take place today. No one should benefit from British aid who is not carrying out the most basic human rights obligations.
We now come to the Front-Bench speeches. Please remember that we need to leave two minutes at the end for Mr Linden to wind up.
2:35 pm
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One project funded by the CSSF was the contentious security and justice programme in Bahrain. In its 2018 report, the Foreign Affairs Committee urged the Government to review the programme, particularly in light of the evidence that Bahraini prison staff and security personnel had been implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings.
That programme, which cost at least £6.5 million, caused the CSSF to come under parliamentary investigation for its lack of transparency. However, once the programme began to face scrutiny, it was simply transferred over to the Integrated Activity Fund. If the CSSF faced severe criticism from this House for its funding of the programme, then it is only natural that the IAF, which is arguably more opaque, should receive the same investigation.
The IAF has also come under further scrutiny for its links to the Bahrain Special Investigations Unit. Recent freedom of information requests obtained by the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy revealed that in 2018, visits were made under the IAF from the College of Policing, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and Merseyside’s professional standards department to meet counterparts at Bahrain’s Special Investigations Unit. Since those visits, Bahrain’s SIU has been criticised by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims as “critically flawed” and failing to meet,
“the minimum professional standards and minimum international legal standards”.
Bahraini judges and representatives from the Ministry of Interior visited the UK in 2018 and 2019 under the IAF. According to the Bahraini embassy in London, these visits were conducted to discuss,
“both the scope and implementation of alternative sentences in the UK”.
The FOI requests also indicate that no overseas justice and security assessment was conducted for the judges’ visit, violating the Government’s own human rights safeguarding policy.
Prior to a mass prisoner release to ease the severe overcrowding of Bahrain’s prisons following the outbreak of covid-19, evidence suggests that alternative sentencing legislation was discriminating against political prisoners, including Sheikh Mirza Al-Mahroos and human rights defender Ali Al-Hajee. Alongside revealing the other contentious programmes and activities that the IAF supports, the FOI requests further highlight that at least two programmes have been provided exclusively to Bahrain. This evidence shows that certain activities are, in fact, country specific, thus negating the FCDO’s claim that country-specific breakdowns are impossible, since activities are only covered regionally. In the light of that, I again urge the Government to provide a clear breakdown of the individual projects and programmes they fund in each of the countries that the IAF supports.
With a history of controversial projects and their insistence on being vague about the Integrated Activity Fund, the Government are not painting a particularly clear image of their support for the GCC region. Lord Scriven said of the IAF:
“I have never seen a situation where it started open and became more swiftly opaque as criticisms grew… the Government have become hypersensitive if not paranoid to the fact that the truth will be exposed”.
It is imperative that the Government are more transparent about the Integrated Activity Fund, including by releasing information on the specific projects that the fund supports, in what countries, and crucially, whether they comply with the human rights risk assessment. I look forward to the Minister, for whom I have the utmost respect as a personal friend, enlightening the Chamber this afternoon as he closes the debate on behalf of the Government.
My judgment on the limited information that is available in public is that the Government have made a mistake in not being more transparent about this fund. I think we probably knew more about its predecessor fund than this one. It is interesting that it has not always been spent. The average spend is only about two thirds of the allocated £20 million a year.
This debate is not just about effectiveness, transparency and the other things I have talked about. The fund is also a way of introducing those countries where it may be spent on co-operation and all kinds of things from institutional changes to aquaculture and the like, to the idea that we are interested in their trying to make fewer of the mistakes that we made in our past so that they will make fewer of the mistakes that they are making in their present. If we are going to be effective collaborators and we can put our weight of different kinds, be it military, diplomatic or economic, behind the states that are trying to resist some of the more powerful and worst elements in that region—we understand the difficulties they are facing—we would like to know that public money and public process is working in a way that allows us to understand what is going on, so we can support the money being properly spent. That is why we need to have greater transparency and greater effectiveness from the money.
What could sound more benign than that? Aquaculture sounds like a wonderful thing to spend British taxpayers’ money on in Oman. “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is perhaps a sorer point.
However, that is not really the full extent of it, is it? With all due respect to Alistair Burt, for whom I have a great deal of time, it emerges that about a third of the projects could be euphemistically called “justice projects”: they are related to justice, security, imprisonment and other similar issues. Despite the plethora of FOIs, the Library briefing is almost entirely made up of questions with inadequate answers to them—some from the Minister, who I am sure will give us a far more candid response. We have a whole list of UK Government Departments that are spending the fund’s money, but we do not know how much each is spending or, indeed, on which projects. We do not know which of the Gulf countries are in receipt of the money and how much each of them is given. I notice that a written answer to the noble Lord Scriven said,
“All IAF-funded project work undergoes assessment and review. We are not able to disclose information related to particular IAF projects in greater detail as we have a duty to maintain the confidence and confidentiality of our partners.”
It appears that they do not want us to know what they are doing in the aquaculture field.
A couple of months ago, I asked a question that drew attention to the contrast between the funding of Bahrain through the IAF and the two prisoners who had undergone abuses through the Bahraini justice system, Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa, who are still on death row. Again, the reply simply said, “Yes, we object to the death penalty being used in these circumstances, but we are designing to support Bahrain-led reform in areas including human rights.”
I return to the question asked by the hon. Member for Worthing West: how effective is that? The answer must be, not very effective. The record on human rights across the board is getting worse year on year in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, which is much larger and more proactive in the region—although, UAE is becoming increasingly so—draws a lot of the attention. We have heard about the 184 executions, quite a number of them by crucifixion and other horrific practices. We know about those protesting for women’s human rights who were locked up and tortured. All of that is happening now under the current Saudi regime.
However, we also know that Bahrain lifted its moratorium on the death penalty in 2017, has executed six people and has a further 26 on death row. Those are the headline figures, but the practices and conditions in prisons, which are squalid, lead to epidemic-level outbreaks of illness. Prisoners do not get treatment for serious health conditions. Many of these individuals are long-standing human rights campaigners going back decades. They are now quite elderly, but they are locked up. Despite having serious health conditions, they do not receive any health treatment.
The situation in Bahrain has gone downhill since the Arab spring, when there was a popular uprising, which was suppressed using Saudi forces. Since then, anyone speaking out on human rights has been dealt with in a summary fashion. Civil liberties in these countries are virtually non-existent now. Things that we would take for granted, such as a free press, the right to assemble and the right of opposition political parties to form—most of them have now been dissolved—do not exist. In Bahrain, unlicensed gatherings of over five people are illegal and public protests are supressed with violence.
I ask the Minister, how are our attempts, funded by the British taxpayer, to improve human rights in these countries going? It all seems to be going in the opposite direction. I do not have time to go over the many individual cases, but there are cases of people—such as Ali Al-Hajee, Ali Al-Wazir, Hassan Mushaima and all those on death row—who should be held up as supporting human rights and arguing for better conditions of life, but who are being supressed by entirely oppressive regimes.
I am always very conscious of the fact that in Britain the abolition of the death penalty and the legalisation of homosexuality both happened in the course of my life. Both date back to the 1960s, so we should engage and encourage, but we should be mindful of the fact that we have not always had the greatest story to tell. On labour rights, for example, let us not kid ourselves, because we still have a problem with human trafficking in this country, notwithstanding the gangmasters legislation that we have now had for about 10 to 15 years. So humility is the order of the day.
That said, engagement must bring with it other things. The most important of those, as the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said, should be transparency and accountability. It is in the operation of the IAF that we find a worrying lack of both transparency and accountability, and I fear that permeates other aspects of our engagement with Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
Although it is not necessarily directly on point in relation to the operation of the IAF—at least I suspect that is the case, but who knows?—I am very concerned that the police chief in Dubai appears to be a front-runner for the presidency of Interpol. Nasser Ahmed Al-Raisi was in charge of the police service that detained a British academic, Matthew Hedges, for around six months on trumped-up charges, bluntly, which Matthew has always denied. I understand that he was eventually forced to sign a confession in Arabic, which he just did not understand, and in that time he was tortured. The engagement with the United Arab Emirates in relation to that case, for example, is not one that in any way, shape or form can be seen as working in the interests of United Kingdom citizens.
It is because of the lack of transparency and accountability that the business of engagement with GCC countries looks, from time to time, as if it is operating on double standards. We criticise China—I am 100% behind the Government’s new policy on China—but at the same time we seem to find it very difficult to criticise the Saudi Government, notwithstanding, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) outlined, their truly appalling human rights record. Yes, they have recently passed legislation allowing women the right to drive, but at the same time they are jailing those who actually campaigned for that very right. They also use the death penalty for people who would have been minors at the time they committed any crimes. They seem to continue on an almost unrestricted basis, including—God help us—having crucifixions.
If UK taxpayers’ money is being spent in such countries, the UK Government have a duty to account to taxpayers for where it is being spent and what it is being spent on. The little that we do know about the operation of the IFA, particularly as it relates to Bahrain, is that it involves sentencing reform and alternative sentencing there. That is a cause that I am prepared to support—indeed, it is a drum that I have beaten for many years in this country. That is certainly something we should support. However, if we consider the way in which alternative sentencing policy is pursued in Bahrain, we find very quickly that in fact there is no benefit for the political prisoners there. The beneficiaries of alternative sentencing are all within the country’s criminal justice system. I would have thought that one of the things we would want to promote is equal treatment, at the very least, of criminal prisoners and political prisoners. We should of course be pursuing a situation in which there are no political prisoners, but for those who find themselves imprisoned in Bahrain, any advances should be equally available to all.
There is a case for doing at least some of the work associated with the IAF, but I cannot think of many areas of public expenditure, even at this scale, that are allowed to be maintained in such conditions of secrecy. It is totally lacking in transparency and accountability. If the money is genuinely being spent on capacity building, we should expect it to be spent through non-governmental organisations, which I know is not easy in Gulf countries. However, they are there and they do operate, and they would seem a more obvious route for channelling support through, as we do in virtually every other theatre in which we spend overseas development moneys.
One such issue raised with me relates to Bahrain, which other Members have referred to. Freedom of information requests have demonstrated that IAF funding has supported religious organisations in Bahrain, and the Government have frequently praised Bahrain on its religious tolerance, stating on their website that:
“Bahrain maintained a positive record on freedom of religion or belief.”
However—there is always a “however”—it has been clearly illustrated that that is not what is happening. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly raised concerns about systematic discrimination against Bahrain’s indigenous Shi’a population by the Sunni Government. Without full transparency about Government funding to the Gulf, how can taxpayers be sure that public money is not being used to underpin bodies involved in religious discrimination and the violent suppression of civil societies in the Gulf Co-operation Council? That is why we need transparency and why this debate is so important.
The Government have often pointed to Bahrain’s alternative sentencing legislation as an IAF success story. However, although an impressive number of individuals have been released on alternative sentences—that should be noted and congratulated—I have been made aware that there might be evidence to suggest that releases may have discriminated against political prisoners. At Jau prison, there are now reportedly entire cell blocks that exclusively house political prisoners, and those on criminal charges are granted alternative sentences.
A notable example of discrimination relates to the prisoners known as the Bahrain 13—the leaders of Bahrain’s political opposition, jailed for their role in the 2011 pro-democracy uprising. Four of those men—Sheikh Mirza al-Mahroos, Mohammad Hassan Jawwad, Mohammad Ali Ridha Isma’il, and Sheikh Abdul-Hadi Abdullah Hassan al-Mukhodher—have completed nine years of their 15-year sentences, making them eligible for alternative sentences. However, despite their advanced age—some of them are over 70—all have been excluded from recent prisoner releases, while individuals convicted of violent criminal offences have been released ahead of them. When International Activities Fund-backed legislation is applied in such a discriminatory manner, without any transparency in how the IAF money was spent supporting this initiative, how can the public, the British taxpayer and we as elected representatives be confident that our taxes are promoting genuine reform in Bahrain and the wider GCC?
Mohammed Ramadhan and Hussain Moosa are Bahraini political prisoners who have been sentenced to death for his participation in pro-democracy protests and are at risk of imminent execution. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) referred to them. It is clear that they were tortured, sexually assaulted and forced to sign false confessions, which acted as the basis of their capital convictions. As a matter of principle, the UK opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances, and I welcome that. However, the use of executions has risen in Bahrain by a factor of more than 10 since 2017, in spite of IAF assistance to strengthen the rule of law.
The Special Investigations Unit is an IAF beneficiary—it sounds very dramatic and it has lots of power. The results of its so-called investigation were criticised for being flawed, failing to comply with the Istanbul protocol and leading directly to the re-imposition of the death sentences, so that review and investigation led nowhere. Amnesty International has found that IAF beneficiary oversight bodies that are responsible for investigating allegations of torture and abuse
“continually contribute to a pervasive culture of impunity in Bahrain through their failure to independently carry out their mandates.”
In the light of those well-documented and well-known failures, will the FCDO freeze funding until an independent review has been conducted?
Naji Fateel, a prominent Bahraini human rights defender, is currently serving a combined sentence of 25 years and six months for his human rights activism—something that we all subscribe to and speak about. He has now been away from his five children for more than seven years. When he was arrested, he was severely beaten and officers stomped on his head. During interrogation, Naji was severely tortured: he was kicked, forced to stand for long hours, suspended from the ceiling for long periods of time and electrocuted grievously on his genital area. His torture was so severe that he lost consciousness multiple times and had to be rushed to the hospital. There are publicly available pictures of the resulting scars on his body and he has suffered long-term consequences from this torture. Although Fateel now requires specific medication and surgery for his various injuries, the Jau prison authorities routinely deny him such treatment and have cancelled surgical appointments numerous times. Again, are we helping those people financially through the International Activities Fund, and are they then disregarding human rights, as they seem to?
After Naji made complaints to a human rights oversight body, the National Institute for Human Rights, it merely reviewed his medical records and swiftly closed his case, concluding he has
“his rights related to access to healthcare”
without a proper investigation or any action to remedy his situation. If the National Institute for Human Rights cannot do that job fairly, impartially or in a way that we can be satisfied about, it is time to do something about it.
[Mr Laurence Robertson in the Chair]
To conclude—it is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Robertson—will the Government make their funding streams to the GCC transparent, so that Naji and the British taxpayer can be sure that money is not going to, in effect, the institutions that cover up abuse?
Those are just a few examples of why the so-called secret package of funding must be transparent. Let us see where it goes, so that we can hold people accountable and allow for scrutiny. We must have dialogue with those we are helping, to ensure that human rights protections are not just a talking point, but a reality. Those examples show why we need it.