Sir Andrew Mitchell
MP for Sutton Coldfield · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I urge Labour Members to rise up now and say that the historical interest and support of the Labour party have been for international development. People might expect the beastly Tories to cut aid and development, but they do not expect the Labour party to do that. Now is a chance to have a real reset, which should include three things.”
“As we get older, we tend to look back at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, but I acknowledge at the outset that British development policy is at its best by far when it is conducted on an all-party basis. It is not a Labour, Conservative or Liberal policy; it is a British policy. That was one of its great glories in the past.”
“Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale about the importance of saving the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, but we have to accept that we will not get a major boost in public support unless it comes from the top. We had an era of huge support, led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.”
“The Government are the 100% shareholder in BII and are therefore able to set out very clearly what its priorities should be, but they should then leave an organisation like BII to get on with following that mandate. I argue that there have been three great losses from the Johnson and Starmer premierships.”
“I argue that, since the Suez crisis, international development has been the only area of indisputable British international leadership—and we have lost that.”
“I do not really agree with that because, while the hon. Gentleman cites a number of areas where Britain makes a big contribution, there is a big black hole where we have cut off our legs in respect to international development. I will say a word or two about that in a moment.”
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“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on moving the motion and on doing the House a favour by encapsulating most of the key arguments. I look forward to seeing his words repeated faithfully in The Mail on Sunday next weekend. Nothing antagonises our constituents more than the stories of hard-pressed taxpayers hearing that their hard-earned money has been spent corruptly. DFID is one of the most transparent Departments, if not the most transparent, in Whitehall, and it is precisely to promote the necessary openness that in 2010 we set up the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which has been much mentioned this afternoon.”
“Is the hon. Lady aware that Somaliland absolutely makes her point? It has a budget of around £50 million, of which Britain provides something like £10 million, while the remittance value is more than £400 million. That shows that we must all look at more creative ways of ensuring that remittances are well used.”
“Member for Batley and Spen (Jo Cox) and I have produced a report under our joint chairmanship of the all-party political group on Friends of Syria, which benefits from considerable expert advice and input. Clare Short and I recently visited the Turkey-Syria border with some brilliant British Muslim charities, and I pay tribute to their bravery. We must ensure that every child in a refugee camp and all those refugee children in Jordan and in Lebanon get an education, which should be paid for by rich European countries. Lebanon and Jordan are swamped by the number of refugees using their public services, and we must help out.”
“Secondly, there must be more incentives to decontaminate land, which would have a huge effect on the availability of land for house building in Birmingham. Finally, I want a real effort to be made to bring to fruition the plans to build a garden city in the black country that could provide up to 45,000 homes, none of which would need to be built on the green belt. This Queen’s Speech debate takes place against the background of an agonisingly difficult but ultimately catastrophic situation in the middle east. The four horsemen of the apocalypse continue to ride through what was Syria—a second-world country. I remind the House that in a country of just over 20 million, 11 million souls are now on the move—6 million within the country and 5 million outside. The hon.”
“I want a much greater focus in this parliamentary session on the importance of building new homes. It is virtually impossible for young people today to get on to the housing ladder in the way that my generation did, and dreams of a property-owning democracy are receding. However, homes must be built in the right places. Sutton Coldfield would suffer from the proposals of Birmingham’s Labour council to build no fewer than 6,000 new homes in the green belt. That is completely unacceptable, and we look to the Government to call that in at an early stage. I propose three ideas for how we can make the house-building process easier. First, there must be more imaginative and considered inner-city developments, with more power for local communities and less for developers.”
“The Queen’s Speech that we are discussing today is an authentic one nation speech. Social mobility is at its heart, and it makes clear the importance of capitalism working for everyone. It also puts some flesh on the bones of Prime Minister’s speech at last year’s party conference, which was one of the finest that he has made. For the moment, Europe dominates our politics. Indeed, at midday on 11 June, Sutton Coldfield town hall will hold a debate between the noble Lords Heseltine and Ashdown on the one side and Nigel Farage and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on the other. I can tell the House that tickets for that great debate sold out faster than Glastonbury and all went within half an hour yesterday. I want to make just a few brief points in the time available.”
“It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), who has entertained the House with a truly exceptional maiden speech. He spoke about his constituency with eloquence and about his predecessors with wit. Many of us remember his distinguished predecessor, Sir Raymond Powell. Indeed, I served in the Government Whips office opposite him and I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that he was a distinguished butcher. The hon. Gentleman will discover, I hope, that his expectation of working with people across the House will be fulfilled. He will find that we on this side are the opposition and not the enemy, and I personally look forward to working with him. It is perfectly clear from his maiden speech that he will fulfil his expectations, just as his partner and his constituents would wish him to do.”
“Let me just make it clear that ISIL will be relatively easily defeated militarily, but 90% of any defeat will be an ideological defeat, and that will be very much more difficult to achieve. We must show the same abhorrence of Islamophobia as we show of anti-Semitism.”
“For how much longer will the international community tolerate the deliberate targeting of hospitals by Russian military aircraft, which have now hit more than 30 hospitals in Syria? Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but its shocking behaviour is an affront to international order and is almost certainly a war crime. Finally, I want strongly to support what was said about human rights, and about the two key pieces of legislation in that respect in the Queen’s Speech, by the former Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), and by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke).”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We must also keep refugees and migrants as close as possible to the areas from which they came. Few if any of these people want to recreate Syria in Europe; they want to return to the homes from which they were driven, often under gunfire. The EU must cancel all tariffs on goods from Lebanon and Jordan. Industrial and agricultural goods are still subject to tariffs in some cases. No progress has been made on the EU’s 2011 proposal to have deep and comprehensive free trade agreements with those areas. We also need to encourage the international community to look ahead to the reconstruction of Syria. The Prime Minister has already made it clear that Britain will provide up to a billion pounds of support for reconstruction, which we must ensure happens as swiftly as possible.”
“My right hon. Friend is making an immensely compelling point. Does he agree that when the report is published, which, I like him, hope will be as soon as possible, although the tendency in the British media will be to use it as a trial of the former Prime Minister—Blair guilty or innocent—the great gain of the report will be in showing how the whole mechanism of government worked in the run-up to the decision to go to war? A Prime Minister is not Dr Strangelove; this is about how the whole machine in Whitehall works.”
“My right hon. Friend has rightly been concerned about the structure and effectiveness of local government in Birmingham. This is not a party political point, because these concerns have extended under Conservative and Labour Administrations. In his negotiations with the Birmingham improvement panel, under the excellent John Crabtree, will he bear in mind the importance of giving the new Labour leader, John Clancy, the space to implement the necessary reforms?”
“My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister deserves great credit for the results of the Syria replenishment conference that was held under his co-sponsorship in London. He will be aware, however, that that can only address the symptoms, and not the causes, of the catastrophe that is Syria today. Will he tell the House what more he thinks the British Government can do to try to promote the political track and ensure that it reaches the most speedy possible success?”
“Is not the key point that the right hon. Gentleman has made, and that the House should consider today, that all parties support the NHS and that, therefore, it simply will not work to have one party chart the future? It would be much better, therefore—this is why I support his motion—to have a cross-party commission, although not a royal commission that would kick it into touch for three years, to try to bring everyone together to face what he rightly describes as an existential challenge to health in this country for the future?”
“Is it not the case—I think this is a cross-party point—that although the NHS is under very great financial pressure, and we are trying, in effect, to get a quart out of a pint pot and have been doing so for many years, the people who work in the service are also under very great pressure? Whatever one thinks about the junior doctors’ situation, the information that has come out from across the service, and from across the junior doctors, is testament to the fact that they work under enormous pressure. This is not just a financial issue; it is also about the fact that the staff in the NHS are under unprecedented pressure that is not set to get any easier.”
“I am not sure that there is that big a difference between my hon. Friend and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). My point is that as well as getting all the political parties to focus on this issue now, we need an extremely long-term approach. The House of Commons used to accept that we had to have a long-term, all-party approach to pensions, because of the length of time involved in such important decisions. We also need that in relation to this issue: as well as getting everyone to focus on it, we need to get them to focus on the importance of reaching agreement because this is such a long-term issue.”
“Indeed, we accept that were Aston Martin to choose to come to Peddimore in my constituency—which we ardently hope it will—development would take place in area D of the green belt under the current plan. We have always said that if area D were needed for economic development that would provide jobs and employment for the future, we would accept it in the greater local interest. Equally, our green belt in Sutton Coldfield was bequeathed to us by past generations, and we should think with extraordinary care before allowing it to disappear forever under bricks and mortar. Once built on, it can never be restored for future generations. The Minister will also note that the west midlands region has less green belt than any other region of the country.”
“We also fought the disgraceful and destructive Labour Prescott law, which allowed in-filling and back-garden development in our royal town to be treated as brownfield land—something that the coalition Government mercifully overturned as soon as they were elected in 2010, not least following Sutton Coldfield’s trenchant campaign. I must make it clear at this point, however, that we in Sutton Coldfield are not proponents of nimbyism. We fully understand and actively support the view that more homes must be built if future generations are to enjoy the housing opportunities that our generation has enjoyed. That is why Sutton Coldfield councillors have consistently accepted planning applications that have increased the density of housing in Sutton, most recently in the context of the vexed issue of Brassington Avenue.”
“We fought the Boundary Commission’s plans to dismember our ancient royal town and ultimately secured for Sutton Coldfield one of the very few changes the Boundary Commission made in its national proposals anywhere in the country. We fought to reassert our royal status and thanks to the support of many, and most particularly the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Royal Tunbridge Wells (Mr Clark), we successfully concluded this campaign here in Parliament on 12 June 2014. Local campaigners fought successfully for our royal town council, which although not yet in perfect form will be set up before May this year.”
“Labour councils are pursuing similar ill-conceived proposals in Conservative constituencies outside Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham as well as outside Birmingham, in my constituency. The people in Sutton Coldfield have spoken out in their thousands and are confident in the Government’s commitment to true localism, and in the fact that these plans run counter to the national planning policy framework as the Minister for Housing and Planning himself has confirmed in his statements about the green belt. We have approached our various different community campaigns in Sutton with some confidence and a modest record of success.”
“I am most grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting me this debate on a matter of great importance to my constituents. My constituents will note and be honoured that you are in the Chair for this important debate. The extraordinary and hugely controversial proposal to build 6,000 houses on Royal Sutton Coldfield’s green belt is as obnoxious to my constituents as it is unnecessary in the context of the overall Birmingham development plan. No comprehensive case has been made for this destruction of our green belt, and officials from Birmingham City Council have relied upon inertia and a feeling that resistance is futile as the best means of pursuing these ill-thought-through proposals. Nor, as the Minister will know, is this happening only in Royal Sutton Coldfield.”
“That might arm officials in Birmingham with serious and credible arguments for building on the green belt, but such arguments are wholly absent today. Royal Sutton Coldfield is an ancient royal town with more than 1,000 proud years of history, and the sheer scale of the proposed destruction of our green belt is not easy to describe.”
“There is an enormous opportunity to build as many as 8,300 homes at Brookhay—more than the entire number with which our green belt in Sutton is threatened. Most important of all, I have put forward a compromise proposal that there should be a moratorium of between eight and 10 years while the rest of Birmingham City Council’s building plans take shape before there is any question of building on our green belt in Sutton Coldfield. That will allow us to take account of updated figures and up-to-date developments, not least the inward immigration figures for Birmingham, which, each time they are examined, vary by a multiple of the 6,000 homes with which we are threatened. This compromise proposal will allow for further consultation in 2023 based on updated figures for housing needs throughout the wider area.”
“There are huge opportunities to maximise brownfield sites in Birmingham, and examples, too, of how to build new and fulfilling inner-city communities featuring proper infrastructure and opportunity. Such developments could make a significant contribution to Birmingham in its emerging role as a key element of the midlands engine. There are between 40,000 and 50,000 existing brownfield opportunities in Birmingham, but alas, my calls for an independent audit of brownfield land in Birmingham fell on deaf Labour ears. There are also new areas covered by the local enterprise partnership which seek house building as part of their strategy for economic growth and new jobs, but again no comprehensive audit has been carried out.”
“Consultation processes held in holiday periods, and ill-considered comments by Labour councillors that it was all “a done deal” and protest was futile, did nothing to deter the sense of local anger and injustice. This campaigning of ours is localism writ large. It is the “big society” made flesh. However, my constituents have been wilfully ignored by council officials—ever courteous, of course—as officials have been dispatched to inform us of their political masters’ decisions rather than consulting us, and to advise us that resistance is hopeless as this Labour-inspired juggernaut bears down upon us all in Sutton Coldfield. We have been very constructive in advancing alternative ideas, propositions and compromises, none of which has even received the courtesy of a serious response.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Throughout our campaign, there have been significant campaigning events and marches over the green belt involving hundreds of my constituents. Indeed, I have addressed meetings attended by more than 1,000 people in my constituency. Royal Sutton’s Conservative councillors have campaigned vigorously against Birmingham’s proposals. I pay particular tribute to Project Fields, led so brilliantly by a local campaigner, Suzanne Webb, and to the three councillors in New Hall whose constituents are most directly affected by these proposals, Councillors Yip, Wood and Barrie. More than 6,000 people from our town have written directly opposing the proposals; all have been ignored.”
“We ask the Minister and the Government to heed our cry today, and we ask the Government to accept the case that we have made and to take the necessary action forthwith.”
“The effects on schools, healthcare and other amenities have hardly been considered, and the huge implications of the strain that would be imposed on our transportation systems, alongside the knock-on effect on other communities, are barely understood, let alone addressed. The people of Sutton Coldfield have cried out against these proposals with an articulate, unanimous and mighty voice, and the Government have a commitment to hear them. We demand that the Government step in to resist these plans. We offer our compromise proposal for an eight-year moratorium on this aspect of the overall plan, and we do so in a spirit of good will for the sake of our town and of future generations. We fully understand the importance of building more homes for the future, but those homes must be built in the right place.”
“That is perhaps a debate for another day, but I agree with my hon. Friend. He understands why such a proposal could make a considerable contribution to good local governance. As I was saying, the sheer scale of the proposed destruction of our green belt is not easy to describe. The imposition of a colossal 6,000 homes adjacent to our town would be impossible for us to absorb. It would be a wholly inedible Labour dump of concrete, which would change forever the character of Sutton Coldfield and have huge infrastructure consequences, which have barely received the slightest official attention. For example, our local hospitals, which would undoubtedly be affected by these monstrous proposals, have not even been consulted on the plans.”
“Of course the Minister cannot comment on the substance of what our hon. Friend has said, but I am sure he will agree that, were it to be the case that the hospitals, already very challenged, had not even been consulted by the authority, that would indeed be very remiss and would suggest that the full duty had not been exercised by the local authority and planning inspector in their researches.”
“It is important to clarify the situation in Burundi. Following the bilateral aid review in 2010, Britain ceased to have the very small programme it previously had in Burundi, partly because the costs of running the programme were so great, but secondly because France and Germany had a much bigger stake in the country. Britain—quite rightly, in my view—prioritised its interventions in many of the other countries that my hon. and learned Friend is addressing, in the interest of focusing on those we could most directly affect rather than those we could not affect.”
“There have of course been elections in the past in Somaliland with very close results whereby just a few thousand votes separated the two candidates, and power has transferred peacefully and effectively, so I think the hon. Gentleman will want to make it clear that this present glitch does not besmirch a very considerable record in respect of elections in Somaliland.”
“They educate their own children, they have children later, and they understand the opportunities for family planning. They have influence as a result of their education in their family, in their community and, increasingly, as we see in Afghanistan, in national government as well. There is much to celebrate in the success and effectiveness of British development policy and the real contribution that it has made. Perhaps everyone in the House should do a little more to make that clear to our constituents who I think, in the medium term, can easily be won round to its importance.”
“The decision in the strategic defence and security review in 2010 to spend 30% of the DFID budget on tackling conflict—now increased to 50%—was absolutely right although, as I mentioned to the House, it was pretty hard to find ways of spending 30%, and it may be quite difficult to spend 50%. The third key limb of all of this is prosperity and boosting economic activity with the transformation of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, which has invested in some of the countries that we have discussed. The poorest people can lift themselves out of poverty if they have a job and are economically active. The fourth thing that Britain has championed is getting girls into school, which is the single most effective way of changing the world, because girls who are educated tend to be economically active.”
“One reason for the massacres in Darfur—the pastoralists versus the crop growers—was the effect of climate change on crops and the ability of animals to withstand the droughts that are increasing in frequency. Britain has made an important contribution in the area of conflict, which has rightly been described as development in reverse. The key aim of British policy is to stop conflicts starting or, once they have started, to stop them, and once they are over, reconcile people. Much closer relations between development, defence and diplomacy, to which Members have alluded, came about because the coalition Government set up the National Security Council.”
“That was a direct danger to the UK, and an example of how conflict not only mars and destroys the lives of the people of Somalia but threatens us on the streets of Britain. Not long ago, there were more British passport holders training in terror camps in Somalia than in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Those people were a direct danger to the UK, but now progress is slowly being made. The African Union Mission in Somalia is much better equipped, and the initiatives launched by the Prime Minister at the London conference in 2012, following the dreadful famine, have been very successful, and have made steady if disjointed progress. In all those countries, climate change hits the poorest people first and hardest.”
“As I have said, it stands in stark contrast with what is happening next door in Burundi. There is more to do on political and media space, and it has not always been an easy relationship. I shall pass over the extraordinary and wholly wrong imprisonment of the Rwandan director of security under a European arrest warrant issued by Spain last year. We should not forget the essence of this relationship: following the genocide, Britain has been a powerful partner and influencer of the Rwandan Government, and the British people, in their relationship with the Rwandan people, have seen a tremendous growth in security, stability and, increasingly, in prosperity. Finally, I visited Somalia four times as Secretary of State and saw the way in which Mogadishu—in the past, a beautiful city—had been reduced to rubble, with al-Shabaab rampant.”
“We have seen the way in which terrorism, for example, in Kenya, but also in Tunisia and Egypt, destroys tourism, on which those countries rely. It is not an accident that the terrorists make those dispositions. We have heard about Burundi, where there is disorder and death, and hundreds of thousands of refugees. What a contrast to Rwanda next door, which is peaceful and stable, and an extraordinary development partner for Britain. It has lifted 1 million citizens out of poverty in the past four years, and seen great progress. It is a country where, from the top, corruption is stamped out. We know that it will do exactly what it says with the money that it receives from the international community. Ten years ago, Rwanda could fund only 38% of its budget; today, it funds more than 60%, and it is an example of the progress that can be made.”
“In Eritrea, as has already been said in this debate, that migration is fuelling the migration that comes across into Europe. Despite international arbitration, the conflict with Ethiopia is still not yet resolved, which I hope the Minister will mention when he comes to contribute to the debate. I believe that Chris Mullin, when a Minister, and I, when a shadow spokesman, are the only two Members of Parliament to have visited Eritrea in living memory. That benighted country certainly needs to see the benefit of order and development. In northern Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army has caused chaos with decades of war. There are huge numbers of jobless youngsters who do not have enough to eat. Voluntary Services Overseas, an outstanding British organisation, has made a significant contribution.”
“It is a real flashpoint, with warnings of Islamic fundamentalism from leading Muslims in the country. I wish to praise the work of Aegis that has done so much good work in Rwanda at combating genocide. I say to the Minister that Aegis may well have something beneficial to say about the disorder in the Central African Republic, although it is of course an area very much in the French zone, and we would be looking for the French and the European Union to use their international development spending to tackle those difficulties. In Sudan, Britain, Norway and the US have done what they can to deal with the extraordinary number of displaced people, as in the south freedom fighters seek to morph themselves into a Government.”
“There are 25 or 28 bands of villains going around terrorising the population. It is a rich irony that some of the poorest people in the world live on top of some of the richest real estate. In northern Nigeria, where DFID has done such good work, Boko Haram has been destroying the lives of ordinary people, although the position has got far more difficult for it under the new President of Nigeria. In Mali, we have seen the terror that has gripped local people. It is worth noting that Mali produces cotton, but, despite excellent attempts by Britain to try to ease trade distortions—particularly because of the American and EU subsidies— it cannot sell its cotton for a living wage, and that needs to be addressed by the international community. In the Central African Republic, half of the population is now underfed.”
“With our 0.7% commitment enshrined in law, Britain is clearly continuing to lead the way and putting its money where its mouth is, but the 0.7% spending of taxpayers’ money is justifiable only if we show that it is delivering real results so that hard-pressed taxpayers can see that for every pound that they are contributing to the development budget, they are getting 100 pence of delivery on the ground. All the way across sub-Saharan Africa and central and east Africa, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham made so clear, poverty and conflict are breeding instability. There is a belt of misery that is fuelling discontent and anger among very poor people. There is appalling suffering in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly in the east.”
“Today’s announcement on malaria—the £500 million going forward to 2020—is an important continuation of a policy that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he now is but then was not, announced in 2008 when he said that a Conservative Government would contribute £500 million until the disease was eradicated. He has now extended that promise so that it will last for 12 years. Britain has taken leadership on family planning. If all countries stick to their promises, we will have, by 2020, reduced by half the number of women in the poor world who want access to contraception and who currently do not have it. There is also the extraordinary success, particularly in the Horn of Africa, in combating HIV/AIDS.”
“In 2000, there were 100 million children in our world who could not go to school, because they did not have a school to go to. Today, that number is heading down from 57 million. The Girls Education Challenge Fund was set up to get 1 million girls into school in parts of the world where there was no state structure in which to do it. It encouraged the private sector, humanitarian organisations, charities and philanthropic organisations to join in that project. We have been leading the way in tackling disease through vaccination. In the previous Parliament, we vaccinated a child in the poor world every two seconds, and saved the life of a child every two minutes from diseases from which, thank goodness, our own children do not suffer. We are on the way to eradicating polio.”
“Even the European Union is beginning to make some progress in this regard. Let us also be clear that this progress from Britain has happened under both Labour and Conservative Prime Ministers. Before I come directly to east and central Africa, let me say this: now is the time; we are the generation that can make a colossal difference to these huge discrepancies of opportunity and wealth that exist in our world today, and disfigure it so very greatly. Britain has done extraordinary humanitarian work around the poor and conflicted parts of the world. We think of Syria where Britain’s support for Syrian refugees is greater than all the rest of the European Union added together. We think of the way that Britain has managed to help to get children, particularly girls, into school.”
“We need only to think of the recent injuries and deaths that have afflicted Médecins Sans Frontières to understand why. Our hearts have to go out to all those who have been maimed or worse serving their fellow men and women in a very difficult part of Africa. This debate is timely. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) said so eloquently, the scale of the difficulties in this part of the world sometimes mask the scale of our development success. The very great difficulties hide the huge differences that international development can make. Let us be absolutely clear that international development works and that Britain is a key mover and shaker in the deployment of soft power. British initiatives are being copied all around the world—in America, Australia, throughout Scandinavia, and among UN agencies.”
“I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on securing this debate today and on his excellent speech, which he must have written in the small hours of the morning at Addis Ababa airport. He certainly launched this debate extremely effectively. The debate gives us a chance to pay tribute to the outstanding officials and staff from the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development. The DFID officials, whom I had the privilege to lead for some two and a half years, are doing such outstanding work in the area that we are discussing. We should also pay tribute to the many non-governmental organisations and charities that do such dangerous and vital work in desperate parts of the world.”
“It is worth adding to my hon. Friend’s point, in connection with the intervention by the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), that when what George Bush described as genocide was taking place in Darfur, the first country to offer troops for an AU force was Rwanda, because those living there knew what had happened to them and they wanted to stop that happening to those living in Darfur.”
“The hon. Lady is making an important speech, but may I encourage her to be as bipartisan or as all-party in her approach as possible on this vital issue? It is very good to see the Leader of the Opposition and the Heath Secretary in their places, both of whom have a long-standing interest in this issue. Will the hon. Lady at least accept that the all-party campaign led by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb)—very substantially assisted by Alastair Campbell, who has some considerable expertise in this area—was successful, beyond the scenes, in persuading the Chancellor to produce an extra £600 million for mental health? All of us will try to ensure that that money is spent well, but let us try to do so with an all-party or bipartisan approach.”
“My right hon. Friend deserves great praise for not only the content but the tone of his speech. Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis), does my right hon. Friend agree that while any gap between reality and rhetoric is to be regretted, what really irritates our constituents is the making of bogus party political points on the subject? I hope that he will ensure that his tone and his content are reflected by his Department. I wish him every success in working with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), who clearly cares deeply about this matter, to ensure that we have an all-party approach to it.”