Oral evidence: Human rights
HC 860
Wednesday 24 February 2016
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 24 February 2016
Members present: Crispin Blunt (Chair); Mr John Baron; Ann Clwyd; Mr Adam Holloway; Daniel Kawczynski; Yasmin Qureshi; Andrew Rosindell; Nadhim Zahawi
Questions 46-119
Witnesses: Rt Hon Baroness Anelay, Minister of State with responsibility for human rights policy, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Rob Fenn, Head of the Human Rights and Democracy department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Paul Williams, Director of Multilateral Policy, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, gave evidence.
Q46 Chair: Welcome to this evidence session in the Foreign Affairs Committee’s inquiry into the FCO’s management of human rights. Baroness Anelay, welcome. Perhaps you would like to introduce yourself formally for the record, and your team.
Baroness Anelay: I am the human rights Minister at the FCO, but also the Prime Minister’s special representative on the prevention of sexual violence in conflict initiative, so I see human rights embedded across the whole of the FCO in that way, and my colleagues help me to deliver that policy. Paul, would you like to introduce yourself?
Paul Williams: I am the FCO Director for Multilateral Policy.
Rob Fenn: And I am Rob Fenn, Head of the Human Rights and Democracy Department.
Q47 Chair: I know you had a prepared statement you wanted to make at the start. As we have your written evidence from the office and we have, obviously, prepared a line of questioning for you, let us not go down that road. If, at the end, there are issues that we have not covered, that you feel are in addition to the written evidence you have given and that you would like to get across to us, that will be the moment to do so. But hopefully we will have covered them in the course of questions.
Minister, you will no doubt be all too aware of the welcome candour of the permanent secretary when he came to give evidence to this Committee and told us that human rights were not one of the top priorities and that, in a constrained environment, the need to concentrate on Europe, eastern Europe and Russia had supplanted that to an extent. Is that still the case?
Baroness Anelay: I certainly saw that was part of what he said that day and I have discussed it since then, because that microcosm—that part of the extract—does not reflect the work that we do in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I know what he was seeking to do at the time was explain the staffing levels in the FCO. Indeed, when he then appeared in front of the House of Lords Sexual Violence in Conflict Committee for its inquiry, he went much further and explained that he saw, as the Foreign Secretary does, that human rights combine the everyday work of every single diplomat throughout the FCO, so that it is embedded across all the work that we do.
Has it been deprioritised? Firmly, no. It is still the priority, because it is what every single diplomat does as part of everyday work. Is it a priority? Yes, indeed it is.
Q48 Chair: Is it a ministerial priority in the way that it was under Secretary of State Hague?
Baroness Anelay: Since the Foreign Secretary himself has said that he sees human rights as the everyday work of every member of the FCO, yes I think it is. As politicians we use different words but we can be trying to describe the same thing.
Q49 Chair: How has the current Secretary of State managed to convey to Human Rights Watch, for example, that there plainly has been a downgrading of human rights within the priorities of the office? They put that to us orally in evidence yesterday when David Mepham repeated what was in the written submission to the Committee.
Baroness Anelay: I was surprised to hear that. First, because I have met David on several occasions and explained to him how we are setting out the way we present the annual report, and that therefore there is no reducing of the priority that we give to human rights, which are embedded across the whole spectrum of the work we do. I also know that the way in which the Foreign Secretary has ensured that human rights are represented by every single member of the team when they travel around this country and overseas means that he sees that it has as much importance as it ever did.
Q50 Chair: It is not just the Foreign Secretary, is it? In the evidence that was sent to us by Free Tibet and Tibet Watch they made a comment about Hugo Swire and his engagement with them. They commented that, during a debate on 22 October, Mr Swire reported that he had met a lot of pressure groups and non-governmental organisations that had come to raise their concerns in advance of the visit of President Xi.
They commented that, given that Free Tibet, Tibet Watch and many other organisations attending the meeting felt that Mr Swire had failed to engage or respond constructively to their input, the reply can be seen to carry a misleading and politically advantageous implication of meaningful consultation and the inclusion of stakeholder input in Government policy. They said, “A number of organisations have expressed the view that if such meetings are a box-ticking or PR exercise, it may be better not to participate in them at all.”
Baroness Anelay: First of all, I think that all Ministers view the meetings with NGOs and individuals as being of great importance for the way in which they listen to and engage with the outside world. By “outside” I mean outside the world of politics, so that all those who have a view can be heard.
Of course, I do realise that those who express those views then feel that the Government have not sufficiently taken them on board. For example, if one is working for Free Tibet, it will not be much comfort if one of them finds that the Government maintain the position, as we have, that we believe that Tibet is part of China. I can, therefore, see that they would be disappointed with the result of their contribution, but I certainly would not want to undermine the willingness of NGOs and individuals to engage with the Foreign Office.
Indeed, the way we are looking again at how we engage with civil society means that we want to be able to give those who do not have secretariats or international help to support them the opportunity to have access. I realise that in the real world, of course, the NGOs and Ministers have only 24 hours in every day, but it is important that we find ways of engaging with them.
I do that in a variety of ways, either with roundtable engagement or having individual or wider meetings, such as the launch of the Magna Carta Partnership’s work last year and, more recently, the Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy, when we may invite up to 150 NGOs. There is a variety of ways in which one can engage and one needs to use all of those.
Q51 Chair: What about the commentary from Human Rights Watch about the actuality of how we manage human rights as a priority? They have pointed out to us that human rights conditions in Egypt are the worst they have been for decades. Under the leadership of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt has “engaged in an unprecedented crackdown on dissent and opposition, trampling over fundamental freedoms and rights and entrenching the authoritarian state that so many Egyptians bravely revolted against in 2011”.
Without wanting to go further down that line, obviously the situation in Egypt is extremely difficult, yet President al-Sisi was afforded the red carpet treatment at Downing Street. That doesn’t send a very good signal, does it?
Baroness Anelay: This is one of the discussions that all Governments have to have. What engagement do you have with countries that do not adopt your values and social norms, but where you want to achieve change? Therefore, you can do that either by quiet diplomacy or megaphone diplomacy. Where quiet diplomacy works, then it is better to do that first.
I appreciate, Chair, that you have been to Egypt recently. You will have seen and heard some of the stories that Human Rights Watch has carefully collected—and I respect the work they do very much—to show that there are serious concerns about individual freedoms, certainly freedom of expression. We continue to work with the Government of Egypt to explain why in the long term it is against their interests to inhibit freedom of expression. When President al-Sisi came here, there were discussions with him about human rights within Egypt. They are part and parcel of every engagement that we would have with another Government.
Q52 Chair: Are you aware of what has happened with the organisation in Cairo that reports torture?
Baroness Anelay: I think you might be referring to Al Nadeem Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence.
Q53 Chair: Yes, so what have we done about what is happening to El Nadeem?
Baroness Anelay: As I understand it so far, the Egyptian Government announced that it was going to close down an organisation that carries out valuable work on assisting those who suffer torture and carries out remedial work with them. That is the kind of work that we like to support. When we inquired, we and the international community were told that El Nadeem had breached certain health and safety laws.
We want to find out whether those laws are in fact relevant to El Nadeem or relevant to other premises, whether they may be commercial or not. What is clear is that the international community as a whole wants to work to prevent El Nadeem from being closed down. It would give the wrong signal to the rest of the world if the order to close were carried into effect.
Q54 Chair: Why did the FCO refuse to fly the rainbow flag for the Pride last year?
Baroness Anelay: That has raised a lot of interest I know. We looked carefully at our flag-flying policy and the decision was made that, if you are going to fly a flag, it should be a flag relating to a state. So there is a uniform policy for the whole of the FCO, not only here but around the world. If it is a flag for a country, it is flown. If it is not a flag for a country, it is not, and that affects the Commonwealth flag as much as anything else. It does not in any way undermine the work that we want to do on LGBTI issues throughout the Foreign Office.
Indeed, when I was appointed Minister in August 2014, and I looked at the then annual report, my first reaction was, if I or any member of my family were describing themselves as part of LGBTI as a community, where would they look to see interest from the FCO? I knew it was there but I could not see it.
Therefore, I ensured that we looked more carefully at our policies on LGBTI processes. For example, when I went last time to New York I arrived just too late to join our UK mission ambassador there, Matthew Rycroft, who was taking part in the float for the LGBT day, the Gay Pride day, in New York. It is a case of a decision on a practical issue.
Q55 Chair: There is a mixed story to tell on LGBTI, in terms of the evidence we have taken from the organisations advancing LGBTI rights. Some are quite encouraged by the changes of approach—we will get into that in a minute. What I am driving at is that you have a reputational problem as a ministerial team on this issue. Whatever is going on underneath you, do you accept that there is at the very least a problem in the current ministerial team’s perceived commitment to human rights?
Baroness Anelay: Referring back for a moment to the issue of the flag, I think headlines are easy to make when something as visual as a flag is raised—or not raised, in this case. There has been—
Q56 Chair: With respect, Minister, the flag issue is then reinforced by the fact that the Permanent Secretary comes to us and acknowledges that the priority around human rights has dropped. It coincides with an environment where you are producing a new approach to human rights and the specific areas of priority have been changed, and where you are intending to produce a rather shorter human rights report than you have produced before. That is producing concern from organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International about whether there is going to be the same level of accountability.
There is particular concern about the language used by the Secretary of State in promoting this, which is in marked contrast with the previous Secretary of State. Do you not accept that, though it may be grossly unfair, there is at the very least a reputational issue about the ministerial commitment to human rights?
Baroness Anelay: I was going to say that moving on from the fact that flying or not flying a flag is easy for a headline, another headline is that it is much easier for people to say, “They don’t care any more.” It is more difficult to prove why one does care, because of course changes in human rights and successes can take so long that you cannot necessarily grab a headline from it. We need to explain better, as the FCO, to both those people who represent major NGOs and those more broadly who work in civil society, how and why the issue of human rights is embedded across the whole of the FCO and that it has not been deprioritised.
As I mentioned in opening, I talked to the permanent under-secretary, and when I looked at the words he used when he appeared in front of the House of Lords Select Committee, he was making it clear that human rights are still a priority. If you build them across every part of the Foreign Office and if they are embedded and everybody is expected to reflect them—including the ministerial team, of course—that surely shows the importance attached to them. If there is a perception that says they are not a priority, that is a perception we have to work to redress and address.
Q57 Chair: When the permanent under-secretary said to this Committee that the prosperity agenda is further up the list of priorities, surely that means that prosperity will be pursued at the expense of human rights.
Baroness Anelay: First of all, it isn’t; I will come back to that in two seconds. I looked at the rest of what he said, and he was talking in terms of the number of people employed. When you have UKTI, clearly you have a much larger number of people who are employed. When I have been asked questions in the House of Lords, I have made it very clear, as I will today, that if you pursue trade engagement with a country, it is not at the expense of human rights; it is complementary to human rights. Therefore, when we have trade negotiations, those who take part in that are well aware of our human rights advice on individual countries, and human rights are not sacrificed at the altar of prosperity.
Q58 Chair: How would you suggest we measure you over the rest of the Parliament in terms of, say, relationships with countries such as China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the prosperity versus human rights index?
Baroness Anelay: I am going to ask my colleagues to come in in a moment, but first of all I ought to say that it disturbs me when I see stories that Ministers have not engaged on human rights issues when they have visited China. For example, the last time the Chancellor of the Exchequer went to China, he did indeed have meetings on human rights. He raised them not only privately but publicly too, so they are part and parcel of that.
Measurement is the core of what you ask, Chair. Of course, measuring success in human rights terms is always difficult, simply because we are working with other international groups or national groups. If we work with the International Committee of the Red Cross, we have to say that we share the responsibility for improvements that take place, but that does not stop the question being absolutely about measurement. We can point to some significant changes with regard to, for example, Sri Lanka and their adoption of the international protocol, but they also need to make changes.
This is perhaps where I will turn to my colleagues, because you properly asked how we can see change over the period of this Government.
Rob Fenn: Thank you, Minister. Measuring change in human rights is always tricky. Some of our best achievements are in preventing things getting worse. I would like to pick up briefly on the Minister’s reference to Sri Lanka, because I think that that is one of the jewels in the crown of our human rights engagement—
Q59 Chair: I would prefer it if we had a go at answering the question, which was about how we should measure you? How should this Committee and the rest of Parliament assess your success? You have made the legitimate point that no progress might be seen as success in a difficult environment, but can we focus on the question and use examples for illustration, if you need to?
Rob Fenn: I was very encouraged to hear what Kate Allen said yesterday about how a shrewd observer like her going around the world and interacting with our posts is able to see that they regard human rights as a major part of their day job. This is a success for our mainstreaming approach—the Foreign Secretary’s dictum that human rights are part of the everyday work of all British diplomats.
Things are probably easiest to measure when we come to the programme side. You will have noticed that the Government have doubled the size of our human rights-specific fund, the Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy. That has gone up to £10.6 million a year. That will give you a very quantifiable way to check how we are spending the money. We account for it very punctiliously. We do some very extensive evaluation of our projects, which is published online—
Q60 Chair: That money has come from the DFID vote, hasn’t it?
Rob Fenn: Most of it is ODA, but not all of it is ODA. It is very easy to spend—
Q61 Chair: What percentage is ODA?
Rob Fenn: Ninety-seven per cent.
Q62 Chair: Pretty much all ODA. So 3% is left for countries such as Russia, those of the Gulf Co-operation Council and Israel, for example.
Rob Fenn: You can spend that whole fund on human rights projects, including some in Russia and some through multilateral organisations, with it being ODA-able. I think we will have a very good spread of targets for the Magna Carta Fund.
I am trying to think of other ways in which you would like to measure our impact. Perhaps our new report—we will stand by the impact of our more readable annual human rights report. It will not be withholding any information; it will simply signpost the readers to information already in the public domain. Previous editions of the report tended to duplicate and to gather it all together in one place.
You also have to measure our impact on a case-by-case basis in individual countries. You, Chair, instanced China, and China is a country where this time last year we were lobbying hard for the release of five women’s rights activists and, very shortly after our intervention, they were released. I am sure that that was partly due to the fact that we have a very wide-ranging conversation with China about the way in which human rights are good for both our countries. We are trying to improve performance and governance in China. We are working very closely, for example, with the courts system in China to reduce the number of crimes that attract the death penalty—there is a good measurable output, if you like.
Right across the piece we will be chipping away at human rights problems. As the Minister has put it, we will be harnessing the insights of our Ambassadors and High Commissioners in all those countries, so that we pick the issue on which we can make most difference.
Baroness Anelay: With your permission, Chair, might I suggest that Paul add something? I could bring in something about the PSVI initiative and measurement of that.
Paul Williams: Thank you, Minister. I agree with everything that Rob said. I am director in the directorate where Rob is a staff member, and we of course have internal measurement of each other. So Rob has specific objectives on human rights, against which I judge him and he judges his team. I am not saying that that is a measure that the Committee can necessarily use, but you can be assured that we—
Q63 Chair: These are whether you respect the human rights of each other, or something more complex?
Paul Williams: No.
The Minister might say something about preventing sexual violence in conflict—
Q64 Chair: Sorry, if that is not about each other, what is it about and how does it work? Are these objectives that you set yourselves? Will we see these objectives in your new report?
Paul Williams: What I think you will see in the report is sections—assuming the Minister approves this—on each of the new themes that, as you will have seen from our written evidence, we are setting out and judging ourselves against. Therefore, you will see measurements within that about how we feel we are performing on each of those themes. You will also see a section on Human Rights Priority Countries, and within that you will also see measurements about how we think those countries are doing and what we have tried to do to affect what those countries are doing. Those issues then relate to the specific objectives that we internally set ourselves to achieve, which you will then see translated into the Annual Human Rights Report and what goes online from individual posts around the world.
Q65 Chair: So in the report we are going to see you setting yourselves specific targets, perhaps around certain individuals, causes and countries?
Paul Williams: In the report, I think you will see our assessment of progress on both the individual countries that we talk about as human rights priority countries and on the themes that we have set ourselves. Of course, there are other reporting mechanisms to Parliament, too. The FCO’s Single Departmental Plan, for example, and the Minister’s own FCO orals, where Members of Parliament are free to ask questions about how we are doing on those themes and on individual countries. I suggest that that is part of how the Committee can assess how we are doing on human rights and democracy.
Baroness Anelay: Perhaps, with regard to PSVI, I may add an illustration of why, although measurement is difficult, it is still important that we are held to measurements. I will shortly be setting out my objectives for this year, with the help of the steering board, which gives advice and guidance on the quality work that we do. I can make claims, for example, about the increased training that we have been able to provide through our work with the peshmerga in northern Iraq and the support we give there. One could give a numerical level and say that we have trained 800 people, that we have worked with the Norwegians and other allies to ensure that they also carry out training and that we work with the MOD to ensure that the training that is provided can be demonstrated to be human rights-based. That can be said, and one can measure it. I also saw an element of that a couple of weeks ago in Nigeria.
Q66 Chair: But that, of course, is an input.
Baroness Anelay: Exactly, and the output is exactly the problem. My next stage is to try to work on the outputs. I will give a quick example of that. In Nigeria, I saw a gifted British Army trainer training people in how to search somebody in a human rights-compliant way that also keeps the person doing the searching alive. I am very much aware that, at the end of the process, the British Army will have no control over where that particular soldier it has trained went, and indeed whether they continued to be in the company of those who have also learned human rights compliance. I agree that my work is to look at the output over a longer period, which is much more difficult but is important, otherwise the input doesn’t have the effect one needs.
Q67 Chair: I hope we will be able to see your target outputs in the report that you make to Parliament. Rather than simply being backward looking, it would obviously be helpful if we could see the direction in which you are trying to take results. We will obviously wait and see when you produce the new account in April.
You have narrowed your focus from the 6+2 key themes to three human rights themes. Can you briefly explain the rationale behind that?
Baroness Anelay: The rationale was that, when I looked at the list, I felt there were too many occasions when I wouldn’t know why it was in that order. As soon as you have a list, it looks as though the first on the list is the priority and the rest just falls into line behind that, and it was missing children’s rights and the whole issue of LGBTI, which I just felt was plain wrong. Could I have added those on to the list? Well, you can, but it doesn’t do much good because then they still come at the bottom of the list and are rather disregarded.
To get round the idea that torture prevention was the most important and that business and human rights was the least important, I wanted to ensure they were all seen as human rights embedded across the FCO. That is why I invited my colleagues to come forward with proposals about how we could ensure we showed the world our commitment to the democratic values that underpin everything we do and provide the opportunity for us to invest even more in delivering on human rights. Rob, you were the one who helped with all that. I wonder if you would like to explain how we developed that.
Rob Fenn: Thank you, Minister. It was a big opportunity after the election to work for a Government that wanted to do even better on human rights than its predecessors and wanted us to take a fresh look at it. It had this feeling that our 6+2 priorities did not quite add up to a brand, were always risking creating some sort of hierarchy between human rights and were, frankly, a little alienating for our network—particularly the posts who could not see a real opportunity for them on that particular list.
We were looking for something that would really capture the unique selling point of the UK—our soft power and our Foreign Office network—so we homed in on three things. The first is democratic values and the rule of law, which is in a way the UK brand around the world on human rights. I see that team in my department as very much open to talking and acting on every single human right. It is the most thematic and most abstruse part of my department, but where some very important expertise resides. Then we had a theme around strengthening the rules-based international system, which was obviously something that the UK was greatly expert at. We are in every single part of the multilateral system, from the Security Council through to the Council of Europe—you name it, there are British diplomats there at work within the international system, so it was about leveraging that for human rights.
The third part—and perhaps the most topical, given all the focus on extremism, Daesh and the threat our countries face—was that we came up with the concept of human rights for a stable world. We wanted to bring together the problem-solving impact of human rights as part of a bulwark against extremism, to be somewhere we could really make the most of freedom of religion or belief and bring that together with the conflict prevention expertise in the Foreign Office and things like the Overseas Security and Justice Assistance Framework, which is obviously another very important role for human rights in de-risking our involvement in difficult countries. Those three themes seemed to us in the Department, and thankfully to the Minister too, to be a good way of squaring this circle, providing strategy and a sense of shape to our human rights work without ruling out any individual human right.
The last point I will make on this is that we are very privileged to represent a country whose own civil society is expert in every single aspect of human rights work. You name it, there is a British NGO, British expert or British professor who is the best person on that subject. We did not want to squander any of that; we wanted to channel it.
Q68 Ann Clwyd: Is there not a risk that the areas are now so broad that previously specific areas of focus such as the abolition of the death penalty around the world will be overlooked?
Baroness Anelay: Just the reverse, in fact. We have made clear as a Government that the death penalty is wrong. It is wrong in practice and wrong in principle, and I wanted to be able to be sure that those who felt that felt they had a place within the work we do. It may not be that they were working towards its abolition—I hope they would because, as far as I am concerned, that has to be the long-term work of every single person—but they might want to be able to take part in work to help the survivors of the families of those who have been executed or the families of those who are in prison awaiting execution, who are in the appalling situation of not knowing what is going to happen. I wanted to be able to do that but also to have a clear signposting of what you could do, where you would go. Rob, we do have somebody, for example, on the death penalty, who is the clear signpost person; you phone up and speak to that person, don’t you?
Rob Fenn: Absolutely; I hope that was very clear in our memorandum. We spelled it out in great detail just for this purpose.
Q69 Ann Clwyd: You have talked about internal evaluation but you do not seem to be doing very well according to the press this morning, which has headlines such as, “Britain is undermining human rights, warns Amnesty” and “Government accused of downgrading human rights”. Kate Allen said, “The UK is setting a dangerous precedent to the world on human rights. There’s no doubt that the downgrading of human rights by this government is a gift to dictators the world over and fatally undermines our ability to call on other countries to uphold rights and laws.” That is pretty damning.
David Mepham followed on by saying that there has been a shift of expertise—as the Chair previously mentioned—from human rights to trade on overseas ministerial trips. David Mepham told us yesterday that the group was “very concerned by the trend in China policy”, which he said was increasingly run by the Treasury. Despite a relentless crackdown on dissent, he said—and you said the opposite—that George Osborne had not raised human rights issues on his recent visit. Would you dispute that?
Baroness Anelay: I would not only dispute it; the proof is there because public statements were made. It was a matter not just of private meetings, but of public statements as well. I would dispute the perception of what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said and did when he was China. There certainly are records of the meetings, and obviously there are records of the public meetings. With regard to business and human rights, we were one of the very first Governments to have a National Action Plan. We are just updating that and we are the first to do that. We have taken a lead on it and we have had praise from around the world for being in the lead. One can always do more.
May I refer to the comments that Kate Allen made in the papers this morning? First, I very much value the relationship that we have with Amnesty International. I always have. In the 20 years I worked outside of Parliament before becoming a politician within Parliament, I was in civil society and supported human rights defenders so I very much support the work that they do. From memory, I believe that Kate was referring specifically to the Government’s proposal to have a Bill of Rights. She argued that this was not the right way forward. I have had discussions with her about that and explained that there will be a consultation.
The draft Bill is not yet in the public domain and therefore that debate is yet to happen. Clearly, my understanding is that this Government will uphold human rights, whether it is through a Bill of Rights or through the current system. I appreciate what the Chair said—there may be a perception that we are not as strong on human rights as we used to be. That perception is wrong. It is not founded in fact. Our job at the FCO is to ensure that we put forward the information to explain to people why that has been misconceived.
Q70 Ann Clwyd: How widely will you be publicising your method of approach to the three prioritised areas? How will you explain it to the public?
Baroness Anelay: I am glad that you mentioned the public because, of course, it is all too easy for us to explain to international and local NGOs and not to go any further than that. We had a meeting at the FCO last year for all the leading organisations in civil society to explain that. More recently, we explained things a bit further when we had an event to launch the new Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy. These days, far more is done through online media than is done face-to-face but face-to-face is still essential. Diplomacy would not survive without it and that is where we put the pressure. We will make sure the public know by ensuring that we are agile in the way in which we use our media. Whether it is Twitter, Facebook or in other ways, that is the way we need to transmit that. Perhaps I should say that, underlying all that, the most important tool or weapon that we have—sitting with me today—is our diplomats. Rob was the High Commissioner in Brunei at one time. These are people who spend time in the FCO, but are also ambassadors at other times. It is our ambassadorial network—270 of them around the world—who will carry out a great piece of work in explaining what work we are doing and how we can help in projects that can be funded by the FCO.
Q71 Ann Clwyd: How will you measure your impact in each of the three areas? A Department like DFID, for example, is much keener on external evaluation than the Foreign Office is.
Baroness Anelay: I know that DFID has its own structured way of presenting information. I am interested in what they do. If one looks online at their presentation, they have in each of their paragraphs, “If you want to know more about this country, go to the FCO.” They have a link to us. So they recognise that the country-specific knowledge that we have in post around the world and also at our research desks and desks in London that can be used to inform the public. So our information is available through the DFID system, too.
Q72 Ann Clwyd: But they get people externally assessing how effective policies are. I don’t see that happening in the FCO.
Baroness Anelay: We do have a management board, of course, which is responsible for ensuring that we have an external overview of the work that we do. Certainly we have our own assessment system from the point of view of delivery of the human rights policies. I would not like to try to encroach upon my colleagues’ work on country-specific matters, but certainly from what I see there is a great deal of rigour in testing and counter-testing the work that we do.
Q73 Ann Clwyd: May I put one point to you about monitoring? For example, if this country sells arms to a country that is in contention at the moment and we ask for evidence about how those arms are being used, what system of effective monitoring have you got?
Baroness Anelay: There are several layers within that. When we are involved in trading with other countries, if it is with regard to arms there are specific extra layers of control. The UK and EU consolidated criteria have to be followed, and each and every application for an export has to pass that test. If it then transpires that there is proof that those rules have been broken, our system is quick enough to be able to cancel that particular contract and then review any that were in the pipeline to that same country, but every single application has to pass those criteria and has to keep to them.
With regard to external experts, we have access to people who have expertise, as Rob mentioned earlier on, in a whole range of human rights. They advise us on the prevention of torture, the death penalty, freedom of religious belief and freedom of expression, and they are the friendly fire that guides us on those. I mentioned a short while ago the steering board that I have on the PSVI work that we do, so there are other eyes outside. There are also strict criteria built into legislation.
Ann Clwyd: On occasion I would say that some of them are not very effective eyes.
Q74 Yasmin Qureshi: Good afternoon. I want to explore the finances that are given to our embassies and high commissions across the world and the funding given to support the human rights work. How is it decided which embassy or high commission will get what percentage of the pot of money, and how is that spending monitored and evaluated?
Baroness Anelay: There are two parts to the answer and I will do the first part as briefly as I can, if that is all right. First of all, all of our diplomats have to work along the lines that human rights are part of everything that they do. Therefore, one could say that as we invest in training our diplomats, that is part of the investment that goes in. They carry that with them and it is part of the continuous in-service work that they do. But you—properly, of course—draw attention to where the money goes.
I wonder if I might turn to Paul, but I would say very briefly that the practical side of providing money for projects means that we want to invite people to get advice about how they make an application: is it likely to be successful? What are the kind of criteria? The people they go to in the first instance are usually the people in-country: that is, of course, the high commissioner or the ambassador, or the people working with her or him there. It starts there so perhaps they can be helped along the way. The worst thing is that people apply out of the blue for a project and then find they are turned down when, if they had had some help and guidance, they might have succeeded.
Paul Williams: Thank you, Minister. As Rob mentioned a little bit earlier, we now have a doubled-in-size human rights and democracy programme called the Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy, so for the next financial year that will be £10.6 million for the year. What we do is, in the spirit of the mainstreaming that the Minister talked about earlier, we ask embassies around the world to bid into the fund based on their local knowledge—what they think they can do and achieve by using the money—and then we have a system for evaluating those project bids. A series of boards eventually decides on which embassies get the money.
That is not to say that that is the only money available for human rights and democracy work, of course. As you will have seen from our written memorandum, we consider that human rights and democracy are also a key part of our security and stability around the world, so we have another fund, a cross-Whitehall fund, called the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. It is possible also to bid into that, but if anyone does they have to fill out a programme fund bidding form to the fund. That includes a human rights element as well. So it is possible to bid in for money in several ways, but the key is this local knowledge.
To go back to what Rob was saying about the new three themes, that also provides the local flexibility for ambassadors to be able to say, within this slightly broader theme than the 6+2 priorities we had before, “What do I think I can achieve locally?” We hope that that will help people bid in on those three things in order to be able to achieve what they can best achieve in their local environments.
Baroness Anelay: May I give an example of where that works, taking into account also the issue of experts raised by Ann Clwyd? When I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the end of last year, I was launching the international protocol and announcing that it had been translated into Arabic and, of course, into Swahili. The reaction I got from those in Kinshasa was, “We speak Lingala. We can speak Swahili so we can read that, but can’t it be in our language, too?”
The Conflict, Stability and Security Fund person was operating from the embassy in Kinshasa. She immediately said, “Let me have a look at our project” and in half a day she had been able to find the funds to have that translated into Lingala and for me to be able to announce that by the time I left, which meant that the NGOs and the individuals who said, “Why isn’t Britain doing this?” found that we listened and reacted on the advice of the experts and delivered.
Q75 Yasmin Qureshi: Following on from the question about funding, you touched on the Magna Carta Fund, which I think has a £400,000 maximum per year that any organisation can apply for. I want to ask a question about organisations. There is a suggestion that in many of these things, the larger the organisation, the more professional they are in knowing how to tap into funding. Has any concerted effort been made to enable smaller organisations and groups to take part in that funding? Does the FCO publish statistics on the size of the organisations that are given funding?
Paul Williams: Shall I start off, and then maybe Rob, who is a bit closer to this, can carry on? It is important that we are working through our embassies and high commissions abroad to bid into this. They already have networks of local contacts, with whom they work on human rights and democracy-related issues. It is often local NGOs that deliver these programmes. They do not always work on their own; sometimes local and international NGOs work together. It depends on what the circumstances are.
That network of contacts should make it possible for any kind of NGO to bid in. The £400,000 is an increase on before. We are now looking at multi-year programming, which can be very helpful in a local context, rather than single-year programming. Maybe Rob can add a bit more on the precise processes.
Rob Fenn: I should simply specify that the £400,000 cap is per project, not per organisation. If we had some fantastically performing implementer who could produce two projects of that scale, we would certainly look at that.
The fund itself is designed to empower and work through civil society. Fighting back against the way that civil society space has been contracted and compressed around the world is one of our self-imposed goals. We see it very much as a UK objective to persuade countries around the world that civil society is good for them and that it is the best part of their countries. Particularly in a globalised economy, which is increasingly a knowledge economy, our international partners do best when they liberate and empower their civil societies, rather than declare war on them. We very much see our fund as a way of walking that talk and helping to bring forward NGOs in other countries.
We are very conscious of the risks. We know that in countries such as Russia and elsewhere the clampdown on civil society hold risks for the people we want to work with, so we are extremely careful. That is why, as the Minister said, we work very much through the local judgment of our women and men on the spot.
Q76 Ann Clwyd: LGBT organisations such as Stonewall raised concerns in written evidence. The FCO’s requirement for organisations to be registered to receive funding causes problems for LGBT organisations that are not able to register in their home countries. What is the FCO going to do to tackle that? Are you prepared to alter your process if necessary by refusing to disclose details of successful applicants to restrictive Governments?
Baroness Anelay: May I answer the second part first? In any work the Government does to enable others to fight for the human rights that we all support, we must also have a care for their security as well. Therefore, there are many occasions when we would not publish names—even the names of organisations—because it would bring them into real danger.
We have all seen the appalling circumstances across Russia, with the assault on NGOs and their ability to survive. We then face the dilemma of how one can help an organisation that cannot register in its own country because it is not permitted to do so, and because the law has been skewed so that, although it is perfectly described and should be doing the work we would support, it cannot register. Those answers are ones that I wish could be better. My work is to try to make them better. The first is that we need to work with the country itself to be able to change their view. Working with Russia is, shall we say, testing on those matters.
The other thing is, indeed, to look at how else we can use our systems to be able to do the work which that group of people, that unregistered NGO, has recognised needs to be done. There can be flexibility in the way that work is delivered, but it is very difficult because, at the bottom of it all, one has to have a care for the life of the individual who is being very brave—that human rights defender—and for the life of their family members, too.
Q77 Chair: Was that a yes?
Baroness Anelay: It was that we work—not to register them, not in this country.
Q78 Chair: Are you prepared to change your processes to enable these organisations, who in effect find themselves underground?
Baroness Anelay: What I was saying is that, if they are an underground organisation, as you describe it, our processes are already in place to be able to lobby for the kind of ideas that they are trying to embed. If they are underground, we wouldn’t necessarily be able to help them, because to do so would expose them to extra danger.
Q79 Chair: Presumably that is their call, though. If there is a case for supporting them in whatever way they are trying to survive, either in Russia or elsewhere in the world, and we think the work these organisations do is worth while, we are now running into a block about our processes stopping worthwhile organisations getting support in the most difficult of circumstances.
Baroness Anelay: Rather than putting others at risk, brave though they are—and they are brave—I would find other ways. For example, by working through the OSCE on freedom of expression. Dunja Mijatović is just retiring, and I hope there is a very good person to replace her. I think there are other ways that we can act not to put people at risk, knowing that as a Government we are creating a situation in which—
Q80 Chair: Let us assume you have an organisation that is in difficult circumstances but everyone agrees that the right thing to do is for the organisation to receive the money, and for you to give the money, in order to support them in whatever way. They are going to run into a block because our bureaucracy says, “Er, no, you are not registered and you can’t have the money,” even if you and your officials felt it was appropriate and the organisation felt it was appropriate and wasn’t going to compromise their position.
Baroness Anelay: I think, Chair, I have misunderstood the question. I understood the question as being that this organisation had not legally been able to register in their own country and were therefore unable in that country to carry out their human rights work.
Chair: Exactly. That is a description of it, yes. That is the question.
Baroness Anelay: If they are individuals or organisations that are unregistered, there are ways in which they can be helped, but if they are not registered in their own country, for us to assist them has to be a matter of balance. Are we putting them in greater danger, and what results from that?
Q81 Chair: But it is a matter of balance, and your rules are not going to proscribe it?
Baroness Anelay: Our rules do not proscribe assistance to others. The process takes into account the impacts. If I can just give an example, not speaking of Russia. Clearly, we are lobbied very heavily to allow humanitarian goods to go into the two areas of Sudan and South Sudan. The crossing there is so dangerous that we will not support the provision of aid to those who are travelling through that area—there are still brave people who do it. I am saying that our processes are in place to prevent us from committing the Government to provide help to people who are in a position that is going to mean that their life is at obvious hazard. Clearly, anybody who is a human rights defender has risks to take into account, but we like to ensure that we find other ways to help.
Q82 Chair: I appreciate that, if the answer was, “Yes, if they need the support, if it is not going to compromise their position and if they want it.” Are you telling me that this issue of registration and difficult circumstances is going to mean that you are not going to give them the money?
Baroness Anelay: We are always lobbied in this country by civil society here to ensure that we carry out due process. We have to be responsive to that. Therefore, we keep to that on the basis that we can be transparent in what we do. It is not a matter of being able to support people in a way that puts them at obvious risk, a more obvious risk than usual.
Q83 Chair: But surely that is their call, isn’t it? They are the ones defending human rights in difficult circumstances.
Baroness Anelay: It is British taxpayers’ money going to support them, and I think the British taxpayer would have a view on how we use it.
Q84 Chair: I am obviously working on the assumption that you can properly defend the expenditure—of course, that goes without saying—but the issue here is that you have set up a process that runs as a blockage for organisations operating in the most difficult circumstances, where inevitably all these considerations are going to have to come into play, not compromising their position and so on. But you appear to be resisting examining our own procedures in these most difficult of circumstances by simply saying, “Unregistered. Sorry.”
Baroness Anelay: First of all, Chair, we of course always re-evaluate our procedures throughout. We continue to do that on a normal basis. What I said—I hope I said—at the beginning is that there are other ways of assisting people in those circumstances. Just because in Russia it is difficult to register as an NGO does not mean to say that we simply throw up our hands in horror and say that we are not going to engage with and lobby the Russians. There are other ways of working—I mentioned the OSCE, but also through the Human Rights Council, where we work very strongly on these matters, and through the United Nations. That is exactly where we should be putting our efforts to ensure that human rights are not forgotten in those countries where the Governments try to prevent people from being able to exercise their rights.
Q85 Chair: So as the Ugandan state moves against organisations such as SMUG, those at SMUG can whistle for practical support in the form of finance out of this fund.
Baroness Anelay: I am saying, Chair, that there are lots of different ways of supporting people. What we try to do is that we support them in a way—
Q86 Chair: No, I accept all that. I would expect you to be supporting such organisations in those circumstances, but what I simply do not understand is why, in a case where people deserve support, you would then say, “No, you’re not registered. You can’t have any”—despite the fact that they deserve it.
Baroness Anelay: Of course, Chair, as you are aware, since one of our objectives is to strengthen the international rules-based system, we are bound by that ourselves, too. So in working through the international organisations we can exert pressure on those who are changing NGO laws against what we would see to be best practice. That is what we do.
Q87 Chair: I have to say that I think you are leaving a route to support people in the most difficult of circumstances closed. I would invite you to have a look at that.
Baroness Anelay: Chair, I would say first of all, if I may, that no route to helping people who need help is ever closed by the FCO. I see day in, day out the people who are in the field working to provide that help. They often have to do it in a way that is confidential, but they do it. They also have to be accountable to the British public for the work that they do, and that may sometimes be very difficult to call.
Q88 Ann Clwyd: Amnesty suggested that each UK mission should have a dedicated human rights adviser. Some of the missions have one, but is this something that the FCO is keen on doing?
Baroness Anelay: I realise that this has been a proposal that has come from one or two of those who have submitted evidence. What I would say is that it is better to have human rights across the whole of the system, rather than having one particular dedicated person—say one for each of the 270 high commissions or embassies around the world—because they need to inform the whole of the work being done.
Chair, I have been reminded that what I should have added at the last moment, when I was talking about the work done by our people in post around the world, is that they have access to bilateral funds. You do not need to be registered for bilateral funds. I was very inelegant in omitting that, because I was trying to hint at the fact that we have to be confidential and careful, but clearly those who have expertise on the ground can make decisions that require a very close call sometimes.
Q89 Ann Clwyd: I disagree with you there, because when I was special envoy on human rights in Iraq I was very grateful that there was a human rights adviser—someone who was actually pushing for human rights. In my experience, unless you have a dedicated person, the issue gets lost and goes right down to the bottom of the pile. If you really believe in advancing human rights, particularly in countries where human rights are under threat, the Foreign Office should have a dedicated human rights adviser in a mission.
Baroness Anelay: May I take the example you have just given of Iraq? I was there travelling for only five days, including a couple of days in Baghdad and a couple in Erbil. In both places I saw evidence of the way in which people there—the Deputy Head of Mission and the Consulate General in Erbil—very much saw human rights as part and parcel of everything they do. A human rights adviser would not have added to the value of the work they do, because they see it as core to their everyday work. My job is to ensure, as new people come in to post, that they also see it as core to what they do.
Q90 Ann Clwyd: That is not my experience. You have got to have somebody nagging people to focus on certain aspects of human rights that would be brushed under the carpet otherwise. In Iraq, it is slightly different, and it would be in Afghanistan as well, but there are many other countries where the lack of a human rights adviser in a mission is a cause for concern.
Baroness Anelay: I hear the concern you express and I will certainly reflect on that when I answer further questions on other countries and when I talk to my Ministers. When I say “my Ministers” I am not elevating myself to Foreign Secretary; I mean my co-Ministers, all the other junior Ministers.
Q91 Nadhim Zahawi: Baroness Anelay, welcome. How does the FCO determine what constitutes value for money with its human rights and democracy work?
Baroness Anelay: I am going to ask Paul, if I may, who can go into better detail than I could. What we look at is: what change should be achieved; what are our objectives; what is the likelihood of those changes being achieved within a particular timeframe; whether we have access to the particular expertise to deliver that; and if so, how the plan can be put together.
For example, there may be some countries where we feel we can achieve change rather more quickly than others. Morocco was one where we put in a lot of work over the past year and a half on torture prevention. That might not have been achievable in other countries. One has to look at how to assess the aim and practicality.
Paul Williams: That is precisely it.
Q92 Nadhim Zahawi: To push you a little harder on that, is it the low-hanging fruit that we go after? Because it is quick, we have a Government on the other side that may be easy to deal with and it is cheap.
Baroness Anelay: The easy and facile answer would be to say that, of course, low-hanging fruit gets you the headlines. As you can hear from the earlier part of the investigation, we do not necessarily go for the headlines. When you are talking about human rights, you are talking about changing social norms—social norms that took us decades, indeed centuries, to change here. We still have a way to go.
If you get low-hanging fruit along the way, that is a bonus. What you go for are the core issues of human rights. I see that time and again in prevention of sexual violence in conflict. Obviously, northern Iraq is one example where the Kurdistan Regional Government have changed laws and tried to make changes, but there are still vast changes that have to be made among the tribes.
When you think you have got a legislative change, my view is that is always only the very start and you have to weigh the whole of the project about when you are ultimately going to be able to achieve the change for all, not just on a piece of paper that has been signed.
Q93 Nadhim Zahawi: No, I appreciate that. Human nature being human nature, the more difficult cases clearly are the ones that take longer, require more resource and so on. Presumably, by that law they drop off the priority list.
Baroness Anelay: There are two points in answer to that. The first is about taking longer and you are absolutely right. That is one reason why the rules underpinning the Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy have been changed, so it can now go up to a four-year programme, to do exactly that and address the issue that you raise.
But there is also the other point, which is that if you, for example, want to ensure that ultimately there is not only a moratorium on the death penalty but it is abolished around the world—you are working towards that—you know that you are going to be committing to work not only in one country but in a multitude of countries, and over a long period, through the Human Rights Council and international fora as well. Therefore you are committing not just to spend on one project; you are committing the Government to a whole range of activity as well.
Q94 Nadhim Zahawi: Is the Magna Carta Fund ring-fenced?
Baroness Anelay: Yes, indeed.
Q95 Nadhim Zahawi: And is the funding for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Arab Partnership Fund still separate?
Baroness Anelay: Yes.
Q96 Chair: In your written submission, you said that you employ approximately 235 full-time equivalents on human rights. What do they, who apparently have this as a top priority, do, as opposed to every other employee of the Foreign Office?
Rob Fenn: There are some people in the network who work full time on human rights. They are the human rights desk officers. In China, for example, it is a whole team. But in other places it will be part of somebody’s job description. Trying to disaggregate human rights work is notoriously difficult, and a bit misleading sometimes, given that mainstreaming is the objective.
Q97 Chair: But you disaggregated it.
Rob Fenn: In the last annual human rights report, we gave you the best numbers that we could, but that came with the health warning that it tends to misrepresent the way the Foreign Office works. We work as a network. We don’t just have people in silos doing human rights.
Q98 Chair: When you meet them in missions, there are people whose direct responsibility is human rights.
Rob Fenn: In big posts, yes, you might, and in countries faced with human rights crises, yes, you can have a whole team who do 100% human rights all the time. This ties in to Ann Clwyd’s question about human rights advisers and to Amnesty International’s hope and advice that we would have one in every embassy and every high commission. The job of my department is a kind of brokerage. We need to make sure that the people at the sharp end have access to human rights expertise. We sometimes source that expertise directly from within my department; I have a human rights adviser. Sometimes we can go to civil society itself. Sometimes we can work with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, for example. We try to join up the problem and the solution and to make human rights expertise visibly part of the answer to real-world foreign policy problems.
Q99 Mr Baron: Many NGOs have submitted evidence that suggests that they are certainly critical of the FCO’s failure to publish clear measurable objectives. There are two sides to this. It’s a grey area in some respects. It is very easy to talk about the importance of human rights, but a lot of NGOs, and a lot of others as well, want clear measurable objectives. What do you say to those NGOs?
Baroness Anelay: As I was explaining earlier, that is exactly the problem. If you are changing social norms, you are changing them not in a matter of a year or two, but over generations. Sometimes you can achieve change through legislative methods. I’ll give a straightforward example. One could say our objective is to ensure that 10 more countries over the next year sign up to legislation to abolish early and child marriage, and you could work towards that. Does that mean that you necessarily achieve the end of early and child marriage? No, it doesn’t, because in those countries people get round that; we see how they get round it. So in looking at objectives, one has to say, “These are the values that we believe are of benefit to society. These are the values that people should expect to be able to have, to give them security and prosperity. And they are the values that they should have because they are right anyway.”
Q100 Mr Baron: But you would accept it is important to monitor.
Baroness Anelay: It is—to monitor exactly that. That is absolutely right.
Q101 Mr Baron: Do you mind, then, informing the Committee of how many professional statisticians are employed by the Human Rights and Democracy Department?
Rob Fenn: Professional statisticians?
Q102 Mr Baron: Yes. You need to measure these things, don’t you?
Rob Fenn: We don’t have any professional statisticians in my small team.
Q103 Mr Baron: How do you go about measuring this, then?
Rob Fenn: We measure on a case-by-case basis. If I can give you an example under each of our three themes, with democratic values and the rule of law we can do some good measurable work through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, for example. That has been very rigorously assessed under its Triennial Review for the Cabinet Office, which was published last year. That was a very long document that I am sure profited from a lot of statistical analysis. It captures the way that WFD is promoting democratisation around the world. If you want to measure our success under the rules-based international system, for example, there is an up or down challenge for us to get re-elected to the Human Rights Council this year. If we are, that will be a big success.
Q104 Mr Baron: Yes, but I suggest that to many NGOs and others listening to this, it does sound a little bit like you are almost contracting out the responsibility. One takes the point that trying to measure clear objectives is not necessarily easy, but you have to monitor progress. It is a very straightforward question. How many professional statisticians do you have? The answer is none, and you are then seeking information from outside bodies. Would you at least accept that it does not send out a strong message that the FCO is taking the issue very seriously?
Rob Fenn: We take the assessment of our impact very seriously.
Q105 Mr Baron: But you are relying on outside reports and everything else to feed into your monitoring.
Rob Fenn: We certainly include in our own analysis the advice of NGOs, outsiders, experts and other parts of Whitehall. For example, the easiest part of our work to measure is our programme funds. There we evaluate—at least 10% of all the projects that we run are retrospectively evaluated. The whole of the last Parliament’s—
Q106 Mr Baron: Only 10%?
Rob Fenn: Only 10% of projects are visited by my teams and evaluated, whereas the implementers at post have to submit a report at the end of every project. Every project is self-evaluated, and 10% are paid a surprise visit by my team to check that it has actually worked.
Q107 Mr Baron: So someone is monitoring how taxpayer’s money is spent.
Rob Fenn: Correct.
Q108 Mr Baron: Not just the 10% of it.
Rob Fenn: Not just 10% of it, no.
Baroness Anelay: As the project is proceeding, my understanding is that there is also a monitoring of that in post, too. Those carrying out the work have to report on what they are doing, and that is subject to review. When I was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I was very concerned to be told by NGOs there that they were worried about the emergence of some NGOs—just small, one or two-person NGOs—that were creating themselves simply to grab funds. What they said was that our system was robust enough to prevent the British Government from falling into the trap of giving money in the DRC to—
Q109 Mr Baron: I have a final question, if I may. I put it to you that here we have a situation where you can come back at the Committee and say that measuring clear objectives is not necessarily easy, but you accept that they need monitoring, and you have no professional statisticians working within your small team to help you monitor. You rely on third-party reports and anything else that comes along. It does not create the right impression. Do you at least accept that?
Rob Fenn: No, I am trying to reassure you that when it comes to monitoring the overall programme, my Department has quarterly meetings. We have statistics. I might not have a degree in statistics, but I can run a programme and ensure that projects deliver and deliver on time. At this stage of the financial year, we are trying to ensure that there is full spend and that the money is spent well. We have a very rigorous system of programme management in my Department, and it was largely because the fund had such a strong reputation for being well-run that it made a successful bid for an uplift in the recent spending round.
Mr Baron: Thank you.
Baroness Anelay: With your permission, Chair, I think Paul might want to come in.
Paul Williams: Can I add that there are a number of layers of governance that are going on? At the top level of governance, I have quarterly reviews—they are called key performance reviews—of all the spending in a directorate, and that becomes more frequent towards the end of the financial year. We are monitoring the level of spend and how it is going. Then on the individual programme level, we are getting regular reports in from the programme implementers via post, so there is a view from post about how it is actually working on the ground. Those are then received into the programme team and some of them are randomly secretly checked as well. Then, at a higher level still, we have overall objectives, both for the Department and for individual countries, covering everything including human rights.
So we have a number of levels of governance to work out whether what we are doing provides value for money for the taxpayer, working out according to the original programme objectives, and whether it feeds in, as we had hoped, to the overall country objectives for that particular country.
Q110 Mr Holloway: What is the objective of the annual report on human rights?
Baroness Anelay: The objective is, first of all, to hold to account the FCO itself and to show the work that we have been doing, but it is also to hold to account countries where we feel that great progress has to be made on the human rights record. That is why, with regard to the Human Rights Priority Countries that will be in next year’s annual report, we will focus on countries where there needs to be a trajectory of change. I was concerned about the way in which we talked about the countries of concern. It sounded very much like House of Lords language—“Country of concern. Oh dear, we’re worried.” It is more than that; it is that there is a concern about human rights, and action needs to be taken. I think that the way in which we described the different reports that we gave confused people about which was the more serious country to worry about than others, so the human rights report is to hold us to account and to show where we are focusing our work to hold others to account for their human rights failings.
Q111 Mr Holloway: Do you welcome the Foreign Secretary’s wish to make it shorter and punchier?
Baroness Anelay: Yes, indeed I do, because I want it to be more usable and accessible. The world today looks online to get information and wants it with a tap of the finger. They do not want to be wading through a report that, although it was very laudable last year, has information that is almost out of date as soon as it is printed. Online, we can have continual updates. There will be half-yearly updates of the whole thing, and through the FCO, we will make sure that there are updates on particular country issues. Whether something happens with El Nadeem in Egypt, we have yet to see, but as those events develop, there can be updates. You will have an online version of the annual report, which will be focused and full of information that people need to use as a basis, but will have signposts of where else to get more.
Q112 Daniel Kawczynski: Baroness, I have watched you on television in the House of Lords sometimes defending questions about Saudi Arabia. I am passionate about Anglo-Saudi relations—I have been taking delegations to that country for the last 10 years—and it is very demoralising just how much denigration there is about Saudi Arabia in our own media and in this country, when in fact, they have evolved so much over the last 10 years, certainly in my experience, and are making great strides to improve human rights. What are you and your team doing proactively to challenge some of the stereotypes and to challenge the lazy journalism in this country of not reporting the facts accurately?
Baroness Anelay: I think that comes back to my answer to the Chair’s challenge earlier about perceptions—that is, it is our job to try better to explain both the work we do and why we do the work. Therefore, I do not hold back on saying where Saudi Arabia needs to improve on its human rights record. In one of the questions I answered, I also did not hold back on saying that I am realistic, and I know that, in a Sunni majority country where His Royal Highness is the guardian of the two Holy sites, I am not going to see some changes with regard to the views on sharia law and other matters very quickly. Unlike you, I have only had the opportunity to go there once. That was in 1998. I was told at that time that within five years, there would be women on the Sharia Council. Well, it has taken a lot longer than five years.
What I would say positively is that it is happening now. We were asked earlier about how we measure success—sometimes painfully slowly, but it is important to keep that careful attention. Every time I meet somebody who has been imprisoned wrongly, as we would say, for a human rights issue, and every time I meet a survivor of sexual violence in conflict, when you look them in the eye, you know that at the end of the day, however difficult it is, you have to achieve change. All those who are willing to work with us will do so.
Q113 Daniel Kawczynski: I note that the last time you visited Saudi Arabia was 1998. I very much hope you get an opportunity to go again, because it has changed hugely since then. Specifically with regard to women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, whenever we go as an all-party group to Saudi Arabia, we make a specific point of engaging with women’s rights organisations. They really appreciate the contact, interaction and interest from British politicians when we go out there and engage with them. From your perspective, in everything you are doing as a leading Minister, may I appeal to you to either visit the Kingdom again soon, or to host a delegation of female members of the Shura Council at your earliest convenience, in order to hear updates on the progress that is taking place?
Baroness Anelay: I welcome what you say about progress that is taking place. I very much enjoyed reading about the bravery of some of the women who stood for election and achieved being elected, sometimes in quite testing circumstances. It shows that change is possible, and we need to nurture that.
Overall, I found it vital to see the work that parliamentarians do, which is why the cross-party Westminster Foundation for Democracy is so important and why all-party groups are important too. I work with them on human rights—not only the all-party group on international freedom of religion or belief, but all-party groups that specialise in one country and nurture and develop our relationship with those countries. The work that parliamentarians do is certainly underplayed in the press or sometimes given the wrong headline. We should see it for what it is: the advancement of democracy.
Daniel Kawczynski: Thank you.
Q114 Chair: While we are on the subject of Saudi Arabia, you may have noticed at oral questions yesterday that Mr Lidington answered a question that invited him to present a strategy for the abolition of the death penalty and asked whether that new strategy would include Saudi Arabia. Mr Lidington did not get beyond saying that it was simply the policy to oppose the death penalty everywhere. What is the actual strategy to advance the abolition of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia?
Baroness Anelay: As I referred to earlier, when we are working on strategies to give targets about change, we have to look realistically at where change is going to be more easily achieved. Clearly, Saudi Arabia is one of the more difficult areas in which to achieve change, as I have just explained. Our policy is the same, in a sense, as the strategy. Our policy is to say, worldwide—
Q115 Chair: We write Saudi Arabia off as hopeless as an abolitionist country, so there is no strategy.
Baroness Anelay: I don’t write anybody off, whether they are a political opponent here or abroad. I am rather determined; I keep on plugging away, so I wouldn’t write anybody off.
Q116 Chair: In response to Mr Kawczynski, you may have said that women are on the “Sharia” Council. If there is a Sharia Council, I rather doubt they are on it, but Mr Kawczynski is quite right; they are very strong and welcome members of the Shura Council, which the Committee met when we visited Saudi Arabia.
Baroness Anelay: I am delighted to hear that, because of course when I went there, the only people on the Shura Council were men. On that occasion, I was very glad that they came and met all of us. The delegation was almost half women, from both the Commons and Lords.
Q117 Chair: Finally, does changing the title from Countries of Concern to Human Rights Priority Countries send out the wrong messages to countries with poor human rights record?
Baroness Anelay: Just the reverse, Chair. It sends out the message that we are not just sitting back and saying, “Oh dear. We’re concerned.” We are leaning forward and saying that we are actively wanting to make change. That is our priority: to make change.
Q118 Chair: You rather deftly avoided answering my questions at the beginning about the reputation of the ministerial team. I invite you to accept, first of all, that symbols matter and that you have a reputational challenge under the current Foreign Secretary, and to acknowledge that there is an issue there. Along with your colleagues, you have very ably put the case to us this afternoon, and you will present the new-style report to us, but do you accept that you have an issue to address here?
Baroness Anelay: I think there is a misperception in the press and certainly among some organisations, and that is why it is my job, and that of my fellow Ministers, to be able to show why it is a misconception. Do I think there is a problem because of the attitude of the Foreign Secretary? Absolutely not. I attended the Foreign Secretary’s Human Rights Advisory Group with him not so long ago. That was a very forthright, frank exchange and that is what it should be about, and we should be building on that. He was certainly not sitting back and taking no note. He was very much part of the discussion. I see, through him, the determination to ensure that this country is not only safer and more prosperous, but showing that we have an approach to human rights that not only works, but is right.
Q119 Chair: Thanks to you and your team. Is there anything that you wanted to say at the beginning that you feel has not been covered in this session and would like to place on the record? Equally, if you have a formal statement, I am very happy to take it into written evidence.
Baroness Anelay: I just want to thank the Committee for its interest. I am sure that this will not be the end of that interest. I know from colleagues that we have looked closely at your recommendations in the past. Indeed, some of our management procedures and how we approach human rights work have changed as a result of the Committee’s input. I welcome that.
Chair: Thank you.
Oral evidence: Human rights, HC 860 3