James Berry: The EU Commissioner for Security and the head of Europol have both made it clear in evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs how important it is maintaining our current policing and security co-operation with Europe. I know that my right hon. Friend is committed to continuing that co-operation. Are his counterparts in Europe as committed as he is?
James Berry: Mobile phones in prisons allow criminals to deal drugs, intimidate their victims and continue criminality from within their prison cell. Will my hon. Friend say how the powers in the Prisons and Courts Bill will help to address the scourge of mobile phones in prisons once and for all?
James Berry: Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government remain committed to resettling 23,000 of the most vulnerable children and adults directly from Syria, the middle east and north Africa over this Parliament, in addition to asylum seekers and family reunion cases? Will she update the House on how many people have been resettled in the past year?
James Berry: Does the hon. Lady agree that they are indeed warm words because, as anyone who has children knows—I do not, actually—a family of four will undoubtedly drive or get a taxi to the airport and not use a cycle or a train?
James Berry: I beg to move, That this House has considered human rights in Sri Lanka and the 34th session of the UN Human Rights Council. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes, not only because it will be wonderfully fair and impartial but because I know that you take an interest in the issue. It is also a pleasure to be joined by so many members of the all-party parliamentary group...
James Berry: I could not agree more with the right hon. Lady. I am sure that the Minister will listen to the all-party group’s concerns about human rights in Sri Lanka. I have not just my own concerns as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group but concerns that my Tamil constituents have raised with me. They are concerned that UN Human Rights Council resolution 30/1 should not be just one more in...
James Berry: The reports by Freedom from Torture, whose No. 1 referral group is Tamils in Sri Lanka, are shocking. I know that the Government of Sri Lanka dispute what Freedom from Torture says, but even if we do not necessarily consider that, we must consider the recent report by the UN special rapporteur on torture, which was critical of how the Sri Lankan Government handle torture and the fact that the...
James Berry: As I just outlined, the all-party parliamentary group for Tamils has indeed recognised the progress that has been made, but it is right to scrutinise the areas in which there has been a lack of progress and, as I will explain, a clear policy by the Government of Sri Lanka to undermine one of the key tenets of the resolution. I will come to that in a moment. We also highlighted areas in which...
James Berry: I agree. That brings us to the nub of the issue: the concern that the Government of Sri Lanka intend to turn up to Geneva this week and over the next few weeks to dazzle the international community with a list of clauses in the resolution on which they have made progress and a list of UN conventions that they have ratified, but to weasel out of the justice mechanism by saying that it is all...
James Berry: I well understand the domestic political situation in Sri Lanka, but the fact is that President Sirisena signed up to the resolution in order to bring Sri Lanka back in from the cold on the world stage. He received congratulatory comments at the time from a number of world leaders and from Secretary of State Kerry, and he now needs to deliver his side of the bargain, not say “This is all...
James Berry: I entirely agree. The last pronouncement made on the issue by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire), when he held the ministerial brief that my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West now holds, was that Sri Lanka had not yet met its commitments to the international community. Not only does that remain the case, but we are concerned that the Sri Lankan Government...
James Berry: I would agree with the hon. Gentleman, were it not that in this case we are not demanding anything of the Sri Lankan Government that the UN Human Rights Council has not already demanded and that they have not already agreed to. We are only trying to get them to deliver what they have already agreed to.
James Berry: I accept that the immediacy of the terrible situations in Syria in Yemen will preoccupy the UN Human Rights Council, and rightly so. However, having failed to act in the closing stages of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, which may now seem a long time ago but was probably the world’s darkest hour since world war two, it is now incumbent on the international community to ensure that the...
James Berry: The then Government—the Minister quite rightly corrects me. There is evidence that a UN food distribution hub in a no-fire zone was systematically shelled by the then Government’s forces after UN field workers provided the co-ordinates to the Government. There is also evidence that a field hospital in an abandoned school was shelled 65 times by Government forces—so consistently that...
James Berry: I entirely agree. As I have already outlined, resolution 30/1 was very much a consensual resolution. It fell well short of what many members of the Tamil community, who undoubtedly suffered terribly throughout the civil war, actually wanted—a fully independent international inquiry. The limited element of international involvement that the Sri Lankan Government have agreed to must be...
James Berry: That is exactly why I said that both sides need to have confidence in the process. Whatever the LTTE did, which was no doubt disgraceful, the victims who were used as human shields, for instance, were mainly civilians—indeed, mainly Tamil civilians. They are the ones for whom I speak when I say that justice must be done. Sadly, the Government of Sri Lanka have made no progress, as far as I...
James Berry: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me a hat trick of questions this morning. In my speech on the Christmas Adjournment last year, I raised the need for social media companies to take responsibility for addressing hate speech and extremism on their platforms, rather than leaving it to the police to do their dirty work at the taxpayer’s expense. As there has been no real improvement from...
James Berry: Does my hon. Friend agree that this case shows the moral, legal and security dilemmas thrown up when someone is suspected of terrorism or of intending to commit an act of terror but there is not sufficient evidence to convict them, even in closed session? There were loud protests in favour of closing Guantanamo Bay, and now an outcry when a former detainee goes on to commit an act of terror.
James Berry: Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the proposals for Crossrail 2? If there are to be any delays, will he tell us what can be done about overcrowding on our trains, such as the one I was on this morning, in the meantime?
