Summer Adjournment — House of Commons, 2015-07-16
Topic: Government Operations
Stephen Phillips (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great honour and privilege to follow the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) after such a powerful and eloquent maiden speech. I fear that she is going to have spend some of the next five years here teaching me how to pronounce all the names in her constituency. She stands in a long tradition, in that I think it took the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) at least five years before I started to get the name of his constituency right. I know that she will be a valued Member of the House, not only from that contribution, but from the fantastic work she has done in her constituency in her profession before she came into politics. On behalf of the whole House, I would like to congratulate her on such a fantastic speech These are, of course, the debates before the summer recess and I shall try not to detain the House for too long, but I hope I can be forgiven for making one observation about the procedure of the House. These debates previously took place in a way that permitted Ministers from across the whole of Government, by Department, to respond to the concerns of hon. Members that were raised before the long break and fell within their particular areas of ministerial responsibility. Although it is an enormous pleasure to see my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on the Front Bench, and although he and the Deputy Leader of the House will take the concerns of the House back to each individual Department, the transition that we have made so that the Leader or Deputy Leader of the House now responds to this debate and individual Ministers do not do so is one that should be looked at by the Procedure Committee. It is, in my respectful observation, a change that does little to enable the concerns of Members to be brought to the forefront of Ministers. I wish to detain the House briefly on two matters. The first of those is one that troubles me greatly, as my right hon. Friend knows. I have campaigned on it in the past and I intend to campaign on it in this Parliament: it is the effect of corruption across the world and what it means for the people of this country The House debated the matter recently in an Adjournment debate, and there have been other opportunities to raise it. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it clear that this is an issue that must be tackled not only by this Government, but by the international community. It is a fact that very many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people have their lives touched to a considerable degree, and not in a way that is good for them, by the corruption that is rife, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and the developing world. The effect of that is devastating for those who live in appalling conditions, as many do in the developing world, but it also has an effect on all of us in the United Kingdom, because while that corruption takes place, our security is threatened. It is the thing that drives economic migration to Europe and drives people to take the desperate measures to try to cross the Mediterranean to look for a better life in Europe, albeit illegally. It is also the thing that runs the risk of driving the terrorist threat not only in this country but in all the countries that are allied with us. It is therefore something that the Government are rightly focusing on in this Parliament I wish to hear not only that this matter is a priority for the Government—the Prime Minister has rightly said that it is—but more details on the anti-corruption seminar that the Prime Minister intends to run in this country next year for all UN nations and, indeed, what is intended to be achieved by that summit. Although we have a framework that is principally centred on the UN anti-corruption convention and to which many nations are signed up, it remains the fact that very little effort goes into monitoring and enforcement. As I have said, that is something that not only affects those in the developing world—some of the most vulnerable and poor people to whom we owe a moral responsibility—but threatens our security here.