HC Deb 04 July 1973 vol 859 cc514-5
8. Mr. Biggs-Davison

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government will submit to the United Nations Economic and Social Council a programme for a decade of action against religious persecution.

Mr. Amery

Her Majesty's Government have no plans to submit such a programme to the Economic and Social Council.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Is it not the case that in, perhaps, half the world Christianity, Jewry and Islam are persecuted by Powers that lead the movement in the United Nations and elsewhere against apartheid and, indeed, against the non-racial policy of Portugal? Should not our attention and the attention of the United Nations to human rights be free from these double standards'?

Mr. Amery

I am glad to say that the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations has produced a draft declaration and a draft convention on religious intolerance, and both items are included in the provisional agenda for the next session of the General Assembly. We shall then give our support, wherever possible, to those drafts.

Mr. Heffer

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of us would like to see some hon. Members on the Government side refrain from double standards? Hon. Members of the Opposition have opposed Russian policy in Czechoslovakia and, equally, American policy in Vietnam, and that should be supported on both sides of the House and not by the sort of question that is an indication of the double standards of some hon. Members.

Mr. Amery

I hope that nothing that the hon. Gentleman said implied that he was supporting Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia.

Mr. Heffer

The right hon. Gentleman knows that I was not. That is a typical example of double standards.

Mr. Fell

May I ask my right hon. Friend why it was not possible for him to answer my hon. Friend who posed the Question with the words "Yes, Sir"?

Mr. Amery

For the simple reason that we think that a declaration passed by the United Nations and a convention would come better, before calling for a "decade". We are not very sure that these decades—

Mr. Fell

Ten years.

Mr. Amery

—are all that useful. We should like to see the passing of a draft declaration and draft convention on religious intolerance.

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