Vietnam (Hansard, 12 March 1990)

§ 66. Mr. Tom Clarke
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any plans to restore development aid to Vietnam.

§ Mrs. Chalker
The Government are considering the possibility of supporting British non-governmental organisation activities in Vietnam, especially to help the communities in the areas from which the boat people came.

§ Mr. Clarke
Does the Minister accept that that sounds like a slight improvement in what was otherwise a scandalous position for the Government to take? Will she now respond positively to the pleas by the Save the Children Fund, Christian Aid and Oxfam to ensure that there is essential economic aid to deal with the appalling poverty in Vietnam? Will the Government use their influence to stop the international embargo which appeals to the Pentagon but to no one else?

§ Mrs. Chalker
The hon. Gentleman may remember that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and I had a meeting with a number of non-governmental organisations on 14 November 1989. At that meeting we invited the NGOs to put forward a number of proposals which may help people coming from the area where the boat people came from. We have received the proposals only in the last week, but we shall be considering them urgently.

§ Mr. Lester
Now that my hon. Friend has received those proposals, will she assure the House that they will be quickly targeted to those areas in north Vietnam, where it is expected that boat people will leave from next? I recognise that it is difficult to decide when to joint-fund those programmes, but urgency is vital. The quicker we can make the programmes work, the better for the boat people, for the people of Hong Kong and for the Vietnamese in south-east Asia.

§ Mrs. Chalker
I will do so as quickly as possible, but as it has taken a number of months for the agencies to come up with their proposals, they must be considered properly. If they are viable, we shall put them into operation as soon as possible.

§ Sir Russell Johnston
Does the Minister agree that the normalisation of relations with Vietnam is crucial both to the future of the boat people and to the stabilisation of the situation in Cambodia? Will she again give this further consideration and also consider exercising influence on the United States?

§ Mrs. Chalker
Yes, of course we shall. We greatly welcome the withdrawal of Vietnamese combat units from Cambodia. All those things are steps in the right direction, but we are still waiting to see how the Vietnamese Government will respond. Until we have seen how they respond, it is difficult for me to give the hon. Gentleman the total commitment that he would like.

§ Mrs. Clwyd
Does the Minister not understand that an end to the economic isolation of Vietnam is esential before we can solve the problem of the boat people? It is not sufficient to leave it to the voluntary agencies to provide the kind of aid that Vietnam needs. Has she not read the International Monetary Fund report, which urges enormous aid to Vietnam? Why do we continue to follow the policy of the American Government in imposing a vicious, vindictive embargo on the kind of assistance that Vietnam ought to have?

§ Mrs. Chalker
The hon. Lady is perhaps less aware than she might be of the outstanding arrears to the IMF. More than $100 million is owed to the IMF and $3.3 million to the Asian Development bank. Until a solution is worked out with the IMF, there will be no active lending programmes by any of the major donor countries, so in that respect we are no different from other donors. I am 19 very much aware of the needs of the people of Vietnam. We shall certainly start in the way that I outlined in November. A direct bilateral aid programme will not be possible until an economic recovery programme is agreed with the international financial institutions.