Grand Committee
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Intelligence and Security Committee: Annual Report 2011-12
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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The Marquess of Lothian
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report 2011–12.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)
My Lords, we are hoping that the annunciator will be changed shortly so that we are not distracted by proceedings in the Chamber. I remind noble Lords that in the event of a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes from the sound of the Division Bell.
The Marquess of Lothian
My Lords, the core work of the committee upon which the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, and I have the honour to represent your Lordships’ House covers an important area of national interest, not least because of the amount of public money that the agencies consume each year, something over £2 billion. The nature of the work they do, and what they spend the money on, must, of course, for the large part, remain secret. However, the Intelligence and Security Committee ensures that there is parliamentary oversight of this work, and it is right that we have, as we have today, the opportunity to debate our findings.
The committee has had another busy year under the firm leadership of our chairman, Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP, to whom I readily pay tribute, as I do to the immensely hard-working staff of the committee, without whom our detailed and often complex scrutiny would not be possible. I would also like, at this early stage, to record my continuing admiration, gratitude and respect for the almost always unsung dedication and professionalism of those who serve our country in our intelligence and security agencies—SIS, MI5 and GCHQ. We owe them much as a country, and I am glad to pay tribute to them.
This annual report covers a wide range of issues, and we have made a number of recommendations. I shall, in the time available, concentrate on a few of those. First, resourcing—the agencies received a relatively generous settlement in the last spending review of 2010, with what is known as a flat cash budget, which nevertheless represented a significant real-terms cut over the four-year period. With a combination of pay freezes and concerted efforts to control other costs, the agencies are currently coping with this while apparently preserving front-line capabilities. All the same, the settlement commits the agencies, both individually and collectively, to achieve significant savings before 2015. The committee agrees that the efficiency savings need to be made, wherever possible, in administration and related areas. However, we are not convinced, as we say in our report, that sufficient progress is being made towards making them, and the Government have yet to convince us that the agencies will meet the targets that they have been set. If they do not, the agencies could be forced to cut front-line capabilities, and that, as I am sure your Lordships agree, would be extremely worrying. I hope that the Minister can assure us that the axe will not end up falling on the front-line capabilities that are so badly needed to protect our national interests.
The second area, also related to resources, is the ability of the agencies to respond to unexpected events. We have seen—here I include Defence Intelligence, whose role was, and continues to be, crucial—how the agencies had to divert resources to the events of the Arab uprising, which is a subject to which I will shortly and briefly return.
The committee is concerned that, inevitably, these resources will have to be switched from other areas. In these straitened times, particularly for Defence Intelligence which has suffered round after round of cuts, our ability to maintain sufficient coverage of all the areas of the globe—the importance of which has been graphically and painfully illustrated in Algeria over these past few days—is becoming increasingly fragile. Yet our agencies need to be able to respond to events anywhere and at any time. We may be able in the short term to plug the gap but only by robbing Peter to pay Paul. If we do not examine this more closely, sooner or later we will be caught out—if that has not already happened.
More generally, we welcome the fact the central intelligence structures are now aligned beneath the National Security Council. However, from past experience, we are concerned to ensure that analytical judgments and policy recommendations remain separate when advice is presented to Ministers. As we have seen in the past, it has been easy for this distinction to become blurred and it is crucial that it does not do so in the future.
Earlier I referred to the agencies’ swift and commendable response to the Arab spring—or, as I prefer to call it, the Arab awakening. That presented a real challenge to the intelligence community which had to reprioritise quickly and redirect its resources towards the region. Of course, it is often impossible to predict such events. However, the question remains as to whether, once events began to unfold, the agencies should have anticipated the possibility that the unrest would quickly spread across the region and should have recognised the Islamist nature of much of it and the crucial distinction between national and universal Islamism, which is of such importance to our security. We are seeing this clearly in what is happening in the Maghreb and the Sahel and potentially even more dangerously, in Syria.
Although the capability of al-Qaeda and its affiliates has been weakened in Afghanistan, in the tribal regions of Pakistan and increasingly in the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia, it has demonstrated that it is still resilient, capable of regrouping and recruiting elsewhere, of mounting an attack on western interests and of posing a serious terrorist threat to the United Kingdom and its citizens. This danger needs to be further and urgently pursued. Above all, this demonstrates the risks inherent in drawing down effort on lower priority areas, and of the importance of the agencies, working with allies where necessary, maintaining global intelligence coverage.
In Northern Ireland we welcome the intention of the Security Service to maintain its resources at current levels. From my own experience, this is a ball we can never afford to take our eye completely off.
Finally, there is cybersecurity which remains the most rapidly growing threat that we face. Every day citizens and businesses in this country face attacks on their computers and networks from criminals, hacktivist groups—that is spelt with an “h”—and state actors, ranging from actions which cause mere irritation to the compromise of financial details and, at the most extreme end, the theft of intellectual property and sensitive national security material. This is a threat to the security and prosperity of the United Kingdom and, in its report, the committee has welcomed the seriousness with which the Government have addressed this. The additional resource—£650 million over four years—is a significant sum in these straitened financial times.
While the committee’s interest has been primarily in the 20% of more sophisticated attacks where national security has been affected, the wider issues remain the same. We have noted the work of the Communications-Electronics Security Groups and the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure, which are increasing their efforts to educate government and business about the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of their systems and how improving behaviour will strengthen defences and benefit the entire country at the least cost. However, it is more than two years since the Government announced increased funding for work against cybercrime. While there has been some progress in developing new capabilities, this does not appear to have been as swift as might have been expected. In a fast paced field, where new technologies are emerging all the time, we cannot afford delays in our national response. The committee will keep this issue under close review.
There are many other important matters mentioned in our annual report, including counterterrorism work, staffing and diversity in the agencies, and access to communications data—to name but a few—which other noble Lords may wish to raise. I will now turn to broader issues. When we held this debate last year, the Government had just published a Green Paper covering reform of the Intelligence and Security Committee and increased protection for intelligence material involved in civil cases. Since then, this House has debated the Justice and Security Bill, which is currently being considered in another place. I will not repeat the arguments that were deployed in Committee and on Report in your Lordships’ House, but there are one or two areas that I wish to raise briefly.
As noble Lords will be aware, Part 1 of the Bill concerns reforms to the Intelligence and Security Committee itself. It is intended to formalise many of its practices, which have evolved beyond the limitations of the statute under which the committee was originally established in 1994, and gives the committee greater powers to access information held by the agencies. It will also make clear the committee’s responsibilities to Parliament as well as to the Prime Minister, which have not always been clear in the past, and underline that it is an independent committee, which has also not always been clear in the past to outside observers. These are important changes that originated from within the committee and we are pleased that the Government and others, both in your Lordships’ House and, I understand, in another place as well, have in principle accepted them as being necessary.
However, there is more work to be done to bridge the final remaining gaps between the committee and the Government and I hope the Minister can reassure me that agreement on these issues is near. I think we are all agreed on the need to strengthen the committee’s link to Parliament but there are implications from formalising this relationship. While I understand the Government’s nervousness around such issues as parliamentary privilege, can the Minister confirm today that the work of the committee will be adequately protected in future?
Secondly, for the first time the committee is being given explicit powers to investigate operational matters, subject to certain clear provisions. These are that the matters are agreed between the Prime Minister and the committee as being retrospective—that is, not part of any ongoing operation—and of significant national interest. These principles are not controversial and the committee has no intention of becoming involved in the day-to-day operations of the agencies.
However, we must ensure that the legislation does not inadvertently tie the committee’s hands. After all, the committee often investigates matters relating to operations, sometimes even at the Prime Minister’s request; its report into the 7/7 bombings is a case in point. It would be a significant step backwards if the legislation did not allow for such inquiries in future.
My final point relates to the resources available to the committee. Our admirable staff provide all our research, analysis, briefing and drafting in-house. If the committee is to be able to continue its work, let alone take on the increased role that the Bill envisages, the Government must ensure that we have adequate support to do so. Our resources are meagre compared to those of our overseas counterparts, as noble Lords who have been on the committee and have visited other countries will readily agree, I am sure. They are also meagre in comparison with inquiries such as that on the detainees or the Iraq inquiry, the report of which we still await, or indeed of the Committee on Climate Change, to name just a few. If the Government are serious about supporting the measures in the Bill, this committee must be funded correctly and adequately so as to be able to carry out its responsibilities properly in the future.
My very last point on the Justice and Security Bill is about the necessity of introducing closed proceedings in civil cases where the protection of national security material is involved. This was debated at length in your Lordships’ House and I am pleased that the core of the Government’s proposals has survived that consideration. The reputational damage to our agencies of legally unjustified financial settlement with those questionably claiming mistreatment cannot be allowed to continue. The public perception is that the agencies have something to hide and we should not allow the situation to continue where a judge is unable to rule on such allegations. In addition, our relations with allies will suffer if we are unable to guarantee that we can protect their secrets, especially as we expect the same when we share our intelligence with partners overseas.
It is been an extremely busy year for the intelligence agencies, primarily due to the burdens placed on them by the Olympic and Paralympic Games. That these events not only passed off without incident but were such a widely acknowledged success was in no small measure due to the enormous behind-the-scenes efforts of the agencies to ensure that terrorists did not take advantage of the situation. This took a significant effort on the part of the Security Service in particular, and we have noted the disruption that staff had to endure with long or unsocial working hours and bans on leave—and this was all in addition to the range of their other work that continued as normal.
The agencies do not often get the public recognition they deserve, so it is important to put this on the record when the opportunity arises. They are a credit to this country and we owe them all a debt of gratitude. I commend the report to the Committee and I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, when I went to see the latest Bond film, “Skyfall”, there were two Members of your Lordships’ House in the audience. I think we both found that the least credible part of the film, which was a high hurdle, of course, was the active executive role taken by the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee. That is probably the limit of my expertise on the subject, certainly compared with today’s speakers and indeed with other noble Lords in the Room, so I hope that noble Lords will forgive any naivety in my comments.
On reading the report, although this is not a criticism of the report itself, the writers or the committee, I would have been pleased if some of the gaps had been filled. I am not talking just about the redactions, although on those I did wonder about the process. Does the committee advise the Prime Minister that certain matters are for his eyes only, as it were, because as we discussed during the passage of the Justice and Security Bill, responsibility for security is a matter for more than the agencies? Indeed, much reference is made in the report to what is called the wider intelligence community. It appears from the report that the National Security Council, with a membership of Cabinet Ministers, joins things up across government. The report states:
“It is evident that the NSC has increased further its status and priority, and we are reassured that the requirements of the NSC have been assimilated by the intelligence community”.
I am intrigued that membership of the Joint Intelligence Committee is not quite aligned with that of the NSC, which includes the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. However, DECC officials are not permanent members of the JIC. The events of the past few days have confirmed the relevance of that. Perhaps the issue will soon be water, but that could be a matter for another debate. The JIC, on the other hand, includes officials from BIS but the Secretary of State for Business is not a member of the NSC, which is interesting given the problems of cybersecurity to which the noble Marquess has just referred.
The impact of the NSC on the intelligence community—to pick up that reference—is one thing but what is important above all is its impact on outcomes. The report’s very first recommendation concerns the distinction between policy implications and analytical judgments. Again, this has already been mentioned and the Government agree with it. It cannot be easy to maintain that distinction or to avoid blurring the line between the operational and the strategic. Two of the quotations from the evidence from the Foreign Secretary which are contained in the report were particularly interesting on this. He said:
“We task them all the time”.
Then, acknowledging the importance of operational independence, he goes on to say that,
“there is a process of discussion. I mean, the weekly discussions that I have with the Security Service are about where they are focusing their resources and particular operations that require that resource and questions I can ask about the issues that I see that need to be addressed and how they are doing them. So it’s a different sort of accountability”.
Accountability is an interesting word there, because it is moving towards the Executive. I am not saying that there is anything wrong in that involvement or that I am critical of it, but I thought that this highlighted the point. The noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, has asked the Minister to confirm that resources will remain available for the front line, which in my mind raises the question of who is responsible for the allocation of resources within each agency by each agency, and how much they should be told by the Government where resources should be allocated.
As I read the report, the agencies are increasingly collaborating for operational reasons as well as for efficiency. The Government’s response stresses the importance of a tri-agency approach to conducting and supporting counterterrorism investigations. No doubt the debate about having separate agencies and the demarcation lines is a very old one, but I wonder whether the time is coming for it to be revived and for a reflection on where the demarcation lines should be, as the world changes and we become more of one global whole.
One of the changes of course is the agencies’ increasing dependence on IT. I was not surprised to read of the difficulties of retaining talented people—to whom one must pay tribute, not only in IT but across the piece. This is not a new issue in the public sector: the attractions of the private sector have taken, for example, engineers and planners out of local government for years. It means making the job attractive, not only in terms of salary but in other ways. There is talk of recruitment. I have been on to the websites and played with what is there. However, I do not get much of a sense of what the imaginative and innovative methods are to which the Government refer—without fleshing it out—which would attract possible applicants to look for jobs with the agencies and get to the point where they might try to take the intelligence test, if I have used the term correctly.
Turnover within the agencies seems high. I assume that there is an analysis, either within each agency or by the committee, of the levels of seniority where there is high turnover and the reasons for it. Is absence monitored? Sickness levels are often a very good indicator of what is going on beneath the surface. This information is in the public domain but, as regards discussing this area in public, taking evidence from those who can give it is just the sort of thing that could be considered—an issue that I raised during the passage of the Justice and Security Bill—not at one stage removed, as we are today. I readily acknowledge that there are difficulties when one moves from the general to the particular in this area but, for example, redundancy payments are indeed high, as the report mentions. This makes me wish to ask—but I cannot ask or listen to the question being asked—whether there are false economies in making high redundancy payments if that means recruiting a large number of more junior employees.
Diversity, as is also recognised, is an issue in recruitment and, perhaps, retention—I am not clear about that. Are the nationality requirements really such a problem for diversity? How much effort is being made to learn from other sectors? Is there secondment to and from the agencies and other sectors? Presumably, that is not entirely impossible? I would like to think that the committee has been told more than:
“Work is in hand to identify a sustainable package of measures to tackle the situation”.
However, I return to the “what?”. The proportion of spend on counterterrorism brings one up short. I noted, too, mention of home-grown self-starters and lone actors. The sections on the Prevent strand of the strategy reminded me of the difficulties in another area—drugs. This is all about mindsets, and I wonder whether there is any read-across that one can make. I should be interested to know whether the ISC was content with its recommendations on this. I wonder, too, if it was satisfied with the Government’s response to the section on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. It seems that nothing is immune from being turned into an acronym. The report refers to the risk of being linked to such activities. I do not know whether it is only my reading of the Government’s response but it carefully does not address the difficult area of “condoning” such treatment—if that is the right word for not asking all the questions or ferreting away at investigations that might reveal things that one might not want to know; and yes, I have read the consolidated guidance and note the role of Ministers in this. Perhaps that is for another day.
It is clear that the committee’s oversight is continuous and vigorous. Meetings are not everything but I note that the committee met 44 times in the year—almost once a week. As the committee and the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, has said, the real test is our response to the unexpected. Perhaps the events of the past few days remind us that behind this is the question of what is done to limit the unexpected. I pay tribute to the work of the committee as well as of the services. Scrutiny is by no means merely passive and reactive, and this report shows that.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
My Lords, it has been a privilege to serve for a second year as one of your Lordships’ two representatives on the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, along with the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian.
The intelligence and security agencies of the state continue to have a high profile in government. New requirements and threats arise, which the intelligence agencies have a vital role in addressing. As the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, said, technology develops very fast, providing new tools both for the agencies and for those who threaten us. New issues arise in striking the balance between transparency and secrecy, and between the effectiveness of the agencies, on the one hand, and the freedom of individuals on the other. It is evidence of the prominence of these issues that a major element of the programme of this parliamentary Session is the Justice and Security Bill as well as pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed legislation to require mobile telephone and internet providers to retain data for the use of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The Intelligence and Security Committee has been, and is, closely involved in all these matters.
As the ability of the state to intrude on the privacy of citizens has increased over the years, so successive Governments and Parliament have rightly put in place means of scrutinising the activities of the agencies to provide protection against abuse. Since the activities of the agencies have to be conducted in secrecy if they are to be effective, so the scrutineers on behalf of the public have to be admitted within the ring of secrecy. What is more, if the public are to have confidence that they will have effective protection, they also have to have confidence in the independence and integrity of the scrutineers.
Our legislation gives judges the duty to enter the ring of secrecy and ensure that the intelligence agencies are operating within the constraints of the law. Since 1994 it has given the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee the duty of exercising a more general scrutiny on behalf of the public and Parliament. The judicial commissioners—and we have two very distinguished former commissioners present today—have carried the confidence of the public. However, the Intelligence and Security Committee has appeared to be the creation of the Government and, because it operates within highly constraining legislation, it has carried less public confidence.
I believe that this criticism of the committee has been largely unfair. Although the ISC has not had the power to require information from the agencies, the track record of the committee in protecting secrecy has given the agencies increasing confidence to provide information fully and frankly to the committee. The committee’s scrutiny has extended well beyond the limits of policy, administration and expenditure—which were the limits on it set out in the 1994 legislation. In the Justice and Security Bill now before Parliament, the legislation is catching up with reality and carrying it forward by making the committee more genuinely a committee of Parliament and by giving it the power to require information from the agencies and not just request it.
Of the matters which the committee has examined this year and which are covered in the annual report, there are many which have had a high salience in public consciousness. Perhaps chief among these, as the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, was the role of the agencies, police and Army in protecting the security of the Olympic Games, or perhaps I should say the security of the nation during the Olympic Games. Like others, the committee was worried last year that the Games would necessarily be such a preoccupation of the security agencies that they would open the way to attacks elsewhere. In the event, the actions which the agencies took to pre-empt and deter attacks were so effective that the efforts directly devoted to the Games themselves, although large, did not drain other areas of the resource to the extent feared, and protection in those areas remained in place. Overall, I echo the comments of others that that aspect of the Games, like other aspects, was a spectacular success.
Overseas, the greatest challenge to the agencies, in addition to the ongoing requirement to support our Armed Forces in Afghanistan and to monitor the breeding grounds of al-Qaeda terrorism, was the upheaval created by the Arab spring. As the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out, recent events in Mali and Algeria have tragically demonstrated that overseas eruptions of this sort, even when they occur in areas known to be volcanic, are often unpredicted—and perhaps unpredictable—by intelligence, but they create a requirement for urgent action to catch up with events. The fact that such unexpected events have happened at various times in our history emphasises the need for the agencies to maintain at least some capacity in all areas where British interests are involved. Of all the agencies, GCHQ has the potential flexibility to respond quickly in such situations, and overall the committee was impressed by the rapidity and effectiveness of the response that it and the Defence Intelligence Service were able to make to the events in Libya.
Another area where the Government have been devoting substantial effort—and need to do so—is cybersecurity, as has already been mentioned. The committee has been monitoring the way in which the Government have been using the £650 million they devoted to the National Cyber Security Programme in the most recent public expenditure settlement. It appears that the publicity given to this issue, not least by the welcome initiative of the Foreign Secretary in holding the London Conference on Cyberspace in November 2011, has been effective in drawing attention to the danger that this form of espionage presents to the UK and in alerting companies to the need to take action to protect their commercial interests. Much more needs to be done, but within Government there are still only hand-to-mouth arrangements for funding the protective action necessary and the committee has had to repeat the recommendation it made last year that a more stable long-term funding mechanism is needed for this vital work.
Because of my personal background, I have taken a particular interest in the ISC’s work in looking at how the central machinery for handling and using intelligence has been developing. I think it is generally accepted that the establishment of the National Security Council, bringing the heads of the agencies to the top table with senior Ministers in planning the UK’s defence and security priorities, is a welcome development. I follow the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in saying that it also has its dangers, by bringing the purveyors of intelligence directly into contact with senior policymakers without the sieving mechanism that the country so wisely put in place in the form of the assessment staff and the Joint Intelligence Committee. It risks bringing the intelligence moths too close to the policy-making flame. That risk was increased by the fact that the operations of the Joint Intelligence Committee had become, as the National Security Adviser himself admitted to the ISC, a little “stately and formal”.
In this fast moving situation, particularly when British troops are engaged in active military operations, it is all the more important that policymakers have the use of immediate—but properly assessed—intelligence: the very purpose for which the Joint Intelligence Committee was established in the Second World War. It is therefore welcome that the new chairman of the JIC, Jon Day, who has extensive experience of assessment, has taken steps to make the assessment machinery more fleet-footed in meeting the day-to-day needs of senior Ministers, as well as producing longer-term assessments to meet the requirements of the NSC.
I will end with two more general remarks. First, it is striking how much the challenge of dealing with internationally based terrorism has had the effect of requiring all the agencies to work more closely together, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, noted. The work of detecting and pre-empting al-Qaeda attacks on the British homeland requires the co-operation of the Security Service, SIS and GCHQ as well as the police and, in some cases, military assets. I believe that they have responded to the challenge very well.
It would be idle to deny that tensions occasionally arise between the services, but on the whole they are rare. Would it be better if we had a unified intelligence service to deal with these interrelated threats? The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, hinted at this question. I think that the answer is no. As things are, each of our agencies and services brings to bear its own skills, traditions and roles, which are separate. As long as they work closely together, and the ISC both monitors and encourages the agencies in that area, they are more effective as a partnership than as a single entity.
That brings me to another point. Intelligence work has always raised ethical issues, and again the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to these, but modern intelligence work, requiring extensive international co-operation, raises such issues acutely. Our intelligence and security agencies find themselves from time to time working with uncomfortable bedfellows. As the de Silva report brought out clearly in the Finucane case, agents who penetrate terrorist organisations inevitably sail close to the wind. But working with other Governments also brings our agencies into co-operation with those who may have different standards and different methods. It is therefore essential, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, that our agencies have clear guidelines about boundaries which they should not cross. I believe that the agencies and Ministers have given much attention in recent years to creating such guidelines. However, it would be foolish not to recognise that difficulties will sometimes arise, for example, when a partner at one moment turns out to be a rogue at another. This is just one of the many risks that members of our agencies and security forces have to run. In general, what I have seen as a member of the ISC and previously reassures me that we can have confidence in the ethical standards to which our agencies and security forces seek to operate.
The world in which we are living has all sorts of instabilities and dangers that are made greater by the power of technology in creating new and ever more potent threats. It is the job of our intelligence and security agencies to defend us against them without crossing lines that would infringe the very liberties they are there to protect. They have continuously to make hard decisions about priorities in using resources, and those resources are necessarily limited. The agencies welcome the scrutiny to which they are subjected because they know that it helps to keep them honest and defends them against criticisms which are unfounded or unjust. I believe that the Intelligence and Security Committee and the commissioners are necessary to that scrutiny and I am proud to take part in that work. I endorse everything the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, has said about the contribution of the staff of the ISC and the need to give them the necessary resources as the committee’s work expands. I am very glad to support the noble Marquess in his Motion that the House takes note of the committee’s report.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton
My Lords, thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I have learnt something that I had not expected to this afternoon, which is that as a former chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I now need to see the latest James Bond film. Also as a former chair of the committee, I hesitated and wondered whether I should hover like a ghost from the past over this debate, but I could not resist taking part because it is sometimes good to have a degree of perspective, and the committee is still relatively new, and therefore I want to say a few words.
I congratulate and thank the two noble Lords who represent us on the Intelligence and Security Committee. When I was its chair, Peter Archer—Lord Archer of Sandwell—was a diligent member of the committee; we now have two Members of your Lordships’ House serving on it and I am sure that their contribution is very highly valued. It is an extraordinary committee. While it is not a Select Committee or a committee of Parliament, it is a committee of parliamentarians and probably works harder than any other committee of this kind. Mention has been made of the number of meetings it holds, but it is the intensity of many of those meetings and the degree of responsibility held by its members that are important. I am therefore happy to pay tribute and note with interest some of the phrases that have been used in connection with the legislation we have been talking about in the recent past actually catching up with reality in terms of the information coming from the agencies about operations or other areas. It is the case that this committee has a great deal of power and that it has exercised it informally, not least because the agencies want to have the confidence of the committee. Therefore, whatever the statutory situation is, I have always felt that the ISC has a great deal of power and holds great sway with the agencies. It has been important to see that develop, and it is interesting to hear how it is to develop in the future.
I should mention a word of caution about a theme that emerges time and time again, and that is the need for transparency. We need confidence both in the committee and in our agencies. There is a limit, as has been said, to the amount of transparency that can exist. If we emphasise transparency too much, we will lead people to believe that they can be told more than is the case, and sometimes we need a reality check in that respect.
I, too, would like to say a word about the success of the Olympics and Paralympics. As we have been told, there was much concern beforehand about what might happen and what the potential for disruption and danger was. The report states that this put “unprecedented pressure” on the agencies, and I can well believe it. I am glad that the report recognises the exceptional effort made by staff, which the noble Marquess mentioned in opening the debate. We all know that many real sacrifices were made. It was an intense summer for many people who, for example, lost their holidays or had difficulties if they had children. This affected not only the agencies but MoD staff and, perhaps, more widely throughout Whitehall. Although I am sure that many of those individuals felt that it was worthwhile, there were real pressures and we should pay tribute to them.
On the other hand, the report recognises that the preparations that were made to anticipate and avoid difficulties during the Olympic period meant that risks were taken in certain other areas. This is a matter that we should not dwell on but perhaps not push to one side because there are real and serious potential problems here. Mention has been made of resources. We all know that times are difficult. We also know that no Government want to or can take risks with national security, which must always be a priority. However, I am concerned, as are many other people, about the pressures being placed on the single intelligence budget and I fear that we are potentially getting to a critical period in terms of those pressures and problems. We saw, as I mentioned, that the pressures resulting from the preparations for the Olympics meant that squeezes were made and gaps created elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, mentioned the increasing and intensifying danger of cyber attack and how cyber security needs more attention and is more of a challenge.
We have seen how events as they are always called, such as the Arab spring or awakening, which is probably more appropriate, are a real challenge for the intelligence agencies. The report states clearly that there were gaps and problems. We are seeing it at the moment so far as Mali is concerned; again, clearly, there are problems. These are all unanticipated pressures. Who knows what the next pressure will be: something in the Pacific or somewhere else? The report expresses clear concerns about the extent of global coverage that we have. Yes, we have got to work with allies, to share intelligence and support, and to work with whoever we can whenever we can, but I think that the committee is going to have a real challenge here in finding out what the real pressures are and even perhaps in anticipating what needs to be done to make sure that those pressures do not create real problems. Recommendation S says that:
“Defence Intelligence has told us that it ‘can’t cover everything all the time in the modern world’”.
Maybe we can live with everything not being covered but, as I have just said, with Mali, the Arab awakening and whatever comes next, how much coverage can we actually afford to marginalise and put to one side while we depend on others? The recommendation goes on to say:
“Nevertheless, Strategic Defence and Security Review cuts will further decrease DI’s ability to provide global coverage with sufficient depth … We urge the Government to ensure that sufficient resources are available to allow in-depth coverage to be maintained on an ongoing basis”.
I am glad that the committee has said that and I hope that it will not pull its punches with government if it feels that such problems are not being given proper priority in the future.
There is a whole section in the report about Defence Intelligence: how it fits into the wider body of intelligence and what the structures should be. I would simply say that if anything is going to be reorganised, it has to be done with very great care, and I am sure that the committee will watch that. I am slightly worried that there is a suggestion that the profile of Defence Intelligence should be higher. I am not sure that any agencies or any intelligence services having a high profile is particularly desirable.
I want to mention one other issue, which is that of staffing problems, in particular recruitment and retention. I have particularly strong views about certain aspects of this issue, which is one that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, also touched on. Recommendation X in the report mentions the difficulties that GCHQ has in retaining internet specialists and actually calls it,
“a matter of grave concern”.
This is an area where we have to have and be able to keep the best individuals in the field. In a very rapidly changing and challenging situation, we have to be at least one step ahead of those who would do us harm. Recession or not, we have to pay enough to recruit and retain the individuals we need. It is not just about money. I know that there are real elements of dedicated service on the part of the individuals involved, but we have to be able to recruit and retain the best.
Another issue I find extremely worrying and which has puzzled me ever since I was made chair of the ISC in 2001 is that of recruitment from ethnic minorities. Recommendation W says:
“All three Agencies apply the same nationality requirements, which are a prerequisite for security clearance. While that does hamper their recruitment of a more ethnically diverse workforce, we nevertheless consider that greater efforts can, and must, be made even within these constraints”.
I have not looked up the reports we published between 2001 and 2005, but I know for certain that very similar words were used in all of them. The Government’s response notes the committee’s conclusion and says that,
“the Agencies take seriously their responsibility to have an ethnically-diverse workforce”,
and that,
“the Government will continue to monitor the progress”.
Those words echo completely what was being said 10 years ago. I despair and remain puzzled as to why it is the case because there must be very many people who have the nationality requirements to join the agencies. The two seats that I represented in Parliament—Bolton West and Dewsbury—had many third-generation youngsters of families of Indian and Pakistani origin who were born here, educated here, went to university here, were well qualified and multilingual. I accept entirely that there must be careful vetting of all applicants—although in the past when there have been failures, they have often involved stereotypical agency employees rather than people from different backgrounds—but more could be done, more should be done and more should have been done years ago. I urge the committee to keep up pressure on this because not only do we have an agency workforce that is not as responsive or representative as it should be, but we are losing out on talent that we need. In the past, we have had shortages, for example, of Urdu speakers, and yet we have whole pools of them here who could be helpful.
I congratulate the committee very sincerely and urge it not to lose sight of the big picture on resources and to intensify its pressure in some of the areas that I have mentioned.
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield
My Lords, I add my thanks to the intelligence community for keeping us safe throughout our stellar Olympic summer. As a historian, I hope the Cabinet Office has commissioned an internal study of how it was done, for two reasons: first, to serve as what Whitehall used to call in the old days a fund of experience document, which can be drawn upon for the planning and protection of future great national events; and secondly, when the passage of time permits, so that the study can be declassified for future generations to appreciate a job extraordinarily well done. As far as one can see, as an outsider, the operation involved almost every element of the British intelligence community.
On that theme, I am pleased that the remit of the Intelligence and Security Committee is to be widened to embrace the community in its entirety. I note from last July’s report that the committee, rightly, places much weight on the value of horizon scanning. There have been some encouraging developments on the horizon-scanning front, in the secret world and beyond, since the document we are debating this afternoon was placed before Parliament.
Little noticed on page 17 of the coalition’s Civil Service Reform Plan last June was a paragraph on horizon scanning which read:
“The Government needs to continue to strengthen its strategic thinking and horizon scanning, given the current environment of change and uncertainty. A review of the capability will be completed by Autumn 2012”.
Completed on time it was, and I am delighted to say that the Cabinet Office has declassified it this very day.
I should declare a minor interest. I delivered a short presentation to the review team early on in its work about the history of horizon scanning in the United Kingdom since the Committee of Imperial Defence—the National Security Council of its day—prepared its first War Books in 1912-13. The review was led by the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Organisation, so its work is well within the remit of ISC oversight.
The motive power of the review of cross-government horizon scanning as it is called, is to make better use of the considerable array of horizon scanning already undertaken across a range of departments and agencies—domestic, foreign and secret—and to embed the combined product more effectively in policy analysis and planning. Horizon scanning is, by its very nature, a perilous craft but, as the review states: “The benefits of conducting horizon scanning outweigh the negatives when it is used to add value to strategic decision making. It is a wasted resource if it is not ultimately used to inform the policy agenda in a coherent way”.
I understand that the report’s recommendations that the Cabinet Secretary should be the “champion” of trans-Whitehall horizon scanning has been implemented and that Sir Jeremy Heywood has already chaired the first meeting of his Permanent Secretary-level group which will be underpinned by a second group at director level, led by the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Jon Day.
These developments strike me as a wholly beneficial addition to our country’s ever needed capacity to look over the other side of the hill, and I hope the ISC will apply attention and support to the new arrangements.
There is one delicate sphere of horizon scanning which I think it is timely to contemplate. May I respectfully suggest to the ISC that, during the coming two years, it keep a close, scrutineer’s eye on the depth and width of contingency planning within the secret world about the possible impact of a Scottish separation on what we would no longer be able to call—should it happen—the British intelligence community?
Certain thoughts arise: would Scotland want its own security and intelligence agency with a “McC” in Edinburgh? Would an independent Scotland seek its own bespoke GCHQ? Signals intelligence is a costly and complicated business with an infrastructure all its own. Would we see aerials and antennae springing out of the thin soils of the Cheviot Hills? Would those old Cold War listening stations on the north-east coast of Scotland crackle back into aural life? In submarine terms, who would warn the Scottish Government of a Russian Akula lurking in the Minches? Would a Scottish intelligence liaison officer from the Scottish High Commission in London take his or her place every week at the Joint Intelligence Committee alongside the American, Canadian and Australian representatives? I have more than a suspicion that our United States intelligence allies would be far from radiant about the prospect, especially if there was a determinedly non-nuclear Government in Edinburgh.
I should not expect such contingency planning—which I sincerely hope is already under way—to be made public. However, I would hope that the ISC could examine it on behalf of Parliament and the public.
Last year’s ISC report, as has already been mentioned, examines horizon scanning very much in the context of the foreseeability—or otherwise—of the Arab spring. I had a great deal of sympathy with C’s argument, as reflected in the report, that that was the last thing Middle Eastern and north African regimes expected, so their secret worlds were not brimming with their own prescient forecasts which western intelligence might have acquired by clandestine means for warning purposes.
I thought of this old and ever present “secrets and mysteries” problem that our intelligence-gatherers always face when the files of the Franks inquiry into the origins of the Falklands War were declassified a few weeks ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, gave absolutely riveting evidence to Franks—the transcript of which, in parts, reads just like a film script. In one section she expresses a degree of sympathy for the analysts, despite her criticisms of the intelligence community on its pre-invasion performance. Here she is in an exchange with Oliver Franks about such criticism:
“It would be the easiest thing in the world for the JIC, or whoever does the actual intelligence assessment, to say to ministers that every single thing in the world could blow up into a major incident within the next few weeks or months—Belize, Cyprus, Hong Kong … It would not be helpful, it would be incompetent, it would be weak. They have to try to alert us to some of the priorities, they have to make an assessment which does not say everything is on a knife edge”.
Another thought arose when reading the Franks inquiry transcripts. The great and the good Oliver Franks asked each of the four Prime Ministers who gave evidence—Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher—about the use they made of their intelligence feed when they were in No. 10. In their different ways they made it plain that among the piles of red boxes that the private office prepared for overnight or weekend reading, they reached first for what the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, called the “hot box” containing the intelligence. It was so much more interesting than yet another brief on local government rate support grant, but that is my observation, not that of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher.
Although perhaps it has happened already, it strikes me that it might be valuable if the ISC conducted a survey with its questions modelled on the Franks approach of how Mr David Cameron and the Ministers in the inner intelligence loop make use of the product from our country’s remarkable £2 billion a year intelligence and security machine. Again I suspect that the results could not be published, but it would be instructive and valuable, not least as an indicator, of how the new National Security Council-led tasking is playing out in real terms.
I have a final thought that is linked to the coalition’s Civil Service Reform Plan. It contains a so-called “Action 11” which has aroused anxieties about a possible seeping politicisation of the senior ranks of the Civil Service if Secretaries of State are given the proposed “greater influence” over new appointments. I hope that the ISC will keep a careful eye on this. If there was the slightest whiff of politicising the top appointments to the secret world it would amount to an anxiety of national proportions. For almost above all others, the Queen’s most secret servants possess an overriding duty to spare their ministerial customers nothing; always and everywhere to speak truth unto power. Theirs is among the toughest of callings in Crown service; placing patterns on fragments, constantly dealing with the grimmest possibilities and the darkest sides of human nature. As the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, told the Franks inquiry, the JIC is,
“presented with a series of shafts of light of varying quality and brightness on a scene and their job is to fill those in, link them and relate them to make a coherent picture”.
Those who undertake this stretching task day in and day out, and those working in the agencies who supply the particles of the intelligence picture, deserve our special gratitude and appreciation.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, this is a welcome opportunity to debate this report today. Like the report, the debate has been both fascinating and very illuminating. As the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, said at the start of his comments, it is right that we should thank the intelligence and security services for their work. By the very nature of the work they undertake, most of us will be unaware of anything more than the occasional headline or special report, but what is so important in what they do is the detail of their investigations and their analysis. In most spheres of life, failure is not a matter of life or death, but it can be for many in our three intelligence and security service agencies—possibly their own, and certainly the potential for the death of others if they get something wrong.
The Prime Minister has made a Statement which is being repeated in your Lordships’ House on the emerging details of the hostage situation and resulting military action in Algeria. That highlights and emphasises the current international situation our security services are faced with, while the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, stressed the need to understand how and when the threat of terrorism can emerge. It serves to highlight the importance and the dangers, and the bravery of the staff who work for the agencies and why their work is so important. It also highlights why the security and oversight of that work is so important and that we must have processes that examine and take evidence on the work of the agencies, in which Parliament and the public must have confidence. The comments from my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton on confidence and transparency were important: it is crucial that Parliament has confidence in the work of the committee and the agencies.
We must also be assured that the agencies are using their powers appropriately and that the legislation and resources that the agencies work within are adequate and appropriate for the task. A crucial aspect of that work is assurance and trust that the committee has access to all the information it requires. The noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, when he was chairman of the committee, in November 1998, said:
“When a situation arises that gives serious cause for public concern …We shall not be able to help matters unless we can say that we have investigated the allegations, with … access to all the relevant information”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/98; col. 594.]
The committee reports directly to the Prime Minister and, in the main, its reports are published other than on issues of security. I am not aware of any disagreement between the committee and the Prime Minister on what constitutes an issue of national security. It is a huge and serious task that the committee is set and it has the respect, gratitude and confidence of the House. That comes from our faith in its honesty with the security services and agencies but also with politicians and the Prime Minister.
I turn to the details of the report and the Government’s response. We have briefly touched on the Olympics. Before the Games, when the report was published, there were huge concerns, but in all ways the Games were a great success, not least in terms of security and public protection. The report highlights the challenges that the Games presented for security, policing and counterterrorism, and it recognises the “unprecedented” pressure—I assume that the word is not used lightly—that the services were under. That was clearly made much more difficult by the appalling problems with accreditation and volunteers. We have said it before but should repeat our appreciation of the professionalism of all those involved in security for the Games, especially where emergency arrangements had to be made after the failings of G4S and those responsible for monitoring its plans and arrangements. It is worth re-emphasising our appreciation of the work of the security services, the Armed Forces and the agencies.
However, one area that gives cause for concern is the committee’s analysis of the approach to risk management. Page 25 of the report quotes the National Security Adviser, who said:
“Of course there will be greater risk. But with finite resources and a major national priority requiring greater effort over a defined period of time, it is inevitable that there will have to be a greater risk-taking in some parts of the Security Service business, and I think we have to depend on the professionalism of the Director General to decide where that risk can most safely be taken”.
In the Government’s response on this issue, they rightly state:
“The Government will never put national security at risk”.
However, in their response to the committee’s recommendation E, they state:
“The Government acknowledges that the Agencies will continue to face challenges in balancing the delivery of front-line counter-terrorism capabilities against achieving efficiencies that Government as a whole is committed to delivering”.
The rest of that paragraph is helpful in acknowledging that the agencies are facing challenges in meeting those savings targets but it also makes clear that the efficiency savings must continue.
The committee’s recommendation T puts on record, in a measured way, how concerned it is about the threat being faced and the financial situation. It welcomes the way that the agencies have responded to date, but expresses concern, in a specific recommendation to the Government, by saying that,
“we remain of the opinion that the Spending Review settlement must be kept under review to ensure that it is commensurate with the threat”.
That was the point made by the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, about ensuring that the front-line capabilities are never at risk.
I am sure that the committee will continue to monitor the Government’s response, but it may be one that we have seen before, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, said. I hope that we will move on from this. The response says:
“The Government welcomes the Committee’s conclusion. It was, and still is, recognised that the spending review settlement will be challenging for the SIA. The Agencies have put considerable effort in to managing their finances to live within this settlement. The settlement is still sufficient”—
thus admitting that it is not what it was—
“to enable a wide range of Agency capabilities and activities, in line with operational requirements and NSC prioritisation”.
That is an admission of how challenging it is, and the Government’s response bears out that it is right for the ISC to be concerned. I am confident, from the comments that have been made today by noble Lords who represent us on the committee, that the ISC is continuing to monitor this and is very much aware of the increased uncertainty that the services face and how they will cope with the further round of cuts in the next spending review.
We have also heard today about the Justice and Security Bill, which we debated at length in your Lordships’ House. We very much welcome the important changes that were made, even if other noble Lords would have perhaps liked to see some more openness—although not to the extent feared by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. The key issue for your Lordships’ House was that there should be parliamentary privilege for the ISC in terms of protection for witnesses and for the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
There were different views on how that could best be achieved, whether by a Select Committee route with safeguards built in or by statute. At the time the Bill was being discussed, the Government gave assurances regarding privilege being conferred by statute, although the clerks have expressed their view that this could create legal uncertainty as to whether it is possible to grant privilege by statute rather than using a committee of Parliament, and the very real concern that the uncertainty could result in legal action to try to resolve the issue.
I am relaxed about the method of conferring privilege. If it is possible to confer it by statute, we would welcome that. In Committee on the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said that it might be possible,
“to give the committee bespoke statutory immunities that would provide the committee with protections that would replicate certain aspects of parliamentary privilege … We are considering whether this is a viable approach and whether it is the best approach to tackling this issue, and we may bring forward amendments”.—[Official Report, 19/11/12; col. 1651.]
I appreciate that that was just a couple of months ago, in November last year, but the Bill is in the other place at the moment and it would be helpful if the noble Lord was able to repeat those assurances or give an update, if there is one, to your Lordships’ House.
I also found the report very interesting reading on the issue of counterterrorism and TPIMs, which the committee remains concerned about. We come back to the point on funding, which seems to be a theme throughout the report. The committee says:
“The lack of any direct correlation between risk levels and the additional funding made available to the Security Service and police to prepare for this only adds to our unease, as do the delays in putting the funding in place prior to the transition from Control Orders”.
In many walks of life when someone talks of unease, it is usually relatively benign, but I suspect that that word was carefully chosen by the committee. I am not convinced that the Government’s response fully addressed the concerns that were raised.
I have little knowledge of the interaction that the ISC has with similar bodies in other countries, or with other security services, but it is vital not only that the ISC and Parliament have confidence in adequate funding for the work of the security services but that other countries with which we co-operate also have that confidence. I do not want to overstate the point but this is something that is evident throughout the report and if the committee expresses unease, I share it. I hope that the Government genuinely welcome the recommendations in the report and will seek to find some way that links risk to funding so as not to increase the risk to a level that creates further unease.
Despite changes to enhanced TPIMs, the ISC also remains concerned because it considered that enhanced TPIMs were unworkable and said that,
“it seems unlikely that they would ever be implemented”.
The Minister will recall the recent Urgent Question regarding Ibrahim Magag, who was subject to a TPIM and absconded—apparently by hailing a black cab. Many noble Lords across the House, who had vast experience of counterterrorism issues, made the point that the removal of the control order’s power to relocate someone who was considered to be a danger made it easier for Mr Magag to abscond. The Minister was reluctant to confirm, in that short debate, that the Government’s policy change had to take some responsibility, but the fact remains that while Mr Magag was subject to a relocation order, he did not abscond. In fact, my understanding is that nobody absconded while the power to relocate was included in control orders.
Much has been said today about the Arab spring, or Arab awakening. Although the ISC recognises in its report that it can be impossible to predict how and when events such as the Arab spring will begin, it also questions whether the agencies should be better equipped to be able to better anticipate how events might unfurl. Page 15 of the report has a very helpful timeline that shows how quickly events can unfold. It can be difficult to identify or predict the trigger that unleashes events from an unstable situation, but I am not too clear—perhaps the Minister can help—whether our intelligence services were aware that the level of unrest was such that the potential for an escalation to the degree that we have since seen was likely. As I said, I understand the difficulty in identifying precisely how, when and why events will escalate—but was there an awareness that they could escalate in that way? If so, were the intelligence services able to advise Ministers accordingly?
I am not suggesting that it is on the same scale, but I think that the recent and current situation in Northern Ireland illustrates a similar point. I am sure that the intelligence and security agencies were, and are, aware of dissident activity. However, although they must have predicted that the flag issue in Belfast would be difficult, was there any sense that the political disengagement, anger and fear felt by some sections of society could have led to the violence we have seen? The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, commented in your Lordships’ House when we discussed this issue that this was nothing to do with flags—it was a wider resentment, fear and anger about a range of issues.
I am not necessarily expecting answers to those points, but the issue I am trying to raise is that the views and mood that led to the Arab spring, and also to the current violence in Northern Ireland, were not new. They did not rise up suddenly but were simmering. It then just takes one incident to trigger the events that we have seen. In its report, the ISC suggests that, in the case of the Arab spring, there was a lack of understanding about the region, and it makes recommendations to the Government on addressing this. Those recommendations are crucial because there is also a downside to the uprisings and changes in Libya, that of instability in the region. The situation in Syria, and events in Mali and, particularly, Algeria, illustrate how volatile and dangerous the situation currently is. The wisdom of the committee on this specific issue is something the Government should see as an asset and an advantage.
My final point is on cybersecurity and communications data. Clearly, the way in which we communicate and how we conduct our business, including financial business, has changed dramatically in a very short period of time, and the threat to the resilience of those communications has also increased. It is clear that the ISC shares the concerns that in the UK we are at an early stage in developing our capabilities to protect UK interests. In their response to the recommendations, the Government seem to accept that. There is further evidence if the noble Lord looks at the comments made in the recent report of the Defence Select Committee in the other place, which was published on 9 January. It states:
“The evidence we received leaves us concerned that with the Armed Forces now so dependent on information and communications technology, should such systems suffer a sustained cyber attack, their ability to operate could be fatally compromised”.
Those comments and others throughout the report give enormous cause for concern. Clearly, the committee will continue to monitor this, but there are grave concerns and we need to up our game and ensure that the work that has been undertaken moves much more quickly than it has done.
I have said “finally”, but my second finally is about the draft communications Bill, which is currently in a Joint Committee of both Houses. It is crucial that the Government bring forward a Bill that recognises the need to bring legislation up to date with the technology being used by criminals and terrorists. Parliament as a whole recognises that at the same time there must be strong protection for public privacy, including limits and safeguards on the use, storage and access to data, not just by the police and the ISC but by private companies and other agencies. I appreciate that this is a critical issue in which there is enormous public and parliamentary interest. The changes made need to be justified by the evidence and there have to be increased safeguards and protection.
My very final comment is to thank the committee for its report and for the work of all noble Lords involved. The value of the committee is the confidence that it enjoys in Parliament as a whole—in both Houses—but also the fact that it is honest with government, Parliament and the agencies. That trust is of enormous benefit to the Government and Parliament.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, I am sorry to throw the furniture around; it is not a response to what has been a really helpful debate. It has been extremely well informed, as one would expect from the speakers we have had the privilege of listening to.
Before I turn to the points raised by the noble Lord, I thank my noble friend the Lord of Lothian for opening this debate. I thank my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, as the two representatives of your Lordships’ House on the Intelligence and Security Committee, for their hard work and diligence. It is evidently no sinecure, as the former chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, has demonstrated to us in her observations.
Having started by thanking them, I put the committee into some context. We should not forget the other members of the committee coming from the other place, in particular the chairman, my right honourable friend Sir Malcolm Rifkind. I thank them all for their contributions to the report and I recognise the support provided by the staff of the committee. I am very impressed by the expertise within the committee and the sheer dedication to its role, which is evident in the quality and volume of work that is produced. Acknowledgement should also be given to the agencies and their excellent work. Noble Lords have been unanimous in their praise, and I join in those sentiments. I would particularly like to publicly congratulate them on helping to deliver a safe and secure Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Games were a perfect example of their ability to deliver under pressure and raised still further the agencies’ reputation here in the UK and internationally.
The ISC’s annual report focused on a number of matters of great importance to the Government. I start by addressing the Justice and Security Bill, on which the noble Baroness made some of her concluding remarks. It is, of course, of particular interest to the ISC. As noble Lords will be aware, I had the privilege of leading the Bill through Report stage in this House and participated in its full and thorough analysis. I thank noble Lords for another informative discussion today because Part 1 of the Bill concerns the oversight of the security and intelligence agencies. That is clearly of great importance and interest to the ISC. I agree with my noble friend the Lord Lothian that the new Bill must not put the ISC in a worse position than currently with regard to the oversight of operational matters. We intend to make amendments to the Bill that may be necessary to ensure that that is not the case.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend the Marquess of Lothian made the important point that the ISC must not just be independent but it should be recognised by all as being independent. I agree wholeheartedly with that. The Justice and Security Bill will put the ISC on a stronger footing and enhance its powers, allowing for more effective oversight of intelligence and security matters. It will ensure that the ISC can no longer be open to the unfair accusation that it is just a creature of the Executive.
As I said to noble Lords on Report, it is our intention that the new ISC will be a statutory committee of Parliament, and the Government intend to table an amendment in the other place to make that clear. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, will be reassured by that and by what I am further able to say, because we also intend to give the committee bespoke statutory immunities that will provide it with protections that replicate certain aspects of parliamentary privilege. Specifically, I can reassure my noble friend the Lord Lothian that we are considering providing protection to witnesses before the ISC so that the evidence they give in good faith could not be used against them in criminal, civil or disciplinary proceedings. A lot of work is going on at the moment to make sure that the noble Lord’s ambitions for the ISC can be fulfilled. The Government agree that the ISC will require an uplift of resourcing to enable it to undertake its strengthened oversight functions and we are discussing with the committee the precise nature of that uplift.
Part 2 of the Justice and Security Bill has generated the most interest among colleagues and the media, with some unfairly suggesting that it is a tool to cover up agency wrongdoing. It is anything but a tool for cover-ups. Closed material proceedings will in fact allow for more cases involving the intelligence services to be heard, including cases that previously could not be heard at all. Nothing that is currently heard in open court will be heard in secret in the future. The Bill is about ensuring that allegations made against the Government involving intelligence material are fully investigated and scrutinised by the courts, while addressing the potentially severe implications that could arise if sensitive intelligence secrets were disclosed in open court. In response to the suggestion—made by some outside the debate today, I hasten to add—that CMPs are open to misuse, I would emphasise that judges, not the Executive, make the final decision as to whether a closed hearing can take place, and we have put in place safeguards to make sure that that is the case.
I am strongly of the view that the provisions in the Bill are a measured and proportionate response to the challenges we face. I appreciate the work of the ISC and of noble Lords in scrutinising the Bill during its passage through the Lords, and I anticipate that scrutiny in the House of Commons will lead to further refinement of its provisions.
The ISC report outlines major areas of the threat to our national security, including international and Northern Ireland-related terrorism, hostile foreign activity and nuclear proliferation. To ensure we continue to face these challenges appropriately, we need a clear strategic direction. As flagged in the their response, the Government support the committee’s recommendation that it is imperative that policy implications and analytical judgments remain separate in any intelligence assessment provided to Ministers.
I welcome the committee’s recognition of the agencies’ rapid response to the Arab spring. I also understand the committee’s concern that it was not foreseen. I must reiterate the points laid out in our response to the report that, in countries where you have tightly controlling regimes, it is often not possible to predict the extent to which people will take to the streets and demonstrate. It is impossible for our intelligence resources to cover the whole world at all times. The agencies rightly prioritise those countries where secret intelligence can add the greatest value. The challenge is to retain flexible capabilities that can be rapidly deployed to respond to emerging situations, such as the Arab spring—or the Arab awakening, as my noble friend Lord Lothian preferred to call it.
The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, quoted from our recent past history to illustrate graphically that we still depend on the exercise of judgment in prioritising intelligence gathered and indeed intelligence gathering.
With reference to the Olympics, I am extremely pleased to be able to say that the Games were a triumph for safety and security. Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Butler, have referred to this. A considerable amount of work went into ensuring that the Games were secure, and the Security Service had to cope with an increased level of risk across its portfolio of work. It is a testament to the service that it managed this risk effectively and was able to maintain the appropriate levels of resourcing to cover areas of additional potential concern that were not terrorism-related. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, it avoided the risks to the nation as well as to the Games.
A number of noble Lords have rightly talked about cybersecurity as another key theme within the annual report. The Government response explained our approach to improving cybersecurity in the United Kingdom and we will be extending this work going forward. This will include the rollout of a programme of public awareness initiatives, delivered in partnership with the private sector and aimed at increasing cyber confidence and improving online safety for both consumers and businesses. At every level, cybersecurity is an issue and I note noble Lords’ comments that, while they welcome the Government’s funding commitment, there is a need for a sustainable funding stream for this activity into the future.
We are also supporting the development of cybersecurity skills and education across the UK in schools, higher education and beyond, including the “Behind the Screen” initiative to provide cybersecurity education at GCSE level. The future lies in us all being well educated about risks that the failure to provide cybersecurity can bring. I agree with the committee that cybersecurity is a key issue for UK national security and I can reassure noble Lords that the Government take this extremely seriously.
The ISC annual report, quite rightly, refers to counterproliferation as a key issue and references, in particular, concerns regarding Iran and its continuing efforts to enrich uranium in violation of six UN Security Council resolutions. In response, we are committed to a dual-track approach of engagement and peaceful pressure. The past year saw a significant increase of pressure, including an EU oil embargo and enhanced financial sanctions. Iran and the E3+3 grouping, which consists of the UK, France, Germany, the US, China and Russia, met four times to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme and, in December 2012, a further round of talks was offered to Iran. I think that this is the right approach.
The noble Baroness mentioned TPIMs. The ISC report noted its concerns about the new terrorism and prevention investigation measures regime, and there have been suggestions that the abscond of Ibrahim Magag has shown that its concerns were well placed. National security is the Government’s top priority, and the police, security services and other agencies are doing everything in their power to apprehend this man as quickly as possible. I would emphasise that this is not a reflection on the effectiveness of the TPIM regime and that this abscond had nothing to do with the change from control orders to TPIMs. The TPIM Act provides rigorous measures to manage the threat posed by terror suspects who we cannot yet prosecute or deport by limiting their ability to communicate, associate and travel. This is the first abscond by someone subject to a TPIM, and it should be noted that, in the six years of control orders, there were seven absconds. David Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said that:
“The only sure way to prevent absconding is to lock people in a high security prison”.
I agree, and said so in the debate we had on the Urgent Question. Where an individual cannot be prosecuted or deported, whatever steps are taken and wherever they are located in the country, there will always be a risk of their absconding, just as there were under control orders. It has been suggested that a review of the TPIM system should be undertaken. I am satisfied that the TPIM regime is a robust and effective system for dealing with terror suspects who we cannot yet prosecute or deport, but we will review our procedures following this incident. I remind noble Lords that, as part of his role as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson also conducts an annual report that covers TPIMs. I would expect him to examine this as part of his review.
We have spoken today, and there have been quite a lot of discussions, about budgets and resources and the pressures faced by the agencies. My noble friend Lord Lothian mentioned this in his introduction and many noble Lords have referred to it. It has been the policy of successive Governments not to reveal details of the individual agency budgets, and I do not intend to diverge from this particular practice. However, I am able to say that the Government welcome the ISC’s recognition of the vital role that, for example, Defence Intelligence plays within the Whitehall intelligence community. The reduction of the deficit is the Government’s top priority—all noble Lords will understand that—which means bearing down on public expenditure. The MoD, in common with the three agencies, will have to make economies to meet the demands placed on it by government, and no area of the MoD’s business can be exempt from those economies. However, I am confident that DI will continue to prioritise in those areas that matter most to UK national interests and defence. DI retains the ability to surge people into these areas, should the need arise, and work collaboratively with allies in areas of mutual interest where it is a national priority to do so.
The total security and intelligence agencies budget is approximately £2 billion per annum. It was and still is recognised that the spending review settlement will be challenging for the agencies. They will need to maximise value for money, efficiencies and collaborative working in order to live within this settlement. Agency heads are aware of the need to deliver efficiency savings while continuing to maintain capability; and there has been steady progress towards this over the past year.
The ISC has full access to the budgets of the agencies and I trust that it will continue to draw attention to any funding issues it feels warrant particular consideration. For example, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee talked about the recruitment and retention of personnel. That must be a matter to which the Government and the ISC should pay proper attention. I note the committee’s concerns about the achievement of sustainable efficiencies, particularly from collaborative working. The National Security Adviser will continue to monitor the agencies’ ability to meet these matters.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee raised concerns over the agencies’ ability to maintain effective staffing levels. In response to changes in the nature of the threat and the economic climate, the agencies have reviewed their staffing and skills requirements to ensure that they are in the best shape to meet future national security challenges. Each agency undertook a programme of redundancies or early release. These programmes, alongside recruitment in key areas, have enabled the agencies to grow the skills and expertise that they need to meet their future objectives and provide greater room for capacity growth within the organisations. The Government recognise that recruitment and retention of internet specialists at GCHQ is a matter of the greatest importance. We have therefore been working closely and urgently with GCHQ to identify a sustainable package of measures to improve its capacity to attract and retain staff with the necessary internet skills and to implement these measures by the end of the year. We will of course continue to monitor the situation and review these new measures.
I should make a point about diversity. Vetting is essential to the agencies to ensure the security of their work. Nationality requirements can pose real challenges in the case of some minority applicants and I hope that noble Lords will understand that. However, we are working with the agencies to improve diversity. A number of recruitment campaigns online and in the printed media have been specifically designed to attract those from diverse backgrounds.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee also raised the issue of attendance at JIC and NSC. These two bodies have regular attendees. However, with neither body does this prevent others attending when a subject under discussion is relevant.
I am sorry if I have spoken at some length but this has been a substantial debate on an important matter of public interest. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in a debate on a wide-ranging report. I warmly welcome the annual report and look forward to future annual reports being equally or—given the new arrangements in train for the ISC—perhaps even more insightful. Finally, I conclude by paying tribute once again to the enormous contribution made by the security and intelligence agencies in ensuring that the British public are properly protected. The men and women who work in our agencies are hugely skilled, professional and dedicated. The burdens that secrecy imposes on their private lives can be great and we owe them a great debt of gratitude.
The Marquess of Lothian
My Lords, I can and will be brief. I just want to make a number of comments in relation to what I thought was a very sensible and insightful debate. The remarks made today have reflected the essentially non-partisan nature of the ISC, which is one of its great strengths. I start by thanking the Minister for his remarks. I will not go into them in detail. He has given a number of indications of amendments in another place and assurances as to adequate funding, and we look forward to seeing those amendments and hearing the outcome of those discussions on funding. It has been helpful to have those remarks.
With regard to what has happened recently in Algeria and the lessons that can be learned—we have missed the Statement so I do not know what was said—it strikes me that something we should be looking to for the future is a proper analysis of what happens to arms when they disappear. We know that in Libya Gaddafi’s arms disappeared, and we have indications that some may have reappeared in Algeria this week. I have a great concern at the moment that some of the arms that have been provided to the rebels in Syria, vicariously or directly, may end up in the hands of al-Nusra and other Islamist organisations, which would not be in the interests of this Government in the future. I hope that area will be looked at.
I mentioned retention last year and made a very strong point about it. One of the reasons for talking about the retention of staff within the agencies generally, but specifically within GCHQ, is that the nature of GCHQ’s work means that the people who operate there are highly skilled in IT. They are recruited because they are what the director-general described in our report last year as “whizzes”. He said, “How do I hold on to my whizzes when the outside world is trying to recruit them at far greater expense than I could ever meet in order to keep them?”. It is an unresolved problem that I hope the Government will go on wrestling with. I am glad it was raised by a number of noble Lords here today.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised the issue of redactions. This is something that comes up every year. Redactions irritate us all. When I was the shadow Foreign Secretary in another place, I used to enjoy the debates because I would read out pages of redactions and it always got a laugh. It was only when I joined the committee that I realised how essential they are. The committee does not write its own redactions. The committee writes its report as it sees things and that report is to be seen by the Prime Minister. It is the Prime Minister who will come back and say, “We feel there are certain areas here that should not be in the report that is published”. In my experience—and I may be wrong—I do not think there has ever been a redaction, which can only be allowed on grounds of national security, that has not eventually been agreed between the committee and the Prime Minister, because if it is a matter of national security there is no question in the committee’s mind that that should not be redacted. We could write reports without redactions, but they would not be as valuable to the Prime Minister or, indeed, the general public.
My final point is in relation to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. Once again, we have heard an interesting and thought-provoking speech. I cannot undertake that the committee will look at everything he has raised but I can undertake to personally ensure that his remarks are brought to the attention of the committee and that copies of his speech are made available to the members of the committee so that they can consider some of the very relevant remarks he made.
We have had an important debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, whose speech I totally endorse. I think he and I feel that we are part of a committee that works very closely and proactively together. I am grateful, too, as I said earlier, to those who serve us on that committee. I thank this Committee for this debate.
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Nash
Global Hunger
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the opportunities for tackling global hunger in 2013 and beyond, including at this year’s G8 summit.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, by 2015 the UK should reach 20 million pregnant women and young children with nutrition programmes and ensure that another 4 million people have sufficient food throughout the year. The UK will continue to tackle global hunger in 2013, including through a food and nutrition event just before the G8 summit. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for DfID will also take forward the G8 new alliance on food security and nutrition as co-chair of its leadership council.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
I am grateful to the Minister for her response. Millions of children whose diet lacks essential vitamins and minerals endure long-term malnutrition and consequent diseases, stunting and premature death. Does the Minister therefore agree that the G8 at County Fermanagh should offer clear support to the global Scaling Up Nutrition movement, which provides an excellent framework for donors and, indeed, for developing countries, calls for support for a global target to reduce stunting and offers solutions to combat the lifelong physical and cognitive impairment caused by poor nutrition?
Baroness Northover
The noble Baroness is right to highlight again the importance of good nutrition and the problems of stunting and malnutrition. The G8 is an opportunity to focus on these issues, but this needs to be taken throughout the year. I am glad, therefore, to be able to reiterate the United Kingdom’s commitment, throughout the year and right on through, to this very important challenge.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, around a fifth of farmland in Senegal and Sierra Leone, nearly a third in Liberia and about a half in Cambodia have been acquired by companies. Does my noble friend agree that it is vital that we ensure that the growing phenomenon of large-scale land deals is not undermining food production in these and other countries? In this context, can she say what provision the Government have made as a first step actively to champion and push the UN voluntary guidelines on land tenure?
Baroness Northover
We are very supportive of moves in this regard on voluntary guidelines on the management of land and other natural resources. It is extremely important that there is transparency here, that the governance of land tenure is addressed, and that when countries consider the position on tenure in their countries they consider food security, the impact on the environment and consultation with those involved. We are very actively pushing that forward.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, can the Minister confirm that 14% of men, women and children around the globe go to bed hungry each night, including tonight, and that 28% of children in the developing world are undernourished or stunted? In the welcome investment that the Government are making this year to achieve their 0.7% target, will they look at investment in small-scale agriculture and nutrition, and encourage their G8 partners to follow their lead in this area?
Baroness Northover
Again, the noble Earl is right to concentrate on this area. It has been a diminishing problem, but it is still there on a massive scale. That is what we have to tackle. We have to welcome the fact that in many parts of the world now undernutrition has now reduced, but he is quite right: it is still a major problem, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. We are very supportive of smallholders. We are helping in 13 countries. Some 500 million farmers are smallholders, with less than two hectares of land, and they are at the margin in their ability to feed their families.
Lord Judd
Does not the noble Baroness agree that, as the noble Lord, Lord Bates, put it so well the last time this was before us, it is obscene that almost half the food available to us in the West and the north is thrown away, while desperate people utterly dependent on food production are seeing their land bought up by multinational companies to service that greed? Must that not be a priority at the G8, and is it not intimately related to the whole question of security, not only in food security sense but in building stable societies less prone to abuse by extremists?
Baroness Northover
I think we see how we are all interlinked when we look at the situation in Mali right now. The Foreign Secretary is quite right to emphasise that it is important that we are supporting those in Mali through aid programmes. The noble Lord is right to emphasise the problem of waste of food, but there is also a lot of wastage among those smallholders simply because they do not have the right storage for their crops, and so on. It has to be a very high priority to ensure that, wherever it is in the world, food, which is so important to relieve this problem, is not wasted.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, does the Minister accept that part of the solution for our broken food system lies in taking steps internationally to ensure that companies pay tax appropriately in developing countries and to help those countries to use their own resources in the fight against hunger? Can she assure us that the Government’s G8 tax reform agenda addresses the problems of tax avoidance faced by developing countries?
Baroness Northover
The right reverend Prelate is quite right and I am sure he has noted that transparency in this regard is going to be on the G8’s agenda. One important development is the risk to companies and banks these days related to what they do in various countries. The spotlight is potentially on them. We have seen the backlash in the United Kingdom about the paying of tax. We need to get across very clearly the need for transparency, to highlight what is happening in different countries and to point out to companies that they incur risks thereby.
Lord Deben
Does my noble friend accept that the urgency of these matters is increasing all the time because of the world food shortage that will clearly be a part of our future? The effect of climate change and the like means that we have to live in a world where, if we are to feed 9 billion people, we really have to get more urgency in this whole issue. What worries me is that there are constant statements about debates, discussions and further targets, when actually this is far too urgent for us not to have it at the top of our agenda.
Baroness Northover
It has been suggested that global food production might decline by 7% by 2050 because of climate change and in some areas of the world by 20%. I emphasise that the United Kingdom takes this extremely seriously. One of the issues that came out of the hunger events that were hosted at the time the Olympics was a focus in the United Kingdom on agritech business. Defra, DfID and BIS are taking that forward because clearly investment in research, in which we have great strengths in the United Kingdom, should and could help to relieve some of these problems.
Energy: Wind Farms
Baroness Quin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are planning changes to their support for onshore wind farms.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma)
My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting renewable energy as part of a diverse, low-carbon and secure energy mix alongside gas and low-carbon transport fuels, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage. Renewable energy brings energy security, the decarbonisation of our economy and green growth. Our ambition for a central scenario of up to 13 gigawatts of onshore wind, as set out in the Renewable Energy Roadmap, of course remains. Onshore wind is one of the most cost-effective, large-scale renewable technologies, and the Government are committed to ensuring that onshore wind remains part of the UK’s energy mix.
Baroness Quin
My Lords, my Question was prompted by the situation in Northumberland, which has far more onshore wind farms than any other county in England. Is the Minister aware of the concern there that excessive subsidy-driven wind farm development is potentially harming other parts of our regional economy, particularly the tourist industry, which has achieved a great deal in recent years? While being supportive of renewables and, obviously, of achieving a good energy mix, I ask the Government, in their review of the economic and environmental aspects of wind farm development, to look at the situation in Northumberland in particular.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises important points that are relevant to Northumberland. I reassure her that all wind farms must be well designed and well sited to be approved, and applications for onshore wind farms can be turned down because of local concerns. The Government have taken this issue very seriously, which is why we called for evidence. That consultation has recently closed. We are looking at what the response has been to that and we will report back in spring, with a full report in May.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, will my noble friend heed what was said by the noble Baroness opposite? Onshore wind farms are unreliable, uneconomical and unsightly, and Mr John Hayes voiced the views of many people in this country when he said, “Enough is enough”.
Baroness Verma
I reassure noble Lords that we have taken the concerns of local constituencies very seriously, which was why we called for evidence. However, this does not mean that we will be changing our policy. Government policy remains that onshore wind will continue to be part of ensuring that we have a diverse mix of renewable energy sources.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, I live in the village of Belford in north Northumberland, where two overseas companies have planned huge wind farms of 150 metre tall turbines in areas of outstanding natural beauty at Middleton Burn and Belford Burn. This is against the wishes of 92% of the local populace. Is it not time that planning authorities took full account of all the relevant factors before approving such exercises, before this country’s most beautiful countryside is irrecoverably scarred?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I do not quite know how to repeat myself, but I will try yet again. The Government did take on board the concerns of some communities, and we did have a call for evidence. That consultation has recently closed. We are looking very closely at the responses to that call for evidence, but we need to ensure that onshore is part of the renewable energy mix in order to meet our targets for 2020. Onshore schemes also bring real benefit to the local communities they are set in. I very much take on board the points raised by the noble Lord and others, but we are mindful that this needs to be part of a bigger picture.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
My Lords, while surely understanding the concern of my noble friend, will the Minister not be deterred by those who stridently demand more and more renewable sources of energy, yet oppose every attempt to provide them? We should therefore stand by the policy of supporting wind farms, and supporting diversity, including the use of nuclear power.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, that was what I hoped and tried to get across; obviously I failed. I would like to reiterate that this Government want to be the greenest Government ever, and in doing that are of course looking at all renewable energies. Onshore wind is only a small part of the renewable energy sector, but it is an important one, one that is very cost effective, and one that will hopefully be part of our energy security for the future.
Lord Teverson
My Lords, one of the issues about onshore wind is that we pay generators to stop generating, so the wind turbines actually stop operating. That costs us money. Would it be a much better solution if we used that energy: if we kept on generating electricity, and we topped up the storage heaters and the hot water tanks of the fuel poor? Instead of paying generators not to generate, we could use that electricity to help fuel poverty. I understand that the technology is already there; why do we not use it?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, my noble friend raises a number of very important points. The Government recognise that smart electric heating may in future provide a low-carbon solution to a range of energy challenges, including balancing the supply of electricity. DECC’s heat strategy team have had constructive discussions with utilities and manufacturers to discuss this potential further. The Government will publish a document on the strategic framework for heat in the coming months.
Lord Empey
My Lords, will the noble Baroness confirm that, because of the intermittent nature of wind power, there will be—there can be—no reduction in generating capacity from fossil fuel and nuclear sources? In this country cold weather, such as that we had two years ago, tends to be accompanied by high pressure, which means no wind. The intermittent nature of wind power will therefore not result in a reduction in fossil fuel or nuclear generation.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, that is why we look at onshore as being a part—a small part—of the renewable energy mix.
Social Care: Funding
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Warner
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will announce their decision on the Dilnot Commission’s recommendations on capping the cost of adult social care for individuals.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have committed to announcing further details before the Budget on capping the potentially huge costs of long-term care, giving people the certainty that they need to plan for their long-term care needs. The Government have agreed the principles set out by the Dilnot commission. We expect further details shortly.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Progress is being made, albeit a little slower than many of us would like. Will the Government prepare draft clauses on a capping system for consideration alongside the draft Care and Support Bill? Does he agree that, to work effectively and fairly, national capping of individual liability will require the draft Bill to provide for portable national eligibility criteria?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as the noble Lord is aware, the draft Care and Support Bill is currently going through pre-legislative scrutiny. Our proposals can be amended to support the cap in law and we would include the appropriate provisions when legislation is introduced. I can tell the noble Lord that work is going on drafting such clauses. We have said that we will build national eligibility criteria into the Bill.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, from what we read in the press, it looks as if the Government’s plans might include a cap of £75,000 and that that will not include accommodation costs. As I understand that 85% of people incur lifetime costs below £75,000, would this not skew the outcomes unfairly?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we have to speak speculatively and hypothetically because I cannot give the noble Baroness any indication of the level at which the Government will finally propose to set the cap. The level of the cap needs to represent an affordable and sustainable relationship between the state and the individual. We will give due regard to the Dilnot recommendations for the cap while taking into account current economic circumstances. We will set out further details in the coming weeks but I am sure that the point that the noble Baroness effectively makes will be closely borne in mind as we approach decision time.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, with more people needing social care, and with a higher cap than anticipated under Dilnot being probable, what provisions are being made to assist local authorities to cope with managing deferred payments for care?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as my noble friend is aware, the universal deferred payments scheme will be part of the Care and Support Bill. No doubt, we will debate those provisions when the Bill comes before us. I cannot tell her when that will be, but, clearly, they will be the subject of close scrutiny by the Joint Committee.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, is not one of the unfortunate effects of the Dilnot proposals that they protect inherited wealth at a time when the NHS needs money?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the main benefit of the Dilnot proposals is to protect people from unpredictable and catastrophic costs of long-term care. While the noble Lord could interpret the raising of the means test as a way of protecting the rich, I see the combination of the cap and the threshold as a way of giving greater certainty and predictability for all concerned, because none of us, whether we are rich or less rich, can know whether we will be subject to catastrophic care costs at a later stage in our lives. That is the inherent unfairness which Dilnot and the rest of the commission attempted to address.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, following on from that answer, does the Minister accept that uncertainty is the most difficult thing for vulnerable people and their families to cope with? They are uncertain about the level of services that they will have because of problems with local authority budgets and they are absolutely uncertain about what their financial liability will be. Therefore, saying that the Government will accept the Dilnot proposals but not saying when or at what level is only adding to that uncertainty in a most unacceptable way.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I might have hoped that the noble Baroness would welcome my initial Answer, which at least gives her the certainty that an announcement will be made before the Budget. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, that is progress and, I hope, welcome progress. However, I take the point that the noble Baroness makes and the sooner we can introduce the certainty that she desires the better.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, first, is it possible that these clauses will be available during the time that the Joint Committee is still working? Secondly, am I right in thinking that Dilnot has nothing to do with healthcare but has to do with what we usually call social care?
Earl Howe
Yes, my Lords, my noble and learned friend is right. The Dilnot proposals focus primarily on social care although there are always knock-on effects for the health service. In theory, it will be possible for us to produce clauses covering the Dilnot proposals for scrutiny by the Joint Committee but I am not in a position to give that undertaking at present.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I welcome the announcement that has been made and I hope that it will please more of us than seems to be the case at the moment. We shall see. Does the Minister agree that the effectiveness of the Dilnot proposals for a cap depends on adequate insurance products being available to cover pre-care costs or costs that arise before that cap is reached? If so, have the Government had any discussions with the insurance industry or are any planned?
Earl Howe
My department is engaging actively with the financial services sector for the very reasons that the noble Lord suggests. As I have said, care needs are very difficult to predict and care costs can be open-ended in the current social care system. At the moment, that makes financial products very expensive to buy and difficult to develop. There are many reasons why people do not consider financial products for their care at present, including a lack of awareness that they have to pay. We very much hope that the introduction of a Dilnot-type solution to this problem will encourage the financial services sector to develop these products and we believe that that will happen.
Iraq: Camp Liberty
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recent information they have concerning flooding by sewage and storm water at Camp Liberty, and whether they have made representations to the United Nations and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq about conditions at the camp.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)
My Lords, we are aware that parts of Camp Liberty were flooded during a recent period of heavy rainfall, as were many parts of the Baghdad area. Fortunately, this did not affect residents’ accommodation blocks. We continue to monitor the situation at Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty through the embassy in Baghdad and to raise issues with the Government of Iraq and the United Nations.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, is it not time that the Government made a judgment, based on first-hand evidence such as that produced by the ex-UNAMI chief Tahar Boumedra, and ignored the manipulation and dissembling by Martin Kobler on behalf of the Secretary-General of the United Nations? If the United Kingdom is to maintain its integrity and influence in the Middle East, we should be pressing for the dismissal of Herr Kobler and, indeed, be asking ourselves, with our allies, whether the present Secretary-General of the United Nations has not outlived his usefulness.
Baroness Warsi
Before I answer the noble Lord’s very important question, I am sure the rest of the House will want to join me in wishing him a very happy birthday.
The noble Lord raises an important point. The Secretary-General, whom I met with last week at the United Nations, is doing a very important job, with the support of the international community, in some very difficult circumstances. The specific situation in relation to Camp Liberty is that the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, as part of the United Nations Assistance Mission, regularly reports about the situation in Camp Liberty and Camp Ashraf. Our own officials visited in July last year and the international community does not, at this stage, find any credible evidence to support the matters that have been raised by Mr Tahar Boumedra.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, considering that many of the complaints that are made by the residents of Camp Liberty and, indeed, Camp Ashraf, against the Iraqi authorities and UNAMI could be easily verified or refuted and that some have been confirmed not only by Mr Tahar Boumedra but by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, will the Government press for an inspector to be appointed by the UN Secretary-General to look into the serious allegations of ill treatment, such as denial of access to urgently needed medical treatment, which has lead to the deaths of two inmates of Camp Liberty? Since we have been aware for some time that 52 residents of Camp Liberty were formerly refugees in the United Kingdom, will my noble friend press for their immediate transfer to the UK?
Baroness Warsi
As my noble friend is aware, the situation in Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty is in many ways much better than that of residents in Baghdad. For example, electricity is available for 24 hours a day, as opposed to the three hours for which it is available in some parts of Baghdad. About 200 litres of water are available to residents there, when about 90 litres are available in some parts of Baghdad. My noble friend raises the very important issue of the recent death of a resident there. We share those concerns about the death of Behrooz Rahimian and have made inquiries specifically in relation to the medical assistance that he received. We are aware that there is a doctor and medical facilities on site 24 hours a day; there is also the opportunity to receive medical assistance from doctors in Baghdad. We understand that Mr Rahimian was afforded medical assistance in relation to his illness.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the new Parliament in Baghdad will be built to a British design, that UK parliamentarians, including the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, are out there helping to develop democracy and that the development of a democratic Government in Iraq to deal with the kind of issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, is the number one priority and will be supported fully by the British Government?
Baroness Warsi
I agree with much of what the noble Lord said. He will also be aware that this situation goes back many years. The group that lives in Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty is an organisation that originally left Iran after the Iranian revolution. Mujaheddin e Khalq, the group that is predominantly part of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty, has its own history and record, and we must be incredibly careful about which members of that group we readmit to the United Kingdom.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the problems we have is that the United Nations has not granted Camp Liberty the status of a refugee camp? It that were granted, would it not be possible to have adequate medical facilities and for water, sewerage et cetera to be resolved? At the same time, the status of Camp Ashraf could be looked at because the property of individuals is systematically being looted there, and the information the Minister has is not the information that we receive from residents of those camps.
Baroness Warsi
I can assure my noble friend that about 3,000 residents of Camp Ashraf have moved to Camp Liberty. It is not a refugee camp as such; it is a place where individuals are being assessed as to the countries to which they could be relocated. Four have already come to the United Kingdom, a fifth who was offered that has decided not to come and about 52 others are being considered for coming to the United Kingdom. In relation to property at Camp Ashraf, I can assure my noble friend that about 100 residents of this group remain in Camp Ashraf specifically to sell off their property.
Antarctic Bill
European Union (Croatian Accession and Irish Protocol) Bill
European Union (Approvals) Bill [HL]
Public Service Pensions Bill
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Eatwell
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments 118ZA, 118B, 118C and 119A in this group, which in my name and that of my noble and learned friend Lord Davidson. Clause 20(1)(b) is about consultation and reporting in the context of the responsible authority proposing,
“to make scheme regulations containing retrospective provision which appears to the responsible authority to have significant adverse effects in relation to members of the scheme”.
We are particularly concerned that “significant” is not defined and could be open to interpretation. We do not want the responsible authorities to, let us say, be let off the hook when it comes to consulting on changes that might have an adverse effect on members, especially given that the provision relates to that continuous bugbear in this Bill, retrospective changes. In particular, the protections that are present in Clause 20 do not apply to adverse retrospective changes to any of the non-protected elements of public service schemes—they only kick in if the adverse effect is deemed significant. Amendment 116A would ensure that the protections in Clause 20 apply to any proposal to make an adverse retrospective change.
There are only three protected elements in Clause 20(5): the extent to which the scheme is a career average defined benefit scheme—the main purpose of the Bill—members’ contribution rates and benefit accrual rates. However, this means some very important elements of a pension scheme are not protected, most notably the definition of pensionable earnings, early retirement rights and ill-health benefits. If a responsible authority decides to make adverse retrospective changes to something as important as ill-health retirement benefits, or indeed to the definition of pensionable earnings, which will of course knock on to the final pension provision, it is unacceptable for such adverse retrospective changes to be excluded from the protections in Clause 20.
When this issue was addressed in another place the Minister complained that the effect of the amendment would be to make any,
“adverse change to member benefits subject to the additional protections in clause 20, regardless of how minor that change might be”.
He then said that,
“we believe that almost all retrospective changes will either be minor or technical in nature, or beneficial to members”.—[Official Report, Commons, Public Service Pensions Bill Committee, 20/11/12; col.407.]
That is a welcome belief but it is not knowledge: it is merely a belief. Having members’ protections over such things as ill health and pensionable earnings hanging on a belief is entirely unsatisfactory. Given that the Minister has already made concessions or, to put it better, positive statements about the way in which he will bring forward amendments to the insidious retrospective measures in the Bill, I ask him whether the measures on retrospection will also apply to this matter.
Amendment 118ZA in my name adds to the definition of the “protected period”, as it is called, to accommodate the different closure date of the local government pension scheme. Clause 16 closes the local government pension scheme on 1 April 2014, but all other schemes are closed on 5 April 2015, one year later. However, Clause 20 defines the protected period as one of 25 years beginning on 1 April 2015. This means that there is a window of a year in which the protections under Clause 20 will not apply to the local government pension scheme. This amendment would correct what seems to be a drafting error by ensuring that there is no such peculiar window in which the protected elements of the local government pension scheme are not, in fact, protected, as the Government clearly seem to intend, by Clause 20. By aligning the protected period for the local government pension scheme with the other schemes in the Bill, they will all come to an end and all be dealt with and covered at the same time.
The Minister in the other place was sympathetic to this argument. I am therefore somewhat surprised that the Minister here is not reflecting that sympathy by tabling an appropriate amendment to this oversight in the non-alignment of the two schemes.
Amendment 118B again refers to protection. As we have said, Clause 20 lists various protected elements of the scheme. This amendment would overcome some of the deficiencies that we have already indentified by adding the definition of pensionable earnings, ill-health benefits and retirement rights to the protected list. This overcomes the problem of their being subject to the significant adverse consequences of retrospection. This would be a simpler advantage to dealing with some of the issues to which I have referred.
The Minister in another place argued that his rejection of an amendment like this rested on wishing to maintain flexibility in the arrangements. I do not think that that is a very satisfactory argument. Flexibility is often an attractive characteristic of legislation, but not when it is achieved by undermining the pension rights of members of a pension scheme. Let us remember, these are some of the less well paid members of our community who serve us through a variety of public services. Achieving flexibility by reducing their rights does not seem to me to be a very respectable activity.
Retrospection again rears its ugly head as regards Amendment 118C. The amendment seeks to leave out Clause 20(6), which provides that all the “protected elements” under Clause 20 will not be so protected if a change is required by or as a consequence of a change in the employer cost cap. When we last discussed cost caps, we saw that the definition of the cost cap was entirely in the hands of the Treasury. Therefore, it would be quite possible to place the cost cap at such a position as would lead to a consequential loss of protection under Clause 20.
Once again, the Minister has made a lot of sympathetic noises about the perhaps unfortunate consequences that the current definition and specification of changes in the cost cap bring to this Bill. I hope that his earlier commitment to doing something about the cost cap will carry through to Clause 20 and the various protections that it provides.
Finally, given that we are continuing the same theme into Clause 21, Amendment 119A again refers to the incorporation of “significant” with respect to “adverse effects”. The point is that “significant adverse effects” are designed in the Bill to trigger the use of an affirmative resolution procedure for any changes to scheme regulations. In particular, Clause 21 provides:
“Scheme regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure”,
only,
“if … they amend primary legislation, or … contain”—
and here we go again—
“retrospective provision”,
which would,
“have significant adverse effects in relation to members of the scheme”.
Given the way that retrospection runs continuously through this Bill, creating major uncertainty among members of these schemes, the very least we can expect is that any adverse effects should be subject to an affirmative procedure.
Returning to Amendment 116A about the use of “significant” in defining “adverse effects”, I beg to move.
Lord Flight
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 117A, which—if I may put it thus—heads somewhat in the other direction from the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. As I understand it, Clause 20 says that for 25 years you will not be able to make any changes other than as a result of consultation and agreement among the various parties. The clause refers to the changes containing a provision which,
“changed the protected elements of the scheme”—
defined as where,
“the scheme is a career average revalued earnings scheme”,
in relation to contribution rates and to “benefit accrual rates”, or where the “responsible authority” proposes to make scheme regulations containing retrospective provision which appears to the “responsible authority” to have “significant adverse effects” in relation to members of that scheme. As I said, the protected period is defined as 25 years. My understanding is that although this clause may not cover every detail, it is in effect saying that other than by agreement, no changes can be made which come under the two defined areas for 25 years.
My amendment to reduce that period to 12 years was not entirely random: it was basically part of a previous amendment suggesting a post-2006 review by the OBR of fiduciary valuations. However, the fundamental point is that whatever Government are in power, they will be obliged to make major amendments. We started off with a cash-flow deficit of £15.4 billion by 2017. However, the ONS has advised that the longevity assumption is six years shorter than it ought to be, so that adds another £7.2 billion; and now that we have the government single pension proposals, the public sector pension schemes will not get the contracted-out NI contributions, which worsens the cash flow by about another £5 billion. So, we are going to have a cash-flow deficit per annum of approaching £30 billion.
If anyone thinks that that is sustainable in the present environment of deficits which are well above maintainable levels, they are not seeing reality. I repeat: whoever is in power in the next five years will be obliged to review the whole aspect of public sector pensions if the cash-flow deficits turn out to be at the sort of levels that now look likely. Limiting the protected period to 12 years is hopeful—not being able to change any of the key elements for 25 years is just unrealistic.
Lord Newby
My Lords, this is a rather disparate group of amendments. I will start with government Amendment 117. Amendment 117 is part of the wider package of amendments that seek to meet the desire of the Northern Ireland Executive to be removed from the provisions of the Bill. The provisions in question would have required a report to be laid in the Northern Ireland Assembly, should the responsible authority have sought to make changes to the protected elements in the schemes for which Northern Ireland has devolved competence. Given that this is consequential and in line with many other amendments relating to Northern Ireland, I hope that that amendment will be uncontroversial.
I will now speak to government Amendment 118 and Amendment 118ZA. Government Amendment 118 recasts the timing of the 25-year period of protection. The amendment will ensure that all schemes made under the Bill benefit from this protection until 31 March 2040. It is currently intended that the new Local Government Pension Scheme will be in place earlier than April 2015. Concern was expressed in another place—which the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, expressed here today—that the scheme would lack the protection in this clause until 1 April 2015 had passed. The amendment seeks to deal with this concern. Although the Government have no intention of making changes to the core elements of the new Local Government Pension Scheme in its first year, we are happy to rectify the situation. The amendment will ensure that all schemes, even those that might be implemented before 1 April 2015, receive the full protection from Clause 20 for 25 years.
Amendments 116A and 119A would increase the required levels of consultation and parliamentary process for all scheme regulations that make adverse retrospective changes to members’ benefits. As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, says, we have debated the issue of retrospection a number of times in your Lordships’ House. As discussed when we were considering the potential amendments laid to Clause 3, the Government are aware of the concerns on this issue and intend to bring forward their own amendments in this area. I plan to have a draft amendment available in advance of Report stage and I hope that it will meet the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell.
Amendment 117A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, would, as he said, end the protection set out in Clause 20 after 12 years. It would require a review of the effectiveness of the cost cap to be conducted by the Office for Budget Responsibility, and that review would determine whether the clause’s protections would be extended beyond 2027.
Although I understand the noble Lord’s reluctance to bind subsequent Administrations for 25 years to a more onerous process, I must reiterate the Government’s position on the new 2015 schemes. First, we believe that if the cost cap is necessary, it will work. If it does not, the solution does not lie in reducing the consultation and reporting requirements that govern fundamental changes to public service pension schemes. To make this amendment would risk causing unjustified concern and uncertainty to scheme members about the commitments that the Government have given in the context of negotiating the important reforms made by this Bill. I am very happy in that respect to repeat the statements of my right honourable friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury when he described the new schemes as,
“a deal that can endure for at least 25 years and hopefully longer”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/11/11; col. 929.]
We have committed that this belief should be enshrined in the primary legislation governing these schemes. We do not share the gloom of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, as to their unaffordabilty. Therefore, I hope that he will not press his amendment.
Amendment 118B was discussed in another place, and there the Government set out their belief that the elements of the new pension scheme designs which have been designated as “protected” are the right ones. It is right that members and their representatives should seek reassurance from the Government over their commitment to the new schemes that have been negotiated. However, these schemes must work in the real world. Public service pension schemes require regular tweaking to keep them in line with all kinds of other legislation, and the processes in Clause 20 are not designed for such changes. The protected elements, which have been included by the Government in Clause 20, are those which form the core of the new schemes. The kind of regular, purely administrative, changes that are made to the regulations of public service pension schemes are unlikely to touch on these aspects of design. If they ever do, it would be right for scheme members to be reassured about the impact of such changes through the procedures in Clause 20. Those elements suggested by the amendment go beyond this. These are aspects of design which are likely to require administrative changes, and so the proper consultation requirements which should apply to them are those set out in Clause 19. It is not as though the changes are not consulted on at all.
It may be of benefit to the House if I give a couple of examples of the kind of changes to the three heads under the noble Lord’s amendment that have been made in a couple of years, which demonstrate the kind of thing that we are talking about. In respect of pensionable earnings, for example, we are about to remove all references to primary care trusts in connection with their role in establishing pensionable earnings for practitioners. That is a small administrative change to reflect the fact that PCTs are on the way out. On ill health benefits, we have made changes that allow scheme medical advisers to determine that a member can satisfy the severe ill health condition for the purposes of the Finance Act 2004. It is a small administrative change. In respect of early retirement, changes made from 1 April 2010 required that an employer should pay the costs of the early payment of a mandatory retirement lump sum, paid to a member retiring on the grounds of redundancy. So, again, it is a small administrative change.
In view of the reassurance that I have, I hope, been able to give the noble Lord, and my attempt to clarify the way in which the clauses work, I hope that he will feel able not to press his amendments.
Having given reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Flight, that we believe that the cost caps will work, I am afraid that I cannot support Amendment 118C. This amendment cuts across the provisions relating to the cost cap mechanism set out in Clause 11. As discussed in another place, that mechanism already contains a number of its own consultation requirements. Indeed, the arrangements in Clause 11 are actually more stringent than those set out in Clause 20. It may be to the benefit of the House if I read it out. The Bill says that,
“scheme regulations may provide for … a procedure for the responsible authority, the scheme manager … employers and members (or representatives of employers and members) to reach agreement”.
So there is a requirement in the Bill that they have to reach agreement, whereas Clause 20 requires only consultation with a view to reaching agreement.
Lord Eatwell
The noble Lord is very kind to read out that little piece from the earlier clause. However, it uses the word “may”, and “may” is not a requirement.
Lord Newby
My Lords, we are back to the “may” and “must” issue here. Clause 11(6) states:
“For cases where the cost of the scheme would otherwise go beyond the margins, scheme regulations may provide for—”.
It then lists several things that may be provided for. This is one of those cases where in reality the difference between “may” and “must” is not only negligible, it does not exist. The schemes will include those provisions; that is exactly why they are in the Bill. Having another process for consultation, as the noble Lord suggests, is unnecessary. I hope, therefore, that he will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for those comments. I am particularly pleased with government Amendment 118, which achieves what we were attempting to achieve through Amendment 118ZA in a very satisfactory and comprehensive manner. Regarding the other amendments which we have proposed, as I have said on numerous occasions, we look forward to the Minister’s amendments with respect to the retrospective measures in this Bill.
I wish to comment on his rejection of Amendment 118B, which seeks to include the scheme’s definition of pensionable earnings, ill-health benefits and early retirement rights under the so-called protected elements in Clause 20. The examples he gave were indeed administrative, but they were not in the least reassuring. The fact that there was a series of administrative changes does not mean that future changes will also be of such limited significance, because the clause allows for greater changes. It is like saying that it might not be very significant if one player on a football team has a shirt that does not quite match those of the others. It is very significant if he is then not allowed on to the pitch. Giving us these so-called reassuring examples is an exercise in which I hope we will not indulge in the future, because it does not address the nature of the argument. However, at this time I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 116A, which deals with the issues of retrospection that we will discuss on Report.
Lord Newby
Lord Newby
Lord Eatwell
“Scheme participation
The Treasury shall commission an independent review into the appropriateness of increased pension contributions if, following the full implementation of the increases in employee contributions announced in the Government’s 2010 Spending Review, the number of members opting out of any public service pension scheme increases by more than 5 per cent compared with the drop-out rate in the 12 months immediately before any contribution increases were implemented.”
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, the purpose of this proposed new clause is to evaluate scheme participation. I am sure all of us are very concerned that members should participate fully in the pension scheme that is available with their employment. Some of the new measures which will be introduced this year are complex but it will typically be in members’ best interests to remain in their defined benefit scheme—in this case, their average earnings defined benefit scheme.
The role of the proposed new clause is to require the Government to assess the attrition of membership of public sector pension schemes consequent upon the increase in contributions which will take place following the 2010 spending review. The purpose of the amendment is to determine whether the number of members opting out of any public service pension scheme in consequence of the increase in contributions exceeds by 5%—this is an arbitrary number—the drop-out rate immediately before the contribution increases. Therefore, it seeks to pick up what the consequence of contribution increases and the various changes which the Bill will introduce might be.
The amendment is not a challenge to the appropriateness of the contributions but merely seeks to provide the sort of information that the Government, employers who are members of the various schemes and, indeed, the members themselves need in order to understand the dynamics of what is going on in public sector pensions. Providing that information to all those groups would be beneficial and would lead to a better informed debate and better informed consideration in future of the development of public sector schemes. I beg to move.
Lord Newby
My Lords, it is probably sensible to remind ourselves why the increases in employee contributions were felt to be necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Hutton, was clear when he said in his interim report that,
“there is clear rationale for increasing member contributions to ensure a fairer distribution of costs between taxpayers and members”.
He sets this in the context of the cost of public service pensions having risen by a third over the past decade to £32 billion and of those increases having fallen mostly on the taxpayer. Subsequently, in 2010, the Chancellor announced a proposed increase in member contributions of 3.2 percentage points, to be phased in progressively over three years from April 2012. Let me be clear: the Government stand behind the justification for these increases and fully expect them to be implemented and carried forward into the new schemes. Proposed scheme final agreements clarify this. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, is right to raise the issue of participation, and I welcome the opportunity to set out what we are doing to maximise this.
First, we have protected the lowest earners from the increases. We know that they are those most likely to opt out, so there will be no increases for those earning under £15,000, and limited increases for those earning under £21,000. Secondly, we have split up each year of proposed increases so that we can assess the impact, particularly on opt-out, of year one, before finalising the approach for the next. As a result, I am pleased to be able to say that following the increases in contributions in April 2012, scheme data show that there has been no discernible increase in opt-out. This perhaps should not come as a surprise. Union representatives at the Bill’s evidence session in the other place unanimously stated that they would continue to advocate membership to their members.
We should also remember that the auto-enrolment policy—begun by the Opposition but implemented by this Government last year—will further encourage pension participation more generally. Therefore, given the clear rationale for rebalancing costs fairly, and the specific steps that the Government have taken to minimise opt-out, we do not intend to revisit the contribution increases after their implementation.
Of course, the Government will closely watch what is happening in practice. We monitor opt-out as a matter of course. In the unlikely eventuality that opt-out rates dramatically rise, naturally we will have to consider the best way forward. However, we think that this is highly unlikely, and the evidence bears that out.
We do not, however, believe that a statutory, independent review of the appropriateness of the increases would be right or necessary. We believe that increasing contributions is appropriate and that it will leave public service workers with pensions which remain the envy of many in the private sector. Introducing a statutory review mechanism would be misleading to members about the intended permanence of these increases.
The Government will continue the implementation of the increases and will continue to monitor opt-outs from schemes, but we cannot agree to this amendment to provide for a formal review, as, in our view, this would set an unrealistic expectation that the increases might be reversed.
Lord Eatwell
It would have been very nice if the Minister had addressed the actual amendment instead of the fictional one that he seems to have been discussing. There is no suggestion in this amendment of looking at the “appropriateness”, as he put it, of higher contributions. The intention is simply an information exercise; we want to know what is happening and we want it to be clearly revealed. The various measures that he described to maximise participation are very appropriate and desirable, but will they work? We are told, “We believe they’re going to work”, but some people believe in fairies.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I suggest to the noble Lord that it is not a question of hoping, thinking or believing; it is a fact that the increases have been implemented and there has not been a discernible increase in the opt-out rate.
Lord Eatwell
The point is that, if there is a proper review available to all—which the noble Lord is not relying on; I presume that he is relying just on the evidence provided by his officials—we will be able to assess the consequences of the increases.
Finally, I think that when the noble Lord was discussing the measures to prevent opt-out, he mis-spoke. It is not correct that somebody earning less than £15,000 a year is not subject to higher contributions. I think he will find that part-time workers earning less than £15,000 per year are subject to higher contributions.
However, given what we heard, which was clearly a misunderstanding of the purpose of the amendment, for the moment I beg leave to withdraw it.
Lord Newby
Lord Newby
Lord Newby
Lord Newby
Lord Newby
Lord Newby
“( ) This section does not apply to a new public body pension scheme which relates to a devolved body or office.”
Lord Newby
“but may not add a devolved body or office.”
Lord Eatwell
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, this amendment refers to Clause 28(10)(b) whereby the Treasury may by order,
“add any body or office to it”—
that is, to Schedule 10, which lists the various schemes that are the subject of the Bill.
The Government have made a couple of amendments to the clause, particularly regarding the provisions dealing with devolved authorities, on which we spoke earlier, but the Treasury is still given the power to amend quite drastically any career average or other defined benefit scheme relating to a public body simply by adding that body to Schedule 10 at the flick of a pen. That is rather reminiscent of the most notorious part of the Public Bodies Act, which noble Lords will remember, whereby public bodies could just be added to the list of those to be abolished or otherwise changed at will. This House was not willing to accept that position. Similarly, I do not think that the House should be willing to accept this particular situation in which, without any by your leave whatever, public sector schemes or other arrangements in a public body that is not part of our consideration should be simply added at will. Surely there should be a degree of consideration before that is done.
The amendment suggests that paragraph (b), which refers to adding any body or office to Schedule 10, should be left out. The Treasury can remove any body or office from Schedule 10 and the issue relating to devolved authorities will also stand. We cannot rely on a flick of the pen to incorporate bodies into the Bill. We need to know the list that will be incorporated. I appreciate the difficulties that exhaustive lists create but we are dealing with people’s pensions, which is an aspect of life about which people are most nervous and insecure. We cannot say that one day somebody will decide that a fund that was previously not part of these conditions now will be, and that the issue will not be debated—that there is nothing anyone can do and it will just be done by fiat. That is not appropriate. I beg to move.
Lord Newby
My Lords, the Government have always been clear that pension reform should extend to all public service pensions. Clause 28 and Schedule 10 are the means by which that work will be continued, even after enactment of the Bill. To date, the Government have focused their resources on reforming the largest public service pension schemes as these affect the vast majority of public service employees. As such, pension reform for the smaller public bodies is not as advanced as the reforms to these major schemes. Noble Lords may be reassured to know that reform of these smaller schemes is anticipated to be completed by 2018, after the reforms to the larger schemes are operational in 2015.
The Government’s policy with regard to these schemes is clear: any public body whose defined benefit pension scheme needs to be reformed is listed in Schedule 10 or may be added to it. Members of these schemes should be well aware that their pensions are in scope of the reforms. However, the arrangements surrounding some of these pension schemes are complex and it may be unnecessary to include them in Schedule 10 if they are able to reform on their own initiative. If so, they will not need to be listed.
To date, we have worked hard to ensure that all the public bodies that operate pension schemes eligible for reform by the powers under Clause 28 have been listed in Schedule 10. However, we are trying to be realistic with this provision: of the more than 400 public bodies that provide pensions to their employees or officeholders, some may not yet have been identified appropriately. That said, I can assure the noble Lord that the vast majority of public bodies that provide pensions through one of the major public service schemes will be reformed by Clause 1, so the number of public bodies that may have to be added will be extremely low. However, if we need to include such schemes, the Bill needs to provide for the Treasury to add them via Schedule 10.
I note what the noble Lord says about draconian powers but it is worth noting that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not express any concerns whatever about this power as currently drafted. It is a sensible way of dealing with the addition of a small number of public bodies to the universal principles of public sector reform. I hope therefore that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, perhaps the Minister will clarify for my edification his reference to schemes reforming themselves and then not needing to be incorporated into Schedule 10. What will be the criteria of satisfactory reform and who will do the judging?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the criteria for satisfactory reform is that we want all public bodies to adopt schemes which are in line with the provisions of the Bill. So, if the schemes do that, that is fine. There are a number of schemes, some of which are listed already and some of which may need to be listed subsequently, when the Government and the Treasury believe that the process will be helped if they are formally listed in the Bill or under the Act.
Lord Eatwell
I thank the Minister but this is unsatisfactory. It leaves an area of uncertainty hovering over smaller schemes, which may be in or may be out. I presume, therefore, that the Treasury will make a judgment as to what it thinks in its wisdom is right. I do not think that is a proper way to go forward and may return to this issue later. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Newby
Lord Newby
“( ) This section does not apply to a public body pension scheme which relates to a devolved body or office.”
Lord Naseby
“(1) Schedule 6 to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (parliamentary and other pensions) is amended as follows.
(2) In paragraph 19, for sub-paragraph (3) substitute—
“(3) Sub-paragraph (2) does not apply if either—
(a) the trustees of the Fund consent to the new scheme making the provision, and the person making the new scheme is satisfied that the consent requirement is met, or(b) the provision provides for a person’s normal pension age or deferred pension age to change in consequence of a change in state pension age in respect of service after the provision comes into force, but not affecting that person’s right (including a contingent right) or entitlement to or in respect of a pension or future pension payable from the Fund which has accrued in respect of service where that age does not change in consequence of a change in state pension age.”(3) In paragraph 19, at the end insert—
“(8) In this paragraph—
(a) “normal pension age”, in relation to a person and a scheme, means the earliest age at which a person with relevant service is entitled to receive benefits (without actuarial adjustment) on leaving that service (and disregarding any special provision as to early payment of benefits on the grounds of ill-health or otherwise),(b) “deferred pension age”, in relation to a person and a scheme, means the earliest age at which a person with relevant service is entitled to receive benefits under the scheme (without actuarial adjustment) after leaving that service at a time before normal pension age (and disregarding any special provision as to early payment of benefits on the grounds of ill-health or otherwise), and(c) “state pension age”, in relation to a person, means the person’s pensionable age as specified from time to time in Schedule 4 to the Pensions Act 1995.””
Lord Naseby
My Lords, in moving the amendment, I must declare an interest as a trustee of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund and as its only active pensioner within the membership of the fund.
The amendment relates to Clause 31—Parliamentary and other pension schemes: pension age. The clause amends Schedule 6 to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, to which I shall hereafter refer as CRAG, by inserting a new paragraph 29A, “Pension age”, into that schedule. It is an enabling measure, not a requirement, as was made clear in the Commons. It enables IPSA, in relation to MPs and the officeholders within its remit, and the Minister for the Civil Service, in relation to the ministerial scheme, to introduce for future benefits a provision whereby “normal pension age” within these schemes will rise automatically with changes in the state pension age.
The PCPF trustees take no issue with the measure itself. As statutory consultees under CRAG, it will be for the trustees another day to debate with IPSA/the MCS the detail as to how such a provision may be implemented for the future. However, we are concerned that the drafting creates ambiguity in the legislation governing the PCPF such that it potentially undermines existing protections afforded to PCPF members in a way that we doubt Parliament intends.
It is important to understand the background. The legislative framework of the PCPF was overhauled by CRAG and is governed by that Act. There was extensive debate at the time of the passage of CRAG about the need to ensure that the accrued rights of PCPF members were appropriately protected in legislation. That was particularly important given that the setting of MPs’ future pension provision was by that Act being transferred to an independent body in IPSA. The legislation appropriately prescribed the boundaries of its powers.
Those boundaries, set out in Schedule 6 to CRAG, were described as follows:
“My aim is to ensure that the statutory safeguards afforded to members of other occupational pension schemes broadly apply to the parliamentary scheme. As with statutory protection for pension schemes elsewhere, amendment 74”—
the government amendment—
“would put a double lock on any provision adversely changing accrued pension rights. It would first be necessary for the trustees to consent to the scheme making such provision and, secondly, each member would have to give his or her informed consent to any changes to accrued rights”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/10; col. 854.]
The details of those boundaries can be found in paragraph 19, “Protection of accrued rights” and paragraph 20, “Meaning of accrued right”, in Schedule 6 to CRAG. These provide, at paragraph 19(2), that:
“The new scheme must not make any provision in relation to an accrued right which puts (or might put) a person in a worse position than the person would have been in apart from the provision”.
Paragraph 20(2) says that the term “accrued right” means,
“a right (including a contingent right) or entitlement to or in respect of a pension or future pension payable out of the Fund”—
the PCPF—
“which has accrued in respect of service before the provision comes into force”.
The protection does not apply if the PCPF trustees consent to the making of the provision and informed individual member consent requirements are met.
Our concern, as PCPF trustees, is that the clause as drafted risks going beyond the narrow scope to which the Government referred. It is important that this does not happen because the structure of the clause means that it disapplies the accrued rights protection in CRAG and the so-called “double lock” enshrined in CRAG would not exist at all. At its most simple, the difficulty with the clause is that it will import language into CRAG that is inconsistent with the drafting that is there already. With inconsistency comes ambiguity and that risks undermining the double lock that currently exists. The clause fails, for instance, to speak of the removal of the protection as applying only in respect of service after it comes into force, this being the critical aspect of the existing CRAG protection.
I have two questions for my noble friend on the Front Bench. First, what comfort can he provide that the carve-out will not undermine the existing CRAG protections other than to introduce an enabling provision to allow IPSA or the MCS, as appropriate, to tie future service benefits to an NPA that uprates in line with changes to SPA? Secondly, can he confirm that the wording in Clause 31,
“(as well as other benefits)”,
does not extend the application of the carve-out to any benefits other than relevant accrued benefits? I realise that the second question has some technical dimension to it, to which I shall briefly refer. It arises from the wording currently in Clause 31 by way of proposed new paragraph 29A(1) to Schedule 6 of CRAG. It provides that the carve-out from accrued rights protections, to enable the introduction of an NPA that uprates automatically with changes to SPA, is limited. It will apply only to “relevant accrued benefits”. Defined at the proposed new paragraph 29A(3)(d) to Schedule 6 to CRAG, they are benefits accrued after the coming into force of that SPA link—that is, future service benefits. However, the Bill refers to the carve-out applying to,
“relevant accrued benefits (as well as other benefits)”.
The concern is that the additional words in parenthesis could be read as suggesting that the carve-out applies to all benefits, not just to “relevant accrued benefits”.
Having proposed this quite complicated amendment, I hope that nevertheless the Minister will be able to clarify the position and indeed give comfort to me and the other trustees. I beg to move.
Lord Stewartby
My Lords, I support my noble friend, who has explained this technical area very skilfully. Like him, I have to declare an interest as a member of the parliamentary fund and I was a trustee for several years. The great advantage of that is that one does not come to the details of this sort of provision completely unsighted. However, it is a very complicated Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, mentioned, it contains a lot of areas of uncertainty. The same point about ambiguity in drafting was made by my noble friend Lord Naseby. All I want to do is help support the case made by my noble friend and underline every point at which accrued rights are involved. That is a very sensitive area. When the Bill is finally tidied up, special efforts must be made to ensure that accrued rights are dealt with as if they were sacrosanct. I believe they are, but that must be what happens in practice. With those few words, I support my noble friend and hope that the Committee will be sympathetic to the case he put so clearly.
Lord Newby
My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Naseby and Lord Stewartby, are concerned that Clause 31 as currently drafted creates ambiguity and could have a wider interpretation than is intended. I will seek to put their minds at rest and in doing so answer the two questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.
I hope I can reassure the noble Lord that the clause as drafted does not provide for a wide power to amend accrued rights under the relevant schemes. The power provided for in the clause is actually very narrow and the disregard for the accrued rights protections in CRAG applies only to this very narrow provision. The power simply allows those responsible for the schemes to amend them to create a link between normal pension age under the scheme and state pension age, which would apply to benefits accrued from the point the amendment takes place. That is to say, once that link is in place any increase in state pension age will increase the normal pension age, but only for those benefits accrued after the creation of the link. That is the key point. The clause does not allow for changes to the indexation arrangements for deferred members, sweeping changes to the death in service benefits or removal of the final salary link. All these areas will continue to have the same level of protection under Schedule 6 as now.
I believe that the phrase,
“(as well as other benefits)”,
in the clause is of considerable concern, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, said. I should like to put on the record the Government’s view that this phrase does not open the door to a wider interpretation of the benefits that could be subject to the state pension age link as a consequence of this clause. It is important to include this phrase, so it is clear that the clause does not reduce the power the scheme already had to change the normal pension age for benefits that accrue after the change. However, it is also clear from the current drafting of the clause that the only accrued benefits that come within the new power are “relevant” accrued benefits, as defined in new paragraph 29A(3)(d). I hope therefore that the noble Lord will find sufficient comfort in what I have said to be able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Naseby
I am most grateful to my noble friend for listening to the propositions and concerns that we had. I think his answers were very helpful. Certainly, I would like to study his reply very carefully after Committee stage, and if necessary return on Report, but I hope that will not be necessary. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Newby
““devolved”: a body or office is “devolved” if or to the extent that provision about pensions payable to or in respect of members or staff of the body, or a holder of the office—
(a) would be within the legislative competence of the Northern Ireland Assembly were that provision contained in an Act of the Assembly, or(b) is not a reserved matter within the meaning of the Scotland Act 1998;”
Lord Newby
““local authority” means—
(a) a local authority in England and Wales within the meaning of Part 1 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989;(b) a council constituted under section 2 of the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994;”
““pension board” has the meaning given by section 5(8);”
““scheme advisory board” has the meaning given by section (Scheme advisory board)(6);”
Lord Newby
Algeria
(11 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made earlier in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the despicable terrorist attack in Algeria and the tragic events of the past few days. It is with great sadness that I have to confirm that we now know that three British nationals have been killed and that a further three are believed to be dead, as is a Colombian national who was resident in Britain. I am sure the whole House will join me in sending our deepest condolences to the families and friends of all of those who have lost loved ones.
First, let me update the House on developments over the weekend and the steps that we have taken to get survivors home. Then let me begin to set out how I believe we will work with our allies to overcome the terrorist scourge in this region.
The Algerian Prime Minister told me on Saturday afternoon that the Algerian military had completed their offensive and that the terrorist incident was over. Since then, Algerian forces have undertaken a further operation to clear the site of potential explosives and booby traps. This is still being completed and it will allow our embassy-led team to access the site.
It is important to put on record the scale of what happened. There is still some uncertainty around the precise facts but we believe that, in total, some 800 employees were working at the In Amenas site at the time of the attack, about 135 of whom were foreign nationals. More than 40 were taken hostage and at least 12 were killed, with at least a further 20 unaccounted for and feared dead. The Algerian Prime Minister has said today that he believes that 37 foreign hostages were killed. The number of terrorists was more than 30. Most were killed during the incident, but a small number are in Algerian custody.
Our immediate priorities have been the safety of the British nationals involved, the evacuation of the wounded and freed hostages, and the repatriation of those who have tragically been killed. Working closely with BP, and side by side with our US, Japanese and Norwegian partners, a swift international evacuation effort has been completed. The last British flights out on Saturday night brought not only the remaining freed Britons but Germans, Americans, New Zealanders, Croats, Romanians and Portuguese. As of yesterday, all 22 British nationals caught up in the attack who either escaped or were freed had been safely returned to Britain to be debriefed by the police and, of course, to be reunited with their families.
Now, our most vital work is bringing home those who died. An international team of British, American and Norwegian experts is in close co-operation with the Algerian Ministry of Justice, undertaking the task of formally identifying their bodies. We want this process to happen as swiftly as possible but it will involve some intensive forensic and policing work and so may take some time.
Throughout the last five days, the British ambassador to Algeria and staff from across government, and beyond, have been working around the clock to support British citizens and their families. I am sure the House would like to join me in thanking them for their efforts. We should also recognise all that the Algerians have done to confront this dreadful attack. I am sure the House will understand the challenges that Algeria faced in dealing with more than 30 terrorists bent on killing innocent people in a large and extremely remote and dangerous industrial complex. This would have been a most demanding task for security forces anywhere in the world and we should acknowledge the resolve shown by the Algerians in undertaking it. Above all, the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists.
Many questions remain about this whole incident, but one thing is clear. This attack underlines the threat that terrorist groups pose to the countries and peoples of that region and to our citizens, our companies and our interests too. Four years ago, the principal threat from Islamist extremism came from the Afghanistan and Pakistan region. A huge amount has been done to address and reduce the scale of that threat. Whereas at one point three-quarters of the most serious terrorist plots against the UK had links to that region, today this has reduced to less than half. At the same time, al-Qaeda franchises have grown in Yemen, Somalia and parts of north Africa.
The changing nature of the threat we face was highlighted in our national security strategy in 2010 and it shaped the decisions that we made. While of course there were difficult decisions to make, we increased our investment in our Special Forces, cybersecurity and key intelligence capabilities while also increasing our investment in fragile and broken states.
In north Africa, as in Somalia, terrorist activity has been fuelled by hostage ransoms and by wider criminality. To date, the threat it poses has been to those north African states themselves and, of course, to western interests in those states. But as it escalates, it is also becoming a magnet for jihadists from other countries who share this poisonous ideology. Indeed, there are already reports of non-Algerian nationals involved in this attack. More than ever, this evolving threat demands an international response. It must be one that is tough, intelligent, patient and based on strong international partnerships.
First, we should be clear that this murderous violence requires a strong security response. We must be realistic and hard-headed about the threats we face. Our role is to support the Governments of the region in their resolve to combat this menace, as many are doing at great cost. So we will work closely with the Algerian Government to learn the lessons of this attack, and to deepen our security co-operation. We will contribute British intelligence and counterterrorism assets to an international effort to find and dismantle the network that planned and ordered the brutal assault at In Amenas.
We must work right across the region. In Nigeria, we will continue our close security partnership with the Government as they confront Islamist-inspired terrorism. In Libya, we will continue to support the new Government on the urgent priority of building new and effective security forces. In Mali, we will work with the Malians themselves, with their neighbours and with our international allies to prevent a new terrorist haven developing on Europe’s doorstep. We support the French intervention that took place at the request of the Malian Government and we are working to ensure that an African-led military force can, with the appropriate training and support, help to ensure Mali's long-term stability. That support will include the EU training mission that was agreed by EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels last week.
Secondly, our tough security response must be matched by an intelligent political response. Al-Qaeda franchises thrive where there are weak political institutions, political instability and the failure to address long-standing political grievances, so we need a political approach that addresses these issues. We must support effective and accountable government, we must back people in their search for a job and a voice, and we must work with the UN and our international partners to solve long-standing political conflicts and grievances. Thirdly, we must be patient and resolute.
Together with our partners in the region, we are in the midst of a generational struggle against an ideology which is an extreme distortion of the Islamic faith and which holds that mass murder and terror are not only acceptable but necessary. We must tackle this poisonous thinking at home and abroad and resist the ideologues’ attempt to divide the world into a clash of civilisations.
The underlying conflicts and grievances that are exploited by terrorists are in many cases long-standing and deep, and, of course, the building blocks of democracy—the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, the rights of minorities, free media and association and a proper place in society for the army—are a big part of the solution but all take a long time to put in place. Yet this patient, intelligent but tough approach is the best way to defeat terrorism and to ensure our own security. We must pursue it with an iron resolve, and I will use our chairmanship of the G8 this year to make sure this issue of terrorism and how we respond to it is right at the top of the agenda, where it belongs.
In sum, we must frustrate the terrorists with our security, we must beat them militarily, we must address the poisonous narrative they feed on, we must close down the ungoverned space in which they thrive and we must deal with the grievances they use to garner support. We must demonstrate the same resolve and purpose that previous generations have shown when dealing with these issues in this House and in the country. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating a Statement on Algeria given in the other place by the Prime Minister.
I start by joining the noble Lord and the Prime Minister in expressing my deepest sympathy and condolences to the families who lost loved ones in last week’s terrorist attack. For them, and for all those involved, the past six days have been an unimaginable nightmare. The whole country has been shocked as the horrific details of this unprovoked and violent act of terror have emerged. This was pre-meditated, cold- blooded murder of the most brutal kind, and behind each lost life is a family of loved ones who are in our thoughts today.
I echo the Prime Minister’s unequivocal condemnation of those involved in planning and carrying out this attack. It is they who must bear full responsibility for the dreadful loss of life, and every effort must now be made to bring them to justice. We on this side of the House will give the Government our full support as they seek to achieve this, and we endorse the thanks expressed by the Prime Minister to our embassy staff in Algeria. We will also give the Government our support as they consider how best to respond to the growing threat which al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other violent extremist groups pose.
In particular, the task is to understand the nature of the new threat—more decentralised, more fragmented, taking advantage of the ungoverned spaces and security vacuum in parts of north Africa—and at the same time, in its response, for the international community to apply the lessons of the past about the combination of diplomacy, politics and security required to help bring about stability in the region.
First on the attack itself, people will agree with the Prime Minister that the Algerian Government were faced with some extremely difficult judgments about how and when to act. Nevertheless, do the Government believe that there are any lessons to be learnt for Governments handling terrorist incidents on their soil? Secondly, in light of the attack, can the noble Lord the Leader say more about the work that the British Government are doing with British companies operating in the region, and can he tell us whether at this early stage any lessons can be learnt?
Turning to the broader context of what is happening in the region, on Mali we support the actions of the Government to date, and we welcome the confirmation by the Prime Minister that they do not envisage a combat role for British troops. Do the Government agree that the efforts of the French military must be supplemented by the much more rapid deployment of west African forces, and what is the Government’s view about whether this can be achieved? After last year’s coup, the Government of Mali face both a security and a legitimacy crisis. What further steps can be taken by the international community and Governments to use diplomacy and development to stabilise the situation? In particular, which international body should co-ordinate this urgent work? More broadly across the region, countering the emerging threat of terrorism begins with understanding it and talking about it in the right way. The work to deal with this threat will be painstaking—diplomatic and political as much as military; collaborative and multilateral, not unilateral. There is no quick fix.
Do the Government agree that we are talking about a number of distinct regional organisations—some using the banner of al-Qaeda, others not—rather than a single, centrally controlled group? Each of these threats needs to be monitored and countered appropriately. Can the noble Lord the Leader outline what steps might be taken to improve the flow of information and intelligence from the region, and whether it needs to be better shared with key allies? We know that these threats grow where governance is weak, as the noble Lord himself suggested. What longer-term roles do the Government anticipate for the African Union and ECOWAS—the Economic Community of West African States—in securing greater stability in the region, and how can the European Union support this effort? In relation to ready access to arms, can the Leader of the House set out how the international community can better prevent the spread of this weaponry throughout the region, including weapons left over from the Libyan conflict?
Finally, do the Government agree that if we are to meet the challenges we face, we need a much greater focus of our diplomatic, development and political resources on this region? We should also remember the events of the Arab Spring, which demonstrated the desire of people across north Africa to improve their lives through peaceful means, not through violence and terror. We should support them. Indeed, I was at a conference in Cairo at the weekend, supporting colleagues from the newly formed Arab Social Democratic Forum, all of whom are committed to meeting the concerns of their citizens and achieving social justice through democratic means and respecting human rights, human dignity and the rule of law.
However, today, above all, we mourn the victims of this terrorist attack. We grieve with the families of those who died. We stand united in seeking to bring the perpetrators to justice and will do everything we can to protect British citizens working and living across the world.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition for the support she has given to the Government. I agree very much with her comments and the tone with which she concluded her response. I think all sides of the House would want to align themselves with what she said and the Statement my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made. She was also right, at the beginning of her comments, to emphasise the importance of understanding the nature of this new threat. That is something we very much need to do.
On some of her specific points, it is clear that the Algerian Government found themselves having to deal with an extremely difficult and complicated situation many thousands of miles away from the capital in a very remote part of the world. All of us need to recognise the difficulty they confronted. She asked whether there are lessons we can learn from that. I am sure there are—we always need to learn from events and it is vital that the British Government continue to work closely with the Algerian Government.
With regard to the work of the British Government in the region, all major British companies have now been contacted and have put in place improved security procedures and the consular information has been updated.
The noble Baroness rightly said that we have made clear that there is not a combat role for British troops in Mali but I think we should support the French in taking emergency action. We have, as she knows, already lent them two C-17s and are due to discuss our help to them at the National Security Council tomorrow. In terms of progress on the ground and the involvement of other countries in supporting the effort in Mali, there are some African soldiers on the ground. We hope that more will follow soon. This will be co-ordinated by ECOWAS and the United Nations, but she is absolutely right to say that there is no quick fix for any of this. She said rightly that we believe that this is the work of a number of distinct organisations under the al-Qaeda banner. They are distinct but there are connections between them and we will need to deal with them individually but recognise those commonalities.
In terms of improving the flow of intelligence to the area, the noble Baroness will know that recently, before Christmas, the Prime Minister appointed his own envoy to the Sahel. Discussions at the NSC about the Sahel are continuing. We will need to work with our allies, particularly the French, in making sure that we share all the intelligence that we can.
On the role of the African Union and ECOWAS, we certainly need to help build capacity for the future to deal with those issues. We have stepped up our help to Libya to try to remove weapons from the region. The noble Baroness rightly raised the issue of security on the borders. One of the priorities of all our work in Libya is to try to address that important issue, and working with other countries and the Libyans to make the region more secure. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness’s concluding remarks on the importance of having a great focus on the region. I agree with her remarks about the Arab spring, and the long-term benefit to which that will give rise. There are obviously difficulties through which we need to work, but we need that focus. It is also worth remembering that, in the past, brutal regimes have not made our world any safer.
I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s remarks. We will continue to work on this.
Lord Chidgey
My Lords, we support the Prime Minister in the calm and measured response that the Government have given to this crisis. Of course, we join with the Minister, the Prime Minister and the whole House in expressing our sympathy for all those affected, particularly our British families who have lost, or who are still awaiting news of, their loved ones.
We face a serious situation developing in Algeria and throughout the Sahel. The emergence of Islamist groups such as AQIM has been long foreseen. The advent of the Arab spring has unfortunately created an environment, through porous borders and the like, in which extremism can now more readily flourish across the region. What specific measures are the Government taking to ensure that the African nations engaged through the AU, ECOWAS and the UN have full access to effective EU training and support for counterterrorism actions? What measures are the Government taking to develop an international security protocol to protect the personnel and the assets of the companies working in difficult conditions in these remote regions?
Finally, what specific initiatives, and with whom, are the Government taking in the Sahel to enable the underlying economic exclusion—unemployment and poverty— fuelling the unrest to be tackled? I appreciate that at this stage it may be difficult for the Leader to comment in detail, but can he give us some indication of when we might get that sort of specificity?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Chidgey for his support. I will need to follow up some of his specific questions over time. Currently, the broad approach is becoming clear: the need to emphasise the importance of the Sahel and for us to up our efforts in working with a range of interested parties, whether through the EU or with other individual states; to address both the security issue but also the kind of economic issue to which my noble friend refers; and recognising that political and military solutions need to go hand in hand. We must address some of the underlying issues to do with poverty, which act as fuel for people who recruit and feed on those grievances.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
Does the Minister accept the endorsement of what the Prime Minister said: it really is shameful that, at a moment like this, after these horrific events, so many attempts are made to look for people who are responsible other than the terrorists themselves? The events that took place were not provoked by the invasion of Mali. They were not provoked by any behaviour that could possibly be regarded as justifying it; it is right to say that.
Will the Minister also address the need to mount a really successful international operation to restore the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Mali and, hopefully, a properly functioning governance system there? This will not be easy or short. Is any thought being given to a recommendation made by two UN panels that, where the UN asks a sub-regional organisation, such as ECOWAS, to undertake a very tough business like this and where keeping the regional powers in the fore must surely be the right thing to do, the costs should be met under the UN assessed contributions and not simply through having to rely on carrying a hat around, invariably, to the European Union? Why should countries such as Japan, Russia or China not contribute?
That proposal has been made on a number of occasions. I do not think that it has ever yet born fruit. Surely, an operation such as this demonstrates the need to provide ECOWAS, which has no any financial resources of its own, with a proper underpinning for the task we are asking it to undertake.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, first, I very much associate myself with the first comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about who was responsible for this attack and with his point about those attempting to say that it is the sensible and appropriate action being taken as regards Mali that has driven this. He is clearly right that there is not that linkage. As far as we can tell, the attack, which was extremely well planned, must have been some time in the making. The idea that it was triggered by recent events in Mali does not seem to make sense.
On his broader point about Mali and how we can take it forward, I listened with great care to what he said. I know that discussions are going on at the UN on precisely those issues. I will follow those points up subsequently.
Lord Howell of Guildford
Does my noble friend accept that the emphasis in the Statement on the resolve of the Algerian authorities and Algerian forces in dealing with this horrific situation is extremely welcome? Is he aware of a point that was not made in the Statement but perhaps should have been; namely, that in recent years and months, Algeria has been seeking to move much more closely to the United Kingdom through trade links, business links, links in relation to prison reform and human rights, and through a whole range of other areas, as well as an interest in associating itself in some way with the Commonwealth? In short, Algeria regards Britain as a strong and growing friend. Therefore, it is fully entitled to expect from us not criticism but support and encouragement in dealing with this very difficult situation.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful for the comments made by my noble friend, to whom I always listen with a great deal of care. His views on these matters are highly respected in this House. It is obviously the case that Algeria over a long time has been dealing with these terrible issues, going back over many years. It is a sovereign country. We should respect the difficult decisions that it had to take. It is also the case that in addressing this horrible situation, Algerians lost their lives and Algeria’s armed forces risked their lives to help free nationals from around the globe. I agree with my noble friend about the importance of us making sure that our relations with Algeria build on the improvements made and become closer, and that people do not rush to condemn it.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, I am sure we all agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the responsibility for this hideous incident lies entirely with the terrorists concerned. I hope that the Leader of the House also agrees that there is a real problem about regional security in that part of north Africa. I want particularly to raise with him the unresolved issue over the western Sahara. In recent years, Morocco has told us over and over again that because of the disputed territory there, the western Sahara is peculiarly vulnerable to al-Qaeda activity, to training camps for terrorists and to other activity of a really appalling nature. Are the United Kingdom Government now prepared to raise this issue again forcefully in the United Nations in order to try to get some proper security into the western Sahara so that that territory cannot be used as a launching pad for this sort of activity in the region in future?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I take the points that the noble Baroness makes. The Government, the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister have been aware of the growing threat to which she refers. I will certainly pursue those points, as I know she will. Perhaps we might have a word about it.
Lord Wright of Richmond
My Lords, I should perhaps declare an interest as a former non-executive director of BP. I would also like to echo the condolences that have been expressed to the families of all the victims. Does the noble Lord accept that one essential element in confronting Islamic extremism, not only in north Africa but elsewhere, is the unresolved problem of the Middle East peace process? I suggest that we and our partners should make a positive and active attempt to revive the moribund peace process and to work towards—at last—a just and permanent peace settlement for the Palestinians.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, on the noble Lord’s condolences and the role of BP, it has clearly been a very distressing time for BP and all its employees. I think that all noble Lords will endorse the points that were made. On his broader point, yes, that whole issue is one that the Government are very aware of and continue to pursue to try to resolve at every possible opportunity.
Lord Naseby
The speed with which the Prime Minister moved in calling COBRA meetings and the Government as a whole moved in bringing back our colleagues who survived is greatly to be welcomed. The Prime Minister mentioned in his Statement that priority will now be given to bringing back the remains of those who have died. To that end, I wonder whether it might not be in the interests of all parties if a senior coroner, or a recently retired coroner, was hastily made one of that team to ensure that, if at all possible, this can be done even more quickly than has ever been achieved before.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to my noble friend for his comments both about the way in which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has handled this crisis and also his points about the importance of resolving the problem of repatriating these bodies—which is a deeply distressing thing for all the families concerned—as soon as possible. I know that officials in our embassy and from the police are working closely with the Algerian authorities in the kind of way he describes to resolve it as rapidly as possible.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Perhaps I may ask a couple of related questions about African ownership of the solutions. First, for some years I was the secretary of the All-Party Group on Algeria, after Prime Minister Blair and President Bouteflika were starting a new rapprochement. One of the problems, of course, is that they do not have Westminster-style democracy in Algeria. On the other hand, does the noble Lord the Leader of the House agree that we have to have practical, in-depth parliamentary arrangements with Algeria, as we do with Ethiopia or anywhere else where we may not have perfect arrangements? Secondly, is there not scope for giving more congratulations to the African Union on the string of successes it has had right across the tenth parallel from Somalia through to Chad, South Sudan and right the way across? I base this on a talk that I had in Addis two months ago with the executive director for security of the African Union. I think it is fair to say that they are remarkably able people but very badly resourced. We ought to be a little less schizophrenic about letting the African Union take the lead instead of damning it with faint praise for not being as effective as it should be.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with both the noble Lord’s points—on the importance of working with Algeria, and having African solutions to problems in Africa.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, is the Minister aware that two of the fatalities were men from Liverpool? Paul Morgan, the head of security, originated from Aigburth, and was killed while trying to repel the attackers. Garry Barlow, from Allerton, reportedly had Semtex strapped to his chest. Their deaths left their loved ones and the local community utterly devastated. Will the Minister ensure that every practical help is given to these and the other grieving families as they try to come to terms with their loss? As this jihadist contagion threatens other countries, especially Nigeria, will he look again at the proscribing of Boko Haram, which has been responsible for hundreds of deaths, and the need to find political and economic solutions to deter the easy recruitment of the disaffected, as well as the wisdom of supporting militias in places such as Syria, which have links with al-Qaeda, or share jihadist indifference to the slaughter of innocent people?
Lord Hill of Oareford
First, I agree very much with the noble Lord how important it is that these poor families have every support that we can give them. I know that through the police and in other ways through our embassy we have been providing as much of that support as we possibly can.
On his broader point about Nigeria, we strongly condemn the violence that there has been in northern Nigeria. We are working with the Nigerian authorities to try to find lasting solutions to that conflict and, through our High Commission in Abuja, we are supporting counterterrorism work and interfaith projects. In November, the terrorist organisation, Ansaru, was proscribed by Her Majesty’s Government, which I hope sent a clear message that we condemn its terrorist activities.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
First, I associate these Benches with the sympathy with the relatives of those who have died and who have experienced the nightmare of either knowing that their relatives have died or not knowing what has happened to them. We meet in mourning this afternoon. We also associate ourselves with the thanks to the diplomatic staff, who have done such an excellent job in repatriating those who have died and making sure that the hostages who have been freed have returned home.
I welcome the phrase from the Statement where the Prime Minister speaks of these events as a,
“distortion of the Islamic faith”.
Will the Leader of the House express his support for the vast majority of Muslims, in this country and across the world, who express their own bitter opposition to violence? This is sometimes associated, on the part of terrorist organisations, with allegations of western and Christian aggression. Will he also affirm his support for all that interfaith activity in the cause of peace, which is going to be so crucial to the development of a cultural situation across the world where peace is seen as a crucial part of the future of our world?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for the support that he expressed from the Bishops’ Benches for the work of our embassy staff and others who have been dealing with this awful situation. I am very happy to associate myself as strongly as I can with both the statements that he made—that these terrorists and extremist Islamist organisations represent a distortion of the faith, and his view that interfaith work has an important part to play in trying to build understanding and putting these aberrations into their proper context.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
My Lords, I endorse strongly the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about the United Nations, but can I also ask the Leader of the House about what role the Government see for the European Union’s External Action Service in this important region? In addition, in relation to the drug trade, while the weapons that are being used may well be coming from Libya and elsewhere, it is absolutely clear that at least part of the finance is coming from the drug trade that comes up through Guinea-Bissau and other failed states from South America, through the Sahel and the Mediterranean and into Europe. Can we have an assurance from the Government that they see this wider picture as including dealing with that key element, which is part of the source of the problem?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The noble Lord very accurately reflects the interconnections that exist between criminality, terrorism and all the different factors which come together. As he said, we know how criminal activity is used to fund terrorist activity in a horrible nexus in a number of places. He is right to emphasise that we need to find ways of tackling both strands in the solutions that we develop: both security and military, and political. As far as the EU is concerned, it is one of a number of different bodies with which we need to work to find solutions. The support which it is providing for training in Mali is one example, and there are others too. I agree with the noble Lord that we need to do everything that we can to build on that.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
The noble Lord the Leader of the House referred to French intervention in Mali. It is of course accepted that that is not only lawful, but laudable, and historically utterly understandable. Does he agree, however, that in such terrifying circumstances as these, the maximum premium should be placed upon collective responsibility and concerted action? Is he able to say whether the Government of France came to any consideration or discussion on this matter with any country other than Mali, including of course the neighbouring African countries, before sending troops into Mali?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am afraid that I am not able to add a great amount in response to the noble Lord’s question. I know that it is the case, as he has said, that the Malian Government invited the French to undertake that intervention. It was urgent in the circumstances on the ground. If I can find better particulars I will of course pass them on to the noble Lord with great pleasure.
Korean Peninsula
(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Alton of Liverpool
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the security, humanitarian, and human rights situation on the Korean Peninsula.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, I thank noble Lords from all parts of the House for taking part in today’s short debate. I know that the retiming of the debate will deprive us of several contributions, notably that of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, who has to chair a Select Committee.
The Motion before us focuses, as I will, on three things: security, humanitarian needs and human rights concerns in North Korea. Since 2003, when, with my noble friend Lady Cox, I made the first of four visits to North Korea, I have served as chairman of the All-Party Group on North Korea. Last September, while in China, I visited the River Tumen, where many trying to leave the DPRK have lost their lives.
The continuing security challenges posed by North Korea were underlined by its rocket launch in December and reports a week ago that it may be about to conduct its third nuclear test. Last Friday, the Russian ambassador to the UN Security Council, Vitaly Churkin, said:
“Our position is that the North Korean rocket launch is a violation of a UN Security Council resolution, so the council should react”.
Even more significantly, China is also likely to support a new resolution this week—a significant diplomatic blow to Pyongyang, about which the Minister will doubtless say more. We are talking about the most militarised country on earth, with the world’s fourth largest army and biggest special forces. North Korea’s arsenal includes the full array of weapons of mass destruction: a plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme now supplemented by uranium enrichment; the world’s third largest chemical weapons arsenal; possible biological weapons; and a range of ballistic missiles.
A failure to hammer out a long-term political settlement and a conflict triggered by a Sarajevo moment would replicate the horrendous haemorrhaging loss of life that saw the catastrophic deaths of around 3 million people in the Korean War. The 2010 sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island underline North Korea’s capacity to initiate hostility, and, in the cyber domain, interference with the GPS systems of planes using Seoul’s busy airports, all indicate North Korea’s ability to inflict harm, short of invasion.
An isolated rogue state has the power to inflict other miseries, too, including drug trafficking, currency counterfeiting, crimes of abduction and the transfer of nuclear technology, which can be sold to terrorists or to countries such as Iran, and which I hope the Minister will comment upon. Since 1953, North Korea has promoted an ideology based on “military first”. For both sides, it has largely been a case of military first, second and third. In this context, Kim Jong-un was right in his New Year’s Day assertion that,
“past records of inter-Korean relations show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war”.
In a similar vein, the Republic of Korea’s new President, Park Geun-hye, has called for deeper engagement. She said:
“While we cannot allow the North to develop nuclear weapons ... we must keep open the possibility of dialogue, including humanitarian aid”.
Britain has diplomatic relations with both sides and should build on the successful 2011 visit of Choe Tae Bok, the Speaker of the North Korean Supreme Assembly, who expressed interest in both our Northern Ireland peace process and the Hong Kong formula of two systems in one country. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan clearly understood, advocating the use of soft power should not be confused with being a soft touch.
President Park made reference to the dire humanitarian situation—my second point. Two million died during the 1990s North Korean famine. Our previous two excellent ambassadors in Pyongyang both issued warnings about the reappearance of malnutrition, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, when she spoke to our all-party group last year. In July in the House I warned of the unacceptable use of food as a “weapon of war”. Food deprivation and malnutrition lead to physical frailty and stunting, long-term intellectual impairment and increased vulnerability to disease. North Korea’s leaders might reflect that the cost of their missile launch—more than £500 million—could have bought 2.5 million tonnes of corn and 1.4 million tonnes of rice. I hope that the Minister will give her assessment of the current food situation and Kim Jong-un’s recent announcements of Chinese-style agricultural reform, as well as her assessment of the welcome brokering by Jang Song-taek—Kim Jong-un’s uncle—of two new joint economic zones with China.
Thirdly, on human rights, according to the United Nations, 200,000 people are languishing in festering prison camps—the kwan-li-so—where 400,000 people have died in the past 30 years. In an evidence session here, Shin Dong Hyok described how he was born and spent 23 years in Camp 14 and was tortured and subjected to forced labour. At 14, he was made to watch the execution of his mother and brother. BBC Radio 4 has broadcast extracts of his harrowing story The evidence given to our committee and described in a House of Commons debate initiated by Mrs Fiona Bruce MP include accounts of executions, torture, detention, forced labour, trafficking, religious persecution and the “guilt by association” policy, which leads to the arrest, imprisonment and punishment of detainees’ families for up to three generations. We have also heard of women impregnated by Chinese men facing forced abortions or infanticide following deportation by China.
When did the British Government last raise with the Government of China the issues of forced repatriation, the absence of a refugee adjudication process, the denial of access by the UNHCR and the other matters to which I referred? A few months ago, I raised in your Lordships’ House the use of capital punishment. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said that officials from the Foreign Office would reply to me on that point, but I still have not received a reply.
Just a week ago, describing what she called a “beleaguered, subjugated population”, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called for an international inquiry into serious crimes, a proposal supported by around 50 human rights organisations. She said that security questions,
“should not be allowed to overshadow the deplorable human rights situation … which in one way or another affects almost the entire population and has no parallel anywhere … in the world”.
North Korea has never allowed United Nations special rapporteurs on human rights to enter the country, but with 25,000 North Koreans living in the south and an estimated 100,000 living illegally in China, there would be no shortage of evidence for such an inquiry to assess.
Straightforwardly, do Her Majesty’s Government support the creation of a United Nations-sponsored commission of inquiry, and will we vote for it if it comes to a vote? Historians will surely question our generation’s extraordinary indifference to North Korea’s gulag archipelago.
Looking to the future, an approach based on Helsinki-style engagement would surely seek to build on the small advances of recent years. One is in education. Here I make reference to the remarkable story of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, to the first Chevening scholars at Cambridge, and to the use of English as the north’s second official language. This should encourage the BBC World Service to respond positively to the 18 Korean organisations which have requested broadcasts to the Korean peninsula—an issue which Peter Horrocks, the director of BBC Global News, will address at the all-party group on Wednesday of this week.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“Everyone has the right … to receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.
The World Service’s 80th anniversary—and its role in places such as the former Soviet Union and Burma—is a timely reminder of the power of ideas. We know that 14% of defectors say they listened to foreign broadcasts, and 44% of those questioned said that they admired foreign societies. Two weeks ago Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, were in North Korea urging internet freedom.
Not to encourage reform, not to invest in promoting progress and not to break the information blockade would render pointless Britain’s millennium decision to forge diplomatic relations with the DPRK. We owe it to the coming generation, to the Koreans who perish during their hazardous escapes, to those who suffer from a lack of food or medicine, and to those who are the victims of an ideology that has become prisoner of its own rhetoric, to do better than simply offer Cassandra-like predictions of thermonuclear war—predictions which, if they came to pass, would reduce the whole peninsula to an irradiated cemetery.
As today we assess the security, humanitarian and human rights challenges on the Korean peninsula, with the new leadership in the north and south and in China, too, and with today’s second-term inauguration of a United States President, surely there is a moment for change: a time to end the war and to replace it with long overdue peace and prosperity.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, one of my favourite political quotations is the famous remark of Edmund Burke that for evil to triumph requires only that good men remain silent. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, are wonderful examples of good men and good women not remaining silent. The courage that was required to visit North Korea time and again in the face of all kinds of discouragements, fears and threats is greatly to the credit of them both, and they stand as Members of this House with every possible right to claim the respect and admiration of us all.
I begin by saying about North Korea that it is, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Alton, implied, a deeply traumatised state. It is a state with a very strong history of being victimised—by the Japanese, by the Chinese and by those in other countries—and one that has never really recovered its balance from that terrible history. The strange thing about North Korea—and in this respect I think it is unlike Iran—is that the idea that one might sacrifice one’s population to a nuclear attack does not seem to cross the minds of the North Korean regime in the way that I think it crosses the minds of all other regimes, including nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan, and would-be nuclear powers, such as Iran. North Korea has destroyed or allowed the destruction of such a large part of its civilian population that the one great barrier against using a nuclear weapon—the fear of losing one’s own population—probably has less effect in North Korea than in any other country on the face of the earth. That is the most frightening thing about North Korea. It looks like a county whose regime would be capable of using a nuclear weapon because in the end saving the regime is more important than saving the population.
Let us look briefly at the security history, although I wholly take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that that is in many ways secondary to the terrible, indescribably awful human rights regime that has been conducted for so long by this extraordinarily strange dynasty of Kim Il-sung and his successors, which has become a kind of secondary religious heresy demanding the deification of its own leadership. The story in North Korea is one of having walked away altogether from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty—the NPT—to which it originally belonged. It walked away from the NPT in order to breach some of the key provisions, one of the most important being that there would not be a continuation by its members of nuclear testing in the face of what has not been a new treaty, tragically, but what has certainly been a very long period of postponement and delay when no nuclear power, with the single exception of North Korea, has continued to test nuclear weapons. Other countries are frightening in their own way, but this direct breach of this key provision, widely morally accepted, if not legally accepted, is an extremely disturbing fact.
North Korea has about five or six nuclear bombs, based, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly said, on the use of plutonium, ironically originally provided as part of the nuclear materials for peace movement in the United States in the 1970s. It broke the understanding and conditions of that provision of nuclear materials for peace by deliberately saving the plutonium from that programme and using it as the origins of its relatively small nuclear arsenal. The best information we have is that something between six and eight fully realised nuclear weapons are owned by North Korea. That is one of the smallest nuclear arsenals in the world but it is still one capable of creating immense and savage destruction.
North Korea went ahead to produce a great many short-range ballistic missiles—we believe that it has some hundreds—and also medium-range ballistic missiles, of which it certainly has scores. What it has failed to do so far, with the exception that I shall come to in a moment, is to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles, which has become a major objective of the regime. By an intercontinental ballistic missile, we mean one with a range of more than 3,000 miles, capable of reaching Japan certainly, but also the west coast of the United States. The first attempt by North Korea in 2009 to develop an ICBM failed rather obviously and conspicuously and was noted with some satisfaction by the rest of the world. Tragically, only a month ago, on 12 December 2012, once again the regime—this time of Kim Jong-un, the son of Kim Jong-il—was successful and the missile managed to find its way across Japan, flying high above Japan but nevertheless into Japanese airspace, before it crashed some time later into the Pacific. It was clearly a successful intercontinental launch.
At the moment, the belief generally held in the nuclear weapons community is that North Korea has not been able to miniaturise nuclear warheads to the point where the relatively small or low-power ICBMs it may be producing could carry them intercontinentally to a country such as the United States. But even having said that, the fact that it is now capable of launching such a package, although not yet miniaturising it to a point that it becomes effective, is obviously not far away from what could be a fully fledged ICBM carrying a nuclear warhead.
The one piece of relatively good news is that the speech that the new “Young Leader” of North Korea made a few weeks ago to mark his taking over of power—although there was very little in it that was not Orwellian in its terminology and philosophy—contained a small sign of light when he spoke of creating a movement towards some kind of peaceful agreement with South Korea. The possibility therefore arises, which might be worth pursuing, of a non-nuclear Korean peninsula which fits into the pattern of the non-nuclear zones which have now been established from Latin America, by way of Africa, to parts of Asia.
The offer lies on the table, as it has for several years, in the six-plus-one peace talks, of which North Korea is a member, that in return for a decision to end nuclear testing and development and fully to accept the additional protocol of the nuclear peace treaty, North Korea would then have opened to it investment, supplies of food aid and a willingness to allow it to rejoin the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out, that is a fairly distant hope at the present time for a country as strange as this one. If anyone deserves such a response and the good will of the rest of the world, then the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and his colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, do. They have gone as far as human beings who are not themselves in government can go to try to bring it about.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for initiating this short debate. I have been able to attend some of the meetings organised by the all-party group, and particularly welcomed the chance in 2011 to meet the Speaker of the North Korean Assembly, Choe Tae Bok, when he visited the United Kingdom as the guest of that all-party group. Among the questions we touched upon during that discussion were the humanitarian situation and the issue of religious freedom, and today I should like to say something about both.
Forty years ago, North Korea’s gross domestic product was twice that of South Korea. Today, North Korea is among the world’s poorest nations while the south is among the richest. Today, the gross domestic product of South Korea is nearly 30 times that of the north—a 60-fold difference. The situation has been aggravated by famine, a series of natural disasters and the near total collapse of the Soviet economies, once the DPRK’s primary market, all of which have, of course, contributed to the country’s abject poverty.
UNICEF DPRK recently published its national nutritional survey. There was one slight encouragement: that malnutrition had dropped by four percentage points since 2009. However, I go on quickly to say that, nevertheless, malnutrition is over 27%. UNICEF’s representative in North Korea, Desiree Jongsma, reminded us of what that statistic means. She said that,
“more than one in every four children remains stunted, hostage to life-long ill-health and reduced educational and career prospects as a result of a lack of much needed proteins, fruits, vegetables and fats, as well as frequent infections due to a lack of both essential medicines and clean water, as well as poor hygiene”.
On average, boys in North Korea are five inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts and weigh 25 pounds less. Malnutrition, of course, leads not only to physical weakness but to intellectual impairment. It leads to a frail population and makes the people especially vulnerable to disease.
When the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, visited North Korea, I understand that they were told by senior DPRK officials that the average citizen receives only a meagre 350 to 400 grams of rice each day, well short of even the regime’s sparse target of 600 grams. However, I understand that the reality in practice is that many see no rice at all, subsisting instead on husky cornmeal. Two million people are estimated to have died during the famine of the 1990s.
In those circumstances, we need to think very carefully about the morality of food being used as a weapon of war or coercion. Surely it can never be right to withhold food from starving people as a way of punishing their leaders. It was a tragedy that the £126 million food programme which the United States had generously decided to put in place last year was literally blown off the agenda by North Korea’s decision to launch a satellite nine months ago. However, the North Korean leadership should also reflect on the morality of spending vast sums on developing a nuclear capability and on maintaining the world’s fourth largest standing army when they cannot feed their own people. That is surely a scandalous and immoral misuse of resources.
The former Leader of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, said that the situation has been “getting worse year on year”. She continued,
“the most vulnerable people in North Korea are victims of a situation over which they have no control. They are suffering from no fault of their own”.
South Korea’s decision to withhold food aid, supported by the Obama Administration, has inevitably put innocent lives at risk while doing nothing to bring about the end of the conflict between north and south. You cannot starve people into submission and you should never try.
In May 2012, two organisations, Sant’Egidio and Caritas Korea, delivered 25 tonnes of food aid to the DPRK. That was done at the request of Han Tae-song, North Korea’s former ambassador to Rome. That is but a small contribution; nevertheless, it is an act on which we must build. It is not coincidental that those organisations which have been taking in food and medicine have often been inspired to do so by their Christian faith. I think, for instance, of the remarkable American priest, Father Jerry Hammond, who has made more than 40 visits to North Korea, taking in medicines to combat tuberculosis.
Paradoxically, despite that outpouring of practical love, since the 18th century Korea has been the scene of much persecution of Christians. In 1846, Korea’s first ordained Catholic priest, Andrew Kim, was at the age of 25 taken to the Han sands, where he was stripped naked and decapitated; there have been more than 8,000 Catholic martyrs. In 1866, Robert Jermain Thomas, a Welsh missionary, travelled on behalf of the Bible Society to Pyongyang and to the Taedong river, where he was executed. The latest Open Doors World Watch List, published less than two weeks ago, ranks North Korea as the country where Christians are persecuted the most, as has been the case every year since the list was first published in 2002.
Christians are motivated by love, believing that each person is made in the image of God and, because of that, worthy of the utmost respect and elevation of their human dignity. Religious freedom would bring untold blessings to North Korea, not least through the provision of sustained and significant programmes providing for food, education, welfare and health.
Kang Pan Sok, the great-grandmother of Kim Jong-un, was the elder of a Christian church in Pyongyang, so the leadership of that country know from their own story that they have nothing to fear from the Christian faith. It would be a sign of great hope if perhaps, in her memory, her great-grandson could now see the way to opening the path for the church to play its part in building and helping to contribute to a prosperous and peaceful North Korea. Now there is something to hope and pray for.
Baroness Cox
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in expressing much gratitude to my noble friend Lord Alton for initiating this debate. I serve as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, which he chairs, and, as has been mentioned, I have travelled with him to North Korea on three occasions. I take this opportunity to pay sincere tribute to his tireless dedication to highlighting the situation in North Korea and his endeavours to promote the interests of citizens living there. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for her very kind words.
I shall focus on human rights violations, referring to the Foreign Office update of its 2011 human rights and democracy report, in which the Government say that there has been,
“little change in the … human rights situation in the DPRK”.
I refer also to a recent statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, who, after describing the human rights situation in North Korea, said that the DPRK Government have not accepted assistance to help to review North Korea’s criminal code and criminal procedures code to help to bring North Korea into line with international obligations. Does that remain the case, and do the Government have any further information about the numbers and conditions in the network of prison camps in which, as has been mentioned, the United Nations has estimated that some 200,000 inmates languish?
Have the Government responded to the call by Dr Marzuki Darusman, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in DPRK, that individual,
“states and the international community … undertake a comprehensive review of the relevant documents, to assess the underlying patterns and trends, and … consider setting up a more detailed mechanism of inquiry”,
into human rights violations? If so, how?
In the absence of access to the prison camps—a request that my noble friend and I have made repeatedly to the North Korean authorities—and given the denial of access to the UN special rapporteur, we have to rely on the testimonies of those who have managed to escape. It was such first-hand testimonies that, eight years ago, prompted my noble friend and myself to become engaged in dialogue with the authorities in Pyongyang. We believe in building bridges and using our freedoms to promote the freedoms of those who do not have freedom.
I offer some examples of those first-hand testimonies. Most recently, two North Koreans, Dr Heung-kwang Kim and Yong-il Kim, told the all-party parliamentary group how they had risked their lives to leave the country. Dr Kim is the author of North Korea's Future in 10 Years. He left North Korea, disillusioned with the economic system and a salary that was insufficient to feed himself and his family, claiming that,
“the State was indifferent to our lack of food”.
Yong-il Kim escaped from North Korea in 2000. He rode on the top of a train for 16 hours to avoid detection by the authorities. He helped to secure false papers for his parents and two brothers and they crossed the River Tumen into China, where, as my noble friend has said, many escapees are shot dead. After four years working in China, and alarmed by the number of forced repatriations to North Korea, he travelled to South Korea and is now the executive director of People for Successful Korean Reunification. He urges democratic nations to,
“emphasise human rights as much as they have emphasised security questions”.
My third example, Ahn Myeong-Cheol, aged 37, described how his father killed himself when he learnt that he had been heard criticising the regime, while his mother and brothers were sent to prison camps as a punishment for his criticism. Ahn was “re-educated” and became a prison guard, witnessing guard dogs, imported from Russia, tear three children to pieces and the camp warden congratulating the guard who had trained the dogs. After he escaped, Ahn published They Are Crying for Help, urging the international community not to look away from the human rights violations and crimes against humanity experienced on a daily basis by the North Korean people.
My fourth example, Lee Young-kuk graphically described the degrading situation in prison:
“From the very first day, the guards with their rifles beat me. I was trampled on mercilessly until my legs became swollen, my eardrums were shattered, and my teeth were all broken. They wouldn’t allow us to sleep from 4 am till 10 pm and once while I was sleeping, they poured water over my head. Since the conditions within the prison were poor, my head became frostbitten from the bitter cold. Not a single day passed without receiving some form of torture and agonizing experience”.
My fifth example, Lee Sung-ae, described how prison guards pulled out her finger-nails, destroyed all her lower teeth and poured water mixed with chillies into her nose. Finally, Kim Hye-sook was sent to gaol aged 13 because her grandfather had gone to South Korea. She spent 28 years in the prison camp; as a child she was forced to work in coal mines and witness public executions. In 2011 she showed the all-party group her paintings depicting the suffering she both witnessed and experienced, ranging from deprivation of food to public executions and even cannibalism. She wept as she spoke about the death of her son in the camp.
According to Mr Narayan from Amnesty International, around 50,000 people are imprisoned in Camp 18, and two of every five prisoners die there. He showed the all-party group a DVD entitled “‘Hell holes’: North Korea’s Secret Prison Camps”, which may be viewed on YouTube.
Capital punishment has also been used routinely. In one recent year there were 52 executions, including the Minister of Railways, Kim Yong-sam, and Vice Minister So Nam-sin. May I ask the Minister when the British Government last made representations to the DPRK about the use of capital punishment in that country?
In conclusion, my noble friend and I have emphasised the importance of opening up dialogue; promoting Helsinki-style engagement; constantly reminding the authorities of their obligations and duties to their citizens; and breaking the information blockade. Like my noble friend Lord Alton, I have always been deeply impressed by the role which the BBC World Service has played in countries such as Burma and in the former Soviet Union. Despite the risks in listening to such broadcasts, people are desperate for news and contact with the wider world. As one escapee remarked:
“The flow of information is the most important way of changing attitudes and breaking the vice-like grip on the population”.
I therefore strongly support the possibility of the extension of the BBC World Service to the Korean peninsula. I was delighted when the Foreign Office Minister, Hugo Swire, told the last meeting of the all-party parliamentary group that:
“The issue is back on the table”.
Before I finish, I briefly refer to the humanitarian situation in DPRK, with especially dire needs in the field of healthcare. I am very hopeful that Merlin—I must declare an interest as a founder trustee—might be able to undertake a programme there. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government would be willing to consider sympathetically supporting such an initiative.
The Korean people, both north and south, are gracious, courteous and hospitable. We must do all we can to help the people in North Korea to promote their human rights; to alleviate their humanitarian needs; and to support their peaceful progress, security and prosperity so that soon they may earn a respected place in the community of nations.
Lord Black of Brentwood
My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for raising this important subject. I would certainly echo the very appropriate comments from my noble friend Lady Williams. As I want to talk about freedom of expression, I draw attention to my media interests in the register.
The words of President Franklin D Roosevelt in his address to Congress in 1941 are probably some of his best known. It seems appropriate to talk about an American President in a stirring speech to Congress on a day like this. He looked forward to a world in which there were four fundamental freedoms. The first of these was freedom of expression, in his words “everywhere in the world”. For the benighted people of North Korea this most fundamental of human rights does not exist in any way and is not in prospect in any way. While South Korea has a relatively free press with near universal internet use—indeed it is one of the most connected in the entire world—North Korea remains the most repressive and isolated media environment in the world.
The regime owns all media, attempts to regulate all communication and ruthlessly limits access to information. Both Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists based in Washington place it right at the bottom of the international press freedom leagues, languishing alongside Eritrea.
All information is distributed by the Government across radio and TV, which deliver a centrally composed message bombarding the population with flattering reports about their leaders, and never mentioning the economic hardship, the famine or the malnutrition—which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford mentioned— all of which blight the country.
Radio and TV sets are supplied pre-tuned to government stations, and radios must be registered with the police. Neighbourhood officials—I use the word advisedly—verify the government seals. Tampering with a set can result in the perpetrator being sent to a concentration camp. Under the penal code, listening to foreign broadcasts or reading so-called dissident publications are “crimes against the state” that carry terrible punishments including hard labour or, in some circumstances, the death penalty. According to Freedom House, the international free speech watchdog, in 2010 alone more than 1,000 people were arrested for possessing or watching foreign films acquired on the black market.
There is no such thing, of course, as independent journalism. Journalism students are taught to adhere to a strict hierarchy, with news simply defined as championing socialism and denouncing imperialism. Ideological training takes place once a week for journalists for the duration of their career. Even then, despite these remarkable controls, there is a danger. According to one author, Ashlee Male:
“A mere typing error can result in a journalist being taken to … a ‘revolutionisation' camp’”,
for re-education. One such journalist, Song Keum-chul, was sent to a concentration camp a number of years ago and has never been heard of again.
As we have heard, any form of contact with the outside world is rigorously controlled. Mobile phone use was permitted only in 2008, having been banned in 2004, but most of the 1.5 million mobile phones—and that is a tiny number in a country of 24 million—are in the hands of the country’s political, commercial and military elite. North Korea’s full connection to the internet occurred only in 2010, but for ordinary citizens web access is available only through a nationwide intranet that does not link to foreign sites.
All this means that North Korea is totally isolated. As Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said after a recent visit to the country—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton:
“As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world … It will make it harder for them to catch up economically”.
That seems to be the crucial point, because freedom of expression is the foundation stone for economic growth.
The only glimmer of light is that very tiny cracks in this repressive regime are reportedly beginning to appear. A study released by InterMedia in Washington last year, entitled A Quiet Opening, finds that access to external media through bootlegged TV and smuggled foreign DVDs is becoming more commonplace in the countryside outside Pyongyang, despite the risks that we have heard about from the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. There is a little more mobile access through the use of smuggled mobile phones. The report concludes:
“Despite the incredibly low starting point, important changes in the information environment in North Korean society are underway”.
In Japan, an organisation called Asia Press is training journalists and providing them with video cameras to record daily life in North Korea. The images are loaded on to memory sticks and then smuggled out through the porous border with China into Japan for wider broadcast. These are admittedly tiny cracks, but I hope that the national media—and we have heard about the role of the BBC World Service today—with encouragement from our Government and international organisations can nurse and expand on them in years to come. For every dam burst, a tiny crack is always the starting point.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, said, the flow of information in a country like this is absolutely crucial and we should do anything we can to encourage it. I ask my noble friend to ensure that the issue of free expression continues to be at the top of our human rights agenda for the tragic people of North Korea, for they deserve no less than that.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, I serve as an officer on the North Korea All-Party Parliamentary Group which the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, chairs so ably. It will, alas, become clear that this membership has not given me any fluency in the Korean language. I intend to focus my remarks on the rule of law—or the lack of it—in North Korea, but I also want to mention the question of religious freedom.
My noble friend will know that 179 former North Korean political prisoners and defectors recently wrote to the foreign ministers of a number of UN countries appealing for their Governments to support an international inquiry into crimes against humanity in the DPRK. A remarkable coalition of almost 50 human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Human Rights Watch and the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, endorsed this request. I join the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in asking my noble friend to outline consideration given to that proposal for an international inquiry.
Will she also outline how Her Majesty’s Government have responded to calls from the United Nations for individual states such as the United Kingdom to shine a light on what we all agree are systematic and heinous violations of human rights, which may possibly be the worst in the world? This request chimes with the welcome remarks of my right honourable friend William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, in calling for human rights to be a central strand of this country’s foreign policy.
In October, Dr Marzuki Darusman, the current UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—an ironic title—presented his latest report to the General Assembly of the UN. He stated that,
“for several decades egregious human rights abuses in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have been extensively documented by various actors, including organizations of the United Nations system”.
He called for a much more rigorous approach by the international community in collating, assessing and acting upon the evidence of widespread abuses of human rights.
As the coalition of human rights organisations has said, the time is long past for an urgent, thorough, independent and impartial international investigation of the system of political prisoner camps known as kwan-li-so, in which gross violations of human rights, including torture, forced labour, sexual violence and executions, are widespread and systematic. All of these have been extensively documented and highlighted during evidence-taking sessions by the All-Party Group on North Korea. Although it is 60 years since the armistice was agreed, the human consequences of the Korean War still, unfortunately, reverberate. Just before Christmas, two of the families of Korean War abductees visited Westminster. Even after the passage of so much time, these families have still not come to terms with the abduction of their loved ones.
A separate group also gave evidence to members of the all-party group about an abduction which occurred in 1969. Lee Mi-il’s father, Lee Seong-hwan, was one of an estimated 100,000 people who were abducted by the North Koreans during the course of hostilities and never allowed to return to their families. Mr Lee and his family had been trapped in their apartment after the North Koreans captured Seoul and blew up the Han River bridge. On 4 September 1950 a North Korean major came for Mr Lee, accused him of giving money to those fighting the communists, and took him away. His wife, who was heavily pregnant with their second child and is now in her 90s, has never seen him again or heard any news about his fate. She has spent a lifetime waiting for him to return. Her daughter says:
“My mother says she has given up hope of seeing him before she dies, but I know she still has hope in her heart”.
Mrs Lee’s story is one of several testimonies contained in a short book with the well chosen title, Ongoing Tragedy.
In the report that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, published two years ago, Building Bridges Not Walls, they set out the case for a systematic approach based on upholding human rights and the rule of law. They have helped to encourage a growing international consensus around this objective, and it was encouraging to see, for the first time, the adoption of the annual resolution on North Korea at the UN Human Rights Council in March 2012. More recently, in November 2012, the UN General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee also adopted the annual North Korea resolution by consensus for the first time ever. This shows increasing international resolve and momentum, but still more needs to be done, not least because, despite those resolutions, North Korea has failed to change its repressive policies.
Let me also say that part of the remit should be an examination of religious persecution in North Korea. Here I remind the House of my interest as chairman of the All-Party Group on International Religious Freedom. As the right reverend Prelate outlined, North Korea is bottom of the table for religious repression and has been for 11 consecutive years. A senior defector remarked:
“The North Korean authorities put defectors in different categories according to the reason they left. Those who bring a Bible back or have been involved with Christians in China tend to be executed”.
Religious Intelligence UK estimates that there are 406,000 Christians in North Korea, and a possible further 280,000 secret Christians. None of these statistics is verifiable, but what is verifiable is the fate of those who practise their faith.
In 2011, reports detailed a further campaign of execution against Christians in North Korea. At least 20 Christians were arrested and sent to the Yodok political prison camp for their faith. When the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and noble Baroness, Lady Cox, raised these reports, North Korean officials said that they were “lies” and that the execution of Christians was “impossible”. Compare that response with the evidence given here in Parliament by a Christian woman who escaped from one of the camps. Jeon Young-Ok had to undertake risky expeditions across the North Korean border to find money and food for her children, who were suffering in the deadly famine of the 1990s. She was caught and jailed twice in her efforts to feed her family. Mrs Jeon was caught and put in the northern Pyeong-an detention camp. She recalled:
“We were made to pull the beards from the faces of elderly people. Prison guards treated them like animals. The women were forced to strip. A group of us were thrown just one blanket and we were forced to pull it from one another as we tried to hide our shame. I felt like an animal, no better than a pig. I didn't want to live”.
Jeon Young-Ok added:
“They tortured the Christians the most. They were denied food and sleep. They were forced to stick out their tongues and iron was pushed into it”.
Despite all this, she harbours no hatred for her country and shows extraordinary composure when she states:
“The past is not important but these terrible things are still happening in North Korea”.
That is why we must act.
The international community, which for so long has appeared indifferent to the fate of women such as Jeon Young-Ok should remind itself of Dietrich Bonheoffer’s warning:
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil”.
Bonhoeffer perished at the hands of the Nazi regime that was responsible for racial cleansing, slave labour, brutal torture, the disregard of lawful process and manifold abuses of human rights. Too many people turned a blind eye to all that. Our generation should not be guilty of making the same mistake.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
The reason that I so much admire the persistence of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on North Korea is because I share his view that ostracism is not the answer. I was the negotiator on the opening of diplomatic relations with the DPRK and I visited Pyongyang to open an embassy there. I do not think that was wrong. It seems to me that however awful the regime and its human rights record— it is awful, and its human rights record is awful—it cannot be the right answer to break off contact. The object of the exercise must be to find ways of incentivising reform. This means doing business with a very unpleasant regime, and there are no easy answers.
As the right reverend Prelate said, food aid is a difficult issue. One knows that most food aid goes not to the intended recipients but to the armed forces. The industrial zone, Kaesong, is a difficult issue. It generates employment but the foreign exchange it brings in serves to prop up the regime.
We should take our lead from Seoul, which clearly wants—it must, as they are relatives, friends and the same people—reform in the north as much or more than anybody else, and has more right to demand it. However, it does not want the implosion of the state. It does not want revolutionary change. It would like to see a staged reform process. This may sound idealistic but there have been one or two little signs in the changes to the current regime in Pyongyang that we ought to be trying very hard to encourage.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for instituting this debate—and I am very grateful to him and to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for all that they do. Contact really matters, even if often one meets people with whom one thinks one is making no progress whatever. Ostracism is not enough.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, it is really important to debate this issue and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the chairman of the all-party group, for providing the opportunity. He, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and others, as many noble Lords have said, have often made it possible for us to give witness to crimes against humanity, inhuman conduct, humanitarian abuses and religious persecution. All of these have been graphically described by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford, and by the noble Baronesses, Lady Cox and Lady Berridge. I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, that to make these visits and to say what is said requires very great courage. I admire that and have recently also been reading about Father Jerry Hammond and understand that kind of courage as well.
Sometimes it is painful to admit that terrible events occur in places where the United Kingdom has very little influence. It is not because we are indifferent to these matters but because of the historical position. We rightly demand to know what the Government are doing and what they have done. Ministers routinely, as I know, end up saying that they have raised all these concerns on all possible occasions, sometimes in the company of others. We all welcome this activity because we want to see it but in the same breath we sometimes have to acknowledge that we have a limited impact.
Nonetheless, I am wholly aligned with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, the right reverend Prelate and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and I think that what they have demanded of us, quite rightly, is that we never look away and that we always take the positions that are needed strongly. I also greatly admire the positions taken on a number of occasions by my right honourable friend Douglas Alexander. One of the positions he has taken, if I may just make this point to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, is about the absence of the rule of law and the importance of trying to argue on that front as well as about religious intolerance and repression.
The Question rightly draws together humanitarian crises and security. The dynamics of the internal oppression in North Korea are generated in large part by the belligerence of the state on regional and perhaps international scenes. It is surely a function of the grandiose posturing of the leaders of a small, militarised and impoverished state feeling the need to shore up their power internally that they will brook no opposition or alternative systems of thought, culture or media—as the noble Lord, Lord Black, quite rightly pointed out—or religion, art or indeed anything. It is a manifestation of a kind of paranoia, a fear of internal close-at-hand phenomena undermining them and a wildly exaggerated sense of importance, which I am afraid, some dynastic cults manage to produce among themselves. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, it is in part a product of a terrible history. It has given rise to what I can only describe as a pathology. The nation should reflect, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford said, on the issues of morality but I say with a heavy heart that I do not expect that to happen any time soon.
Yet, however grotesque or even absurd North Korean positions are, it is a problem which is far too large for the world to ignore. The critical question is who can potentially influence events. Who might impact on the risk of a growing nuclear arsenal? Who might successfully urge the end of the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles? It seems unlikely that the North Koreans will influence these matters themselves. Their dynastic leader is perceived to be unprepared for leadership and unable, even were he willing, to corral his father’s allies. This may well produce greater internal instability, which is capable of being translated into external aggression. Indeed, it is only the routine acts of local antagonism to neighbours that we can count on as the certainties: the intercontinental rocket launch that effectively ended the huge aid mission of the United States, the leap-day deal; and the links with Iran over that rocketry. I have no doubt, as has been said, that they will make progress on it. They will have the equivalent of a Kahn in rocketry and nuclear weapons, the influence of a Werner von Braun in missiles. They will find that kind of leverage.
There are threats of further nuclear tests: a third nuclear test possibly in the very near future. There has been the sinking of a South Korean warship and the bombardment of a South Korean island. There is the threat of spreading nuclear weapons, as noble Lords have mentioned, to rogue states, terrorists and non-state actors. There are the alleged cyber-attacks, denied by Pyongyang, on civil aircraft GPS guidance, although I think there is probably reasonable evidence that it happened. The sequence of provocations cannot be in any sense accidental.
Can South Korea influence events? I hope so. In an extensive and revealing interview with Al-Jazeera, President Park’s closest associate at the Institute for Policy Studies said that she had been principled, resolute and determined to keep her promises to achieve greater reconciliation and influence. Yet the rocket launch has become a major security concern. President Park stressed that it underlined the urgency for more diplomacy. I applaud that. However, she also notes that North Korea’s determination to sustain its nuclear programme and defy UN resolutions make it difficult. Indeed, the regime in North Korea has not only denounced her in the most unflattering terms, but described her predecessor in the past five years as bringing “nightmare, despair and catastrophe” to the region.
The United Sates has probably played, at least for the time being, the key diplomatic cards available to it to achieve the short-lived leap-day deal, which has now melted away. If I am right, and in the light of the lack of any progress, the various collapses of the six-plus-one talks inevitably raises the question of the role of China. United States and Chinese assessments may be linked in a somewhat paradoxical way. The United States appears to believe that influence could be created by aid and the support of humanitarian projects. In short, North Korea would become dependent on the relationship. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, asked whether building bridges might be the right way or creating dependence as part of the same strategy. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, rightly argued the same point just a moment ago.
It is not easy to read the Chinese thinking, but they may have concluded that, over long years, a relatively chaotic client will come to depend on the one steadfast friend it can probably count on: one source of trade, one source of military cover, one source of diplomatic umbrella, and a very powerful regional power to boot. It may be thought that this creates a kind of marginal stability which is better than anything else on offer. If that is right, the strategic choices of the United States and China are diametrically different. If the views remain this dissonant, then the prospects for much progress are probably poor.
China is investing in North Korea. Surplus military equipment flows to the country. There may well be technical experts working on the North Korean rocketry. All these approaches must cause us anxiety and perplexity. I believe that we need a clear sign from China: perhaps a vote in the United Nations will be that sign. Most of all, the approaches seem at odds with China’s own economic trajectory and its growing rise into a role as a world power in international institutions.
I ask whether the Government share any part of this assessment; whether they believe that there is an alternative dialogue into which life can be breathed; and whether the approach of the six-plus-one nations may be revivified in a more viable form. I also ask what is open to us beyond being the honest witnesses that I described at the beginning of my speech and the advocates for the victims of the appalling humanitarian crimes.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for calling this debate and for the active role that he has played in raising the profile of North Korean issues in Parliament. He absolutely deserves the plaudits that he has received from across the House today. Noble Lords clearly share our concerns about the North Korean security threat, and the appalling human rights and humanitarian situation there.
Let me start by setting out the Government’s assessment of the current situation in North Korea. Kim Jong-un has now been in power for more than a year. Over the past 12 months there has been intense speculation as to whether this new, young, western-educated man will lead positive change in North Korea. We have certainly seen some changes in style: greater openness about his family life, more public appearances and a surprise new year’s speech claiming that North Korea wants to improve relations with South Korea, and will focus on improving its economy. It could be the distant hope to which my noble friend Lady Williams referred. However, whether any of these statements will lead to real changes for the people of North Korea remains to be seen.
North Korea remains a significant security concern. It tried twice to launch satellites in 2012, in both cases allowing it to test its ballistic missile technology in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874. The success of the second satellite launch, in particular, serves as a reminder that North Korea poses a real and severe threat to international peace and security. I add my support to much of what we heard from my noble friend Lady Williams. The UK simply cannot accept repeated violations of Security Council resolutions by the Government of Pyongyang. It was right that the UN responded to April’s satellite launch with a strongly worded UN Security Council Presidential Statement. We are working closely with Security Council colleagues to respond to the launch which took place in December.
North Korea also continues to sell its dangerous technology to any willing buyer worldwide, presenting a broader risk to peace and security. The UK continues to work with international partners to ensure that current sanctions are rigorously implemented but, as the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea noted in its most recent report, more needs to be done to help others with implementation.
Noble Lords will be aware of the speculation that the South Korean President-elect, Park Guen-hye, wants to pursue dialogue with North Korea during her five-year presidency. The UK would welcome improvements in inter-Korean relations and would welcome in particular the resumption of negotiations on the denuclearisation of North Korea. However, repeated provocative acts by North Korea have made it difficult for others to engage in negotiations. We are therefore concentrating our diplomatic efforts on urging North Korea to refrain from further provocations and to take concrete steps to engage in constructive dialogue. However, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, is right when he says that we must always be looking for opportunities in terms of who and what can influence the North Koreans.
The nuclear issue is of enormous concern to the international community but, as noble Lords have set out so clearly, we must not lose sight of the situation of the people who live in North Korea. Food deprivation and malnutrition were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford.
As your Lordships are well aware, North Korea has some of the most repressive controls on civil and political rights in the world. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to the well publicised memoirs of Shin Dong-hyuk, which have shown that the conditions for political prisoners are truly shocking. Individual stories repeated in the House today again have shocked many of us.
I remain deeply concerned about the policies of some countries that, in breach of UN conventions, continue to repatriate North Korean asylum seekers. The UK has taken a leading role in ensuring that North Korean human rights abuses have been highlighted in international fora. We co-sponsor the annual UN General Assembly resolution on human rights in North Korea. This year it was passed without a vote—a significant first. As an EU member state we co-sponsor the annual Human Rights Council resolution and have been actively lobbying North Korea to allow the UN special rapporteur access to the country.
We are actively considering with UN partners whether there is anything more that we can do to encourage North Korea to change its policy on human rights. The UK has also undertaken small-scale work in-country to improve the treatment of vulnerable groups. One area where we have seen some positive developments in North Korea is in the situation of people with disabilities. Due to severe social stigma, 10 years ago it was unusual to see a disabled person on the streets of Pyongyang; now this is a commonplace. Last year, the British embassy in Pyongyang provided funding for training at a deaf school in Wonsan. We also assisted the North Korean authorities in sending swimmer Rim Ju Song, the country’s first Paralympian, to London in 2012. Of course, North Korea is very far from meeting international human rights standards. However, the achievements to date in the way in which people with disabilities are perceived and treated is one small progress.
We also have concerns about the humanitarian situation in North Korea. Assessments by the World Food Programme confirm that there remain chronic levels of malnutrition. There also appears to be a widening gulf between the visible relative affluence of Pyongyang and appalling conditions elsewhere in the country. The UK contributes funding to organisations operating in North Korea. Between 2011 and 2014 we will contribute £100 million to the World Food Programme’s global budget and we also contributed a fifth of the Central Emergency Response Fund’s £15.4 million funding for North Korea. The British embassy in Pyongyang has also worked with the North Korean authorities on a number of small-scale humanitarian projects, including a project to provide a safe source of soybean milk to young children. The embassy also sponsored a visit to the UK to provide training for North Korean doctors treating spinal injuries and providing rehabilitation.
However, despite this work, we are clear that the North Korean Government bear significant responsibility for their failure to feed their people adequately. Of particular concern is the prioritisation of resources to the military. This year North Korea has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding its satellite programme while simultaneously seeking aid. This money could have been spent on improving the critical infrastructure, which could have made it easier to transport food around the country, or, simply—as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said—on food. We must continue to be clear to North Korea that it cannot just rely on aid from the international community. It needs to take measures to ensure that the right conditions are in place so all of the resources that it has available, including any aid, can be used most effectively, and it must give real and tangible priority to improving the humanitarian situation of its people.
If Kim Jong-un delivers on his new year’s promise to improve the economic situation, the UK would warmly welcome this. We will focus our diplomatic efforts in the next 12 months on promoting the benefits of economic development in North Korea. However, we will not provide North Korea with development assistance over and above what we are currently providing until its Government demonstrate that they are ready to take concrete steps towards reform.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised the issue of the BBC World Service in North Korea. This is primarily a matter for the BBC World Service, under the terms of the broadcasting agreement. However, I am aware that the BBC World Service director Peter Horrocks will be speaking to the APPG on North Korea later this week and I am sure that matter will be raised with him.
My noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood made a fascinating and well informed contribution. I agree with his assessment of restrictions on freedom of expression. Our concerns were reflected in the General Assembly resolution, which we co-sponsored. The British embassy in Pyongyang continuously tries to find ways in which to expose the North Korean people to the outside world—simple steps. For example, in 2010 we secured the broadcast of “Bend it Like Beckham”; we have a British Council English-language teacher training programme, and in 2012 we sent the first two achievement scholars to the UK.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, talked about diplomatic relations with North Korea. The UK advocates a policy of critical engagement with North Korea. Engagement is the best way of communicating our views and ensuring that our messages on human rights and proliferation are understood.
My noble friend Lady Berridge, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised the issue of the commission of inquiry. At the Australia-UK ministerial consultations on 18 January, the Foreign Secretary and the Australian Foreign Minister committed to looking at what more can be done to improve the effectiveness of UN mechanisms, including around the issue of the commission of inquiry.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised the issue of prison camps. We regularly raise this issue when we have the opportunity. We are also consulting with international partners in advance of the Human Rights Council meeting in March. As he is aware, given the significance of the abuse, unfortunately the DPRK still refuses to engage in serious dialogue or provide any access on this issue. The noble Lord also raised the issue of repatriation of North Korean refugees from China. We believe that people who have escaped from the DPRK are entitled to protection under the international Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. We regularly raise this matter with the Chinese Government and encourage them to work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, raised the issue of UN mechanisms and whether North Korea has accepted assistance from the UN to engage with UN mechanisms. We are not aware of this, but the UK Government have also offered assistance in relation to North Korea’s engagement with UN mechanisms. Again, we have not received a positive response.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Hereford and my noble friend Lady Berridge raised the issue of persecutions of Christians in North Korea. We continue to have concerns about the persecution of people in North Korea because of their religious beliefs, and these concerns were highlighted in the 2012 United Nations General Assembly resolution. We regularly raise these concerns; we both raised and detailed how many individuals have tragically paid with their lives for simply having a faith. It is also important to note, in today’s debate, how many noble Lords who have taken part in the past have spoken of the importance of faith and of their faith.
In conclusion, I am grateful to noble Lords for their contribution to this evening’s debate. We do not expect change in North Korea to come overnight. It is therefore vital that we maintain the conversation on what can be done to encourage North Korea to embark on a positive path towards change. It is also important that the North Korean authorities see firsthand the concerns that have been raised by noble Lords here today, and I therefore ask Her Majesty’s Ambassador in Pyongyang, Michael Gifford, to draw the Hansard report of this debate to the attention of the North Korean Government. If there are any specific questions which I have failed to answer in summing up, I shall make sure that officials write. If they do not, please catch me in the Lobbies, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, and I shall make sure that it happens.