UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for securing this debate. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Group on UN Women. In doing so, I immediately seek an assurance from my noble friend as to whether the All-Party Group on UN Women will be involved in the London conference in June 2014.

This has been a proactive Government in pursuing this agenda. Looking back over the 14-year period, the past three have probably been the most proactive that we have seen, the credit for which must of course go to the Foreign Secretary, who has taken such a personal stand and has championed this; and to my honourable friend in the other place, the ministerial champion for tackling violence against women overseas, Lynne Featherstone.

There has been a great deal of progress. We achieved a declaration on the issue for the first time at the G8 last year. Also last year, we had an inclusion in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting communiqué. I know well how difficult it is to get the 54 countries of the Commonwealth to come to any sort of consensus, so that was really quite a remarkable achievement. Nevertheless, these fine steps along the road of progress have not necessarily been followed by much action. I will give my noble friend some evidence for this.

Of the core group of the G8 member states, a significant one, involved in ongoing conflicts in the Caucasus, is Russia, which has not adopted a national action plan. In the Commonwealth, the evidence leads to even greater pessimism. Of the 54 countries of the Commonwealth, only eight have adopted national action plans to date. Three were among the old Commonwealth—Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom—so I think that one would expect that. However, the five remaining nations, of the new Commonwealth—Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Uganda—which signed up to these norms represent a counsel of despair. We know well that countries of the new Commonwealth, predominantly in Africa and south Asia, have very poor records of violence against women. Yes, we have come far but we still have a long way to go.

Particularly instructive about the absence of sign-up to national action plans is south Asia, as a region. Of the five countries in south Asia, four—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka—have persistent, ongoing and long conflicts, yet not a single one of them has signed up to their commitments in this regard. Moreover, not a single country in the Middle East or north African region has signed up: not one Arab state is represented in the list of 43 countries that have developed national action plans. We might have made some progress, but we have done so within what I would describe as the “usual suspects”, rather than among those where the need is greatest. Looking at the extent of conflict in the Middle East now, our failure to achieve any progress there is significant. I ask my noble friend whether Her Majesty’s Government will now—having got this far, through its leverage as a UN Security Council member, its role in funding UN Women as extensively as it does and having such a fantastic Conflict Pool—contemplate some form of conditionality in the aid and assistance they give to some of these countries, to pressure and leverage them to move forward and to prioritise action against violence against women.

Finally, I turn to the role of civil society and cross-learning, upon which both the UN Secretary-General in his report and, indeed, we, have put quite a lot of emphasis. It is not clear to me how much of our funding supports cross-learning. As an example, I draw the House’s attention to a Zambian programme supported by Oxfam, called “I Care About Her”. The programme is an illustration of where they have given up on trying to educate men through the conventional methodologies—the church, educational programmes, leaflets and so on—and have decided to educate men in a rather different way: by asking them which women were important in their lives. The answer came back quite clearly that men in Zambia considered mothers, sisters and daughters to be the important women in their lives, not their wives. The greater extent of the violence against women was against wives. The re-education focused on showing that the women who were the subjects of violence were somebody else’s mother, daughter or sister. It has been a hugely successful programme, and Oxfam should be commended for it. I hope my noble friend will be able to tell us if they are funding cross-learning of that sort from one country to another.

In conclusion, I very much welcome this new United Kingdom national action plan which is to be developed and implemented through 2014 to 2017. While achieving a great deal across our own Whitehall departmental functions, the UK should also use its lead to influence, to cajole and, if necessary, to push this issue across other parts of the world. That will be the demonstration of its leadership.

Ukraine, Syria and Iran

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I say to my noble friend that I am extremely relieved to hear that the Foreign Secretary is travelling to Washington to have discussions with the US Administration but, more importantly, to have discussions with the International Monetary Fund. Can he tell the House how much leverage we have with the IMF? We know, of course, of its exasperation that €300 billion was expended on very necessary eurozone bailouts but that only €610 million was pledged to Ukraine before the crisis started in November. Perhaps there has been a lack of urgency on the part of the IMF-EU relationship with Ukraine that has led us to where we are now.

I also congratulate the Foreign Secretary on the very measured tone that he has taken in terms of Russia. We need to co-operate with Russia and Ukraine and we also need Russia on Syria. However, on Syria—I do not wish to detain the House, I will be brief—surely we need to be tougher with Russia because we have wasted, some might say, two opportunities now in Geneva without seeing any progress whatever. To what extent might we help the Free Syrian Army to gain access to weapons so that it can defend wives and children?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

On Russia and Syria, I remind the noble Baroness that the resolution passed on Saturday in the UN Security Council was passed unanimously. This demonstrates, to an extent, that the Russians are beginning to lose patience with the regime, which is bombing, starving and besieging its own people throughout much of the country. That is at least some step forward. Of course we engage with the Russians as actively as we can on these and a number of other subjects.

On the question of help to the Syrian National Council and the moderate opposition in terms of weapons, the Government take the position that the House of Commons showed its unwillingness to provide military support in Syria and that we will not change our policy on that until we have brought that issue back to the Commons. That may happen at some time but, at present, we are providing non-lethal assistance to the Syrian opposition and will continue to do so.

Armed Force: Constitution Committee Report

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I start by paying tribute to our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, and our legal advisers, notably Professor Adam Tomkins, for an extremely intellectually stimulating inquiry.

I was enthusiastic about it as the follow-up to the 2006 report, because in the types of armed conflict in which the United Kingdom may be engaged, as well as in the deployment of technology, much has changed. Many of these armed conflicts have the potential to draw in the United Kingdom, as the permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, leading member of NATO and contributor to several other alliances that our history, international outlook and diplomatic responsibilities call upon us to be. We will continue to see these foreign engagements posing difficulties for parliamentary scrutiny, as we witnessed recently during the recall of Parliament for a vote on our response to the crisis in Syria.

I want to devote my remarks to two issues: formalising the process for securing parliamentary approval; and how Parliament might be best placed to take the decisions that it needs to take. In doing so I will refrain from wholehearted endorsement of the committee’s report, as I believe its conclusions have been overtaken by the parliamentary discussion and vote on Syria on 29 August. If we were writing this report today, our witnesses might with the benefit of hindsight of that vote have taken a different view, thus affecting our conclusion in terms of relying on convention rather than formalisation of the process of parliamentary approval.

I turn to the events of 29 August and the vote on Syria and my belief that we must now formalise the process for consulting Parliament on the use of armed force. As a member of the Constitution Committee, I had been concerned for some time that the previous Government’s failure to act on their Governance of Britain White Paper of March 2008, which proposed a draft detailed war powers resolution to formalise Parliament’s role, had left us with a vacuum. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, has pointed out, we had had assurances from the Foreign Secretary in the other place when in the debate on Libya he stated that the Government of the day would,

“enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/03/11; col. 799.]

I fear that this Government have failed to formalise that process and I suspect that they have no intention of doing so.

In the period since 2008, we have seen from successive reports by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and from several discussions with the Minister, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, why we have not achieved a satisfactory outcome. I should say that the Minister is ideally placed to be answering this debate given his long experience of all three relevant ministries in this discussion: the MoD, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Cabinet Office. Moreover, lest there be any doubt, one of our witnesses, the former Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw, who was the originator of the Labour Government’s proposed detailed war powers resolution, told us when he gave evidence for this report that he still believed that a formal resolution was the way forward.

I will not labour the point that all sides were and have recently been committed to giving the House of Commons a formal role in approving the use of armed force in conflicts abroad. What sets me apart from the committee’s report and the government position is whether we rely on convention, which is necessarily ad hoc, or whether we have a formal and more transparent process for engaging Parliament, which I favour.

Let me go through the arguments that the committee poses as obstacles to formalisation. The report highlights the difficulties of definition, specifying the kind of action that would engage parliamentary involvement. The detailed war powers resolution goes some way to spelling out the definition of a conflict decision: this is if the use of force is outside the UK and is regulated by the law of armed conflict. For those who feel that this is too narrow, I suggest that its definition is that of the director of Royal United Services Institute, Professor Michael Clarke, who said,

“if one was looking to establish a rough working threshold [for engaging the need for parliamentary approval], it might be where troops were going to be deployed overseas with the clear intention of engaging in conventional military combat operations”—

that is, death and destruction.

Other obstacles include what we would do if Parliament was not in session. The vote of 29 August demonstrated that a recall can be effective when the situation is serious enough. As for when Parliament has been dissolved, I argue that the Government of the day would have to take the relevant decision through the exercise of the royal prerogative and seek retrospective approval from the fresh Parliament.

The committee was also concerned about retrospective approval being sought for certain emergency deployments. What would happen if approval was declined? The draft detailed war powers resolution could be improved in order to make provision for that through being provided with a 90-day period when, retrospectively, it could call for UK deployments to cease. That is what the US has, were Congress not to approve a deployment under the War Powers Act. In other words, the action could go ahead contingent on retrospective approval.

The report also talks about problems of disclosing secret, legal and tactical information. We saw all of them come into play on 29 August, and I know, from having read Hansard extensively, that the advice provided was insufficient for the Members voting in the other place. I think that the proposal put to the other place’s Political and Constitutional Reform Committee by my friend Professor Philippe Sands is a good one. He argues that since the Attorney-General is not Parliament’s law officer, the House of Commons should consider appointing its own law officer who would interface with the Attorney-General on the extent of disclosure to be provided. That law officer could also interface with the Intelligence and Security Committee and provide assurance of the legality of a course of action.

At paragraph 53, the committee also covers the difficulty of lifting the arms embargo to Syria, finding that if the 2008 resolution had been in force, it would not have covered a decision to provide arms to the Syrian National Coalition. I specifically asked Mr Straw about this. He replied:

“It is a plainly conflict decision, in my view. The emergency condition is not met because everybody knows about this and it is hard to argue that the security condition is met because this is a very public decision. So I think it would be triggered”.

At best, experts disagreeing prove that there is a question mark over our assessment in terms of what a key witness believes. My view is the same as that of the committee: the condition would not be met, but these different interpretations make my point precisely. It is that until a draft resolution has been put forward by the Government for consideration and a chance has been given to the relevant committees in the House of Commons and this House, we cannot arrive at any consensus about what conditions would require parliamentary approval and what would not.

Let me come to the final point against formalisation: the justiciability of deployment decisions. A parliamentary war powers resolution rather than an Act of Parliament was the chosen instrument of the previous Government in order to avoid these decisions reaching the courts. In other words, they chose a resolution over legislation. I shall briefly touch on the reasons why I believe the time has come for us to formalise the role of Parliament in the use of armed force.

In today’s world, it is right that our citizens expect that major decisions of war and peace which are made in their name are made with deliberation, accountability and lawfulness. It is also right that in a representative democracy their representatives have access to a clearly defined and reliable process which is employed in all circumstances, whether they are predictable or not. Where they are predictable, the maximum information should be provided in advance. Where the actions have to be taken as an emergency, they should be guaranteed the right to disagree and have the tools with which to seek to draw back from the decision. A parliamentary resolution such as that proposed in 2008 may be capable of amendment and improvement. What is not in dispute in our report is that Parliament has a role to play in these decisions; what is regrettable is that all three political parties have pledged in the past to formalise the role of Parliament on these decisions yet, in office, seem to be incapable of honouring that commitment to the electorate, who are, after all, the very people to be sent into harm’s way.

We are at a time when trust between the public and Parliament is at an all-time low. The public have not had the opportunity to know much about the lead-up to the Iraq war, as the Chilcot report is not published. They may have concurred with the outcome of the vote on 29 August, but will not have been provided with any reasoning other than that their representatives did not want to be embroiled in another conflict. That back-of-an-envelope process, hurried and mismanaged as it was, does not give reassurance that either Parliament’s will or the United Kingdom’s interests will be served by more of this muddling through that we now call a constitutional convention on the use of armed force.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government welcome the report of this committee. As noble Lords will be aware, the Commons comparable committee, to which I gave evidence last month, is now compiling a similar report. We hope that that committee’s report will be published within the next few weeks and that it will take our debate a little further forward. The Government will reflect on both reports and respond to the Commons committee report. I have no doubt that in the course of the next year our conversation will move on.

As outlined in their response to this report, the Government are extremely grateful for the committee’s thorough and thoughtful consideration. As the committee recognises, the decision to deploy UK troops in overseas conflicts is one of the most difficult and important that a Government can take. We all recognise that the shadow of the decisions on Iraq, and the fact that the available information which led to the decision on Iraq was not entirely full, is part of the context in which we have been discussing this ever since.

In 2011, the Government acknowledged that a convention had evolved whereby the House of Commons should have the opportunity to debate and vote on such deployment decisions before troops were committed, except when there was an emergency and such action would therefore not be appropriate. Our commitment to that convention was demonstrated most recently by the Government’s decision to request the recall of Parliament on 29 August this year to debate the role that the UK should play in relation to the conflict in Syria, and then to respect the will of the House of Commons expressed by the subsequent vote. The committee’s report concludes that that convention provides the best framework for the House of Commons in which to exercise political control over, and confer legitimacy on, decisions to deploy UK forces in overseas conflicts.

There have been, in this debate, a number of interventions saying that we needed to go further and that we should formalise that convention through a resolution of the House of Commons, although there has been a great deal of sympathy in this debate for the view that formalisation through statute would perhaps attempt to make things too solid in a situation where, as the noble Lord, Lord King, remarked, the definition of armed conflict and the decisions about deployment we are taking could take many forms. Those include whether or not one puts troops on the ground, sends cruise missiles or drones or sends a training unit to Mali, supported by a couple of transport planes, to deal with a situation in which one is dealing not with conflict, let alone with forces of another state, but with armed groups operating across borders in states which do not entirely control their own territory and one does not know how far they may have to go once they are there. That is very much where we are now.

I have immense admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and indeed I recall a stage in 1996 when we regarded him as so much the living embodiment of the British constitution that my party arranged for him to give a lecture on how coalition government might be formed, because we thought that his would be an authoritative view if we found we had to do so. I say to him that the idea that any Government could now say, before committing troops to armed conflict, that we knew how long they might be deployed for, let alone what the exit strategy might be, does not fit with where we now find ourselves. Mali is a good example. There are a number of other conflicts in Africa at the present moment—indeed, there have been a number of other requests for a couple of British transport aircraft or a training team—of the sort that we are likely to be find ourselves in in the coming years where the question of where the threshold comes is very difficult to operate. That is part of the argument that we are going through within government at the moment and about which we are having a dialogue with Parliament.

My response is that I find myself—rather to my surprise—becoming one of the Government’s supposed experts on this area, and we need to have a continuing dialogue with Parliament about the numbers of deployments that we have. I remind the House—as I said in evidence to the Commons committee—that there are now 16 different operations overseas under European common security and defence policy. The British have contingents in 14 of these. I am sure all noble Lords taking part in this debate could name all of them. In most cases, these are very small numbers of people; some of them are policemen, not military. In all of them, we are not entirely sure how secure they are or how long these deployments will last. In places like Somalia and South Sudan, or in Darfur, where we are often working with UN, AU or other forces, the question of how far we are formally committed is itself not entirely clear. That is part of the uncertain world in which we live.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I do not want to make heavy weather of this, particularly not at this late hour. I do not think, however, that anyone in this House first of all talked of legally enshrining in statute a method of dealing with this. The difference between us is about a draft resolution or the convention. The conflicts that my noble friend has described are of course in a wide grey area, but several of them are not covered by the law of armed conflict, hence the Labour Party’s draft resolution would not need to come into force in that regard.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The question of where the threshold should lie and what sort of triggers one has on this is very much part of what we need to discuss further.

I will try to answer some of the questions raised by noble Lords. Several noble Lords asked when the next revision of the Cabinet Manual will be. I think that I have to say, “In due course”. The latest revision came early in this Parliament under a new Government. I think it is likely that the next Government will find it convenient to take in a further revision but I hesitate to commit that Government, whoever they may be.

Much of what we are talking about is whether you are taking a decision—as on Syria, for example—where it is clear that you are making a major commitment. It would clearly have been a major event to send either cruise missiles or planes over Syria. We were over the threshold and therefore it was entirely proper for Parliament to consider it and take the decision.

There are a number of other areas where it is not entirely clear where the threshold is. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Guthrie, rightly pointed out that the Gulf conflict involved a very major commitment of forces. However, we found ourselves carrying on afterwards in Kurdistan, with a number of much more shaded decisions to take. I think I recall being told that there was a point during that deployment when the colonel in charge of the Royal Marine commando issued orders to his companies, and the Dutch major who was part of the commando said, “If you ask my company to do that, I will need to refer back to The Hague”. We are all struggling with evolving situations in which one has to say, again, that the legality and legitimacy are also in play.

The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, talked about legality and the need to make sure that we are in accordance with international law. Similarly again, as Professor Sands would accept, it is not entirely clear what international law requires. Do we have to have a resolution of the UN Security Council, with all five permanent members authorising the action? The western powers intervened in Kosovo with some real sense of legitimacy, in spite of the resistance of some permanent members of the Security Council. Do we have to be sure that we can justify what we did in terms of the concept of just war? In the aftermath of the Iraq war, I remember taking part in a rather large Anglo-American conference, jointly organised by the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church, on the concept of just war and coming away thinking that we had failed to agree on what that concept really meant in the modern world. We have the doctrine of responsibility to protect, which is very attractive but also not entirely easy to pin down on the ground.

A number of noble Lords spoke about the importance of public confidence and of troops knowing, once deployed, that Parliament has given formal approval. In an extended conflict, it is important to make sure that Parliament continues to have confidence in the mission. Going to war nowadays, or committing troops to conflict, is not simply a decision but a process. It therefore requires a continuing dialogue between the Government and Parliament and, of course, between the Government and the wider public.

I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, that conventions are not entirely fragile. Conventions are developed and are difficult for a Government to break. Commons resolutions have more solidity but they can also be bent—they have sinews but they do seem to move up and down. My own sense of all this dialogue is that we need to continue to reflect and argue.

Within a few weeks we will have the report of the Commons committee. The Government will have to respond to that committee and that will take us further along the road to deciding how far we can strengthen the existing convention, how far it should be formalised in a resolution—I recognise that there are those in both Houses who believe that the time has come for a formal resolution—and how far the convention should be written into the next edition of the Cabinet Manual. Rightly, this issue will continue to attract the attention of both Houses of Parliament. Mention has been made of the Chilcot inquiry, which we all hope will emerge soon, and that will feed into this debate.

I end by thanking the committee for this report. It has aroused further debate within the Government. I have met officials in recent weeks to discuss it further. We will continue to reflect on this. The Government’s response to the Commons committee will be the next stage in that. Part of that reflection will be whether we are satisfied that this convention has now become strong enough or whether we should yield to the demands in both Houses that what we now need is a resolution. If so, we need to reflect on how that resolution should be formed and what sort of threshold one might need to write into such a resolution, as well as the continuing dialogue that Parliament and the Government need to have about the commitment of armed forces. In future these are likely to be in relatively small elements, which are multinational, in which the British may not be a major element, in which we are in support of the troops of other nations, and in which we are dealing with multiple conflict situations in weak states as often as we are dealing with a conflict against a state—after all, the Gulf conflict was a conflict against a state and therefore relatively clear—and we will come back to Parliament with our conclusions when they are ready.

European Commission: Staffing

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the decline in applicants for the European Commission started before the current Government came into office. It is partly a question of language inadequacy; you have to take the competition partly in your second language. Applicants from most other countries take it in English as their second language, in which they are very often highly fluent; we lack sufficient English, or British, students, who are fluent in French or German, the other two languages. If I may say so, there is no evidence that there has been a decline because of uncertainty about Britain’s future relations with the European Union. May I also say that the noble Lord is misinformed, and that some 20 British candidates have succeeded in the concours since 2010? He may have read an article that said that no British civil servant has succeeded in the concours since that date.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, would my noble friend agree that a postgraduate degree qualification from the College of Europe greatly facilitates employment in the European institutions? Could he tell the House whether the scholarships to the College of Europe, suspended by the previous Government in 2010, have been reinstated—and, if so, at what level?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is widely accepted that a year studying in both French and English in the College of Europe, in Warsaw or in Bruges, is very helpful in getting students accustomed to the ways of Brussels and what is required in the concours. The last Government cancelled the 24 British scholarships for the College of Europe in 2009. They have been partly reinstituted, with five from BIS for British officials next year, and a number of others from the devolved institutions. In addition, a small group of people, which I think includes several Members of this House, have contributed to a private scholarship scheme, which will fund three scholarships this year. So we are working at it and the number of candidates is now rising again.

Syria: Peace Initiative

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have to recognise—and I say this as a Liberal who believes in international order and is very reluctant to condone the use of force—that without the threat of force we might not have reached the position we have so far reached in Syria. Just as with the opening to Iran, without the very extensive sanctions against it we might not be having the discussions that we are now having with the Iranian Government. One has to use diplomacy as far as one can, but the big stick behind it sometimes helps.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

Does my noble friend agree that in conflict resolution it is not so much a model that brings about change but the facts on the ground? In Iran there has been limited but nevertheless very welcome regime change, in Syria there has not. Can my noble friend tell the House whether Her Majesty’s Government are now receptive to Iranians participating in the Geneva II conference?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we would welcome Iranian participation in the Geneva II peace conference. However, as UN Resolution 2118 spells out, the Geneva II peace conference is based on acceptance of the Geneva I communiqué, and Iran has not yet signalled that it accepts the basis of that communiqué.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for giving us this opportunity to debate one of the most critical issues of our time: what to do about Syria. We have had several debates in the House on that issue, so I will not rehearse the arguments that I made in the previous debate on 1 July. Needless to say, I should add, for those noble Lords who were here for that debate, that my views have not changed.

Whether to intervene or not is not merely a matter of legality and international law, but is also about judgment, conscience and consequences. To act has consequences, which may be grave indeed, but to choose inaction also has consequences, perhaps graver than if we acted. We cannot know all the outcomes in advance, but we can strive to make a situation better than it might be if we did nothing.

International law, like other codified and customary law, is an evolving thing, subject to different interpretations. Parliamentarians and statesmen cannot make choices on the basis of naked law alone, as there will always be ambiguity regarding the appropriate analogies and past practice. No one situation is exactly like the last. Witness how different analogies are being employed today: this is like Kosovo, the Iraq war, Halabja, the Iran-Iraq war, World War I, and so on. We cannot make decisions on a narrow perception of legality founded only on United Nations Security Council resolutions, particularly when that course of action may not be open to us due to the cynical use of a veto by Russia and China in order to protect their geopolitical interests, irrespective of the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding day by day, and which has been unfolding over the past few years.

I am extremely relieved that this Government have decided to wait for the UN weapons inspectors to confirm the use of chemical weapons. But let us remind ourselves that the weapons inspectors will not point the finger. That is not their remit, and they undoubtedly would not have been allowed into Syria if that had been their remit. Moreover, we have to recall that there was intensive and continuous shelling and bombardment of Ghouta in the days after the attack, potentially to destroy chemical and ballistic evidence, so we need to be clear as to the weapons inspectors’ ability to solve this conundrum for us.

When we are back in the hands of the Security Council and in the realm of law, will Russia and China, if it is proven that the Syrian regime was behind the attack, live up to their obligations under the 1925 Geneva Protocols to act to enforce the provisions when they are breached? I doubt it, so let me put this question to the Labour Party, whose amendment in the other place is somewhat self-contradictory. What will it do if the weapons inspectors provide information to suggest that only the Assad regime had the capacity to undertake this attack? Paragraph 3 of the amendment it is moving in the other place today requires a vote in the Security Council. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for whom I have great respect, has just spelled that out, but the Labour Party does not spell out what it might do when, despite the inspectors’ evidence, if it is forthcoming, there is a Russian or Chinese veto. In the debate on Syria on 1 July, the noble Lord, Lord Wood, argued that we,

“should spend diplomatic capital on urging other actors in the region not to take action that escalates the conflict from either side”.—[Official Report, 1/7/13; col. 993.]

“Hallelujah” I say, but we are not in a position where we have that influence. We are not in a position where we have that influence with Russia or China. What would they do if Hezbollah used chemical weapons in Lebanon? The situation there is increasingly destabilised. It is asymmetric in Lebanon as well as in Syria. If the strategy of deterrence is not employed—and that is what we are trying to do here—to deter Assad and his allies using chemical weapons on a larger scale in the future by demonstrating that we will not stand idly by, how do we in our state of impotence prevent escalation or repeats?

I shall conclude by adding one important point from a Muslim perspective. I have lived in and been in and out of the Middle East since 1973 and I have spent the past 40 years trying to understand why anti-Western sentiment is growing in the region. I returned from Egypt earlier this month. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, is in his place. He listened to the same protestations that I heard in Cairo. One of the things my interlocutors say again and again is that the West engages with them only when our own strategic interests are engaged, such as our energy needs in the Middle East. In Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf I hear the same refrain: “You don’t protect our rights, only your own interests”. A familiar question arises now with Muslims in the UK. We need to act with caution to dispel this perception. We need to be true to our values but we also need to be true to our responsibilities.

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[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Perhaps I may assist my noble friend because obviously I did not explain myself clearly enough on the first occasion. A short adjournment tonight would achieve no more than I have been able to give the House to assist it with the general statements that have been made by the Prime Minister in another place. My right honourable friend has given an undertaking and no more is being said in another place. Therefore, there is no more to be reported at this stage. This House has made its views very clear and very cogently and another place has done so too. This is a Take Note Motion. The noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition wishes to engage in a requirement that we should make commitments now to recall the House in certain circumstances. I do not postulate on the unknown; I deal with the known. All colleagues know that when I give my word, I keep it. I have listened today and I have taken note. My word is always that this House should have an opportunity to contribute its views. It has done that today. I suggest that we should now conclude our proceedings and continue to consider the result of everything in both Houses today.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords—

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords—

Georgia

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are not content, but as the noble Lord knows well, the Russians are not always the easiest negotiating partners. As he will also know, a fence is being erected along the boundary of the breakaway regions and, in some cases, several hundred metres into Georgian territory beyond the breakaway regions. We continue to talk to the Russians about this. The new Georgian Government have made a number of deliberate unilateral moves to demonstrate their willingness to talk to the Russians. There have been some limited talks but so far the Russians have not given very much in return.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the greatest challenge for the EU with regard to Georgia is managing the relationship between Russia and Georgia? Can he tell the House the position of Her Majesty’s Government on Georgia’s application to join NATO, which could present some newer challenges?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, at Bucharest some years ago NATO agreed to accept Georgia as a candidate member. The largest non-NATO, non-British force at Helmand at the moment is two Georgian battalions. We support Georgia’s aspiration to join NATO but it will necessarily, unavoidably be a long process. There are, indeed, British military trainers in Georgia.

G8 Summit

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, for securing this extremely timely debate ahead of next week’s G8 meeting in Northern Ireland. I am going to concentrate on just two of the three Ts that the Prime Minister identified as his priorities for the meeting: tax and transparency. On tax, it has long been argued that bilateral arrangements between countries were never going to deliver. Multinationals simply move to a different jurisdiction, cloak their activities in opacity and pay their teams of lawyers and accountants to devise ever more ingenious methods legally to avoid tax—legally in law at least, if not in spirit.

It is with great enthusiasm that I see the United Kingdom rising to the challenge of tackling tax and transparency in this forum. While these eight countries may not represent the collective might of the world’s main economic centres today—I must say that the presence of Italy seems a little anachronistic—the G8 is a good place to start. Any progress here will surely lay the foundations for a wider debate among the G20 countries, to be hosted by Russia.

The subject of the tax and transparency of large corporations generates public opprobrium like no other. A poll in Prospect magazine recently found that the public hugely disapproved of large corporate tax avoidance—some 88%—while their disapproval of wealthy individuals who cheated to avoid tax was significantly lower at something like 38%. Not paying VAT to the plumber or to the person who came to do the odd job, but paying cash, resulted in only about 6% or 7% of people disagreeing. That may not be entirely rational, but the lesson that I would draw if I were a large multinational is that the large corporations are in the firing line, not small individuals, as the public see them.

It is a hugely ambitious agenda for the Government to take on, and the challenge of breaking down corporate secrecy by seeking to require companies to disclose their beneficial ownership, which is asking who owns and controls them, is to be applauded. By setting up centralised registers with a clear line of sight, which is the minimum available to the law enforcement agencies—I would like public access as well, but I recognise that that may be too much to ask for at this point—the poorest Governments who have the greatest need will at least have the tool with which to begin to look for their stolen assets.

This would not be comfortable for the rich developed countries, nor for their associated tax havens. In the former category, we have the United States where much responsibility for corporate oversight is at state level so the Government may be less willing to act against the state of Delaware, for example, which according to the Economist has more companies numerically than its population. Small countries are the best known tax havens and unfortunately many are UK Crown dependencies or overseas territories. In this regard, the Commonwealth—I am aware that the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, will speak right after me, so I shall be careful what I say and mute my criticism as I know well to do when he is speaking—has been rather feeble at taking action as a forum that might have been well suited to this task. Among its members are some of the poorest countries of the world, where assets have been plundered and corruption is rife. The ability of these countries is heavily circumscribed by the lack of capacity—having sharp civil servants and revenue officials, schooled in the latest techniques of outright corruption and capable of spotting corporate tax evasion.

At the other extreme, among its members are the offshore banking centres—the relatively rich Caribbean islands where many of these companies are registered. We have only today heard the news that Bermuda, among the richest islands and a strong financial services centre, has announced that it will not sign up to the multilateral convention on mutual tax assistance. This is particularly frustrating as all three Crown dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man—have come on board along with the Cayman Islands. Perhaps the Commonwealth could embed a programme of secondment of experts from the rich developed world. Perhaps even the architects of these opaque tax structures might go and work with those poor countries’ tax authorities to try to build up capacity to retrieve those billions owed. It may be a sobering experience for the practitioners in the City of London to see for themselves what the effects of their work reaps in the lives of the millions who are deprived of the benefits of their natural resources, for example.

Turning to extractive industries, US entry along with France and Germany to the extractive industry transparency directive is extremely positive. We cannot continue with a system where secret deals are struck by companies and Governments whereby huge amounts of profits disappear into the ether. It is evident that when we require companies to say what they have paid and Governments to disclose what they have received, it is harder to steal. The United Kingdom is right to press this case more vigorously despite the fight back in the US from the big oil companies. We have also seen the public dismay caused by corporate tax avoidance with the likes of companies such as Google and Starbucks. People often say that when a company provides essential services it is difficult to vote with your feet, as people have been able to do with Starbucks—sufficiently so as to make it volunteer to pay £20 million in tax. But volunteering is surely not good enough. People say that we cannot take similar action against Google because using a search engine is no longer an optional extra in our lives. However, we know that its profits are made from selling advertising and it should not be beyond the wit of the British public to reject the products of those Google advertisers until the company sees that it might need to come into line as its profits go south.

More importantly, those companies argue that it is for the United Kingdom legislatures and the Executive to come up with laws that prevent them from their propensity to avoid. To some extent, I have sympathy with that argument. When we get report after report from the Public Accounts Committee, as we have this morning, it is not entirely clear to me why the Executive—our Government, HMRC and the Treasury—cannot come back to Parliament with some proposals at least to attempt to get to grips with the problem of new and more innovative structures being developed by the financial services sector on a regular basis.

I will use my last minute or so to talk about Syria, which is also on the agenda. For those, like me, who believe that the civil war in Syria will be brought to an end only when the parties are prepared to come to the negotiating table, it is axiomatic that that will inevitably be brought about by success or failure on the battlefield. For the western world to stand aside from supplying arms when all around them are doing so—and to the most unfriendly groups in terms of our interests—it seems that as a country we have become entirely isolationist. That is something completely out of character with our history, our international standing and our permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council.

Moreover, we may eventually be forced to do so under our obligations in humanitarian law. So I say with some regret that I wish we would not go down the route on which we believe we have to ask Parliament to approve every step in our moves to deal with the Syrian imbroglio. I do not understand why an Executive—a Government—are appointed if they feel they are so weak in tackling what is clearly in our interests: ethically, morally and in humanitarian terms.

Government Communications Headquarters

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for those very helpful words. However, it is not only all terrorism that is by definition international. When I was covering the Home Office brief and spent some time with the West Yorkshire Police I came to the conclusion that all serious organised crime is now international. We therefore operate in a world in which co-operation, not just with the United States but with our European partners and others, is nevertheless essential in order to combat this global phenomenon—and, of course, some of those with whom we have to co-operate are not the easiest of partners. The noble Lord will know well that some of the websites which those who have been radicalised in this country have had access to are operated out of very distant countries.

The difference between public opinion and published opinion is, of course, that public opinion very often wants different and contradictory things. The public want security and privacy, they want the state off their backs, but at the same time they want the state to protect them. That is part of what politicians have to deal with. It is one of the reasons why referendums are not always a terribly good idea, because the way public opinion flies depends on which week the referendum is held. Attitudes to privacy among the young are much more relaxed than among the old. Whether as the young get older they become more concerned about privacy is something we shall slowly discover as we go on.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, the Foreign Secretary’s Statement will have gone far to reassure people that our very high standards of oversight are being upheld. However, the problem for people is not so much about our own legal standards and standards of oversight, but what happens internationally, in other countries, and whether their standards are as high. In light of that, will my noble friend tell us what attention Her Majesty’s Government are giving, in the borderless cyberworld, not just to the full implementation of the 2006 data retention directive, but also to aspiring to have high common standards as we go forward into negotiations with the United States on the transatlantic treaty? Will that subject be covered in those talks?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure that I understand the full transition to cloud computing. A very small number of people in this House understand it, and I run to them from time to time to ask for their advice. Certainly, we will find that the new global standards on attempts to regulate cloud computing will be thrashed out in negotiations between the United States and the European Union in the context of the transatlantic negotiations. So far we are a long way from discovering how those will turn out. I read in the New York Times the other day that one of the differences across the Atlantic is that in the United States most people distrust the state much more than they distrust companies, whereas in Europe more people trust the state and distrust companies. That raises implications for what sort of regulation people really want. Clearly there will be some extremely difficult negotiations, first on the EU data protection directive, and then within the transatlantic negotiations.

Syria

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recent Friends of Syria conference in Rome, what assessment they have made of the political situation in Syria.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Foreign Secretary has stated that there must be a political solution to the conflict, which has already claimed more than 70,000 lives. The longer the conflict continues, the more radicalised and sectarian it will become, with an increasing risk of regional overspill. There is no sign that the Assad regime intends to enter into a genuine political process. We must, therefore, increase pressure on Assad and his regime to push them to the negotiating table.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the increase in pressure proposed today in the Foreign Secretary’s Statement may be too little, too late? Does he further agree that the West’s interests are now profoundly engaged, as a failed state in Syria will result in an expansion of international terrorism, increase the dangers from WMD, endanger the supply of energy and destabilise Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and even Turkey? Therefore, will Her Majesty’s Government now work with the United States and France to arm the non-jihadi opposition forces, recognising that the use of force will be the only way to bring the Assad Government to the negotiating table or to bring about an eventual forced peace, should Assad not be available to bring about peace?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are balancing a number of extremely difficult choices all the way through. We are attempting to force the regime to negotiate. We do not have all the permanent members of the UN on our side. The Russians continue to support and, reportedly, to supply the Assad regime. The Iranians are of course supplying the Assad regime. We have taken what we regard as a carefully calibrated decision to upgrade the amount of support, including non-lethal armour, to the Opposition, but we are all conscious that once you start supplying high-end weapons to a civil war, you never quite know where they will end up, as the French discovered in Mali.