EU: Subsidiarity Scrutiny
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, we have already had two questions from Cross-Benchers, so it is the turn of the Liberal Democrats.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with the European Union Scrutiny Committee when it took evidence from Professor Dashwood who, in respect of arguing before the European Court of Justice, said that,
“the subsidiarity principle was most useful in the state of law-making rather than at adjudication, at which point it was ‘largely inoperable’”?
In other words, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, has said, we need to build alliances in good time rather than wait to go to court.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the principle of subsidiarity is in many ways a difficult concept to get hold of, and of course it is highly political. There are those here who think that a number of things should be dealt with in Wales and Scotland and not at the national level, while I wish that the principle of subsidiarity was better applied in England than it is at present. This is part of the way we play politics between different levels of government.
Israel and Palestine
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the role of civil society in promoting peace in Israel and Palestine.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, this year marks 96 years since Arthur Balfour’s declaration and 20 years since the Oslo peace accord. It took just over 30 years from Balfour’s commitment to give meaning to the establishment of a state for the Jewish people. For the people affected, both Israelis and Palestinians, the past 65 years have not represented peace and security. In that period, three generations of Arab and Jewish people have grown up knowing the sorrow of bereavement, the insecurity of daily life and the uncertainty of their children’s future.
The historical involvement of the United Kingdom and our responsibility for these affairs is not what I want to talk about today, other than to say that people on all sides of this debate will commiserate for lives lost throughout that period. We have witnessed all the scourges of conflict and all the treasure expended for an ultimately simple goal: to share out a relatively small part of the earth to live together in peace.
On the whole, the day-to-day efforts of groups of Israelis and Palestinians to work towards a peaceful resolution on the ground are unrecognised by the international media. These peace activists have not given up on the peace process, even while their Governments either wilfully backslide or are powerless to move forward. They know what peace will look like, and we know that a majority of both of them want peace. For the Palestinians, peace is an end to the occupation so that they can get on with their lives without either Israeli soldiers or Israeli settlers over their shoulder. For Israelis, peace translates into an improved quality of life of security and without fearing the next terrorist incident. Both populations accept that they have to coexist to share a very small portion of land, to grow food, to undertake jobs and to bring up children to lead better lives.
Both populations participate in numerous civil society groups and NGOs to work towards using similar methods: to create a better understanding of each other through familiarity so that stereotypes are broken down; to be constructive in the face of violence; and to work towards limited and concrete goals to promote peace.
Today I want to highlight the work of just two, while paying tribute to the many that there is no time to mention. One such organisation is OneVoice, a youth-led movement working to end occupation and violence in Israel and Palestine. Based in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, its campaigns have attracted over 650,000 signatories with over 300,000 Israelis and Palestinians each. They train youth leaders to prepare them for public life, and campaign with a vigour at election times that Western politicians can only watch enviously. OneVoice Israel’s election campaign, Israel 2013, comprised events across the country to highlight the importance of electing politicians who were committed to the two-state solution. I am sure that when the election result is analysed in full we will see some link to their youth work.
OneVoice Palestine is at the forefront of peaceful opposition to illegal settlement activity, given that there are over 600,000 Israeli settlers living in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank—nearly 10% of Israeli Jews in total. I have been in parts of Area C and witnessed how Israel’s annexation policy works in terms of closing off an area of agricultural land, after some time declaring it uncultivated and then expropriating it for settlements. To counter this, in February 2012 OneVoice Palestine brought around 150 Palestinian youths to plant dozens of trees and Palestinian flags in a barren area east of Bethlehem that was under threat of confiscation by Israeli military order.
One of the greatest obstacles to genuine collaboration between the two communities is the difficulty of a common language. Unless both sides speak English, the barrier of Hebrew and Arabic keeps them apart, so these movements tend to be dominated by the better educated elites on both sides. However, they find ways to reach beyond their own socioeconomic class into the wider public. In April last year, OneVoice Palestine youth activists released hundreds of helium balloons along the 1967 line bearing the text in Hebrew of the 2002 Arab peace initiative. In marking the 10th anniversary of the peace initiative in this manner, they ensured that while Israeli media might not mark the event, their actions and the coverage of it made it more widely known.
Operating at another level, defending civil liberties and human rights is the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, ACRI, Israel’s oldest and largest human rights NGO, dealing with the entire spectrum of rights and civil liberties issues in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Since its inception in 1972, ACRI has been consistently successful in bringing precedent-setting litigation up through tribunals all the way to the Supreme Court. Its reputation for integrity and impartiality is widely respected within the legal community and among decision-makers, the media and the public.
ACRI is hands-on, too. Its education department produces material in both Hebrew and Arabic for use by key agents of change, who are teachers in the Jewish and Arab school systems, students, security forces personnel and social and community workers. In other words, building a more tolerant and just society has to be about working from the grass roots up to change attitudes and narratives.
Countering violence through emphasising rights and the rule of law is fundamental to raising awareness of the implications of harming a civilian population in the course of armed combat. In a landmark case that ACRI brought, a military judge has ruled that protesters in, and residents of, the West Bank are permitted to non-violently resist the unlawful orders of soldiers, and should not be viewed as having committed a crime. The importance of using the law in a democratic society to secure rights cannot be overstated. The mere fact of recourse to legal advice and assistance can serve as a hugely important confidence-building measure in divided communities.
I would mention dozens more organisations on both sides of the divide, but in the minutes I have left I will concentrate on some of the obstacles faced by civil society groups in mobilising for peace in such difficult circumstances. The first is the tendency on the part of donors, both on the ground and outside Israel and Palestine, to be deeply risk-averse. Stringent donor requirements result in a tendency on the part of NGOs to work with the converted rather than to work with those on the fringes: the extremists. It is for foreign donors to take the lead on this, and to provide funding that is less reliant on the “tabloid test” of what the headline will say if it transpires that we “backed” a terrorist. If we are to make a difference on the ground, we will have to take risks to support those who may appear extremist but who have sufficient leverage to be change-makers within their communities. Will my noble friend the Minister reflect on that?
A more specific constraint is the legal difficulty of establishing a joint structure when working in two parallel jurisdictions. Most NGOs have to have two separate structures. Travel between the Palestinian territories and Jerusalem is very difficult indeed. I have spoken to scores of OneVoice activists who told me how difficult face-to-face contact was between the two sides. If the idea is to break down barriers through personal contact, then the test of the state’s commitment to peace has to be judged by its ability to facilitate people-to-people contact. What efforts are under way in discussions between the Israeli and Palestinian Governments to allow for these joint organisations to operate as a single legal entity?
Finally, on funding, while the tri-departmental conflict pool between DfID, the FCO and the Ministry of Defence is there to deal with humanitarian emergencies and other protracted conflicts, what amount of FCO and DfID resources are dedicated to ongoing, long-term, grass-roots funding for civil society projects in Israel and the Occupied Territories? What funds are disbursed through the EU mechanisms to these bodies?
I end with the observation that while the peace process is often described as “dead”, in the words of Aaron David Miller, the US negotiator on successive talks:
“It is not yet buried and it will be back”.
When it returns, its foundations will have been laid by the thousands of activists on both sides who work day in and day out for that end. We all owe them a debt of gratitude.
Drones
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The noble Lord has asked several complex questions and I will try to answer some of them. The development of civil systems is clearly a complicated area. Basically, for large unmanned systems, the same rules apply as for manned aircraft. For small unmanned systems—there are now some very small unmanned systems—provided they are within the sight of the person controlling them, regulations need not apply. Clearly, a lot more work is needed in that area. On the international dimension, the question of extra-judicial killings is something which, as those who have read this morning’s Guardian will know, is being actively debated in the United States as we speak.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, on 20 November 2012, the Senior Minister of State at the Foreign Office, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, assured me that the UN special rapporteur for human rights and countering terrorism was preparing a report to the UN on the issue of drones. That was in response to a question I had asked her along the lines of the Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, today. Can the noble Lord tell the House what progress there has been in terms of Her Majesty’s Government’s contribution to the report of the special rapporteur and when we can expect it to be forthcoming?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am not briefed on that specific question and will have to write to the noble Baroness. We are, of course, in conversations with others about the use of drones. On the specific issues being discussed in the United States at the present moment, I simply stress that the United Kingdom has used drones for military purposes only in Afghanistan.
Biological Threats
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, for initiating this extremely important debate and being kind enough to let me have sight of that excellent research paper from Mr Julian Elderfield. Without that, I would not have been able to speak in this debate; such is the paucity of my knowledge of these matters. There are important broader considerations, many of which I engage with regularly, so I decided that it was important to hear what was said today.
It seems that the concerns on this issue fall into three broad categories: public information, international co-operation and regulation. In the context of the report by the Defence Select Committee in the other place on cybersecurity, we heard yesterday from General Jonathan Shaw, former head of cybersecurity at the MoD, about the lack of preparedness. He made the point that one of the greatest weaknesses in the system is the lack of awareness of the public, enterprise and companies as to what can happen to the infrastructure around us and of the potential breakdown of day-to-day technological systems on which we all rely. He called for a public awareness campaign similar to the HIV/AIDS campaigns of the 1980s, when every household in the country received a leaflet informing them of the background and their options in terms of behaviour change and so on. That is the extent to which he considered public information to be critical.
Although it is a very different threat, that could equally apply to the threat from biological warfare, which may potentially be more serious than cyberwarfare in the context both of an indiscriminate bioterrorist attack could affect densely populated areas, and of serious leaks from laboratories that could cause multiple fatalities. There would then be questions of identifying what created the emergency and dealing with the fall-out from it. The awareness and preparedness of the emergency services was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. He is a great expert on that so I will not particularly dwell on it, but it will be critical to how the emergency is dealt with. For example, identifying the nature of the attack would itself be a challenge, as well as dealing with potential mass casualties.
The aftermath of the sarin attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 is instructive. That was the most serious attack on the Japanese mainland since World War Two. It killed 13 people, seriously injured 50 and created temporary problems with vision for about 1,000 people. Immediately after the attack, ambulances transported nearly 700 patients and hospitals saw nearly 5,000 patients who got there by one means or another. Most of those reporting to hospital were the worried well—in other words, people who thought that they might have been affected. As it turned out, many of them were not but they were a drain on hospital facilities in an emergency.
Witnesses reported afterwards that subway entrances resembled battlefields. In many cases, the injured simply lay on the ground, many with breathing difficulties. Many of those affected by sarin went to work that morning despite their symptoms, most of them not realising that they had been exposed to it. Most victims who sought medical treatment as the symptoms worsened got the information that led them to report to hospital via news broadcasts, so there was a considerable lag between the incident itself and the information on what had happened and what people had to do about it if they were affected.
In the aftermath, emergency services were criticised for their handling of the attack. For example, the Tokyo subway authority failed to halt several trains despite reports of passenger injury and the platforms were inundated. Sarin poisoning was not well known at the time, and many hospitals only received information on diagnosis and treatment because a single professor at Shinshu University’s school of medicine happened to see reports on television. He had experience of treating sarin poisoning after a very small incident, recognised the symptoms and had information on diagnosis and treatment. He then led a team who sent the information to hospitals throughout Tokyo via fax machine.
That was some considerable time ago, although frankly 17 years is not that long. Technology has moved on and, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, after the attacks of 7/7 here in the UK, we have put into place a significant number of protocols to ensure that a joined-up response can be effected in the event of a major emergency. The question still arises of how quickly we can identify the cause, given the plethora of different types of pathogens that can be used and, indeed, the natural variants that can exist. Another question is whether we have sufficient antidotes to treat the victims.
Information campaigns may also be useful in deciding what not to do. In the Tokyo attack, significant numbers of people were exposed to sarin only because they helped others who had been directly exposed. Among those passengers on other trains were subway workers and health workers, who immediately set aside everything else and got stuck in to helping people. We know from this that even basic guidance such as where to look for information would itself be helpful.
The second principle to deal with is international co-operation. Before I move to the UN framework, it is worth commenting that—according to today’s New York Times—the first General Assembly of the United Nations was convened in London for its first meeting on this date in 1946. What a happy day it is for our country.
Multilateral diplomacy aims to regulate biotechnology and to prevent bioweapons. This is, of course, of limited use when it comes to terrorists, and that is the problem. Traditional diplomacy on its own is not enough. As we know from bitter experience, international law is meaningless to terrorists. Given that the Biological Weapons Convention is nearly universally ratified— 165 states have ratified it and 12 have signed it—the treaty offers a sound platform for developing further policy in this area. We need to build on the BWC and not let unilateral measures undermine the treaty. One method of strengthening the BWC is to institute greater confidence-building measures in the regular meetings which take place in between the quinquennial reviews, the last of which took place in 2011.
The lack of enforcement and verification of the BWC is a further problem, but it does not invalidate the treaty. It has contributed to the national policy development and is therefore a key source of policy diffusion and information sharing. While we would want to see a global verification regime, I suggest that while the US continues to be an obstacle we should not hold out too much hope and should do what we did with the ICC, when partners of the US moved forward without that particular ally, while encouraging it to participate from afar.
We also need to recognise certain limitations of global Governance. We are not going to eliminate bioweapons research; major powers will always want to create a security margin for themselves by doing defensive research to develop bioweapons in order to understand how they work and how they may be able to develop measures to fight them if they are released by enemies. There will always be a suspicion that other countries’ defensive research could potentially be used for offensive purposes, but it is our responsibility to our citizens to continue to do that research.
Given the boundaries between pure and applied research, defensive and offensive, civilian and military uses are unavoidably blurred. It is also important to better integrate biosecurity considerations into current public policy on biotechnology, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. I suspect that this is largely missing from current policy initiatives in these areas, not least within the European Union framework. In responding, is my noble friend able to tell us what work is ongoing within the EU to advance this?
I conclude by turning briefly to regulation. From the literature it appears that more could be done to increase security in the institutions that deal with these matters. Better controls are required. Can the Minister tell us in summing up what requirements are put on laboratories in the UK to conform to standards, as well as international bodies that engage in this work, particularly those which sub-contract to research laboratories abroad?
Israel and Palestine: Balfour Declaration
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are providing very active support. My honourable friend Alistair Burt was in Gaza and the Middle East last week and we are providing a great deal of financial support both in Gaza and in the West Bank.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
Given that the vote at the United Nations is merely symbolic and observer status, exactly like that of the Holy See—the Vatican—should not threaten anyone, will Her Majesty’s Government have conversations with the Americans to remind them of their obligations under the Oslo accords? One of three preconditions from Oslo was that the Americans had to engage positively and proactively in bringing out a two-stage solution.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, my noble friend knows the complexities of American politics as well as I do, and knows that the United States is in a very different position in terms of congressional politics from us in either of the two Houses here. We have actively to engage with the United States to get it to turn back and towards negotiating a peace process.
China: Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, for initiating this extremely important debate, particularly as our discussions on China and multilateral nuclear disarmament are not just necessary but increasingly urgent, as we have heard from other speakers.
We know of the projection of China’s power, the significant uplift in its capabilities and the response that this is eliciting from the United States, among other countries. In a way, the crisis of China’s success in attaining the three goals of Deng’s era—affluence, stability and power—has resulted in such a changed dynamic, paradoxically known as its success trap, that that in itself poses a host of new problems both internally and externally.
For a generation, China’s foreign policy was guided by Deng Xiaoping’s injunction to “hide brightness, nourish obscurity”; that China, as a poor and weak country, should keep a low profile, avoid conflicts and concentrate on economic development. The foreign policy posture was defensive and accepted the US-dominated international order by free-riding on American protection of its investments and, of course, trade with Western free markets.
However, it is hard to maintain a low profile when your country has second-biggest economy in the world, its military spending is growing in double digits and has done so for more than 20 years, and you have a physical presence in every continent. With 50 million citizens living abroad and 80 million overseas Chinese, China is present in many of the world’s trouble spots. Only last year we witnessed the Chinese airlift of 38,000 citizens out of Libya in the lead-up to the no-fly zone. Its maritime footprint is increasingly visible, with its export-dominated economy and a navy needed to protect shipping lanes. Its interests and influence are bound to affect its outlook and actions.
Some Chinese analysts argue that China’s foreign policy outlook is grimmer than ever. Wang Jisi, President Hu Jintao’s adviser on foreign policy, argues that despite the balance of power shifting in China’s favour, its assertiveness on the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the Senkaku Islands and the Indian border have helped to create the conditions for a resurgence of American power in Asia, which I will come to later.
This summer has seen a series of maritime disputes involving China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines. In the dispute over the Senkaku islands, a Chinese newspaper suggested skipping the pointless diplomacy and moving straight to using the atom bomb on Japan. There is little doubt that both countries got to this point through excessive nationalism and both Governments are trying to play the dispute down, but nationalism, when unleashed, cannot be dampened that easily. The Economist states that a recent poll in China suggested that more than half the people thought the next few years would see a “military dispute” with Japan.
The European Council on Foreign Relations has published an outstanding series of reports on China, to which I pay tribute. An interesting thing is that it asked Chinese scholars to address and identify the issues they see as significant in the future. In a series of excellent essays, a wide variety of views emerged but, on the whole, it is not optimistic reading. From those who are multilateralist and want Chinese leadership to be engaged and responsible, to nationalists who want a clear and assertive stance, there runs a thread of pessimism and their challenges are significant. There are widespread fears that the next 10 years will be exceptionally difficult, both economically and politically, as dissent within the system grows. The social media site Weibo has at least 30 million active daily users, exposing official wrongdoing and voicing solidarity with the virtual community. The pervasiveness of corruption and the gap between rich and poor since the removal of the “iron rice bowl” of the Deng era, which leaves most without an adequate health or welfare system, is increasingly coming to the fore. In 2011, there were more than 100,000 mass disturbances—in other words, protests—reported.
Some years ago, Yan Xuetong, a scholar at Tsinghua University, was asked what he wanted from Europe. He said:
“When we go to war with America…I would like Europe to remain neutral.”
For him, a multipolar world is not a given, as he foresees an era of bipolarity with China rising, in the next 10 years, to become the only counterpart to American power. He wants a rethink of some of the fundamental doctrines of the Deng era: the quest for multipolarity, where he thinks a bipolar world of the US and China is inevitable; the principle of non-alignment, which he wants to abandon, thereby foreseeing an alliance with Russia. He also sees an advancement of the norm of intervention as the Westphalian system, based on sovereignty, is on the way out with the rise of American and European involvement in interventions.
The rise of nationalism in incidents in the South China Sea and East China Sea suggests that Chinese people want to see their economic clout reflected in a projection of power. Inevitably, there will be tension between domestic pressures and grand strategy. According to the Economist, fears among scholars that China is unstable at the grass roots, dejected among the middle strata and out of control at the top suggest that there is a deep-seated fragility in the system. When you have an information-age economy and a one-party state you may get the ability for spontaneous mobilisation alongside a crisis of legitimacy, which is an unhappy mix. Twenty years of double-digit military growth have raised the stakes in fishing, shipping lanes, energy resources and forward defence, making it more difficult to avoid territorial issues. With the rise of nationalism, it will be more difficult for new leaders to deal with China’s rise in its neighbourhood and beyond. China’s power has not improved its external environment any more than it has resolved its internal dynamics.
The question arises, therefore, of what can be done in the near term to bring stability to China’s neighbourhood. International safeguards in the Asia-Pacific region to limit the scope for mishaps to escalate into crises—particularly maritime ones—would be a solution. A series of confidence-building measures could be augmented with hot lines for communication between the relevant Governments in the event of an emergency or confrontation. Secondly, a dispute-resolution mechanism, including treaties to resolve disputes over sovereignty, is most urgently needed. Most importantly, and the US is taking clear steps over the Senkaku Islands in this regard, is bolstering deterrence. The islands are administered by Japan and so fall under American protection. The US therefore has, so to speak, “a dog in the fight” and can use its influence to defuse the situation.
The EU also needs a global China policy. Currently, when the Chinese think of the European Union they see 27 bilateral relationships and an overarching body principally concerned with trade. It is instructive that when Angela Merkel goes to Beijing the red carpet is somewhat plusher than when the EU high representative arrives there. It is imperative that the EU take a deeper strategic role in its relationship with China. One method of doing this is to strengthen its voice on other matters around the world so it can be seen as cohesive, representative and a potential partner to be reckoned with.
The most important bilateral relationship that concerns China is with the United States. We know that the projection of Chinese military power has elicited a significant response on the part of the US. China’s claim to about 80% of the South China Sea and its development of a new generation of more capable intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles has increased its ability to deliver nuclear warheads to the United States. There is also great concern that the deployment of China’s nuclear-powered submarines in the next few years, armed potentially with long-range delivery systems for atomic warheads, will cover the whole of the US from the deep waters of the South China Sea.
However, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, pointed out in his opening remarks, US power is still overwhelmingly greater than China’s—indeed, greater than that of any other state in the world—and it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the rise of China’s strategic military power might be a reaction to US guarantees to so many countries with whom China has disputes within its neighbourhood. US attitudes are also coloured by China’s record on nuclear proliferation, which was so aptly recorded by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Its assistance in providing missile technology to Pakistan, despite its commitments to abide by the International Missile Technology Control Regime, and its lack of wholehearted co-operation on Iran’s nuclear proliferation attempts are notable. Added to that, there is the apparent lack of determination on the part of China to work towards resolving the issue of North Korean nuclear proliferation.
I agree with other speakers that China’s ambitions are predictable, but its approach to disarmament does not give rise to optimism. If China wishes to lead in future, it might do better to signal its capability for leadership by leading in the multilateral fora for nuclear disarmament.
United States: Presidential Election
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are all conscious that the Middle East peace process will be a very delicate and urgent issue over the next few months. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority has suggested that it may take back the question of its status at the United Nations to that body next week. We will be in urgent discussions with our American and European partners on our approach to that extremely difficult conflict. The strategy for global growth is of course a matter that we are discussing within the G8, the G20 and the OECD.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, will my noble friend give the House the Government’s assessment of the nature of the relationship? Is it now increasingly bilateral, given our diminishing role in the European Union, or would the Americans prefer the United Kingdom to be a stronger player both bilaterally and multilaterally through the EU?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, Washington sees the United Kingdom as a valued friend in Europe—within the EU and other European institutions. The issue of the UK’s place in Europe is an important matter for the USA.
Pakistan
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with the Government of Pakistan and other interested parties regarding the current political situation in Pakistan.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, when I visited Pakistan last week, I called on Prime Minister Gilani and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, and I had discussions with President Zardari, Chief Minister for the Punjab Shahbaz Sharif, the governor of Sindh and Imran Khan. We are following the situation of Pakistan closely. We want it to enjoy free and fair elections and we believe that it is important to avoid escalating tensions. A strong and stable constitutional democracy is in the interests of Pakistan and we encourage all involved to act in a way that respects the constitution and helps to ensure stability.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
I thank the Minister for the very interventionist stand that the Government are taking. I would not expect her to agree with the proposition that, while normal states have a military, in Pakistan’s case it is the military that has a state. However, would she nevertheless agree that when there is a highly interventionist and politically motivated supreme court, a military that challenges the civilian Government over the dismissal of the Defence Secretary and a military and intelligence service that supports rival candidates in an election, the position in terms of democracy in Pakistan is very dangerous? Can the Minister tell the House whether the UK Government, as a friend of Pakistan, are considering a Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group to intervene to bring about a break in the impasse that currently holds?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, Pakistan faces challenging political times but that is not new. All parties in Pakistan recognise that this is a huge opportunity for Pakistan, for once, to have a full-term democratically elected Government pass power to another democratically elected Government. From all the discussions that we have had with all parties in Pakistan, they all recognise how high the stakes are. The noble Baroness will be aware of a Friends of Pakistan group, and it may well be that these are matters that can be discussed there.
Constitutional Change: Constitution Committee Report
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, this is a most interesting report and the debate has lived up to its billing as one to watch, but let me start with a note of regret that the committee considered naming its inquiry “The Process of Constitutional Reform” and then, overcautiously in my view, abandoned the noun “reform” for the noun “change”. It says that “reform” was somehow inappropriate as it implied a subjective position—to change things for the better—and therefore it stuck to more neutral language, “change” being merely to make or become different. This is far too timid an aspiration for a committee of such distinction and influence, and my vote would certainly have been for reform.
On the substance of the report, there is a desire to place some constraints on the flexibility of the constitutional arrangements currently available. The danger of partisanship, whereby the Government of the day may wish to change constitutional aspects to their own advantage, is recognised, and the report recommends, rightly in my view, that constitutional legislation needs to be treated differently from other public policy. I agree wholeheartedly that there should be no surprises in the introduction of constitutional legislation, but this does not automatically take me down the committee’s preferred route of pre-legislative scrutiny as norm. I shall take an example from recent practice to illustrate my point.
On the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, it was very well known that both parties in the coalition considered the size of the Commons to be too large and had said so in their election manifestos—in the case of the Liberal Democrats, in several election manifestos. The public were aware of these positions, so it was not entirely unexpected as a proposal. Moreover, if it were to be implemented for the next election, its timescale was tight due to the re-drawing of boundaries, hence not allowing for pre-legislative scrutiny.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Bill was unexpected in so far as it had not been a longstanding Conservative ambition to fix parliamentary terms, as had been the case for my party. However, the exigencies of coalition government led to a situation whereby, to provide certainty in a more fluid situation than previously experienced, the Government decided to bring in this legislation.
Now, ideally, a Government moving to this kind of change—less unusual in reality than we might think, as several Governments in recent history have gone to a full five years—should have gone through consultation with a Green Paper, a White Paper, a draft Bill and then the actual Bill. The process would undoubtedly have taken at least an additional year and, in my view, as this was a political decision, was better settled sooner to lend predictability to public policy.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
I note that what I am saying is controversial. If noble Lords want to intervene, I wonder whether they might do so and I would be prepared to deal with that.
Lord Norton of Louth
It was indeed political and there was no constitutional reason for it to be introduced. It would be quite sufficient for the Prime Minister to say that he would not advise the Sovereign to dissolve until May 2015. You only need the Bill if you do not trust the Prime Minister.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
That is a well rehearsed point, I know, from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. My rebuttal to him at the time that we had this discussion in Committee was that all public policy can be construed as political; we nevertheless go through a process of giving it substance through law and deliberation prior to it becoming law. That was why it was quite right for it to go through Parliament. There is a philosophical imperative in respect of this public policy measure not just to have it for a single Parliament but to have it as good practice enshrined as a constitutional convention. That was the basis on which we introduced it.
Lord Wills
I could not resist the noble Baroness’s invitation to intervene on her. I want to make two points. First, on the point of the parliamentary Bill and the boundaries, it is of course quite right that both partners in the coalition had expressed their intention to reduce the size of the House of Commons. However, they had very different numbers, which have crucial implications for the outcome. Therefore, it is completely proper, as the committee said, that this should have been open to all sorts of prelegislative scrutiny. Secondly, the point the noble Baroness made about the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill proves the point that the committee was arguing: that Bill was precisely in the interests of the Executive, and it is the need to fetter the Executive that a lot of the measures put forward by this report are aimed at.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
If the noble Lord were to read what the report says on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, he will see that there were contested opinions as to whether it amounted to better governance or merely the Executive overriding to their advantage.
The important examples of the need for proper constitutional process do not necessarily lie in this Parliament but in previous Parliaments; for example, the change to the role of the Lord Chancellor in 2008—noble Lords have referred to it already—or, as the committee mentions, the handling of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill in the closing stages of the previous Parliament, which ran a full five-year term, and where the previous Government, with eight years of power till 2005, should have introduced their Bills in the early part of the previous Parliament rather than leaving it to the wash-up. The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, which had significant implications for habeas corpus, was not subject to prelegislative scrutiny and, in my view, it should have been. There are some Bills that require flexibility and, as long as justifications are provided for deviation from good practice, we should take each Bill as it comes.
Let me turn to public engagement, which is emphasised in the report. It is, of course, right that in constitutional matters, more than in any other area, there should be at least a minimum awareness in the country of what is proposed and, preferably, meaningful consultation on the merits of the proposals. The nub of the problem lies in what threshold we apply. Noble Lords will be aware of the new e-petition system whereby 100,000 votes on a Downing Street petition can trigger a discussion in Parliament on public policy. As we have seen from the anti-European Union debate recently, a mere debate publicises an issue but does not lead to changes and therefore can disappoint. Consultation that leads people to think that they have a say without it being reflected in substance just makes the electorate more cynical. Another factor is the appropriateness of public engagement. The e-petition system calls forth rather esoteric and special interest issues, and I will give the Committee a flavour of them. Recent petitions include: Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits; Fight for BAE Systems Jobs; and Protect Police Pensions. Some of these may be areas where a debate might be sufficient to deal with them, but the people who have signed the petitions would wish the Government to take action. So, yes, there should be public consultation, but it should be meaningful.
Let me go to the most controversial recommendation. I beg the indulgence of the Committee in going on for a minute or two extra since I have lost some time. The report proposes that legislation should be accompanied by a ministerial statement and provides a comprehensive list of what should be covered in that statement. It further asks the Minister to justify why the Government might agree or disagree with the responses given. The Minister would also be required to set out the extent to which rigour was applied in Cabinet committee. It stops short of asking for a justification of Cabinet decisions, but that is not far off. This perhaps goes too far, and the Government’s response—that they will consider these matters further—is the right one. In today's age of spin, we cannot expect that the internal deliberations of policy within government would not be subject to speculation about who said what, when and for what motive. That would not increase confidence in the Government but would, in fact, decrease it. Having read the multitude of diaries that appeared within months of the previous Government's departure, I come from the perspective that those of us outside are better off not knowing how carelessly or, indeed, controversially serious decisions are made. I suspect that there is at least one member of the committee who would rather that his advice to Cabinet had not been the matter of such intense speculation in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
There are several good things in the report, which have been mentioned by noble Lords, on First Reading and Second Reading timescales and so on. I wholeheartedly agree with them. On the whole, the report is excellent, and while I share some disappointment about the Government’s response, I look forward to the summing up by the Minister. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, I look forward to hearing him face the music.
EU: Repatriation of Powers
Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are now facing a clear difference of timescale in the things under way. There is a real urgency about managing the eurozone crisis. That is a matter of weeks. Examining the balance of competences within the European Union is a much longer-term investigation, with which the British Government are engaged, and on which we expect to have plenty of allies among the other member states of the European Union.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, would my noble friend accept that, in a spirit of constructive engagement, the Prime Minister has made it very clear that he is not about to go to the European Council with a shopping list of powers to be repatriated, that the coalition agreement did not envisage that, that the coalition agreement envisaged only a review of the working time directive and that the repatriation of powers is not on the agenda here and now?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we all recognise that Britain’s future economic prosperity depends on the eurozone not collapsing and that it is therefore very strongly in our interest to do everything we can to assist in the management of this current crisis. Britain’s priorities are: first, to maintain the integrity of the EU 27; secondly, to maintain and strengthen the single market; thirdly, to promote recovery and economic growth; fourthly, to defend specific British interests in financial services; fifthly, to ensure that social and employment legislation does not hold back growth; and also to rebalance competence away from detailed regulations on matters better left to national, regional or local government.