Haiti

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, we have not had many questions. If I may say so, the Labour Party has had two questions, one of them one of the longest I have heard in this House, and I think we should hear from the noble Baroness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the Foreign Secretary agree that there is sometimes a limit to what His Majesty’s Government can do in different countries in turmoil—and there are many such countries all around the world—that actually we have to have priorities, and that other countries should be doing more, such as France? Does he agree that although we give diplomatic support, we should be very careful about tying ourselves up with putting lots and lots of extra money into a country such as Haiti?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point; as they say, if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority. We should be frank, as I was in my answer to the noble Lord who asked the Question, about our capabilities here. We have a mission, but it is based inside the Canadian mission, and Canada has taken one of the leading roles in helping Haiti over the years. We have two country-based staff who are currently working from home rather than in that mission, because of the dangers in Haiti, and the other staff that we have work out of the Dominican Republic. We should be clear that in some countries we have a scale whereby we are able to act and scale up quite rapidly, but that is not the case in Haiti.