Working Practices (International Agreements Committee Report)

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not delay the House for long, because I think a lot of the key arguments have been made, not least by my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lady Donaghy, and by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. This debate has come about because of a sense of frustration with the Government; the aim of the International Agreements Committee is the practical and effective scrutiny of forthcoming treaties, not to thwart the will of government. Those who have the self-confidence of government should be able to look to others to see points that they have missed or points that could be improved on, and perhaps even occasionally compliments.

We do not get that impression from the present Government. I was delighted to see the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, this morning, and it assuaged to some extent the sense of irritation I felt with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office when we received the letter from the right honourable Amanda Milling, which more or less said, “I’ll only come and talk to you if you agree with me”. That is not how government works. The way it works is to look for more information and detail to find the right way of doing things. What we have sought, and I hope—touch wood—are going to achieve, is to be in the process much earlier, so that we can see the objectives and strategy of government, and perhaps add our tuppenceworth.

The right reverend Prelate was right when he talked about the expertise that is available in this House. The only legitimate argument for having an appointed second Chamber is that you can put expertise in it. Well, we have got that. If I may say so, most of us, with a few honourable exceptions, have been round the houses a few times, and using that to try to improve how a treaty develops is a very important thing.

It is called the International Agreements Committee, not the International Trade Committee. Agreements are wider and more germane, and we need to take them into account. Rwanda is a classic case in point. I am delighted that the committee is putting out a call for evidence in relation to that, because it is nonsense to suggest that we should not scrutinise, in the most effective way possible, something as significant as that. My noble friend Lady Donaghy made the point about the Prime Minister’s statements on Sweden and Finland. We need to know what they mean—or were they just something to make the day go a little bit better? It is critically important to all of us.

I enjoy the work in the committee, but I often find it quite frustrating—and it should not be, because we should be working together to move forward with these treaties. I remember the Brexit debate, and it was all about, “Oh, these foreigners are having a say in how we lead our lives”. Now it is not the foreigners who are having a say in how we lead our lives—it is a cabal of Ministers who are doing it, and one or two officials as well. It should not be like that. Parliamentary scrutiny matters, in this House and in the other place, and I am sure that the continuing work in the International Agreements Committee will ensure that it does.

UK’s Ambassador to the USA

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord in his various diplomatic responsibilities, which he discharged with great aplomb during his tenure as a Foreign Office diplomat, including of course at the United Nations. I agree with him. Whoever is responsible should be brought to account for these actions. As Ministers and as a Government, we rely on the insight that our ambassadors and diplomats provide.

Our relationship with the United States is strong and is based on mutual recognition and respect. I played a part in receiving the President of the United States at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Where we have disagreements, as we have had recently on climate change and the JCPOA, we respect each other’s differences and recognise that there are times when we may have a different perspective or view from that of our closest ally.

My personal reflection is that our work with the United States will withstand this. We work on a number of important issues. Today, the report of an independent review of Christian persecution has been launched. I am looking forward to being in Washington next week to meet my counterpart, Ambassador Brownback. We have been working on the issue of Christian persecution around the world and on standing up for the rights of the persecuted, and we are seeing results. The relationship between the US and the UK is special, deep and strong. It has spread over many years and will continue to withstand any challenges, including the latest one.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, like a number of noble Lords, I have walked on both sides of the street as a Minister and as a member of the Diplomatic Service. I can testify to the significance to both sides of having frank and unblemished advice from our ambassadors. However, when I became a member of the Diplomatic Service, I was subjected to detailed, developed vetting, to the extent that a bank account my mother had opened when I was eight was uncovered. I am not aware of any equivalent vetting when I became a Minister. Will the Minister give the House a guarantee that, should it transpire that a politician was responsible for these leaks, action will be taken against that politician with the full force of the law in such a way as to ensure that we are not bandying around terms such as “honourable” and “right honourable” without any honour being present?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness will recognise that when you take up responsibility as a Minister of the Crown, you are bound by the duties and responsibilities of that office, including by the Official Secrets Act, and that you should seek to discharge your duties in that manner. The noble Baroness is quite right to raise the issue of who is responsible. I am not going to speculate on that. The inquiry will be thorough and, if there is evidence of criminality, at that stage the police will be involved. We need to ensure that we get to the bottom of this to restore the confidence that Ministers have in the diplomatic telegrams that we receive, and so that our diplomats can continue to report in the exemplary and candid manner they do.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, back to his position and his new role. I am delighted to see the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in his place. It cheered me up to see that we have two Ministers so respected in the House because I was greatly disheartened by a sketch in this morning’s Financial Times which talks about a country diminished, using the reduced pomp and circumstance of yesterday as a peg to discuss the extent to which we seem to be reducing the values of our society. I was delighted to hear the most reverend Primate refer to values—as indeed did my noble friend Lord Alli and the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, who are not in their places at the moment. In essence, when we look at our foreign responsibilities, and at the leadership we have shown in the world in the past, we must remind ourselves that we set examples that have been to the good. Now we seem to be setting examples that do not show Britain in the best light.

I was delighted to hear the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, refer to Lord Joffe. He was a man who not only had values but lived by them as the lawyer to Nelson Mandela. We need to remind ourselves that that is the history of this place and of this House.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Howell, I am rather surprised that the Brexit debate is on a different day from this debate on foreign affairs, defence and international development. Perhaps it is because in the past European matters have been quasi-domestic. We have talked about them as part of our domestic policy because they have had an impact on domestic policy. But how we handle the Brexit issues and how the rest of the world sees us handling the Brexit issues will have a real impact on how our foreign policy is perceived.

I was greatly disappointed to see the invocation of Article 50 in March. Then a general election was called. As a consequence, we lost three vital months in a tight two-year period. There are many more distinguished negotiators in this House than I, but I spent a stint negotiating. One of my greatest achievements was the definition of “industrial jam”. My heart throbs every time I walk past a jammie dodger. It took a solid year to negotiate that we could have industrial jam with no fruit in it. What is it going to be like when we have to deal with the challenge of the EU budget?

I sat on the EU Financial Affairs Sub-Committee which looked at the EU budget. I thought I knew about the budget, having sat on and chaired the budget council, but I realised how good my civil servants were. The EU budget is complicated. I had not realised quite how complicated until the committee started that piece of work. One thing that really surprised me and, I think, every last one of us was the view of the lawyers that we were not liable for any exit bill, or it could be argued that we were not liable for any exit bill at the end of the Brexit process. I have to be honest: that absolutely horrified me. How can we hold up our head in the world if we run away from our moral responsibilities? As I say, the EU budget is complicated. There is the multiannual financial framework. There are also the agreements that we have entered into, called reste à liquider—the payments still to be made for the various projects. If we do not pay our share, poorer countries than ours—countries struggling to get themselves on a pathway to growth, having come out of non-democratic systems—will have to pick up that bill.

We will be judged on the rhetoric that we have used in this process. I say to your Lordships that a lot of that rhetoric has not shown us in the best light. There has been a sense of machismo—a machismo that is gender-free because it is not just the men who have been using it. As we seek to negotiate trade agreements with other countries, we will be judged on how we handle this process of exit.

Negotiations are not easy. I very much agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, when he said that we should be seeking not a deal but an agreement. It is working towards agreement that is important. If you enter into a negotiation, you need a clear vision of what you want. You also have to have a clear understanding and appreciation of what the other side wants. In that way, you can find a way forward. But you will not find a way forward if you sacrifice trust, and we have sacrificed trust with the name-calling of the people who we are going to be turning to in a few months’ time to try to negotiate future trade agreements.

We have heard all the slogans, such as “Brexit means Brexit”. We have heard all the carefully crafted phrases about no deal being better than a bad deal. We should be seeking a consensus as we move forward. To be honest, I would rather the whole concept of Brexit disappeared. In 1974 I was against the Common Market, but I have seen the benefits of it and I have seen my children benefit from it. I accept the situation that we find ourselves in but we must try to find a way to move ahead that does not make enemies of people who should be our friends.

In the report that the EU Committee brought out there is a very important phrase—that the price of future market access on favourable terms would be impossible without reaching agreement on the budget. We need some idea of where the Government are coming from on issues such as the budget. We do not have a clue, but we need to know where we are headed to before we, as a revising and analysing Chamber, can judge where all our processes are taking us. It is not too late to rectify that.

We have just passed the anniversary of the death of Jo Cox. She is the one who said that there is more that unites us than divides us. This is a time for all of us to put country before party. But we can do that only if those in the driving seat allow us to participate. There are many in this House who are extremely distinguished, with a huge amount of experience and—another important element—contacts and networks throughout the European Union, and they could help in this. I plead with the Government to put country before party and give us the opportunity to turn away from the disheartening analysis of a country that is diminished. We need not be diminished, but we have to have courage to know that we have to work together.

North Korea

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

As always, my noble friend makes a most important point. I can give him an assurance that the Foreign Secretary is meeting the Chinese representatives when he travels later today to New York. He has already had very fruitful discussions with China. It is notable that the whole of the United Nations Security Council, including China, agreed that sanctions should be exerted on the DPRK, and China has shown good faith in that this year in its sanctions on coal.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary made it clear that he sees military action as undesirable. We, along with our allies in America, have not taken offensive action. It is of course North Korea that has been offensive in its actions. Clearly the position of Seoul on the border means that any military action would be absolutely disastrous. That is why we are all working together as allies in the United Nations to ensure that there are stronger sanctions and, in particular, that there is a stronger will on the part of China to exert its influence on North Korea, to avoid an escalation of what we have seen over the last few weeks.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, given the uncertainty that exists about North Korea, not least after President Trump’s discussions yesterday with the Senate, if there is the possibility of military engagement by the United States against North Korea, would there be a situation similar to what the Foreign Secretary suggested this morning in relation to Syria, which would engage British troops? If that is the case, what attempts will be made to consult Parliament, given that the elected House will cease to exist in a very few hours’ time?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is a straightforward fact that the United States has made it clear that it is not seeking military action. It is installing a defensive missile system and working with allies in the area such as South Korea. What came across very strongly in the announcement by the Secretary of State in America yesterday is that the United States is seeking a peaceful resolution. It made it clear that it wants to bring North Korea to its senses, not to its knees.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a number of very interesting speeches in the past couple of hours, but the first few sentences of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, absolutely sums the situation up. If the Prime Minister wants a referendum on Europe before December 2017, he puts it in his manifesto, goes to the people and, if he is elected, gets his referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, in his very amusing speech, talked about leadership—it is not a sign of leadership to cower behind the, albeit elegant, coat-tails of a Back-Bencher to try to get a piece of legislation before this House because of fear of UKIP on the one hand or of what the noble Lord, Lord Garel-Jones, described as the Tea Party tendency in the Tory party on the other. Nevertheless, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, on his opening remarks. It is quite interesting that the ghost of Francis Urquhart is sitting out in the Prince’s Chamber, because that gives the show away—this is a government Bill masquerading as a Back-Bencher’s Bill. That is regrettable for two reasons: first, it is here under false pretences and, secondly, the very fact that it seeks to bind a future Government is absolutely outrageous. It is a constitutional outrage that one Government should seek to bind another.

This has been the morning for true confessions, with a number of noble Lords saying how they voted yes in 1975. I voted no, but have changed my position, because I have seen the advantages of the single market. The oldest and best single market is here in the United Kingdom. Right now, another referendum is going on—it seems to have been going on since time began but has actually been going on for only a couple of years—which seeks to break up that oldest and best single market. This Trojan horse of a Bill seeks to take us out of the biggest single market in the world—the single market that changed my opinion. My fear about this Bill is that it talks about a referendum in 2017 and that there will be uncertainty between now and then.

Anyone who has had anything to do with foreign direct investment—not just with the Nissans of this world but with SMEs, many of which are at the high-tech end of the market—knows that when you go to the United States, Australia, the BRICs or, as we are now supposed to say, the MINTs, one of the great advantages we have is that we say, “Come and settle in the United Kingdom. We have access to the biggest single market in the world, transparent accountancy and a transparent legal system”. What we are saying to them today is: “Hold on a minute, maybe we will but maybe we won’t”. At this stage in what we hope is an economic recovery, that is barking mad. We need stability and certainty and to be able to play, as my noble friend Lord Monks said, to the power of that single market, to bring jobs to this country and to consolidate them.

The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and a number of other noble Lords have said today that the country wants a referendum. That is not the case where I come from—it is very far down the list of priorities there. The saloon bar may want a referendum but most of the people of this country have other priorities and we should be concentrating on those. Mark my words: the problem that you get with a long and protracted referendum is that the focus of attention is diverted from key and influential matters that we should be addressing. I ask your Lordships’ House to give this legislation detailed line-by-line scrutiny. As many have already said, the Bill is not fit for purpose and, as Members of a revising Chamber with a respect for the unwritten constitution of our country, we should not be prepared to tolerate a Trojan horse. That is what this Bill is.

UK Trade and Investment

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Grand Committee

Asked By

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in improving the performance of UK Trade and Investment in relation to small and medium-sized enterprises in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I am very grateful to have this opportunity to raise the issues in this debate, which I asked for quite a long time ago. I did so after hearing the Minister address a business breakfast on UKTI. Two things struck me. First, there were great similarities in some of the things that he said in his speech to what I said 10 years previously when I was doing his job. Secondly, we do not get anything like enough opportunity to discuss this issue, particularly in the troubled economic times that we are in.

SMEs are great drivers of the economy but they are going through a particularly difficult time. From the beginning I say that I am a friend of UKTI, but I am a critical friend and am not yet 100% certain that we have the delivery mechanisms in place to address some of the issues that are essential to the growth of SMEs, both in exporting and in operating within the domestic economy.

Let me begin by paying tribute to the Government and to the GREAT campaign. I have been a great fan, to coin a phrase, of cross-government working in relation to foreign direct investment. I have often felt that we missed a trick in not bringing together the British Council, VisitBritain—in which I have a registered interest as a director—and UKTI to promote what Britain is and what Britain is good at. In the run-up to the Olympics and the Paralympics, the GREAT campaign was an enormously good showcase for the values of Britain as well as for its skills, design and capability. I should like to ask the Minister what will happen to GREAT now that the Olympics and Paralympics are out of the way. What will happen to the money? Will GREAT go on? Will the money be continued? Or, will everyone huddle back in their silos, keeping well out of the way of the traffic, in case they dare to talk to one another at any point in the future? Those of us who travelled internationally and saw the GREAT posters and material in a lot of international airports realise what a powerful advocate it is for the UK.

I have a long interest in working with entrepreneurs seeking access to international markets. I suppose that I am a poacher turned gamekeeper in that I ended up as a head of mission. I have worked directly with UKTI and have to take some responsibility for some of its failings as well. One of the big criticisms that is made of UKTI—I am not 100% certain that it is justifiably a criticism—is that it is biased towards big business. It is difficult to envisage a situation where UKTI would not get behind big business. The scale of some of the projects that are either for export potential or for foreign direct investment is so overwhelming. It is easy to work with big business because it is structured in such a way that it is easy to interrelate with it. We are always told about the great advantages to SMEs of the supply chain.

I say to the Minister that a camel can go through the eye of a needle easier than a small firm which does not have an international name can get into the procurement department of a major multinational. There is a body of work within what used to be called the DTI—it must be about 10 years old now—that looked at the supply chain in the oil and gas industry. Some of the best technology that exists in that industry has grown out of SMEs, yet the best closed shop in the world is multinational procurement. It makes the BMA and the Law Society look like a bunch of amateurs. It is critically important to get the people with the ideas and the ability to develop the business before the guys in the big businesses who actually buy those things. I think that that is an area that UKTI does not devote enough time to. Not all of it is about spending money; some of it is about knocking on doors. Some of the clever and influential people who gravitate towards UKTI, I would suggest, should turn their minds to how to make that supply chain work more effectively. I do not like the idea of SMEs taking scraps from the table, but if you run an SME—and I have run an SME—you really would do anything to get your foot in the door in that kind of context.

In this, I feel that I am criticising some of my dear friends. There are issues about the commercial acumen within UKTI. Some of it is because of the nature of an organisation whose staff rotate every four years, particularly with Foreign Office staff. You can get somebody who is a brilliant Arabist or an expert in hard languages running a UKTI operation. I know that 400 staff have had commercial awareness training but, frankly, nothing concentrates the mind more than seeing the whites of the eyes of a customer who will maybe take their business elsewhere. It is hard to teach people commercial awareness. I know that proposals have come up, year after year, about secondments into business, but it is very easy to second somebody into Rolls-Royce, BAE or GlaxoSmithKline. It is very difficult to second somebody into Joe Bloggs’ widget makers. I often think that that kind of white-knuckle experience is missing from some of the experience in UKTI.

I know that there have been considerable changes at the top. UKTI appeared before the Select Committee on SMEs not so long ago. I have never quite graduated on to a Select Committee; I am a new girl in here. However, I notice that it was pointed out that 75% of the new managing directors come from the private sector. Can the Minister tell us if any of them have ever grown a company from start-up, or if they have come from a business that is not AIM or FTSE listed? The psychology is very different. I notice from the annual report that there is great emphasis on attracting overseas venture capital. The best venture capital in the world is about six stations from here on the Jubilee line. One of the problems with accessing venture capital is that the risk profile of an SME is different. There is no opportunity to spread risk in the way that you can with a major company, as I found out when I referred to this in my maiden speech along the corridor and was summoned in by 3i. There is a venture capital gap; there is no getting away from that. The cost of administering a venture operation in a small business is sometimes much higher. It is easier to get £50 million, sometimes, than it is to get £50,000. That needs to be addressed, and we need to find a route to do so. I would like to know how this new service that would link companies is actually going to work.

I was interested in the Secretary of State, Vince Cable’s, announcement last week about a new banking facility using the Co-operative Bank and the Unity Trust Bank. That was interesting, as it is not one of the big banks. I should declare an interest as a life-long co-operator with an account in the Co-op Bank. One of the problems with the banks is that small businesses are terrified of them, first because they often do not get the money, and secondly because of the pernicious system of personal guarantees. If you want money from a bank you can put your granny up as collateral. I think of the number of deals that I have lost because a husband has gone home to the wife and said, “I have got to put the house on the line”. If my husband came home and said that to me, I would chase him. It stands to reason that if you are asking people to take significant personal risk, you are limiting the prospects that are available for them. Many people go to informal investment. I pay tribute to Business Link in bringing in business angels.

Time is running on, so I will jump very quickly to another area. Can the Minister give us some idea of how the defence and security organisation is settling in as part of UKTI? That is a very difficult area for SMEs to crack. Often they need a guy with all the gold braid on him just to get in the door of a Government who might be in the procurement business. The annual report is very coy about how DSO is doing. If the Minister can give us some information, I would be very grateful.

In my last few seconds I will say to the Minister that there is one area in which officials will say I am out of date—but I have checked and I am not. UKTI is probably the most bureaucratic organisation under the sun. I have worked in many organisations but never in one that is quite so bureaucratic. Will the department look again at the bureaucratic structures of UKTI? There are good people there trying to do a very difficult job. Let us make it as easy for them as possible.

Libya

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I will keep off the dangerous subject of lawyers. I thank the Minister for the opportunity to have this debate today. He has addressed the House with his usual courtesy and respect in changing circumstances to fill us in on some of the issues that are not immediately apparent, and I am enormously grateful to him for that.

One point that the Minister made has come up in a number of strands in speeches made by noble Lords—the parallel between Libya and Iraq. May I enter a caveat here? People have a tendency to look at the most recent history of Iraq as a snapshot. It is not a snapshot. There are strong parallels between what is happening now in Libya with what happened in Iraq in the early 1990s. The first resolution that was passed at the United Nations in the 1990s was followed by 17 resolutions and 12 years of Saddam Hussein running riot around the world, and a divided international community. Indeed, Saddam himself made the point that it was the divisions in the international community that gave him the opportunity to do what he then set out to do. However, I do not want to get hung up on Iraq. I am very conscious of the fact that, with so many noble and gallant Lords and a former Secretary-General of NATO in the Chamber, I am very much the amateur in this matter. I hope to look later at the post-conflict plan that my noble friend Lord Soley has talked about.

The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, made a very important point about how we know what victory looks like. How do we know what the end game looks like after Resolution 1973, which I support? We must be conscious of that. A number of noble Lords have spoken about the necessity to remove Colonel Gaddafi and the means whereby we do that within a legal framework. These are issues from which we cannot resile; they are also issues that it is not easy to debate in a public forum such as this.

I should like to take up a theme that my noble friends Lord Soley and Lord West raised about the nature of the rebels. My noble friend Lord West described them as a rabble; that sounded a little insulting, but in reality they are a rabble. It is a disparate group of people. We do not know who they are; we do not know what their backgrounds and capabilities are. Arming the rebels is a very serious issue. We know nothing about their background and, as we can see on our televisions every night, they are patently untrained, with no chain of command and no experience, particularly regarding modern and sophisticated weaponry. That is the issue that we have to address. How can there be a mechanism that brings together this disparate band of people?

Talking about disparate bands of people, we know very little about the Interim Transitional National Council. It is a group of 30, largely lawyers, businessmen and academics. I take the point of my noble friend Lady Kennedy that we are not hearing much about any women being involved, other than as victims. Yes, a group of people has to come together to create a leadership, but we do not know who they are and in some cases we do not even know their names for security reasons. Do we know whether they have the breadth and depth to lead a country to a new future? There is a vacuum, and that vacuum troubles me.

The Minister referred to jihadist activity and was very positive in his remarks on whether al-Qaeda and other jihadists were in the area. As we discussed in the House the other day, I think al-Qaeda has been caught on the hop by what has happened in the Middle East, but you can bet your boots that it will not be on the hop now. It will be seeing and seeking opportunities. I do not expect the Minister to be fulsome in any response on this matter. I am assuming that the intelligence and security community is looking hard at the activities in the region, not just in relation to Libya but particularly to Yemen and throughout the region.

One issue that I feel I have to raise, as a former Secretary of State for Scotland, is Moussa Koussa. I was dismayed at some of the remarks made by some of my friends, in this House and elsewhere, but also by members of the coalition, giving him an almost euphoric welcome to this country. I am not squeamish; I realise that in a situation of conflict, the opportunity to bring someone over from the other side is to be welcomed. There are many Members of this House, using their professional skills, who have dealt with defectors to the value of this country’s security. But, please, do not let us forget the consequences of Lockerbie, not just on the international community but on a quiet and respectable Scottish town that will for ever be known as the place of one of the worst atrocities that this country has ever known. I thank the Minister for his statement that there will be no immunity. I look forward to greater investigation of the role of Moussa Koussa in the Lockerbie bombing and in other atrocities, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice.

There is one area in which I am less sanguine than the Minister, and that is about oil markets. I want to talk about the post-conflict situation. People assume that oil is oil is oil. It is not. The oil from different countries is different. Libya was the world’s 12th biggest provider of oil, which is the most traded commodity in the world. Now there is barely a trickle coming from Libya. It is very useful that Qatar has agreed to be the marketplace for Libyan oil, but how is that oil to be transported out of Libya? The men and women who were evacuated from the oilfields have caused a reduction in output from Libya that may be very difficult to restore. We know from past experience how easy it is to disrupt oil supplies. Saudi Arabia has offered to step into the breach, but the oil that is produced in Saudi Arabia is of a different quality from that produced in Libya. You need to mix the sweet crude from Libya with the coarser oil from Saudi Arabia to produce the petroleum products that we all use.

The international community needs to address the issue of onward oil supply and, as it does so, to put together a post-conflict plan for Libya. If people have struggled in Libya and throughout the Middle East only to reach an end game that leads to poverty, despair and a lack of future, the prospects for democracy will be harder to maintain. I urge the Minister to consider the issues of the post-conflict plan and not to be so sanguine about oil prices, because I believe that they will go up. Saudi Arabia alone used half of its oil revenues from last year to pay off dissidents within its ranks. All is not well, but I hope that someone, somewhere, can give us an idea of what the end game will look like.

Indonesia

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Certainly what has been raised by the Deputy Prime Minister will be followed up. The noble Lord mentioned concealment. If he has visited websites, as I have, to look at reports of what is going on there, he will have seen enough to realise that horrific and dreadful things have occurred. While the case for greater access for journalists is always strong and we will pursue it, we can already see what is happening there.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that one of the associated problems in Indonesia is that of people smuggling. In view of the tragedy overnight off Christmas Island, will the Government do everything in their power to raise again in international fora the need for concerted international action against people smuggling?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Yes, of course we will. One has to echo the words of the noble Baroness about the sadness and tragedy so graphically depicted in photographs in our newspapers this morning of these refugees—boat people of a kind—going to a terrible death in the storms off Christmas Island. It is very sad.