Nigeria

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Baroness is right to draw the attention of the House to the terrible plight of those who suffer the devastating consequences of intercommunal conflict. I note that she is careful, and right to be careful, to differentiate between the activities of Boko Haram and those of the Fulani—the pastoralists and the farmers—and the conflict there. The result for those who suffer is appalling, whoever the aggressor may be. Therefore, I can say to the noble Baroness that we call on all parties to find a peaceful solution to the underlying causes of these incidents, as I did when I visited Kaduna. We work closely with the Government of Nigeria on these matters.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, the International Development Select Committee in the Commons, in its report on Nigeria, cited climate change as fuelling the conflict in this area. Now that the UK has finally ratified the Paris climate change treaty, what will be built into our actions in Nigeria to mitigate this problem?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Baroness is right to remind us of the report’s conclusions. When I was in Kaduna state the impact of desertification was drawn to my attention, particularly on the Fulani, who, having been tribal herdsmen for centuries, and having moved across country, felt that they had to go deeper into Nigeria. We work very closely with the Government of Nigeria, using DfID and ODA funds to ensure that we can provide some economic support. We particularly want to support some of the peace clubs, which bring together the various conflicting groups that find themselves trying to fight for the same access to land and therefore their livelihoods.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, we have had some amazing speeches during the last couple of days. The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury was especially profound and moving. Others have brought their huge wisdom to this debate. When the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, says—as a political historian—that nothing on this scale has happened in his lifetime, we should pay attention.

Knowing what we are doing, we seem to be heading towards something that almost all of us deeply regret and which will profoundly change this country and its future. My noble friend Lord Marks mentioned his children’s devastated reaction. They see themselves as European. My children, too, were horrified. One of them is doing a law conversion course. Of all ironies, on Friday 24 June she had an exam on EU law. Never had an exam seemed more irrelevant.

The young are overwhelmingly in favour of staying in. As you progress through the generations, that moves in the other direction. The long blaming of so much on the EU and the reluctance of political parties and business to counter that has had its effect. To me, as a Lib Dem, the outpouring of support for the EU, especially from young people, has been so welcome, so novel, but so sad.

Others have powerfully put across analyses of how we came to be where we are, and of our hugely divided society. But we should note that Scotland, even with the deprivations there, voted to remain. The irony is, of course, that the Brexiteers are not known for tackling poverty and that leaving the EU is likely to reduce, not increase, the life chances of those who feel most excluded.

I wonder, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, how on earth we ended up with a referendum with a simple majority. What was proposed could not be a more profound constitutional, social and economic change. Our now divided country shows how unwise it is to undertake huge constitutional change on a simple yes/no referendum with a simple majority. Those who led for leave had no agreed plan—hence the poster at Saturday’s march, “Even Baldrick had a plan”. There is no manifesto and no agreement on what relationship we now want with the EU: like Canada’s, Norway’s, Switzerland’s, Albania’s or something else?

Do we face inwards or outwards? The most reverend Primate rightly expressed a wish that the UK reaches out,

“with a forward foreign policy to the poorest around the world”.—[Official Report, 5/7/16; col. 1861.]

The UK should be proud of its record on development. We are the first country in the G8 to commit 0.7% of GNI for aid, as my noble friend Lord Bruce pointed out. Our aid must now be at risk. Our economy is projected to weaken: therefore, our 0.7% will be smaller than it otherwise would have been. In the circumstances of a weak economy, the right-wing campaigns that have wrecked our place in Europe will take their wrecking ball to our aid commitment. If we did not manage to defeat the voices of little England over the EU, where our own interests are so directly affected, how will we fare on aid?

Then there is the impact within the EU itself. We, along with other northern countries, were instrumental in persuading our other EU partners to contribute. The EU is the largest and strongest economic bloc in the world. It is also the largest and strongest contributor to development around the world. Our outstanding Department for International Development has been disproportionately effective in helping to shape what the EU does. The noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, as EU Commissioner, completely shook up what the EU was doing. In more recent years, DfID staff quietly and systematically aligned the EU with UK aims, not the other way round. We led, but we will no longer be there.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, said, those whom I have met recently in developing countries were not arguing for Brexit. In the last month alone, in Nigeria I was asked why the UK was being so isolationist and in Angola I was told that it would be “a big mistake” for us to leave the EU. As we speak, the African Union is seeking to join up Africa, looking to the model of the EU. It seeks to remove customs and visa barriers between countries—the reverse of what we seem to be doing. A Foreign Office civil servant said to me that he was not sure he would want to stay in his job if we left the EU because he would be in the business of managing the UK’s decline.

As my noble friend Lady Kramer made very clear, we are already damaging our economy. That damage will continue, even if, as my noble friend Lord Carlile suggested, we take a judgment, down the track, that it is not in Britain’s interests to settle for an inadequate agreement outside the EU. Clearly, we must redouble our efforts to trade with the rest of the world, but part of our strength came from our membership of the EU and, with it, our political and economic stability. I have to hope that we have as close a relationship as we can with our EU partners. As we embark on this long and dangerous journey, if that is what we must do, it is surely vital that we now work together and that Parliament plays a key role in charting us through these dangerous waters.

Companies: Overseas Territories Registration

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister clearly—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords—

Sudan: Human Rights

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, of course we had the Chinese state visit very recently, during the course of which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister discussed the matter of human rights widely with the Chinese President. So we keep the matter under review. In the first instance we want to ensure that any aid provided is provided within international humanitarian law as well as international law itself.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, what further progress has been made in restricting the small arms trade, given that every community in Sudan is awash with small arms? Obviously, this is an extremely difficult problem, but international efforts were being made. What further progress can the Minister report?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Baroness points to a serious problem, not only in that area but elsewhere. We have made clear to the Government that it is important that they improve their own attitude towards the security of all minorities, part and parcel of which is indeed the restriction of the amount of arms that are available. But I am under no illusions about the difficulty of trying to pursue that.

Overseas Territories Joint Ministerial Council

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I am very glad that the noble Lord raises this point, particularly as COP 21 is under way at the moment. He is right that the overseas territories include some of the most remote and biologically interesting places on earth, and contain more than 90% of our biodiversity. I assure him that that is why these matters were under discussion and why the UK Government made a commitment to protect these unique and diverse areas from being damaged. We have made that clear in the past, and we aim to designate the largest contiguous no-take MPA in the world around Pitcairn in 2016. We are working with the Ascension Island Government to protect 50% of their waters from fishing activities, and we are also working with South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, the British Antarctic Territory and the British Indian Ocean Territory. This is a vital matter for those overseas territories.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, following on from my noble friend’s question, can I probe a little further? The Minister mentioned one or two overseas territories which were publishing registers, but could she say whether all overseas territories are participating in the central registers, and what is the timetable for doing this? Obviously the next stage is to make sure that these are public.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, discussions are ongoing about whether those registers will be public. Of course, some overseas territories feel that that is not appropriate to them. These discussions are continuing, but we have made great progress. We do not put a deadline on this, because the overseas territories have their own elected Governments; therefore we work in partnership with them. We do not dictate to them but work with them.

Nepal

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it has been the policy of this Government and preceding Governments to encourage a peaceful resolution of power and to support the development of a new constitution. With regard to the blockade to which the noble Earl refers, our acting ambassador in Nepal, along with EU and other like-minded countries’ heads of mission, has regular dialogue with the Indian ambassador to Nepal. Our British high commissioner to India, James Bevan, called on Indian Foreign Secretary Jaishankar on 7 October and raised with him the question of Nepal. We agreed that we would continue to engage with India and seek to work with it to help resolve the crisis of the blockade.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I start by thanking Oxford University for translating the Nepalese constitution for me. Is the noble Baroness as pleased as I am to see gender rights and—for the first time in the region, as I understand it—LGBT rights enshrined in the constitution? Will the UK Government congratulate the Nepalese Government on this major step forward in human rights?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I entirely agree and endorse what the noble Baroness has said. Of course, our remaining concern must be to ensure that the constitution is put into effect. Because of the recent elections, that is still a matter to be resolved.

LGBTI Citizens Worldwide

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, like others, I thank my noble friend Lord Scriven for securing this debate and opening it so effectively. We heard some extremely powerful contributions, including the searingly brave personal account from my noble friend Lord Paddick.

I am very glad that we are discussing this subject immediately after our debate on the new sustainable development goals. Key to those goals is to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030 while leaving no one behind. We know that those whose sexuality is not accepted in their home countries are particularly likely to be excluded, and in poverty, so those SDGs are absolutely relevant here.

In that debate, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield made a very effective contribution. I note that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans was down to speak on the dairy industry debate that followed. So I wondered where the Bishops’ Bench was for this debate. I was very glad to hear the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, who just spoke, because I noted that there was nobody sitting on the Bishops’ Bench, even just to listen. How could that be? I assume that the Church of England must surely move on from appointing women bishops to addressing this issue of human rights. I thought that that lay behind the moves quoted today made by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury where he spoke of drawing together the communion and conversation across the whole Anglican communion. I wish them well, even if they are frayed at the edges— as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, put it.

As my noble friend Lord Scriven said, this is about human rights. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, put it more strongly, calling it the greatest human rights issue of our time—and he is surely right. My noble friend Lord Scriven paid tribute to my colleague Lynne Featherstone and to me for our work in DfID, and I thank him. It was when my shortly to be noble friend Lynne Featherstone became a Minister in DfID that this subject went on to the agenda. It was Lynne, of course, who in the Home Office brought forward equal marriage. She tried to get a strategy on LGBT within DfID. Although one was agreed internally by the summer of last year, she could not get it published; it was regarded as politically too hot a topic to touch. When I took over from her in DfID in November last year, I sought to take this work further forward, and the strategy was published. I hope that by the time I left we had secured sufficient progress that this was an issue which could not slip back in to the shadows. Like the noble Lord, Lord Collins, I welcome cross-party support on this, but I would like to ask the Minister what DfID is now doing on this agenda. Like my noble friend Lord Scriven, I want to know which DfID Minister is now responsible for this.

I found that officials within DfID were extremely enthusiastic about this agenda. They recognised that development could not be effective if certain sections of the community were excluded. You can look at discrimination through the development lens. We know only too well that discrimination can lead to exclusion from education, healthcare, and economic activity. Aid must be impartial and not based on nationality, race, religion, political point of view, or sexuality. It must be based on need alone. When people are marginalised due to their sexuality, they are likely to be poor. So how do we tackle this? Ensuring that there is international protection of human rights is an important start, but we know that what we do must not expose individuals to even greater danger. So as my noble friend Lady Barker and the noble Lord, Lord Smith, pointed out, we need to work closely with those in countries where they face particular discrimination so that we can work out how best to support them. Supporting civil society is vital. Working through the corporate sector, to which Governments often listen closely, is also essential. My noble friend Lord Scriven and the noble Lord, Lord Black, referred to instances when that has been effective.

When I was in DfID, we sought to map what was happening and who was active in the countries in which DfID worked. We helped to get LGBTI rights on the agenda of the World Bank, which is becoming very supportive in ensuring that development is inclusive. We initiated research at the Institute for Development Studies at Sussex University on sexuality, poverty and law, as we sought to underpin and sustain action by the UK Government into the future. This is one of the first research programmes to look at these important issues. Given the World Bank’s economic remits, it was looking at the economic costs of homophobia, undertaking a study in India that highlighted the enormous cost of healthcare due to homophobia. It noted HIV disparity, depression, and suicide, three health issues that are particularly high among the LGBT population. It estimated that this cost India more than $700 million in 2012.

This debate is about human rights, but my noble friend Lady Barker is right that it is also worth emphasising to countries the economic benefits of change—what she calls smart economics—just as this has been a way in which gender equality has also sometimes been broached, with more positive results than might otherwise have been the case, in particular to make sure that it is included as part of development initiatives. As we have just debated the new sustainable development goals, we must insist that no one should be left behind. That commitment must now be harnessed to support and protect those who would otherwise be excluded because of their sexuality.

There have been some encouraging developments, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and others have noted. They include the incorporation of LGBTI issues in the draft World Bank safeguards and the reference to discrimination in the Commonwealth charter, which is a small step forward. As so many noble Lords have said, the Commonwealth has particularly pernicious laws. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, is right that we should be emphasising that we have changed our laws and that those elsewhere are now totally outdated. Will the Minister tell me what further progress has been made in regard to Commonwealth countries? Will she update the House on progress on selecting a new Secretary-General and indicate whether she is optimistic that such an appointment will bring progress on this matter?

In DfID I found myself discussing with leading figures in the US Government how we could encourage Americans to dissuade some of their countryfolk, the religious fundamentalists to whom the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, referred, from packing planes flying to African countries to harden policies against LGBTI rights. The noble and right reverend Lord is absolutely right in this regard.

Like others here, I have met some amazingly brave campaigners who knew their lives were at risk, not only because of their sexual orientation but because of their campaigns. I heard some terrible stories. I was delighted that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on global LGBT rights was set up and to be at its first meeting to nominate my noble friend Lady Barker to be an officer of the group.

For me, some of the social and governmental challenges we face were summed up and crystallised when I was attending a meeting at an AU summit earlier this year. This meeting was on child marriage. It was not on LGBTI rights. The President of a particular African country—I can tell noble Lords who he was afterwards —in his concluding remarks, stated, “I oppose child marriage”. There was gentle applause. “But”, he said, in a total non sequitur, “I do not support same-sex marriage”. There was wild applause. That illustrated for me quite how high a mountain we have to climb, and this debate is part of a stage on the way. I thank my noble friend for bringing it forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is one of those things where someone thought it was an excellent idea at the time without thinking through the consequences of what it does to the other flag being flown. When we fly the flag we look at the country and think, “What is that country doing?”. I am proud of what we are doing. If I want to wear a rainbow outfit on the right day, nothing will stop me doing that either, I can assure the noble Lord.

I shall return to the narrative. Our embassy in Hanoi in 2013 was the first local mission to use its website as a platform for an LGB&T—as it was then—activist blogger. I would also like to draw attention to our consular work, highlighting that some of our posts now offer same-sex marriages, with one such union prompting the Seychelles to reassert its commitment to decriminalise sex between same-sex couples, so things can change. Our embassy in Santo Domingo hosted the first same-sex marriage in the Caribbean on 30 December 2014.

I was asked about the special envoy and I was delighted to meet with Mr Berry last week. We agreed that there is already excellent co-ordination between the UK and the US and discussed what more we could do together. That will be a continuing discussion. I will be listening and learning. He has only just been appointed and we need to see how that develops. We agreed on the need to empower ambassadors to show leadership on LGBTI issues where and when they believe it to be most appropriate.

In the light of this, I have every confidence that we will continue our work overseas and show our strong commitment and vigour in protecting LGBTI rights around the world. That includes the United Nations in New York and the Human Rights Council, where in September last year we saw the passing of a second resolution on sexual orientation, supported this time by more states than ever before. This resolution, tabled by Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay provides the international legal framework needed by LGBT activists to help challenge the views of states that undermine their legitimacy.

I assure noble Lords that we will continue to prevent silence on sexual orientation at the UN and elsewhere, not least because silence is an affront to those people who suffer discrimination and violence. It would weaken the UN’s credibility and ability to address a range of other contentious issues. As such I was delighted to see that, for the first time, the UN Security Council last month held an informal meeting on LGBTI rights in the context of ISIL. Again, this shows the UK at the forefront in strongly condemning the atrocities committed by ISIL.

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the time is up.

[Baroness Northover]

Before the noble Baroness actually concludes—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we have both been Whips. I have exceeded my time in a time-limited debate—

[Baroness Northover]

I look forward to receiving—

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I am not required to take any interventions when I have exceeded my time.

Building Stability Overseas Strategy

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My noble friend is right, and it is a daily difficulty of every Government to deliver their spending in a way that secures the security of their people. We focus on countries and regions where risks are high, our national interests are at stake and we know that we can have an impact. We partner with others—the European Union, the United Nations and NATO—but it is the move from the Conflict Pool system to the new Conflict, Stability and Security Fund that is part of our continuous process to improve how our funds are spent. The new system will better align our national security objectives with conflict prevention.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree—I am sure she will—that it is only through long-term engagement with fragile states that there is any chance of building stability overseas and, in particular, that means ensuring that young people have a brighter future? Does she therefore think it was right that my colleague Michael Moore and my noble friend Lord Purvis brought forward the 0.7% Bill, which ensured that predictable funding into the future, in the last days of the coalition Government?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness’s question because I recall that the last time this Question was on the Order Paper it was so ably answered by her. I entirely agree with her view that this country should be proud that we have a legislative requirement for spending 0.7% on overseas aid. We should also be proud that we are the only country in the world that, as the Budget made clear, will spend 2% on defence for at least the life of this Government.

Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict, and Iraq

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass]

My Lords, I apologise to the Minister and to noble Lords that my slight impediment made me miss the first minute or so of her Statement. One is greatly heartened by the participation we have had in the conference to end sexual violence which arises as a result of warfare. I would like to ask the Minister specifically about Iraq. We and the West played a huge part in what is happening today. We gave our blessing to Nouri al-Maliki. For more than 10 years, 1,000 people a month have died in Iraq. It may be called democracy, but it is not what democracy is intended to deliver. I worry that we almost pass over the hint that our US allies talk about making an arrangement with Rouhani in Iran. Under Rouhani’s presidency we have had two executions virtually every day since he was elected. He and his Iranian revolutionary guards, the Quds force, have put tremendous pressure on al-Maliki. We have seen some of the outrages, such as the slaughter of unarmed Iranian refugees in Camp Ashraf on 1 September 2013. In the present situation, should we not be looking outside the box? Are we not going to have a similar civil war—

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

Especially as the noble Lord was not here at the beginning and we are over time, perhaps he would conclude.

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass]

I will do my best. Is it not a fact that we will have a similar civil war to that happening in Syria if we do not—as the Minister suggested—get international intervention? She should know as well as I do that, unless we resolve the Iraqi problem with some sort of federal solution, we will not make any impact for the good of that community.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Northover Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for setting out in very succinct terms the overview of where we are on foreign and defence policy today. However, I point out to her—I know that this view will be echoed around the House—that it was perhaps a bit of a mistake for the usual channels to schedule foreign affairs, defence and international development alongside the significant issue of constitutional affairs, over which, for the first time in 300 years in this country, we have a real dilemma. As it was known that some 80 or so speakers had put their name down, it would have been far better to have set aside separate days for these important matters.

I will stick to foreign affairs, as I would be expected to. My time is brief, so I will stick to just two things. The Foreign Secretary addressed a conference on globalisation last week at Chatham House, where he remarked that the world was more unpredictable and unstable now than in the last decade of the previous century. He also noted, wryly, that his period in office at the FCO coincided with some of the most unstable events that have taken place. Both statements are of course correct, but I am delighted to add that there is no causal link.

I will talk about the capacity of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to undertake deep analysis and problem-solving that renders it—or should render it—equipped to undertake the level of strategic thinking that is required to deal with the level of instability that the Foreign Secretary spoke about. We know that the role of the Foreign Office has changed; it has had its own pivot, if one can describe it as such, towards being a more commercial and trade-focused arm of the UK Government. I also appreciate that the Government have made structural changes, such as the Foreign Service Academy and the language academy, but the positive effects of that will not be felt for some time. In the mean time, the capacity of our diplomatic service to see long-term trends and to identify policy responses does not seem as robust as might be needed for these difficult times.

One example of the lack of capacity is still the dearth of senior women in leadership roles in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In the lead-up to International Women’s Day in March this year, I asked several parliamentary Questions about the role of women appointees at the United Nations, the European Union, other international agencies, NATO, other permanent members of the UN Security Council, our allies, BRICs, and so on. The response I got was truly extraordinary, and bears repeating. Some 11 women had served in senior roles in the past 25 years—I was only able to go back 25 years—while 173 men had served in those roles.

At a time when women’s equality has been pursued by both the Labour Government and indeed by this Government, I was interested to read in the rebuttal to my letter in the Financial Times that Sir Simon Fraser, the Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is a Civil Service diversity champion. We shall not hold our breath, although I fully respect the fabulous role that Sir Simon carries out as head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Diversity matters because problem solving is complex and requires considerable thinking outside the box—which is impossible where one gender or class dominates. I am not trying to say that excellence should be sacrificed to obtain diversity. Indeed, one other sector of excellence in the United Kingdom, the university and higher education sector, has embraced diversity to its credit. Diversity is one of the reasons it ranks so highly among higher education institutions in the world.

Let me turn to my other concern in terms of a lack of strategic thinking in the Foreign Office. That is thinking around dealing with failing and failed states—or indeed states that are too big to fail but that may have to be allowed to fail. The noble Baroness talked about Iraq and Syria, and we know that there are several failing states in Africa. I will concentrate on one in which I know the noble Baroness takes an interest, which is Pakistan. Pakistan suffered an egregious terrorist attack on its principal airport in its principal commercial city earlier this week. It is mired overall in an ongoing decade-long deep and existential crisis.

I discussed the problem of a UK strategy for Pakistan in 2008 with the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The problem as I saw it was that the regional instability that an unstable and conflict-prone Pakistan would bring about was more profound and far-reaching than the issue of winding down the Af-Pak mission as it became to be known in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in those days.

The very concept of Af-Pak as a single prism was flawed in my estimation. The nature and dispersal of power in Pakistan, which had had authoritarian rule over many decades, was very different from Afghanistan and needed disaggregation from the Afghan war nexus. I was sent off by the Prime Minister to meet the senior Pakistan people in the FCO and it became apparent to me that the advice they were getting was shallow and short-sighted. What we have ended up with, as we have seen with the attack this week, is a Pakistan—which is a nuclear-weapon state of some 170 million people—in which the writ of the Government does not run in large sections of the country. The Governments of the day, each as incompetent as the previous one, do not have a strategy of dealing with the Taliban and are caught in this dilemma of trying to make peace with the terrorists they themselves inculcated and tried to bring about.

In our Foreign Office today we conflate the role of the diaspora—the Pakistani ethnic minority diaspora in Pakistan—with the dilemma that we have as a United Nations Security Council member dealing with Pakistan as a foreign country. So in concluding, I will to come back to our role as a United Nations Security Council member and simply ask the noble Baroness one question. The role of United Nations Secretary-General is coming up for renewal and reappointment in 2016. Will the United Kingdom Government give its backing to a senior female potential Secretary-General should one come up on the horizon?

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I could just intervene and remind noble Lords that we do not have a fixed time; we have an advisory time of five minutes. We have 82 speakers and for the courtesy of those speaking later in the debate, I ask noble Lords to bear in mind that when the clock hits five, they have had five minutes.