Human Rights

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate today and attracting such a very impressive list of speakers. I offer my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on her maiden speech. It was a remarkably powerful and memorable maiden speech. She will be an enormous asset to this House.

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s commitment in his speech of 15 September at Lincoln’s Inn, when he said:

“There will be no downgrading of human rights under this government”.

I welcome his important acknowledgment that:

“Where human rights abuses go unchecked our security suffers”.

But I was sorry that he decided to repeat and misquote the speech by my late right honourable friend Robin Cook in 1997. In that speech, my late right honourable friend made points that were very similar to those made by the Foreign Secretary some 13 years later. He said:

“Our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves”.

An ethical dimension to foreign policy is really not so very different from—as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, acknowledged, and as the Foreign Secretary says—foreign policy with a conscience.

I go to a point from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and her contention about the report in today’s Guardian concerning the story of cluster bombs on UK territory. It is inaccurate—and I think that examination of the leaked document itself shows that it is an inaccurate report.

Most of us have an inherent sense of what human beings are entitled to in terms of certain protections and freedoms. Clearly, our support for democracy and the freedom of expression that is an inalienable part of the democratic process is one of the bedrock principles. Whether it is the brutal suppression of protesters in Iran after the elections this year, the murder of human rights workers in Russia, the attacks on brave women who assert their rights on the streets of Sudan or Afghanistan, or the abuse of the rights of gay people in some African countries, we acknowledge that we have a duty to help and defend those who ask only for what we enjoy ourselves every day in this country.

On this side of the House we recognise the practical implications of such a position. For example, there is the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which supports such efforts in Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, Uganda, Mozambique, Kenya and many other countries. Can the Minister explain why the foundation’s funding is to be cut by the coalition and how such a cut is comparable with the Foreign Secretary’s right-minded pledge to improve and strengthen the FCO’s work on human rights?

Noble Lords, in covering the ground that they have covered very ably today, have often gone into the details of human rights abuses themselves, notably the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in his masterly overview in his opening remarks, as well as the noble Lords, Lord Avebury, Lord Sacks, Lord Trimble, and many others. Like the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Luce, I found the papers from the Conservative commission very interesting and agreed with much that it recommended. But in looking at how its proposals fit in with the Government’s plans for the coming year, I was concerned about the practical steps that the Government might be able to take to bring them into effect. Debates and speeches, however well intentioned, have to be matched by policy in action. When we have the high principles that we espouse, we have to know how the Government intend to take that forward.

I shall concentrate in my remaining time on the mechanisms which we have that the Government might deploy in relation to human rights. Like the noble Baronesses, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer and Lady Morris of Bolton, I applaud much of the work done on human rights for women. The commission’s work on women’s human rights is in many ways admirable. Indeed, the annual report from the FCO on human rights sets out a comprehensive view on what has been done and what remains to be done. Can the Minister confirm that there are no plans to stop the work in producing this annual report each year, as it is such a very important and valuable guide to what is happening around the world?

Unfortunately, the only places where I could find any indication in the Government’s business plan on what was going to happen with human rights was in relation specifically to the Commonwealth and the Eminent Persons Group, in the section on so-called soft power. Indeed, I think that it was the fifth point of the fifth item of the fifth priority. That point made the assertion that the work has actually started. Can the Minister tell us what has been achieved so far?

As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, suggested, I turn to the Conservative Party’s Human Rights Commission report’s recommendations on how the Foreign Office should take matters forward. As the noble Lord said, an important recommendation is that of the appointment of a Minister for human rights within the FCO, who would be a sort of director with an overseeing role along with a group of human rights ambassadors. Surely such a Minister should also have a role in DfID and the MoD and, indeed, in UK Trade & Investment. As the noble Lord pointed out, trade can often make an uneasy bedfellow when considering human rights issues. Do the Government plan to create such a post? If so, when is that likely to happen?

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield raised an enormously important point about the responsibility to protect. I think that we can all agree that, when human rights abuses culminate in violence, peacemaking should be done, wherever possible, through dialogue, through peace treaties and through peace negotiations, as the report suggests. However, that point is axiomatic—in a sense, it is a very easy point to make—but what happens when we find that we are unable to act through the United Nations? What is a Government’s responsibility to protect in those circumstances, when such endeavours are blocked—as, for example, over Kosovo—by a clear and potentially catastrophic failure to reach agreement in the UN? Frankly, the Conservative commission sidesteps what we all know is the crucial question—which the coalition Government may have to answer—which is whether we should intervene to halt or avert human rights abuses when there is no agreement at the United Nations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, mentioned, the report also makes recommendations on how the FCO should deal with the UN Human Rights Council meetings next year. That is an important issue, so I was glad that the noble Lord concentrated on it. Frankly, I agree with a great deal of the report’s recommendations on that, including on the universal periodic review, membership elections, bloc party politics, agenda setting and the way in which some allegations against Israel are dealt with. However, I find it hard to believe that any Government will be able to act on the recommendations in the near future.

Indeed, where I think that the report falls down is in its possibly laudable but quite unrealistic notion about taking politics out of the UN. Culturally, we are years away from doing that, even if it were desirable for human rights priorities. As yet, we are not at that ideal position. It is almost as if the Conservative commission’s members spoke only to academics and experts like themselves. I do not know whether the commission members have been to the West Bank or Gaza, as the noble Lady, Baroness Morris, has. I do not know whether the commission members have witnessed the visceral fury of the Palestinians at what they perceive—and which many agree—to be the systematic undermining of their human rights. I do not know whether the commission members have had direct contact with North Korea or engaged in discussions with Chinese officials about the pressure that could be exerted on that country. It is simply unrealistic to expect to be able to take politics out of human rights discussions at this stage in international relations.

Over the years, I have travelled and talked about human rights in many different parts of the world. I have talked in the US about capital punishment and the evidence of its use in that country on people of very restricted intellectual ability, including the pathetic case of a man who was saving the ice cream from his last meal until after he came back from the execution chamber. I have discussed prison conditions in Japan and women’s rights in the Arab world. However, all Governments—elected or unelected—react strongly and with great hostility to public criticism, whereas they can often be persuaded to shift their position through private persuasion. Progress is achieved not by the protocols and the mandatory measures that the commission advocates but by persuasive discussion in private and with honesty that returns to the same issue over and over again. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, was entirely right that we must be practical and choose the right route for each country.

My Lords, I will end on that note.