Economic Partnership Agreement: Kenya

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I commend the impressive maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord McDonald of Salford, and welcome that he is clearly intent on being an active Member of this House. I thank the Minister for giving us the Grimstone rule, to which reference has already been made. It is a small concession to parliamentary democracy, but a welcome one.

This agreement demonstrates why Parliament needs to be involved in formulating these agreements. I love Kenya and have spent many happy times there. It is a country rich in natural resources, but it has a massive problem, which I wish to concentrate on today: corruption. It ranks 124th in Transparency International’s index of 180 countries.

When Kenya’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission was launched in 2016, its director said that Kenya was losing a third of its state budget—around $7 billion a year—to corruption. Sadly, things have not improved since then. A succession of scandals in public procurement have been exposed, year after year. Some have involved massive contracts and some just a consistent pattern of graft. Such corruption deprives the people of the wealth that they could be enjoying and that Kenya, without corruption, would be well placed to deliver. Currently, there are investigations into alleged corruption over Covid-related contracts—although that is of course not unique to Kenya.

So could we not have been more ambitious in pushing Kenya towards transparency in public procurement contracts? The agreement states that the parties will aim to conclude negotiations on transparency in public procurement within five years. I ask the Minister: why did we not push for something more demanding on this vital issue?