Tanzania: North Mara Mine

Debate between Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and Lord Triesman

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend, of course, knows the country much better than I, and I take on board his valid points. My understanding is indeed that the police authorities and the local authorities are looking at the incident and investigating it. I assure my noble friend that my honourable friend Mark Simmonds, the Minister for Africa, has raised the issue on three separate occasions this year when meeting officials from the Government.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is right—it is a Canadian company—but it is listed in London and, potentially, we have some responsibilities. Quite aside from the North Mara mine, there are many other reports of human rights issues involving this company—at Marinduque in the Philippines and in Papua New Guinea, where rape victims, allegedly, of the guards employed by the company, have been offered a minimal remedy provided that they give up all legal proceedings. In New Zealand, superannuation funds have now excluded investment in this company. Will the Minister give an undertaking on behalf of the FCO that in the next FCO human rights annual report the dealings of that company will be reviewed?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I shall certainly take back the views expressed during questions to my noble friend and, indeed, to my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. Let me assure the House that ABG is signed up to the voluntary principles on security and human rights. That is a point that we have again reinforced in discussions and representations made.

Islam

Debate between Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and Lord Triesman

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Triesman]

Sadly, and I want to say this as briefly as I can—and I make the point about it being political—this is not simply about the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. I have been going through quotations from a large number of other people from UKIP, and there is obviously an attempt to adopt positions on the extreme right in our country. Cavan Vines, the candidate in south Yorkshire, talked of people who hide behind women and kill our children. Chris Pain, the opposition leader in Lincolnshire, gave a foul-mouthed diatribe about Islam. Peter Entwistle, the deputy chair of Bury UKIP, speaking of President Obama said:

“If I ever see him on a Greyhound bus wearing a rucksack, I’m getting off!!”.

Misty Thackeray, the deputy chair of UKIP in Scotland, praised the right-wing Dutch politician, Geert Wilders as a self-confessed hater of Islam. I could go on. I have also noted that the support for those UKIP positions from the EDL has been as conspicuous as those quotations are. This is a sequence of attacks that have no place among us.

Whatever the justification that some people may feel for political objectives that they cannot achieve by normal, democratic means, those objectives never justify the use of violence to achieve them. That is true for any people in any community; it is never justified, and nobody in here would try to justify it. Nobody would say that the people of the United Kingdom can be bombed, shot at or violently compelled to make political changes that they do not wish to see. They never have been compelled that way and I do not believe that they ever will be compelled that way; this is a country that repudiates violence from any quarter and insists that those who conduct violence from any quarter are brought to justice. That is a straightforward convention among all of us, for reasons that are very profound.

It is not a matter, in my view, of whether people choose to live differently in their style or at a distance from others in their own communities. Personally, I have no taste for seeing communities constructed in that way—let me be quite clear about it. I prefer to live in an integrated society in which people share each other’s cultures and enjoy them. But it is also a truth that if people live that way within the law and including all laws that protect equal status of all citizens, there is no reason why those people should be subject to state intervention or trenchant language, as we have heard in the House this afternoon. People do have different lifestyles, and if they wish to live lawfully in their own communities we should at least have some modicum of respect for those facts.

I noted what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, said about abrogation, with the later verses superseding the earlier ones, but I am not a sufficient student of that tradition to understand what is or is not within context. However, I am, in my modest way, a Talmudic scholar—at least, I have studied it to some extent—

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Lord could conclude his remarks.

[Lord Triesman]

I am nearing my final words. I notice that one of the most prominent quotations often relied upon is about smiting one’s opponents hip and thigh. That appears in Judges, chapter 15, verse 8. I tell noble Lords that I have never set about doing that, I have never thought of doing it, and I have never thought that it was a compunction upon Jewish people or anybody else.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and Lord Triesman

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I do not accept that supporting the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is a Second Reading proposition. It may be very difficult, in a number of contexts, to achieve what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is suggesting, but it is well worth doing it. A comparison can be made with somebody at a football match. I heard over very many years that when people made loud, offensive, grotesque, racist comments in a football crowd you could do nothing because of the great mass of faces. Then CCTV came along and we were able to do something about it—and it was quite right that we did, though apparently not yet fully successfully. There will be technical means—there probably already are. That is why the amendment should be supported.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I am sure that the Committee will agree that, in light of the other contributions that remain to be made and of the time, further debate on Amendment 23A should be adjourned. Perhaps it would be a convenient moment to suggest that we adjourn this debate until Tuesday 15 January at 3.30 pm.