Palestine: United Nations General Assembly Resolution

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness for securing a debate at this time on an issue that transcends all party differences. On 29 November 1947, the United Nations voted in Resolution 181—with 33 for, 13 against and 10 abstentions: in other words, voted very powerfully—for the establishment of the State of Israel. It also wanted to see the establishment of a Palestinian state. On 29 November 2012, the United Nations voted again, and 138 out of the now 193 member states voted for the possibility of moving towards a new member state. They did not declare that it was a state, only that it was moving towards being a state.

Who voted against? Panama, Palau, Nauru, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, the Czech Republic, Israel, the United States and Canada. How is it possible that the State of Israel, which was brought into being by an overwhelming majority vote in the United Nations, has contrived over the subsequent years to so lose the confidence of other member states that it finds itself with so little support in its opposition to the perfectly reasonable demand for a Palestinian state?

The peace process has been paralysed for years. There has been no peace process for years. I speak as someone who spends a considerable amount of time working on this issue and on events in the region. Huge changes are taking place—and they are not for the better. The world has changed. I do not think that some of our colleagues in this country, in Israel and certainly in the United States realise that the world has already changed. It is the kind of change that took place in the run-up to, and after, the First World War. The balance of power is different. Changes take place because of changes in technology. Having massive military power in the old sense no longer cuts it. It no longer stops or starts major political change.

It is said by many in the Israeli establishment that there is no partner for peace. Therefore, what is the objection to recognising a nascent state that can become a partner for peace? If there is to be a partner for peace, and if the complaint is that Palestinians are fragmented, surely this creates the opportunity for the various elements in the Palestinian state to come together—for Hamas, Fatah and others to become a partner for peace. However, I think that we have gone beyond all of that. It is no longer clear that a two-state solution is possible. If it is not, there are only two other obvious possibilities that I can see. One is a single state, which manifestly cannot be a Jewish state if it is democratic. The other is some form of chaos and war in the region. It is wholly possible that that is what we are looking at: we are sliding into a regional war.

What is the alternative? It is that we look to a regional process to create stability in the region. Noble Lords will not be at all surprised that I speak about such a process because I have been banging on about it for years. I have not for years seen the possibility of Israel and the Palestinians negotiating an outcome, and I do not any more see the United States providing a particularly useful role in achieving it. There was a time when it could have. There was a time when the European Union could have played a role of this kind, but it is so intent on focusing on its internal problems that it has not been able to provide any kind of useful contribution to the peace process. There is a great urgency about the development of a regional process to save us from regional chaos and to give the possibility of the establishment of a Palestinian state living in peace and stability alongside the State of Israel.

In this regard, I say with great sadness that our country this time is on the wrong side of history. This is a serious error of judgment. This was an opportunity to rescue the reputation of this country in a region that has not been impressed by the military adventures of the past 10 or 15 years. It was an opportunity for our country to say clearly that we support our friends in the State of Israel but that we do not give them a veto on our policy, or who we talk to, or who we are prepared to engage with. I do not expect my friends to tell me who I can and cannot talk to; I expect them to come along with me to talk to people. If my friends say they want a partner, I try to establish a relationship with that partner. Instead, we as a country find ourselves closing in, in a way which—whatever our Israeli Government colleagues say—is not good for Israel, never mind for this country.

I spent the past weekend organising two international conferences in London. At the second was a very senior Israeli—a senior, very Jewish, very Israeli Israeli. His commitment to his country, in diplomatic, political, academic and security terms, had been, he said, “my whole life”. I asked him what he thought of the vote. He said: “Israel should have supported the vote. It should have made it clear that it wants a partner for peace and wants to give Palestinians an opportunity to get together as a state to be a partner for peace”. Recognition of a developing Palestinian state does not define its boundaries; that is part of the problem. It does not describe its population; that is part of the problem. It does not tell us how we are going to relate the various different Swiss-cheese parts of its territory; that is part of the problem. However, it does give a partner with whom to engage in a peace process.

It saddens me greatly, and frightens me greatly, that we face such dangerous times in that region, from which we will not escape. On this occasion our Government did not do the right thing for the country. I hope that they can review their approach, not in terms of the vote, as the vote is past, but in terms of how we engage to ensure a regional process towards stability. Otherwise we will, I fear, observe a regional descent into chaos.

International Law: Use of Drones

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord is right to raise the matter; this is an important issue and an important debate. In fact, it was on the front page of the Times today and has been on the front pages of many of our newspapers over time. He will be aware of parliamentary interest in both this House and the other place. In relation to the UK’s conduct, specifically in Pakistan, I can confirm that we do not use armed drones against targets there. We do use unmanned air systems—drones—in Afghanistan, predominantly for surveillance and recognisance tasks.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, in addition to the method of technology described already, we now have the possibility of attacks not only by land, sea, air and space but in cyberspace. This is highly complex and had the Stuxnet attack on Iran taken place in any of the other four media, it would have been regarded as a declaration of war. It is no longer clear what a declaration of war amounts to when it is in cyberspace. Will my noble friend the Minister describe what work the Government are doing legally and diplomatically to clarify declarations of war in this new medium?

British Council: Funding

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for securing this debate. He is a very distinguished chair of the APPG and I am happy to be a member of that group. Like him I have a family connection with the British Council. My cousin David has served in it for a lifetime in many different parts of the world, including Baghdad after the war, which is not the most comfortable of places. He is finishing his career back home in Northern Ireland.

That is where I would like to start. There has been a lot of discussion about how the British Council’s activities display our culture in other parts of the world and how beneficial that is outside the United Kingdom. It became clear to me as the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly that it was easy to involve nationalist people and politicians in the work of the British Council despite people’s fears sometimes that it might be otherwise. The British Council is not the English Council. It presents all the cultures, Welsh, Scottish, English, Northern Irish—and not just pro-British Northern Irish, but Irish culture of all kinds. People from the nationalist community, including politicians, were happy to become involved in the British Council’s work. It was a helpful facility in binding people together.

There is a great deal that we have to give. Culture—I do not use the word lightly—is not just music, art, drama and literature. There are important aspects of our culture in the way that we conduct parliamentary democracy: that is part of our culture. Our adherence to human rights and the way that we implement them, policing and the administration of justice are also aspects of our culture. That is why I am proud that the British Council takes up those things too. It involves all sorts of people projecting important elements of British culture of all kinds and making a profound contribution to the rest of the world as well as to ourselves.

It has always astonished me that this remarkable organisation is so little known at home and so widely respected abroad. If it has one flaw it is perhaps a classic British flaw. It does not tend to blow its own trumpet at home, even though it is so well known abroad. My advice to it is to recognise that at home it is important that people understand more of its work. Like my noble friends Lord Dholakia and Lady Hooper I participated earlier today in the debate on the UK Border Agency. In a sense the two organisations are at opposite extremes. One sullies the reputation of the United Kingdom in the way it functions. It costs us a huge amount of money to annoy almost everyone who comes in contact with it and brings us no benefits to our reputation, whatever other good things it might do. The other, the British Council, is a remarkable organisation, which improves the reputation of the United Kingdom. Quite extraordinarily, we can get other people in the rest of the world to pay us to develop the British Council and to teach them our language, which benefits us and is absolutely remarkable.

It is a very long time since a rather dismissive military leader questioned how many legions the Vatican had—how many legions the Pope had. In doing that, he was dismissing the lack of power of the Vatican. That military leader is now dead, gone and largely forgotten, and the power of the Vatican continues. Increasingly one might ask how many legions we have in the United Kingdom. The answer is less and less. But there is no reason why we cannot have more and more influence and power through spreading our culture in all its different ways, and having the rest of the world coming to us and asking us to do this.

What is the hindrance? The hindrance is any lack of vision and appreciation that we might have at government level and, to some extent, a sense that promoting ourselves, our language and our culture is something we are a little less happy to do than our American cousins. We should be proud of it and we should promote it. It is not just in our interests. If we really believe in it, our culture has a contribution to make to the rest of the world and no one does it better than the British Council.

Middle East: Quartet

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, from my visit there last week, I have come away with the sense that some important changes are taking place. Indeed, on the Palestinian side, there is a sense of confidence which is perhaps partly to do with the application to the United Nations and other developments. However, is it not clear that the efforts of the quartet itself are resulting in little more than nugatory negotiations and arbitrary deadlines? Given that elections are now in the air so widely among the participants both inside and outside, would it not be better for the quartet to pull back and analyse how it could produce a strategy that over the next three to four years will produce serious negotiations, rather than to continue kicking at a door that will not lead it anywhere in the very short term?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I think that my answer has to be the same as the one that I gave to my noble friend earlier. The quartet is part of the mechanism, but many other things need to change and improve. There is the question of the recognition of Palestine as a state. The British Government believe that Palestine has fulfilled most of the conditions for that although we think that the ultimate statehood will be acquired when the occupation ends and when peace is achieved. These things must all be pressed together. I do not think that it would be wise at this stage to say that the quartet must be put on the back burner and not play any role at all—it could play a role. At the moment, there are obviously major difficulties in the way.

Syria

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I remind the House of the benefit of short questions to the Minister in order that my noble friend can answer as many as possible.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, this is a serious, sensitive and solemn Statement from my noble friend, and I welcome it very strongly. As we have seen the standing of the Arab League rising in recent times, it is particularly disappointing that the standing of the UN Security Council has fallen because of the actions of Russia and China. Can my noble friend reassure me that while we cannot depend on the United Nations for the present, we will use our good offices within the General Assembly to help Russia and China understand the gravity of their mistake?

My noble friend mentioned co-operation with other European countries and with the Arab League, and I welcome that. However, we of course have our ally in Turkey right on the front line—as he has said. While I do not advocate any military adventures from us at this stage, can I be reassured that we will co-operate, in whatever way we can, with our allies in Turkey, directly as well as perhaps through the auspices of NATO? Can I also be reassured that members of President al-Assad’s family will not be permitted to use their close relationship with this country either to protect themselves or their assets at this time, or indeed for anything they might plan for the future? This is something for which our own Government can perhaps take some responsibility, and on which they can act.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend made three points. First, on how we can help to make the UN more effective, we are of course living with the legacy of the Second World War and a UN structure that is frozen in time. Many people, including many of your Lordships, have worked hard over the years to try to break the deadlock on UN reform to get a more effective regime that is not vulnerable to the kind of vetoes that we have seen over this affair. However, it is very difficult, and every time we have tried, people have disagreed with each other and no progress has been made. None the less, we will certainly keep trying.

Secondly, co-operation with Turkey will be close. We are working very closely with the Turkish Government on this and indeed on many other issues as well. We will certainly continue to do so.

Thirdly, President Bashar al-Assad’s family will get no special protection. There will be no special relationship, despite the fact that some of them have direct origins in this country. The matter will be kept under very careful review. However, there will be no special favours for the families of any members of the regime who are guilty of the kind of atrocities that are now occurring.

Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for 2010-11

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Lothian for obtaining this debate and for his sterling work on the committee and the report that has been produced. I declare two interests, one as president of ARTIS Europe, which is a research and risk analysis company that takes an interest in areas of politically motivated violence and terrorism, and the other as a customer of the Security Service during the past seven years as a member of the Independent Monitoring Commission. We spent a good deal of our time working with various elements of the Security Service here in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere.

This is an extremely worthwhile report, which merits considerable study. I want to refer only to a few aspects of it. I could pick up on some of the positive remarks about, for example, the National Security Council, which seems to be an important development. I could pick up also on the concerns expressed about the BBC Monitoring service, an issue referred to in general terms in your Lordships' House but very specifically in this report. I welcome not only what the report had to say but some of the remarks in the Government’s response to it.

I note what my noble friend said about concerns about confidentiality in respect of our partners and material coming into the public domain. This is a very difficult area to put into structure and regulation. In the Independent Monitoring Commission, we found ourselves meeting at a very early stage, because it was a somewhat unusual body, as my noble friend knows from his own experience in Northern Ireland. Quite quickly, rather more because of the personnel than of the structure, we were able to build up a sense of confidence with our interlocutors. That was able to function adequately over a period in excess of seven years during which we published some 26 reports. That confidence was not maintained purely by the structures in place, though some were important, but because of the personnel and the relationships between them, which are very difficult to legislate for. It is extremely important to come to understand those things which you can, and should, properly put in the public domain and those matters which have to be dealt with in another way. Without that, it is impossible to do serious work in this area. Structures alone will not address that.

Let me come to the more specific areas that I wish to concentrate on. First, on Northern Ireland and republican terrorism, my friend the Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Assembly, David Ford, recently remarked to the Assembly in answer to a question that the level of attacks was not currently increasing, which was very welcome news, because, during our period, they had continued to increase. I am absolutely clear, as I think he was, too, that that is not because the level of activity has diminished but rather because of the excellent work of the security services, the police and the Garda Síochána. It is quite clear that there is still a very high level of dissident republican activity, but it is being foiled by excellent work. I take this opportunity, as other noble Lords have done, to convey my own appreciation to those involved, in so far as I can on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland, for the protection afforded to them and other people in the United Kingdom by their extraordinary work. One of the difficulties about it is that, as with good civil servants’ work, when it is successful you do not see anything publicly and people then take for granted that everything is fine. That is a little bit dangerous because people then let their security guard down and something terrible can happen. With good civil servants’ work and good security work, it looks as though everything is going swimmingly, which is only because of the quality of the work that has been undertaken.

I was gratified to note the recognition of cybersecurity as a tier-1 risk, as is recorded in the report. It is important to understand that this is not simply a question of traditional terrorists, whether domestic or international—although they are mostly international—using the modality of cyber to arrange traditional-style terrorism. In other words, cyberterrorism is not about people communicating with each other using the internet in order to plant bombs or all the other things that terrorists traditionally do. Rather, there are new ways of engaging in attacks that are mediated entirely through the internet—for example, the damaging of government infrastructure and the necessary national utilities. These are very real dangers not just in the defence field but in all aspects of life, including things such as water and electricity, not to mention all our own practical activities. That struck me very forcibly some years ago when some Taiwanese colleagues made it clear to me that, in the Taiwanese Parliament, every parliamentarian’s computer was being hacked into every single day. I think that some colleagues in your Lordships’ House and elsewhere might not be quite aware of the vulnerability of many of these things, although I know that that is not the case with noble Lords in this Room.

The whole area of cybersecurity presents an enormous difficulty and challenge, including on a number of elements that I note are mentioned in the report. First, the question of staff retention and pay, which is referred to, is a very difficult issue. In some long discussions that I had on this front, a young man who runs a company in the United States remarked to me that one of the problems with those who are most skilled in this area of work is that they are often—though this may surprise some noble Lords—not qualified with university degrees, but they are extremely skilled in this work and they have a very particular set of personality attributes and a particular way of working. When a number of small companies were established that became very effective in providing anti-hacking services—largely, setting a thief to catch a thief—a number of the large corporations saw this work as an ideal undertaking. There was clear money to be made and the expertise was available, so these large corporations bought over a number of these small firms. As far as I am aware, almost none of them survived because, brought inside a corporate structure, this was not the way that these young men—and they are almost all young men—functioned. Therefore, one of my questions for the Minister is: how are departments finding the challenge of engaging some of these young people who are not the traditional personalities for the Civil Service or the security agencies or the military or the police? In fact, these are the kind of young people who might be firmly outside these structures, yet they are exactly the kind of people that we need inside if we are to deal with this kind of problem. The report talks about this issue in terms of finance, but I really think that it is much more about other things in addition to the question of finance.

That leads me to the issue of psychological research in these areas. I have been to a number of conferences recently where it has become clear that huge amounts of money are being spent on hardware and on software, but very little is being spent on understanding the psychology of the kind of people who get involved in these sorts of activities. This was commented on in a recent conference that was promoted by the right honourable Foreign Secretary, at which Misha Glenney—a former BBC journalist who has recently published an excellent book on the subject—pointed out that almost no work has been done in this area. For me, that is reflected in the report, which highlights key themes as: “Organised crime”; “Hostile foreign activity” coming from Governments and so on, which is absolutely true; and “Terrorism”. However, the report does not refer at all to what is commonly known as “hacktivism”, whereby young people become involved in activities that become crime, because they break the law, but their intent is not that of traditional organised crime to make a lot of money; much of it is about gaining respect for themselves as serious operators on the internet. However, they then get themselves in trouble and find themselves on the wrong side of the tracks and on the wrong side of the law. I was struck by the fact that that is not identified in the report as a fourth area. This is not organised crime, or terrorism per se, or foreign activity in terms of Government and armies and so on, but it causes us a great deal of problems. That suggests to me that there is something about the whole psychology of this new space that has been created—as well as land, sea, air and space, we now have a new context for engagement and, indeed, for war.

That leads me to another question about legal research. I submit that if the Stuxnet attack had happened in an equivalent way on land, at sea, in the air or even in space, it would have been regarded as a declaration of war. However, despite the great problems that it obviously caused for Iran, it does not seem to have been regarded in that way. At this stage, without waiting for something to happen, a serious piece of work needs to be done in international law to explore at what point such a thing becomes a declaration of war, at what point can it be responded to only by cyber-response and at what point by other kinds of response. There is a lot of work to be done in that area.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

On that point, this is an important question and the real problem in this area is one of attribution. All the evidence that we have taken suggests that it is very difficult, when you get a worm of the type that Stuxnet was, to find out where it has come from.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. That is why there is a problem, to which there is no simple answer. Great damage is done whether the attribution can be established or not. Sometimes in the past people have not waited to establish the attribution. A doctrine of pre-emption, which I do not in any way recommend or commend, was created by a previous American Administration. The point is that sometimes we have to find a way of dealing with these things. I simply seek reassurance from the Minister that it is being actively looked at by those with the experience and legal expertise to address the question.

To some extent, that leads me to the question of attribution more generally and in regard to research. Some comments were made about the threat of al-Qaeda, including that in the Arabian Peninsula and other places. In looking at it, it seemed to me that there was rather a surface view of the thing. For example, many of those who get involved in Yemen in support of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are concerned about their local situation, as was the case in Afghanistan. There are a small number at the top who have all these notions about the caliphate and so on, but they are not necessarily carried forward because everyone who is involved on the ground believes that. That is extremely important in understanding how to deal with it.

Let me give a specific example from our own country. There are those who have looked at the way of thinking of young people who are potentially vulnerable to being involved in terrorism in this country. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for pointing out that this is not always a question for foreign policy; it is very much a domestic issue. The view has been taken that it is about fundamentalist views. The job is to persuade young people not to have these hard-line, extreme, fundamentalist religious views. I have always had some doubt that it is possible to persuade young people of anything of the kind. Indeed, the more adults try to do it, the less likely young people are to go along with it. However, research has recently suggested that that is not the best way to deal with it anyway. Even if these people have very fundamentalist views and, at the same time, accept that democracy and the rule of law is the only proper way to change and govern society, they are not vulnerable to becoming terrorists.

That is an extremely important question to be explored, so I seek some assurance from the Minister that research is not necessarily being done only by those inside the services, who may have a particular expectation of research. Those of us with any passing understanding of academic research know that it is extremely important that people do not come with preconceived ideas. Those inside the services cannot but have preconceived ideas. Is there any role for research that is being done externally, on a more objective basis, to inform the work of the security services?

On the issue of being up-to-date with difficult questions, we have had a strategic defence and security review, but we have just come from the Chamber where we have been looking at the dramatic and disturbing changes taking place in our own continent of Europe. Only a couple of days ago, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he was “extraordinarily concerned” about euro survival, civil unrest and the break-up of the EU. Again, this is not a question of distant places but of our own part of Europe. I seek reassurance— I do not ask for anything more—that our intelligence services are paying attention to the real and present danger of unrest in Europe over the next few years as the weight of financial difficulty and political disjunction begins to bear down. That may be, sadly, a substantial part of the work of our security services which is not, as yet—I understand why because the report is now a few months old—focused on in the report.

Libya

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Lord is quite right. I am personally well aware of the damage and horror caused. Our top priority at this moment is to ensure that Libya completes its transition to having an inclusive, stable and democratic Government. However, these matters lie just ahead and we will certainly give full support through the FCO-led unit, which was very helpfully set up by the previous Government to support the campaign for reconciliation and compensation in Northern Ireland.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, and Mr Jason McCue for their work in pressing the previous Government to establish the unit to which my noble friend referred. May I seek the Minister’s reassurance that that unit will continue to operate, and that the benefits that were being negotiated—not only the victims’ compensation but benefits for the United Kingdom and its taxpayers more broadly—will continue to be pressed for? Will the current moves by the United States Government to ensure that unfrozen assets from Libya are used to compensate United States citizens mean that those benefits accrue solely on the other side of Atlantic, or will they also be available to the United Kingdom Government and citizens for what they have suffered?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Yes, I can assure my noble friend that all those matters are under close consideration. As he knows, the Government—under the previous Government and in the immediate future—are not negotiating directly with Libya. That reflects the view that the greatest chance of success is for the victims and their families to engage the Libyan Government directly, with the support of HMG. However, we will certainly take all my noble friend’s points into account.

International Democracy Day

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I could not speak about the detail of youth organisations, but it is obvious that vast numbers—billions—of young people need to be encouraged in the values of democracy throughout the world and we play our part. On specific propositions on the website and elsewhere, I shall have to write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the celebration is not just about our own historic past and the contribution that this great country has made to democracy, nor about encouraging democracy in other parts of the world—extremely important and exciting as that is—but about a never-ending requirement to ensure that each succeeding generation of young people in our own country understands the importance of democracy under the rule of law? Is he aware of the research of Professor Peter Weinreich and others which suggests that, in dealing with radicals and politically motivated, violent young people, it is less a question of dealing with the ideas that they have, fundamentalist as some of them might be, than of ensuring a commitment to democracy and the rule of law that means that they do not turn to violence but accept democracy as the way of dealing with difference?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Yes, of course I agree with my noble friend. There is great wisdom in what he says. Democratic values need to be constantly reasserted. Democracy lies in the responsibility of each individual. I think that it was Edmund Burke who said that society only works if there is a policeman within each of us. So it is with democracy. If democratic ideas are implanted in each generation, there will be democracy. It is about a lot more than votes and party politics.

East Jerusalem and the West Bank

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I was not explicit because, as the noble Baroness will know—she is better equipped than most of us in these sorts of areas—what one often gets when making representations that are not welcome to the recipients is a shrug of the shoulders and a polite nodding of the head but no action. I am afraid that the most visible action is of the opposite kind—buildings have continued to be demolished, which gives rise to a question about the prospects for progress.

No one can disguise the fact that most of the responsible world—the Arab world, the western world, the European Union, the United States, the UN—believes that the present fluidity and turmoil in the region provides an opportunity for Israel and a Palestine that we hope is moving towards a united Government, although it is not there yet, to start serious negotiations. That is what we want, but it has to be said that this has appeared not to be the opinion of the Israeli authorities at the moment. Their inclination appears to be just to hunker down and hope that something else will turn up.

It is not a situation in which we are optimistic. None the less, we think that continual pressure and the continuing presentation of the realities of the destructive path on which an Israel that refused to negotiate would set itself will eventually move things, but I cannot pretend that it will happen tomorrow morning.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, my noble friend made much of the fact that the Minister declared that the settlements were illegal under international law, but is my noble friend aware that if the Minister had gone further and said that there might therefore be a case for materials produced in those settlements to be boycotted, he would be in breach of the new anti-boycott law which the Knesset introduced on 11 July? What is Her Majesty's Government’s response to the introduction of that law? Does my noble friend agree that it seriously undermines not only freedom of speech in Israel but even Israel’s credentials as an open, free and democratic society?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I myself—and I think this would be a government view—do not very much like the shape of the boycott law, which seems to intrude very greatly on the freedom even of speech about what can be traded and developed in the relevant areas. However, I understand that the matter will come before the Israeli Supreme Court and has been challenged, so maybe it is premature to make final judgments on it. Generally, we think that boycotts are not the way forward—they impede the sensible development of trade—and we should perhaps not forget that, although much of what I have had to say is gloomy, trade and activity, not in Jerusalem but elsewhere on the West Bank, are developing really rather well, and many people, including in your Lordships' House, are well aware of some of the remarkable enterprises that are springing up in places such as Ramallah and elsewhere.

Sri Lanka

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I certainly agree that hideous atrocities and crimes were committed. The UN panel report is very revealing, as are other reports. It is the view not just of the United Kingdom but, I think, of the whole international community that there is an essential need for the Sri Lankan Government and others to be open and prepared to examine the past in an open and unbiased way in order to find at least a basis on which better unity can be created in the future. The noble Lord is absolutely right that to try and bury these things in the past will lead to more suspicion and difficulty, and that is not the way forward.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, the previous Government are to be commended on appointing the right honourable Paul Murphy and Mr Chris McCabe, a former Northern Ireland Office official. It is hard to imagine a more diplomatic, courteous or experienced team. Despite that, President Rajapaksa and his Government showed no interest in engaging with them. Can my noble friend tell the House whether there is any improvement in relations between the Government of Sri Lanka and Her Majesty’s Government? If not, is it likely that we will be able to achieve any engagement and understanding, either directly or through Commonwealth colleagues, or will we have to resort to pressure from the international community, including the United Nations? How will we deliver the kind of inquiry that the noble Lord mentioned earlier in his reply?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

We all very much hope that it will not go that way and that there will be an improvement in relations, which have not been good thanks to an attitude which seems determined to try to put up a wall, as it were, rather than embrace the opportunity that the UN panel report offers. Clearly we do need a clear inquiry. The so-called Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission is at work and maybe it will be able to contribute to more openness. However, the pattern is not good, and I would be misleading my noble friend if I said that there had been much improvement recently; there has not.