Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2015

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Lords Chamber

We have not been able to do it so far. We need another 12 months to make this happen.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, your Lordships’ House wants to reach a conclusion on this matter, so I will try to be very brief.

I want to counter something that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said a few minutes ago about the danger of your Lordships’ House exceeding its powers. In 2013, we specifically wrote into this legislation—without dissent in your Lordships’ House and without any disagreement between the two Houses of Parliament—the right for either House to dissent if the transition period should in any way be altered. Therefore, no one is exceeding their powers by introducing this Motion, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has done, or the amendment to it that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has introduced today. We should not confuse these questions, and I hope that the noble Lord will agree with me that that is wide of the argument.

The integrity of the process—a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, in his timely and excellent speech earlier today—is the key factor. I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, when he talked about the integrity of the electoral register; I agree with him about issues of electoral fraud; I am in favour of individual registration; and I also agree that it is important to have timely Boundary Commission reviews. We are in agreement about all of that. However, I think that the legitimacy of the process is the key question that your Lordships have to address this evening. The legitimacy of the process can only ever be guaranteed by the independent Electoral Commission. That is why I disagree with my noble friend Lord Empey.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, when he intervened on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, reminded us of what the Electoral Commission said about the benefits. I have the entire quotation here; it is not long:

“If the transition ends in December 2015, there is a potential benefit to the accuracy of the register—with any retained entries which are redundant or inaccurate being removed—”,

but it goes on to say that there is also,

“a risk to the completeness of the register and to participation”,

in the important set of elections in May 2016,

“with retained entries relating to eligible electors being removed”.

The commission concludes that the risks outweigh any benefits, and argues that, before overturning the original timetable agreed in your Lordships’ House and in another place,

“there should be a compelling case for bringing forward the end of the transition”,

from the date originally agreed by Parliament.

The commission—not the political parties or many of us who sit as independents in this House may have had political allegiances or might be supporters of parties—says that the case has not been made. This is not about party advantage; this is about ensuring that the process is above any suspicion. It is ensuring that no one is a loser or a gainer as a direct result of changing the regulations and agreements that were originally made.

For 25 years, I represented inner-city communities, either as a city or county councillor or as a Member of the House of Commons. I also saw two parliamentary constituencies disappear—it might be thought that to lose one might be regarded as carelessness—and I recognise that demographic changes have to be reflected in fair electoral arrangements. My own experience tells me that the really crucial point is that any changes have to be seen to be disconnected to party advantage and must always be one step removed from party politicians; otherwise, they lead to the devaluation of our electoral arrangements. Inevitably, the short-circuiting has given rise to the charge that the normal arrangements are politically motivated. Whether or not that charge of trying to score political advantage is true, perception, of course, is all. Anything that casts doubt on the legitimacy of our electoral arrangements, or the fairness of how elections are conducted, is bound to poison the wells of our democracy, and so should be resisted at all costs.

The independent and impartial Electoral Commission says that,

“taking this decision before the outcome of the annual canvass means the Government has acted without reliable information on how many redundant entries will be removed”.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that he does not know, and I do not know, what the numbers are. The commission says to us that there is no reliable information and therefore, we should not proceed in this way. Acting without reliable information is no way for any Government to proceed. It says:

“We therefore recommend that Parliament does not approve this order”.

That is the best possible advice we could have been given.

Although my noble friend Lord Empey is right that we are entitled to reject that advice if we wish, we put it into the legislation for a purpose, and we would have to have very good and compelling reasons for overturning it. Frankly, I have not seen those good and compelling reasons. We must safeguard our electoral process by ensuring that it is above any suspicion of any kind of cynicism or manipulation. I therefore urge your Lordships to support the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy.

Iraq: Nimrud

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is not entirely easy to communicate with the leadership of ISIL and it is a question of Muslim heritage and pre-Muslim sites which it is concerned about. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, has a great deal of expertise in all this and I also know that for all those engaged in the study of ancient history this is an extremely painful experience. We are doing what we can.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, is not the bulldozing of the ancient city of Nimrud, the Assyrian city that stands for so much of Mesopotamia’s history, as the noble Lord said, on a par with the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Sufi monuments in Mali in 2011? Is not this destruction of the collective memory of humankind that has just been referred to, and the murder by ISIL of so many of the people who live in that part of Iraq and in Syria, what Ban Ki-moon called earlier this week crimes against humanity? Will the noble Lord tell us what will be done to bring those responsible before the International Criminal Court where they may be tried? What is being done to stop the artefacts that have been acquired now being sold on international markets? What is being done to retake the plain of Nineveh?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises a number of questions. Part of what is going on is the deliberate destruction of these sites, including by heavy explosives, and part of what is happening is the smuggling of antiquities. They are parallel, rather different, activities. We are working with all our partners in the European Union and through UNESCO to stop that trade, which of course provides a means of financing these radical movements. In the Middle East, there are allegations that some of the antiquities are being sold in Lebanon and Turkey.

Soft Power and the UK’s Influence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in debating the findings of this report, we clearly owe a great debt to the noble, Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, and the members of the Select Committee. The ability to produce reports of this quality eloquently underlined the need for an international affairs Select Committee of this House, as the noble Lord said in his introductory comments—and I happily echo that.

In July last year, when introducing a Cross-Bench debate on the importance of the BBC World Service and the British Council, I argued that the deployment of smart power would always consist of a combination of Joseph Nye’s soft power, backed up by the hard power of military capability—a point that my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup made so eloquently earlier. I drew on the British Academy’s excellent report, The Art of Attraction. In the intervening nine months, the world has become more fragmented and dangerous, with terrorist webs, rampaging militias and armies posing existential threats. As it emerges from a period of sustained austerity and battle fatigue, following wearying wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain in 2015 is a country that has become uncertain about its place in the world. This uncertainty is reinforced by jihadist militias and terrorists, the territorial aggression of Russia, the nuclear threat posed by Iran and North Korea, and the unresolved question of what sort of relationship we are to have with continental Europe.

Our world is less tolerant and more violent: from Syria, Iraq and the continued rise of the so-called Islamic State or Daesh, which continues to murder people and eradicate culture and heritage; to the horrors of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, where the Sudanese regime has dropped more than 2,500 bombs on its civilian population; to Boko Haram’s abduction of girls in Nigeria; to the burning alive of Christians in Pakistan; to the recent beheading of 21 Egyptian Copts in Libya; and to the continuing incarceration of 200,000 people in the prison camps of North Korea. The need to deploy smart power is self-evident. It would be folly in these circumstances to reduce further our military or non-military capability.

The key issue is the battle for ideas, be they secular or religious. In that context, I was surprised to see a reply in another place, just in the last day or so, to Tim Farron, the Member of Parliament for Westmoreland and Lonsdale. He asked the Government what resources were committed to the area of freedom of religion and belief. In that reply, Mr Lidington, the Minister, said that there was just,

“one full time Desk Officer wholly dedicated to Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB)”.

He said that,

“the Head and the Deputy Head of HRDD spend approximately 5% and 20% respectively of their time on FoRB issues; one Human Rights Advisor spends 5% and one HRDD Communications Officer approximately 10%”.

This is pretty dismal in the context of the horrors that are being perpetrated in breach of Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which safeguards the right to believe, not to believe or to change belief. All over the world, we can see how that is honoured in the breach. Billions of people are motivated by religious belief and do extraordinarily wonderful things, but as with secular ideologies—such as those of Hitler, Mao or Stalin—they can also do some pretty terrible things. Ideas and beliefs shape our world and our destiny. Smart power must engage directly with that. We have enormous national assets to enable us to do so but we need to build on them. As other noble Lords have done, I will briefly mention three prizes that we have. I so agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, when he said in his introductory remarks, “We are the best-networked state in the world”. He mentioned the role of the Commonwealth, the BBC World Service and the British Council, and I will do so, too.

As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, yesterday saw the commemoration of Commonwealth Day. The former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Sir Don McKinnon, once correctly observed:

“The Commonwealth is a pretty good investment for Britain but it has not always been used at its best”.

In a world where jihadists seek to impose a brutal uniformity, including denying girls an education, the Commonwealth, by contrast, stands for tolerance, diversity, interconnectedness, pluralism and the dignity of difference. The Commonwealth charter underlines the aspirations of its member nations to democracy, human rights and the rule of law, as the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, and the noble Lord, Lord Soley, both emphasised in their speeches.

I think it was my noble friend Lord Luce, in a previous debate, who once told us that President Nasser of Egypt once said to Prime Minister Nehru of India, “I put my extremists in prison. What do you do with yours?”. Nehru replied, “I put mine in Parliament”. His were the values of the Commonwealth.

We in Britain also know the importance of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, a concept to share in a world that stifles opposition. Last month, I spoke at the launch of Liverpool’s new Commonwealth Association. I suggested that British cities should declare themselves to be Commonwealth cities and network with other cities which badge themselves in the same way—like the more than 500 universities in the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

When I came to Westminster 36 years ago, I was delighted to become one of the 16,000 members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. I suspect all of us here in the Chamber are members of the CPA. For several years I chaired the Council for Education in the Commonwealth. With a combined GDP of £5.2 trillion, some 2.2 billion people live in the Commonwealth’s 53 independent and sovereign states. Sixty per cent of the population are under the age of 30 and 800 million live in poverty. Where better to focus our ring-fenced aid budget than on the Commonwealth, and especially on education? It is lamentable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, said, that we have seen a decline in Commonwealth scholarships. This, along with our visa system, has had a deplorable impact on students from countries such as India.

It is instructive that, despite 250 years of trading with India, it is said that it now has more trade with Switzerland than with us. Smart power would use the power of education and the English language to address such discrepancies. Nelson Mandela once said that the Commonwealth makes the world safe for diversity. He also insisted that education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world. That, surely, is the battle for ideas—a thought echoed by the courageous Malala Yousafzai, whom the Taliban tried to murder in Pakistan because she insisted on a girl’s right to an education. Her words were:

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world”.

Yet, despite what we heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, perhaps the most important English language institution that we have, the British Council, has seen its FCO budget reduced to £154 million this year, down from £190 million. I hope that we will hear from the Minister how the Government see the future of British Council funding.

My third example of Britain’s smart power assets are the arms of BBC global news, World Service radio, BBC Online and television news. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, has spelled out many of those issues to us in his sometimes excoriating—but, I thought, to the point—remarks, particularly about the issue of resources, and the way we have pillaged the resources of the BBC quite wantonly. The BBC World Service has a global audience of 265 million people and is directed for the first time in its 83-year history by a woman, Fran Unsworth. Kofi Annan called the World Service, “Britain’s greatest gift to the world”.

In its briefing for today’s debate, I greatly welcome the BBC’s statement:

“The BBC is considering whether it can develop a viable news service for the people of North Korea”.

That is an issue I have raised, as co-chairman of the All-Party Group on North Korea, on numerous occasions in your Lordships’ House. I should be grateful if the Minister would say, when replying, whether this initiative will have the blessing of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It would be helpful if he could spell out exactly how the Foreign Secretary will participate in the discussions on the charter review—and hence on the future of the BBC World Service—to which my noble friend Lord Birt referred. Only a week ago the director-general, the noble Lord, Lord Hall, warned that the BBC was at a crossroads, with choices for decision-makers that would be fundamental to the future of the BBC and it global standing. He spoke of,

“a sleep-walk into decay for the BBC, punching below its weight abroad, and Britain diminished as a result”.

In its conclusions the Select Committee says:

“The UK can, and should, act as a serious force for good as the world continues to change”.

However, it also warns that the UK risks,

“finding itself outwitted, out-competed and increasingly insecure”.

If we do not find the resources to back up these wonderful institutions, surely that will come to pass. It would be a huge error for this country to make, and it would not be good for the world either.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warnock (CB)]

I rise simply to underline everything that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has just said. It seems to me a disgraceful possibility that individual private clinics might be allowed to exploit these vulnerable people. The words that the noble Lord quoted show that this could happen automatically. It is not just that people may be allowed: the suggestion is that they will be allowed, unless some very special consideration applies. I therefore beg the Minister to reconsider this part of the Bill.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister may not be surprised to find that I am keen to intervene on this amendment, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, but he may have been surprised by the noble Lord’s ability to put together an interesting coalition of voices which would not necessarily always agree on some of the substantive issues raised in the context of human fertilisation and embryology. On this occasion I strongly agree with what my noble friend Lady Warnock and the noble Lord, Lord Winston, have said, and I hope the House paid attention to the specific example that the noble Lord gave of someone having to spend £11,000 in a London clinic. I find that extraordinary and we are all grateful to the noble Lord for telling us about it.

I strongly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said about some of the organisations mentioned in the amendment: the Care Quality Commission, the Human Tissue Authority, the Professional Standards Authority and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. What have they got to do with economic growth duties? They have much more important duties than that and I find it amazing that we are dealing with this issue at all in the context of the Deregulation Bill.

If we examine the press releases of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, or look at its website, we will see, in terms, the phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, used. The HFEA says:

“We are not an economic regulator”.

That is also emphasised in a previous Written Answer by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in which he stated:

“The HFEA is not an economic regulator and, accordingly, does not publish information on costs at a clinic level”.—[Official Report, 22/1/13; col. WA 195.]

And nor should it. So, surely this serves only to emphasise that the HFEA is not competent to undertake any economic growth duty.

Indeed, at last year’s Progress Educational Trust’s annual conference, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, described how most NHS trusts charge above cost, and that they are driven by profit motives. Dr John Parsons, the former director of King’s College Hospital’s assisted conception unit, also argued at the same conference that simple greed had made profits, rather than compassion for patients, the top priority of many fertility clinics today. That point was underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Winston. Dr Parsons further argued that this encouraged the use of dubious technologies which are motivated simply by market forces rather than treatments motivated by compassion that are targeted to suit the needs of the individual patients about whom we have heard today. Are the Government proposing that the HFEA should emulate those whom it is failing to regulate?

If the HFEA, which is not an economic regulator, should now have the additional duty to make a profit, how might its judgments be further impaired by such pecuniary interests? How might this exacerbate what the report of the Progress Educational Trust’s last annual conference described as—I repeat what was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Winston—

“the rampant commercialisation of IVF in the UK”?

If the profit motives of some avaricious clinics go unchecked by the regulator, and the regulator itself becomes increasingly motivated by profit, will this not make an already bad situation even worse?

It is far from clear that the HFEA has proven itself to be a particularly effective regulator as it is. The noble Lord and I do not agree on this point. I do not believe that it is sufficiently robust. To begin with, recent Written Answers to Parliamentary Questions reveal that it does not even maintain proper records on the number of human embryos used in research or allowed to perish. Instead, the HFEA seems more concerned about providing repeated references to a pinhead, the relevance of which to the number of human embryos destroyed is far from clear, except perhaps as a reflection on the competence of whoever is responsible for answering these Questions.

The HFEA’s enforcement of its multiple births policy has already proven to be utterly toothless. That is exemplified by a press statement on the HFEA website from 13 November 2013, in which it was conceded that IVF clinics would no longer be subject to a condition on their licence that they keep their multiple births rate below the HFEA target. As the press statement further revealed, this was in response to a legal challenge launched by two UK clinics,

“resulting in considerable cost to the HFEA”.

How much easier it will be for the HFEA to cave into those it is supposed to be regulating if it has to prioritise an economic growth duty.

Strikingly, an ensuing Written Answer from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on 9 December 2013 stated the following in relation to the incidence of multiple births and the HFEA’s publication of clinic success rates:

“It is not clear whether additional powers of economic regulation would alter the HFEA’s influence on such practice”.—[Official Report, 9/12/13; col. WA 79.]

If the profit motives of some clinics already remain unchecked in a continuing environment of IVF postcode lotteries, how will this not be made even worse by having the HFEA join the fray in prioritising profit over protecting patient interests?

Although the HFEA chief executive, Peter Thompson, may be trying to make some modest efforts to combat,

“the rampant commercialisation of IVF in the UK”,

this seems limited only to “tentative steps” for increased transparency on the part of clinics and an expectation that others will bring about a change in culture. This does not exactly sound like an effective regulator, does it? If it is up to clinics to bring about a change in culture, what is the HFEA there for? The impotence of the HFEA is already serious enough as it is. As Dr Geeta Nargund, who I met recently, pointed out in a Huffington Post article that I would encourage noble Lords to read,

“no-one appears to be monitoring the drugs given to women during IVF treatment. Extremely high doses of stimulation drugs and intravenous immune therapy injections are administered to women by some clinics with no scientific evidence to support those practices. The HFEA do not collect information about drugs and dosages given to women, but we need this information to study any adverse effects of the drugs on women and their children in the future”.

How is the HFEA protecting the interests of patients if neither it nor anyone else is monitoring this? Dr Nargund’s concerns are only reinforced by the Written Answer I received from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, just yesterday, in which it was admitted that the,

“administration of medicinal products to patients undergoing fertility treatment ... is not regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority ... The HFEA has advised that it does not collect information on the identity of medicinal products used in treatment”.

But it gets worse. The same Written Answer received yesterday goes on to describe nevertheless how the,

“HFEA is aware of some clinics that have administered reagents to permitted gametes or permitted embryos that are then introduced into patients when the reagents concerned have not been CE marked. … Although the HFEA does not hold information on the effects of particular dosages on the welfare of the developing child and the health of the mother, the HFEA expects clinics to do such monitoring as part of their licensing conditions”.

It should be noted that we are not just talking about unlicensed medicines but about off-the-shelf laboratory reagents, most of which I gather would typically be labelled as unsuitable for clinical application. It should also be noted that no mention is made here of the sanctions imposed by the HFEA on clinics for putting goodness knows what into patients without knowing the effects,

“on the welfare of the developing child and the health of the mother”.

It therefore seems that as long as the clinic is responsible for whatever happens, the HFEA is satisfied.

In closing, I would like to reinforce what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said in relation to proposed interventions for mitochondrial diseases. Regarding the question of profit, it is noteworthy that a “competing interests” statement on a recent paper by Shoukhrat Mitalipov—belatedly added as a corrigendum—includes the admission that he has a patent application entitled:

“Method for mitochondrial DNA replacement in oocytes”.

My understanding is that researchers at Newcastle have no similar patent applications for pronuclear transfer, which is probably unsurprising because their proposed use of this technique is not original, having already been attempted in humans in China with woeful results. However, how would the economic growth clauses in the Bill affect the HFEA’s consideration of such licence applications? Would the HFEA be compelled to favour proposals for spindle-chromosomal complex transfer over proposals for pronuclear transfer on the basis of patent applications and potential profits to be gained? Or can the Minister please spell out clearly how the projected use of pronuclear transfer in admittedly limited numbers of clients could be seen as a contributing factor to economic growth, such that the HFEA would be seen as satisfying the economic growth clauses in the Bill?

I am sorry to have wearied the House with some of this but the point I am making is that these are complex and clear ethical, as well as medical and scientific, issues. This is not about things being driven by the state of the economy or deregulation, and it is a great error on the part of the Government to have included this in the Bill. I hope that between now and Third Reading the noble Earl will listen to what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has said and give this much greater and more detailed consideration.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, we should be protecting desperate patients from being ripped off by clinics whose main interest is to make money. I hope that the Minister will look at this again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. However, I am disappointed with the Minister’s response because I thought that at the least he would have been prepared to give this matter further consideration between now and Third Reading. With my noble friend Lord Winston here to talk about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, also present, I knew that we would have an interesting debate.

The point is that, however effective or not the HFEA is at the moment, the one thing that unites us all is that we do not want to see its regulatory function weakened. My noble friend Lord Winston spoke about London becoming the centre of a healthcare market, and the Minister welcomed that. When I took through the 2001 regulations that extended the purposes of research in the original 1990 Act, which was based very much on the extraordinary work of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, we clearly had in mind that there was research potential for the UK. That was one of the factors behind taking through those original regulations. The argument that we put forward then was that the UK would be able to attract research investment because, despite some of the doubts that noble Lords have expressed today, we were considered to have a first-rate regulatory function. I put it to the noble Lord that he is putting that reputation at risk by allowing ambiguity in the nature of the regulatory process.

My noble friend talked about the dangers of commercialisation in this field and he is surely right. It is interesting that the chief executive of the HFEA has recently been quoted as recognising the responsibility to take action against rampant commercialisation of IVF in the UK. That statement is very welcome. My noble friend has argued that at the moment it does not have the powers to do anything about it, but the noble Lord comes here with a proposal to weaken its already inadequate powers. That is quite remarkable.

The Government are very keen for the mitochondrial donation regulations to be approved on 24 February. I support them, but has the noble Lord considered the risk to that decision from the impact of this Bill? This will be a big issue when we debate those regulations. When the noble Earl, Lord Howe, comes to make proposals for the regulations, he will say that your Lordships can have confidence in passing the legislation because of the robustness of the HFEA. However, I, who support those regulations, will have to get up and say that actually the noble Earl is incorrect because of what the noble Lord here is proposing to do.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I entirely agree with what the noble Lord is saying, but does it not also undermine the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who has consistently said that the HFEA is not an economic regulator, to now put him in that invidious position?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

That is absolutely right. The noble Lord then went on to say that we should be fine because the provisions in the Bill say that all the regulator has to do is to “have regard to” the desirability of promoting economic growth. However, the moment you include those words, the regulator becomes liable if it can be shown that he does not have regard to that, even though the noble Lord recognises that in many cases he ought not to have regard to it.

It is quite inadequate to say that we are consulting on this. This is absolutely wrong. We need to know by Third Reading whether the Government are going to keep in the HFEA and the PSA. I think that the noble Lord ought to allow further discussions to take place between now and Third Reading, and he ought to discuss this with his colleague—particularly the impact on the new regulations on mitochondrial donations that will be coming forward. As for his assurance that any of these bodies will be included by an affirmative resolution, how many times has an SI been defeated in Parliament? It is fewer than 10 times, so it is a meaningless safeguard in effect. I invite the Minister to say that he will at least give this further consideration before Third Reading before I make my decision.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden]

As the noble Lord suggested, I will leave that to my noble friend Lord Tyler, as a former Member of the House of Commons. However, the case for asking the House of Commons to reconsider the issues that these amendments highlight is strong. I incline to that view, and for that reason I support these amendments.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, am a signatory to these amendments. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lords, Lord Lexden, Lord Norton and Lord Tyler. I think that in the part of the country that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, comes from they have a saying: “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”.

I sympathise with some points of view expressed by noble Lords on the opposition Benches. I am not an enthusiast for this legislation; I would rather it was not before us for a variety of reasons. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said earlier about the climate that IPSA has created and the difficulties that have arisen because of a loss of confidence. However, as the right honourable Member for Blackburn, Jack Straw, said in evidence to the committee to which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred, and which reported only today:

“It is important that we do not get ourselves into a gloom about this. Politicians have never been trusted. In a sense, in a democracy that is quite healthy … In the middle of the [Second World] war, Gallup surveyed public trust in politicians and it was pretty low”.

I am not indifferent to that: I think it is very important that people should have a high view of politics and politicians. However, as Jack Straw said, it has always been thus. I worry that the solutions that we have put in place will not deal with some of the endemic problems of a lack of trust, not just in politics or politicians, but in our institutions throughout this country, where there has been a considerable decline in public trust across the piece.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, I was grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Gardiner, for meeting us to discuss our reservations about the Bill. However, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, recognised, these are genuine attempts to try to make the Bill better, even if one does not agree with them. That is why I am happy to be a signatory to these amendments, not least because of the experience that I had when I served in another place and was a member of what was then the Privileges Committee—the Standards Committee’s predecessor.

I was a member of that committee when we had to deal with the so-called cash for questions scandal, when two Members of the House of Commons had received significant sums of money for tabling parliamentary questions. The end of that process brought to mind something which I think the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said at Second Reading: that the real mechanism for people to decide whether to recall an MP, which is in place, is of course a general election. I was very struck that, at the end of that process, when two Members of Parliament were found guilty of those offences, in one case the constituents in the constituency where they lived decided not to return that Member of Parliament, but in the identical other case they did return that Member of Parliament. He continues to serve in another place. We had to look at some difficult cases but we were certainly not asked routinely to provoke potential by-elections. That is the issue that most concerns me and which I want to address in speaking to this amendment.

I was always impressed by the genuine desire of members of that Committee on Privileges, from whichever part of the House they were drawn, to maintain the reputation of the House of Commons and get to the truth. I did not sense any narrow partisanship; I worry that we are risking that by putting this mechanism in place. The fact is that Standards Committee Motions are also amendable on the Floor of the House of Commons. I hope that the Minister will address both the pressure that will be placed on members of that committee of a partisan nature in the future and what can then happen on the Floor of the House. Will he say in his response whether that possibility of amendable Motions on the Floor of the House of Commons will continue in this new situation? If so, could a partisan majority not be used to trigger a recall process by increasing a suspension to 10 days, even where the Standards Committee had decided against it?

I want to say a word about the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee, which talks of the Standards Committee taking judgments. The benefit of these amendments is that we would take those subjective judgments out of the process. I particularly agreed with the description that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, gave. He talked about simplicity and objectivity being at the heart of what these amendments seek to do. In particular, Amendment 3 would make the trigger incredibly simple. If you are convicted of an offence, the electors would get to determine whether they wish to keep you. Incidentally, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said a few moments ago about the danger of vexatiousness creeping into the system with groups of people, for whatever motive, trying to undermine good Members of Parliament.

As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, it is extraordinary that we are having this debate this afternoon, after this report of more than 100 pages was published this morning. Although I have obviously not been able to read it in any great detail yet, I was struck that the report said on page 5:

“The subcommittee heard from a number of witnesses who were concerned about the extent to which the current system was fair to those members subject to it. While we believe the system is broadly fair, it is clear that MPs do not feel well supported”.

The report also reflected on the Standards Committee itself on page 6, saying:

“The Committee does an essential but sometimes unpopular task”.

That is certainly true; I know from the expressions on the faces of one or two noble Lords who served on that committee in another place that they would agree. The report went on to say that,

“if the House fails to engage with the Committee’s proposals it undermines the Committee’s position but, more importantly, the House’s own standards”.

We have to take those points seriously and I hope that between now and Third Reading, we will have the chance to do that.

By contrast the Government’s second trigger, as it stands, gives Members of Parliament the whip hand. That cannot be in the spirit of what the Government themselves say that the Bill is about. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House made that clear weeks ago but the Government’s response is, to say the least, wanting. In answering, it really would have had to demand that this matter be considered further, before Third Reading in any event. Now that the Standards Committee has published these proposals, that case for better and further consideration of the Bill and its impact on the committee must surely be even more compelling.

There are just six weeks left of this Parliament. We are not yet into the wash-up. We are not yet into purdah. We can, in the time remaining, amend the Bill and put in place a recall arrangement that would command public support—something simple, more objective and more easily understood, which avoids the perception that MPs will be able to make friendly interventions to prevent their own errant colleagues being subject to the process. In that six weeks, we can also look properly at the issues raised by the Standards Committee’s own report. Addressing the issue of lay members—a point that has been referred to by noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Howarth—including their number and force, would go a long way towards dealing with some of the issues that I have been raising. Either way, it is not enough for the Government to dismiss such serious and widely expressed concerns out of hand. I hope we will hear a clear commitment from the Minister to come back to this question at Third Reading.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly and the Minister knows why. This morning I was able to explain to him that in a few minutes’ time there is to be a memorial service for a former Member of the House of Commons and I have been asked to give one of the tributes there. However, I would not want my silence to be mistaken for somehow resiling on my commitment to support this amendment, to which I have added my signature. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has made a very persuasive case in your Lordships’ House today. Although I will reserve my remarks to Report because I will not be able to be present to hear the Minister’s reply, I hope that between now and then he will have time to give great consideration to the powerful points that have been made. I read the Second Reading speech of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, which was a very telling contribution to the debate, in which he argued that this is a bad Bill and is probably incapable of being made better. I rather agree with him on that. However, I do think that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is at least making a valiant effort to try to point us in the right direction. Much of the wording is of course taken from the Representation of the People Act.

I served on the Committee of Privileges in the other place and fought seven parliamentary elections, winning five of them, including a by-election. I therefore have a view about these things, which I will express at a later stage. I would never want this legislation to be used to undermine Members of the House of Commons. That should be a fundamental concern of your Lordships’ House. I served as a Member in Merseyside. I saw one of the most assiduous and respected Members, Frank Field, who continues in the House of Commons to this day, spend days, weeks and months fighting attempts to deselect him and remove him from the House of Commons. We should resist with all our might anything that can be used in a vexatious way to undermine MPs such as Frank Field. I hope that we will not therefore be frightened to send amendments back to another place so that they can give them due and proper consideration. I apologise for not being able to stay to hear the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I begin with an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—two apologies, to get my mea culpas out of the way: first, because I missed some of his opening remarks on these amendments, and secondly, because he was good enough to send them to me in detail a week ago or so by e-mail, and ask for a response. I have not given him that response yet—he is about to get it now. I have to say that this is a seriously bad idea. A core reason is that it brings judges into a direct role with Parliament, which judges themselves will resist very strongly. They will be right to resist it, because once we blur that line between parliamentary democracy and the judiciary we get into very murky waters, where you end up drawing lines where you do not wish to draw them. I am sure—and if there are lawyers here at the moment, they will be the first to agree—that the thing judges hate more than anything else is trying to deal with political cases. So I strongly recommend that we do not go down this road. I will go into just a little more detail—I do not want to spend long on it. The principal point here is the all-important one: judges and Parliament should be kept separate as far as possible.

On the secondary matter of misbehaviour, the misconduct issue is incredibly hard to interpret when it takes place in the context of politics. Many examples have already been given of elected Members of Parliament who might get into a situation where they clash with the law because they are either supporting a demonstration or a strike, or opposing it, or taking a stand on any number of other issues, and who may themselves fall foul of the court. In the e-mail the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, sent me he said that he was trying to address some of the points I had raised at Second Reading. However, this does not deal with them—it aggravates matters.

We need, as far as possible, to follow the Burkean principle that parliamentary representation is decided by the electorate, and that by and large you overrule that only in the most extreme cases—murder or other very serious offences of that type. Otherwise, we get into a position where the court decides. That is why I have such a strong objection to what happened in the case of Phil Woolas MP, where the court decided that he could not stand again. It is so profoundly wrong. It goes right back to the battle that Bradlaugh had with Parliament. He refused to take the oath on the Bible, so the House of Commons refused to let him become a Member. He promptly went back to the electorate, who elected him again and so on. One might say that that makes the case because he won, but there are examples where it would not.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, did not think that there was much in the slippery slope argument. One case in which it would have been a very slippery slope would have been when an MP objected to the First World War. If we consider the attitude and atmosphere around the country in the context of the First World War, an MP taking a pacifist position might well have been in very serious difficulty. As I said in my Second Reading speech, it is a mistake just to look backwards: look forwards. If people were to campaign for one of the opposition groups in Syria—not ISIL—and if the legislation here on terrorism were so tough that they got arrested when they came back, but the group they had been supporting in Syria was not one of the extreme groups, where would we be?

There are umpteen examples where this goes wrong. We should stick with Burke on this. If the electorate decide that somebody is their MP, that should remain the case until the next general election, unless there are some very special circumstances. The more we pull back from that practice, as Burke himself pointed out, the more difficulties we get into. I know how much thought the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, puts into these things, but I will add that members of the judiciary dread cases where they are pulled into a political process—and they are right to dread them. It is all-important that we keep a clear distinction between the law and Parliament.

Georgia

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Venice Commission and others are also engaged in discussions with the Georgian Government about human rights and judicial rights. The ODIHR report was absolutely about prosecutions of members of the former Government and the processes by which prosecutions are carried out, court procedures and so on. We are in very active dialogue with the Georgian Government, as are other EU ambassadors—and, of course, Georgia, through its association relationship with the European Union, has a constant dialogue with that and other international organisations.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, given that this is a 116-page report, is my noble friend not right to use the term “systematic” when he describes the violations of human rights and the undermining of natural justice that is alleged within the context of the report? Will the Minister therefore look again at whether or not those violations should be classified as systematic? Will he also say whether British or EU diplomats are able to attend some of the trials of former officials to ensure that due process is conducted?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Yes, British officials are engaged in that sort of extremely active dialogue, and British officials have gone out to advise the Georgian Government. I stress the word “failings”. Georgia is a country in transition and has not yet entirely established what we regard as western European standards. I remember visiting Poland and Hungary in the mid-1990s, and they had not reached that stage yet either. We are doing all we can to make sure that Georgia follows the same path—but it is rather behind them.

Sudan and South Sudan

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Sandwich has a long-standing and consistent interest in the people of Sudan, and we are all indebted to him for instigating today’s debate. When the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, comes to reply, I hope that that she will share whatever information she has about the continuing humanitarian crisis in Blue Nile and South Kordofan states—which my noble friend talked about—about Khartoum’s refusal to allow charities and NGOs into the area, and about the regime’s aerial bombardment of civilian populations.

Endorsing what my noble friend just said, the South Kordofan and Blue Nile Coordination Unit told me that, last month, a total of 28 Antonov bombing raids dropped more than 130 bombs on 20 different villages. Can the Minister tell us when we last raised what Dr Mukesh Kapila CBE, a former senior British official and former United Nations resident and humanitarian co-ordinator for Sudan, described at a meeting held in Parliament as,

“the second genocide of the twenty first century … unfolding in South Kordofan”?

The first was in Darfur, and the perpetrators in South Kordofan are the same indicted war criminals and fugitives from justice.

I will use my short time today to concentrate my remarks on Darfur, where up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2 million people displaced. A further 300,000 people have been displaced this year. Darfur is a region where governance as a civil concept has collapsed, law and order are a distant memory and the social fabric has been left in tatters. The current policy responses, including UNAMID, the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur that was finalised in 2011, and the government-led national dialogue, are all wholly inadequate to address the national political and the local social and economic drivers and consequences of the crisis. Are the objectives of the DDPD now being reviewed?

In its paper, Darfur 2014: Time to Reframe the Narrative, the Sudan Democracy First Group says:

“The relevance and performance of UNAMID continues to be severely questioned by many observers. Recent events and revelations have not only shown that UNAMID is unable to undertake its mandate to protect civilians and provide protection for humanitarian actors, but it has become complicit in undermining these goals”.

Following my visit to Darfur in 2004, I welcomed the UN Security Council’s decision to send a peacekeeping force with a Chapter VII mandate to protect civilians. However, peacekeepers were only part of what was required: it was also crucial for the international community, and the UN in particular, to hold Sudan accountable for the continuing aerial and ground attacks against civilians by its armed forces and their proxies. UN Security Council resolutions imposed targeted smart sanctions on the architects of the ethnic cleansing. They should have been enforced but they were not, sending Khartoum a signal that there was little political will to hold it to its commitments under international law. Little wonder, then, that Darfur has happened all over again in South Kordofan. That failure meant that there was no peace to keep, and it soon became apparent that UNAMID was not fit for purpose, despite its annual £1.29 billion cost.

There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that UNAMID has repeatedly failed to properly investigate alleged attacks on Darfur civilians, and that it has been systematically impeded and intimidated by Sudanese security services and the Sudanese authorities, in direct contravention of the 2008 status of forces agreement signed by the Khartoum Government.

Those concerns, expressed by local people and international NGOs, have been reinforced by the testimony of former UNAMID spokesperson Aicha Elbasri. The events on the night of 31 October in Tabit, in which 200 girls and women were allegedly raped—and which I have raised in questions and correspondence with the noble Baroness—are only the latest incident in which UNAMID has failed the people of Darfur. When UNAMID personnel finally went to Tabit to investigate, they allowed Sudanese security services not only to accompany them but to film, and therefore intimidate, the local witnesses to whom they spoke.

Following Aicha Elbasri’s allegations, the UN Secretary-General set up an internal review of UNAMID—the Cooper review. However, the Security Council has not been given the full Cooper review team report, and the Secretary-General gave an incomplete summary of its contents to the Security Council. This only adds to the sense that fundamental problems at UNAMID are not being addressed as they should be by either the Department of Peacekeeping Operations or the UN Secretary-General. I hope that the noble Baroness can tell us what we are going to do to insist on transparency and accountability

As a permanent member of the Security Council, and as a general contributor to the peacekeeping operations, the UK must hold Hervé Ladsous, the head of the UN’s peacekeeping operations, accountable for UNAMID’s lamentable performance. There must be an independent external evaluation that examines Aicha Elbasri’s accusations and Ladsous’s appeasement of senior Sudanese officials. Moreover, lessons learnt must be applied to other vastly expensive peacekeeping operations, because this is hardly the first time that civilians have been badly let down by those who were ostensibly protecting them.

Dag Hammarskjöld, one of the great Secretaries-General of the United Nations, once said:

“We should … recognize the United Nations for what it is—an admittedly imperfect but indispensable instrument of nations working for a peaceful evolution towards a more just and secure order”.

He also said:

“The UN wasn’t created to take mankind into paradise, but rather, to save humanity from hell”.

What has happened in Darfur—and most recently in Tabit—does not reveal an imperfect organisation creating a more just and secure order, nor has it saved the people from the hell which Khartoum has imposed. It is our duty to say so.

Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the whole House is indebted to the most reverend Primate for the way in which he introduced this debate. In Liverpool we were well aware of the talented and inspiring man that we had as Dean of Liverpool Cathedral. I think now the whole nation is beginning to understand the unique combination of experience and gifts that the most reverend Primate brings to the role that he now plays.

During his opening remarks, the most reverend Primate talked about the cost of deploying a battalion and it brought to my mind the famous exchange involving Stalin, who asked, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”. The answer, I suppose, came in the form of the Polish Pope, Karol Wojtyla, and the events at the end of the Cold War—in the transformative effect that the churches in all their denominations played in bringing an end to the former Soviet Union and the tyrannies that existed during that time.

The most reverend Primate also talked about the role of the BBC World Service and the British Council in promoting values, both institutions being extraordinary exemplars of soft power. I will return to that subject, as others have done, in my remarks. Earlier this year, in February, I introduced a debate on their role and I argued that the Government needed to combine soft power with hard power in a foreign policy based on what might be described as smart power.

In the face of terrorism, war and dictatorship, there are of course times when hard power—military force—needs to be deployed. There are times when the use of financial power is needed, to cut off sources of funding for those who seek to do us or their own people harm. There are times to provide funding and resources to those struggling for freedom or survival. There are times when political and diplomatic pressure is essential, and the work of our intelligence services in ensuring that we are aware of dangers before they occur is always vital. But soft power—a concept first articulated by the American academic Joseph Nye, as we have heard—should never be underestimated. When combined with all the other tools that are available, it can contribute to an intelligent, creative, practical and principled foreign policy.

Several months ago, the British Academy published an excellent report, which concluded that:

“UK foreign policy is too often conducted in a compartmentalised manner”,

which was a point alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng,

“with the would-be benefits of soft power either judged to be outweighed by security concerns”,

which was a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, and by the excellent Select Committee report,

“or simply never taken into account”.

The report concludes that soft power is,

“likely to become more important in international relations over the coming years. UK governments can help themselves simply by recognising this, and by providing enough resources for the development and maintenance of its long-term assets”.

More than 80 years after its establishment by Lord Reith, today the BBC World Service has a global audience of 265 million people, as the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, reminded us. It transmits in English and 27 other languages. Often it is the only lifeline to honest reporting of news and current affairs. That was certainly true for the millions living behind the iron curtain in eastern Europe during the Cold War. It was true in Burma, throughout decades of brutal military dictatorship. When I visited Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in March last year, she told me of the vital role that the World Service played, not only as a source of information and hope for her during her long, lonely years under house arrest, but as a source of ideas for the people of Burma. During my visit I gave a lecture at the British Council library in Rangoon, which throughout the worst of those years was always a place of hope for the people of Burma. I know that last month the Member of Parliament for Enfield Southgate, David Burrowes, delivered another lecture there on parliamentary democracy, human rights and civil society.

In building Burma’s democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi particularly points to the role that the World Service has played in disseminating information, broadcasting truthful news bulletins and programmes that could be relied upon, and sustaining morale in the darkest of times. Yet, as we have heard, funding and the mandate of both the World Service and the British Council risk their effectiveness. In 2010-11 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office grant for the British Council was 27% of its income. In 2013-14 that grant is forecast to be less than 20% of total income. The proportion is projected to decrease further, reaching 16% of total income by 2015-16. Meanwhile, of course, the World Service has seen its mandate changed and its capacity reduced.

I will give your Lordships one example of the effect of depleted resources. I want to talk about the use of soft power in North Korea. I remind the House of my non-pecuniary interest as co-chairman of the All-Party Group on North Korea. Although I readily concede that there are significant differences between Burma and North Korea, there are also legitimate comparisons, and I regret that our now more resource-driven approach has led to very different outcomes.

Your Lordships will recall that in February, a United Nations commission of inquiry report found that the North Korean Government were guilty of crimes against humanity, including enforced starvation, torture, sexual violence, forced labour, political prison camps and public executions.

Bringing to light the most devastating and relentless catalogue of crimes against humanity in the post-1945 era, it is salient to note that these abuses were all committed while the UK pursued a soft power approach towards the country through a mix of cultural, educational, and exchange projects, some of which I have seen first hand on my four visits to that benighted country. On North Korea, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions about what works and what does not.

The last time there was a war on the Korean peninsula, some 3 million people lost their lives, including 1,000 British servicemen—probably more, I suspect, than in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Falklands combined. As the transition from military dictatorship to thriving democracy and market economy in the Republic of Korea has demonstrated, a peaceful, united Korea need not be a pipe dream. It is worth mentioning in the context of today’s debate that not only were there all those civilian and military casualties, but the former Anglican Bishop of Korea, the late Monsignor Richard Rutt, in his booklet The Martyrs of Korea, estimated that around 8,000 martyrs had died for their Christian faith in Korea during that period. As evidence has demonstrated in both the report issued by the United Nations and in testimonies given only a week ago in this House—which will be included in a report to be published by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom or Belief—those deprivations of religious freedom and offences against Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights continue to this day.

Change on the Korean peninsula will not come about simply by accident or as a result of simple, short-term interventions. When we think about soft power in that context we should ask ourselves two questions: who should we be looking to influence in North Korea and how can we engage North Korea in a responsible and effective manner?

In many ways, North Korea is an exception to so many rules—I readily concede that. Decades of international dialogue and pressure have had precious little effect on how the regime conducts itself in the international arena. The report by the United Nations that I referred to describes it as a “country without parallel” in its abuse of human rights. Measured against the universal declaration, if that were to be its benchmark, it is in breach of pretty well every one of its 30 articles. Years of sanctions have failed to curb its desire to develop nuclear weapons, and criticism of its human rights record has not, thus far, satiated its appetite to continue to commit the most egregious abuses in modern history.

Some 111 members of the General Assembly have just voted for the Security Council to consider referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court for those crimes against humanity. This is a superb example of a non-military approach, using the tools of international diplomacy and insisting on the upholding of international law in safeguarding universally accepted human rights. Even if a member of the Security Council decided to exercise a veto, perhaps fearful of its own record on human rights, the world’s verdict has already been recorded through the General Assembly. It cannot be doubted that the prospect of a Nuremberg moment—whether at the ICC or a specifically constituted regional tribunal awaiting those who have been responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people in those camps, and for the 200,000 who are estimated to be in them today—has already concentrated minds. I commend to the House the energy and commitment that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has invested in securing that outcome. Perhaps the Minister will give us an appraisal of what is likely to happen next.

In the longer term, we should have some idea of how we are going to engage not necessarily the regime but North Korea generally. Other noble Lords have referred to the use of the diaspora. We have 800 to 900 North Koreans living in this country now; there are 25,000 North Koreans who have escaped and are living in South Korea. We must enable them to be agents for change and we should deploy resources, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said, from within the ODA budget. They should be deployed across the piece, not in silos, to bring about those objectives. At a recent meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, it was suggested that we need off-the-tracks lines of engagement. Breaking the information blockade should be one of those objectives, which is why I deplore the decision of the BBC World Service thus far not to broadcast to the Korean peninsula, unlike what happened in Burma.

These are not random thoughts and ideas. In the debate that I initiated earlier this year I mentioned an important book by the former US ambassador to Hungary, Mark Palmer, and I want to highlight it once again as I conclude. Mark Palmer was a notable advocate of soft power. He set out a detailed plan for how dictatorships can be challenged and freedom advanced using non-military means and the exercise of soft power. His book, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025, is one which I commend to the Minister and to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

During our recent debate on dealing with the rise of Islamic State in Syria, I said that simply relying on military responses is not enough, and I quoted Einstein’s definition of insanity. He said that insanity is when you do the same things over and over again. In thanking the most reverend Primate for giving us the opportunity for today’s debate, I suggest that, instead of condemning the world to insanity, we need painstakingly to develop approaches which combine intelligence with a fearless passion for promoting human dignity, human rights, respect for difference, the protection of minorities and the vulnerable, and the upholding of the rule of law.

South Sudan

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I entirely agree that the churches are among the strongest and most widespread civil organisations in that deeply embattled country. Of course, many of the civil society organisations are now in refugee camps outside Sudan. I pay a particular compliment to those aid workers who are helping in South Sudan, in conditions of very considerable insecurity. Many of them come from British NGOs. We all recognise how difficult the situation is and we are certainly working with the churches as far as we can.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that too much time in South Sudan has been focused on state building rather than nation building, and that that is reflected in the 38% of revenue that has been spent on armaments in South Sudan compared with the 7% spent on education? As we approach the peace process, will he ensure, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, argued, and as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, has just said, that the representative nature of the peace process becomes more apparent, including not only warlords but many of those who have suffered, not least the women in South Sudan?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this is, of course, a very new country and there has not been very much time for either state or nation building so far. We are certainly working through IGAD to pull in as many civil society organisations as we can in order to ensure that we do not have warlord-dominated negotiations of the sort the noble Lord suggested.