Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To move that this House takes note of international compliance with Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights concerning freedom of belief.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking all noble Lords who will participate in this balloted debate, which draws attention to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”.

Today we will hear from many distinguished Members of your Lordships’ House, including my noble friend Lord Sacks, who says in The Dignity of Difference:

“The great faiths provide meaning and purpose for their adherents. The question is: can they make space for those who are not its adherents, who sing a different song, hear a different music, tell a different story? On that question, the fate of the 21st century may turn”.

The urgency of that challenge was reflected in a recent speech by the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right honourable Douglas Alexander. Among systematic violations of Article 18, he particularly drew attention to what he described as “anti-Christian persecution”, which he said,

“must be named for the evil that it is, and challenged systematically by people of faith and of no faith”.

I know that we will hear later from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who will expand on that important speech.

Two recent cases underline the universal applicability of Article 18. A young Indonesian man, Alexander Aan, was jailed for more than two years simply for declaring his atheism on Facebook. Mubarak Bala, a Nigerian, was confined to a mental institution for the same reason. Ben Rogers of Christian Solidarity Worldwide visited Alexander Aan in prison in Indonesia and campaigned for his release. Such welcome advocacy by a group of one religious persuasion working for the freedom of another, whose beliefs are different—hearing different music, telling a different story—is echoed in a letter by world Buddhist leaders, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, calling for an end to violence against Muslims in Burma. The Dalai Lama is emphatic that:

“The violence in Buddhist majority countries targeting religious minorities is completely unacceptable. I urge Buddhists in these countries to imagine an image of the Buddha before them before they commit such a crime”.

Not only is Article 18 a universal human right; it is a human right that is violated universally. Last year, under the admirable chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Freedom of Religion or Belief, of which I am an officer, published Article 18: An Orphaned Right. It noted that,

“almost 75% of the world’s population live in countries with high levels of government restrictions on freedom of religion or belief”.

Thanks to major speeches by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister, and the crucial work of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, the introduction of the European Union Guidelines on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the excellent work of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, this issue has been given greater prominence. I know that today’s important debate will contribute to that.

Yet, compared with Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom and its ambassador-at-large, the excellent Andrew Bennett, or the US State Department and the US Commission of International Religious Freedom, the Foreign Office has just one official specifically focused on freedom of religion, and only for a third of her time. The FCO has said that it wants to develop a toolkit on freedom of religion or belief for diplomats, stating that,

“every minister at the FCO is an ambassador for religious freedom, raising and promoting these issues in the countries with which they engage”.

But how will they do that? How are our diplomats trained in religious literacy? Compare the £34 billion spent on military operations since the Cold War with the paltry resources deployed in promoting Article 18 —in promoting religious coexistence, public discourse and dialogue, foundational to building peaceful societies in a world increasingly afraid of difference.

In an all too brief survey of worldwide violations of Article 18, I inevitably begin in the Middle East, where, in the midst of an orgy of violence and brutality, we are fast approaching a time when Christianity will have no home in its ancient homelands. In Syria, the brutal murder in April of the 75 year-old Dutch Jesuit Father Franz van der Lugt, who had served there for 50 years, working in education and with disabled people, illustrates why an estimated 450,000 Christians have fled. Followers of other religions, notably the Mandeans, Yizidis, Baha’is and Ahmadis suffer similarly.

In Iraq, a Christian population of 1.4 million has been reduced to 150,000. In recent weeks, the depredations, beheadings and crucifixions by ISIS are almost beyond belief. For the first time in almost 2,000 years, Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, no longer has a Christian community. Its churches are now closed, most having been desecrated. In what has been described as “religious cleansing”, ISIS says that anyone who refuses to convert and defies it will be,

“killed, crucified or have their hands and feet cut off”.

ISIS has taken a sledgehammer to the tomb of Jonah, replaced the cross with the black Islamic flag on top of Mosul’s St Ephraim’s Cathedral, and beheaded or crucified any Muslim who dares to dissent. This week in Istanbul, the head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, Professor Dr Mehmet Görmez, in his address to the participants of the World Islamic Scholars Peace, Moderation and Common Sense Initiative conference said that 1,000 Muslims are being killed each day, and that 90% of the killers are also Muslims. He said:

“They are being killed by their brothers”.

Yesterday, the archbishops of Iraq united in their condemnation of these events but also called on the outside world to help. The only people who have successfully withstood ISIS are the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. To its credit, the Kurdish leadership has been generously offering safe haven to Mosul’s fleeing Christians and has asked for international aid to help it do so. This crisis justifies huge humanitarian and resettlement aid that could include micro and business loans to help people to help themselves. The West must also press the Gulf to end the funding of ISIS. Where in Mosul is the “responsibility to protect”, let alone Article 18? I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us.

Elsewhere, in Egypt, these are increasingly dangerous and menacing times for freedom of belief. As honorary president of the UK Copts, I saw the way in which Copts were targeted by the Muslim Brotherhood. Last year, in the single largest attack on Christians in Egypt since the 14th century, more than 50 churches were bombed or burnt. It was Egypt’s Kristallnacht. What priority do we give to Egypt’s minorities as we engage with the new President?

In Iran, the so-called moderate, Hassan Rouhani, in the 12 months since he was elected, has executed 800 people and imprisoned and tortured many others. Iran continues to target religious minorities, particularly Baha’is, whose cemeteries have been desecrated; 136 Baha’is are in prison, some since 2008. As “unprotected infidels” they can be attacked with impunity. Repression against Christians in Iran includes: waves of arrests and detentions; raids on church gatherings; raids on social gatherings; harsh interrogations; physical and psychological torture, including demands to recant and to identify other Christians; extended detentions without charge; violations of due process; convictions for ill defined crimes or on falsified political charges; economic targeting through exorbitant bail demands; and threats of execution for apostasy. What priority will our new chargé d’affaires in Tehran be giving these Article 18 issues when he meets the regime’s leadership?

I return now to Sudan and the treatment of Meriam Ibrahim, which was described by the Prime Minister as “barbaric”. In May, this young mother of two was charged, and sentenced to death for apostasy and 100 lashes for adultery. Having refused to renounce her faith, she was forced to give birth shackled in a prison cell in Khartoum. Happily, given a debate where we will be hearing so much that is so very sad and tragic, international pressure, often led by young internet campaigners, has led to her release. This morning, she arrived safely in Italy. However, Meriam Ibrahim’s case is not an isolated one. Archaic and cruel laws lead to stonings and lashings, with Al-Jazeera reporting that in one recent year, 43,000 women were publicly flogged.

In Nigeria, another crisis is looming for religion and unfolding on a daily basis. There are reports of collusion between elements of the military and Islamist forces. This week marks 100 days since Boko Haram abducted more than 200 schoolgirls in Chibok. Are we any nearer to finding them? My noble friend Lady Cox has just returned from Nigeria and will have much more to say about the situation and her report documenting that jihadist violence.

As the Minister responds to Article 18 abuses in Nigeria, might we hear something, too, about the plight of Christians in Kenya, who face increasing threats and attacks from al-Shabaab, and in Eritrea—another serious violator of freedom of religion? The UN has just established a Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea, and I look forward to hearing how we will assist its work.

I have focused extensively on the Middle East and Africa, but across Asia, Article 18 faces serious threats as well. We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, about the situation in Pakistan. Think of the bombing last September of the Anglican church in Peshawar, killing 127 and injuring 250, of the attacks on Shias and Ahmadis or of the imprisonment of and death sentences on Christians, such as Asia Bibi, charged with blasphemy. For challenging those laws, Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minority Affairs, was assassinated in 2011, and no one has been brought to justice.

Meanwhile, in Burma, Muslims are facing growing religious intolerance. In March 2013, I visited a village just outside Naypyidaw. In the charred embers of a burnt-out madrassah, I took statements from the few Muslims who had not fled. I met Rohingya Muslims and heard from ethnic Kachin and Chin Christians facing terrible persecution. Proposed new legislation to restrict religious conversions and interreligious marriage will hardly help; practical initiatives countering hate speech and intolerance might. Could we not ask the UN Secretary-General to visit Burma, specifically to address rising religious intolerance, and encourage the establishment of an international and independent inquiry into the violence in Rakhine state, Kachin state and other parts of the country?

Elsewhere in Asia, religious intolerance is rising, too, for example in Indonesia. I would welcome the Minister’s response to CSW’s new report, Indonesia: Pluralism in Peril, and the Government’s view of Prabowo Subianto’s attempts to undermine religious coexistence and his challenge to this week’s election results. There are also threats to Article 18 in India, with a BJP attack on an evangelical church in Uttar Pradesh last week; in Sri Lanka, where anti-Muslim violence has erupted; in Bangladesh, where, earlier this month, nuns were brutally attacked and beaten; in Malaysia, where a court has ruled that only Muslims can use the term “Allah”, even though Christians have traditionally also used that same term in their texts and in their languages; and in Brunei, where a full Sharia penal code is being introduced.

Turning to the Far East, I hope we will hear whether we have protested about the demolition of Protestant and Catholic churches there; the continued detention of the Catholic bishop of Shanghai, Thaddeus Ma, arrested in 2012; and the well-being of the Tibetan Buddhist monk and scholar Tenzin Lhundup, about whom nothing has been heard since his arrest in May, and the self-immolation of 131 Tibetans since 2009. In 2009, I visited Tibet with the noble Lord, Lord Steel. Together, we published our report Breaking the Deadlock and, in highlighting the religious dimension, we argued:

“Any attempts to resolve the political situation … must take due account is of the profound spiritual life of Tibetan people”.

In Laos and Vietnam, the situation is perilous; I have given the Minister details. We had a debate only yesterday about what some have described as genocide in North Korea. For 10 years, I have chaired the all-party group and I commend the Hansard report of yesterday’s debate to all Members of the House.

As I have outlined in a speech which rather inadequately has tried to set the scene for the many more detailed interventions which will follow, Article 18 is under threat in almost every corner of the world. As we approach the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, we should recall that, long before Article 18, it asserted the importance of religious freedom.

Societies which deny such freedoms are invariably unhappy societies. Research shows that there is a direct link between economic prosperity and religious freedom. In 1965, Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s proclamation on religious freedom, said correctly that a society which promotes religious freedom will be enlivened and enriched and one that does not will decay.

Article 18 is a foundational human right—many would say the foundational right—because, while there should be no hierarchy of rights and all rights are interdependent, without the freedom to choose, practise, share without coercion and change your beliefs, what freedom is there? As my noble friend Lord Sacks says, on this question, the fate of the 21st century may turn. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, although I had the privilege of entering your Lordships’ House in 1997 as an independent Cross-Bencher, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and I first met—in what seems a far-off age—when I was president of the National League of Young Liberals. I immediately recognised that I had encountered someone who had an extraordinary breadth of knowledge of world affairs. But as befits a former cathedral chorister, as he has pointed out, he also has a great knowledge of the relationship between faith and politics. Although he is not the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to whom we have all paid tribute for the extraordinary work that she does in this area, we are all indebted to him for his reply today, and we look forward to the correspondence that will come from the detailed questions that have been raised.

I thank all noble Lords who have made such rich, eloquent and knowledgeable contributions to this debate. None of us could have known how topical and timely this balloted Motion would prove to be. Many have spoken from first-hand experience. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, set us off with a metaphor about the unleashing of a tiger, and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, used a similar metaphor when he talked about the prairie fire that can spread. Many noble Lords referred to that fire, including the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson.

The Minister actually took only 15 of his allotted 20 minutes, and with one speaker struck off the list—

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I inform the noble Lord that the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, took less than his time was because he did not have any more time than that to take.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I am sorry, my Lords, but people stuck to their time limits and one noble Lord removed his name from the list, so there was some extra time. The courtesy of the House is all that I am trying to observe in thanking all those who have participated in this important debate.

Article 18 demands an end to suppression, persecution and gross injustice. It should be at the heart of our concerns, not an orphaned right.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise, but the time allotted for this debate has now elapsed and I must put the question.

Iran: Human Rights

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree with that. We have to remember that there is something of a civil society in Iran, in spite of the current regime. Iran has an ancient civilisation and much pride in that ancient civilisation. The persecution of minorities—both religious minorities such as the Baha’i and ethnic minorities such as the Ahwazi Arabs—is also a stain on the current Iranian regime. We know that there are many people in Tehran and elsewhere who likewise disapprove of that. We continue to make our case.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, has the Minister had a chance to look at the letter sent to him at the Foreign Office by his noble friend Lord Carlile of Berriew last weekend? It concerns not just the death of Mr Savadjani, but a number of members of the Iranian resistance who are currently scheduled for execution. In the light of what the Minister has just said about the plight of the Baha’is, would he like to make some further comment about the execution of Baha’i believers in Iran?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have condemned extremely strongly the persecution of the Baha’i. There are still, as the noble Lord knows, a large number in prison. I have not seen my noble friend Lord Carlile’s letter; I will look at it and will write to the noble Lord.

Ukraine, Syria and Iran

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are doing our best to carry the P5 with us as we go. That is an important part of where we are going. It is extremely important that we got the first resolution on Syria for some time agreed unanimously by all participants. That is a significant step forward and we should not underrate it.

I agree that the situation is appalling. I am told that somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people are trapped in Aleppo at the moment. Part of the expectation of what will happen is that there may be another surge of refugees across the frontiers in the next six months if some of these sieges are lifted, as, of course, we very much hope they will be.

The fact that this is not a chapter 7 resolution does not necessarily mean that attitudes—including the Russian attitude and, perhaps with it, the Chinese attitude—will evolve. The behaviour of the regime in killing and starving its own people is losing the sympathy of the whole international community.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister answered the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, by talking about the role which the United Nations Security Council might play in the future. One of the things we should be doing is looking at the role of the International Criminal Court and the ability of the Security Council to make a referral—not least because Ban Ki-Moon only this week said that unspeakable suffering was being experienced by the children in Syria, with some 10,000 of those killed so far being children. In the Foreign Secretary’s Statement we heard about the barrel bombs that are continuing to rain down on Aleppo; the sieges being undertaken in places such as Homs, where people are being starved to death; and, in previous times, the use of Sarin gas and the fact that only 11% of chemical weapons have been removed thus far. Surely it is time for us to start thinking about collecting the evidence against those who have been responsible for these deeds, whether they come from extremist militant groups or the regime, to ensure that one day they will face their day of trial.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, a number of groups, both governmental and non-governmental, are collecting evidence of atrocities in Syria as we go forward. We are committed to a transition regime rather than a destruction regime because we are well aware of the lessons of Iraq where, under American leadership, most of the institutions of Saddam Hussein’s state were dismantled, leaving us with an ungoverned and ungovernable country. We are also very clear that in any transition there is no place for the core members of the Assad regime, and that is what we intend to negotiate through the Geneva II talks.

Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Cox for once again focusing our attention on the suffering peoples of Sudan. I begin by expressing sadness and some shock that, despite all the debates and all the attempts to create a climate for peaceful development, the suffering in that war-torn country continues unabated. My first visit to South Sudan was during the civil war, which claimed 2 million lives, and, in 2004, I went to Darfur and saw first hand a conflict which had claimed between 200,000 and 300,000 lives. While the world looked on, 90% of Darfur’s villages were razed to the ground. At the time, I published a report entitled, If This Isn’t Genocide, What Is? Throughout 2011 and 2012, I tabled questions and spoke in your Lordships’ House about the new genocide unravelling, as we have heard, in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, which was described by Dr Mukesh Kapila, a former high-ranking British and United Nations official, as,

“the second genocide of the 21st century”—

Darfur being the first. Those who unleashed this torrent of unconscionable violence on their own people are undoubtedly mass murderers and fugitives from justice, having been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. In South Kordofan and Blue Nile, more than 1 million are now displaced, and the perpetrators are attempting to repeat what happened in Darfur, but this time by closing borders and refusing access without witnesses.

Two years ago, Ministers told me that they were urgently seeking access to the affected areas:

“Reports of such atrocities will be investigated and, if they prove true, those responsible will need to be brought to account”.—[Official Report, 21/6/11; col. WA 294.]

Three months later, Ministers said that,

“we continue … to seek urgent access to those most affected by the conflict”.—[Official Report, 9/11/11; col. WA 66.]

However, we have lamentably failed to do either, failing both systematically to collect evidence from fleeing refugees and to gain access to the areas on which bombs have been raining down. I hope that the Minister will update us on both of those questions.

Yesterday I attended a briefing of the Associate Parliamentary Group for the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan, of which I am an officer, along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Kinnock and Lady Cox. What I heard did not just leave me saddened and shocked, it also left me angry.

We heard that in Darfur, where 2.3 million people are already displaced, a further 350,000 people have been displaced since January and 1.3 million people are now in temporary camps; that aerial bombardment is a regular occurrence; that there is a climate of fear and terrorisation and a rapid downward trend in security; and that the situation is getting worse. We heard that there may be another 50,000 people displaced in Adela but no one, including a UNAMID force of more than 20,000 personnel, has access, so no one really knows. For INGOs, the situation is fraught with danger following the killing of two of World Vision’s staff in July. There is now virtually no humanitarian access to areas that are not held by the Government.

Yesterday we were told that it is five years since DfID officials have been able to get beyond the state capitals in Darfur to visit projects run by NGOs. I hope that we will hear from the Minister that our commitment to Darfur and the rest of Sudan remains a priority for the UK, that DfID staff are fully informed of the situation, and that we are finally getting to grips with the fact that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, said, the Doha document for peace in Darfur is on its last legs. I hope that the Minister will tell us when we last raised Darfur and the situation in South Kordofan in the Security Council. The Security Council resolutions banning military flights over Darfur are, we heard yesterday, regularly being broken and those who issue their genocidal orders do so with total impunity.

As I prepared for today’s debate, it was with a genuine sense of sadness. It is more than 10 years ago that, on the eve of a breakthrough in negotiations between the Government of Sudan and SPLA rebels, I welcomed the new atmosphere of hope, but also warned that a ceasefire would be no guarantee of democracy or justice for all. More than 10 years later, it is clear that the CPA that followed has failed to bring change, democracy, or justice to the Sudanese peoples of Sudan or South Sudan. That remains today a distant dream in many of those places. I also feel shock because, despite the ongoing and mounting tragedy of a further decade of war, the attention of the world appears to have turned away from the region.

It is not only Darfur and South Kordofan; consider for a moment the peoples of central and northern Sudan, who flocked to the streets in September of this year and were brutally massacred by the Government of Sudan’s security services. More than 200 protesters were shot dead. The awfulness speaks for itself. Consider also the situation in Jonglei, where it is thought that militias loyal to the Government in Khartoum have also been trying to destabilise the situation.

More than 10 years ago, I said to the House that Sudan’s modern history is littered with temporary peace agreements which were eventually broken. The CPA has been broken for the people of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and it has been broken for the people of Abyei. The various Darfur peace processes were flawed and have not been honoured. The eastern Sudan peace agreement does not work for the eastern Sudanese.

It is past time to think strategically. Are we prepared simply to sit back and watch protesters be killed on the streets of Khartoum, or will we get behind calls for fundamental change in Sudan? What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to help the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan? The panel is tasked with mediating Sudan’s internal conflicts and its conflict with South Sudan, but can it really have the necessary capacity required for all the immense tasks which it has been given?

Finally, I wonder if the Minister has seen the report launched by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, just two weeks ago on behalf of Aid to the Church in Need. The report details the specific persecution of Christians in many parts of the Republic of the Sudan. This is a really troubling phenomenon which is now occurring on a systematic basis. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Human Rights: Burma

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would agree that history shows that one of the most difficult periods in a country’s history is when it is attempting to move away from a highly authoritarian regime. The question whether it can move from that without a bloody conflict is, of course, always one of the difficult ones. We have taken the choice to encourage the moves currently under way in Burma; things are improving a good deal there but, of course, they have a long way to go. The opposition, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, have very much encouraged the move that the British have taken.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, is it not crucial that we take our lead from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as the noble Lord has just said? I met her just before Easter, when she said that we must engage in dialogue—but also that we must be realistic. During the discussions with Thein Sein, were limits placed on the new military relationship that has been announced by the Prime Minister? In particular, have we raised the Burmese army’s use of child soldiers, forced labour, sexual violence and land mines? Can he confirm that it is not our intention to sell arms to Burma?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I can confirm that the first thing that Aung San Suu Kyi asked the British Government to do was to appoint a defence attaché to Burma some months ago. We are now offering military training to a number of Burmese officers in this country to help them through the transition. Requests have also been made to assist in retraining the Burmese police. These are all things that we think will help through a transition—not, of course, towards full democracy and a perfect resolution of all these problems, but we see the situation as improving. We are doing our best not only to help it to improve but to monitor how far it goes.

Sudan: War Crimes

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by Amnesty International, We had no time to bury him: War crimes in Sudan’s Blue Nile State.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are deeply concerned about the suffering caused by the conflict in Blue Nile state. Accounts presented in Amnesty’s report underline our serious concern about the impact on civilians of the military tactics used. Our priority is a cessation of hostilities and full access to the area for life-saving humanitarian assistance. We continue to press both the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North—the SPLM-N—to enter into talks to achieve this.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that, in addition to this shocking report, new satellite imagery compiled by Amnesty International shows the sheer extent of the purging of the Nuba people from these areas of South Kordofan and Blue Nile, as well as the scorched-earth policies being pursued by the Sudanese military—unabated, uncondemned and unobstructed by the West? Can the Minister tell us when this situation was last raised in the United Nations Security Council and whether we support the extension of the current arms embargo on Darfur to the rest of Sudan? Rather than locking out refugees from camps such as Yida, why are we still not collecting first-hand accounts from witnesses that detail the genocide and war crimes against humanity which are carried out on a day-by-day basis?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord asked about six questions, and I am not sure that I can answer all of them. The UN is extremely heavily engaged both in Sudan and in South Sudan, with three UN missions and a number of other UN operations. We and other Governments make entirely clear to the Government of Sudan our horror at what is taking place. However, as the noble Lord knows, access to the areas of conflict is extremely difficult for diplomats at present.

Sudan

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as I have already said, the two presidents meet and say that they have agreed and that matters will now be implemented—and then too little has happened. We are fully engaged with the Government of Sudan and with the Government of South Sudan and are working with others to bring as much pressure to bear as we can.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Although the Minister is anxious about using words such as genocide, does he recall that it is exactly year ago when Dr Mukesh Kapila, who is one of our senior officials in Sudan—indeed, he was an official at the United Nations—used precisely that word to describe what is happening in South Kordofan and Abyei? Having listened to my noble friend a few moments ago describing what is happening now, a year later, in a regime headed by Omar al-Bashir, who is a war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court, surely we should be stepping up the pressure for at least the ICC investigations, to which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred earlier, to be extended to cover Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have already stepped up the pressure and are very much engaged. We are working with the African Union and the high-level group, with Mr Mbeki as the co-ordinator, to see what pressure we can bring to bear on all concerned. We are all conscious that this conflict is taking place across the great dividing line between the Arab world and the black African world—a situation that we see also in Mali—and this is an area where we have to engage actively but carefully.

Pakistan

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, Pakistan faces challenging political times but that is not new. All parties in Pakistan recognise that this is a huge opportunity for Pakistan, for once, to have a full-term democratically elected Government pass power to another democratically elected Government. From all the discussions that we have had with all parties in Pakistan, they all recognise how high the stakes are. The noble Baroness will be aware of a Friends of Pakistan group, and it may well be that these are matters that can be discussed there.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, I particularly welcome the way in which the Minister reached out during her visit to Pakistan to people from minorities, especially religious minorities. Has she noted that this month is the first anniversary of the assassination of Salman Taseer, the former governor of the Punjab, who was murdered along with Shahbaz Bhatti, the former Minister for Minorities in Pakistan? Can she tell the House whether, during her discussions, she considered how British aid is being used in Pakistan? Is it being used to create and promote the sort of values espoused by Members of your Lordships’ House and the British Government, or is any of that money being siphoned into causes and groups that promote the kind of sectarian violence that led to the deaths of Shahbaz Bhatti and the governor of the Punjab?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, the assassinations of Salman Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti were tragic for both Pakistan and the rest of the world. They were a personal tragedy for me because of my personal relationship with Shahbaz Bhatti. However, as I promised him, I visited Karachi when I was in Pakistan, and specifically visited a convent school for girls and met the Archbishop of Karachi. The school is an excellent example of service to education and to interfaith relations. It is run by an Irish nun who has been in Pakistan for 58 years. I was delighted to hear from the Archbishop that the Christian community in Karachi is doing well, despite its challenges.

Our main commitment to aid in Pakistan is through the education programme. We are committed to 4 million more children being educated as a result of DfID’s commitment in Pakistan. I am sure that all in your Lordships’ House would agree that the best way to open minds and to deal with the challenges of extremism is through better educated young people.

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Framework Agreement) Order 2012

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the background to this order ready for affirmative resolution and following yesterday’s proceedings on the trade agreement with the Republic of Korea. That, too, is a very important document, with its contents at an early stage; it remains to be seen how that will work out in the build-up of trade between ourselves and the Republic of Korea. This instrument is one of the accompaniments that the EU and its allies and other countries with which we are doing deals like this rightly require. The international practice now is to have agreements along these lines: a framework agreement alongside a trade agreement dealing with all the other matters that the Minister has listed, which are extremely important from the point of view of good governance and civil society being properly looked after in the countries that are parties to this agreement. In this case, that means the member states of the EU and the Republic of Korea. Obviously, right now there is bound to be a certain amount of tension, at least in the margin, because of events in North Korea and the relationship and heightened tension between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. One hopes that will not have any deleterious effect on the trade agreement that we discussed yesterday or on this agreement.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who is a great expert on Korea. He is particularly knowledgeable about South Korea—and, indeed, North Korea—and I would presumptuously guess that he may want to say a number of things about these matters. I will listen with great interest, but with some trepidation. I apologise in advance in case we find our proceedings go on a bit because I am due at a Select Committee where a Minister is attending at 4.10 pm. Therefore, if I depart prematurely, which I would certainly not wish to do because it would be very discourteous on my part, I can none the less rely on my noble friend Lady Maddock to keep me abreast of the developments in the rest of the discussion, and I shall look very closely at Hansard.

On behalf of the other part of the coalition today and in support of the Minister, I express support for this agreement.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the Minister said at the outset of his remarks that we should attach great importance to our relationship with the Republic of Korea, our key ally in east Asia; I entirely concur. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, suggested that I am an expert on Korean issues, which is an exaggeration. So far as North Korea is concerned, the only thing predictable about it is its unpredictability. I do not claim great expertise, but I declare a non-financial interest as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, which I founded along with my noble friend Lady Cox seven years ago following our first visit there.

I was struck by paragraph 7.2 of the memorandum to the statutory instrument, which lists “Justice, Freedom and Security” and suggests that these might involve,

“(e.g. combating organised crime and corruption, drugs and money laundering, migration, protection of personal data) as well as on good governance, and taxation”.

It goes on to talk about what the agreement will allow engagement over:

“issues such as climate change; security of energy supply; approaches to labour issues; education and other issues relating to structural change in the world economy; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; counter terrorism; and a shared understanding on the need to prosecute the most serious crimes of concern to the international community”.

I do not take exception to any of those; indeed, I shall return to three or four examples in the list with some brief questions to the Minister in a moment or two. However, I am surprised that there is no reference to the relationship between North Korea and the European Union—and between it and ourselves. We have had diplomatic relations for over a decade now with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The lack of such a reference seems strange, as does the lack of a reference to human rights in that list.

Looking at the issue from the international perspective, one of the errors in how we have conducted relations is that we have emphasised security questions a great deal—properly so, given that North Korea embarked on the development of weapons of mass destruction—but failed to run in parallel questions of human rights. This is not a criticism of Her Majesty’s Government—quite the opposite. I was struck that Amnesty International reported on 10 January that, to mark the birthday of the two late leaders in North Korea, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, an amnesty had been declared for the release of prisoners there. If the Minister has any information on that, I would be grateful if he will let us know whether that is so, how many prisoners might be involved, and whether he sees it as a glimmer of hope in the international situation. If he does not have that information today, I would be grateful if he wrote to me in due course.

I have long argued that we have not really learnt the lesson of history that in the period of the Soviet Union, we understandably matched weapons of mass destruction—the SS-20s and SS-22s of the Soviet Union—with our cruise and Pershing missiles. Simultaneously, Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and Ronald Reagan as President of the United States at the time embarked on support for the Helsinki Accords, promoting human rights issues alongside and in parallel with security questions. That was the reason we saw the Berlin Wall crumble, and it will be the reason—maybe not tomorrow, but in time to come—that the 38th parallel, which divides the Korean peninsula, disappears as well.

The importance of human rights in North Korea should not be underestimated. In a leader 18 months ago entitled “Slave state”, the Times said:

“The condition of the people of North Korea ranks among the great tragedies of the past century. The despotism that consigns them to that state is one of its greatest crimes”.

It was in this Room—the Moses Room—that I chaired meetings of the all-party group where we took evidence on several occasions from people who had escaped from North Korea. I will give only one example to the Committee this afternoon: a witness called Ahn Myeong-cheol, aged 37, who worked as a prison guard at four political prison camps within what is called the absolute control zone between 1987 and 1994. He movingly described in this Room how his father killed himself when he realised that he had been heard criticising the regime. His mother and brothers were sent to prison camps. Ahn was re-educated and became a prison guard in that so-called absolute control zone. He vividly and harrowingly described how he witnessed guard dogs, imported from Russia, tear three children to pieces and how the camp warden congratulated the guard who trained the dogs. He said that even when prisoners died they were punished; their corpses and remains were simply left to disintegrate and rot away on the open ground.

I also chaired a meeting for Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, who was the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and who, along with his successor Mr Darusman, the former Indonesian Attorney-General, was denied any access to North Korea. In this House, speaking to the all-party group, Vitit Muntarbhorn said that he estimated that 400,000 people had died in North Korea’s prison camps in the past 30 years. He said that its human rights record was “abysmal” due to,

“the repressive nature of the power base, at once cloistered, controlled and callous”,

and that,

“The exploitation of … ordinary people … has become the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite”.

All eight of his reports which went to the United Nations have detailed a very grave situation in which the abuses are “both systematic and pervasive”, and “egregious and endemic”. Vitit Muntarbhorn has concluded:

“It is incumbent upon the national authorities and the international community to address the impunity factor which has enabled such violations to exist and/or persist for a very long time”.

He estimates that some 300,000 people have fled the country, many of whom are, of course, living in north-east China while others have managed to migrate to South Korea. There is a brilliant book called Nothing to Envy, written by Barbara Demick, which records many of the first-hand accounts of those who have been able to escape.

Here at Westminster, I chaired the launch of a 142-page report commissioned by the late Vaclav Havel, Elie Weisel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former Norwegian Prime Minister, entitled Failure to Protect: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea. What they were arguing in that report was for the need for the international community to take human rights issues every bit as seriously as issues concerning security. Only a week ago in another place, in a Westminster Hall debate, the honourable Member for Congleton, Mrs Fiona Bruce, along with Mr Gary Streeter, the Member of Parliament who is the vice-chairman of the all- party parliamentary group, initiated a debate where Members from all sides spoke of their concerns about human rights and humanitarian questions. I commend the Hansard of that debate to your Lordships.

A few weeks ago in this House, I chaired a meeting for Shin Dong-hyuk, who is aged 26 and was born in prison camp 14. He spent the first 23 years of his life in that camp. I am glad to see that the noble Lords, Lord Edmiston and Lord Grocott, who have taken a close interest in this issue, are present in the Committee. They have had the chance to meet some of those who I have referred to. Shin Dong-hyuk was forced to work for 11 years from the age of 10 and was forced to watch as his mother and brother were executed. During his visit here, he met the Lord Speaker and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has a book which will be published in March, entitled Escape from Camp 14. It is precisely people such as Shin Dong-hyuk whom we should be investing in for the future. They are tomorrow's leaders. He does not have a hatred of the leadership of North Korea; he has a hatred of the ideology. He wants his country to change and to reform just as the Republic of Korea did. That was, after all, a military dictatorship, but under the extraordinarily brave and enlightened leadership of Kim Dae-jung it embarked on the sunshine policy and reformed itself, so I hope that we will see North Korea change as well.

In addition to asking the Minister directly about human rights, the importance that we attach to it and why it does not appear in the list of our concerns on the face of the paper, I have four brief questions for him. On energy supply, it was announced in September that Russian natural gas would be pumped into South Korea via a pipeline that would straddle the whole of North Korea. At present, the £520 billion South Korean economy imports about 96 per cent of its energy, 80 per cent from the Middle East. Clearly, it does not want—any more than this country would want—to be entirely reliant on that source. What will be the payment for that energy coming into South Korea? How will that sit with the sanctions that we have imposed on nuclear proliferation—the security questions that I know are close to the heart of the Minister?

Secondly, I would like to ask about Kaesong. One of the most hopeful developments in recent years was the development eight years ago of the Kaesong industrial zone, which is about six miles north of the demilitarised zone inside North Korea. Some 48,000 North Korean workers work there in 123 different companies. This earns, it is said, around $50 million a year for North Korea. The aim is to develop Kaesong so that one day it will have some 700,000 employees. In the context of the employment and trade implications of the order before us today, what is Her Majesty's Government's position on the exploitation of labour and the use of cheap and possibly slave labour? The average wage for a North Korean working in Kaesong is about £67 per person per month, and a lot of that money has to then be handed over to the state. Is this a question that we are pursuing in the context of the cheap labour and cheap produce that could then be exported as a result of these orders to the European Union?

Thirdly, I want to ask about education. On 15 February, an extraordinary man called Dr James Kim will be in your Lordships' House speaking at the all-party group. As a young man, James Kim fought on the side of the South Koreans. He lied about his age in order to get into the army. He was one of only 17 who survived in a unit of 800 men. At the end of the war, he said that he would one day try to do something to bring peace and reconciliation to the Korean peninsula. For his trouble, 60 years later, having gone to North Korea, he was arrested as a spy and sentenced to death. He said, “I have come here to give you everything, so you might as well have my body and use it for experimental purposes”. He wrote his last will and testament and said to the United States, where he also has citizenship, “There should be no revenge because I came here as an act of love”. He was ultimately deported and a year later was allowed to return to North Korea where he was able to embark on the building of the first ever international public-private university. I was privileged to visit it a year ago at its opening with my noble friend Lady Cox.

Dr Kim raised £18 million for this extraordinary initiative as a result of Her Majesty's Government creating diplomatic relations with North Korea 10 years ago when the then Prime Minister Tony Blair overruled his Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and decided that the war was over, which is something that the United States has still not done, merely the armistice that still stands, which was signed in 1953. We ended the war and created diplomatic relations. One of the great fruits of that has been that the English language is now the official second language of the country. It is the language used at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology to teach about 600 students. Is there more that we can do to promote education as a reforming tool? It is a transformative experience. It is the chief thing that will change North Korea in the long term, and we should be very pleased from the point of view of British trade and commerce that English is so widely taught and used there.

I also congratulate the Government on supporting the creation of the first two Chevening scholarships, which started in this academic term at Cambridge University, giving young people the chance to come to the United Kingdom to learn English-language skills on brief courses. It is impossible to come to a country such as this and not be challenged by our liberties, our freedoms and our democracy—the things that we prize. Just as we saw in the former Soviet Union, perestroika and glasnost bring about change, mainly as a result of interaction. Surely the same thing can happen in North Korea.

Finally, I turn to security and weapons of mass destruction. Following the sinking of the South Korean corvette “Cheonan”, when 46 people died, and the bombing of a South Korean island, it is quite clear that there was a very serious deterioration in relations between North Korea and South Korea. Many of us fear that it will be not a deliberate act but a Sarajevo moment that will lead to a conflagration that could lead to the loss of some 3 million lives, because that is how many died in the Korean War. We often forget that in addition to the 2.5 million Koreans who died, there were 500,000 others: Chinese, Americans and 1,000 British servicemen—that is more British servicemen than died in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined. We must do all we possibly can to ensure that there is not a repetition of history.

I wonder whether the tools in this order can be used to facilitate a Beijing peace conference because China clearly has the key role in trying to broker some way forward. I also believe that Her Majesty's Government can build on their successes in constructive critical engagement and can work with our European partners to create more constructive engagement, not least with the military. Surely with the octogenarian leadership of the Politburo, the nomenklatura and the military, there are opportunities for us to build relations with some of those who lead the military by welcoming them to the United Kingdom, taking them to places such as Sandhurst and opening dialogue to see whether we can help a country that has 1 million men under arms—it is the world’s fourth largest standing army—to put its resources into building peace instead and into doing something about the humanitarian needs of a country where 2 million people died in the famine in the 1990s and where our previous ambassador, the admirable Peter Hughes, said that he had seen examples of malnutrition reappearing on the streets.

With the news from Burma of significant change, the release of political prisoners and a coming in from the cold, surely it is not too much to hope that we might see something similar happen in North Korea. There have been changes in China. Those of us who visited China 40 years ago, as I did, and visited underground churches and saw human rights violations have seen extraordinary change and reform. China is not there yet on some of the human rights issues, but the social and economic changes make it one of the most exciting places on earth. Anyone who has the privilege of travelling to South Korea can see the possibilities for the north if only change could come.

Building on the report that my noble friend Lady Cox and I published when we returned last year Building Bridges not Walls, I commend this order, but I ask the Minister to dwell on some of the points that I have raised today and consider whether we cannot place more emphasis on the importance of raising human rights considerations as we embark on more constructive and critical engagement.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I express the Opposition’s support for the approval of this statutory instrument. One of the real privileges of becoming a Member of the House of Lords, which I did last year, is to listen to people such as the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, who have expertise, wisdom and judgment to offer on things that one knows very little about. I hope that the points that he has raised today, although they are tangential to the thrust of the EU framework agreement, will be taken very seriously and that we will have further opportunities to debate the position in North Korea, about which he spoke so movingly. I thank him on behalf of the Opposition for his work there.

The agreement itself is what they call in EU jargon a strategic partnership, and it is one that is directly linked to the conclusion of the free trade agreement in 2010 between the EU and the Republic of Korea, which I think Europe took about a year to ratify from when it was actually signed. That was not bad when one looks at the position in relation to the United States and its free trade agreements with Korea, which are deeply enmeshed in the problems in the US Congress. Perhaps many people in Britain forget that the EU can be effective and that it still is an important pole of attraction for a very rapidly growing country like the Republic of Korea. The deal on the free trade agreement with the accompanying strategic partnership was negotiated in two years. It arose out of the global initiative that my noble friend Lord Mandelson launched when he was trade commissioner which, given the difficulties of completing the Doha round, was a switch away to bilateral trading agreements with our major trading partners.

The Republic of Korea is extremely significant for us in economic terms. It is the most important trading partner for Europe behind the United States, Japan and China. I discovered that fact when I was Googling away before the debate, but it is a remarkable fact none the less. We on this side welcome the deepening of relations with the Republic of Korea. We think it is right that a trade agreement should have a parallel political agreement, as it were, which sets out a broad range of areas for co-operation and dialogue and we very much wish that co-operation and dialogue to be effective. I am sure that this agreement will play an important role in deepening relationships between Europe and the Republic of Korea, which I hope will assist in a solution being found to the terrible problems that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, described in North Korea. I support the approval of this statutory instrument.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I happily yield to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, as an expert in EU jargon. It is a very erudite subject with which we have both struggled for many years. I feel I am slightly in the same position as I was in last night, when being asked to defend Britain's approach to the OSCE, to which the answer is: we are not entirely sure how this works or what its potential is, but we think it is worth doing. The framework agreements are a new element in EU relations with other countries beyond the European region. They have very wide potential, including on human rights, and provide a formal structure for member states collectively to raise such issues.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his, as always, fascinating and well-informed speech. While nothing in this framework agreement specifically refers to North Korea, relations with North Korea are of course always likely to be an important part of the agenda when we discuss political and human rights issues with our Korean colleagues. All those of us who have been to Seoul know that when you are in Seoul you feel close to the border. The sense of insecurity is not that much less than it used to be when one visited Berlin during the Cold War, so one cannot get away from the North Korean dimension in this relationship. The absence of specific reference to North Korea or to human rights in the framework agreement does not imply that these are outside its structure.

The noble Lord asked a number of specific questions, including one about information on the news of a potential North Korean amnesty for political prisoners. I will inquire further within the Foreign Office and report back. Although I am fully briefed on what is happening in southern Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Iran, as one jumps from one country to another I have unfortunately not kept up with exactly what is happening in North Korea.

There are problems in developing among the EU 27 a common position on North Korea. Smaller EU member states see North Korea as a distant country, even further away from Europe than Burma. We are therefore talking about the larger EU member states attempting to reconcile their positions, which fits in with their relations with China and their position on nuclear proliferation. Finding common EU positions on distant problems with which not all the smaller member states are directly concerned is not always easy.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

Can the Minister tell us about the position of France? As I recall, France does not even have diplomatic relations with North Korea and since it is not one of the smaller member states, getting a common position would be a pretty good start.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will ensure that I give the noble Lord a more expert reply on the French position than I could off the cuff. As he remarked, the British took a very balanced decision to reopen relations with North Korea. The Americans and the French did not support it at the time. I think that most of us here think that it was worth doing, in spite of the intense difficulties which our representatives have often had in North Korea since then. We therefore have an advantage over some of our EU colleagues in having a more direct understanding of what is going on in the country.

I will also need to come back to the noble Lord on questions of energy supply. I thank him for the information on the proposals for a direct pipeline and I appreciate its implications. Similarly, in the case of the industrial zone, I am tempted to say that the import into Britain of goods which are partly put together in extremely poorly paid factories and then assembled in higher wage countries is, as we all know, not unique to relations between South Korea and North Korea.

On education, I have heard some fascinating stuff before from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the university of which he spoke. We are doing our best to provide some support there. It is a very interesting experiment and is one of the things which suggest that chinks of light are possibly opening up. At this precise moment, with a change in leadership in North Korea, it is difficult for any of us to read exactly how the situation is going to develop. We have to follow what is happening, to intervene when we think that we can make a difference—as we are beginning to do on the educational front—and to see how much more we can manage. The Government share his concerns about the possibility of a local incident moving up the escalation ladder into accidental war. We are all concerned about that, and not only between North Korea and the Republic of Korea. Although not within this framework agreement, it is absolutely part of the multilateral diplomatic process on North Korea—which includes the Chinese, the Americans and others—to try to build those contacts and confidence-building measures which will prevent such an escalation happening.

The comparisons with Burma are not exact. North Korea has remained much more closed than Burma, even through the worst points of the Burmese military Government. We can hope for similar shifts with North Korea but it will take longer and it is much more difficult, precisely because North Korea has been so much more cut off from the world. This framework agreement offers us the prospect to widen the relationship with Korea. We will be pursuing this through a whole range of activities.

Perhaps I may be allowed on a personal note to remark that some noble Lords may not be aware that the Korean parliamentary choir will be coming to sing with the British parliamentary choir and has invited the British parliamentary choir to go out and sing in Seoul in exchange. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on the language point. We are singing Mendelssohn with them and the Korean parliamentary choir has insisted that we sing it in the original German and not in English. I am glad to hear that it is particularly correct in this way.

I conclude by reassuring noble Lords that the Government believe our European partners and Europe institutionally have a role to play in strengthening co-operation between Britain and the Republic of Korea. This agreement will allow for more work to be done in expanding a long-term relationship on a number of very important issues such as the promotion of human rights, international peace and security, energy and climate change, on which the Koreans are particularly active, and global economic co-operation.

Social Policy

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the quality of the introductory remarks made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and of the ensuing debate demonstrate why this was such a good subject to lay before your Lordships’ House today for debate. We are all indebted to him. Perhaps I may also take this opportunity to welcome the admirable noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to her new ministerial responsibilities. She was formidable in opposition and she will be formidable both in the Cabinet and at the Dispatch Box here in your Lordships' House. She has brought great credit on herself and I am sure that she will continue to do so for many years to come.

Like others I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wei, and congratulate him on a remarkable, extraordinary and memorable maiden speech. I was struck that he mentioned in his remarks his professional connection with the foundation named for Lord Shaftesbury, who was of course the great 19th century social reformer, and who gave this country the asylums, the ragged schools and the public health legislation. I think that we may see a reflection of the inspiration of Lord Shaftesbury in the work which the noble Lord undertakes in the years that he will spend in your Lordships' House.

The noble Lord mentioned with some trepidation his youth. Perhaps I may say as someone who was once the youngest Member of your Lordships' House but was also the youngest Member of another place, that, sadly, it is something that passes very rapidly. Enjoy it while you can. Robert Kennedy once said that youth is,

“not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination”.

The noble Lord, Lord Wei, showed great imagination in his remarks today and we look forward to very many more contributions in the future.

As we are recalling the 19th century, perhaps I may remind your Lordships that in 1839 Thomas Carlyle published the Condition of England Question. Perhaps if instead of evaluating political success on the basis of crude economic indicators we, too, were to assess the condition of England on the basis of broader social policy, we might be shocked by the tatterdemalion society which we see today.

The Condition of England Question 2010 would reveal that three-quarters of a million British children have no contact with their fathers following the breakdown of their relationships. According to the Children's Society, 100,000 children run away from home every year. Save the Children says that 3.9 million children are living in poverty and that a staggering 1.7 million children are living in severe, persistent poverty in the UK—which is, after all, one of the richest countries in the world. Every day 4,000 children call Childline. Since it was founded in 1986, it has counselled more than a million children.

Five million images of child abuse are in circulation on the internet, featuring some 400,000 children. Every day we end the lives of 600 unborn children; one in five pregnancies now ends in abortion and we have laws that permit abortion up to and even during birth in the case of disability. In Edinburgh, figures published earlier this year showed a 75 per cent increase in the number of babies addicted to drugs because of their mothers’ addiction. Suicide accounts for 20 per cent of all deaths among young people aged 15 to 24. More than 140,000 people attempt to commit suicide every year.

Last year, Samaritans answered 4.6 million calls from people in despair, which is one call every seven seconds. Also last year, 29.4 million anti-depressants were dispensed, which is a 334 per cent increase since 1985 at a cost to the National Health Service, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will know from his experiences, of £338 million. The number of homeless people in the United Kingdom is 380,000, which is the same as the population of Bristol. Five hundred people will sleep rough tonight.

The prison population has increased by 85 per cent since 1993. This week, 85,056 men and women are in our jails. Gun crime in the United Kingdom claims 30 victims every day. The average lifespan for people who get involved in gun crime in Manchester is a mere 24 years. Individuals now owe more in debt than the wealth generated by the entire country in a year. At the end of April, total UK personal debt stood at £1,460 billion. That shames us and underlines the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, about neighbourliness. In Britain, an estimated 1 million elderly people do not see a friend or neighbour during an average week. There would be so much more about the Condition of England Question that should give us pause. The poet, TS Eliot, could have had this dehumanised society in mind when he suggested that we are “living and partly living”, while CS Lewis prophetically foresaw a society where we would see The Abolition of Man—the title of one of his books.

The missing piece of the political puzzle has been the importance of relationships. Too narrow a focus on economic growth and market efficiency can too often overlook the importance of fostering community and family life, and supporting relationships. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, mentioned the shortcomings of liberal economics, and he is right. Political liberalism has many strengths, but it has weaknesses too. It can become Utopian and easily bogged down into too narrow a focus on proceduralism; that is, so long as you go through the motions it makes it legitimate to repair society by constitutional or procedural change, or by an economic fix. The average voter, I suspect, would agree with Thomas Macaulay’s assertion:

“An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia”.

In 2008, David Cameron identified what he called a “broken society”, a phrase that has been challenged in your Lordships’ debate today. He said that he intended to be as radical a social reformer as Margaret Thatcher was an economic reformer. During the general election, the Prime Minister attempted to define the difference between his party and the Opposition around the slogan of the “big society versus the big state”. We have spent a lot of time rightly talking about that today.

Although I have always had an instinctive aversion to the overbearing, busybody collectivisation of life by an authoritarian state—I spent 25 years either as a local councillor or as a Member of another place representing an inner city area of the city of Liverpool—there is also a danger in believing that we can somehow dispense with the state, especially when it comes to providing protection for the least fortunate and the least well off in society.

The welfare state emerged in 1942 when William Beveridge laid out his plans to eliminate “freedom from want”. He saw the state as a safety net—I was intrigued by the beautiful metaphor used by the noble Lord, Lord Wei, where he described the big society as like a coral reef—but certainly not a suffocating blanket. His objective was to eliminate what he identified as five “giant evils”—squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. Thanks to Beveridge, we tilted away from indifference and reliance on charitable giving to intervention and direct help. But, as the years passed, the state grew like leviathan, spawning bureaucracies which fed upon themselves. A uniformity was imposed, which has led to the same centralised regulations being placed on citizens from Barrow-in-Furness to Bournemouth, regardless of local differences and circumstances.

The debate about whether the state has become too invasive, which David Cameron sought to initiate, has been caricatured as a smoke screen or cipher to make swingeing reductions in the remit and resources available to state agencies, but it did not strike me that way. We must not let the debate become a pretext for a polarised confrontation between those who propose cuts in public expenditure and those who oppose them. If we could take a more thoughtful approach to the role of individual citizens and their role in promoting the common good, a phrase used by the most reverend Primate during his remarks earlier in the debate, we would see that the big civil society and the state need one another. Insisting on the present organisation of the National Health Service or social services should not become a species of Holy Writ for which its defenders will go to the stake.

For a society to be healthy we have to be participators and the trustees, not the owners, of what we possess. Social, political and economic activity must ultimately centre on the common good rather than individual acquisitiveness or the hegemony of the state. There are signs that out of the debris of a compromised fiscal system, some people are beginning to reassess what really matters to them and what they truly value. Here is an opportunity to proclaim a belief in human dignity, the worth of each life, and the duty we each have to the communities of which we are a part.

When partnerships are created between the state and what Edmund Burke called the “little platoons”, quoted earlier by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, the voluntary groups and neighbourhood associations that would be integral to what David Cameron has called a,

“broad culture of responsibility, mutuality and obligation”,

we would have our best hope of combating today’s gigantic challenges. And who can doubt, as many noble Lords have said today, that there are many functions that have been taken on by the state but which could be discharged by the little platoons?

Along with a more reflective approach towards our individual role we will also have to reassess the blighting effect of the great bureaucracies on individual behaviour. Their tendency to sap personal endeavour can be deeply corrosive. Our civil society has become uncivil as modern citizenship has revolved around the flaccid language of rights alone. I was glad to hear the most reverend Primate talk about the need for a virtuous society. A few years ago I wrote a little and rather unmemorable book called Citizen Virtues which made precisely that point. We must not create a situation where we breed unrealisable demands, a cult of selfishness and materialism. The uncivil society is further entrenched by individual isolation, a weakened sense of ethics and a lack of virtue. We enter perilous waters when choice is not conditioned by any regard for consequences and when society has no shared framework for reaching conclusions because there are so few shared values.

Through the Roscoe Foundation for Citizenship, which I direct at Liverpool John Moores University, and where I hold a chair—I declare my interest—I have seen some extraordinary examples of public service among young people in the north-west of England. If their attitudes could become tomorrow’s practice, we will have grounds for hope, but we should not underestimate the scale of the disaggregation which has occurred in society and which I set out in the points I made about the Condition of England Question.

So we do need a serious consideration of the parameters within which the British state, comprising some 63 million citizens, should operate. We also need to ask ourselves how we will form citizens who are willing to accept the responsibilities and duties which a less nannying and omnipresent state would require. Saint Edith Stein, who died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, was a German-Jewish philosopher who became a Catholic nun. At a time when the Nazi state was stifling dissent and corralling its citizens into conformism with the tenets of National Socialism, Stein wrote tellingly about the responsibility of every citizen to be an agent for good or ill, and about the way in which the values of the individual citizen determine the nature of the state in which they live. She rightly insisted that both society and the state consist entirely of persons. These are not mysterious entities. They are made up of men, women and children whose strengths and weaknesses, talents and needs, are all too real. These are her words. “The state”, she said,

“is not an abstract entity. It acts and suffers only as those individual agents through whose actions the functions of the state are discharged act and suffer. And it is their actions that conform to or violate norms and values … the state is just or unjust, protective to those whom it ought to protect, and scrupulous or unscrupulous in its dealings with other states, only insofar as the relevant individual persons have these characteristics. Moral predicates apply to the state only insofar as they apply to the relevant individuals”.

The state, then, takes its inspiration from the values of its citizens. Stein warned that when the two do not coalesce it inevitably leads to conflict.

If such coercion is to be forestalled and agreement and partnership is to emerge, it will require a huge effort to persuade every citizen to take seriously the promotion of the common good. If we are to do this, and if the big society is to take the place of the big state, this will require nothing less than a fundamental change in our attitudes and culture to achieve, something that I certainly would welcome.