India: Freedom of Religion or Belief

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

I can certainly give the right reverend Prelate that confirmation. I very much agree with the Bill. In fact, I insisted that it went forward with government support. Fiona Bruce does an excellent job in this regard and, for the first time, one of these governmental envoys will be placed on a statutory footing. That reflects the importance that we in this Government and in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office attach to celebrating freedom of religious belief. She does a great job and should be able to do it on a statutory basis.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, will the noble Lord build on the success of his department at the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in managing to include in communiqué the words,

“freedom of religion or belief are cornerstones of democratic societies”,

and will he encourage his officials on two things? The first is to emphasise that this is not exceptionalism and that Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—that everyone has the right to believe, not to believe or to change their belief—is about every human being’s right. Secondly, there is empirical evidence that shows that those countries which promote freedom of religion or belief are the most prosperous and most stable in the world. If we look at factors such as the 114 million displaced people in the world, we see that they are often in countries where there is not such freedom.

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

The noble Lord speaks with great passion and knowledge about this. My department takes this very seriously: not only have we set up the envoy and are putting that into legislation but we have dedicated staff in the FCDO who look at freedom of religious belief. My noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon led at the United Nations Security Council in June, together with UAE, in defence of a motion on freedom of religious belief. Of course, in response to the report by the right reverend Prelate when he was the Bishop of Truro, we commemorate Red Wednesday—I want to reassure my noble friends that this is not a political moment; it is a moment when we celebrate and make clear how important it is that people have freedom of religious belief, and how we stand up for those being persecuted for their beliefs. I think that on the last occasion of Red Wednesday, we lit up the FCDO in red—something which, in other circumstances, I hope is not going to happen any time soon.

Low and Middle-income Countries: Debt Restructuring

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

Obviously, I remember fondly when we were working together in passing the Act to which the noble Lord refers. When that Act was passed there was a real problem with vulture funds acting as hold-outs in debt reconstructions. While there are still arguments for the approach he is taking, we have to ask: will it affect the cost of capital for poorer countries to borrow, will it affect the availability of capital and, crucially, now that we have the collective action clauses and the majority voting provisions, is it still necessary to have this sort of legislation? The IMF reviewed this in 2020 and concluded that things were working well, so there is a concern in my mind that the approach he is talking about is perhaps relevant to what was happening in the past rather than relevant to what is happening now. I think we should keep an open mind on it.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, with more than $1 trillion owed in debt by 150 countries to China through belt and road, making it the biggest debt collector in the world, what assessment has the Foreign Secretary made of the implications on dependency, including the extension of China’s military presence in the world? In this 75th anniversary year of the Commonwealth, is he not particularly concerned about the way in which the CCP has been marching into that void, not least as a result of the cuts we have made to our overseas aid and development programme?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

It is very important that we provide alternatives to finance so that Commonwealth and other countries have a choice. I am very proud of the work I did to set up the Caribbean infrastructure fund, for instance, and we are looking again at whether we can refresh and renew that. We are also trying to get the multilateral development banks to expand their balance sheets and lend more to poorer countries. These are ways in which we can offer countries alternatives to Chinese finance in the way that he suggests.

Haiti

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

I know that my noble friend has considerable experience, having done this job in the Foreign Office for many years. We will certainly talk with colleagues and friends in Caricom about what they intend to do. Our priority should be to focus on the Turks and Caicos Islands; they are our responsibility as an overseas territory. We are looking to deploy a reconnaissance team there because of concerns about their borders and security. That should be our immediate focus while offering help, assistance and advice, as my noble friend suggests, to the people of Haiti and the Caricom nations that are coming together to try to help.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, 4,000 inmates have been freed from the prisons in Haiti by the gangs, with police stations being burned to the ground. Generally, there is complete anarchy. I welcome what the Foreign Secretary said about Secretary of State Blinken’s announcement of the $300 million programme to send a security mission. When is that mission likely to be sent? I also welcome what the noble Lord said about the United Nations agreement with Kenya to send 1,000 police offers. When are they likely to be sent to restore order in this urgent situation?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

I am afraid that I cannot give an update on exact timings. As the noble Lord knows, the UN has given backing through a Security Council resolution to the existence of this force, so it is not a UN force but it is UN-backed, which is important. I agree about the general point that it is so important for it to be able to do its work. People who follow these things use what I think is the rather odd phrase that the state has to have a monopoly on violence, but it is true: we cannot possibly have development, progress and success when there are quite so many different armed groups in charge of different parts of that country.

Developing World: Debt Reduction

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 13th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

We have doubled our commitments to climate finance. One of the successes of COP was that the climate finance funds are now considerable, running into many billions. I identify the problem more as small countries, particularly island and developing states, not being able to access that money because they do not have the expertise, the lawyers, the bankers, the officials and so on. That is a problem that my officials are trying to solve. In the area of debt itself, the climate resilience debt clauses that we are now writing into debt, which give states a holiday from debt repayments if they suffer a climate disaster or some other unforeseen event, can be a big part of the future too.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that, through China’s belt and road programme, developing nations are estimated to be indebted to China to the tune of more than $1 trillion? Does he share the view of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee that it would be naive not to see how such punitive debt in countries such as Sri Lanka—which is $47 billion dollars in debt, half to China—can be used by China to buy support in the UN, to expand its military presence and for leverage in domestic and international institutions? How are we countering this?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

One of the most important ways to counter it is by offering an alternative, so that when countries are developing there are other offers on the table. That is why the expansion of British International Investment—what used to be the Commonwealth Development Corporation—is so important. We are also countering it through the expansion of the multilateral development banks, and in our White Paper we demonstrate how we can expand their balance sheets and get them to lend more. However, the noble Lord makes a very good point: if we look back 10, 15 or 20 years, when we were running debt forgiveness programmes to help highly indebted countries, we see that it was mostly Paris Club countries such as France, Germany, Britain and America that were responsible for the debt, so if we wanted to write it off then we could. Now that so much of the debt owed is to China, which does not believe in debt write-offs, we have to find other ways of delivering restructurings to help those countries which have got into trouble.

AUKUS Security Partnership

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 13th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

The noble Lord is completely right that we have to get on with it, which is why there is Team Barrow to bring together the town council, BAE Systems and the Government. A lot of money is being put in—£25 billion from the Government and a further £16 million of levelling-up money—to make sure we have not just the defence capacity but the physical capacity in the town and the people to do this. I am confident we can get this done. The Virginia-class submarines are being sold by the Americans to the Australians to help prevent them from having a gap. It is up to us to make sure we do not have a gap and that there is no break between our excellent Astute-class submarines—I am proud that most of them were built during my time in office as Prime Minister—and the AUKUS submarines that will follow.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it was said by the Foreign Affairs Committee of another place that South Korea and Japan should be

“invited to join an AUKUS technological defence cooperation agreement”—

or pillar 2, which the noble Lord referred to in his initial reply. This was not just waiting on events; it urged us to invite them to join AUKUS, and I wondered whether he would give that recommendation further consideration. I will pursue the point made by his noble friend a moment ago. Bloomberg estimated that, if there were a blockade of the Taiwan Strait, it would cost the world economy some $10 trillion. Above and beyond AUKUS, what are we doing to deter the Communist Party of China?

Rohingya Refugees

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

First, let me clarify the point I made. Obviously, the ODA budget qualifies to pay for refugees from Ukraine, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Effectively, what happened over previous years was not only that the budget moved from 0.7% to 0.5% but that some of it was taken up, quite rightly, by ODA spending on looking after people from Ukraine and Afghanistan. We can now see that the overseas aid budget being spent overseas is actually increasing. For instance, when it comes to Africa, next year the budget will be almost doubling, to well over £1 billion. On what we want to see with the Rohingya, clearly there is a huge refugee crisis. They are being looked after in Bangladesh. Ideally, when circumstances are right, they will be able to go home. In between now and then, I think we should learn the lesson of the Syrian refugee crisis, where we did a lot to help countries such as Lebanon and particularly Jordan to make sure that people were able to stay there, work there and build livelihoods there, and then, when it is possible, go home.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, looking specifically at the point the right reverend Prelate raised about the plight of the refugees in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, will the Minister look again at what happened only last week, when 5,000 of those refugees were displaced from the shacks and tents in which they had been living as a result of a fire? The Minister invited us to look at the longer term. I reinforce what the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, said about the International Court of Justice, which has imposed interim provisional measures on the Burmese military, with the support of the British Government, which is extremely welcome. Will he raise at the Security Council the failure to implement that and will he have discussions with the National Unity Government about the long-term rights of the Rohingya, the Kachin, the Karen and the other ethnic and religious minorities? That is the fundamental issue: if someone is not an equal citizen in the new Burma that will emerge after the coup, nothing will change.

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

Fundamentally, the noble Lord is completely right about the interim measures which have been set out by the International Court of Justice. It is incumbent on the Government of Myanmar to make sure they are put in place and to abide by them. The noble Lord made the general point that what is required is an inclusive, federal state, where every ethnicity and every nationality can feel it has a part to play in the country and that it will benefit from the country’s resources. Obviously, we have this military Government, with whom we have very limited contact, but for the long-term future of Myanmar, that is the only answer.

Rules-based International Order

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

We do have a coalition of not only those countries taking part in Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea, but all those countries supporting it. Again, even when it came to the military action, there was a coalition of countries—including the Dutch, Canada and Australia—backing us militarily, and a wider coalition of countries supported the action taken. Wherever possible, we should build a coalition, but sometimes it is necessary to act quickly, and I think the Prime Minister made the right decision.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, how does a rules-based international order sit with the destruction of the Sino-British treaty, an international treaty, which has led to the dismantling of democracy and of “one country, two systems” in Hong Kong? How does it sit alongside the show trials of Jimmy Lai, a British citizen, and the naming in those proceedings of four other British citizens, including our former consul-general Andrew Heyn? Surely that in turn is a breach of the Geneva convention. Why have the Government not yet done anything to use Magnitsky sanctions against any of those who have been responsible for these things?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

One of the reasons for supporting a rules-based order is that it enables you to call out other countries when they fail to live up to it. That is exactly what we have done in the case that the noble Lord refers to. That is why we have said that the national security law needs to be taken out, and that is why we have said that Jimmy Lai needs to be released. We have been very clear about that and how we do not think that it is in line with the arrangements that were put in place when the Hong Kong agreement was reached.