Tunisia

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 17th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

This is a positive set of observations. Having visited Tunisia on more than one occasion, I wondered how the basis of its economy could be sustained by its very successful tourism and by what I am told are its 20 million date trees. How one can count them? I do not know. How can it be done? The answer is that it has been done, but clearly diversification and development are badly needed. I suspect that deep down inside the causes of this present disturbance is the fact that they have not been developed fast enough. We and the EU, bilaterally, certainly have a role to play, as do our French friends and neighbours.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Our key national interest appears to be the security of our own nationals, and to that extent the Foreign Office appears to have responded speedily and in an exemplary manner. I congratulate the Minister on what he said. Successive human development reports of the UNDP illustrate the lack of poor governance in the various Arab countries, and I wonder to what extent we were already alerted to the problem and the way in which it was building up, although the spirit in Tunisia appears to be far freer than in some of its neighbours in the Maghreb. Can the Minister say to what extent he believes lessons will be learnt and the extent to which we will urge neighbouring Governments—perhaps not us, but, better, the European Union as a whole—to listen to the people and their legitimate grievances about food security and employment, even if we do not particularly like the Governments who emerge and who might have a rather different view from us on world issues.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I hope, as we must all hope, that the lessons will be learnt. They are fascinating lessons, and some very profound observations have been made. The emergence of the food shortage issue and its impact on political stability in certain societies is in itself a vast issue that relates to other aspects of crops for biological use, biofuel, and so on. That has all kinds of impacts on world food prices, which at the moment are rising very fast.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, with his considerable experience of foreign affairs in the other place and here, for his kind words of congratulation. The Foreign Office to which I, as noble Lords will know, am relatively new, has demonstrated that in a situation of this kind, precise timing is always difficult to anticipate. However, the Foreign Office has acted with extreme speed, along with great help from ABTA and the commercial operators, who have done remarkably well in evacuating 3,000 tourists from the country at such enormous speed.