Offshore Companies: Property

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

No, my Lords, the real reasons are that there is a practical working relationship with the overseas territories, and that the SAML Act which was brought forward, approved and became not just something we debated but an Act, guaranteed that the overseas territories would respond with public registers. As I have already explained, that is happening. There are existing arrangements in place. There is no reluctance, but it is right that we work constructively with the sectors, and of course there are issues, as the noble Lord points out, about corruption and criminality. It is right that we act, and act accordingly.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, if, as the Minister claims, the overseas territories are totally committed, surely speedier progress would have been made since 2018. What is the problem? Are, for example, the BVI asking for compensation for loss of revenue? If so, what is the government response?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, what was agreed with the overseas territories was that they would have public registers by the end of 2023. That is the timetable they are working with. However, in terms of immediate needs as, again, has been discussed regarding sanctions in response to Russia, we worked hand in glove with them to ensure that every sanction passed by your Lordships’ House and the other place—by Parliament—is immediately incorporated into our overseas territories.

There is no delay or dither on this; we are working practically and pragmatically with our overseas territories. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, we are working both in partnership and overseeing as part of our offering of global Britain. It is an important partnership, and we respect their rights to legislate locally on key issues, but at the same time they need to be held to account where there are issues of corruption and criminality.

Global Refugee Forum

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a hugely important point. The answer is yes: this is something that both the Home Office and the Foreign Office are looking at. I would add that the UK has committed an additional £120 million of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and the region. That money will be used in many different ways, but particularly in supporting those at the front line in terms of vulnerability, of the sort that the noble Lord just mentioned.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government were prepared to disclose the figure of 50 refugees received from Ukraine. What is the current figure?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, it is a very fast-moving situation. I do not know the current figure, but I do know that there is no limit to the number of people this country is willing and able to absorb, as I described when outlining the policy just a few moments ago.

International Development

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, on the issue of the geography and the example given by the noble Lord—whom I commend for being a champion for that continent—the UK remains a leader in international development in Africa. We are committed to supporting the poorest people on that continent. That will be reflected in the strategy when it is published in spring. As well as providing humanitarian support, our UK aid is helping to protect rainforests, deliver vaccines, educate girls, reduce crime and improve economic growth and development.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, between now and 2050, the population of Africa will double. One billion more people will need to be fed, to be housed and to be employed. What effect will this have on the new strategy? Will it be a priority—for example, by encouraging family spacing and discouraging adolescent childbearing?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the Foreign Secretary has been clear—and it will be equally clear in the strategy when it is published—that we intend to restore funding for women and girls. We will continue to prioritise women and girls by supporting education systems, to empower women by strengthening sexual health and rights, and to work to end violence against women, including practices such as FGM. Within that focus on women and girls, we have already seen that one of the best ways to encourage stable populations is by investing in women and girls in the way that I have just described.

Autocrats, Kleptocrats and Populists

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Browne and begin with a Polish question. What is the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist says things cannot get any worse and an optimist says, oh yes they can. We can surely apply that to the position of democracy today. There is certainly a recession, a backsliding.

Consider the position perhaps 30 years ago. We had the end of the Berlin Wall, which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Empire—

“Bliss was it in that dawn”—


and the end of apartheid in South Africa and, indeed, Namibia. It was the end of a chapter of colonialism. We had the time when the United States was the only hegemon and was not challenged by an authoritarian China.

A little later, there was the pent-up anger against autocrats which led to the Arab spring. Now, what is left of the Arab spring? Some may say, Tunisia, but the jury is out on Tunisia, and everywhere else where there was the Arab spring there has been a deterioration. The situation has changed very much indeed.

Secretary Blinken on his visit to Africa last year spoke of a “democratic recession”. There has been a series of military coups. There has been a series of civil conflicts in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, and generally, as the Library notes show, reports from a series of well-respected international organisations illustrate that recession.

Even in Europe, there is a fragility in our democracies. In France, the 25 January edition of Le Figaro showed the disillusion with democracy there. Some 39% of the 11,000 French people polled would welcome an elected strong man, but more than 50% would welcome a government by experts, not by elected people. The majority thought that, on the whole, the political elite was corrupt. Perhaps the position in this country is less fragile—we do not have the Bonapartist tradition—but look elsewhere around Europe and see the position of illiberal democracy in Hungary and the position in Poland.

My second reflection is that the contrast between democracy and autocracy has never been so stark, but there is a continuum, with perhaps North Korea at one end and the Scandinavians at the other. It is a problem of more so, less so. To illustrate that, I invite noble Lords to look at the Council of Europe and the fact that Russia is there. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, yet it is a member of this major human rights organisation. Even, alas, our Commonwealth has deteriorated, with most countries backsliding. The position in South Africa, certainly under Zuma and the state capture by Zuma and the Gupta brothers, has been well illustrated by my noble friend.

Finally, yes, there should be co-ordination but the D10 cited by the Prime Minister is clearly a non-starter, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said. Co-ordination is important for Magnitsky, but the best response is not only soft power but also the question of leadership. On that, I would say that our leaders should be people of integrity and honesty. They should respect the constitution and the role of judges and parliamentarians. They should honour the international treaties they have signed and should adhere to the rules and regulations they have made. This is the best antidote to authoritarianism. We should look in the mirror ourselves, try to be a model, be vigilant, avoid the slippery slope and remember that dictatorships normally die through epileptic fits, democracies die by slow decline, often from the top.

Ministers: Overseas Travel

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, as I have said, decisions are taken on ministerial travel and when they concern those in the most senior positions, that is done with due consideration to their direct responsibilities—that includes my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and others—while ensuring that there is value for money.

We are leaders when it comes to climate change—we are the COP president—as has been illustrated by the UK’s leadership on this agenda. On offshore wind, for example, we are world leaders. We continue to demonstrate real credentials and work with partners on this.

For the noble Baroness’s interest, as she has articulated Australia so specifically, the visit led to a number of important agreements with one of our key regional partners, including a cyber partnership and an agreement on closer UK-Australia co-operation on clean, honest and reliable infrastructure investment in the Indo-Pacific. The Foreign Secretary also signed a deal with South Australia to boost businesses, and she attended vital Australia-UK dialogues together with my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary. This is important diplomacy at an important time for this country, and I am sure many noble Lords support that.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, the reasons the Minister has given in justification—namely, security and the wish of Ministers to work while travelling—are surely applicable to all Ministers. Can we therefore expect more half-million-pound flights?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, it is not the wish of any Minister but a necessity. When we travel abroad—I have just returned this morning from abroad—we are working and reading on the plane. However, I am not at the most senior level of government. I am not the Foreign Secretary. The Foreign Secretary is responsible for many agencies’ work and has many papers to sign, as well as receiving confidential briefings. Therefore, a considered decision is taken. It is right that, particularly for the most senior people in government, decisions to travel are taken ensuring that security is kept in mind, but also that international affairs are the priority of the agenda.

Middle East: Human Rights

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the UK has always believed that reform will be the guarantor of longer-term stability in the region—that we are more likely to bring about change through engagement, dialogue and co-operation. However, of course my noble friend is absolutely right to say that with the rights enjoyed by these countries come enormous responsibilities.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, some of these states, in contrast with the UAE, have a very patchy record on human rights, particularly in respect of freedom of Christians. Does the Minister believe that gross human rights violations should render a state ineligible for membership of the UN Human Rights Council?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, if we were to apply—honestly and rigorously—the same criteria, there would be very few members of the Human Rights Council remaining.

Afghanistan (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, who is a highly respected chair of the committee. I was not a member of the committee at the time, but I suspect that if this debate had been held last summer, there would have been unqualified praise for the quality and comprehensive nature of the report’s analysis and its recognition of the challenges faced. However, the report was published over a year ago, so much of the evidence must have been gathered over the previous year, since when—to adopt and adapt a parliamentary phrase—an amendment has been moved. Of course, the amendment is the events of August 2021 and the Taliban victory.

What were we trying to achieve by our intervention in Afghanistan? The aims of the UK Government are set out in paragraph 37 of the report. They were:

“to safeguard what it describes as the UK’s legacy in Afghanistan since 2001. It wishes to strengthen the gains made in this period, and defines its legacy in terms of improvements in human rights, particularly of women and girls, and the strengthening of the Afghan state since the fall of the Taliban administration.”

It is fair to say that the committee noted in the next paragraph that

“gains made since 2001 could be lost”,

but the options it considered did not include the collapse entirely of the Afghan Government.

The committee noted the considerable expenditure by the UK taxpayer in development aid—more than £3 billion over the period—the training and equipping of the security forces, the tragic loss of 456 UK troops killed in the campaign from 2001 to 2014, and the more than 600 British military personnel with life-changing injuries. However, despite all that expenditure and loss of life, the Afghan army speedily collapsed, surrendering its weapons, and the President fled with much of the Government. Poverty and hunger among the people have increased and would surely have a larger focus in the report if the committee were to consider the humanitarian situation today, which the noble Baroness mentioned.

So one is bound to ask: was it all a waste of time, resources and lives? What is, in fact, the legacy? What is left from that major allied and western effort? Is the report essentially now a historical document? Time will tell, of course, but many of the more educated and modern Afghanis have taken the opportunity to leave the country. There are major question marks over the plight of women and girls under the Taliban regime, but some of that taste of freedom might indeed linger and be capable of surviving when circumstances change, as surely they will one day.

Perhaps we should have had a more profound appreciation of history, such as the British history of intervention in the 1840s and 1880s as part of the great game, the Soviet intervention in the 1980s—what Gorbachev called the “bleeding wound”—a greater appreciation of the reality of Afghan society and the tribalism which apparently the Taliban are experiencing even now, and the intense localism I experienced when I visited Herat and heard that those trained were most reluctant to leave the immediate vicinity of their homes. Did we think that we could graft a western concept of democracy on a very different society? Are there lessons to be learned?

The report concludes that the US talks with the Taliban in Doha were about withdrawal rather than peace negotiations, and that the Afghan Government were sidelined and, indeed, undermined. It rightly points out that the UK and other allies very much played second fiddle to the US in the conflict, and that when the US left we had to leave, together with the European Union and other allies. Was this a reality check for us and the EU? Is it the Government’s view that the Taliban as a whole is in any way different from when it was last in power up to 2001? I would welcome the Minister’s views on whether the Taliban will encourage terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISKP—the Islamic State Khorasan Province? Will there be an even greater transfer of narcotics to the UK? These are key questions, which it is perhaps premature to ask at the moment and to expect clear answers from the Minister. It may be more productive now to reflect on some of the geostrategic consequences of the Taliban victory.

First, with the experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, will the West be a little more cautious about intervention? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, with his experience, will say something about this. Will nation-building be less high on the agenda and spreading democracy now be less favoured? Is there a danger that the correction will go too far in the opposite direction and be very cautious about intervention?

Secondly, the credibility and trustworthiness of the West has been damaged worldwide. It happened before, of course, given the US defeat in Vietnam, but then the US was very much the dominant hegemon and China was not the rival it is today. Taiwan and Ukraine will be especially worried. Countries in the Middle East and Africa will hedge their bets and seek to make peace with China. The UK and the European Union will be similarly affected. Perhaps, as a result of what has happened in Afghanistan, the integrated review needs now to be revisited.

Again, terrorism throughout the world, from Mozambique to the Sahel and Iraq, even in Pakistan, will exult and be emboldened. Is it likely that more such groups will find a safe haven in Afghanistan? What is the Government’s judgment in this respect?

China will, of course, take advantage of the US humiliation and seek ever closer links with Pakistan and the Taliban in Afghanistan, including mining concessions, particularly in respect of rare minerals. In short, the West will need to rebuild its credibility globally and it will take some time for this to happen. Perhaps China will, over time, overreact in Africa.

Positively, however, we in the UK need to have a period of soul-searching in respect of Afghanistan and make our priorities clear: for example, how to get aid to its suffering people and whether some of the assets need to be unfrozen. There is also how to get the aid there without channelling it through the Taliban. We need to reverse the cuts in our own aid and develop areas where we are a superpower, such as in soft power. We need to know ourselves better, avoid any pretensions to great-power status and rely massively on what remains as our major advantages globally.

Russia

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate raises the issue of the rule of law. As someone who regularly stands up and talks about the protection of the rule of law, I say that when we look at the global stage and Britain’s role on it, it is important that we are also at the forefront of ensuring that, domestically, we are doing everything to uphold the rule of law. We can make the case effectively only if our record also speaks strongly at home. Of course there are comments and challenges on the UK’s domestic position, but I am proud to represent a country where the rule of law prevails and we seek to protect the rights of individuals and communities—indeed, of every citizen—in our country.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is absolutely right to draw attention to Russia’s failure to honour its obligations under the Budapest agreement. Does he agree that we would be in a stronger position if we came to the table with clean hands and did not ourselves fail to adhere to our obligations under our treaty with the European Union?

I have just returned from Odessa, where I was the only UK parliamentarian at a defence conference. I emerged convinced that Ukraine will put up very strenuous resistance to any Russian invasion; indeed, there would be enormous damage to its international reputation. Russia must know this, so why do the Government think that Russia has put forward maximalist demands which it knows cannot be met? Is it an attempt to extract at least some concessions? If there is to be dialogue, there clearly has to be some give and take, but any concessions which we make in response to Russian posturing and threats surely cannot let down Ukraine and cannot give any succour to the ambitions of Mr Putin. So what concessions can there possibly be which can provide a ladder down which President Putin can climb which do not also add to the misery of Ukraine and to the aspirations of Putin?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, it is not my job to speak for Mr Putin or Russia, and I will not do so. It is clear that we present a united alliance against Russian aggression and we will continue to work with partners in that respect.

Philippines: Typhoon Odette

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I am afraid I will have to get back to the noble Baroness with an answer to that question.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, as a Welsh Protestant I have been deeply impressed during my visits to the Philippines by the role of the Roman Catholic Church, which is deeply embedded in the country, highly respected and does a vast amount of social work. To what extent are the Government prepared to use the Church as a conduit for supplies and to listen to it about the priorities for relief?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a hugely important point. One of the problems in humanitarian circumstances is not just making a commitment to provide support but getting it to where it is needed on the ground, and for that we need to rely on whichever avenues exist and best suit those purposes. The church networks that he just described are one such avenue, and we will continue to use them for the deployment of our humanitarian assistance.

Zimbabwe: Makomborero Haruzivishe

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s role on the APPG. He is of course right that it is important that regional Governments have a role to play. In this regard, we have engaged directly at the highest level with the South African Government and we continue to engage with other regional partners, as well as regional associations, including the African Union, on this priority.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, in the Government’s view, which country has the clout to bring effective pressure on Zimbabwe on political oppression? We probably have less influence than China, which is most unlikely to bring any such pressure. Zimbabwe’s conduct clearly tarnishes the image of the whole region. Is this recognised by its neighbours, particularly South Africa, and are they playing a positive role in this regard?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the short answer to the noble Lord’s final question is that we are engaged very much with South Africa and, yes, it wants to see a progressive, inclusive Zimbabwe as part of the region and the wider world. Zimbabwe holds ambitions to join the Commonwealth as well. It is a collective effort. I do not think that one country alone can influence the progression and inclusiveness of democracy. It is therefore important that we, together with key partners, continue to play this role.