Civil Service Fast Stream

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

Indeed, I can confirm that, and my noble friend makes a good point about ensuring that civil servants from Scotland are exposed to Whitehall.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I joined the foreign service in 1960 as a working-class boy from the University of Wales. There were only two women and no one from the ethnic minorities at that time. Does the noble Lord agree that our schools, because of the collapse of language teaching, are often unable to provide sufficient language competence and we need to look carefully at language potential? Such matters should never trump merit and competence.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord. We have come a long way but there is always more to be done. I concur with him about language skills.

House of Commons: Ministers

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am sure that noble Lords and Members in the other place will wish to return to this matter as the boundary review continues its work. Let me remind noble Lords that, if the number of MPs were reduced to 600 but the percentage of Ministers in the other place were to remain the same, the number of Ministers would need to fall by about seven, in my calculation, from 92 to 85. However, as the noble Lord points out, over the years there has been a considerable rise in the number of Ministers. In researching for this Question, I came to the understanding that there were about 60 Ministers when we had an empire. In the intervening period, while we may have lost an empire, Ministers have certainly found a role.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not a little disingenuous for international comparisons to use just the number of Ministers? Should the Minister not look at the total payroll vote, which includes Parliamentary Private Secretaries, and rework those figures to give a more accurate picture of the power of the Executive over Parliament?

Civil Society

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. He and his fellow bishops have made a valiant effort to set out broad principles that might guide, in their words,

“the people and parishes of the Church of England”.

It is clear from the speech of my noble friend Lady Uddin and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, that it has a much wider relevance. I am not wholly convinced, however, that the man or woman in the pew confused about voting would necessarily have emerged after reading this report with anything other than a higher level of confusion. Why? Because all the mainstream parties in this country claim to follow those Judaeo-Christian principles. Perhaps the only errant part of the election campaign was the leader of UKIP, who claimed that immigrants should have limited access to the NHS. That put him somewhat outside the pale and was immediately repudiated by his one MP.

Essentially, the aim of the letter is not to provide answers but to encourage Christians and others to think in a Christian way, as Dr John Stott did so well for all of us. The bishops give a set of principles in paragraph 120, emphasising identity and community. I come from the same city as my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, where we define our city, Swansea, as a series of villages held together by gossip. Perhaps I romanticise a little, but it is important.

Yes, the intermediate bodies and the suspicion of power that comes from,

“Put not your trust in princes”,

puts up barriers, checks and balances, but let us remember that it is not just from voluntary effort. It is the church that has been behind much of the effort of institutionalising that welfare provision. It was Adolph Kolping in Cologne, the great Catholic priest, and, of course, Lloyd George, who relied very much on his Scotch Baptist principles, who led the proposals for a welfare state in their countries. I confess that at times the principles enunciated by the prelates come rather close to Tony Blair’s third way, although they probably repudiate that. No doubt their brave efforts will be attacked from several angles. “Politics is a dirty game”, they will say, “Be separate. Bishops, keep out of politics and minister to the spiritual needs of your flock. Cobblers, stick to your last”. John Milton gave perhaps the best answer to this:

“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue … that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat”.

Obviously, the powers that be would like a quiet life and prefer not to be challenged by the church—or they enlist the church, as Putin has done in Russia. However, as we saw in apartheid South Africa, Christians will embarrass politicians on human rights issues. I think of the work of Archbishop Tutu and Catholic Bishop Hurley, who were leaders in this field. Perhaps the civics, the small platoons that proliferated under the apartheid regime, are one of the reasons why there are barriers to the tyranny of the majority in South Africa. They must be praised. Michael Cassidy, the Christian leader from Pietermaritzburg, says that after a long discussion with Botha, the then state president, the state president loftily read to him this:

“the powers that be are ordained of God”—

scant comfort for persecuted Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere. But even those of us who are in the comfort and security of the United Kingdom must avoid the politician’s temptation to agree with everyone, to take the easy way out and to avoid values by relying on focus groups.

Who, then, is my neighbour? Christ’s answer was clear. He told a story about a Samaritan—a stranger from a despised group—who helped someone in need. The problem with the bishops’ letter is, of course, that it sets out basic principles, and in so doing avoids some hot potatoes such as the population problem and its effect on God’s creation in the environment, although I concede that it cannot be wholly comprehensive. However, it is not for bishops but for politicians to implement those principles in a world of limited resources, half-loaf compromises and competing pressures.

A current example raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and my noble friend Lord Judd concerns the migration pressures in the Mediterranean, where there is obviously a clash of values. The moral response is easy in the short term. If we have the capacity to save drowning individuals, it would be wholly immoral to fold our arms, pass by and fail to save them, so we applaud the humanitarian work of HMS “Bulwark”. But having rescued these people in the Mediterranean, is it moral then to wash our hands of them and say that they must be the responsibility of Italy or the overcrowded island of Malta?

Yet we cannot accommodate in Europe all those who would like to come here—those who wish to escape from the awful countries of Eritrea and South Sudan, let alone Iraq and Syria, however nasty their Governments are. Politicians have obligations to their own people and way of life, and it is obviously not moral to have an open-door policy. But there lies the key moral dilemma of where to draw the line. In the medium and longer term, politicians will choose a mix of policies such as destroying ships, targeting traffickers and safe-haven deals, perhaps also opening agricultural markets.

The church and politicians must work together. When Ahab was challenged by Elijah, he called him a troublemaker. May our right reverend prelates continue to be noble troublemakers. Niebuhr had it right when he referred to the,

“relevance of an impossible ideal”.

Bishops and politicians should strive together, imperfectly, to achieve the best attainable outcomes.

Georgia

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, attitudes in Russia to the new President are well known. Given that closeness, are the Government concerned that he may be seeking, in his relations with the Opposition, to follow the example of President Putin? To what extent are we using our influence in other international fora to bring these abuses before them—for example, in the Council of Europe, which is the foremost human rights organisation in Europe?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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

Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, warmly congratulate the most reverend Primate, and I adopt his challenge to future Governments in relation to adding a soft-power component to the coming SDSR. I note what he says about the role of the Anglican Church, and I only regret that in a spirit of ecumenicalism—I can say this as a Welsh Baptist—he did not also mention the role of the Roman Catholic Church, as I have had the remarkable experience of watching the work of Archbishop Hurley in South Africa and of being with the Catholic Church in Argentina, during the troubles in Central America and on refuse tips in the Philippines. Watching the reconciliation work of that church together with the Anglican Church, I think the churches have overall made a remarkable contribution.

The most reverend Primate is right to focus our attention on soft power and the possibility of non-military options. As he said, much of the same ground is covered in the Select Committee report that was published in March. The Select Committee, faithful to its remit, accepted Professor Joseph Nye’s definition:

“Soft power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment”.

I understand that a debate on the report was scheduled for Monday week but then postponed—rather like the number 23 bus, they do not come and then they all come together. It was a most stimulating introduction, as was the report, and when we come to the debate on the report, I will say that I detect some of the fingerprints of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, notably—I speak as a former chairman of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association—in perhaps overplaying the potential of the Commonwealth and underplaying the potential of the European Union.

By contrast, the most reverend Primate seeks to cover a wider area, including non-military options. For example, that phrase would extend to the current sanctions regime against Russia over its conduct in Ukraine. The West will not risk war but has imposed sanctions, and are not sanctions war by another means? Have they been effective? Coupled with the fall in oil prices, the sanctions have imposed major damage on the Russian economy, with the fall of the rouble, the decline in investment and Russia’s cancellation of the South Stream pipeline. There have been other examples of sanctions leading to a loss of confidence and trust—I refer, of course, to Iran and to the fall of apartheid in South Africa. There was of course an insurgency, but instruments such as the sports boycott and the decision of Chase Manhattan Bank in 1986 not to roll over its loans to South Africa had a major influence. As with Russia, as the most reverend Primate said, that shows the importance of having private sanctions alongside official ones.

We should also recognise that early military intervention can prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. After the Rwanda genocide in 1994, when, it is said, over 800,000 people were killed between March and June, the Carnegie Foundation commissioned a simulation exercise from West Point which concluded that, had a small number of troops intervened at the beginning, that might have prevented the looming catastrophe.

I offer a few reflections. First, soft power is a useful instrument for analysis, but there is no simple gradation towards sanctions and military intervention. In short, there is a power spectrum, and it is very difficult to ascertain the effectiveness of our major soft power tools. Obviously, those include DfID, the FCO, the British Council and the BBC World Service. So far as the British Council is concerned, I saw at first hand the quality of its work in intervening, particularly with the black population, during the apartheid years in South Africa. On the BBC World Service, I recall dining once with President Kaunda, who was far more up to date on UK internal affairs than I was, as I had been travelling and he listened to the BBC World Service. I was once in the middle of the Sahara when my host rushed out when his watch alarm went off. Why? “Because it is the one o’clock news on the BBC World Service”, he said, “and it’s the purest Arabic I’ve ever heard”.

To take a few simple examples, the 2012 Olympics told our British story to the world in the opening and closing ceremonies. How do we evaluate the effect of that? Manchester United claims to have 108 million followers in China—more than the membership of the Chinese Communist Party. So what? Will that lead to people buying British goods? Will it influence Chinese foreign policy? Finally, “Downton Abbey” has a worldwide audience. Will British values thus be carried abroad, or does the England of country houses rather than technological advances divert attention from our real interest—the real British story?

Thus, we should recognise that there is a spectrum—a public and a private contribution. Our development NGOs, often co-financed by government, reach parts of the world which government cannot—rather like Heineken. In the Middle East, the work of people such as my noble friend Lord Stone in building up networks between UK supermarkets and Palestinian exporters is an excellent contribution to the infrastructure of peace. Ultimately, however, if there is a settlement, military monitors will be needed. We have many strengths across the spectrum as regards our cultural and military weight. In that sense, we are rivalled only by France and China; the US has different strengths.

My second reflection is that some countries, such as Norway, Canada and Ireland, pride themselves on their expertise in soft power; our self-image is different. Perhaps I should leave the inventory of our assets to the debate on the Select Committee report, but I say in passing that I am puzzled by the omission from the report of the role that we play in the Council of Europe, which is the main forum for human rights in Europe and whose court—the European Court of Human Rights—has been heavily influenced by British lawyers. I shall not spell out the dangers of the Government separating us from the court and the effect on our influence in Europe and beyond. I can leave that to the former Attorney-General, Mr Dominic Grieve, and his withering criticism of government policy as regards the ECHR.

My third reflection is that it is right for churchmen to force us to ask us difficult questions—in effect, to be troublemakers, as Elijah was to Ahab. They should make us ask questions such as: is there a way other than war? Have we made the military option the last resort? I have seen the contributions of Christian men and women worldwide in combating poverty and the need to build a human infrastructure. However, perhaps the “professional deformation” of churchmen is to say to themselves that love conquers all and to ignore the necessity from time to time, ultimately, of the military option. Often, too, soft power works best when buttressed by hard power in the background. Obviously, the end of communism in Europe involved a subtle interplay of hard and soft power. Increasingly, development agencies are forced to recognise the linkage between development and security, as we have seen very much in Afghanistan. However, that is a debate for another day.

Fourthly, and finally, what are the implications for us? The starting point is perhaps the Delphic oracle’s “Know thyself”, or, as the most reverend Primate put it, “Who are we?”. At a time of austerity and military draw-down our power is no longer mainly exercised through military strength. We have, however, from history—from who we are—a unique range of assets to influence others. Perhaps the adjustment to a new role is more difficult for us, with the burden of a glorious past and the temptation to nostalgia. The new means of influence is surely through partnerships; unilateral action, such as over the Falklands, is no longer possible. We should avoid nationalist temptations —for example, the siren voices that influence the Government over the European Court of Human Rights. We should play to our strengths, which include the English language and the new diaspora in our midst. For example, have the Government seriously thought of encouraging people from the diaspora communities in our midst to go abroad to their countries of origin? For example, people from Turkish communities, who have learnt perfect English in our schools, could go for a year as assistants to Turkey; it would be good for them in improving their Turkish, and good for us in spreading the influence of our culture and values. The new diaspora in our midst is one of the many new assets we have.

We should seek creative ways of rebalancing soft, hard and smart power—using, as effectively as we can all our assets, mostly now in partnership with like-minded countries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government have already invested in considerable preparations for the next NPT review. I take the opportunity to answer the question asked earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. The Government have decided to accept Austria’s invitation to attend the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, which will get under way this weekend. The UK will be represented by Mrs Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque, the UK’s ambassador to Austria and permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. I hope that is welcome news to all concerned.

In his opening, the most reverend Prelate talked about the importance of narrative. It is very important, with soft power, to talk about the importance of ideas. We all know that ideas shape the world in the long run, be they Christianity, Islam, the Enlightenment, communism, nationalism, fascism, or whatever; and radical Islam is now replacing the attractions of secular ideologies across the Middle East. We certainly need to think about our counternarrative. The traditional western and Anglo-Saxon narrative has been about open society, limited government, civil society, tolerance and human rights. The Reformation and beyond and the importance of non-conformity were not entirely appreciated by the Church of England in the 17th century, but it accepted them in the 19th century. I declare an interest as a member of the Liberal Party, which grew out of the alliance between the Whigs and the non-conformists.

We need to have a debate on what our national narrative now is. The other week I was in a seminar, off the record, with a fairly senior Conservative MP who said, “We can’t discuss the SDSR until we’ve decided who we are and where we think we are in the world—and we don’t know”. That is a real problem, and we all recognise that that is part of our problem. We need to get back to the question of what Britain is about. We have several contradictory narratives at the present moment. The excellent report on soft power produced by the British Academy earlier this year called itself something like the power of attraction—and that is fine, but, actually, the power of attraction means that we have enormous numbers of people of all backgrounds and levels of attainment wanting to come and live in Britain, which is something that we know many of our public no longer want to have. They want Britain to be a rather more closed society.

Part of our open society is that we accept that foreigners can buy whatever they want in Britain, and part of the popular reaction against globalisation in Britain is a sense that somehow we are losing our own country. So there is popular disillusionment with rapid change and continuing immigration. That suggests that politicians, churchmen and public intellectuals need to open a much more active debate about national identity. Gordon Brown as Prime Minister made one or two speeches on this, but we need to think about where we go from here. I am a member of the advisory board on the commemoration of World War I, and part of what we are trying to do through the programme of commemoration is to remind people where we came from. We did not stand alone; the Commonwealth, particularly the Indian Army, the West Indies Regiment and others, were all part of where we evolved from, into the multiracial society we are today.

Of course, it is also a matter of a national narrative and a sense of national identity that is changing and developing. Yesterday, I had an argument with a young woman, an official from the Foreign Office, who was being a little rude about the attitude to women in developing countries, and I reminded her that 75 years ago attitudes to women in this country were also pretty backward-looking from our current perspective. The transformation of the role and status of women over the past two to three generations in Britain and the other western states has been one of the most wonderful things that we have developed. Now we are trying to transfer those new British values to the rest of the world, and we recognise that the role of women is one of the keys to economic and social development—and also, incidentally, to population limitation. I pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary and the International Development Secretary for the work that they have done, including the work on the prevention of sexual violence against women—and also to the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, whom we have just welcomed into the House.

There is a lot more to do in this area. I am very happy to say that BIS now has a UK student outward mobility strategy, which was launched last year because British people do not go abroad enough. Lots of people come here, but we do not pay enough attention to making sure that our younger generation understands the rest of the world.

Multilateral work is how we have to approach much of soft power. There is little we can do on our own. We work closely with others. In South Sudan, for example, Britain and Norway are the joint chairs of one of the frameworks through which we try to negotiate, working closely with the African Union and the Arab League, doing our best to draw on Chinese participation wherever we can. International NGOs and NGOs based in Britain play a very valuable part in our endeavour. They are part of the soft power projection for Britain. Of course, we are very worried about the shrinking of space for NGOs to operate with Russia and in many other countries, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Commonwealth has also been mentioned—the language, culture and history—but, fundamentally, the rule of law, which we need to make as much as we can of, with India and South Africa in some ways as our key partners. The successful development of the rule of law in that regard is flawed but, nevertheless, is making real progress.

I have many more notes but I shall be as rapid as I can. We welcome the role of the churches in promoting tolerance and understanding among faiths as well as within each faith community, and in talking about different paths to God, particularly among the three faiths of the Book—Judaism, Islam and Christianity. I note that Ibrahim—Abraham—is now becoming one of the more popular boys’ names in Britain. That should remind people that these are not entirely incompatible traditions. The Government can assist in this regard. There are now university centres for Islamic theology and one needs to take that further. I take the opportunity to praise the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, for the work she did, and the speeches she made, on tolerance to Muslim audiences in Istanbul, Oman and Kuala Lumpur as well as for the speeches she made in Washington and Rome on interfaith understanding. That work, and the work on human rights, is being continued by my noble friend Lady Anelay.

A number of noble Lords talked about student visas and the whole problem with visas. We recognise that we have a problem. That is partly because so many people want to come to Britain. However, applications for university student visas continue to rise, as does the student overseas population in Britain. There was an 18% increase in visas granted for skilled workers and a 14% increase in visitor visas last year, so we are not going backwards on that. However, we are struggling to meet the pressure resulting from the number of people wishing to enter Britain.

Some noble Lords mentioned the BBC World Service. It may be better if I write to them on that very large subject. On the economic side, the Prime Minister has made it entirely clear that we are concerned about finding the golden thread that links conflict-free development with prosperity—namely, the absence of war, getting rid of corruption, the establishment of the rule of law, decent government and having markets that work. That involves us in a great deal of co-operation with others in fighting international corruption and criminal regimes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, asked a number of questions, including whether the Government had undertaken a risk analysis of the implications of withdrawal from the ECHR. My clear answer is that of course we have not because the Government have no intention of leaving the ECHR, so no such analysis is necessary.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Surely the question may not be one just of leaving the ECHR but of considering the judgments as purely advisory.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was involved in the Brighton initiative. We are concerned to reform and improve the quality of the court. I am happy to say that the last report I saw suggested that the backlog of applications under the ECHR has declined rapidly over the last two years, so British efforts to reform the Council of Europe have made real progress.

I agree that the European Union is the ultimate soft power element but we also have to recognise that popular disillusion with the EU is a common phenomenon in most member states. That is why the coalition Government, with others, are committed to a programme of EU reform.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, asked about a conference on Bosnia chaired by the Soul of Europe. I hope he will be reassured to hear that the FCO has written to the director of the Soul of Europe, informing him how he can access funding.

If I have not responded to other points made in the debate, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I write to them on those points. This has been an extremely valuable debate. I thank the most reverend Primate for introducing it and look forward to the next debate introduced by him, perhaps next year.

South Sudan

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there has never been an effective and functioning state in South Sudan. It is a new country born out of civil war. It is going to take a long time to construct an effective state administration with the ability to provide education and order within the 10 provinces with a large number of tribal groups and some 200 different languages. This is a major preoccupation with which all the states around South Sudan are engaged. Britain, the United States and Norway represent the troika of outside Governments who are most concerned. Of course we want other Governments to be concerned. It is good news that China has now recognised that it also has interests at stake and is considering providing additional troops to the UN peacekeeping forces.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, of the Governments who are most concerned, Uganda and Kenya are members of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has substantial experience in the field of internal reconciliation. Do the Government see any role for the Commonwealth and for members of the Commonwealth in this sad situation?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is also important to ensure that we have Ethiopia and—as far as there is a Government in Somalia—Somalia on board. There are problems with allegations that Ugandan troops are too close to the side of President Kiir and biased against Mr Machar, so there are a number of delicacies that would raise questions about a Commonwealth role.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on his timely initiative. He gave many examples. In Mosul last weekend the Islamic State effectively declared war on the Christians of Iraq. They may soon be given the choice: convert or face the sword. Some 200 schoolgirls, as yet unaccounted for, were taken by Boko Haram in northern Nigeria. In May we learnt of the fate of Meriam Ibrahim who, happily, just today has reached Europe. How many other cases of a similar nature have we not heard of? All are examples of a wider pattern of religious intolerance, mainly by Islamic extremists and the ignoring of Article 18 principles.

The good news, among the gloom, is that there is now a new recognition of the problem. I cite the all-party report on Article 18 and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, and her colleagues on that. I pay warm tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. Her speech at Georgetown University on 15 November last year was heartfelt and powerful and has been reflected in a new focus in the annual Foreign and Commonwealth Office human rights report.

His Royal Highness Prince Charles delivered a remarkable speech to Middle East faith leaders at Clarence House last December, where he said:

“It seems to me that we cannot ignore the fact that Christians in the Middle East are, increasingly, being deliberately targeted by fundamentalist Islamist militants”.

Last month I organised a visit on the subject by a Council of Europe colleague and was happily amazed by the number of NGOs in London that are involved with this problem. The fact is that of the 131 countries of a broadly Christian culture, not one lacks religious toleration. Of the 49 countries of a Muslim culture, 17 tolerate no other religion. Pew Research shows that Christians are the most increasingly persecuted for their faith; Muslims are the second but that is mainly Muslim on Muslim save, for example, in Burma and Sri Lanka. Of course, we should not forget the plight of the peaceful Baha’is. The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran states that:

“At least 734 Baha’is have reportedly been arrested since 2004 and 136 are currently detained”.

The same report stated, on Christians:

“In recent years, Christians, many of whom are converts from Muslim backgrounds, have faced a similar pattern of persecution”.

Why does it concern us? It concerns us because world peace depends on building bridges across such divides. States that honour Article 18 will honour other human rights. How do we, in the United Kingdom, respond? We can respond bilaterally, giving a good example by promoting human rights generally at home and not diminishing the work of the Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights, for example. Secondly, we can focus not only on Christians, but highlight the persecution of Shia in Mosul, for example. We can speak up and express indignation in, for example, the annual human rights report. Equally, and more controversially, we should consider some conditionality on aid for those countries that are the major defaulters in this area.

Multilaterally, we are now a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Have we taken any initiatives in this field? There is EU conditionality. Are the EU External Action Service and the high representative adequately staffed in this area? The Council of Europe has a series of relevant partnership agreements with Morocco, Jordan and Palestine.

The overall situation is worsening though there are some signs of increasing recognition of the problem.

“Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’ … ‘I tell you,’ he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out’”.

Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow my noble and learned friend and to adopt many of his questions. First, I shall reflect on the precise question in the Motion and then consider whether the inquiry is likely to be judged worth while.

Perhaps the first question can be answered briefly. It is largely contained in Sir John Chilcot’s letters to the Prime Minister of 15 July and 14 November last year. Apparently, only in June last year did the inquiry request that certain documents should be published to give evidential backing to its conclusions. I make two observations on that. First, why was the request made so late in the day? Secondly, surely it was unrealistic of the inquiry to believe that Cabinet Office documents and confidential exchanges between heads of state could be published. By sticking to such a principle, the inquiry ensured further delay for a process that began in June 2009 and was expected by some at the time to last but for a year. The Guardian of 29 December last claimed that a compromise agreement had been reached between Sir John and the Cabinet Secretary that extracts could be published in a redacted form. I pose this question to the Minister: is that so? Was not such a deal in effect inevitable from the start?

Many doubts remain as to whether the length and expense of the inquiry have been worth while. My noble and learned friend referred to the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday. However long and expensive that inquiry was, it had the merit of having a cathartic effect on divisions within Ulster. Perhaps the Chilcot inquiry was necessary because of pressures at the time, but many key questions have already been answered. Certainly, every conceivable question was asked of Tony Blair, the Prime Minister at the time. For some the motive was a sort of personal vendetta against Tony Blair—let us remember “Blair liar” and “Blair war criminal”—but they are likely to be disappointed.

I personally had the privilege of an important vantage point. Between 1997 and 2005 I chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee of the other place. I gave evidence to the Hutton inquiry and I visited key figures in the Washington establishment at least twice a year over the period between 1998 and 2005. I had one-to-one meetings with the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and Sir Richard Dearlove. As a result, I am wholly convinced that Tony Blair acted with total integrity and relayed to Parliament and the public the advice that both he and, indeed, I too had received. There may be criticisms that he did not ask sufficiently searching questions of the intelligence services about their sources. Certainly the US Administration relied excessively on exiles and partisan sources such as Mr Chalabi and the Iraqi taxi driver, Mr Rafid al-Janabi. There was much suspicion that the US Administration was seeking revenge on Iraq for 9/11.

The Prime Minister at the time may be criticised for being insufficiently independent of the United States and having a rather starry-eyed view of President Bush and the special relationship, but again, for example, at Crawford in March 2002 he told the President that he would support military action not come what may, but provided,

“that certain conditions were met”.

He did ensure that the United States took the UN path until thwarted by Monsieur de Villepin and contrary to the neo-cons’ view in Washington. Equally, he avoided the isolation of the US, and in my judgment both of those were the objectives. The inquiry is unlikely to find a smoking gun and it has said in terms that it will not apportion blame.

What about the breaches of international law to which my noble and learned friend alluded? Even if in retrospect we recognise that there was greater weight against intervention among those international lawyers who opposed the intervention, there were respected lawyers on both sides of the argument for pre-emption. The inquiry would be well advised, in spite of its excellent legal adviser, not to seek to give a definitive view in this very uncertain field of international law. What about the role of the security services? Surely that was adequately covered in the Butler report. What about the role of the military? It has had its lessons learnt reviews. There were some concerns about the quality of military equipment, but surely the general, correct view is that it was executed superbly by our Armed Forces.

The follow-up to the Iraq intervention is that there has been much public revulsion against all intervention. There was the Chicago speech by Tony Blair in, I think, 1998. There were successful interventions in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, but following Iraq and Afghanistan, as we have seen in Libya with no boots on the ground and as we have seen in the parliamentary view on intervention in Damascus, there is now a very strong public and parliamentary tide against intervention.

What about the likely conclusion about governance? Was there too much armchair government? Was there a presidential-style Government with the Cabinet sidelined? That may be so, but the memoirs of Robin Cook, no great admirer of the former Prime Minister, suggest otherwise. What about the insights into transatlantic relations? It was the clear strategic priority of the Prime Minister not to keep the United States isolated; that was very much a major factor for him. There was a great deal of evidence of that in the US inquiries. I had a certain personal experience of the somewhat naive views of the neo-cons in Washington when on several occasions I met Mr Richard Perle, whom Denis Healey called the “Prince of Darkness”. He relayed to me his view that come the liberation, while perhaps the bells would not ring in Iraq, there would certainly be great rejoicing and that the ripples of democracy would flow out from Iraq over the whole of the Middle East. That was a view which was in part accepted by the President, and the neo-cons were then very much in a dominant position in Washington.

What about the post-conflict planning? Is the inquiry likely to tell us anything useful about that? The truth is, of course, that we in the UK played a very secondary role in the conflict and certainly a secondary one in the post-conflict planning. I saw that when I went to the green zone in Baghdad and was in the office being occupied by Sir Jeremy Greenstock. I saw the role of Mr Paul Bremer and his large component on the other side. There were two contrasting blueprints for the post conflict. The State Department had Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, who told me that there was more combat experience on his floor in the State Department than on the relevant floor of the Department of Defense. In that department were Mr Donald Rumsfeld and Mr Paul Wolfowitz. They were at the top of the department and said that the Iraqi army was dissolved. As we know, the Chilcot inquiry was unable to interview key people in the US Administration, so it has been given only a partial view of the key players in the post-intervention scene in the United States.

In conclusion, I fear that this long-awaited and long-expected inquiry, long delayed for good or bad reasons, may well prove to be no more than an historic document mainly of interest to students of government. Possibly, after an initial flurry of interest in the press and among the public, the waters will close over it and it will have as little ultimate impact as the Franks committee report on the Falklands, referred to by my noble and learned friend. At least that had a totally UK national perspective. Many expectations have been raised, but it may well be that many expectations will be dashed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would distinguish between access and publication. The delay is very much about working through thousands of documents, many of them very lengthy, and deciding how much can safely be declassified for publication—how much therefore can be published, how much some documents should be redacted in part and whether there are documents which it would be safer not to publish at all. That has taken a good deal longer than was hoped, but it is now well under way and is what we are currently considering.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Is it true that the request by the inquiry was only made last June?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Sorry, which request?

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

The request to publish the documents set out in the letters.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not informed on that matter. I know that, last July, they hoped to be able to start the process of Maxwellisation within a few months. That has been delayed because what happens in a Maxwellisation process—here again I have to correct the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan—is that those who are mentioned in the report will be allowed to see in full those elements of the report which carry their evidence and will be published. So they will not see more; they will see what will be published.

This is not, incidentally, a court of law. In no sense is this a legal inquiry. It is not a matter, if I may quote the noble Lord, of people against whom there is a case; it is a matter of those who may see themselves as being criticised in the report being given time ahead of publication to prepare their response to the criticisms. So, if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, this is not a roadblock. It is, however, an obstacle course, and that takes a good deal of time and discussion among different government departments, which I regret has taken longer than we hoped. I very much hope that it will be concluded soon. The Maxwellisation letters will then be able to go out and we will proceed at the normal stately but sure pace of government publications to a publication of the final report.

I also raise the role of the Cabinet Secretary because I know that he has been criticised quite substantially in the press. The Cabinet Secretary is entitled to see all the papers of previous Governments. In the final resort, as we all know, the Cabinet Secretary only advises and the Prime Minister can always override, but I am old-fashioned about civil servants. Senior civil servants are servants of the Crown as well as of the Government, and they advise in their perception of the long-term national interest. That is what the Cabinet Secretary is doing and I regret that there has been some rather partisan criticism in the press about his role, criticism which I think is unjustified.

The question was also raised as to whether the Butler report covered intelligence, so that we do not need to take it again. The Butler report covered intelligence leading up to the war. This inquiry, which takes us several years past the war, may well need to address one or two other questions. I should perhaps also mention the Gibson inquiry, which, as noble Lords will know, provided an interim report last December on some of the issues of rendition and alleged ill treatment of British nationals and others. A picture of various different dimensions will come into that.

This does, therefore, take a good deal of time to complete. It has not been helped, sadly, by the illness of one of the five members of the Chilcot inquiry, but the other four are well under way and I stress again that Gordon Brown’s promise at the beginning that:

“No British document and no British witness will be beyond the scope of the inquiry”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/6/09; col. 23.],

has been carried out for the inquiry. The question that therefore remains, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, rightly points out, is how much of this it is wise to publish. That is what has caused the delay and it is what we are currently working through.

So there are questions about how fast we can work towards this conclusion and there are, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, questions for the future. I disagree with those who have suggested that the report, when it comes out, will be simply a historical document gathering dust. I think that it will raise precisely the sorts of questions which the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has suggested. What should be the conditions for future intervention? How much information should be shared with Parliament and with opposition parties in order to carry Parliament and the public with the Government? How should we handle the coalition aspects of interventions, given that it is highly unlikely that Britain will be involved in any serious military operations abroad in the future which are not in coalitions with others? There, I think, is where the debates will focus.

The Government are well aware of the sensitivity of these issues. I return to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. What is a reasonable time before we disclose conversations with our closest allies and what precedents do we set if we start to publish Cabinet minutes of the previous Government, when others give their advice in Cabinet and elsewhere on the basis of full confidentiality? These are serious questions with which the Government are currently struggling.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, for raising this question. I assure the House that a large number of officials are working through those issues. The Chilcot inquiry and its four active members are still at work, and we very much hope to publish the final report within the foreseeable future. I will be pushing for that future to be as foreseeable as it can be.

European Commission: Staffing

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of United Kingdom nationals on the staff of the European Commission.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government recognise that there is a problem with the level of UK representation among staff working in the European institutions. The UK represents 12% of the EU’s population but makes up only 5% of EU staff, half of whom are expected to retire over the next 10 years. The Government are committed to reversing this downward trend. In the short term, we are increasing the number of civil servants whom we send on secondment to the institutions and, for the long term, we are providing additional support to candidates who are preparing for the concours.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

I am sure that the Minister will agree that it is against our national interest that there has been such a dramatic decline in the number of British civil servants in Brussels and that, further, we have not succeeded with one British national in the concours since 2010. Does he not agree that part of the reason must be that able British civil servants are deterred by the constant sniping at Europe on the part of this Government—although not, I may say, on the part of the party that he represents? Could not that be in part allayed by giving a guarantee to any civil servant from the UK who goes to Brussels that they will be able to return if they so choose? That was something that was available when we first joined the European Community, as it was.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the decline in applicants for the European Commission started before the current Government came into office. It is partly a question of language inadequacy; you have to take the competition partly in your second language. Applicants from most other countries take it in English as their second language, in which they are very often highly fluent; we lack sufficient English, or British, students, who are fluent in French or German, the other two languages. If I may say so, there is no evidence that there has been a decline because of uncertainty about Britain’s future relations with the European Union. May I also say that the noble Lord is misinformed, and that some 20 British candidates have succeeded in the concours since 2010? He may have read an article that said that no British civil servant has succeeded in the concours since that date.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, another US-sponsored peace initiative; again hopes are raised. I follow the noble and gallant Lord in his theme of “never despair”, but it was sad to learn that the Foreign Office tried to put obstacles in the way of him visiting his Israeli counterparts. The broad lines of a settlement are clear; the logistics are not. The international community has tried unsuccessfully the politics of little steps and the politics of the big bang.

I pose three questions. First, is there any serious alternative to a two-state solution? Surely, one state based on the federal principle or a parallel state structure is politically unrealistic. Nor is the status quo a long-term alternative. I recall sitting recently on a beach in Tel Aviv witnessing families enjoying the good life. One can see the short-term attractions of that, but demography puts a major shadow over the longer term. For Israelis, any alternative has major risks. Golda Meir said something like, “If our enemies destroyed their weapons, there would be peace. If Israel did so, there would be no Israel”. Israel points out, of course, the divided Palestinian groups, the reaction to the Gaza withdrawal and the constant Palestinian anti-Israel propaganda. Palestinians see the settlers increasing their stranglehold on both the West Bank and Israeli politics.

The second question is what, then, are the difficulties in making progress? Last year, Tom Phillips, a former British ambassador in both Israel and Saudi Arabia, wrote a most perceptive article in Prospect magazine, with the headline:

“There may never be peace”.

He gave 10 reasons why the chances of a solution had grown bleaker over the past six years. Surely the fundamentals of the problem remain the same. John Kerry is certainly very active but even the great persuader, President Clinton, failed, and there is no Rabin or Olmet on the scene.

Are there any signs of hope? Clearly at the margins, there are indeed such signs. Negatively, the PA has not, as threatened, taken Israel to the International Criminal Court after the authority’s victory at the UN. Secondly, President Netanyahu has released some prisoners and promised more investment, both in the West Bank and now in the gas fields in Gaza. There are welcome developments in the PA economy. The signs that Iran is coming in from the cold, an “Iran spring”, may remove a perceived existential threat to Israel—as may the promised removal of chemical weapons from Syria. The Arab peace initiative has just been reaffirmed. The Arab spring can, of course, work either way.

Yet with all the problems, the efforts are worth while, as the noble and gallant Lord has said. The precedents of Northern Ireland and South Africa are encouraging but it is difficult to counter persuasively the pessimistic conclusions of that old Middle East hand, Tom Phillips, who concluded:

“Failure is the most likely outcome”.