Hong Kong National Security Legislation
Lord Balfe Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I believe I have already addressed this issue. The route, or the programme which has been announced, is specifically for those who currently hold or qualify for BNO status and their family dependents. As to others, each case will be looked at on its merits. If someone comes to the United Kingdom, from wherever they may be in the world, and seeks sanctuary or asylum in the United Kingdom, that case will be looked at on its merits.
Lord Balfe (Con) [V]
My Lords, I notice that the terms for people from Hong Kong are considerably better than those we are affording to EU citizens, many of whom have lived here for years. Will there be any salary threshold applied to new migrants who wish to come here, and will we treat them more favourably than EU citizens who are already here?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I am sure my noble friend will recognise that the situation faced by those who are eligible for BNO status or have BNO status—or, indeed, Hong Kongers more generally—is markedly different from the situation faced by EU citizens, and therefore it is right that we have a specific scheme, as we said we would, for BNOs specifically.
Hong Kong: Human Rights
Lord Balfe Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest, as I was for some years the joint chair of the European Parliament Hong Kong friendship group and I have been to Hong Kong on numerous occasions. We are now facing what I think of as a Rhineland moment. It is a time when you have to draw the line, because the line has clearly been crossed. We have seen a lot of Chinese pressure over the years: China’s pressure on states not to recognise Taiwan; its pressure on countries when they entertained the Dalai Lama, as David Cameron did; and, more recently, its pressure on Australia when it called for an independent WHO inquiry. It is time now for there to be some international action against bullying, and taking in 3 million citizens is not necessarily part of it. I call on the Minister to tell us how he is going to get together with like-minded states and co-operate in opposing these Chinese moves.
Covid-19: Repatriation of UK Nationals
Lord Balfe Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
On the noble Lord’s more substantial point, we are of course redeploying diplomats in all our posts, whether they work on the security side or from a Home Office or military perspective, wherever they are needed, and they are key to the repatriation effort in each country—I know that south Asia has been a key area of focus—and that has been the right thing to do. The noble Lord says that nothing positive is said about Europe. I ask him to reflect on the comments I made a few moments ago on how we will be co-hosting a conference with our European Union partners on the important issue of the global response to Covid. That underlines the commitment of the UK to work with international partners in different multilateral fora—and, yes, including with our European Union friends.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I am not yet clear as to what the numbers are. Clearly, two sorts of people are being repatriated: one is the people who were on cruise ships and on holidays who were just stranded; the second group is people who went often to south Asia because that is what they did on a regular basis, but they were not on holiday and they did not have a definite time of return. Is there any estimate of the numbers in those two categories, and what are the plans for getting them back? I think in particular of the holidaymakers, because they are no longer on holiday if they have been there for a month, and I guess that the cruise ship industry will have problems. Secondly, there are lots of planes sitting on the ground at Heathrow and in all sorts of airports. How do you choose who gets to fly the planes back, and why, when there are so many empty planes, is there such a long queue?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
To take my noble friend’s final remarks first, a lot of countries have closed airspace, and you need to seek special permissions to allow aircraft to fly. Our charter flights have been operating; as my noble friend will recall, we announced a £75 million package, and we are working in partnership with airlines with which we have signed memorandums of understanding. Every time there is a charter route, we go out and get the best offer from an airline. For example, in India we have been working with British Airways, and in Pakistan we have been working with Qatar Airways.
On the specific numbers on cruise ships, I have already alluded to the fact that we have returned a substantial number—around 19,000 people. At one time we were monitoring a great number of cruise ships—I remember sitting in meetings, day after day, tracking cruise ships around the world. We have had a successful repatriation policy in support of those people, returning them either through commercial routes or, when necessary, running chartered flights.
On the specifics of holidaymakers versus people visiting family, the original estimates ran to around 20,000 people in India, for example, so the fact that we have already returned over 10,000 people is testament to the number of flights. However, the scale of the operation could not be underestimated. To take just the Indian example, we have now run 52 charter flights. It was necessary to run them, and, as I said in response to an earlier question, we continue to run additional flights because of the sheer scale of numbers, with people visiting family and in different parts of the world. Yes, we have committed to do this work and continue to do it. As I said, the job is not done, nor have I claimed that, but we are working through the numbers to ensure that those who wish to come back to the UK can be brought home as quickly as possible. We have prioritised the most vulnerable, which was the right thing to do, but we continue to work with countries on the ground to ensure that we can repatriate all British travellers who wish to return home.
Council of Europe: House of Lords Members’ Contribution
Lord Balfe Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the contribution of Members of the House of Lords to the work of the Council of Europe.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to have secured this Question for Short Debate and to welcome so many fellow Council delegates here. There was a similar debate in the House of Commons recently and there is something to be said for the delegations that travel from this House to the three international bodies, namely the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the OSCE, bringing their activities to the attention of the House from time to time.
All three bodies play a valuable role in projecting Britain’s image overseas. We have been a member of all of them from more or less their foundation and this House has always had representation. We are supposed to make up one-third of the delegation but, having carefully analysed the figures, we generally fall somewhat short of that, although not by a huge amount. However, we do not fall short of one-third of the financial contribution to the delegation. If we had a Whip on our Benches, I would ask him to look very carefully at whether we could get value for money.
The size and composition of the delegations are based on the size and balance of parties in the House of Commons, not Parliament as a whole. I am sure we will hear a bit about that from a speaker from one of the Benches not represented in the Council of Europe.
My first point is that the cost of the parliamentary assembly is incredibly low. The whole annual budget of the Council of Europe costs less than the European Union spends in one day, to keep the sizes in perspective. Also, the cost of the parliamentary assembly has now gone down from €17.5 million in 2017 to €14.7 million this year. It is projected to stay at that level for the next three years.
The fact is that there is now no allowance for inflation. I am told that the two main opponents of inflation are the United Kingdom and the far-right Government of the republic of Italy. I would very much welcome the Minister’s comments on what Britain is achieving in extending its reach and influence by joining the Government of Italy in seemingly blocking the ability of the Council of Europe to expand even in line with inflation.
Since 2010, the parliamentary assembly and the Council have consistently been cut back. Some 230 posts have disappeared over that period. This means that the European Court of Human Rights will inevitably be one of the sufferers, because you cannot spread all the cuts in just one department. I would like to ask Her Majesty’s Government what exactly they are trying to do with the Council of Europe. What is their vision for its future? It seems it is part of the eternal cutting back and resentment of anything called “foreign”. That is my first question.
The second matter I want to turn to is Russia. Russia was probably rightly excluded from a number of international institutions after its intervention in Crimea and various other actions that put it somewhat beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. It is worth remembering that the dismemberment of the Soviet Union was an extremely messy affair. It left behind a number of problems, most of which are now to be found in the frozen conflicts we are trying to unravel.
If Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe, or chose to leave, it would mean that all Russian citizens would lose their right of access to the European Court of Human Rights. That was probably why, having weighed everything up, including the importance of the Council of Europe, there was an agreement in Helsinki to let Russia back into the parliamentary assembly. The British Government did not oppose that agreement; it is important to remember that. But almost as soon as it had been agreed, the Government started lobbying against the very agreement they had let through. At the last session we had the sight, which I found very unsatisfying, of the UK delegation leading the attempt to get Russia’s suspension continued. A group of members, led by Ukraine and the UK, with, as I put it, sundry disaffected members from former communist bloc countries, put down a large number of unhelpful amendments, all of which were defeated by margins of either 2:1 or 3:1, but rather than seeing sense and saying, after the first half a dozen or even 10, “Let’s accept that we’ll lose all of these”, we kept the Council of Europe sitting until after 1 am voting hopelessly on amendments. Virtually every member of every other western European delegation, including the Germans, the French, the Spanish and the Italians, were voting against the United Kingdom. We were in extraordinarily odd company.
I understand that we have now been invited to a meeting in Riga on Friday 6 September, described in the invitation letter as,
“the first like-minded meeting on further actions concerning the return of the Russian delegation to the PACE”.
In other words, this is a meeting designed to make life as difficult as possible. Rather than stretching out an olive branch, it is stretching out a rather harsh whip. We will be represented there by three MPs—two Conservative and one Labour. All I can say for the two Conservatives is that they were the leaders of all the resolutions that were defeated 2:1 in Strasbourg.
I put it to the Minister that it is not acceptable for him to say that it is up to parliamentarians to decide what to do. I am delighted to see the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, in his place, because I recall that when he and I tentatively proposed that it might be appropriate to visit the Russian Duma a few months ago, the Foreign Office came down on us like a tonne of bricks. Do not start saying that there is any freedom for Members and that the Foreign Office is not interested.
How does the Minister propose to put our relations with Russia on a better footing? Frankly, we are all on the same continent. I am not sure I would go as far as Gorbachev and say that we all live in the common European home, but we certainly are in a situation where Britain needs friends. When we leave the European Union we will be in an absolutely ideal situation for people to have a pop at us and decide, “Well, Britain won’t really have the solidarity of Brussels. We can cause them a bit of trouble with a bit of cyberwarfare or the like”. I put it to the Minister that it is in our interests to get together with our western European colleagues and try to get a modus vivendi with the Russians. This is a huge challenge facing PACE today.
Those are my two main points. I congratulate the Minister on still being part of the Government at 6.15 pm; I hope he will still be there at 10 pm. In the meantime, I look forward to him explaining how we will relate to Russia and how we will get a better accord with people for whom we can change history, but cannot change their geography. They are there and they will stay.
Violent Extremism
Lord Balfe Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I follow all other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for initiating the debate and thanking him and his colleagues for all the hard work that went into this most valuable report. I declare an interest as an adviser and participant in an outfit called the European Foundation for Democracy, which is based in Belgium. It was instrumental in being set up by a now deceased friend of mine, Anne-Marie Lizin, a Belgian politician who, 30 years ago, was in north Africa promoting the very values we are trying to promote today. Part of that is that a European approach is needed to what is largely a European problem. It is not just a British problem. The European Foundation for Democracy believes very much in having a cross-cultural, cross-country approach.
I and the foundation welcome the report. We acknowledge that fundamental religious ideological beliefs are among the pull factors that encourage radicalisation of young people in this region, but we could have somewhat stronger recommendations on cultural and educational interventions that could be tailored alongside those in the report to help us to tackle the problem.
Although economic, civic and social factors play a role in violent radicalisation and recruitment processes, we should not forget the significant role played by ideology. Religious leaders and groups play a significant role in those communities. Their interpretation of religion is a key factor in driving people towards taking radical or moderate positions. Research shows that prominent jihadis come from the background of non-violent Islamism, the former exploiting grievances that are not necessarily legitimate as they can promote a utopian, sharia-based state approach that goes against the principles of the rule of law and fundamental rights. In such cases, rather than addressing the grievances and compromising on them, we should be promoting alternative narratives. For instance, I draw attention to the first draft of the Tunisian constitution, which mentions the complementarity of women with men, but after consultation and debate this was changed to the equality between men and women. That was done within that society as a result of debate about the way the different genders should be viewed, all within an Islamist viewpoint. It is possible.
We share the aim of devising programmes to strengthen democratic accountability and good governance and to promote debate and dialogue. To implement those, we should recognise and be ready to counter the ideologies that act against such values. The report rightly focuses on prevention. To do that, we cannot focus only on violent extremism. We also need to take a step back and look at non-violent, extremist ideologies. How is it that among the millions of poor and marginalised individuals from all over the world, some—quite a small minority—decided to embrace violence? We need to try to tease out the ideological triggers so that many people who personally believe in extremist ideology do not then carry that forward into violent action.
I have already mentioned to the Minister that I wrote to him on 13 June, asking whether he would meet representatives from the European Foundation for Democracy to explore how we can all work better together towards our common goal of a peaceful and prosperous community of equal citizens and well-adjusted families in a tolerant UK, Europe and world. I hope that he will agree to such a meeting, because I finish where I started, by saying that this is a European problem. We have much to learn also from each other and I hope that we will do that in combating this difficulty, which faces so many of us.
Turkey: Prisoners
Lord Balfe Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what impact they anticipate the outcome of the Turkish general election on 24 June will have on the government of Turkey’s treatment of those in prison, and in particular on its alignment with the principles laid down by the European Court of Human Rights.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, following the re-election of President Erdoğan and the majority control of Parliament by the ruling Justice and Development Party on 24 June, we expect Turkey to safeguard the human rights of all its citizens, including those in prison, in line with its international human rights obligations. We urge Turkey to make progress in these areas and to lift the state of emergency, and we stand ready to help Turkey in any way we can.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his answer. The European Court of Human Rights is of course a part of the Council of Europe, which this week has adopted a report showing that there are still thousands of prisoners in Turkey some two years after the coup. What is the Foreign Office doing in relation to individual representations? I have tabled a number of Questions about individuals, and I have been fobbed off with answers about general principles. Do we still make representations about individuals and, secondly, do we work in political co-operation with our EU partners? What are we going to do when we leave the EU? Will we be on our own, or will we still seek to work with them?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend raises three questions. First, he asked about the representations that the United Kingdom Government make. I assure him that, most recently when the Prime Minister met the President, we continued to raise various cases not only in general terms but in specific terms. He used the phrase “fobbed off”, which is not a phrase that I am familiar with in the context of the Foreign Office. I assure him that we make representations to the highest level consistently and on individual cases. As for working with our European partners, we continue to—and, as my noble friend knows, we strongly support the important monitoring work of the Council of Europe.
UK and the Western Balkans (IRC Report)
Lord Balfe Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, at a time like this you realise why it is sometimes unfortunate to be placed in a certain position on the speakers list. I rise to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for his introduction, only to realise, in comparison with him and our last two speakers, how little I know about the subject beyond a layman’s prejudices. But I will make one or two observations that I hope the Government will take on board.
First, on the subject of NATO, I found the Government’s response frankly disappointing. Under “Euro-Atlantic integration” they say:
“We agree that, providing Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia meet the requirements for NATO membership, their accession would be a welcome step towards greater stability in the Balkans”.
I do not have the expertise of the last two speakers, but I must say that I was struck by the sheer complacency of that statement. It is then followed by three paragraphs about Macedonia.
I hope that the Government realise that last October the entity of Republika Srpska made a proclamation of military neutrality that was deliberately aimed against NATO membership and which specifically referred to military alliances. If we extend NATO membership much further, we are in danger of devaluing it altogether. We are already in a position where Article 5 guarantees are pretty meaningless over large swathes of membership, and, with reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina, I certainly do not see that it is anywhere near being an acceptable ally to allow into NATO.
On Macedonia, in paragraph 43 of our report we say that the Government should support this, with or without the name issue being solved. I am sorry, but there is a thing called the Greek veto, and it will not be solved without the name issue, so we should be doing all we can to support the current talks, which at last look as though they might head in the direction of a solution.
As regards Serbia, I do not see that there is any will or wish in Serbia to join NATO. I was in Belgrade last year and was struck, first, by the number of people who seem to be rather fond of the Russians, and, secondly, by the sheer outright hostility towards the European Union and the West. They have not forgotten the bombing and what happened in the area and still bring it up on many occasions. We need to take that firmly into account. Kosovo, of course, is not widely recognised by a number of NATO and EU members. I agree that in the end that problem will probably solve itself—but it is a problem.
Briefly on EU membership, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, that the EU has made a complete mess of the area. I also agree with Jean-Claude Juncker that there should be no further expansion for a good period of time. The EU has overreached itself, largely because it wished to stabilise the former Soviet bloc countries of eastern and central Europe. It allowed countries into the EU which, frankly, should never be there. The level of corruption which one still finds in Bulgaria and Romania is quite unacceptable to EU values. In the minds of some people, what is clearly needed is a sort of waiting room, not a situation in which we import more conflict and division into the EU. I remind the Minister, although it is slightly off the point in the context of this report, that Croatia and Slovenia, which are EU members, have shown themselves quite incapable of accepting the rule of international law in border disputes. So I do not agree that postponement is not in the UK’s interest. However, whether it is in the UK’s interest or not, we are in the process of leaving the European Union.
That brings me to another point in the government response. When talking about aid, they say:
“After our exit from the EU, we will have more say over how we target UK funds previously channelled through EU programmes, thereby enhancing the flexibility and impact of our spend”.
What does the Minister mean? Is he saying that the money we have spent through the EU we would not otherwise have spent in the way it has been spent in the past, which is why we need more flexibility—or that we will no longer co-operate with the EU in how we spend our money? Will there no longer be any political co-operation? Or is this just Foreign Office words for saying, “We’re leaving the EU, we’re not going to have much influence, but we’d better put the best show on that we can”? I suspect it is probably the latter.
In closing, perhaps I may make one other point. China is, as I have said on many occasions, the biggest challenge to our values and to what is going on in the West. In paragraph 83 of our report, we quote Timothy Less, one of our witnesses, who said that,
“if China was not willing to put its money into some of these big infrastructure projects, nobody would, and the Balkans would not have the new railroads, ports, roads, factories and other investments which the Chinese are currently financing”.
That is a statement of fact—and the fact of the matter is that China is beginning a foreign policy in the West and we seem to be sleep-walking into it. We have an obsession with Russia but we do not really look at what China is doing. I predict that, in 10 to 15 years’ time, we will wake up and find that a lot of Governments, particularly those in the Balkans, will have huge debts to China and will effectively become Chinese, not Russian, proxies in western foreign policy.
The Russians do not have the money or the influence and, above all, they are not particularly liked. The Chinese are playing a very subtle and very clever game. They are not tying any political demands to their loans and they are almost the equivalent of the payday lender: it is easy to get the loan but hard to get out of the dependency relationship. I counsel that the Foreign Office should, with our colleagues, have a very close look at the consequences of Chinese involvement in the western Balkans, Greece and a number of other countries, and at the impact that this could have on common foreign and security policy, in so far as we have any, after we have left the EU.
Turkey: Human Rights
Lord Balfe Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Balfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the strength and effectiveness of their representations about human rights abuses to the government of Turkey once the United Kingdom is outside the European Union.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the United Kingdom and Turkey have a close and constructive relationship that enables us to raise our human rights concerns at the highest levels. We do not expect this to change as we leave the European Union. In addition to bilateral channels, we address human rights issues in other multilateral fora, including the Council of Europe, of which Turkey is also a member.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I thank the Minister for his reply, but point out that when we are outside the European Union we will no longer be a part of its common position. That will mean that we are not able to shape that common position, nor will we be part of it when we are making representations. Does the Minister consider that the little bit of independence which we gain is worth putting us in the same position as, say, Canada, another largish NATO ally but one which is very much on the margin when it comes to making representations in Ankara?
Northern Cyprus
Lord Balfe Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, I am a member of the TRNC All-Party Group. I have been going to north Cyprus since the 1980s. My first contact there was when I was on the Turkey delegation of the European Parliament. We found that the Greek Cypriot Administration consistently opposed any contact between the European Parliament and north Cyprus. Indeed, the first time I went to north Cyprus, in the 1980s, the leader of the socialist group of which I was then a member received a letter from the President of Cyprus condemning the fact that I had visited an illegal regime. You could say that things have gone downhill ever since. The fact of the matter is that we have had difficulties with both sides for many years, but in particular with the Greek Cypriot side giving a fair hearing to what I see as the legitimate demands of the Turkish Republic.
The European Parliament did stand up for the TRNC. It had an unofficial arrangement: with every Turkish delegation, you got a trip to north Cyprus—it was added on to the itinerary if you wanted to go. It was never an official visit; it was always an unofficial visit. However, it meant that a number of us got to know north Cyprus quite well. I got to know President Denktash, who was basically the father of the present north Cyprus. I got to know his first successor, Mehmet Ali Talat, who, with the help of the United Nations, got a settlement that was put to a referendum in 2004 and agreed on the Turkish side with the assurance of the EU that if the Greek Cypriots rejected it, they could still join the EU. The Greek Cypriots promptly rejected the UN settlement.
Before the Mehmet Ali Talat years, I had met the present President of Cyprus, Mustafa Akinci. He was then the Mayor of Nicosia, the Turkish name for the capital of the island of Cyprus and of its part. He was a very good, reforming mayor who made a lot of changes and got on very well. He always believed in his heart that if he could get the presidency, he could get a solution. You could not find a member of the north Cyprus political class who had more commitment to a settlement than Mustafa Akinci—some would say he had too much of an attachment to a settlement.
I have followed the negotiations since he became President on the political platform that he could negotiate a settlement because he knew the people on the other side and that what was needed was patience and good will. He put a huge amount of patience and all of his good will into it. Frankly, he got to a position where he had given every possible concession that he could have given. If he had given a single further concession, he would almost certainly have lost the referendum in the north because, even as he was negotiating in Switzerland, there were people in the north who were saying, “You have gone too far”. Even at that point he said, “If only we can bring back a settlement. We have got as far as we can. We have given every concession”—and they had given every concession, but they did not get a settlement.
Turkey tried. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has referred to the huge reduction they offered in the number of troops. The troops are there because the people feel insecure. It is not that they parade around the streets. I have been in north Cyprus many times, most recently this summer, and, although there are Turkish bases there, you certainly do not see Turkish troops parading around the streets. It has the most discreet army I have ever seen anywhere—more discreet, incidentally, than the Brits in the south.
Turkey did everything it could to get a settlement. The TRNC authorities did everything they could to get a settlement. The UN mediator, Barth Eide, tried everything he could to get a settlement. I met him after the collapse of the talks and he said to me before he went back to the Norwegian Parliament, “I could have done nothing else. We went as far as we possibly could”.
I have concluded that this process is now dead and it should be declared dead. There is no reason whatever for going back to talks on the old basis because there is nothing left to talk about. My friends in north Cyprus should say that they will go back to the chamber to talk either on the basis of two communities talking to each other, or two Governments talking to each other. The Government of Cyprus talking to the Turkish community has to come to an end. It is no longer acceptable. The Government in north Cyprus have now got to be firm. If south Cyprus says, “We are not going to talk”, so be it. Talks have got nowhere and so they are not losing much.
The next thing that has to happen is that we accept that Cyprus will not be the only island that is divided. The island of Ireland is divided. A large number of islands are divided between two populations that prefer to be divided than to be united. That can be done and the people of north Cyprus should not be afraid of it. They have been extremely resourceful. They have lived for many years under this situation and they have survived.
However, we now have to look to Turkey being more aggressive in its diplomacy. Turkey now has to join the international group of countries that get and campaign for the recognition of the TRNC, at least by Organisation of Islamic Cooperation members. There has to be an acceptance that this is now an emerging state. People say, “It is an illegal state”. I say, “Oh yes, like Taiwan, for instance”—which, I have been told by Chinese friends, is an illegal state. However, it is a state; it exists.
Britain, frankly, has got to stop hiding behind the European Union and always coming up with an excuse for doing nothing. It always seems that there is some fault or some reason why nothing can be done. I strongly supported us remaining in the European Union. I found it very hard to find anything positive to say about us leaving. The only positive thing that might come out of it is that we can no longer hide behind the European Union when we basically want to shuffle off our responsibility for behaving in a decent fashion towards north Cyprus.
I hope the UK will stop hiding behind the EU and say that we want to normalise relations with north Cyprus; that we want to bring it in from the cold; that everything else has failed but we will support talks between the two Governments or the two communities but, until that happy day comes, we will take the attitude that the talks are dead—the peace process is dead. We have to move on, so let us move on with a positive view from the United Kingdom, a positive push forward, and a recognition of our friends in north Cyprus. Historically, the people of north Cyprus have been good friends to the United Kingdom and we should welcome them as such.
Iran: Future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
Lord Balfe Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, the agreement represents a considerable triumph for Europe: over 13 years, with Governments of different political persuasions, we managed to get an agreement. However, we forget that China and Russia are part of the agreement that is seemingly tossed away by the leadership of the United States Administration. Can the Minister assure us that we will do everything within our power, not only with our two European allies but with China and Russia, to keep the agreement going? It is important that we are even-handed. There is a perception in that part of the world that another big player in that area has a much softer ride than Iran. It is important that, having done a deal with Iran, we are seen to obey it and fulfil the full spirit of it.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend is right that the deal that was struck went wider than just the EU partners. There was some very hard grafting, with a lot of work done behind the scenes to ensure wide agreement, and, as my noble friend says, China and Russia were part of the deal. I repeat the reassurance that I gave a few moments ago about the efforts that the United Kingdom Government are making. Not only are we talking with all international partners but, as I said earlier, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary spoke directly to Foreign Minister Zarif in Iran to assure him of the UK’s continued commitment to the deal.