Ukraine: Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I echo the tributes already paid to my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries.

I decided to put my name down for this debate having seen two things on Sunday. The first was a piece in the Sunday Times, no doubt applauded by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, which said that although the West has frozen $350 billion worth of Russian assets, none of it is available to start paying the, as it happens, roughly equivalent figure necessary by way of reparations to repair some of the devastation that Russia has wrought in Ukraine in this bestial war of theirs.

Secondly, there was a most interesting broadcast on BBC Two by Simon Sharma, which discussed the brutalising effects of totalitarianism on the bodies, minds and spirits of the population, the potentially liberating effects of artistic endeavours which expose and challenge those tyrannies, from people such as Picasso—one pictures “Guernica”—George Orwell, Václav Havel and Pasternak, and why these sorts of people come into it. I strongly recommend this programme to your Lordships.

I also recommend a film from 2019 which I was only alerted to recently, “Mr Jones”. It is the true story of a brave young Welsh journalist who, in 1933, disbelieving the story of the triumphant success of Stalin’s economic policies, goes to Moscow, slips his Intourist leash, goes to Ukraine and finds the devastation, the starvation, the ghastly effects of this policy. I remind your Lordships that Stalin once again is a revered figure in present-day Russia.

There can be only one acceptable outcome to this war. It is essential not only for the future of Ukraine and its security but for the future of the West and democracy itself. Russia certainly must not be seen to win and therefore must be seen to lose this war. That must be recognised internationally if not domestically in Russia. Putin cannot remain on the scene ideally. No doubt he will be in some war crimes tribunal.

How is this to be achieved? Certainly, Ukraine must recover its original borders. There are deep and difficult questions about the future status of Crimea. There are many arguments, and it may be up for grabs, but NATO must guarantee Ukraine’s integrity, save for, conceivably, Crimea. I am much indebted to the Library note, which unsurprisingly suggests that the greatest possible risk, of any nuclear force, although it is still unlikely, would be if Russia were on the brink of defeat in the land war. However, if you recognise that this war against Russia must be won, that point must inevitably come, and the sooner the better, because every week and month of this conflict that passes, Ukrainians are suffering most desperately and outrageously, as has been described.

We should be taking this war to Russia at least to this extent. We should not only be doing everything conceivable to strengthen Ukraine’s defence of its own territory against these ghastly infrastructures strikes but supplying Ukraine so that they can attack the infrastructure necessary in Russia to support the Russian land forces. It would not be mirroring the war crime of attacking their civilian population so as to kill its morale, but stopping the supplies from reaching the land force and keeping it going. We should also be targeting whatever launch sites there are on ships in the Black Sea and on the Crimea launch pads of the incoming missiles. That far we should be going.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

May I clarify something? My position is that there will be no progress with these talks until there is the involvement of high-level politicians from this country. I remember in the 1990s the attempt to move Congress from its support of the wrong side—in the British Government’s view—in Northern Ireland. I was ambassador and made a certain amount of progress, but the real progress was made only when Prime Minister Major and the then Minister of State, now the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, took an active involvement in helping me to see the people one had to convince on the Hill. We need the involvement of senior British Ministers. I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that we need the involvement of people from Northern Ireland. This must not be an agreement, if one is achieved, that is imposed on Northern Ireland. It has to be one that is owned by Northern Ireland.

However, my view is that there is no chance of persuading the Council of the European Union that it should modify Mr Šefčovič’s mandate while technical talks are going nowhere and there are no signs of any movement, or even active involvement, by the highest levels of the British political establishment. I do not mean that I think the talks are bound to fail; I mean that, at present, they are not succeeding.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I maintained a Trappist silence throughout all the earlier debates on this Bill. I may be prominent among those wishing I had maintained it when I sit down in a moment or two because I recognise that I speak from a position of having less knowledge of the political and economic background to this debate than perhaps anybody else here—certainly less than anyone who has spoken.

What has driven me to my feet is what seems a striking absence of any reference to Article 16; again, we heard it in earlier debates but not today. To my mind—I speak in this respect simply as a lawyer—it is custom-built to meet any legitimate needs, which there are, to adapt processes in the Province today. What is required of the protocol by way of rewriting treaties is in doubt, but the protocol does not pre-empt the Belfast agreement obligations and commitments on all sides. On the contrary, Belfast is the primary one of these two treaties, which are enforceable under international law.

Those who know much more about this than I do emphasise—rightly, to my mind—the third strand of Belfast, which concerns east-west trade within the UK internal market. Far from the protocol pre-empting what we as the UK are entitled to insist on under the Belfast agreement, surely it accommodates the crucial argument—let the politicians in Northern Ireland make, refine, emphasise and urge this—that the regulatory controls that the EU currently exercises under the protocol, as well as the intensity of their policing, are in fact quite incompatible with its obligation to observe the Belfast agreement. You have only to look at the Belfast agreement to see that we, the UK, are duty bound to fight against the long-term alienation—I forget the precise language—of any community. We did it for the nationalists in respect of language in Northern Ireland. Now we owe the unionists some obligation to try to reinforce the critical importance of the east-west trade link here.

I therefore have no brief for this Bill. The unionists say, “You need this to get back into the Assembly”. That is nonsense. They open their mouths far too wide but their legitimate interests should be—indeed, must be—protected. Do it under Article 16, which meets any imperative need of the day, and let the people of Northern Ireland specify precisely what is required by way of adapting the processes under the protocol. If there needs to be any adaptation of the language, let them deal with that too. As the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said in an earlier debate, do not be too theological about the language—just get the agreement to do what is necessary.

Ukraine

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on my noble friend’s second question, I assure him that the United Kingdom will continue to work with key partners in making the case for those most vulnerable and most innocent, and indeed those being imposed on in this way and taken away from their families. I will write to him on the numbers.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

Can the Minister assure me that, in supplying the heavy weaponry and such other support as we rightly give to Ukraine in resisting cyberattack and so forth, we place no inhibition on the Ukrainians in terms of their reciprocally trying to attack infrastructure behind Russian lines?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom has long recognised the importance of working with Ukraine and ensuring its troops are well trained. Indeed, for many years since the annexation of Crimea, through a programme called Orbital, our Ministry of Defence has been working on specific issues including training Ukrainian personnel, and that will continue. Ukraine is a sovereign nation, and we are a partner and friend to Ukraine. It continues to operate and, indeed, to make gains. The Ukrainians’ end objective is a simple one: they want their territory back, and I think that is a noble intent.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st May 2018 Lords Chamber

The Government and the overseas territories, and indeed the Crown dependencies, have discussed money laundering issues around the table regularly, and over the years there has been continual incremental progress on this important issue. The success of this approach can be seen in the work of Mr Moscovici and his very thorough 38 pages, with not one overseas territory on the blacklist, and only a very small amount of agreed work to be done by a very small percentage of the overseas territories. We should have continued along this road; the Commons amendment is constitutionally wrong and unjust in casting unwarranted aspersions on our loyal overseas territories.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, if it is not improper to say so, I hugely regret the decision of the Speaker in the other place not to have permitted the Government to suggest other solutions to this problem without the need to override the overseas territories’ sovereignty rights. However, we are now faced with the Commons amendment and, although I recognise how powerful the speeches of all those who have supported the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, have been, and although I am deeply sympathetic to the overseas territories for the wholly undeserved insult to which this provision now appears to expose them, for my part I hope that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, will not be pressed. If it is, I should, regretfully, feel unable to support it. This is not an appropriate occasion for yet another vote in this House that would override the considered view of the elected Chamber—after a full debate, which I read in Hansard this morning—moreover, in circumstances in which it would be bound most mischievously to be misrepresented as a vote by a privileged, unelected body intent, no doubt in the view of some, on preserving opportunities for the continued secretion of illicit funds abroad. It would be a wholly false slur on us, but I fear that it would be placed upon us by many. I hope that this is not judged an unduly pusillanimous approach.

Assuming the new clause is agreed, one can only hope that, two and a half years hence, it will not have proved necessary to make the contemplated Order in Council and, accordingly, that we shall never learn whether the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on its prospects were it to be challenged by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, was or was not correct.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate. With respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, we owe a debt to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for tabling his amendment, because it has given us an opportunity to set the record straight. I hope that those in the affected overseas territories will take some comfort from the points in the very powerful speeches that have been made right across this House to express the great dismay at what happened in the other place.

I emphasise the opportunity that the noble Lord has given us to express our feelings, and personally endorse entirely what was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who set out very fully the arguments for supporting the noble Lord, Lord Naseby—although I know he will not press his amendment to a vote. It is very important, as I am sure the Minister will agree, that we have debated this and made the House’s position absolutely plain—while regretting that we have to accept the decision of the House of Commons.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, if I heard the Minister correctly, he compared the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, to Oliver Twist asking for more. I wonder, having heard the noble Lord, whether the Minister would agree that Oliver Twist had right and justice on his side.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I recognise that it is not an entirely simple point; it is not perhaps as straightforward as some of the amendments with which we dealt earlier. I see the force of the Government’s argument that the UK has no alternative under international law but to give effect to our obligations under the UN charter; indeed, Article 103 of the charter expressly dictates that these obligations prevail over any conflicting international law obligations. In the 2010 Supreme Court case of Ahmed, I ended my dissenting judgment with the hope that the majority view would not be thought to indicate any weakening of our commitments under the charter. In Ahmed, however, I also stressed the draconian nature of these orders. I said:

“The draconian nature of the regime imposed under these asset-freezing Orders can hardly be overstated … they are scarcely less restrictive of the day-to-day life of those designated (and in some cases their families) than are control orders. In certain respects, indeed, they could be thought to be even more paralysing”.


It strikes me as highly relevant to the amendment that in the case of Ahmed the Court of Appeal had held—and before the Supreme Court Treasury counsel for the Government argued this in terms—that orders implementing a UN resolution are reviewable, and that on such a review the court can grant relief directed against any UK public authority, not against the United Nations. That, essentially, is what the amendment seeks to achieve, or at least to clarify.

I note not least that one of the team of counsel instructed for the Government in the Ahmed case was Sir Michael Wood, who had been the senior legal adviser to the FCO. Clearly he had seen no insuperable obstacle to the court having this judicial review jurisdiction—the very thing that the amendment seeks to put beyond doubt that the court has. On balance, therefore, my concluded view is that we can and should make plain that the court will have this jurisdiction.

[Lord Judge]

My Lords, my name is attached to the amendment. I shall not repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, had to say. The issue is simple: we must honour our obligations to the United Nations but if, having honoured them, there is an injustice, we must provide a remedy.

Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I agree that the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, was a bit quick off the mark. Just have a glance behind you occasionally—you might find that somebody wants to come in.

I was rather diffident about putting my name to such illustriously signed amendments. My noble friend Lady Northover spoke about the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. I am not sure that I would trust the country solicitors “Judge and Pannick” or “Pannick and Judge”; I am not sure whether it is best to panic after you have judged or judge before you panic. Nevertheless, any sensible Minister who sees those names on an amendment thinks very hard about it. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, said, this will be a very necessary Bill if the Government succeed in their Brexit aims, but that does not mean that every Bill that comes before us has to be given a nod through because of the pressures of the Government’s own making. There is a real danger.

I can almost imagine the discussions in the Cabinet Office: “How on earth do we get this shedload of legislation through?”. Then somebody says, “The only way you can do it, Ministers, is by lots of Henry VIII clauses and lots of powers by secondary legislation”. “Okay, we will do it that way.” The irony of that, as I have said before from these Benches, is that an exercise that was intended to return sovereignty to this Parliament is becoming an exercise in returning power on an unprecedented scale to the Executive. I fear that, unless the Government come up with some new and ingenious proposals for dealing with this flood of legislation short of these broad powers, they will run into trouble time and again.

Of course, we want to get the bad guys, and there is always a temptation, especially if you are the Minister, to go for the Eliot Ness solution—how do we kick down the door and get at the bad guys?—but we cannot ignore a report such as that referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Go through every page of it. There is reference to the Henry VIII powers, but then:

“We do not consider it appropriate for ministers to have powers … We are concerned about the breadth of the power … We are deeply concerned that the power in clause 16”,


et cetera. It goes on right through the report. This is a really serious warning to Ministers and to Parliament from a very well-respected committee.

Of course, Whitehall does not have a pure record on this. Even in the days when we were simply transferring European law into our own law, there was a well-established practice in Whitehall to do a bit of gold-plating on the way and dig in a few regulations that people had wanted to get anyway. We have to resist this gold-plating. As I say, when someone such as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, talks about “unjustifiable breadth”, and someone such as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, talks about “a bonanza of regulations” and “extravagant powers”, it is not only the Committee that would be wise to take note; the Minister should as well.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I had been waiting for the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to speak, so have come in rather later than perhaps I should have. The arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, are compelling. I would throw one other word into the mix: “expedience”. Under the Bill as drafted, it might be thought appropriate because it is expedient to make a provision, but that is not good enough here. These powers are so draconian that nothing short of necessity alone could justify their exercise. Therefore, I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said: unless the Minister can give a convincing illustration of a regulation which is justifiably expedient but short of necessity, we cannot possibly allow the Bill to go forward in its present form.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 1A. I wish to reinforce what has been said by my noble friend Lady Northover. The regulations that the Minister will have powers to impose through Clause 1 will have far-reaching consequences on “designated persons”, “prescribed persons” and “involved persons”, as affected individuals or entities are variously referred to throughout the Bill. Therefore, it is only right that the power to create a regulation should entail a more onerous thought process than consideration by the “appropriate Minister”. I agree that “compelling reasons” would be a more fitting foundation for making such momentous decisions.

Brexit: Case for a Second Referendum

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with much that was said by the noble Baroness, Lady King, in opening the debate and, more particularly, with everything that was said by the noble Lord, Lord Norton. I of course recognise that the majority vote must be given immediate effect, although I, too, hope that further down the line there may be an opportunity to reverse the process if we find that the price at which we can leave is simply appalling.

I want to use my three minutes to express the fervent hope that we never again get ourselves into the position that we are in now. We have held a referendum requiring a decision by a simple majority on a question of the most profound importance, supposedly offering a simple binary choice. Parliament having, by a large majority in both Houses, commissioned the referendum, realistically it is now bound, in the interests of the public continuing to trust us at all, to accept the result and embark on the process of leaving.

I ask noble Lords to contrast the position under the European Union Act 2011, which essentially provides that, in the event of any proposed significant change in EU competencies or treaty law, no such change is permissible without both majority approval in a referendum vote and—this I stress—approval by Act of Parliament. How much better if that had been the basis of this particular sounding of public opinion?

Referendums generally, I suggest, are to be discouraged. In a compelling article, which is imminently to be published in Prospect magazine, Anatole Kaletsky explains why that is so. Margaret Thatcher, he records, called them,

“a device for dictators and demagogues”.

Their very character, said one of the draftsmen of the original United States constitution, was tyrannous. The so-called “will of the people” is often, the author suggests,

“inconsistent or ill-informed and sometimes dangerously repressive”.

Minority interests are simply ignored or overridden. Small wonder that, for example, in Germany’s post-war constitution referendums were deliberately excluded. Representative democracy should not be compromised. In short, we must never again allow ourselves to get into this intolerable position.

Freedom of Religion and Belief

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Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, it is unsurprising that the bulk of today’s debate should have focused on the many ghastly violations of Article 18 that, alas, continue to disfigure so many parts of the world. However, with some small encouragement from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, whose introduction to this debate was, as ever, compelling, I intend instead to focus on a much narrower question that sometimes arises: when the right to manifest—not to hold, but to manifest—one’s religion or belief must surrender to the rights and interests of others. It is a question that has exercised the courts of this country and elsewhere on a number of occasions.

Article 18 of the universal declaration appears on the face of it to confer two unqualified rights: the right to freedom of religion or belief, and the right to manifest that religion or belief. But that is not quite so. It is widely recognised not to be so in international law, including, most relevantly for our purposes, in Article 9 of the European Convention, which, of course, is the equivalent provision and is now incorporated under domestic law here. Article 9.1 of the convention is in effectively identical terms to Article 18 of the universal declaration, but Article 9.2 makes it plain that the manifestation of one’s religion or belief is a qualified, not an absolute, right. It provides for limitations to the right,

“in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”.

It is generally the protection of the rights and freedoms of others and, above all, the increasing recognition of the rights of others, in particular gays and lesbians, not to be discriminated against that has led to much of the litigation under this provision.

Take the Supreme Court case of Bull and Bull—touched on recently, if perhaps a little tendentiously, by the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis—which held that Christian hotelkeepers, however strongly held their belief that homosexual practices are sinful, could not on that ground alone refuse to let a double-bed room to a homosexual couple. The court pointed out that Strasbourg requires very weighty reasons to justify discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. Another case mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, was the Northern Irish one, just two months back, which held that a bakery had unlawfully discriminated against a gay supporter of same-sex marriage for whom they had initially agreed, but later refused, to bake a cake iced with a logo including the slogan, “Support gay marriage”.

There was also Strasbourg’s decision two years ago, in a group of United Kingdom cases concerning religion in the workplace, to dismiss three of the four applications, including those of Lillian Ladele, a civil registrar for Islington, who was disciplined for violating the borough’s “dignity for all” policy by refusing to register partnerships because of her belief that homosexuality is sinful; and Gary McFarlane, a sex therapist dismissed by Relate, a counselling charity, for refusing, on the same grounds, to provide sex therapy for same-sex couples. Similarly, under Article 9.2, in 2005, in the Williamson case, the appeal committee in this House rejected the claimants’ asserted right as teachers and parents at a school established specifically to provide Christian education based on biblical observance to use corporal punishment despite contrary legislation. Indeed, the next year in the Denbigh High School case we rejected a Muslim schoolgirl’s claim to have been wrongly excluded from the school unless she wore the school uniform instead of the jilbab she insisted on wearing. Many of your Lordships will recall too the recent Crown Court ruling that a woman must remove her Muslim veil, charged as she was with victim intimidation, so that the jury could properly observe her facial expression.

These are just some of the many cases which show that, absolute though one’s right to freedom of religion and belief is, in deciding whether to manifest it there are other important interests and considerations in play. Believe whatever you wish, but in your behaviour think of others too. Surely that is a sound precept.