Hong Kong

Lord Goodlad Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodlad (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on initiating this timely debate and on his wise speech, with all of which I concur. I speak with what I hope is the degree of diffidence appropriate to one who does not live in Hong Kong and who has viewed recent developments there from afar. I was one of the noble Lord’s successors as Minister of State at the FCO responsible for Hong Kong and our relations with China. No one who cares about China and Hong Kong can view recent developments with equanimity and pass by on the other side. It is deeply distressing to see people’s lives and businesses being disrupted as they have been and are being. The noble Lord has given a learned and completely accurate analysis of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, which I will not repeat.

The noble Lord referred to the Foreign Office report to Parliament. In his foreword to the six-monthly report on Hong Kong deposited this July by William Hague, the then Foreign Secretary, he wrote that it was his belief that the best way to preserve Hong Kong’s strengths is through a transition to universal suffrage which meets the aspirations of the people of Hong Kong within the parameters of the Basic Law, and that there is no perfect model. The important thing is that the people of Hong Kong have a genuine choice and feel that they have a real stake in the outcome.

I agree with the Government’s position on that. I share my right honourable friend’s welcome that a broad range of groups will be and have been engaged in consultations organised by the Hong Kong Government. What the constitutional package will eventually look like is for the Government of Hong Kong’s Special Administrative Region, China and the people of Hong Kong to decide. In my view, there can be no argument but that constructive dialogue and sincere co-operation towards the reconciliation of opposing views is a better option than personal and economic disruption. That seems to me to be the lesson of history in various parts of the world. Dissenting parties eventually have to talk, and the earlier they do so the better.

Those of us brought up in the democratic traditions of this country instinctively share the impatience of those in Hong Kong for faster progress to genuine universal suffrage and broader-based representational democracy, but Rome was not built in a day. Much progress has been made constitutionally in Hong Kong over recent decades, in no small part thanks to the efforts of some of your Lordships.

Over recent years, we in this country have engaged in substantial discussion about constitutional matters: Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh devolution, proportional representation, constituency boundaries, the role and composition of the House of Lords, our relationship with the European Union—I could go on. No doubt we shall continue such discussion. We have had violence on our streets but, by and large, most people believe as I do in early and continual dialogue.

Of course, that is easier said than achieved, but I hope that recent developments in Hong Kong will lead to progress rather than a hardening of attitudes and that the ingenuity and persistence of those in China and Hong Kong—not to mention here in this country—over recent decades, which have allowed different interpretations of the public interest to coexist to the huge benefit of the people of Hong Kong and others, including us, can be somehow resumed. Of course we stand ready to help, if we ever can. We wish them well.