India: Commonwealth Games

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I will certainly follow the advice of the noble and right reverend Lord. I do not have any details on the other allegations but I will look into them. He might be interested to know that the sum diverted was £94 million. We are monitoring the situation very closely, and the British high commissioner is in discussion with the Indian National Commission for Minorities about these and other issues.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Dalits. Now that the Delhi state government have finally acknowledged this diversion of funds which should have gone to projects such as schools, healthcare centres and, most importantly, the eradication of the demeaning manual scavenging which is the means of livelihood for so many of the Dalits, does the Minister—who I know has long been a great champion of the Commonwealth—agree that the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth should ensure that the lessons to be learnt from this very unfortunate incident should be placed on the agenda of the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, Australia, next October so that there can be a full discussion of whether it is correct and sensible for a country which has more than half its population living in absolute poverty and is a recipient of development aid to be seeking to host an enormous event at such colossal cost?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I certainly recognise the validity of the noble Lord’s introduction of the Commonwealth into this issue, and I think that the Commonwealth has a very valuable role to play. However, I am not so sure whether it is a question of drawing it to the attention of the Secretary-General and the Heads of Government Meeting or of drawing it to the attention of the Eminent Persons Group which is now looking at ways in which the Commonwealth monitoring and policing of human rights generally can be greatly upgraded. I suspect, on reflection, that it might be best to put it before the EPG. Either way, the concern of the Commonwealth in upholding, monitoring and strengthening human rights through all its member states, including the world power which India is, is very important indeed.