Relations with Europe

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow that speech, because in my remarks I also want to communicate my affection for and commitment to the Council of Europe—but not before I pay tribute to our new arrival, who is going to impose some of her strict, applied and disciplined thinking here, as she has done so well in many other places. My long association with both Barking and Islington has made me not unaware of the noble Baroness’s presence and influence, so it is brilliant to have her here.

A week ago, the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and I were in Strasbourg for the deliberations of the Council of Europe. This is the 75th anniversary of its foundation and, because of the election that we have just been through, it has been impossible to organise an appropriate event in our Parliament to remember and make something of the work of the Council of Europe. It will happen now in the spring.

The British people have a safe space in Europe, where we can make contact—informal and humane, as well as that focused on items of business, some of which are very lofty—and establish relationships with other parliamentarians, from 46 different nations. At a personal level, representatives from Kosovo come to see us all the time; they can never get over what we helped them with all those years ago. We could be talking to both Azerbaijanis and Armenians about the dispute that was at the heart of some violent thinking there. We might hear points of view from Greece and Turkey about northern Cyprus, for example. We may just make friendships and feel that we can constitute a presence and contribute something of a very human kind.

I spoke twice last week. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, actually presented a report, but he humbly did not mention that. I suffer from no such feelings myself and will talk about what I did last week. I spoke about freedom of information, which was part of looking at one of the conventions, and then about the metaverse and the way that we safeguard our countries across borders, with the rise of the technology that we are so preoccupied with at the moment.

In addition, I worked in a focused way on its migration committee. It was galling to be a member of that committee during a period when our Government was ramrodding through Parliament three Acts that many of us felt were in violation of international law and that were being argued across the Floor of the House in so cruel and hard-hearted a way. In a council that was founded with lots of energy from the United Kingdom, all the way back, the situation in which we found ourselves was met with incredulity by fellow members of the migration committee—and not a single member of the Conservative Party sitting on the committee to defend the Government.

I have nothing but praise for having a safe space where we can pursue matters of such interest in a person-to-person way. If that is not culture, I do not know what is. I am very grateful for this debate being brought to us today.

LGBT Veterans: Financial Redress

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, I am fully aware of the war widows issue and we are addressing that at the same time. It is very important that all these things get finished off as quickly as we possibly can. As far as the content is concerned, I have given a commitment that I will return before the Summer Recess. That will not be another Statement; it will contain what the process is going to be.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am happy to pay tribute to the Minister for the commitments he has made openly, both to the Question we are discussing and to the modes by which he will deliver further progress on this issue. He will have noticed, in the way the Question was formed, that my noble friend Lord Cashman has used the future perfect of the verb. In other words, will it be enough to hear an update on what is happening, or do we all long for the day when we know what has happened?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

My Lords, we come back to grammar. We are all on the same page on this. Everybody is in full agreement, but we have to make certain that it is done fairly, that everybody who has the right opportunity to apply gets that opportunity, and that the compensation and other restorative measures are available to everybody concerned at the appropriate time.

Nuclear Weapons

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie]

I sometimes think that that my department receives attention from a number of predatory sources, and I shall not be specific in designating them. I was candid with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, that this has been a bumpy journey for the MoD. But, as was acknowledged by the NAO, the important thing is that improvements have been made, deficiencies have been recognised and corrective action has been taken. For this highly complicated, very technical and challenging project, the MoD is on track—indeed, the material changes have facilitated a far better understanding by the MoD of the nuclear enterprise.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, few people in this House are as familiar with these enormously complex and demanding projects as my noble friend who put the Question. His record in that area is astounding. Can the Minister answer his question about the £1.3 billion? Where is that coming from? Hopefully it is not at the expense of other parts of the defence budget.

[Baroness Goldie]

My understanding is that these costs are in many respects now historic; they have been absorbed and budgeted for. The MoD has benefited from the £10 billion contingency funding made available by the Treasury in recognition of how unusual and challenging these projects are. We are satisfied that they are on budget.

Reconciliation: Role of British Foreign, Defence and International Development Policy

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it feels strange to be speaking at the end of a week in this House that began as it did. The ironies are considerable. Perhaps I may resort to a biblical image in order to explain how I feel. What right do we have to observe so meticulously the speck in the eyes of foreign and distant peoples without noticing the plank in our own, at a time when reconciliation is so manifestly needed? Like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for this opportunity. It might be judged that, in my case, it was to vent my spleen but, oh boy, we have had some magisterial input. This will be a debate worth reading in Hansard when it is all over.

I will take from this debate a number of things which focused on culture and heritage. I was not expecting these, but I am glad to have them. So much of all that we are, emotionally and psychologically, is tied into the ways we have expressed ourselves over the years. There are very powerful illustrations of that in Coventry Cathedral. My noble Friend, Lady Andrews, has given us others from across the world and that was enlightening to me. I loved the moving, personal remarks by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, who reminded the House of some special moments in the recent history of Northern Ireland. His story of the Queen in Enniskillen is another thing I will take away. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, reminded the House of the service in which the sons of Rommel and Montgomery were asked to read lessons. They embodied a hope that was the opposite of what we must have been able to think about when their fathers were engaged otherwise.

Turning to the speech of my noble friend Lord Boateng, I speak as an honorary Ghanaian chief. I am Osofu Nana Kwezi I, and he is one of my boys. The adinkra, which he mentioned, the mpatapo—he will help me pronounce that correctly later—and ubuntu from the rest of Africa remind us of what is tied up in language and culture. It helps us to shape our identities and bring the riches of our accumulated experience to the negotiating table and to our witness in public life. I have learned some terrific things which I will take away and think about further.

Some noble Lords have concentrated on the grand themes of international relations. I have neither the mind nor experience to contribute at that level. Others have focused on areas such as Kashmir, Syria, South Africa and, of course, Northern Ireland. So I hope that the House will indulge me if I focus on something altogether humbler and in the margins of normal consideration. It is nearly 50 years since I went to Haiti in the Caribbean and spent 10 years there. In the world of safeguarding—which we have become much more aware of, for all the wrong reasons, in recent times—there has been a process of historic cases: looking back over history to recognise that some things have never been buried or dealt with but need to be brought constantly to mind. I say that of the republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the world. I could expatiate for a long time if I thought that noble Lords had the patience for it—I see from their faces that they do not—about the asset stripping and political oppression of the United States of America and France. They have ripped the heart out of Haiti, taken its assets and used them for their own pleasure, then blamed Haiti for not having them or the resilience to stand up in a more robust way in the world in which it finds itself.

That is, indeed, historic abuse but it is not just then: what about now? The United States of America, because of its enmity and hostility to Venezuela, has applied sanctions, in an effort to make its case about what it considers to be the poor record and life of that South American republic. It has also demanded that its vassal states, of which Haiti is one, observe the sanctions too. Venezuela was supplying Haiti with heavily discounted oil to help it pay its way. Haiti has been obliged to stop that and to take oil from the United States of America at undiscounted market prices. The result is that there are now people on the streets of Port au Prince, where the Government are likely to be toppled yet again. This is all because of somebody else’s policy, imposed willy-nilly on a fragile state.

I also point to the United Nations. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, who is not in his place, mentioned the United Nations peacekeeping forces. In 2004, an escaped prisoner and murderer—I knew him well—and a gang of his fellow criminals came to the north of Haiti simply to overthrow the properly elected Government of Haiti at that time. I do not say that they were a perfect Government, but they were elected and legitimate. The United States gave covert and then increasingly open support to that body of people, which led to President Aristide having to flee from office for the second time. He is a good friend of mine, and I have followed him over the years. A Roman Catholic priest who became president, he is not a perfect man—he is a very mysterious man—but he is to my knowledge the only person in the history of Haiti who, at the click of a finger, could command the support of 90% of the illiterate and marginalised people of his country. He had an astonishing rapport with ordinary people. He was a liberation theologian of the first generation, and he knew his people to the core. He was ousted from office by gang of criminals, in the wake of which the United Nations sent in a peacekeeping force, to a land where there is no war, and kept it there for 12 years. When I went to the Foreign Office to ask, “Isn’t there anything you can do to help this poor, fragile country out there in the Caribbean?” I was told, again and again, “We put considerable resource in; we support the presence of the United Nations peacekeeping force”—which was a load of rubbish from the day it went in. It was not needed.

When I led a parliamentary delegation to Haiti with my noble friend Lord Foulkes—I wish he was here—I remember wanting to deviate by 50 yards from the plan that we had to agree the previous day with the United Nations, just to see the new Parliament building they were beginning to construct. I was not allowed to do so unless the United Nations cleared that 50 yards of deviation. I could have taken them down the street and talked to the merchants, engaged with the people and had fun on the roads, but I had to go in that wretched convoy to travel 50 yards. All those troops came, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, said, from places that do not have a clue where Haiti is, but whose budgets for their military exercises were subventioned by grants from the United Nations. But there it was—suddenly I was a foreigner in a country that I loved with all my heart.

My noble friend Lord Boateng mentioned linguistic ability. I dream in Haitian Creole, and I speak French. I can engage at will with the lowest and the highest of people, and I will tell your Lordships how much you can do when you do that. We used to have experts come in to work on irrigation programmes and community development. They were experts from around the world, with qualifications and diplomas—and salaries to match. What did they achieve? I could have achieved it with 100th of what they were spending on it, and I did—all the thousands of trees we planted, the wells we sank and the microfinance we organised. It was community development in its richest and widest sense: literacy, primary health—we did the lot, and on nothing, with Haitian people. I was able to get alongside them because I spoke their languages and had read about their culture, and I could sing their songs and tell their jokes. It is not difficult to know these facts, but we ignore them at our peril.

I will give one last personal illustration. I remember on that parliamentary visit sitting with the President of Haiti at that time, President Martelly. He had been a pop singer; you may think that Graham Greene’s The Comedians could now be updated and called The Pop Stars, but there you go. I was talking to him, there was a television camera in the room, and we were trying to make sense of things at that time.

Let us remember that Haiti suffered an earthquake in 2010; more people died in five minutes in Haiti than died in five years in Syria. That is a statistic. Let us remember also that the United Nations contingent from Uruguay introduced cholera to Haiti; we remember the effort we made against Ebola in west Africa, but more people have died of cholera in Haiti than ever died of Ebola in west Africa, and what has the world done? It has done nothing, absolutely nothing.

Haiti raises for our consideration very serious matters of principle, however marginal it is to our thinking. I return to President Martelly. I said to him, “They won’t give you any money, President, because they tell me you’re corrupt. How will you answer that allegation?” He replied, “I am not perfect and my Government are certainly not perfect. For every dollar I get, I’m not sure I could account for more than three-quarters of it. What happens to the rest? You will have to find out”. He continued, “I tell you that because every dollar I spend is matched by $99 that the international community spends in Haiti.”

With the massive number of NGOs that flooded in after the earthquake, Haiti was a republic of NGOs. A commission was set up to administer all those billions of dollars, but almost none of it went directly to the Haitian Government or its people. I have long been of the opinion—I take an opposite opinion to that of the noble Baroness who spoke from the other Benches earlier—that you need to have institutions through which a people can administer its own affairs, make its own decisions and prioritise its own policies. You must have that. There is no ministry of health; the earthquake wiped out many ministries of government.

We tried to get interest in building capacity in the legislature. I am talking to the Law Society to see whether it can do something about the judiciary and the crime system. There is so much to do and, until people have any kind of competence to handle these complicated matters themselves, the rest will be charity; it will be nothing more than a vassal state, and its poverty will continue for a long time yet.