House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill
Lord Hain Excerpts(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Lord True (Con)
If I may: this is Committee. The noble Lord can come in. I am concluding my remarks, but I will answer him later. We have seen in recent days the nature of negotiation with a big stick. That is not the House of Lords way, nor is it the way in which the noble Baroness leads us. I urge her not to reject these proposals or any part of them when she responds, but to agree to take them away. Let the Government block entry of new hereditary Peers, as my amendment accepts and as the House should accept, but otherwise let us together pursue the path of peace with expedition, and with honour and justice. I beg to move.
Government of Syria: Freedom of Expression, Religion and Belief
Lord Hain Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I have been diplomatic in response to the Questions we have had last week and this week. We should not take immediate decisions but rather focus on the interim authorities and their words, which we should ensure they keep to. We are monitoring that situation closely. As I said, we have an envoy for Syria, who is doing excellent work—I think she is engaged with parliamentarians here. The noble Lord is right to suggest caution, but we have some reason to be optimistic for the future for Syria. We must not forget what Syria went through under the Assad regime, during which horrendous crimes were committed.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I want to ask my noble friend about the consequences of the withdrawal of 2,000 US troops from Syria, who were working with Syrian Kurdish forces, in particular to contain some 9,000 ISIS—Islamic State—fighters in prison camps. There is a danger of those fighters breaking out and not just damaging religious tolerance but imposing their reign of terror on the whole region.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
To reiterate what I said last week, the first duty of every Government is to protect its citizens, and we are certainly cognisant of that in relation to those camps. The United Kingdom notes the decision of the US to pause foreign aid funding for three months pending a review; that is a matter for the United States. As I say, we are working with our allies to ensure that there is stability in Syria and that Daesh’s territorial defeat endures and that it can never, ever resurge. We are working closely with US colleagues and humanitarian partners to understand and assess the impact of the pause, but we are fairly confident that there will be continued support for the IDP camps in the north.
International Anti-corruption Court
Lord Hain Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, we look forward to considering the draft treaty, which is expected next year, for the proposed international anti-corruption court. This Government fully support the objective of holding kleptocrats to account, but the idea of an IACC carries challenges and requires detailed consideration. Meanwhile, we will use all our tools to deliver an ambitious government-wide agenda to tackle the devastating impacts of corruption and illicit finance, both at home and overseas.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for confirming the Government’s support for an international anti-corruption court. As he has indicated, international experts from countries north and south, right across the world, now have an agreed draft treaty and will soon begin consulting with interested parties. So far, these include Botswana, Canada, France, the Gambia, Kenya, Mozambique, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa and Switzerland. Will Ministers ensure that the UK both participates officially in this treaty-drafting process and encourages more states to do so? Such a new court is vital to help combat global corruption, costing $2 trillion each and every year.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, as I said, we support the objectives of the proposed international anti-corruption court. We look forward to considering the draft treaty and will continue to engage in international discussions on this subject as they arise, and as we have done to date. As my noble friend said, these discussions should not detract from the work the Government are already delivering to hold kleptocrats to account. For example, the UK’s international corruption unit has a world-leading capability and has successfully investigated international bribery, corruption and related money-laundering offences within a UK nexus, resulting in prosecutions and the confiscation of stolen assets.
House of Lords Reform
Lord Hain Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, seven years ago, on 19 December 2017, I said in your Lordships’ House—and I apologise for quoting myself but there is a reason—that
“we all know that things cannot continue as they are. We number over 800 and rising … we have become not so much an embarrassment but, many say, a scandal. At a time of austerity, when everything else is cut, our numbers rise inexorably”.
I concluded:
“Things have reached a point where change is unavoidable. The question is therefore not whether there is change, but who makes it. Either this House takes responsibility or it will pass to the Commons and the Government. Either we reform ourselves or others will reform us”.—[Official Report, 19/12/17; cols. 1979-80.]
I mention this because we did not take responsibility. We did not do anything. Rather, the last Tory Governments did not allow us to do anything, despite—as the former Lord Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said very aptly earlier in the debate—universal cross-party support for the plans in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to reduce our numbers. Now we have this Bill, about which Tory Peers such as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, have pumped themselves up into an absolute fury. Yet we could have done something sensible. My noble friend Lord Grocott introduced Bills to abolish hereditary by-elections in every parliamentary Session from 2016-17, apart from the current Session and the short 2019 Session. That makes a total of five occasions. Had his Bill not been repeatedly blocked by the Conservative Government of the day, there would now be 26 fewer excepted hereditary Peers.
This Labour Government were elected with a clear manifesto commitment to introduce legislation to remove the right of the remaining hereditary Peers to sit in the Lords. The current tightly drafted Bill, now going through its remaining stages in the Commons, will end what were always transitional arrangements. The United Kingdom is one of only two countries that still have a hereditary element in their legislatures. The Bill is not about individuals or personalities but a 21st century Parliament which should not be reserving places for lawmakers just because of the families they were born into.
Many hereditary Peers—on all Benches—have made important contributions to public life, within and beyond the House. This reform is not targeted at them but rather at ending the transitional arrangements put in place after the 1999 Act and resolving a 25-year anomaly. As others have already said in this debate—rightly—should a hereditary Peer be thought fit and valued to be appointed a life Peer, as many clearly are, there is no reason to stop that happening through the existing mechanisms.
Labour’s manifesto was clear on the intention to remove the right of hereditary Peers to sit in your Lordships’ House and there should be no unnecessary delay once the legislation goes through. I trust that the Official Opposition will continue to abide by our usual conventions. I look at the Leader of the Opposition as I say that. I ask my noble friend the Leader of the House to send a letter to all Peers—or to arrange for one to be sent—reminding colleagues around the House why abiding by the historic Salisbury/Addison convention which respects government election manifesto commitments is so important. Will she look at that, please?
I am concerned that some noble Lords opposite are gearing up for a filibuster once the hereditary Peers Bill begins its passage through your Lordships’ House. Some were part of the Official Opposition in this House the last time a Labour Government ended up having to use the Parliament Act. I trust history is not going to repeat itself any time soon, certainly not during the current parliamentary Session. Given the Conservative Party’s dire defeat at the recent general election, it is weird that a number of noble Lords opposite have decided that this is the political hill they are ready to die on. This House is drinking in the last chance saloon. It is the biggest legislative Chamber in the world apart from the Chinese National People’s Congress. Is that really a benchmark to stand proudly by and fight to the end?
Gibraltar-Spain Border Checks
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I think that is what the Government of Gibraltar desire, and it is certainly what the United Kingdom Government desire. I first visited Gibraltar when the border was closed. I visited on the basis that 6,000 Moroccan workers were being based in Georgian barracks. There was progress: when we entered the European Union and an agreement was made about Spain’s entry, there were absolutely no border issues. That is why we now need that agreement with the EU, so we can return to a sense of normality.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I too support my noble friend the Minister in seeking an agreement, which seems near. I point out that it does not help to help to have this tub-thumping jingoism from the Conservative Front Bench, when they created this problem. There is an external European frontier between Gibraltar and the Spanish mainland as a result of Brexit, and that has to be resolved by very careful negotiation. I wish my noble friend the best.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
It will be good for the people of Gibraltar to get an agreement with the European Union, and we are determined to do that. We are very close to achieving it. I agree with the sentiments of my noble friend: jingoistic language does not help the process of negotiation. I have realised, as a trade union negotiator, that you should never push people into corners. You allow them to come to an agreement and come together. I am pretty certain that is what we will do with Gibraltar and the EU.
Gaza Crisis
Lord Hain Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, resolving this conflict has been this Government’s priority since day one. It is now in PM Netanyahu’s and Hamas leader Sinwar’s hands to accept the deal on the table and agree urgently to a ceasefire in the long-term interests of Israelis and Palestinians. We are working alongside allies and partners to push for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, the upholding of international law, the protection of civilians—including the rapid increase of aid into Gaza—and a pathway to a two-state solution.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend the Minister, but does he also agree that this terrible crisis will not be resolved militarily? Netanyahu will not succeed in destroying Hamas as he has promised, not even by destroying Gaza, nor will he destroy Hezbollah, not even by damaging and destabilising Lebanon, and neither they nor Iran will succeed in destroying Israel. Unless Israel is to remain for ever under a state of permanent warfare siege, it is vital there is a negotiated settlement to end the horror. My fear is that that will not happen until this conflict escalates—as recent events seemingly make inevitable —to an all-out regional, maybe even global, war.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, we condemn Iran’s attacks against Israel and recognise Israel’s right to defend itself against Iranian aggression. At this moment, when tensions are at their peak, we call on Iran to step back from the brink. A regional war is in absolutely no one’s interest. We are deeply concerned about the escalation of conflict in the region that threatens to destroy many innocent lives. That is why we are working tirelessly with partners, including allies in the region, to establish immediate ceasefires, both in Gaza and along the blue line. In Gaza, a ceasefire must be the first step on the path to long-term peace and stability, with a two-state solution—a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state—at its heart.
Northern Ireland Protocol
Lord Hain Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Noble Lords
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, it is in the nature of any agreement, particularly one that is ultimately successful, that there must be some element of compromise. However, I will not add further to what I have said, which was the right position. We wish to see restitution of the institutions but that must come, like everything else, from and for the people of Northern Ireland.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the Prime Minister on achieving an agreement which frankly has far surpassed all expectations. Can the Minister comment on those rather intemperate instant reactions that we have seen from some in his own party, and indeed from Northern Ireland, which are almost saying that Northern Ireland should not remain within the single market? The logic of that would be that the external customs frontier of the European Union would be across the island of Ireland and would be a hard border. They should come clean on that if that is what they really mean.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I always think it is good to reflect before speaking; being at this Dispatch Box does not always give you that opportunity, but I agree with what the noble Lord said. It is also the case, and again I repeat myself, that trade between the north and south is important to business and to the life of the island. The best thing for the people of Northern Ireland and the whole of the United Kingdom is prosperity, which is assisted by free and wide trade. I hope that this agreement contributes to both north-south and east-west trade.
Replacement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
Lord Hain Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I believe that we have such a Government.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, was not the Chancellor’s Statement yesterday just a bonfire of Truss economic insanities?
Afghanistan
Lord Hain Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I endorse especially the points so ably made by my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon. I was a junior Foreign Office Minister, first covering Afghanistan from July 1999 until January 2001, and then, from June 2001, was Europe Minister during 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan to eradicate al-Qaeda’s base. I am therefore implicated in what Tom Tugendhat, Conservative MP and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, described as Britain’s
“biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez”,
questioning what on earth so many British soldiers, coalition forces and Afghans bravely fought for—and sacrificed their lives for.
We must now find ways to incentivise the Taliban—and, yes, that includes engaging with them alongside regional powers like China and Iran—so that they are discouraged from returning to their bad old ways, including their oppression of women and girls. A United Nations panel reports that the Taliban have kept up a close relationship with al-Qaeda, permitting them to conduct training and deploy fighters alongside its forces. Something similar may be true of ISIS.
But experience from Northern Ireland—hard learnt at bloody cost to life and limb—shows that you will fail if you treat groups like the Taliban as pariahs. As Tony Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, explains in his excellent book Talking to Terrorists, you have to negotiate with them, offering economic incentives and tough deterrents to respect international norms and human rights. The costly nation-building, democracy-building strategy of the West over these past 20 years has failed abysmally. A fundamental mistake of US-UK policy from the outset was not accommodating the Pashtun, the biggest group in Afghanistan, from where Taliban power comes. Instead of cultivating only Afghan forces and individuals amenable to the United States from 2001, instead of occupying a country that has always rejected foreign invaders—from Britain in the 1830s to the Soviets in the 1980s—surely after 9/11 the West should have negotiated a deal to remove al-Qaeda with the Taliban and other Afghani leaders.
And, yes, the story might have been different if the US and UK focus on Afghanistan after 2002-03 had not been diverted by the calamitous invasion of Iraq. We all share the shame, both the Labour Government in which I was proud to serve and, since 2010 the Conservatives—including Liberal Democrats when in coalition—in our betrayal of the millions of Afghans. It is no good just finger jabbing at Biden or Bush, at Johnson or Blair; there must instead be a proper reckoning by this Parliament and by Congress about the real lessons of our common culpability in this utter catastrophe.
House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings
Lord Hain Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I could not help but be very moved by that speech, as I think we probably all were.
I am a member of the House’s Covid-19 Committee, and on 21 April we published our first report, Beyond Digital: Planning for a Hybrid World. It shows that the pandemic massively accelerated a trend towards simultaneous actual and virtual, physical and online, living. The future of our society will be hybrid for working, shopping, learning, caring, receiving health advice, and social and family interaction—almost every part of our lives. We as a House have prefigured this new future over the past year with our own hybrid proceedings. We have been able to participate, to speak, to amend, to scrutinise, to revise, and to vote remarkably successfully, our staff performing amazingly.
According to figures from the Library, the average number of Members voting per Division, which had been pretty constant over the three preceding parliamentary Sessions 2015–16 to 2017–19 at 360, rose to 496 after the introduction of remote voting—a leap of nearly 40%. Surely it is healthy to have greater democratic involvement in amending and improving legislation, which, after all, along with scrutiny is our main function as a Chamber.
I desperately hope that we can return to what people call “normal” as much as anybody else does. The chemistry of debate, the palpable groans and “Hear, hears” greeting speeches bad or good, intervening, especially to hold Ministers to account, the informal face-to-face part of politics—all these are vital ingredients of a lively parliamentary democracy, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, so eloquently explained. Our legislative Chambers are nothing like as potent in the rather antiseptic culture of remote participation.
I will give an example. When I moved a manuscript amendment prior to the Dissolution of the House in 2019 to force the Government to complete the remaining stages of the Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Bill, the Government Whips resisted, initially with the help of our Whips. But the feeling of the packed House was absolutely unanimous. That amendment was carried without Division and the legislation completed its course. That would not have happened in a virtual or a hybrid House.
But is that at all possible in the foreseeable future, with new Covid variants and the pandemic spreading in other parts of the world such as India and directly impacting on us in Britain? Is it not the case that there will be no return to what we once knew as “normal”? The future is likely to be one of more or less effectively managing the Covid pandemic and whatever other pandemics or mutations follow it, because scientists warn that there will be more and different ones. In retrospect, maybe HIV/AIDS, SARS and Ebola were all dress rehearsals for a new and immensely more difficult future interaction with nature. If that is the case, then surely the future of parliamentary democracies, and therefore this House, will be hybrid—not necessarily everything we do all the time, but certainly part of what we do some of the time, and conceivably bits of what we do all of the time?
The first thing we need to do is to maintain and upgrade the technological, skills and physical infrastructure of the hybrid House. It would be unwise to dismantle it when the future is so uncertain, especially since many staff, who are generally younger, have not yet been vaccinated and may come a far second with booster jabs in future. Surely staff safety is imperative.
Secondly, we should maintain remote voting on our smartphones. Especially given the age profile of Members, is it really prudent to squeeze into poorly ventilated voting Lobbies? The noble Earl, Lord Howe, seemed to think that it was an offence that we were voting more often; I think that it is a sign of democracy.
Thirdly, we should enable the option of remote speaking for those who find it easier or safer, not least to avoid cramming into London underground trains or buses, but perhaps with new limits, particularly on Member numbers speaking to amendments, where debates have been far too long and Members have spoken to multiple amendments—sometimes consecutively—far too often. Debates have lasted long into the night, which they never would have done with the same frequency in the physical past.
Fourthly, we should keep the current 10-Member lists for Questions, which are an improvement on bobbing up and down, which favours muscular, loud males.
Fifthly, we should encourage committees to meet virtually, as has occurred very successfully when taking online evidence from all over the country and even the world.
The future is hybrid, and the question is how best to adapt our procedures to that, while retaining the essence of the physical parliamentary cut and thrust important to all democracies.