West Papua
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Whenever possible, influence should be gained through a good relationship and, sometimes, by being a critical friend. The noble Lord’s points about the wider Indo-Pacific and the security situation are things that a responsible Government here in the UK need to take into account.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for her answers to the noble Lords, Lord Spellar and Lord Watts. Will she take this opportunity to congratulate Indonesia on having last month deposited its formal application to join the CPTPP? Will she congratulate it on, like us, having had a recent democratic and peaceful transition of power, where the new Government keep the same trade policy towards the Pacific bloc as the previous one? Will she take this opportunity to confirm that we will not engage in the kind of protectionism disguised as environmentalism that has led the rapeseed oil industry in Europe to come up with, effectively, a sabotage of any trade deal, thereby opening the door towards the UK being Indonesia’s chief trading partner in this part of the world?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We note the approach to the CPTPP by Indonesia. We believe in free trade and we want to strengthen our trading relationship with partners through the CPTPP, as the noble Lord would expect.
China: Human Rights and Sanctions
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am frantically looking through the read-out of the exchange to see a reference to Tibet. I assure the noble Baroness that the Foreign Secretary raised a number of foreign policy and security matters, particularly issues around human rights. As she would expect, you do not get an instant result in these sorts of exchanges—diplomacy is about consistency and it takes time. But we are now in a period where we want a consistent, stable and pragmatic relationship. For 14 years, the relationship has blown hot and cold, and we have not had that stability and consistency. So that is the approach we will see from this Government.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, the Chinese state is not the first autocracy in the world and it may not be the most repressive, but it is by far the most technologically advanced. The ways in which the People’s Republic uses face recognition technology, surveillance technology and apps that monitor your phone is without precedent, as is the way it uses notionally private companies, such as Tencent, Weibo and Alibaba. Has the Minister’s department made any assessment of whether this kind of surveillance state could be exported; in other words, whether China’s allies and client states might be offered the package of a panopticon state to use on their own citizens?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, we are concerned about surveillance and threats to, for instance, BNO passport holders or others here in the UK, and we monitor that extremely closely. We take our responsibilities towards human rights, compromises of freedom of religious belief and other issues of privacy very seriously.
British Indian Ocean Territory: Negotiations
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the Lib Dem Benches now.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
The security of the marine conservation area is very important; I think it was Foreign Secretary Miliband who instigated it. We will see it continue, and Mauritius has agreed to that.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, Mauritius was paid the then immense sum of £3 million in exchange for this agreement in 1965, and treated it as a final settlement. In 1972 it was then paid again, if memory serves, £620,000 for the resettlement of the Chagossians—moneys which I am afraid it hung on to until their value had been eroded by inflation, which may explain why Chagossians are not enthusiastic about Mauritian sovereignty. It does seem extraordinary that we have given away this prime strategic location, the so-called Malta of the Indian Ocean, not only for nothing but somehow managing to pay for the privilege. I think I have heard three or four Ministers today talk about this black hole. Is it really credible, when we are hearing about that, that the Government will not disclose either what we are paying to the Mauritians or what we are putting in the fund for Chagossian resettlement?