Middle East Peace Process

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I raise three questions, and I hope that the Minister can respond to them.

The first is whether this is the moment at which we should be trying to revive the peace process, or should we be—as the Israeli Government would wish us to—sitting back, waiting for the dust to settle, doing nothing hasty, and making no innovations? I am sad to have to say that I think that the second choice is disastrous. I hope we will explain to our Israeli friends that we think it is disastrous because the new regimes that are emerging in Arab countries will be more sensitive to public opinion and will be open to radicalisation, and if there is no process to engage with we can be quite sure what will happen. We will drift towards confrontation and perhaps even hostilities. I believe in everything that the Minister and her colleagues have said in recent weeks, and I hope that they share this view and will be active in trying to revive the process.

Secondly, how is the vacuum in the peace process best filled? I do not think we can hope that Israel or the Palestinians will fill it spontaneously. In those circumstances, I feel that it is important to argue with the United States that it, together with the quartet, should put some kind of outline down on the table and test the views of the parties to that outline. It need not be anything particularly ambitious. It could be within the parameters of the Clinton negotiations at the White House and the subsequent Taba negotiations, but we need some substance on the table, otherwise the thing will just go round in circles.

Thirdly, who should we, Britain, and our European allies be talking to? I believe we should be talking to everyone, and that includes Hamas. We must surely now make a distinction between talking to everyone and negotiating. That is the essence of diplomacy. We should not negotiate with anyone, including Hamas, who does not desist from violence and does not accept the Arab peace initiative, but we should talk to everyone because we will have something to say if an outline is put on the table, and preserving the old system of boycotting Hamas completely will be counterproductive.

I hope that we can hear a response from the Government on those three points. We are at an important moment, and I hope that we will turn it into an opportunity, not another entry in the long catalogue of missed opportunities.

European Union Bill

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the troubled history of Britain’s relations with the rest of Europe has been marked by numerous incidents of bad luck and bad judgment. It was bad judgment by both of the two main parties that we did not join the Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community at the outset of their existence in the 1950s; it was bad luck that we were vetoed twice by General de Gaulle in the 1960s; it was bad judgment that we tried unsuccessfully to renegotiate the terms of accession in 1974; it was bad judgment, too, that we did not join the exchange rate mechanism in the mid-1980s, when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and the then Foreign Secretary, both now Members of this House, pressed that we should do so; and it was bad luck that when we did join in 1990, the whole system was beginning to suffer from the aftershocks of German reunification. The Bill we are debating today falls fair and square in the bad judgment category.

I shall not weary the House with a full-blown rehearsal of the arguments against the use of referendums as a regular part of our constitutional practice. We debated that extensively last October on the basis of an excellent report by the House’s Constitution Committee, which saw many negative aspects in referendums—many more than any positive ones—and I set out my views then. Suffice it to say that the problems of low turnout, of the impossibility of ensuring that voters address the question being asked and are not swayed by extraneous considerations or by their attitude to the Government of the day who are posing the question, are serious—perhaps fatal—defects which undermine any assertion that referendums represent a superior form of democracy to the working of representative parliamentary institutions.

It surely cannot be denied that their frequent use will seriously damage the legitimacy of the institution of Parliament, which has been built up so laboriously in this country over many centuries. Some of these defects can be palliated by devices such as adding a sunset clause to the present legislation, or by making the result of a referendum purely advisory, or by setting a voting threshold below which the matter would return to Parliament for decision—this last device, of course, being an amendment which the House supported in the context of the recent alternative vote referendum Bill. All these palliatives will, I trust, be given full and careful consideration as we scrutinise the Bill, but the fundamental negative consequences for our parliamentary system of the proposed extensive use of referendums contained in the Bill cannot simply be wished away.

The hard fact is that the Government faced a choice when they set out to give legislative effect to the coalition agreement of last May: that any significant change to the EU treaties should be subjected to approval by referendum. They could have brought forward a quite simple Bill ensuring that any future treaty amendments that transferred significant powers to Brussels would be so treated and would be the object of a referendum. Or they could, as the present Bill does, seek to invent new procedures, including referendums, to handle decisions taken by the European institutions under the powers conferred in the Lisbon treaty, which we, like every other member state, have ratified. I believe the Government made the wrong choice.

That, too, seems to be the thrust of this House’s Constitution Committee in its excellent recent report on the Bill, published on 17 March, when it stated:

“In our judgement, the resort to referendums contemplated in the European Union Bill is not confined to the category of fundamental constitutional issues on which a UK-wide referendum may be judged to be appropriate. Furthermore, many of the Bill’s provisions are inconsistent with the Government’s statement that referendums are most appropriately used in relation to fundamental constitutional issues”.

That is a damning judgment indeed.

In making their choice to go for a complex Bill, the Government have constructed a cat’s cradle of incredible complexity which, as cats’ cradles tend to do, is only too likely to catch and entangle the cat that created it in the first place. The main effect of the Bill if passed in its present form will be, I would guess—others have said this, too—to blight British decision-making in Brussels, even when the decision in question might be one which is strongly in Britain’s interests to see go ahead. After all, no Government are going to willingly risk defeat in a referendum as a result of mid-term unpopularity or in the approach to a general election. It is far more likely that we will find the Government of the day blocking a decision in Brussels, even when it would be in our national interests to pursue it.

There is also what I call the chicken and egg problem about this legislation. All the EU decisions which are designated to be caught by the Bill are only the ones that require unanimity in the Council. So unless and until Britain signifies its agreement to the measure in question, it does not exist in a legal form which can be put to the electorate for confirmation or rejection. Among other things, this implies that the Government as a whole will have to campaign for a yes vote in a referendum—I would be grateful if the Minister can confirm this—because they will already have backed the decision in Brussels. If they had not, there would not have been a decision and there would not be a referendum. Is that a correct reading of the situation?

If the referendum were to have a negative result, or if, for that matter, we were to block a decision simply in order to avoid the need for a referendum, we should of course have set up a simple position in Brussels under which the other 26 member states—which, by definition, would have agreed to it—could go ahead without us under the enhanced co-operation procedures of the Lisbon treaty. We would be left out of a measure which the Government and Parliament would have decided it was in our national interests to participate in. This would be an absurd situation. Is that what the Government have in mind?

In any case, the Bill is shot through with constitutional contradictions. None is more flagrant than the clear and deliberate attempt to go against one of the main precepts of our unwritten constitution, namely that no Parliament can tie the hands of its successor. That is exactly what the Bill sets out to do. This is made all the more blatant by the statement from the Government in the coalition agreement that they do not intend to agree to any significant transfer of powers to Brussels during the lifetime of this Parliament. The referendum provisions of the Bill will only be triggered in subsequent Parliaments, not this one. That really is making constitutional innovation on the wing. It is another powerful argument for a sunset clause.

As a number of noble Lords said, there is another of those contradictions in Clause 18, on the,

“Status of EU law dependent on continuing statutory basis”.

It is hard to understand what that provision is meant to signify or what, if any, effect its enactment would have. It is harder still if you read that in combination with Explanatory Notes 118 and 119, which state:

“This clause does not alter the existing relationship between EU law and UK domestic law; in particular, the principle of the primacy of EU law … The rights and obligations assumed by the UK on becoming a member of the EU remain intact”.

To use another feline metaphor, this clause really resembles the smile of the Cheshire Cat. The longer you look at it, the more it tends to disappear. Surely either the clause should be dropped or we should include in the Bill the Explanatory Note that I have cited.

I have no doubt—we have to some extent already been told this by the protagonists of the Bill—that it is designed to enable Britain to feel comfortable in its EU membership and the mere existence of this so-called referendum lock is meant to achieve that. Yet it certainly does not appear to be having that effect on the Government’s Eurosceptic supporters in another place nor on the prominently Eurosceptic press. Nor is it easy to see how a succession of referendums on relatively abstruse aspects of European law and practice could have that effect either, whether they were voted down or confirmed. If it is not going to appease Eurosceptics and will work against our interests in Brussels, what on earth useful purpose does it serve?

It is regrettable that, after a lengthy period of EU preoccupation with institutional issues, we British should now be heading back down that long, dark tunnel. I had hoped that with the Lisbon treaty in force we could focus on the substance of European policy-making, completing the single market, achieving economic and financial stability and growth, freer and fairer world trade, further enlargement and making a reality out of the common foreign and security policy. Instead, we appear to be seeking to deny the EU the flexibility built into the Lisbon treaty and the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. Without that, no institution, either at the national or international level, can hope to prosper and flourish. The Government’s policy seems to be to lock the door and throw the key out of the window.

International Aid Reviews: Conclusions

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

I thank my noble friend for her very warm words. I also pay tribute to UNICEF and many of the great NGOs that do incredible work often in very difficult circumstances. She raised some points about countries from which DfID money was withdrawn. We are going continuously to countries that will need our assistance. However, the infrastructure must be in place to be able to deliver it on the ground. If it is not, it is often difficult. I very much take on board what my noble friend has said and will take it back to the department for the Secretary of State.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, will the Minister accept a very warm welcome for the way in which the Government have withstood the slings and arrows of the tabloid press, who have asked them to cut our aid programme? How welcome it is that they are sustaining it, particularly given that, if you do a mathematical calculation, you will find that, because of the crisis, the 0.7 per cent of GNI will be worth less in 2013 than when it was pledged in 2005. These countries have already taken a hit. It is very good that the Government are standing up to that.

Does the noble Baroness recognise that seeking reforms to these multilateral organisations, which is entirely legitimate, depends crucially on getting allies in other countries who take the same view as us and press for the same reforms, otherwise it is just a concealed cutting operation? I hope she will be able to say that the Government put a lot of effort into that.

India, Brazil and China are now becoming aid donors. They are countries with a lot of working experience of how to lift people out of poverty. I hope that we will work closely with countries such as Brazil, India and China in future because we have both a lot to contribute and a lot of work to do with them.

[Baroness Verma]

I thank the noble Lord for all his comments. In fact there was very little that I could disagree with. As he is very well aware through his own experience, building good partnerships is very important. He is absolutely right; we will be working with China and Brazil and, hopefully not too far into the future, with India, too. We are having very constructive conversations with our other partners who provide donor aid. Many have shown a very keen interest in how we have gone through our review process and are looking very closely at what we have managed to do to ensure that their programmes are also going to be targeted and focused so that we all work toward the same end, which is getting people out of poverty.

International Development Aid

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important point. We are carrying out the bilateral and multilateral reviews and having a great deal of consultation with a great many organisations precisely to ensure that all our aid is focused on getting the best results for the poorest people in the world.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that in failing or failed states, where often straightforward development projects are impossible to mount, it is entirely proper, as a precursor to resuming development, to provide money to help these states? Is that view shared by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, as the noble Lord is aware, our goals are common across the OECD and our multilateral partners, and our aim is to ensure that our investment—every penny that we spend—is directed towards ensuring the best outcomes. He is aware of that.

Millennium Development Goals

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, last month’s meeting in New York said most of the right things but it is legitimate to ask whether the right actions will follow, and that is why the debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, is so timely. After all, those actions have not done so in the past, and the recession has taken its toll on the willingness of many countries to implement the commitments that they entered into, most importantly at Gleneagles and at the UN summit in 2005.

Some of those who endorsed the warm words agreed in New York last month are not fulfilling those commitments now and have shown no sign of doing so in the future. Russia, France and Italy are examples of that tendency. I should like to know what the Government are intending to do to make the monitoring of commitments in the EU and the G20 and at the UN more effective during the last one-third of the journey than it has been in the past two-thirds. It is good that we are sticking to our commitments, but the UK is only a modest part of a global jigsaw and, if we cannot carry others with us, progress towards achieving the millennium development goals will flag.

This issue of the consequences of the recession and of the current problems over government spending has to be confronted fair and square. It needs to be recalled that the global recession and the particularly sharp slowing of growth in the main developed countries—which are also, of course, the main aid donors—has already levied a substantial hidden tax on the resources being made available to the developing world, as many of the commitments entered into were expressed as percentages of donor countries’ gross national income, and the growth of the GNI of those countries is markedly lower than was expected at the time the commitments were entered into.

A second consideration is that the 2008 financial and economic crisis was in no conceivable way attributable to the policies or actions of developing countries. Therefore, it would surely be aberrant and immoral if they were to be directly punished for events which are already taking a toll on their economies.

Thirdly, it is not in our own interest that developing countries’ health, education, climate and other development policies should be hobbled, with the inevitable increase in global insecurity which would follow. Therefore, I strongly commend the coalition Government’s decision to honour our commitments and to sustain the aid budget.

It is not too soon, I suggest, to be thinking now about the post-2015 scenario for the MDGs. The problems that they were established to address will not have disappeared by then, although one can hope that they will have been much reduced. An instrument a bit less blunt and all-embracing than the MDGs could serve better in the future. It is now widely recognised that global MDG achievement figures conceal as much as they reveal. Thanks to the rapid economic growth in Asia, the below-average performance of many weaker developing countries in other parts of the world is hidden and often not properly addressed. The problems of failed and failing states are simply not on the development radar screen at all. We surely need in future an instrument and approach which focus much more clearly and effectively on what Professor Paul Collier of Oxford University in a striking phrase called “the bottom billion”. The fate of those countries whose populations make up that bottom billion have serious implications not only for the world economy but for international peace and security.

We also need to think hard about the role that can be played in the future by the most successful countries emerging from the developing world—countries such as China, India and Brazil. I do not believe that we should expect those countries to match the same degree of spending as the developed countries but they have gone through this experience themselves and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and they have a lot of lessons to teach us. Therefore, to ignore the contributions that these countries can make to shaping and participating in future development work would be foolish and entirely contrary to the rationale of establishing the G20 as the primary body for co-ordinating global economic policies. After all, these countries have shown how it can be done—how rapid progress to achieving the MDGs can be made. Therefore, I should like to suggest that in cases such as China, Brazil and India, the Government should be thinking of how we can work with them in the future and co-operate with them in seeking to achieve the goals. I hope that when he replies to this debate the noble Earl can say something on the Government’s intentions in that respect. I heard the Secretary of State for DfID speak about that on television only two days ago and it would be very good if we could hear from him.