UN Sustainable Development Goals
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the debate we are having today on the UN sustainable development goals is, if anything, overdue, so the initiative by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, is doubly welcome. The hard fact is that the mid-term review of progress towards the 2030 sustainable development goals showed as much regress as progress. We in this country bear some responsibility for that, as we squeezed our overseas aid budget, cut back on our contributions to multilateral development programmes and diverted huge sums of development aid to financing Ukrainian refugees in this country. This lamentable performance was not without its cost to us in terms of waning influence in the global South. If we ignore its priorities, why should it pay much attention to ours?
Where does remedial action begin? Clearly it begins, if it does not end, with finding more overall resources for overseas aid to developing countries. Getting back to our legal obligation of 0.7% of gross national income will not be easy or quick, but it needs to start now. The Budget at the end of this month surely needs to contain some modest first steps in that direction. Let us hope it will, otherwise our credibility will be hard to sustain.
A key priority among the sustainable development goals must surely be climate change, both what we do in this country and what we do overseas through our aid programme. It would surely be better to move away from the annual wrangles at COP meetings over the global figures for developing countries to more practical and precise programmes which will help developing countries face up to a range of challenges for whose origins, as other speakers have said, they were not responsible. There should be more resources for those developing countries such as Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil and others whose action to check climate change could make a real difference; some linkage between relief for the heavily indebted countries and their action against climate change; and better ways of judging right across the board how well every country in the UN is carrying out the obligations it has freely entered into.
Then there is world health. This is now risking neglect as Covid fades into the rearview mirror, but do not doubt that there will be another global pandemic soon enough. We need to be able to spot it and take remedial action quicker than we did with Covid, and to find more equitable ways to distribute vaccines than we did on that occasion. Much will be riding on next year’s negotiations for a pandemic convention. What are the Government’s plans for that event?
Trade policy too is returning to the development agenda, after a period when freer and fairer trade worldwide was the order of the day and brought much benefit. Now, protectionism is on the rise, and we should have no illusions: if the sort of tariffs being touted by Donald Trump come into being and are replicated by other major trading nations—as was, lamentably, the case in the 1930s—then the damage to the prospects of developing countries will be real and profound. That disastrous precedent needs to be avoided if the SDGs are not to take another heavy hit.
The issues I have identified already make up a daunting agenda. Others in this debate will be added and will be every bit as important. Ducking that agenda would be a futile course, the consequences of which we would all suffer. The UK, working with other like-minded countries, has a modest capacity to make a real, positive difference, and it is in our interest so to do.
Gibraltar-Spain Border Checks
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
Can we hear from the Cross Benches now, please?
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
Will the Minister take the trouble to read the speech made by the Chief Minister of Gibraltar after the problems that arose recently on the border, and will he endorse the firmly calm and determined note that Mr Fabian Picardo took about the continuing possibility of getting an agreement that would benefit both sides? Will he also recognise that every time the false analogy between Chagos and Gibraltar is raised, it plays straight into the hands of the Spanish?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I agree. There is no comparison. This is not an issue where there can be any link. As the Chief Minister of Gibraltar has said, the important thing is that it is in the interests of Gibraltar and the local economy to ensure that we have an agreement with the EU. We are determined to achieve that.
NATO and European Political Community Meetings
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank and congratulate the Leader of the House; this is the first time I have spoken since she took up her new position. I also welcome that the Statement mentioned the advantage that the Prime Minister took at Blenheim to give his colleagues and partners at that meeting the two key points in the gracious Speech about our relations with other European countries and the European Union: the reset and the pact of security in the widest sense.
I am sure that the Leader of the House is aware that the next country to chair the European Political Community is Hungary and there is due to be a meeting there, presumably in Budapest, in the second half of this year. The Prime Minister of Hungary is a past master of pretending that he is something that he is not: the representative of the European Union. His rotating presidency gives him no right to that; that is a matter for the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission. Can the Leader of the House assure me that we are alert to attempts that may be made to peddle the aberrant views on the Ukraine conflict held by the Prime Minister of Hungary?
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord. First, I apologise to the Leader of the Opposition; he asked me a question that I forgot to respond to. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, will not mind that I address that. The Leader of the Opposition asked me about the Global Combat Air Programme, an intergovernmental organisation. An order will come forward to this House, probably on Monday; I will propose a Business of the House Motion to allow that to come forward. I will send him information about that; I think that the Chief Whips have already spoken.
On Hungary, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that his question is probably one for the European Union rather than me. It is worth restating that we stand completely in solidarity with Ukraine—that is an ironclad commitment. There have been different views within the EU—Hungary, is notably one of them—but the EU has spoken with one voice and stands with Ukraine.