Commonwealth Day

Debate between Lord Haselhurst and Andrew Stephenson

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

Yes, I absolutely agree with that, and I will say a word or two about that in a moment. I have one other reflection on my visit to Singapore. It was famous that so many things were prohibited in Singapore, using the well known sign of a circle with a bar across what it was that people could not do. In those days, my hair was a little longer than it is today. I was rather concerned to be meeting Lee Kuan Yew when I was not sure whether I passed the test so far as wearing long hair in his country was concerned, but our friendship managed to survive that difficulty. I salute his memory and all that he has done for his people.

The Commonwealth has many manifestations, but its reality cannot be taken for granted. I said earlier that the Commonwealth is subliminal for us, or in our DNA; nevertheless, we need to understand that not everybody has it at the forefront of their mind. I am still chilled by a discussion in which I was privileged to take part with the External Affairs Committee of the Lok Sabha in New Delhi, when one of its members said to me, “Well, you’ve got to understand that not many people here in India understand what the Commonwealth is about.” That was a shock to me, coming from a representative of the largest democracy in the Commonwealth by population; but it is true, is it not, that if we went around our towns and cities and asked the first 10 people we met what they understood about the Commonwealth, the answers might be somewhat meagre. The Commonwealth is there, and we take it for granted, but we should not take it for granted; we need to remind ourselves of its values.

Taking up the point made by the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) about commerce and trade, it is encouraging that the City of London is a partner in establishing the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council. The City is a founding father of that organisation, for which much is hoped. The lord mayor, Alan Yarrow, describes himself as a child of the Commonwealth, having been born in Malaysia and educated in Singapore. Undoubtedly, the City of London is playing its part to make a reality of trade and finance among Commonwealth countries.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the Commonwealth theme for 2015, “A Young Commonwealth”, which recognises the contribution and potential of young people, is especially relevant to many countries, such as Pakistan, where a significant proportion of the population is under the age of 30? Thanks to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, I recently met a group of young parliamentarians from Pakistan here in Westminster, and their enthusiasm and energy gave me hope for the future development of that country.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. Given the interventions we have heard so far, I am beginning to wonder whether my speech notes have somehow been circulated more widely than I had expected. I will respond to him in just a moment, if I may.

Today, I will mainly concentrate on the work of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. It is a huge honour to have been the chairperson of the United Kingdom branch, and I could never have guessed that, within a year of accepting that post, I would find myself as the international chairman. I would describe the three-year period that I served in that position from 2011 to 2014 as both a joy and a challenge. The fact that I was welcomed so generously in all those parts of the Commonwealth, small and large, that I was able to visit during the term of my chairmanship was uplifting. I felt that, in a modest way, I was some sort of symbol of what the Commonwealth meant.

However, the governance of the CPA at international level presented a serious challenge, which is ironic because, as much as anything, the CPA is about promoting good governance. We believe that if there are stable systems of government—representative parliamentary democracy— in each Commonwealth country, bound by common principles and standards that have been signed into the charter by Her Majesty the Queen as head of the Commonwealth, it will lead to confidence in the economies of those countries, to investment, to the creation of jobs and to the advancement of their peoples. I am pleased that the Select Committee on International Development has stressed the importance of good governance, and I have always tried to say that the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association can be one of the most effective instruments for trying to ensure the improvement of governing practices.

Great work is being done. Wherever one looks, particularly at regional and national levels throughout the Commonwealth’s Parliaments and Assemblies, one will find people who are engaged in that work. The willingness of my parliamentary colleagues here to give time and the willingness of officials is replicated in other countries as well. There is an enormous amount of interchange, training, workshops and so on, because there is always churn—an increasing churn rate in some cases—in members of the respective Parliaments, so there is always someone new who needs to learn the ropes; someone who, having realised their ambition to be elected, suddenly realises that they have these responsibilities and wants to learn how best to discharge them.

Therefore, I found it quite difficult that at the apex of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, in its structure internationally, it was not the best exemplar of good governance. I like to think, somewhat immodestly, that there were some advances during my three years as chairperson. We saw an extension of the Commonwealth women parliamentarians network—it is still not fully complete, but it has advanced considerably. I seem to have persuaded colleagues that the institution of a Commonwealth Youth Parliament should be an annual event, bringing people from all parts of the Commonwealth to an assembly in which they can perform. After one hiccup, when Andhra Pradesh was going to be the host and the state was divided by a decision of the Indian Government—that year it fell through— the Commonwealth Youth Parliament was held last year in the legislature of the North West province of South Africa. The UK delegate, Meera Sonecha, became Leader of the Opposition and even, briefly, Prime Minister following a vote of no confidence. I hope this year’s UK’s representative will distinguish himself or herself to the same degree.

In all my contact with the Commonwealth Youth Parliament, I have been impressed by the young people who are coming through. We can have hope for the future in that respect, provided that we say to young people, who make up such a high proportion of the Commonwealth’s population, that their voice can be heard consistently. If we are listening, they will have confidence in talking to us, proposing their own ideas and, indeed, building their own ambition to take part in the governance of their respective countries. So that was good.

I also advanced the representation of small states of the Commonwealth. We will have an annual small states conference, and I want to see a representative of those small states as an extra person on the executive committee to put their point of view. The small states sometimes feel that they are the poor relations just because they are small—some of them are very small, and some of them are in scattered areas of the Caribbean or the south Pacific. We established a mentoring scheme whereby parliamentarians with long experience can be linked with someone who is new to their Parliament or Assembly so that they can continue the discussion. They do not have to meet people on an occasional basis; they can pick up the telephone or use e-mail to make contact.

More prosaically, we at last managed to implant the principle of internal audit in the CPA structure. Some people had difficulty understanding the principle, although it is actually commonplace in their respective Parliaments and, quite rightly, it needed to be introduced at international level. The CPA’s governance structure does not help it to do the work that it needs to be doing. One of the things that has bugged the CPA for two decades or more is the fact that some members are uncomfortable with the CPA’s legal status as a charity based in the United Kingdom, which I suspect evokes a colonial memory that is unhelpful to what the modern Commonwealth is all about. We have spent a great deal of time trying to find an alternative status that will be acceptable and workable, but of course the whole point of charitable status is not somehow to be degrading; it is a protection against tax. All our purposes are charitable, and therefore it makes sense for us to have that status. However, it was uncomfortable for some. We argued and argued and argued about it, and never found a solution.

The executive committee is the governing body of the CPA internationally. It has nine regions, each of which has three representatives, except Africa, which has six representatives. That gives an idea of how large it is—bigger than the Cabinet of our country and most other countries. It meets not weekly—obviously—but only twice a year, with a rotating membership. In fact, each region’s representatives rotate—they are on the committee for three years and then they go—so there is no enduring memory within that body to ensure that good governance takes place.

Also, there was a resistance to the idea of changing the practice whereby the regional secretaries, who are professional people and often clerks in their own countries, could not even sit in on the meetings that take place. When I pointed out that if messages from the executive were to percolate through to all the 175 branches of the CPA, it would seem essential to put some professional “oomph” behind it, I was told, “Well, no, the regional representatives are the ones who do that.” However, if a regional representative is not at the meeting for any reason, there will obviously be a breakdown in communication: they cannot get the messages back to their home branches. Nevertheless, there seems to have been resistance, up to now, to the idea that the regional representative should do what we normally expect our professional advisers, in the form of our clerks, to do: to ensure that decisions taken are translated into action. That does not happen with the CPA internationally.

Then there has been the collection of a very large sum of money in reserves, which now amounts to about £9 million. Prudent management of the finances is, of course, vital. However, if the income of the CPA internationally is roughly £2.5 million, the reserve that it is necessary to keep to guard against any difficulty does not need to be £9 million. It seems to me that, to some extent, that money would be better dispensed in doing work in the regions to ensure that the network of, say, women’s branches or youth branches is strengthened.

It was rather dispiriting that the last words published in The Parliamentarian by the—alas now deceased—secretary-general of the CPA, Dr Shija, seemed to concentrate on the CPA acquiring new premises in London, with a conference facility, an apartment for the secretary-general and so on. That seemed something of a departure from what the main purposes of the CPA should be. My vision—if I dare use that expression—is that we should build up the position of the small states and that their representative on the executive should be an officer of the CPA, alongside the chair of the Commonwealth women parliamentarians group and the treasurer, the vice-chairman and the chairperson. Similarly, with the youth structure we should see someone becoming the apex of the young people of the Commonwealth, so that he or she can play their part.

I was encouraged by a message I received from the executive director of Commonwealth Youth New Zealand, Aaron Hape, who tells me that a week ago they celebrated this year’s Commonwealth theme, “A Young Commonwealth”, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) has made reference. Aaron says:

“I was delighted to see supporters of CYNZ attend many events across New Zealand, and indeed, internationally, to celebrate this important occasion. What struck me was the amount of new faces that were present at these events.”

How many of us can say that about the young people in our country recognising the Commonwealth and celebrating its activities?

The other advantage of an enlarged officer structure is that one would be able to have rotation, so that every region would feel that it had some say at the top table. It is always the Pacific region that seems to have lost out in that regard over the years. It would be easier to have a rotation system whereby every region could expect that within a period of, say, five years, it would have one of the officers of the association.

Those are my reflections. My international term of office ended in October last year. My successor is Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, the Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament. I find her to be a hugely impressive parliamentarian. She has already built upon the role that the CPA has at the Heads of Government meeting, and the Maltese have been very accommodating to the CPA and to the representations that she has made. She is determined to broaden the scope still further of the Commonwealth women parliamentarians group. She represented the CPA at the commission on the status of women in New York and she is also keen to promote the voice of young people.

I believe that there is the opportunity to make the CPA at international level more than the sum of its parts, so that we have all that is best in so many different regions. In the UK, we do a terrific amount of work in promoting good governance and good relations between parliamentarians, and I see that in various other regions of the Commonwealth as well, but it is about bringing it together. From the centre, we should be disseminating best practice, showing that in our own structures we have got it right so far as good governance is concerned and therefore can preach the message with confidence to others, to remind people continually what our Commonwealth means and how we should put its principles into practice. That should be our constant aim, and the more we can put the spotlight on it, the better it will be and the stronger the Commonwealth will become.