Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and Philippines

Debate between Lord Hill of Oareford and Lord Naseby

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The right reverend Prelate makes an extremely wise point about the long-term future. I am grateful for what he says about the short-term response, although, as he rightly says, a lot of that is down to the natural generosity and human feeling of the British people in terms of their charitable response. The Government are glad to have been able to play their part alongside them in increasing the amount of aid that they have made available.

The right reverend Prelate is obviously also right that there is a difference between the short-term crisis response and what one can do longer term. As he has said, DfID was working with the Philippine Government prior to the emergency on some of the issues which he mentioned which come from climate change. Certainly, helping those countries invest in homes and infrastructure that in future would be better able to support some of these natural disasters is the wise thing to do. I am sure that through the work of DfID, the Government will continue to reflect on that.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

As chairman of the all-party group I welcome enormously that the Prime Minister went to Colombo. Is my noble friend aware that the reaction from the nearly 500,000 Sri Lankans living in the UK, whether they be Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim, has not been at all positive? My e-mail has virtually collapsed because people are deeply concerned at the way in which the Prime Minister raised, in their view, an unbalanced view of what progress had been made, particularly the manner in which it was delivered to the President of Sri Lanka? I have to say that I partially share that concern.

As we move forward, which is the key to all this, does my noble friend, as he sits in the Cabinet, recognise that it has been only four years and that in those four years there is peace? There are no bombs and you can go where you like. You do not have to have your cards with you and there are no checkpoints. That is enormous progress in four years. After all, we took nine years to get rid of rationing. Even as one of those who suffered from the bombing in London, we did not succeed in producing an ideal situation within four years.

Perhaps I may bear on the House for a moment; two dimensions are involved. First, we now know the number of people who disappeared, of whom, sadly, some 600 were children, who I suspect are child soldiers. We now know that. There is a commission. I think that it would be great progress if the International Committee of the Red Cross were to join that commission, because it has helped in producing the numbers.

Secondly, we now have established the numbers who were killed. We know from the Tamil teachers who did the audit that the number is somewhere around 9,000, which is a number that we can handle. Will my noble friend please give maximum encouragement to the processing of those 9,000 to make sure that we find out exactly who they were?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I certainly accept the point. The Prime Minister was very clear in his Statement that one cannot disassociate oneself from the awful history of Sri Lanka over the past 30 years and the history of bloodshed and civil strife that it has gone through. That having been said, I do not accept that the Prime Minister made his case to the President of Sri Lanka in an unbalanced way. There is quite a lot of contention around figures of the sort to which my noble friend refers. That is precisely why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister stressed the importance of having a credible transparent and independent inquiry to get to the bottom of what happened during the closing phases of the civil war and then addressing the situation so that it is possible on that basis to move forward with reconciliation to a shared understanding of what the future might be like. Until that has happened, it is very hard to work out how there can be reconciliation that will last.

Smoking: Cigarette Packaging

Debate between Lord Hill of Oareford and Lord Naseby

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

We will briefly hear from my noble friend and then go over to the other side.

[Lord Naseby]

I congratulate my noble friend on not rushing in to another unproven restriction on the consumption of alcohol, particularly one which has legal dimensions that affect intellectual property rights. Can he confirm that consumption of cigarettes is already falling, and that we are already spending something like over £50 million on tobacco control? Is not the greatest problem at the moment illegal smuggling of cigarettes into this country, which costs the Revenue a huge amount of money—close on £200 million—and is consumed principally by young people?

Algeria

Debate between Lord Hill of Oareford and Lord Naseby

Monday 21st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby]

The speed with which the Prime Minister moved in calling COBRA meetings and the Government as a whole moved in bringing back our colleagues who survived is greatly to be welcomed. The Prime Minister mentioned in his Statement that priority will now be given to bringing back the remains of those who have died. To that end, I wonder whether it might not be in the interests of all parties if a senior coroner, or a recently retired coroner, was hastily made one of that team to ensure that, if at all possible, this can be done even more quickly than has ever been achieved before.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his comments both about the way in which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has handled this crisis and also his points about the importance of resolving the problem of repatriating these bodies—which is a deeply distressing thing for all the families concerned—as soon as possible. I know that officials in our embassy and from the police are working closely with the Algerian authorities in the kind of way he describes to resolve it as rapidly as possible.