Georgia: Imprisonment of Mikhail Saakashvili

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble and right reverend Lord is right that the treatment of the former president has wider ramifications. While humanitarian concerns are clearly uppermost in our representations on the matter, we have also highlighted the relevance of the Government’s treatment of Mr Saakashvili to Georgia’s domestic political climate, international reputation and broader Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, is this not really all about Russia trying to re-exert control in that area by using familiar methods of undermining stable government to do so? Is it not rather the same as what is happening in Moldova, as well as all over the developing world, including in many countries of the Commonwealth, and in Sudan, where Russia is setting up a naval base? Should we not be very careful that while Putin may be failing in Ukraine—and we hope he fails—he may be succeeding rather continuously in those other areas? Does my noble friend agree that we should keep a very close eye on that aspect of what is otherwise rapidly becoming a new cold war?

Nagorno-Karabakh

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, of course we are aware of the presence of regional actors, including Russia, as the noble Lord has articulated. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we have currently suspended all engagement with the Russian authorities, except on a very limited number of issues. Their continued presence should be to keep the peace, as was intended, and not to exacerbate the situation. However, I regret that I do not believe that to be the case. We will continue to work using all good offices, particularly our direct contacts. Indeed, I met with the Armenian Foreign Minister in December to reassure him of our good offices in trying to reach a direct resolution to this long-standing dispute and conflict.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, does not the present situation with this whole miserable, unending war, which has been going on since 1988, indicate how possibly unwise or unfortunate the Armenians were to put their trust in Russia? Russia’s influence has weakened, and it is distracted by losing the battle in Ukraine. That has made it a feeble supporter in securing the position of Armenian citizens in Nagorno-Karabakh.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, in the light of the prevailing situation in Russia’s war on Ukraine, I am sure that many countries are now reconsidering their alliances with Russia and the support that they gain from it. One hopes that we will see greater stability across the European continent and in other conflicts around the world. There is a simple solution. Russia can step up to the mark, fulfil its international obligations and act as a peacemaker in conflicts around the world rather than making them worse.

Chinese Consul General: Attack on Protesters in Manchester

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I will have to follow up on the specifics, but on the noble Lord’s more general point about these so-called unofficial police stations, they have no basis in the United Kingdom and where they and such actions are identified, we shall take appropriate action to shut them down, as he said.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the last question certainly deserves an answer, because this is very strange. Does the Minister appreciate and agree—I think he does—that this incident is a small part of the gigantic dilemma of our relationship with the People’s Republic of China in the coming years? Does he agree that there is a need to clarify what part the Chinese system deeply embedded in our present infrastructure should play in the future, or how we will change it? How will we deal with the fact, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that our trade with China is still on an enormous scale and touches on important areas of security? Does the Minister not agree that the recent lead from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the other place—that we should make real efforts to clarify this very difficult relationship, without going to absurd lengths by trying to cancel China and so on—is a very necessary part of developing our new foreign policy in an utterly changed world?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, as we look at refreshing the integrated review, these aspects will of course be covered, but I agree with my noble friend that there are various elements of our policy on China that present an immense challenge. The actions of the consul general and other officials were, frankly, absolutely against any diplomatic action. It would ultimately have been for the police to investigate and decide, but we observed those actions and they were absolutely against any kind of sanction or action that should have been taken by any diplomat.

On the wider question of our relationship with China, my noble friend is of course right to point out that we have a trading relationship. On broader global challenges, including global health and climate change, China has an important role to play. But, as the Minister of State for Human Rights, among other things, I say that this has not prevented us from calling out China when we see an abuse, whether at home or abroad, or from leading the way in multilateral fora, including the Human Rights Council.

Protection of Media Freedom

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate mentions Russia and China, which are the source of much of the activity and agitation we have seen against a free press, both in those countries and in other countries as a consequence of their actions. The Russian Government’s brutal suppression of freedom of expression and of the media generally is clear evidence of Putin’s desperation to conceal the truth of this war from his own people. We are doing everything we can to expose the Kremlin playbook, including through the new government information cell, detailing how Russia is using the four Ds of disinformation, calling out its lies and contrasting them with verified facts. Through our unprecedented package of sanctions against Russia, we have targeted peddlers of Russian disinformation who push Kremlin propaganda. The Government have already directly sanctioned state media organisations, targeting the Kremlin-funded TV-Novosti, which owns RT, and Rossiya Segodnya, which controls the Sputnik news agency.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend bear in mind that while nations around the world should protect their own media freedoms—and they do not make a very good job of it—we in this country have a unique opportunity, through our membership of the Commonwealth, and through the Commonwealth Journalists Association and a variety of other Commonwealth press organisations, to press for media freedoms throughout a third of the world’s population, which is not a bad start?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My noble friend is right, and we do. The UK continues to prioritise funding for media freedom programmes, which have helped journalists all around the world. We have provided over half a billion pounds in ODA to media and free flow of information over the past five years. That includes support for the BBC World Service, which we debated a few days ago, and our £3 million pledge over five years to UNESCO’s global media defence fund. The fund has benefited more than 3,000 journalists over two years. In addition, the UK has committed £7 million of new funding for independent media in Ukraine. We co-sponsored the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution on the safety of journalists, and there was the joint statement on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, along with the 51st session of the Human Rights Council. Our media, as has been said, is recognised and respected all around the world, with audience figures rising continuously.

Ukraine: Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, on bringing forward this debate. It is the second time in a week or so that he has secured a debate on a vital international topic. He is doing the work of this House’s business managers for them by playing to the Lords’ strengths in this area. At a time when our colleagues in the other place seem to be sinking down the plughole of bickering and short-termism, it is the accumulated experience of their Lordships that can focus on the international issues which, in the end, are more decisive than any others in our daily lives and our long-term existence as a nation. So I hope the noble and right reverend Lord will take an accolade from me for making a better case than most for a future active and experienced House of Lords.

The potential use of tactical nuclear weapons is the most important issue of all because, of course, it would unlock grim escalation and proliferation, end the balance of nuclear deterrence entirely and lead us straight to a world war and mass incineration with the consequences the noble and right reverend Lord just described.

I do not believe, as some do, that there is a halfway house between small tactical nuclear weapons and the full force of massive destruction on a scale never seen before in human history. In the present fraught situation, it is China, rather than Russia, where the key lies to governing Putin’s actions. There is no doubt in my mind that until now, China has been the most powerful restraint on Putin and his warmongering generals. As he increasingly loses on the ground to Ukrainian resilience and ingenuity, Putin’s latest assurance, about a fortnight ago, was that he would not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine after all. Of course, that cannot be trusted; it is just one statement. It is interesting that he had to make it, because it should be seen entirely in the context of trying to keep China’s vague approval of what he is doing. In all the back-track exchanges with Russia since the Russian invasion, in addition to the official hotline, to which I have had the privilege of access, Putin’s toying with nuclear weapons has been China’s No. 1 concern. It has been quite ready to use its good offices with Moscow in exchange for specific restraints on American and NATO supply and the technological sophistication of weapons.

China may have immediate problems with Xi Jinping’s rising unpopularity and all the riots, but these will not affect its weight and influence with Moscow. Their relationship may have started out as an unlimited partnership, but China has not supplied weapons to Russia, and it has applied quite a few financial and trading controls. China’s business community is deeply apprehensive about the effect of Putin’s war on their world business. For example, Chinese citizens are not even allowed to use their credit cards in Russia and have to carry around piles of cash when they visit. They would much prefer being mediators to being rooters for Russian success.

Longer term, China is a big nuclear power and now, according to the Americans, it is planning—idiotically, in my view—to triple its nuclear arsenal. By preparing for superpower conflict and hegemonic struggle with the US, it is heading on precisely the wrong route, greatly to the detriment of the Chinese people. This unfolding crisis, with its impatient and aggressive turn towards Taiwan, is the next chapter. All needs urgently to be managed and controlled, as it was in the Cold War, to prevent the situation turning red hot. We will need many further debates on that, but in the meantime, ugly though Chinese policies have become in many areas, and on our guard though we must be with every action they take, this is one area where we must work with the Chinese so they carry on being the vital restraint on Russia’s nuclear madness.

Ukraine: Post-conflict Reconstruction

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s second point, he will be aware that we are a key part of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, to which we have allocated £3.5 billion. We are also working with the US and the EU on that, and with civil society organisations. There is a real request from the Ukrainian Government regarding the importance of Ukrainian civil society organisations. On the broader point about the UN, frankly, as the noble Lord knows, the UN system was not, beyond the World Food Programme, for example, ready for a conflict such as Ukraine. However, we have been working in partnership with key UN agencies, including UNICEF and OCHA, and will continue to do so. Civil society delivery is key to that, particularly civil society organisations that know Ukraine best—the Ukrainian ones.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, what we have done so far is good, and there has been of talk of a new Marshall plan. But does the Minister accept that in 1945, the Marshall plan took two or three years to get going and was entirely paid for by the United States, whereas in this case, we will be raising funds from all around the world—not least Russia itself but also international institutions, the UN and many other countries, including ourselves? This will require very careful administration and possibly a slightly different model from the Marshall plan.

Also, whereas in 1945 the war was over and there was defeat, and therefore a peace scenario in which to operate, here this will not be the case at all. Russia, even if defeated, if that is right word, will probably continue rearming and have another go. Therefore, we will need a model and an approach that has not been tried before. The more that we hear about it and develop it, the better.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we do need a kind of strategic endurance, if I can term it that way, again referring back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne. The world today is very different from 1945: there are institutions such as the G7, the G20 and of course NATO, which will be key to ensuring that we give the military and humanitarian support required, allowing Ukraine to continue to operate economically and to reconstruct in the long term. Work has started in this respect and there are good partnerships, but we need co-ordination and that must continue.

Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) (No. 15) Regulations 2022

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

Finally, will the Minister explain why, although the OFSI has reported that it has received 236 reports about those in the UK breaching sanctions, only two monetary penalties have been issued? How many warning letters have been issued? Why have there been so many breach reports but so few prosecutions? Ultimately we are to wait for the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which is slowly progressing through Parliament. When are we likely to see it in this House? When will we get an update on the resources for Companies House and others to make sure we can start seizing some of those assets and putting them to good use?

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, these measures are admirable, but can we have an analysis of how we are helping other countries around the world follow the same standards of capping or prohibiting Russian fossil fuel imports? There is evidence that a great deal of Russian oil—possibly not gas—is simply going to other markets in Asia, perhaps at a discount but in some cases at full market price, and that Russian coal is still being fairly widely exported. We would like to hear more about the full diplomatic effort that we are deploying with other like-minded countries in Asia, Europe and across the Atlantic to ensure that Russian oil and gas sales really are minimised and that the heat is being felt in Russian finances. I know that that is our intention, but the facts and figures, some of which have been touched on, do not seem to reflect that very much impact has so far been made.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, referred to £18 billion-worth of assets that have been seized. The noble Lord will be well aware of the billions that have been frozen under a United Nations resolution with regard to Libya, which have been untouched and from which victims in this country have not received any support. Is it the case that we could be seeing a repeat of that performance and that those assets will have to be managed? Perhaps investment should be improved by people in our system and then given back again whenever the conflict ends.

Ukraine

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I assure the noble Viscount that that is exactly what we are doing. Our excellent ambassador, Dame Barbara Woodward, has emphasised the importance of restarting this initiative. We are working closely with and behind the UN to ensure that the initiative, which is saving lives in some of the most vulnerable parts of the world, is restored as immediately as possible.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend’s interesting reply to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, does he agree that, right from the start, the priority has been to prevail not just on the battlefield but in isolating Russia and its war machine from supplies and trade right around the world? Does he agree that our diplomats ought at least to be able to mobilise the other 55 members of the Commonwealth to ensure that they take a stronger position than some of them have against the Russian attack on humanity, on the international rule of law and on the decent standards by which all government has prevailed throughout this world?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that the Government are working with key partners, including in the Commonwealth. I sat through the Foreign Ministers’ meeting where we negotiated the communiqué. It was the United Kingdom, along with key allies, that ensured the importance of language in the communiqué on Ukraine and made the case for it very strongly. More broadly, as the Minister for the United Nations, I know that our diplomats have done an excellent job. As I am sure my noble friend noted, 143 nations of the United Nations recently voted with Ukraine on the issue of annexation. The engagement and unity being shown on the diplomatic front is being co-ordinated extensively with key partners; we will continue to make the case to other allies as well.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, before we proceed with this Committee, can we be assured that there is not a plan to alter radically or even withdraw the Bill? Your Lordships will remember that with the Energy Security Bill we all put in weeks of work, as did the Government and everybody else, only for the whole Bill to be scrapped. It would be nice now to know whether we are going ahead with a Bill that will be pursued and not altered or scrapped as well.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I believe it would be for the convenience of the House if I were to put the Question to the House and perhaps allow the matters which have been raised by the noble Lord and potentially by others to be discussed when there is a question before the House. The Question is that the House do now again resolve itself into a Committee upon the Bill.

China: Security and Trade (IRDC Report)

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to participate in such a highly informative and well-informed debate on such a vital issue. It is a bit hard to focus at the moment when I gather that we are once again in search of another Prime Minister, but that is an issue that we shall put aside for a moment and rightly concentrate on this one.

It is a very interesting report. It is remarkable that we are debating it now, a year after it was published. There seems to be something wrong with the machinery for deciding the timing of these things. It is an excellent volume, under the superb chairmanship of my noble friend Lady Anelay, and we ought of course to have come to it much earlier. Oddly enough, and ironically, because of that delay it has arrived for this debate at a very topical time indeed. China is now more than ever at the centre of our affairs—our home affairs as well as our international affairs—on energy questions and the climate issue, which has already been mentioned, where it is central. We have Xi Jinping at the 20th plenum eyeing up Taiwan again and saying that he is not ruling out force, and apparently we are being told by the strategists that Beijing says that, if China sees that America is getting too intrusive, it will, in those chilling words, “surround Taiwan” in three hours—a rather sinister warning of what is to come.

As for Ukraine, the Chinese role has always seemed to me—and, I think, to many others in this Room—pretty central to that as well. As long as Putin has felt that he has solid support from Beijing, he will not lose much sleep over threats from NATO and so on. Slightly encouragingly, I hear, and I am sure others will hear, that the Chinese are getting increasingly worried about Putin and feeling that they are losing control of him. Of course, what they are terrified of is that he will start with the tactical nuclear weapons. So I hope that, maybe if we have good back-track relations with China on that issue, we can exert some more influence on this evil man in the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, of course, China continues to be, embedded here at home right in the United Kingdom at the heart of our nuclear power replacement programme, which happens to be vital to the whole strategy of carbon reduction in the future. That is more and more important now, as our leaders realise that net zero is splendid but it will not be anything like enough to check the vast growth in emissions, coming not least from China but also from the rest of Asia, which is roaring ahead and for which entirely new policies will be needed. So here we are, dealing with and addressing an issue which is highly topical, despite this deplorable delay.

I just had one additional theme to add to the story, and indeed to the report and to the Government’s response, where it was a missing element. I refer to it in rather over-graphic terms used by one expert, who observed that China as part of its hegemonic strategy is hoovering up the developing world, and in particular the Commonwealth members of the developing world—the coastal states of Africa, but even more the islands of the global south: the South Pacific and the Caribbean as well, and indeed parts of Latin America too. This development does not get much mention from the witnesses in this report, and yet it is really the key issue in our relationship with China and the most serious threat in the medium term to our influence, to the transmission of our soft power and to our place in a transformed world with a rising Asia accounting for an increasing volume of world product activity and indeed a major contribution to security.

The most visible immediate sign of that is what has been going on in the Solomon Islands, which I think took everybody by surprise. Indeed, it seemed to me, listening to our distinguished diplomats, that they were only dimly aware that the Solomons were part of the Commonwealth, that the Queen was the Head of State and that we appointed the governor-general. However, that picture was soon asserted when we saw photographs of the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands with the Defence Minister of China inspecting a rather grim formation of burly-looking Chinese troops on parade. Was that supposed to be what we were trying to achieve in the Solomon Islands? Rapidly, people reassessed and increased our influenced on them and realised that that is not the way we want things to go.

Then there is Vanuatu, of course, which has a huge Chinese base on it. Tuvalu has now been incorporated. Incidentally, the Solomons sit over one of the main maritime routes of the entire east Asian trade, which is a huge proportion of world trade, and the arrival of China there, and its proposal to have a nuclear base, is a matter that concerns us very much indeed.

Then we have Africa where, as we know, the Chinese have had their setbacks and are not always popular, particularly when they have used prisoners to do infrastructure work. But they call themselves Africa’s “dependable ally”, and are increasingly involved in a whole range of countries. Indeed, they have a military base in the top of Africa, in Djibouti, which is a real advance and departure. That is significant, because it brings home that we are talking about not just trade involvement—bags of gold, infrastructure, new conference centres, roads and railways and all that sort of thing—but about security co-operation. We are talking about military training, weaponry and the Sandhurst of China— the Sandhurst of Beijing, rather than the Sandhurst of Camberley—offering thousands of places for officer training to teach military values that are very different from our views of how armies should fit into democratic societies. All that is going on, almost—and I hope that I will be forgiven for saying this—with an oblivious disregard from our policymakers here about what is really happening.

That is the global south—and then we have the Caribbean, of course. I know that Barbados has not left the Commonwealth, although the media think that it has, because it has ceased to be a realm. They are very confused and do not actually understand what is happening in the Commonwealth at all. But those who went there tell me that, as they left, large jumbo planes were arriving and parking at the airport, covered in Chinese designations and signs. It turns out that the Barbadian Government have become dangerously involved, as have many other countries, in owing China a large amount of money for what they thought were grants, which turned out to be loans. They are going to cause a lot of grief when they have to be repaid.

So here is a picture of our Commonwealth of like-minded countries, which are privileged to be members of it—and it is one of the main sources of our transmission and influence in the world. We would like to think that it would be a chain of liberty and democracy containing China, but almost before our eyes it is being turned on its head into a chain of Chinese projection of its power, instead of a containment of its power. It is a very serious development, not mentioned here and not mentioned by the Foreign Office; it is not understood, and it is coming into our lives in very serious ways and at great speed.

We have, of course, huge involvement in south Asia. We have our involvement in Five Eyes and the Five Power system, which was mentioned very thoroughly in the report. We have our links with Japan, which are again covered in the report, and we have AUKUS and the submarine plans, which are important. We have our ambitions to join the CPTPP. We are not involved in the RCEP. All these are organisations far larger than the European market, and far more important in the long term for our development.

We have that; versus that, we have a China which at a very deliberate, practical and detailed level—with not too much ideology but in detail—is constantly moving from island to island and state to state. China is arranging not only the links that I talked about earlier but also technology links and opportunities that they can use as basis for GPS, which we are told is part of the next war, in space, and for drone development, which you do not need on a small island, for a large airport with a large airstrip, and for a whole range of other technologies controlling maritime movements through the continental shelf and the UN’s law of the sea provisions of immense strategic value.

I was saddened to hear from a leading Foreign Office expert a year or so ago that the Commonwealth was a bit boring; it was much-loved by the late Queen, but these little islands were very remote and of no strategic significance. The Chinese do not think that; they think the opposite. They think they are of high strategic significance, and they are involving themselves in these nations at a great rate and in many very effective, soft-power types of ways. I wanted to add that missing bit to our debate, to the Government’s response and to the report, because it is the most important bit of all.

I wish we could have a strategy and framework, which noble Lords with huge expertise are calling for, but I do not think it will be like that. The pace of change of events is enormous, and we have to, at best, try to fit in with the hard cop, soft cop pattern. We need to be hard cop.

We listened to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, with his ceaseless and superb indications of the nasty, illiberal side of China, and what it is doing to people in thuggish ways—there was a little demonstration of that in Manchester last week, which I thought was very interesting. These are Chinese thugs at work; we know that this is a streak in the Chinese character. We have to listen to Xi claiming his endless term of office and talking, frankly, ideological rubbish about how we must go back to Marx and Leninism. He has issued his own absurd “Little Red Book”. The Chinese are not fools; I do not know how they will tolerate that sort of thing, but I do not think that it will last.

We have to be the hard cop there, but we also have to be the soft cop, because China is a world leader in technology, it is a decisive part of the world economy—I understand that China is the second-largest source of imports to this country—and it is embedded in our nuclear power, as I said earlier, and indeed in many other aspects of our infrastructure, partly as a result of being perhaps overencouraged 10 years ago. As noble Lords have rightly said, the world has changed radically. We now have to look at China with the scales dropped from our eyes and realise that we have to deal with it—while holding our noses—but that it is also, potentially, an increasingly dangerous threat to the order of a democratic, free world.