EU: Future Relationship

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, refer to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties because I believe it will have a profound effect on the final resolution of our recovery of sovereignty on a number of issues. I would like to read an extract from Article 53 of the convention. It states:

“A treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law … from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.”


I suggest that that is a convenient way out for us. It avoids the confrontation of having to argue to take back areas of our sovereignty which are not lawfully given by Europe. We can effectively just wait for the European partner to initiate its own action—under what it sees is available to it under that convention—to try to force it on us. In that case it will have to revert to a plea to the bar of world opinion by going to the United Nations. Good luck to it. I do not think it will succeed on much. I think we have a soft way out that we should not overlook.

Everything else I want to say is about sovereignty issues. The principal concern when the vote was taken was the recovery of sovereignty. Of course, the European Union’s acquis communautaire—or ratchet mechanism—is steered towards ever-closer union. It has directly encroached on our sovereignty on so many issues in a manner not necessarily understood and foreseen at the completion of the treaty of Lisbon.

I have 13 sovereignty concerns that I wish to see resolved. That is too many to cover this afternoon, but I will try to go through eight of the most important ones. On 28 January, I obtained an Answer to a Written Question which assured me that there was no intention whatever for Britain to enter into the European defence union nor to forsake any of our Five Eyes capability to Europe. I was very pleased to get the answer saying, “You are right. Nothing is intended.”

Since that time, an eight-minute film has been put out by the European Union. It is easily available on a video link. It shows what the EU considers to be the celebration in Bosnia-Herzegovina of the first meeting of the armed forces of the European defence union. It starts with the downloading of an RAF jet containing 200 members of the Parachute Regiment. The commentary says they are accompanied by 30 members of Special Forces, who I take to be the SAS. There is then a march past, behind the European flag, in front of a saluting base, and a Jeep is pulling a platform on which are the 27 flags of the European defence union, including the union jack. I want further reassurance that we are not part of the European defence union. That is hugely important.

That leads to my second point. All our defence forces have to be under direct oath of loyalty to our sovereign. The European defence union requires a direct line of commitment to Brussels. We cannot have that situation. It would get us straight into the issue of whether we are participating in a standing army, which has been strictly prohibited since the trial of Charles I. We cannot possibly encumber our sovereign with the burden and embarrassment of having to contend with that in the latter stages of her reign. This is a disgrace. Those issues are paramount and we must have a definitive statement on them.

Throughout the past three or four months, we have been frozen as to the defence contracts we can engage in as Europe is still insisting that, as part of the go-forward arrangements, we will use only the authorised European defence production capability, which includes its boatyards, its tank capacity and everything else. It has already allocated to Krups the order for the first 50 of the new key Type 51 frigates, which are very important to us for our own coastal defences, and we are therefore prohibited from placing the order for the remaining 30 or so which we need for ourselves.

Similarly, the most important vessel required for the British Navy at this time is the replacement for the fleet auxiliary. The original one has been sold off to the Far East to be turned into razor blades—I am sure it was a good price—and we now have a situation where we cannot put out an order for the new form of fleet auxiliary, without which our carriers are effectively port-bound. These issues really need to be resolved, and we need clear direction on them.

The fisheries have been talked of much, and they are a major issue, but I wonder if your Lordships know just how bad the situation is in certain places. I have a direct and particular interest in Bridport bay, and the situation there is rather like a war zone. The trawlers going in are of what is called the wedge variety, which means they are flat-bottomed, and they are used to scrape up the bottom of the sea. As a result, they have destroyed the entire spawning and breeding capability of the Bridport area for the future. They have encroached so far upon the beach that they have undermined the sands adjacent to the cliffs, so the cliffs are crumbling, and this is now the worst area of crumbling in the country. It is like a war zone, and it is quite unfair on the local community. This is not fishing rights; this is absolute aggressive intrusion.

If the exercise is correct, that we sent 200 paratroopers to participate in the jollification in Bosnia about the creation of the EDU, it was also significant that it was said in the commentary all to be under the direct command and control of the European development union, at the head office of the EU. I have been sent fortuitously, by an anonymous person, a complete set of the command and control procedures for the European defence union, and it is fascinating. If you are a corps of armed soldiers and you have occasion to take a defensive situation, or even fire a round, you are then not allowed to reload or fire another round until you have been through 16 levels of consent, up to Ms von der Leyen herself, for consent to reload and shoot—

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

Could the noble Lord bring his remarks to a close, please.

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

Sorry. I have said my peace, and I hope you will understand it has come from the heart.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 214, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans, who sadly, as we know, is not able to be with us today. Noble Lords will no doubt be aware that I have spoken in previous debates outlining my concerns about category B2 gaming machines—or FOBTs, as they are more commonly known. The right reverend Prelate’s amendment is a good step in the right direction and I hope the Government will feel moved to support it.

There are clear associations between problem gambling and FOBTs that cannot be ignored. A study conducted by Orford et al showed that 26% of the days spent playing on FOBTs were attributable to problem gamblers and 23% of all time spent on FOBT machines was attributable to problem gamblers. Likewise, according to GamCare’s 2014-15 statistics, 26% of the calls to GamCare in 2014-15 were made for help with issues associated with FOBTs. Problem gambling and FOBTs go together hand-in-hand, and we have a duty to do more to help those who are struggling and the communities blighted by to the proliferation of betting shops.

On top of this, betting shops with FOBTs have also been associated with anti-social and criminal activity on local high streets, which has also been mentioned. A 68% increase in violent criminal offences at betting shops between 2011-12 and 2015-16, identified in an FoI request made by the right reverend Prelate to the Metropolitan Police is simply not good enough. We must do more both to protect employees, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, seeks to do with Amendment 214CA, and to safeguard communities. Those stories which make national headlines—punters smashing up machines in betting shops after losing significant amounts of money—only scratch the surface of what is experienced by employees and communities on a daily basis.

In approaching this amendment, which is about the licensing regime for FOBTs, it is important to say a word about the history of the licensing of betting shops. In 2001, the then Government’s Gambling Review Report concluded that the system at the time—of considering likely demand for gambling provision when issuing premises licences—had the effect of stifling competition and allowing larger firms to monopolise control of the gambling market. The subsequent Gambling Act 2005, which came into effect on 1 September 2007, abolished the so-called demand test, replacing it with an “aim to permit” clause. This effectively placed local authorities in a situation where, on receipt of an application, their starting point had to be to look for a reason not to grant it, rather than to consider a reason to grant the application. The burden shifted to consideration of commercial interest first, rather than consideration of the impact on the consumer and the community.

Indeed, in evidence supplied to the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee for its 2012 report, The Gambling Act 2005: A Bet Worth Taking?, the London Borough of Haringey said there now seemed to be,

“almost no restriction on how many gambling premises”,

could operate in an area. Local authorities need help, therefore I particularly welcome Amendment 214, which would add a new Section 172A to the Gambling Act 2005. Proposed new subsection (5) would allow licensing authorities to take account of factors beyond simple commercial interest, such as proximity to schools, addiction centres or even existing betting shops.

With betting shops allowed four FOBT machines in one shop, there is clearly an advantage to opening several shops in an area to maximise revenue. Bookmakers made £1.7 billon on gaming machines between October 2014 and September 2015, of which category B2 machines —FOBTs—accounted for 99.7%. I reference page 1 of Ladbrokes’ own 2014 annual report, which has been mentioned. In Ladbrokes’ own words:

“Gaming machines and self service betting terminals drive growth”.

Proposed new Sections 172A(1) and 172A(2) provide sensible solutions by allowing licensing authorities to impose conditions on gambling premises, permitting them to have as few as zero FOBTs. They also allow licensing authorities to impose conditions requiring customer identification prior to play in an effort to address FOBT-related crime. The situation with FOBTs has been allowed to get out of hand and it is time the Government took a firmer grasp of it. Reducing the prevalence of harmful machines is a good thing and will make an important difference, but we can and should do even more, and I welcome the recent call for evidence issued by the Government on aspects of the gambling industry, including FOBTs.

I am also encouraged by the focus on reviewing stakes, which for B2 machines are far too high. Making machines less dangerous by reducing the B2 stake from £100 to £2, as the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, sought to do, should be our priority. I certainly will continue to advocate for such a change.

I strongly endorse Amendment 214, which represents a tangible opportunity for positive change which can be implemented now to help problem gamblers and their families, as well as communities and employees. I very much hope the Minister will support the amendment, as I, and clearly many Members in this Chamber, do.

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendment 214 I should declare two interests. First, I ran a chain of casinos in the Mediterranean at an earlier stage of my life, and I am therefore very familiar with the function of a roulette wheel. Secondly, I was chairman of the Jockey Club’s racing interests in the UK, so I was heavily dependent upon the profits coming from the bookmakers’ levy.

The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, was tabled several months ago and I am sorry that it has not gone further. In many ways, it is, as an entity, better than this amendment, and the Minister should give serious consideration to incorporating it into the Bill.

The points I need to make relate to the deep suspicions I raised at Second Reading about the honesty of the electronic roulette wheel in the FOBTs in reflecting the function of a roulette wheel, as I know it to be. I have probably done more analysis on this than anyone alive today, and I would like to do a lot more. I suspect two things are wrong with the wheels at present. First, they do not fulfil either of the two functions which I require as a standard for any honest roulette wheel. An honest wheel should result in 28 different numbers occurring in any sequence of 40 spins—that statistic is astonishingly accurate—and every number on the wheel should come up within a maximum of 121 spins. I have tested these theories over thousands and thousands of spins. For example, I tested the latter over sequences as high as 4,400 and found that there were 44 occasions on which each number came up a minimum of once, which confirms that theory.

As for the former theory, I cannot remember the name but I think it was the Gambling Commission that set up the original licensing arrangements for casinos years ago. It was an extraordinary commission because it went to the extent of installing a roulette wheel in its meeting room and having two croupiers spinning it all day long to observe what happened. As a result, it laid down very strict rules for roulette wheels. I can see no reason whatever why bookmakers should not accept the validity of the same rules for their electronic machines as for the metal and wood wheels in casinos. As things are, they produce very different results.

As a result of my criticisms, two days after our last debate I got a very angry letter from the bookmakers’ association. It said that I was a liar telling an untruth, was wholly wrong and was being offensive. I said, “I may be offensive but can you prove that I am wrong on the matters of fact? I want you to prove to me that you have a 28-number cycle in every 40 spins and that your whole wheel comes up in 121 spins. If you can’t prove that, then you are in fact dishonest in what you present as a functioning electronic roulette wheel”.

I do not believe they can do that but I would like the support of Parliament for this: I want them to give me a 5,000-number sequence for every electronic computer programme that they are running—and they have lots of them, as we have heard. They have so many different terminals that they cannot allow one programme to run so as to establish a pattern, because you could adapt the pattern from one and go and bet on it. You might be able to switch it down to your advantage and they will not do that. If they have six different betting shops, they will have six different programmes and I want those programmes to be subject to audit. I would like to audit them by matching with my own matrix, which I have developed. If they can give me 5,000-spin sequences certified by an accountant or a lawyer, it will take me six hours to say whether they have an honest wheel or not. I will do that for free for the whole industry, if it wants. If your Lordships think it sounds as though I need to get a life, you are probably right but I am obsessed with these numbers and I would love to do it.

In this case, I am so certain that it is wrong that after the previous debate I went on a betting shop crawl in Chichester, my nearest local town. I went round each of the main betting shops in it and sat down to watch what was happening on the electronic wheel. The first one that I watched was simply frightening. The man who had switched the machine on appeared to have £100 in folding money, well concealed in his pocket. He was pulling it out one £20 note at a time and feeding it in to charge it up. He had decided to bet on five numbers: 32, 15, 19, four and 21. These are the five numbers adjacent and to the immediate right of zero on the wheel. Effectively he should have had a six to one chance, as it is five numbers out of 37, but of course he was having to put a £1 chip on each of the five numbers. If he won, he got only £1 back for it and lost £4, so he was actually betting at 5.2 to one against in real odds. He would have had to have six successive win spins in a row just to break even on his £100—an impossible characteristic—yet the man was sitting down to give away £100, without any possible benefit coming to him.

The betting shop quickly moved in and asked me what I was doing. I said that I was doing social studies and I was told, “You don’t do them here—get out”. So I went off to the next betting shop and lasted about five minutes there as well. Eventually I went to six shops. What I found was a horrendous change that has occurred since the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, brought his excellent Bill in. The spin cycle we were worrying about then was running at, I think, two minutes; it has now gone to 10 seconds. This is so fast that you cannot even think what your name is, let alone what you are betting on. At 10 seconds a spin, it is simply draining a man of money without any way of him knowing what he is doing. My great proposal to your Lordships today is: whatever we do with this clause or with the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, we should write in a demand to go back to a minimum of two or three minutes, or whatever it was to be. Any betting shop which does not do that should be summarily closed and will not be allowed to open until they have demonstrated the accuracy of their data in the form that I have dictated. They would be closed until further notice.

However, what I think is happening is that the bookmakers read our Hansard and decided to make a firm commitment to a betting cycle which would be better than the figure they were allowing. They have therefore decided to cut it to 10 seconds now, so that they will have more to negotiate and give away when the crunch comes. Let us put it in now and start closing them. We should get some authority in to stop this nonsense. Wherever there is a 10-second cycle going on in a betting shop, close it down now. We should do it urgently and make an example of them. I rest my case.

Queen’s Speech

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord James of Blackheath (Con)]

My Lords, I will talk entirely on the subject of LIBOR, but under separate headings. I am sorry that LIBOR was not in the gracious Speech, because there is an urgent matter which should get the close attention of your Lordships’ House. We are facing the prospect of an enormous smash-and-grab raid from the USA on our quite legitimate LIBOR interests. It falls to this House to take a very keen interest in this. I declare an interest: in 1958 I joined Lloyds Bank and was put on a LIBOR training course. I must be one of the very few people to have been on one of those. I do not recommend it, but it was something to remember.

At the moment, there are 10 international LIBOR markets. The London market trades in dollars, euros and yen. I am not too sure why we have the yen, but we appear to have a concentration of Japanese banks so we are big in that currency. The Americans do not like it; they want the yen entirely for themselves. So they have launched an initiative to persuade us that we are totally criminal and corrupt in our handling of this market. They have persuaded and leaned upon the Serious Fraud Office—of which I am not a fan—to move for the extradition of the leading yen market manager from this country to theirs, where they were promising him a 30-year prison sentence. He was not terribly happy with that. As a result, the SFO persuaded him, under great duress, to accept that it would put him on trial if he would rat upon his broker friends in this country. The SFO would then get a series of rapid convictions which would make it look very good—something it likes to do and has few opportunities for. It has all gone horribly wrong for everybody concerned.

We need to take note of where we are today. William Dudley is an American gentleman who is president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, an organisation which some of your Lordships will be aware is neither federal, nor a reserve bank, nor a bank at all. It is a very dubious proposition indeed; you should take a very long spoon if you ever go anywhere near it. The LIBOR market is now running at $350 trillion a day—I did not know there was that much money in the world either—and Mr Dudley is claiming that this should be subject to an average rate of 0.37% per day. As far as I can see, the average rate throughout the entire period of his complaint has never varied by more than 0.1% either way, so what on earth he is talking about I do not know. But then we notice with great interest that he is proposing that the British, because of their corrupt and dishonest management of LIBOR in the yen sector, should hand it all over to something called the OBFR, which, would you believe, is the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s own overnight bank funding rate. Is that not a strange coincidence? Of course, it will then milk that market rotten.

Meanwhile, the Serious Fraud Office fell into the trap of believing that it should go along with this and started legal proceedings against the unfortunate man who was the principal yen manager for UBS in London. Eventually, he was put on trial under the threat of extradition if he did not go. The trial began at Southwark Crown Court in November last year, and it was followed by a second one. There have been three LIBOR trials and I will talk only about the first two because the other one is still sub judice and I will say nothing about it. But LIBOR 1 was concerned entirely with Mr Tom Hayes. His trial lasted 12 weeks, at the end of which he was convicted.

The judge had the great idea that he could get a bigger sentence by working on the basis that every dialogue that had taken place with a broker was a separate crime and that he could therefore tot these up into consecutive sentences, and he gave him 14 and a half years in the slammer. This was reduced on appeal to 11 and a half years, which is where it stands presently, but was then subject to a separate confiscation order, which the SFO originally claimed should be for £2 million—the entire lifetime earnings of Mr Hayes. Subsequently, that went back to court and it has now been ruled that the figure shall be £880,000 because the rest of it has been spent on legal aid anyway and that is all that is left, and if he does not pay it by 1 July this year he will incur the remainder of the three-year sentence which was taken off in the first appeal. The Supreme Court has refused any consent for a retrial or appeal on the facts of this case, but now we have two extraordinary things.

In the second LIBOR trial, the actual brokers with whom Mr Hayes was dealing were put on trial—they had not been allowed into the first court case, in which he had expected them to stand alongside him—and were acquitted by the second jury. So we have this odd situation that Mr Hayes has been convicted of conspiracy with six people who have been proven innocent of conspiracy with him. That, apparently, does not constitute terms for an appeal, which I think is extraordinary. The second thing is that the FCA has decided that this matter is so important—quite rightly, too—that it should conduct a separate investigation through its Regulatory Decisions Committee into whether this represents a bigger chain of dishonesty through UBS and whether it should now disqualify or proceed against it. I discovered only last week that the FCA has decided that there is no charge of dishonesty or malpractice against UBS at all, that the information that was given by Mr Hayes to his manager was correct, and that they have all behaved completely correctly. By my count—

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend. I am sure he is coming to a conclusion. He is two minutes over. I am aware it is an advisory speaking time but most noble Lords have stuck within it. I feel he has material for a full day’s debate. I hope that he will bring his remarks to a conclusion soon.

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I will sum up and conclude. We have to resolve this in some way. We do not have the Supreme Court among us directly now but surely we can ask it to consider reintroducing either a proper appeal process or a retrial, either of which would lead us to some form of justice. Alternatively, why can we not pass this to the newly formed Criminal Cases Review Commission and ask it to get its teeth into it? Meanwhile, we should suspend the remainder of the confiscation process and we should probably give serious thought to having a serious talk with the SFO and asking it to clean up its act for the future. I rest my case.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord James of Blackheath]

My Lords, six and a half hours ago, my noble friend the Leader stood up to launch this debate and made a series of very interesting statements, of which four stuck in my memory at that time and have haunted me through the day.

First, my noble friend said that there were 3,600 hospital cases after the attack and 350 dead, but he did not say whether the 3,600 were all injured by the same condition that killed the other 350, because it was not defined whether all the injuries were caused by chemical attack or by blast bombs. He went on to say that there had been a series of attacks of artillery and mortar fire during the hours that followed but did not give an explanation.

Then we heard, thrillingly, from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, who I thought teetered on the edge of one of the most spectacular confessions in the history of television but then fell back from it. I thought for a moment that he was going to give us the reason for the artillery attack, which was of course to keep the television cameras out while they arranged the bodies of the children for the cameras to come in. I am sure that this is what has been going on.

My noble friend the Leader went on to say that there was no substance to any allegations made against the rebels for having done the attack because there was no evidence of any weapons. If my noble friend the Leader would like to put £20 on the table, I will match it with another £20 and we will toss which one of us goes to Waitrose tomorrow and which one to Sainsbury’s, and we will come back with the entire ingredients required to make enough ricin to wipe out the entire attendance in the House of Lords today, which reached a peak of 232—very similar to the 350 who were dead. He could always keep it of course and put it away in reserve for the day when he gets tired of his job and decides to abolish the House of Lords. This is a very easy construction; there is no massive secrecy about how to make this darned stuff. In fact, an author called Felix Francis, the son of the racing novelist, Dick Francis, has written a book in which he has very helpfully published the recipe for making ricin and provided the entire cooking instructions. It is available for about £2 and any terrorist can buy a copy of it.

I was first introduced to the whole question of this self-made device by Dr David Kelly when he was assigned to me by the SIS back in April 1989 when I had to research, identify and locate the components of the Iraqi supergun, which was initially thought to be for the delivery of poison gas. Dr Kelly explained to me very helpfully that it could not have been, because the diameter of the gun required what would have amounted to a 1 tonne shell. That was far too big for the successful and efficient distribution of nerve gas, which had to come in smaller shells because it dissipates so quickly after impact.

In these cases, we open up a whole host of questions which we need to urge upon the United Nations inspectors. We really need them to get this one put down. If we have 232 people in this Chamber today, they have been contained within an area of 3,400 square feet. We have been tightly packed but comfortable. If there were 3,600 injuries, as the Leader has said, we should be looking at 10 times that space to accommodate the gathering of people who were injured. However, if there were only 350 dead, it is inconsistent with the use of nerve gas across that whole level, because the whole impact of that nerve gas would spread out and kill most of the 3,600, so there are not enough dead to make sense in the figures that were given by the Leader.

We need the United Nations to provide us with a map of where the bodies were as accurately as it can. It could start off by buying 3,600 white-headed pins and putting one pin in the map of the area to show exactly where everybody was. After that, could it then please substitute red pins for the people who were killed by nerve gas and everything else so that we finally end up being able to see what has happened? At the end of the day, my money is very firmly on the fact that the rebels did it and not Mr Assad. We should pursue this one, otherwise we are going to be the biggest Pazzis in history in falling for this, and it is wrong.

Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Archbishop of York]

Does not the noble Lord think that a legislature is entitled not purely to accept jargon, however old it is, because the law needs to be very clear about what it is stating? Yes, jargon may have been there for centuries. In the council of the Church of England, the jargon is well known, but when we draft a Measure to come to your Lordships’ House it will be in a language understandable by the people. So yes, that may be the jargon, but what is the meaning? What is it getting at? Do you still have to keep jargon when you are legislating?

[Lord James of Blackheath]

My Lords, my attempts to help in this House usually end up in worse confusion, but let me try. I raised the same question about 40 years ago when the phrase was first coming into regular usage. The explanation I got at the time was that the accounts will be true but they may not be fair because they do not answer the question which accountants never ask at an audit stage: that is whether there is a working capital certificate sufficient to support the cash flow. Therefore, you have to say that the accounts are true, but they may not be fair because they may not highlight the pitfall that the cash is going to run out. So “true” and “fair” belong to each other, but they have a separate and subtly different meaning.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have been sitting reflecting on the Psalms which are read to us in that wonderful translation at the beginning of Prayers each day and the number of redundant words which are used in repeated phrases in the course of them. I think that it is not only accountancy which uses phrases which might possibly be pruned if one wished.

Let me try to answer some of the questions which have been raised. Amendment 65, about which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie asked, amends Schedule 13, which makes provision for NHS trusts. On the question of auditors and related audits, I take the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and think that I had better promise to write to him. The next group of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, raises some large issues about the related audits, which we certainly need to discuss seriously.

I am briefed to say that “true and fair” is an established audit concept. The National Audit Office’s code of audit practice will set out how that is to be reported in auditors’ reports, so the NAO will tell the auditors exactly how to interpret the auditors’ jargon. I beg to move.

Remembrance Day

Lord James of Blackheath Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord James of Blackheath]

My Lords, at this time of national remembrance, I would like to use my time to talk about a national loss of memory, rather than of memory. It is a matter of great concern to me because it involves the greatest single loss of life by any of our fighting forces in any single engagement since, I think, the Battle of Hastings. This also involved: a massive failure on the part of the supporting authorities for the provision of equipment; a total failure of duty of care to the widows and families of the fallen; and the insult of today not even recognising it as a campaign in the official histories of the services. Yet—if one can stretch the point, and I have already apologised in advance to the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk—it was important to the defence of this realm, including our laws, reputation and principles of humanitarianism. I am talking about the suppression of the slave trade.

After Wilberforce’s moment of triumph in this House in 1806, there followed a 54-year campaign for suppression. The whole burden fell on the forces of the Navy and the rapidly-developing Marines, who had ceased to be sailing soldiers and at that time were beginning to be proper amphibian forces. Suppressing the slave trade required massive intervention on the waterways surrounding the coast of Africa. There was a terrible lack of accurate intelligence about where they should be and what they should do; and they had no shallow-draught boats with which to fight this battle.

Having won the Battle of Trafalgar, there were no enemies left for the Navy, so nobody was spending any money on it. They were certainly not going to build a fleet of shallow-draught boats to fight with. They were told to take what craft they could get from the southern ports of England, sail out and suppress the slave trade. In the course of doing so, they lost 23,000 people through fatality. For every one killed in battle, another three were lost to the diseases that beset the troops, who had no protection against them.

A total of 23,000 died in a fighting force engaged over 54 years. In doing so, they succeeded in suppressing the slave trade, but they got no help from anybody, least of all from many of the vested interests in Britain. They had to fight in dreadful conditions in shallow water and in villages where local tribes and their leaders wanted the slave trade to continue because they made a fortune. The slavers themselves would wait for the flotillas from England to arrive, then come in behind them and try to attack and kill our forces, because they wanted their vested interest in slavery to continue.

Only after six years did the Navy bother to send out a couple of frigates to try to cure that process, but in the first five years a total of 1,580 flotillas were sent out, of which not one returned intact. The total number of deaths in the first five years alone was just over 11,000. It was an appalling slaughter. Worse still, because it has never been categorised as a campaign, the Admiralty and Government would acknowledge no obligation whatever to the widows and families of the fallen, who became a complete burden on society and were left to drift for the rest of their life—as far as they could eke it out. There was no money spent on equipment and nothing on welfare. If that sounds surprising for 204 years ago, we have a few more recent episodes that could remind us of the same today.

The noble Lord, Lord Soley, has invited me to join forces with him in forming a committee to erect a monument to the heroes of that campaign and I have happily agreed to do so. He is committed to raising a statue to Mary Seacole, and I have a commitment to raising one to the warriors of suppressing the slave trade. We will work together to do so, though my only argument with the noble Lord is that Mary Seacole rates seven pages more than Winston Churchill in the history curriculum. I am not sure that that is entirely fair. In contrast, the suppression of the slave trade does not get a single paragraph and that is a disgrace.

As we stand today, we need a statue and I have a clear view in my mind about what it should look like. It should obviously carry the image of a heroic warrior at the front, but behind him I want the bodies of a dead wife and children. It would serve as a great reminder to the generations today of the sacrifice that has to be honoured as an obligation. In the immortal words of Nelson, they are a “bequest to the nation” which we must never fail. I am concerned that we do fail, and I have been delighted to hear the comments made on their behalf today. However, we are still not doing enough and I hope that a statue in those graphic terms might help to advance this cause.