Somalia: Piracy (EUC Report)

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Jopling]

My Lords, I want to begin with a complaint. I find it absolutely intolerable that a committee such as ours sits for a number of weeks or months, takes evidence and brings a lot of people kindly to give evidence before us; we produce a report in August; the Government respond shortly afterwards; but we cannot find time for the House to debate it until the following March. I find this quite intolerable. We have a government Whip who is kind enough to be with us—it is nothing to do with him—and I hope that he will pass on to the usual channels and those who organise our business that we really must treat Select Committee reports in a better way than this. I find it very unsatisfactory indeed. I say no more about it.

I should like, secondly, to express a number of thanks. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, who has been chairman of this sub-committee, ably supported by the staff who help us enormously—I thank all of them.

The next thing I want to do is to welcome the reduction in incidents of Somali piracy during the past year or so. This is a very significant fall and reflects great credit on the various military and naval forces which have helped to bring it about. I suppose that it has been helped particularly by the fact, referred to by the noble Lord, that a great number of merchant ships now have armed guards on them. We heard evidence that this has had a salutary effect on potential pirates, who find that there is a certain amount of fire directed towards them when they start attempting to board merchant ships.

As the chairman said, the committee changed its mind over this matter. In the earlier report, I think that a number of us were a little anxious lest we moved into a situation where oil tankers with a huge amount of inflammable material aboard started being attacked by rockets fired by pirates. There is a danger that, over months, as a response to armed guards on ships, the pirates might start using much more lethal weaponry which could lead to a major attack on a ship causing it to catch fire. So far, however, having armed guards has been a big success.

The chairman did briefly refer to another success—that 1,000,000 tonnes of food has been brought into Somalia under the World Food Programme. This is a wonderful record in an area where there is a great deal of belligerence. Many people would say that they did not deserve it, but of course starving people always deserve it and we should salute those who have taken in this 1,000,000 tonnes of food under considerable difficulty.

Another salutary episode which has helped to reduce the number of incidents was the single land attack on one of the harbours used by the pirates. I am glad that Admiral Potts said that we would do it again. There has been a certain amount of criticism about attacking a land target but it was quite right to do it and I think the committee agreed with that. When we went to Northwood I suggested that it would be a good idea to have another one just to show that it was not a one-off. I may sound rather belligerent but it did have an enormous salutary effect and another attack should not be ruled out.

When the Minister responds, I hope he will speak about the political progress that has been made in Somalia itself. From our committee’s report and from the comments of virtually everyone who has spoken about the crisis in Somalia and in the seas around it has been agreed that, on the ground, the long-term solution is a political one. This is very important and I hope the Minister will talk about it.

I am very disturbed indeed to hear that the newly elected president has decided to release 959 pirates by way of amnesty. Again, I hope the Minister will explain this because, from the brief I looked at which said that the president had given an amnesty to 959 pirates, I am not sure whether they were convicted, or that they were held and awaiting trial, or that they were known to be pirates to the civil authorities, such as they are in Somalia. I am interested to know quite what the basis of this amnesty is. We are told that the amnesty does not extend to what I would call the godfathers—the evil plotters who have been organising these attacks and who have been receiving vast amounts of money in ransoms. I am glad to know that the godfathers have not had amnesties but it would be helpful to know about it.

I turn now to the future. It seems to me that those 959 pirates who have received an amnesty are now free to get up to their monkey tricks again. The godfathers are presumably still there, ready to organise such things. Again, I hope the Minister will talk to us about the future. As the number of attacks has been so significantly reduced, there will be a temptation on the part of NATO, the Americans, the European Union and others who have been involved to say, “Oh well, it is much less now—we can relax our presence”. I am sure that there will be political pressure, particularly given the pressure on all the militaries around the world, to say that they are going to reduce the military and naval presence there. Having done so, however, there is a danger—because the pirates have received an amnesty and the godfathers are still there—that it will all start up again using the assets which have been used previously. I hope that the Minister will speak about this.

Another matter which I very much hope the Minister will speak about—I will try to fill in for a moment until the Minister has got his brief; I quite understand that one has to do that—is the fact that we said in our report that it was important to enthuse the Gulf states about attacking the pirates and causing the incidents to be reduced. Quite honestly, however, the Government’s response to our suggestion that the Gulf states should be encouraged to take a much more active part was pretty wishy-washy. I will not read aloud the Government’s response but they gave us four answers to that: we have a headquarters in Bahrain; there are port facilities in Oman; there is co-operation in Dubai; and a whole lot of countries came to a conference in London. With great respect, that is not at all what we meant. These Gulf countries are earning monumental amounts of money for their hydrocarbon exports. As far as I know, their physical assistance in all of this is not as great as it might be. I hope the Minister will look into this and say whether a much more positive approach can be made to our suggestion, in paragraph 87 of our report, to get those states much more actively involved.

Finally, I was concerned that we were told during the inquiry that quite a few convicted pirates were going to be returned to Somalia from Kenya, the Seychelles and other places. It seemed to some of us that to send them back to prisons in Somalia was not very clever because one could not be sure of the security around those prisons. We were told that the United Nations was building a prison and that it would be properly supervised. Given that 959 pirates have received an amnesty, does that mean that the United Nations prison will be redundant and not used? I do not know who these 959 pirates who have received an amnesty are, but it seems to me rather a strange decision that the prisons within Somalia are secure enough to hold convicted pirates. It would seem to me to need a great deal of expert outside supervision to ensure that those prisoners could not be freed. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.