Food: Chicken and Beef

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park [V]]

The Government are looking very closely at labelling. It is a complex issue, but we are making progress and will be coming forward with something shortly. On standards, it is not so much that standards should not change but that we should always seek to improve the outcomes from an environmental health and animal welfare perspective. That could mean improving, changing or even streamlining regulations. We know that agriculture will be a tricky area, as it always is in free trade agreements, but we uphold very high food safety and animal welfare standards and we will not allow imports to undermine those standards. Our manifesto is clear that in all our trade negotiations, we will maintain our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards and we will hold firm in trade negotiations. That position has been reiterated time and again by the Government, not just by the department on whose behalf I am speaking today.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. I repeat the request that questions and ministerial answers be kept brief.

Korea

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, the noble Lord has raised an important point. I believe that it is through the UN Security Council, as I have just said in response to my noble friend Lord Sheikh, that will provide the real route for North Korea to come back to the table and to continue with its denuclearisation and demilitarisation effort. That will bring more stability to the Korean peninsula but to the wider world as well.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed. That concludes the Hybrid Proceedings on Oral Questions.

South Africa: Money Laundering and Corruption

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I disagree with the noble Baroness’s final point. The Government have accepted the amendment that was made, and we are working closely with the overseas territories. She will also be aware that we have a very effective exchange of notes scheme already operational with key overseas dependencies, which provide law enforcement agencies and tax authorities with direct access. On the specific issue of registers, I am sure that she has observed very closely recent statements that have been made publicly, such as those by the Turks and Caicos Islands and by the Cayman Islands only yesterday, that they will be in line with the whole issue of public registers, reflecting European Union priorities and consistent with European priorities as will be required. The noble Baroness will be further aware that we are working directly with the OTs. We have technical groups set up to ensure public registers will be operational by 2023.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

What assessment has the Foreign Office made of the efforts by the current South African Government to crack down on corruption?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As I have already said, we are working very closely with the South African authorities and the South African Government. The action that they have already taken is reflective of how they are tackling corruption at the core and heart of government which has plagued South Africa since the initiation of democracy. I assure my noble friend that we continue to support and co-operate with our South African colleagues through all channels.

Commonwealth: Decriminalising Homosexuality

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lexden]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in decriminalising homosexuality in Commonwealth countries since the Prime Minister became the Commonwealth Chair-in-Office.

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

My Lords, at last year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the Prime Minister announced a £5.6 million programme to assist member states seeking to reform legislation which discriminates on the grounds of sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. Several countries have expressed interest in this offer and the UK is supporting them while respecting their request for sensitivity. Three countries—Trinidad and Tobago, India and Botswana—have made progress on decriminalisation.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, that is indeed good news. In the years ahead, will it not be important to remember the Prime Minister’s statement in 2018 that the British Government have a special responsibility to help Commonwealth countries get rid of anti-gay laws? While there has been recent progress, as my noble friend said, in India last year and Botswana this year, should we also not remember the many countries where there is terrible oppression? An example is Uganda where violently homophobic debates occupying nearly 50 days of parliamentary time have taken place since 2014 which is designed to buttress and strengthen cruel anti-gay laws.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend’s comments, and I am sure he will agree with me that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has prioritised this issue not just at the Commonwealth summit but subsequently. I am sure the House will join me in thanking her for the important progress we have seen on this important human rights issue. My noble friend is right to draw attention to parts of the Commonwealth where suppression and persecution of the LGBT community is very much in evidence. We continue to work bilaterally to raise these issues of concern. I have had various discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Collins, on this issue, and his idea of having champion countries in different parts of the world is something I am pursuing with colleagues at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I look forward to working with Members of your Lordships’ House in further strengthening our work in this area.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, all those most welcome visitors who will be with us next month in connection with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting will surely be struck by the scale and extent of the programme which the Government have organised. It underlines the importance Britain attaches to this unique partnership of nations, linked to each other in full equality.

Equality between the member nations must be matched by full equality for all the peoples living within them. How one yearns, particularly here in Britain, for full and equal respect to be accorded throughout our land to members of different religions who profess their faiths with deep sincerity within the law. How one yearns too for the law in all members of this unique partnership of nations to accord full and equal rights to communities within them who are entitled to the protection of the law, but in some cases have been denied it for far too long.

LGBT people are always in the forefront of the minds of a number of us who contribute regularly to debates about the Commonwealth. The noble Lord, Lord Cashman—my friend in this matter—is prominent among our number and has spoken with his customary passion again today. The oppression which gay men and women suffer in so many Commonwealth countries is an affront in this age which has enshrined human rights in binding international treaties. No one feels more strongly about this than our Lord Speaker, as he made clear in speeches from these Benches in previous years. We must emphasise again today the wide cross-party agreement that exists in this House on this issue.

It is now over six years since the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group called unanimously on all Heads of Government to take active steps to secure the repeal of discriminatory laws against homosexuals. Countries which have such laws are in flagrant breach of the Commonwealth’s own charter. Our own Government have shown unwavering commitment to progress with successive Ministers in this House—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, in the coalition, followed more recently by my noble friend Lady Anelay, who has reiterated her personal commitment again today, and now my noble friend Lord Ahmad, all of them demonstrating great concern and sensitivity.

The recent report of our International Relations Select Committee urges the Government,

“to continue to take a robust position on all aspects of human rights”.

High hopes of progress have been invested in next month’s meeting and our Government must ensure that LGBT people throughout the Commonwealth, who will be looking expectantly to London, are not disappointed. The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, expressed some serious fears. I hope that the Government will be able to allay them. Perhaps our International Relations Select Committee would consider taking evidence from the Commonwealth Secretariat. It would be interesting to hear in some detail what it is doing to try to help advance the cause of human equality throughout the Commonwealth in this and other areas.

I am among the many people in these islands who harbour the hope that one day the Republic of Ireland will return to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is today a completely different organisation from the one that the Republic left in 1949. Anglo-Irish relations have been completely transformed too, although they are going through some temporary difficulty at the moment because of Brexit. Now is perhaps not the time for any major public initiative, but I hope that Ministers and officials will look for opportunities behind the scenes to make the point that this great Commonwealth partnership is incomplete without our Irish friends, south as well as north.

I remember hearing the Commonwealth described some 30 years ago by an eminent Tory as an anachronistic embodiment of a sentimental memory. Today, a marked change of attitude is evident in the Conservative Party, as in the country at large, due in no small part to the sustained work of my noble friend Lord Howell. The Government have responded very admirably to our present stronger feelings about the Commonwealth by organising a truly impressive programme for the meeting next month, which could well set the scene for a new phase of Commonwealth development to the benefit of the world as a whole.

Asset Freezing (Compensation) Bill [HL]

Lord Lexden Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard) : House of Lords
Friday 27th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a great personal pleasure to speak in the same debate with my noble friend Lord Empey, particularly in one that he has initiated. We came into the House at the same point, nearly seven years ago. I strongly share his view that Northern Ireland should be involved as fully as possible in the national affairs of the country of which it is part. We are at one in believing that this Parliament must keep the province firmly within its sphere of work. We are united in detesting the dread phrase, “devolve and forget”.

For me personally, this is a particularly poignant year. It was exactly 40 years ago that I left my job in Queen’s University Belfast to come and assist Airey Neave, then Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland. I saw him almost daily until his murder at the end of March 1979. His murderers remain at large.

It was largely thanks to Colonel Gaddafi and his regime of terror that the IRA was able to continue its campaign of murder and destruction in Northern Ireland and Great Britain until the mid-1990s. Victims of that campaign have been seeking compensation from Gaddafi’s frozen assets, amounting to some £9.5 billion—no modest sum—in this country since 2002, 15 long years ago. Many of them are growing old; all of them despair of ever receiving compensation. A huge sense of frustration exists among them—understandably so, when they see that those who suffered as a result of Libyan terrorism in Germany, in France, and above all in the United States, have gained the compensation that they deserve. The final indignity is that their own Government here in the UK seem to give little priority to assisting them in their plight. As my noble friend Lord Empey explained so clearly, the Government seem unwilling to go beyond offering to help their own private efforts to reach agreement of some kind with the Libyan authorities. How can private individuals be expected to do that, in a country in the grip of grave instability? It is a task for government. A proxy war was waged by the Libyan dictator against the United Kingdom and its citizens. Would tough-minded British Governments in the past, Labour or Conservative, have left our fellow countrymen and women to their own devices in such circumstances? I remind the Government of a passage in this year’s Conservative and Unionist election manifesto. Interestingly, the party made use of its full name for the first time since 1959. The section of the manifesto in question has a heading that refers to, “standing up for victims”. Here is a group of victims for whom the government should surely be standing up.

My noble friend Lord Empey has long been prominent in the campaign to secure redress for those who have suffered. He is a man of great tenacity. His very important Bill, which he has reintroduced in this Session, was passed by this House before the election and attracted widespread support in the Commons before the Government blocked it. There can be little doubt that it is the wish of Parliament that this Bill should become law. The Government assert that to dip into the ill-gotten Gaddafi billions would be in breach of UN Security Council resolutions, EU sanctions regulations and the European Convention on Human Rights. How strange that organisations and agreements that exist to promote justice, international order and human well-being should, in this case, frustrate them. Should a Government committed to standing up for victims tamely accept that state of affairs?

Since my noble friend’s last Bill was extinguished, there has been an important development. The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in the Commons has published a report on this very subject, following a detailed two-year inquiry. Six months on, the Government have yet to respond, which comes as no surprise, since prompt government responses are as rare as amicable agreements over Brexit issues. The Commons report states that if nothing has been achieved for the IRA’s victims by the end of this year—and we will soon be there—the Government should set up a fund of their own to finance community projects and provide individuals with compensation. What is the Government’s view of this recommendation?

In these deeply unsatisfactory circumstances, we must surely show our support for my noble friend’s commitment to ending a long-standing injustice by giving his Bill a Second Reading.

Chechnya: LGBT Citizens

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alli (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) (Con)]

It is the turn of the Conservative Benches.

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, is it not the case that the Russian Government actively support laws that encourage the oppression of LGBT people throughout their territories?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the Chechen Republic is a federal subject of the Russian Federation and comes under the authority of the Russian Government in Moscow, so with regard to issues in Chechnya the buck stops with President Putin. With regard to wider issues across Russia, we believe that the situation for LGBT people has deteriorated since the law banning the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors was passed in June 2013. It is a very worrying situation.

Commonwealth

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, I would like to address LGBT rights. In doing so, I inevitably reiterate some of the points made so effectively not just by her but by the noble Lords, Lord Scriven and Lord Cashman, in powerful speeches earlier. All three are to me noble friends engaged in a common enterprise. Indeed, one recurring feature of our welcome and valuable debates on the Commonwealth in recent years has been the demonstration of strong, cross-party support for action to remove the suffering and discrimination endured by millions of homosexuals in its member countries who become criminals if they give expression to the love with which they have been imbued. Some 90% of Commonwealth citizens live in jurisdictions where same-sex intimacy is a criminal offence. It must be right that on all sides of the House we should stress again today the need to put a complete end to this grave violation of human rights, which so flagrantly breaches international law and is incompatible with the Commonwealth’s own charter. When human rights are set aside, human misery inevitably follows.

That view, I believe, is widely supported on these Benches. It has been championed by my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood in many debates. Unfortunately, he cannot be here today to renew personally his call for the removal of the terrible injustice that gay people endure in 36 of the 52 countries of the Commonwealth. Many of our colleagues share these sentiments—they were expressed with trenchancy, as many noble Lords will remember, on a number of occasions from these Benches by our Lord Speaker, before he took up his office. Of course, as has been pointed out, we must be careful not to adopt an unduly strident or insensitive tone in seeking to encourage those 36 Commonwealth countries to abolish oppressive discriminatory laws—they got them from us in the days of empire, as the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, reminded us. As a Commonwealth country that has rid itself of these laws, is it not natural for us to want to extend the same legal rights and protections as we now enjoy to gay people in other Commonwealth countries, united to us by ties of kinship, affection and history? We would be untrue to ourselves if we repressed the desire to liberate others as we ourselves have been liberated. Many in the Commonwealth agree. It is now over five years since the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group unanimously recommended that Heads of Government should take steps to encourage the repeal of discriminatory laws against homosexuals.

How welcome were the words of one Head of Government—the Prime Minister of Malta—this week, in drawing attention to the blot on the Commonwealth’s reputation created by widespread disregard of the rights of LGBT people, as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, mentioned earlier. It was in Malta itself, two years ago, that the effects of the denial of those rights were brought closer than ever before to the centre of Commonwealth discussion and debate. The Kaleidoscope Trust—whose wonderful work has quite rightly been commended here today—working in partnership with the Commonwealth Equality Network, succeeded in raising LGBT issues in a number of forums during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that Malta hosted. It was an important breakthrough. The Commonwealth summit in London and Windsor next year must follow this up in a decisive manner. In Malta, the Commonwealth Equality Network’s LGBT activists from countries where gay people are criminalised were able to give first-hand accounts of the perils and dangers to which they are daily subject. Both the network and the Kaleidoscope Trust are convinced that, in their words, an approach involving those directly affected is essential for stimulating progress on LGBT rights.

My noble friend Lady Anelay will know all about this; she has shown great receptiveness to the views of LGBT organisations, whose respect she has won. They stand ready to work with the Government in creating a firm place for LGBT issues on the summit’s agenda. The Commonwealth Equality Network has proposed the inclusion of presentations by countries in the global South which have decriminalised, enabling others to learn from their experience. What is the Government’s view of that suggestion? Countries that want to decriminalise homosexuality should be able to look to the Commonwealth Secretariat for advice and guidance. For that, the secretariat will need adequate resources. That too deserves a prominent place on the summit’s agenda. This summit could provide a turning point for LGBT issues in the history of the Commonwealth. We must not let the opportunity slip.

I touch briefly on one other wholly unrelated matter. Our Commonwealth debates often include references, always couched in the warmest terms, to the Republic of Ireland. My noble friend Lord Howell made brief reference to it today. Many of us would rejoice if our close neighbour and partner in so many enterprises could be persuaded to consider coming back into the Commonwealth family. It would find an organisation utterly different from the one it left nearly 70 years ago, and 52 wholly independent states working together on terms of equality would have their collaborative endeavours enriched if the Irish Republic was also involved in them. As regards Northern Ireland, it is now accepted on all sides that there can be no change in its constitutional position without the democratic consent of its people. With its own links to many different parts of the world going back centuries, the Irish Republic would find a natural home as part of the Commonwealth’s great global partnership. This is not an issue which has so far stirred widespread interest in political circles in the Irish Republic itself. But with the Commonwealth at an important crossroads in its history, those at the helm of its affairs should surely be encouraged to reach out to all parts of these islands, for the Commonwealth is a unique family of nations. The Republic of Ireland belongs within our family.

LGBTI: Human Rights Conference

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. We have made it clear to Turkey that accession to the European Union comes only to those countries that abide by human rights rules. Of course, Turkey would have to do that. We are concerned about some of the human rights violations which have taken place, particularly with regard to freedom of expression. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister made that clear at recent meetings.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

How much priority are the Government giving to their objective of securing the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the many countries where it remains against the law?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My noble friend is right to raise this. The UK Government believe that laws to criminalise consensual same-sex relations are wrong and should be changed and this underpins the work that we do, both as Ministers and throughout our posts around the world. We have, of course, carried out a lot of lobbying on this and I am very pleased to see that Mozambique recently changed its penal code so that “acts against nature”, which had previously been widely interpreted as homosexuality, have now been decriminalised.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

The communiqué issued at the end of the Malta meeting included a ringing reaffirmation of the Commonwealth’s commitment to human rights, declaring them to be,

“equal, indivisible, interdependent … and universal”.

However, we were entitled to expect those fine sentiments to be accompanied by an explicit indication of the need for determined action in an area to which I am glad that Members of this House and the other place now regularly return, as has happened in this debate—I refer to the criminalisation of homosexuality in the overwhelming majority of Commonwealth countries. Gay people in both Houses of our Parliament have a responsibility to encourage change among our Commonwealth friends and partners.

Gay people in this country have witnessed a transformation in their position in our society, securing an acceptance, understanding and legal status that they have never had before in our history. It is natural for us to want to extend the benefits of change that we have gained over the last 50 years to gay people in Commonwealth countries, united to us by ties of kinship, affection and history.

This is not a question of seeking to impose British liberal values on other countries where earlier intolerant, illiberal British values were planted in days of Empire. The values that we promote are universal and international, embodied in the UN charter and, more recently, in the Commonwealth’s own charter. It was good that, in Malta, the issues that concern LGBT people so deeply were discussed in the Commonwealth People’s Forum; it would be better still to have them drawn into the main sessions of the conference itself.

It is now four years since the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group unanimously recommended that,

“Heads of Government should take steps to encourage the repeal of discriminatory laws”,

against homosexuals. This matters not just as a fundamental human rights question, but as a precondition for relieving so many Commonwealth friends from the pain and suffering of AIDS, to which my noble friend Lord Tugendhat made reference. The EPG was quite explicit on that point, saying that,

“discriminatory laws … impede the effective response of CW countries to the HIV/AIDS epidemic”.

I repeat the statistic that my noble friend gave us: countries of the Commonwealth comprise 60% of people living with HIV globally, while representing 30% of the world’s population. It is a statistic to keep always in the forefront of the mind. CHOGM adopted the important EPG report in 2012. What has become of it?

We all know that change is unlikely to come quickly everywhere throughout the Commonwealth, but gay people hope and pray for the creation of sustained, serious momentum for change.