EU: Advocates-General of the Court of Justice

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rowlands]

My Lords, I associate myself fully with my noble friend’s observations about the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Bowness. I have had the privilege of serving under him for more than three years, and if anyone wanted to find a way to be a model chairman, they should follow him. We have been a disparate group over these past three or four years. Europe encourages lots of disparate views but he somehow managed, throughout the whole of his chairmanship, to achieve a consensus through persuasive patience. I, too, acknowledge his importance and he has been a marvellous chairman.

I welcome, too, the acceptance by the Minister of our recommendation to increase the number of advocates-general. Whatever one’s views about the court’s broader role—it has been controversial and previously I have made observations about its role and said that it might have been on a mission to drive ever closer union and so on—we know simply that we need a fully functioning Court of Justice if we are to remain in the single market and if it is to be effective. It is not just in the interests of some European ideal, it is strongly in British interests that the Court of Justice works effectively, and produces quality and timely justice.

Given the new role that the court will be playing in the field of justice and home affairs, there is a potential time bomb. It is not just the fact of the number of cases but the relationship between the work that the court will play in the new area of the administration of justice, which has to take priority because judgments have to made quickly, and, more broadly, the court’s other cases and judgments that could be displaced. Interesting figures are quoted in the report. Table 1 reveals that the number of preliminary rulings that have come before the Court of Justice concerning freedom, security and justice, was 17 in 2009, 38 in 2010, and 44 in 2011. That represents a considerable increase, both in terms of numbers and proportion. If that were to continue, the relationship between the work of the Court of Justice in its role as regards freedom, security and justice and its more general role could have an important and serious effect.

When this matter was raised with the Minister, David Lidington, he accepted in his oral evidence that there was a considerable proportionate increase but argued that only 10% of preliminary references in 2001 came from justice and home affairs. However, that 10% figure is increasing. The Minister admitted in his evidence that we really do not know the potential. The figures are beginning to show, and I believe that they will show, that as the Court of Justice increasingly becomes involved in freedom and security issues there will be more urgent cases and, therefore, delays to cases in the broader work of the court could occur.

We wanted to raise this matter and are glad that after initial hesitation the Government have accepted our recommendations on advocates-general. As the noble Lord said, they were actually written into the Lisbon treaty, but the Minister should also be aware that sooner or later we will have to address again the issue of the number of judges. I understand the impasse and the complications among all the member states on who should be appointed, who should appoint and which country should be given the appointments. Mr Lidington at least accepted that advocates-general do not raise those sorts of issues.

I was particularly interested in the statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, which was very different from that of his predecessor. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, was very chary of the whole idea of new judges, but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has said that the Government have in principle accepted that concept. If that is the case, we as members of the committee are very pleased.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, this is the third debate in which I have spoken on the European Court of Justice from the Opposition Front Bench. We support the strengthening of the system; it is essential to the effectiveness and quality of justice in the European Union. We seem to be getting there at least step by step. The proposal for additional advocates-general has our support. The idea that Poland should have a permanent position seems to be in accord with the acceptance that that country is one of the major member states of the Union. It grants Poland the equality of status that it has long sought.

It is significant that the Government have moved to support this proposal. It shows that at least they accept the pragmatism of the view of the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, whereby if you are going to have an effective single market you have to have an effective form of justice. I have to say, however, that there are many people not present tonight but who occupy the government Benches and talk about renegotiating a relationship between Britain and the European Union, which, in essence, boils down to free trade and political co-operation. If that is the vision of the modern Conservative Party about Britain’s relationship with the EU, it is not one in which you would have this system of law which upholds the single market. We need clarification from the Government as to what they envisage the role of the system of law in the European Union to be. I very much hope that what they are doing now, on a case-by-case basis, demonstrates that they accept pooled sovereignty in areas where we have chosen to accept it, and that part of this involves a form of supranational decision-making and supranational law.

My second point is that I support those noble Lords who have raised the question of why progress is limited, so far, to the issue of additional judges for the general court. That is clearly an important part of the reform package. I listened very carefully to what the Minister said about the Government broadly supporting this proposal. Do they support it or do they not? Do they regard the requirement to keep within the existing budget of the court as a binding constraint in all circumstances, or do they not? Is it a binding constraint or is it not? If they say it is a binding constraint, what efficiency proposals are the Government putting forward to the court in order that the cost of the additional judges could be met from within the budget?

I suspect that we are seeing a divided Whitehall here, with some departments recognising the need for additional judges, while others are trying to argue that the cost has to be kept within the existing budget. It is all very well making these declarations but how will it be done?

I agree very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, said about not differentiating between cost and value. It should be obvious to everyone that the value of more efficient decision-making on issues of central concern to our economy, such as the single market, would greatly exceed the cost. Where do the Government stand on this point?

I also endorse what the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, said about the value not just of greater efficiency of justice in terms of the single market, but also in terms of the basic rights of European citizens. We welcome the limited steps that have been taken. Of course, one should search for efficiency and cost saving all the time, but can the Government give us an assurance that they will not block a proposal to increase the number of judges purely on cost grounds alone?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this debate has moved more widely than the decision to appoint another three advocates-general. I take it that we are all agreed that we have no objections to the appointment of three additional advocates-general, so I therefore trust that we may agree the Motion—which is the trigger for this debate—at the end of the debate.

On that point, the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, asked about the exact meaning of Article 252 of the TFEU. Many of these things require juristes-linguistes to play around with the words a great deal. I am told that the Council, acting unanimously, can decide, in effect, to increase the number of advocates-general. Declaration 38 is a declaration of intent but the Council has nevertheless to act unanimously to approve a decision. If the British Government, having failed to achieve the agreement of both Houses of Parliament, were to block it, it would not go forward and that would have a damaging effect on UK relations with Poland. The Poles are very much looking forward to joining the other big five, so to speak, in appointing their own advocate-general.

EUC Report: EU External Action Service

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I must apologise to the Grand Committee because, for unavoidable personal reasons, I probably have to commit the unpardonable sin of leaving the Committee before the Minister has concluded. I am very sorry about that, but I cannot avoid it. I will be very brief. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for the work that he has done and for the many reports that this Committee has produced. This again shows the value of the work that our Select Committee does.

Secondly, I join the tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, for the role that she has played in helping partly to settle the Serbia-Kosovo dispute. I would like to make clear, on behalf of the Labour Party, that we support the External Action Service and that we want to see its role developed, obviously as a supplement to British foreign policy and to magnify that policy’s impact.

The fact is, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has explained, that what went before was dysfunctional, and the EAS is a great improvement. There is one point that I would like to ask the Minister about, and that is the role of Britain in this service. I agree with the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, about the hope that the Government would not be so reserved in their approach. One of the real worries that I have is about the proportion of British officials working in the EAS. The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, raised this point. The service gave me figures showing that only 7.6% of the people working in the service are British, as opposed to our 12.5% share of the population. This is particularly true of member state diplomats: British diplomats make up only 2.3% of the numbers in the service as opposed to 4% for France. As a lot of the national diplomats occupy senior positions in policymaking in the service in Brussels, this is a demonstration of a lack of adequate British influence that I would like the Minister to address in his reply.

European Union Committee Report

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle]

On behalf of the Opposition, I thank the committee, its chairs, members and excellent staff for all their work. It represents a huge volume of activity of very high quality which has very considerable impact. The House ought to celebrate this committee as one of its finest achievements. The speech that we have just heard from my noble friend Lord Rowlands about the detailed examination that the committee has done of proposals in that sub-committee’s field is a tribute to the work of the committee.

Whatever you think of Europe, it needs scrutiny. Like my splendid noble friend Lady Crawley, I am a very strong pro-European. But just because you are pro-European does not mean that you are not critical of an awful lot that happens in the EU. I have always been pro-Europe and pro-reform in Europe. If you are of that disposition, the work of this committee is very valuable. You have only to look at the recommendations in its reports—a classic example was the report of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, on the Channel Tunnel—to get an agenda for reform that this country ought to be pushing.

I wish to comment briefly on the institutional points about the committee that have been made. First, I think it is a pity that we have seen a reduction in the number of sub-committees. I do not say that just because I was briefly a member of the one that was abolished under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. However, if the House of Lords, as an appointed House which is full of people of political experience and specialist expertise, cannot do a committee job properly, what is the point of the place?

Secondly, I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Judd—this may be a little criticism of the EU Committee—in that I think that Europe cannot avoid the social agenda. Social sustainability is one of the real challenges facing Europe. Therefore, I think it is a pity that the axe fell on the committee that specialised in that area. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, that we should try through the usual channels to make the debates on the Floor of the House more timely.

Thirdly, I agree with many of the speakers in this debate that we should promote as much as we can the engagement of people outside in the committee’s work. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, about good regular contact with MEPs is a very good one. The point I want to press on the Committee is the need for networking with other national Parliaments in order that the subsidiarity clauses of the new Lisbon treaty can be made properly and demonstrably effective to the European public. That will work properly only if we really get engaged with the relevant bodies in other national Parliaments.

On the wider point, I think the noble Lord, Lord Jay, is right that we are on the threshold of a great national debate about Europe. Of course it has to be a dispassionate debate, though I hope some of us will be allowed a little passion as well. The purpose of any debate has to be to try to engage intelligent Eurosceptic opinion. We have to bring round to the merits of British membership of the European Union those who are critical but at the same time open to reason and persuasion. Perhaps I am being very unfair but if we succeed with the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, that is a very important test, given the very interesting speech he made, critical of aspects of the Union.

I will make one final point about the agenda of the committee’s work. First, I would like to think that the committee could make a real contribution to the balance of competences review and I ask the Minister how the Government think the committee might make a contribution to that. Secondly, although the focus is naturally on specific EU policies and proposals, we have to raise our sights to the very big challenges, which basically are the arguments around the European Union. Internally, the European Union has this huge economic and social challenge. At the moment the short-term requirements of austerity are not matched to the medium and long-term need to make Europe ecologically sustainable, competitive in a global world and able to cope with the demographic challenge. Frankly, it is this lack of connection between the short term and the long term that we have to think about. Externally, people are just not conscious of how rapidly the world is changing and what role Europe, acting together, can play in defending our values and interests in a world where power is dramatically shifting to Asia and other countries. So the committee should try to broaden its sights on to these big questions. But it is excellent in its work. I fully support it and I am delighted to back everything that it does.

EU: UK Membership

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Liddle]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for making the case for the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are committed to playing a leading role in the European Union to advance our national interests. We play an active role within the EU on many issues—Iran, Syria, Burma, the single market and improving Europe’s competitiveness—and work closely with other EU countries to deliver those important objectives. There is no question of the UK disengaging or withdrawing from the EU. We will remain leading proponents of the EU’s most successful policies.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, although it is always a pleasure to face the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I was rather hoping to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to answer this Question—I think it is the first Foreign Office Question that she has had the opportunity to answer. It is a pity, on a day when the Prime Minister is coming back to the other place to report on the European Council, that she is not here.

What the noble Lord said is all very well, but most of what we hear from the coalition is refusal to enter negotiations on questions that are central to our economic interests, such as the fiscal treaty and the banking union. We hear about opt-outs from justice and home affairs measures that are vital to fight organised crime. We hear about repatriation of competences.

[Noble Lords]

Question!

[Lord Liddle]

Okay. We hear about a future renegotiation. Is it any surprise that the public standing of the EU is at a low ebb? When will we hear from the Government clear leadership that our membership of the EU is vital to our economy and essential to our place in the world? Since the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is answering for the coalition, how much longer are the Liberal Democrats prepared to put up with the Government’s policy of isolation, defeatism and retreat?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I say on behalf of my noble friend Lady Warsi that she answered three debates last week and she will be here tomorrow. She has other responsibilities.

On the question of defending our position within the EU, the Government have made it clear through a number of senior Ministers, not just the Prime Minister, that we intend to stay in the European Union—rather more clearly than leading members of the previous Government in their last two to three years in office.

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Republic of Korea Framework Agreement) Order 2012

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, the Minister said at the outset of his remarks that we should attach great importance to our relationship with the Republic of Korea, our key ally in east Asia; I entirely concur. The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, suggested that I am an expert on Korean issues, which is an exaggeration. So far as North Korea is concerned, the only thing predictable about it is its unpredictability. I do not claim great expertise, but I declare a non-financial interest as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, which I founded along with my noble friend Lady Cox seven years ago following our first visit there.

I was struck by paragraph 7.2 of the memorandum to the statutory instrument, which lists “Justice, Freedom and Security” and suggests that these might involve,

“(e.g. combating organised crime and corruption, drugs and money laundering, migration, protection of personal data) as well as on good governance, and taxation”.

It goes on to talk about what the agreement will allow engagement over:

“issues such as climate change; security of energy supply; approaches to labour issues; education and other issues relating to structural change in the world economy; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; counter terrorism; and a shared understanding on the need to prosecute the most serious crimes of concern to the international community”.

I do not take exception to any of those; indeed, I shall return to three or four examples in the list with some brief questions to the Minister in a moment or two. However, I am surprised that there is no reference to the relationship between North Korea and the European Union—and between it and ourselves. We have had diplomatic relations for over a decade now with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The lack of such a reference seems strange, as does the lack of a reference to human rights in that list.

Looking at the issue from the international perspective, one of the errors in how we have conducted relations is that we have emphasised security questions a great deal—properly so, given that North Korea embarked on the development of weapons of mass destruction—but failed to run in parallel questions of human rights. This is not a criticism of Her Majesty’s Government—quite the opposite. I was struck that Amnesty International reported on 10 January that, to mark the birthday of the two late leaders in North Korea, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, an amnesty had been declared for the release of prisoners there. If the Minister has any information on that, I would be grateful if he will let us know whether that is so, how many prisoners might be involved, and whether he sees it as a glimmer of hope in the international situation. If he does not have that information today, I would be grateful if he wrote to me in due course.

I have long argued that we have not really learnt the lesson of history that in the period of the Soviet Union, we understandably matched weapons of mass destruction—the SS-20s and SS-22s of the Soviet Union—with our cruise and Pershing missiles. Simultaneously, Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and Ronald Reagan as President of the United States at the time embarked on support for the Helsinki Accords, promoting human rights issues alongside and in parallel with security questions. That was the reason we saw the Berlin Wall crumble, and it will be the reason—maybe not tomorrow, but in time to come—that the 38th parallel, which divides the Korean peninsula, disappears as well.

The importance of human rights in North Korea should not be underestimated. In a leader 18 months ago entitled “Slave state”, the Times said:

“The condition of the people of North Korea ranks among the great tragedies of the past century. The despotism that consigns them to that state is one of its greatest crimes”.

It was in this Room—the Moses Room—that I chaired meetings of the all-party group where we took evidence on several occasions from people who had escaped from North Korea. I will give only one example to the Committee this afternoon: a witness called Ahn Myeong-cheol, aged 37, who worked as a prison guard at four political prison camps within what is called the absolute control zone between 1987 and 1994. He movingly described in this Room how his father killed himself when he realised that he had been heard criticising the regime. His mother and brothers were sent to prison camps. Ahn was re-educated and became a prison guard in that so-called absolute control zone. He vividly and harrowingly described how he witnessed guard dogs, imported from Russia, tear three children to pieces and how the camp warden congratulated the guard who trained the dogs. He said that even when prisoners died they were punished; their corpses and remains were simply left to disintegrate and rot away on the open ground.

I also chaired a meeting for Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, who was the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and who, along with his successor Mr Darusman, the former Indonesian Attorney-General, was denied any access to North Korea. In this House, speaking to the all-party group, Vitit Muntarbhorn said that he estimated that 400,000 people had died in North Korea’s prison camps in the past 30 years. He said that its human rights record was “abysmal” due to,

“the repressive nature of the power base, at once cloistered, controlled and callous”,

and that,

“The exploitation of … ordinary people … has become the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite”.

All eight of his reports which went to the United Nations have detailed a very grave situation in which the abuses are “both systematic and pervasive”, and “egregious and endemic”. Vitit Muntarbhorn has concluded:

“It is incumbent upon the national authorities and the international community to address the impunity factor which has enabled such violations to exist and/or persist for a very long time”.

He estimates that some 300,000 people have fled the country, many of whom are, of course, living in north-east China while others have managed to migrate to South Korea. There is a brilliant book called Nothing to Envy, written by Barbara Demick, which records many of the first-hand accounts of those who have been able to escape.

Here at Westminster, I chaired the launch of a 142-page report commissioned by the late Vaclav Havel, Elie Weisel, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former Norwegian Prime Minister, entitled Failure to Protect: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea. What they were arguing in that report was for the need for the international community to take human rights issues every bit as seriously as issues concerning security. Only a week ago in another place, in a Westminster Hall debate, the honourable Member for Congleton, Mrs Fiona Bruce, along with Mr Gary Streeter, the Member of Parliament who is the vice-chairman of the all- party parliamentary group, initiated a debate where Members from all sides spoke of their concerns about human rights and humanitarian questions. I commend the Hansard of that debate to your Lordships.

A few weeks ago in this House, I chaired a meeting for Shin Dong-hyuk, who is aged 26 and was born in prison camp 14. He spent the first 23 years of his life in that camp. I am glad to see that the noble Lords, Lord Edmiston and Lord Grocott, who have taken a close interest in this issue, are present in the Committee. They have had the chance to meet some of those who I have referred to. Shin Dong-hyuk was forced to work for 11 years from the age of 10 and was forced to watch as his mother and brother were executed. During his visit here, he met the Lord Speaker and the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has a book which will be published in March, entitled Escape from Camp 14. It is precisely people such as Shin Dong-hyuk whom we should be investing in for the future. They are tomorrow's leaders. He does not have a hatred of the leadership of North Korea; he has a hatred of the ideology. He wants his country to change and to reform just as the Republic of Korea did. That was, after all, a military dictatorship, but under the extraordinarily brave and enlightened leadership of Kim Dae-jung it embarked on the sunshine policy and reformed itself, so I hope that we will see North Korea change as well.

In addition to asking the Minister directly about human rights, the importance that we attach to it and why it does not appear in the list of our concerns on the face of the paper, I have four brief questions for him. On energy supply, it was announced in September that Russian natural gas would be pumped into South Korea via a pipeline that would straddle the whole of North Korea. At present, the £520 billion South Korean economy imports about 96 per cent of its energy, 80 per cent from the Middle East. Clearly, it does not want—any more than this country would want—to be entirely reliant on that source. What will be the payment for that energy coming into South Korea? How will that sit with the sanctions that we have imposed on nuclear proliferation—the security questions that I know are close to the heart of the Minister?

Secondly, I would like to ask about Kaesong. One of the most hopeful developments in recent years was the development eight years ago of the Kaesong industrial zone, which is about six miles north of the demilitarised zone inside North Korea. Some 48,000 North Korean workers work there in 123 different companies. This earns, it is said, around $50 million a year for North Korea. The aim is to develop Kaesong so that one day it will have some 700,000 employees. In the context of the employment and trade implications of the order before us today, what is Her Majesty's Government's position on the exploitation of labour and the use of cheap and possibly slave labour? The average wage for a North Korean working in Kaesong is about £67 per person per month, and a lot of that money has to then be handed over to the state. Is this a question that we are pursuing in the context of the cheap labour and cheap produce that could then be exported as a result of these orders to the European Union?

Thirdly, I want to ask about education. On 15 February, an extraordinary man called Dr James Kim will be in your Lordships' House speaking at the all-party group. As a young man, James Kim fought on the side of the South Koreans. He lied about his age in order to get into the army. He was one of only 17 who survived in a unit of 800 men. At the end of the war, he said that he would one day try to do something to bring peace and reconciliation to the Korean peninsula. For his trouble, 60 years later, having gone to North Korea, he was arrested as a spy and sentenced to death. He said, “I have come here to give you everything, so you might as well have my body and use it for experimental purposes”. He wrote his last will and testament and said to the United States, where he also has citizenship, “There should be no revenge because I came here as an act of love”. He was ultimately deported and a year later was allowed to return to North Korea where he was able to embark on the building of the first ever international public-private university. I was privileged to visit it a year ago at its opening with my noble friend Lady Cox.

Dr Kim raised £18 million for this extraordinary initiative as a result of Her Majesty's Government creating diplomatic relations with North Korea 10 years ago when the then Prime Minister Tony Blair overruled his Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and decided that the war was over, which is something that the United States has still not done, merely the armistice that still stands, which was signed in 1953. We ended the war and created diplomatic relations. One of the great fruits of that has been that the English language is now the official second language of the country. It is the language used at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology to teach about 600 students. Is there more that we can do to promote education as a reforming tool? It is a transformative experience. It is the chief thing that will change North Korea in the long term, and we should be very pleased from the point of view of British trade and commerce that English is so widely taught and used there.

I also congratulate the Government on supporting the creation of the first two Chevening scholarships, which started in this academic term at Cambridge University, giving young people the chance to come to the United Kingdom to learn English-language skills on brief courses. It is impossible to come to a country such as this and not be challenged by our liberties, our freedoms and our democracy—the things that we prize. Just as we saw in the former Soviet Union, perestroika and glasnost bring about change, mainly as a result of interaction. Surely the same thing can happen in North Korea.

Finally, I turn to security and weapons of mass destruction. Following the sinking of the South Korean corvette “Cheonan”, when 46 people died, and the bombing of a South Korean island, it is quite clear that there was a very serious deterioration in relations between North Korea and South Korea. Many of us fear that it will be not a deliberate act but a Sarajevo moment that will lead to a conflagration that could lead to the loss of some 3 million lives, because that is how many died in the Korean War. We often forget that in addition to the 2.5 million Koreans who died, there were 500,000 others: Chinese, Americans and 1,000 British servicemen—that is more British servicemen than died in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined. We must do all we possibly can to ensure that there is not a repetition of history.

I wonder whether the tools in this order can be used to facilitate a Beijing peace conference because China clearly has the key role in trying to broker some way forward. I also believe that Her Majesty's Government can build on their successes in constructive critical engagement and can work with our European partners to create more constructive engagement, not least with the military. Surely with the octogenarian leadership of the Politburo, the nomenklatura and the military, there are opportunities for us to build relations with some of those who lead the military by welcoming them to the United Kingdom, taking them to places such as Sandhurst and opening dialogue to see whether we can help a country that has 1 million men under arms—it is the world’s fourth largest standing army—to put its resources into building peace instead and into doing something about the humanitarian needs of a country where 2 million people died in the famine in the 1990s and where our previous ambassador, the admirable Peter Hughes, said that he had seen examples of malnutrition reappearing on the streets.

With the news from Burma of significant change, the release of political prisoners and a coming in from the cold, surely it is not too much to hope that we might see something similar happen in North Korea. There have been changes in China. Those of us who visited China 40 years ago, as I did, and visited underground churches and saw human rights violations have seen extraordinary change and reform. China is not there yet on some of the human rights issues, but the social and economic changes make it one of the most exciting places on earth. Anyone who has the privilege of travelling to South Korea can see the possibilities for the north if only change could come.

Building on the report that my noble friend Lady Cox and I published when we returned last year Building Bridges not Walls, I commend this order, but I ask the Minister to dwell on some of the points that I have raised today and consider whether we cannot place more emphasis on the importance of raising human rights considerations as we embark on more constructive and critical engagement.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I express the Opposition’s support for the approval of this statutory instrument. One of the real privileges of becoming a Member of the House of Lords, which I did last year, is to listen to people such as the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, who have expertise, wisdom and judgment to offer on things that one knows very little about. I hope that the points that he has raised today, although they are tangential to the thrust of the EU framework agreement, will be taken very seriously and that we will have further opportunities to debate the position in North Korea, about which he spoke so movingly. I thank him on behalf of the Opposition for his work there.

The agreement itself is what they call in EU jargon a strategic partnership, and it is one that is directly linked to the conclusion of the free trade agreement in 2010 between the EU and the Republic of Korea, which I think Europe took about a year to ratify from when it was actually signed. That was not bad when one looks at the position in relation to the United States and its free trade agreements with Korea, which are deeply enmeshed in the problems in the US Congress. Perhaps many people in Britain forget that the EU can be effective and that it still is an important pole of attraction for a very rapidly growing country like the Republic of Korea. The deal on the free trade agreement with the accompanying strategic partnership was negotiated in two years. It arose out of the global initiative that my noble friend Lord Mandelson launched when he was trade commissioner which, given the difficulties of completing the Doha round, was a switch away to bilateral trading agreements with our major trading partners.

The Republic of Korea is extremely significant for us in economic terms. It is the most important trading partner for Europe behind the United States, Japan and China. I discovered that fact when I was Googling away before the debate, but it is a remarkable fact none the less. We on this side welcome the deepening of relations with the Republic of Korea. We think it is right that a trade agreement should have a parallel political agreement, as it were, which sets out a broad range of areas for co-operation and dialogue and we very much wish that co-operation and dialogue to be effective. I am sure that this agreement will play an important role in deepening relationships between Europe and the Republic of Korea, which I hope will assist in a solution being found to the terrible problems that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, described in North Korea. I support the approval of this statutory instrument.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I happily yield to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, as an expert in EU jargon. It is a very erudite subject with which we have both struggled for many years. I feel I am slightly in the same position as I was in last night, when being asked to defend Britain's approach to the OSCE, to which the answer is: we are not entirely sure how this works or what its potential is, but we think it is worth doing. The framework agreements are a new element in EU relations with other countries beyond the European region. They have very wide potential, including on human rights, and provide a formal structure for member states collectively to raise such issues.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his, as always, fascinating and well-informed speech. While nothing in this framework agreement specifically refers to North Korea, relations with North Korea are of course always likely to be an important part of the agenda when we discuss political and human rights issues with our Korean colleagues. All those of us who have been to Seoul know that when you are in Seoul you feel close to the border. The sense of insecurity is not that much less than it used to be when one visited Berlin during the Cold War, so one cannot get away from the North Korean dimension in this relationship. The absence of specific reference to North Korea or to human rights in the framework agreement does not imply that these are outside its structure.

The noble Lord asked a number of specific questions, including one about information on the news of a potential North Korean amnesty for political prisoners. I will inquire further within the Foreign Office and report back. Although I am fully briefed on what is happening in southern Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and Iran, as one jumps from one country to another I have unfortunately not kept up with exactly what is happening in North Korea.

There are problems in developing among the EU 27 a common position on North Korea. Smaller EU member states see North Korea as a distant country, even further away from Europe than Burma. We are therefore talking about the larger EU member states attempting to reconcile their positions, which fits in with their relations with China and their position on nuclear proliferation. Finding common EU positions on distant problems with which not all the smaller member states are directly concerned is not always easy.

Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, once again the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, has done the House a service in raising this Question for Short Debate about the future of the OSCE. We would all like to thank him and my noble friend Lord Dubs for the work that they do on its parliamentary assembly.

As my noble friend Lord Dubs said, many people, including many parliamentarians, have probably never heard of the OSCE and there is always a temptation—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, is going in that direction—to see the organisation as some kind of redundant hangover from the Cold War, an organisation that has outlived its time, a fossilized relic of the past. You can think of all the phrases. On this side of the House we would certainly agree with him that the Government should be asking the OSCE to justify itself. There should be more information in this House and in the other place about the activities of the OSCE and the value that it is creating. However, from listening to the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, my noble friend Lord Dubs and the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, it is clear to me at least that it would be wrong and misguided to rush to the judgment that the OSCE should go. We say that because it is a multilateral organisation—we are committed supporters of multilateralism—working in one of the most difficult and troubled areas of the world. The Deputy Prime Minister does not get many tributes these days, but he deserves a generous tribute for his decision to attend and speak at the OSCE’s summit in Kazakhstan just over a year ago.

We live in a dangerous world where, if anything, the trends are against multilateralism and commitment to multilateral organisations. Emerging powers such as China put much more emphasis on their own sovereignty, not on working together in multilateral organisations. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, referred to the trends in the United States to focus on the Pacific and, with the necessity for huge defence cuts, pull in its horns in Europe. It seems to us that that means that we should tread warily in dismissing the value of the OSCE, given the work that it does.

It feels like a long time since the collapse of the Soviet Union and since the OSCE’s members signed up to the Paris charter in which they declared their belief in a,

“new era of democracy, peace and unity”.

We know that that lofty ambition has not been fulfilled. Vladimir Putin has redefined democracy in Russia as something he calls “sovereign democracy” and we do not know quite what that means. There has been a war in Georgia between two OSCE members and there are many other troubles throughout the region.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, that we can be critical of the OSCE’s work and say that it is inadequate, but it is doing something to deal with human rights abuses, democratic flaws and the absence of the rule of law in some of the most difficult areas possible. Of course the responses are inadequate. If you have an organisation where 56 participating members have to agree and one of them is the mighty Russia, it is going to be difficult to get things done. However, the role that the OSCE plays in the areas of election monitoring, human rights and media freedom is a valuable one. It is a bit better than a case of “stick with nurse for fear of something worse”. There is a real role for this organisation.

From this side of the House, we would like to know what the Government think about the possibilities of making the OSCE more effective. My noble friend Lord Dubs asked some relevant questions about the relationship between the organisation and the assembly that is supposed to monitor it. He asked what steps have been taken to review its efficiency and effectiveness. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, asked whether we support it, whether the Government are prepared to back it with resources—I am thinking of staff secondments in particular—and whether we are prepared to use our diplomatic efforts to build alliances within it. For instance, do we work in it within an EU framework as we now do in many international organisations?

The OSCE could be more effective in partnership with the European Union. My noble friend Lady Crawley gave me the latest edition of the magazine that we get from Azerbaijan, which referred to my noble friend Lady Ashton’s visit there quite recently when she talked about the EU working with the OSCE Minsk Group in trying to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We have leverage over the EU as well as being members of the OSCE. How are we working to try to make those interventions more effective? The EU has real leverage that it can bring to bear in terms of its budgets, its trade access and of course visas.

The work of the OSCE is more relevant in the Balkans where there is enlargement fatigue regarding the EU. If we think that we are not going to be able to get enlargement in the next decade or so, we need to continue to support the OSCE. More than that, we can see within the region that many troubles are likely to flare up in future. We have seen in the recent Duma elections in Russia the need for proper election monitoring. We saw the role that the OSCE played in monitoring the farcical elections in Belarus. If anything, these problems will mount in future; they will not go away. It will therefore be important, from the perspective of noble Lords on this side of the House, to feel that the Government are taking this seriously and have a strategy for making the OSCE as effective as possible.

EU: Repatriation of Powers

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

Does the noble Lord agree with the article in the Financial Times this morning by the Conservative Member of Parliament, Jo Johnson, in which he says that the last thing the City of London needs to protect its interests is for the British Eurosceptics to plaster a union jack all over it? Does he agree that the best way to defend our vital national interests in Europe is to be in, engaging our partners, rather than out, shouting on the sidelines and demanding repatriation of powers?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the article, which I thought was excellent, and I am very happy that the chair of the relevant European Parliament committee on this is a British Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament, Sharon Bowles.

UN: Specialised Agencies

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, for initiating this debate in this rather late dinner break. It has provided us with food for thought, even if we will not get much real food later as a result of it.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reminded us what a visionary concept the United Nations was, coming out of the Second World War, and how it saw the problems of the world in terms not of a narrow diplomacy of interstate relations but of global issues that needed to be tackled collectively. That logic has grown more powerful, not less, over time, given the collective action deficits in areas such as climate change with which we now have to grapple. Therefore, the logic of UN agencies is very strong. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reminded us, there are many achievements. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, reminded us, those agencies tackle many difficult issues of central concern such as population and the rights of women.

Britain should strongly support this kind of multilateralism because we should aim to maximise our impact in the world through a pooling of efforts. Multilateralism through the UN has a special legitimacy. I am sorry if this sounds like a political point in a partisan debate, but given the Foreign Secretary’s talk of restoring traditional diplomacy is there not a risk that we are devaluing the importance of multilateralism and the good that it can do? I speak particularly of the United Nations in that context. Britain has always believed that it can punch above its weight in the world. We can and we do, but all the time, as economic power is shifting away from Europe towards the East and other parts of the world, that weight is declining and punching above it is less effective.

It is a mistake to prioritise traditional bilateral diplomacy at precisely this time when what we need is more multilateralism, so we should strongly support the UN agencies. It is easy to criticise some of the aspects of their management. I welcome the multilateral aid review that DfID has carried out. DFID, of course, approaches these issues from its own distinctive development perspective. There are arguments for agencies that concern not just international development, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out. For instance, the work of the ILO in promoting decent labour standards is absolutely fundamental if we are going to maintain a world of free and fair trade. It needs to be developed. It does not often deal with the problems of the very poorest countries, but it does deal with issues that are vital if the legitimacy of the world trading system is to be maintained.

Let us not knock the UN and its agencies, and let us not apply too narrow criteria in assessing their work. The UN, for all its imperfections, is something on which we need to build. Of course we should have a credible policy for reform, but I do not think that we can lecture the rest of the world about the need to reform the UN agencies when we take such a negative view of reform when it comes to the management of economic institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. It gives us no credibility to call for reform in other areas.

We will not get very far simply by lecturing people from the outside. We have to work on a reform agenda with people who share our concerns. In particular, we have to try to identify the best people for top management positions, and we should offer to support those people on merit and not on nationality, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, has said.

My noble friend Lord Hunt emphasised that we should press for greater transparency. His key recommendation was that we should have regular reports to Parliament on the work of the agencies, and that documents to do with the agencies should not be secret but should be publicly available. I would welcome the Minister’s views on these topics tonight. Are the Government looking into providing greater transparency? We should certainly be pushing for clearer objectives for measures of success in for accountability for spending and all those things. However, let us first carry that out in practice domestically, as my noble friend Lord Hunt has recommended.

We have had an interesting debate here. The UN agencies fulfil a vital role, and while pressing for reform we should be strong supporters of them as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle]

Will the noble Lord give a commitment to consider the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for a regular report to Parliament and greater transparency?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will gladly commit to considering that. The British Government, here as elsewhere, are very concerned about transparency. I apologise: I should have taken up the point that the noble Lord made about transparency of data. Data are extremely important in many of these areas. We are doing our best to provide better data. In the multilateral aid review, a great deal of emphasis was placed on how much data are available about the effectiveness of work on the ground, in-country, by particular agencies. That is very much part of the way forward.

India

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, the Government have set themselves a bold ambition to put the British relationship with India on a new and stronger footing. The Conservative manifesto at the last election called for a new special relationship. At the Prime Minister’s visit in July 2010 there was launched what was called an enhanced partnership. We are grateful to my noble friend Lord Parekh for enabling us to have this debate, which is an opportunity to assess progress on that bold ambition.

On these Benches, we are strong supporters of what the Government are trying to do. India has made remarkable progress in the past two decades. Its growth is spectacular even though inflation poses a problem to its sustainability. On the official measures, the numbers of people living in extreme poverty have fallen from 26 per cent of the Indian population to 16 per cent, which is a great achievement.

For reasons of sentiment and self-interest, and because people from India and south Asia make a crucial contribution to our society here—while recognising the point emphasised by my noble friend Lord Parekh that India has a different perspective on world events than often we have—we must try to strengthen the relationship. But we must not do that on the basis of false premises.

One false premise was that the previous Labour Government neglected India. One of the things of which I am proudest is that development aid to India under the previous Labour Government was three times the level in the past three years of what it had been in the 1994-97 period; that is, £825 million being spent from 2008-11. I know that there are question marks about whether we should continue to do this but we on these Benches will always remember that there are more poor people in India still than there are in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

A second false premise is that a choice is to be made between a bilateral relationship and a multilateral relationship. The truth is that the two have got to go together. The only point on which I would disagree in the excellent speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, is that it is the capacity of the European Union to mobilise hopefully an agreement on a Doha trade round but certainly to agree a bilateral free trade agreement with India. It is that capacity which will lead precisely to the kind of liberalisation in India that he is seeking. But on our own I do not think that we have that ability.

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, and many other speakers have said; namely, that the economic relationship has tremendous potential. But let us remember that it is starting from a very low base. Of our outward investment in Britain, it is regrettably the case that only 1 per cent of Britain’s foreign direct investment is located in India. More than 50 per cent is in the European Union. On looking at Indian exports, I found an extraordinary fact today: India exports more to the Benelux countries than to the United Kingdom. There has been no dramatic expansion of our trade in recent years. Indeed, I picked up an article that told me that in 2008, Britain was India’s eighth largest trading partner, exporting goods worth about $5 billion. By 2010, that figure had fallen to $4.4 billion. There is an awful lot of work to do to make this economic relationship work.

Our fear on these Benches is that the Government are putting crucial new obstacles in making this relationship a success. Last January, we were all greatly relieved when the right honourable Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, told us that the visa problems he thought that there would be in the business relationship with India were being solved. Only a month ago, I read in the Times that whereas four years ago it was possible for an Indian business person coming to Britain to get a visa within a few days, it now takes 15 days. People have been saying that it is a lot easier to go to France and other countries in Europe to do business because of these visa rules.

The Government set lots of other objectives for their partnership with India, including higher education, on which noble Lords have spoken. Last week, in the debate on universities, we heard how the number of applications from Asia to Russell group universities is falling fast. How can any nation so comprehensively shoot itself in the foot simply to fulfil a stupid, populist policy that was included in the Government’s manifesto in terms of immigration? I repeat: it is simply shooting our future prospects in the foot for the sake of rank populism.

The same applies to the future leaders’ network that the Government hope to set up. How can we have a network of future leaders if we prevent them from coming to this country? Let us have a constructive approach to this relationship and try to build it, and not put obstacles in its way.

Kosovo

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I think that we would all like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for raising this subject for debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, who have spoken; they are all familiar with aspects of Kosovo in a way that I am not. My own personal knowledge of Kosovo was confined to the bunkers of Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence when, as an adviser there in the Blair period, I was greatly involved in the politics of the Kosovo campaign in 1998. It is an unpopular thing to say these days but I was proud of the courage that our Prime Minister, Tony Blair, showed on that issue, and it was a successful episode in what is now called liberal interventionism. We helped to prevent a genocide and secured the right of people to self-determination. From this side of the House we welcome the progress that has been made towards international recognition of Kosovo, including through the recent ruling of the International Criminal Court.

There are serious concerns, however. I did a little bit of homework for this debate, as we spokespersons have to do. I went first of all to an article in Survival by Ivan Krastev on the Balkans:

“Bosnia and Kosovo are trapped in the labyrinthine politics of semi-independence; Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro are small and claustrophobic republics with populist and divisive governments”.

He goes on:

“The Balkans currently reflects a mixture of Greek-style economic problems, Berlusconi-style politics and Turkish-level hopes”.

That is a rather pessimistic view of the Balkans.

The recent strategic survey—another bible for opposition foreign affairs spokespersons—raises serious concerns about the situation in Kosovo. There are widespread concerns about corruption at the highest levels of the Kosovo Administration. There was what has been described as industrial-scale fraud in the general election of 13 December. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, has referred to the awful business of the allegations of a trade in organs. There is also widespread criminality, which means that Kosovo is the only Balkan entity to have been denied visa-free access to the Schengen area. I think that is the case.

Kosovo needs to address these problems. They are problems not only for the Kosovars but for the Serbian Kosovars. They will not achieve full recognition of their statehood unless they accept the responsibilities that come with it. At the moment they are in this rather awkward in-between position. Fundamental to these matters are the independence and integrity of the police, the prosecuting authorities, the judiciary and the rule of law. That is still seriously in question.

We all want Kosovo to become a member of the European Union one day—at least, I assume we all do. I certainly do, as do the Opposition. However, increasingly there are questions about whether the EU can be the magic wand that spirits away the problems of the Balkans and the former Yugoslavia. There is enlargement fatigue within the European Union. There is a loss of interest in the Balkans, particularly from the Americans, who face many other problems in the world. The EU is incredibly internally focused because of the crises that it currently faces. How can Britain play a role within the EU to keep up the momentum of progress that has been made in the Balkans and take the countries there towards EU membership?

I should like the Minister’s view on whether there is something of an opportunity in what has happened in Serbia. I know that Serbia has lots of pluses and minuses but the arrest of Mladic was a great step forward. It showed that President Tadic, who I have met, takes his nation’s EU ambitions seriously. That is why this happened. Can we and the EU use the wish of the Serbs to progress their EU membership as leverage to resolve the outstanding Kosovo issues? Kosovo will not get anywhere unless those questions are resolved.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, talked about the Serbian monasteries and whether progress can be made towards autonomy within Kosovo or whether that is unrealistic. Of course, the Kosovars also have incentives to settle these issues if they are to make the final progress that they need towards recognition and getting on the path of EU membership. On behalf of the Opposition, I hope that we will continue to pursue an active policy in these areas. However, we will succeed only if the general framework of our European policy is right. I am sorry if I sound like a record stuck in its groove on this issue but we will have absolutely no influence over our partners if people think that we are heading towards a semi-detached relationship. We will have no influence on shaping the justice and home affairs issues which are so important in the Balkans, particularly in Kosovo—everything to do with criminality, law and the rule of law—if we decide to opt out of it all in 2014. That will not send the right signal about British engagement. Of course, if the rest of Europe allows the Balkans simply to stew in its own juice, we cannot rule out the possibility of future bloodshed. Do not let us imagine that in future the Americans will come to our rescue in sorting out the Balkans in the way that they have done in the past. Unless we are committed to European defence, we will be shown to be very inadequate.

In conclusion, like the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, I want to see Britain play a very active role in trying to maintain progress towards Kosovo’s independence and membership of the European Union; and, indeed, towards the enlargement of the EU in the whole of the Balkans. However, we will achieve this only if the Government’s policy framework towards the European Union is right.