Queen's Speech

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, I congratulate my colleagues on the new Front Bench, each of whom I respect greatly. I shall concentrate on one country. It is not a large country, with a population of under 20 million, but it stands at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean, and it is a country with which I have been associated for nearly 50 years. I refer to Sri Lanka, and the changes that have taken place there in the past three or four months. Those changes should bring new confidence to relations between the UK and Sri Lanka.

I start with an aside. Sri Lanka has had a presidential and a general election and in both cases the turn-out level was one we would welcome enormously in this country. There were hardly any troubles at all, except in one polling area where the election commissioner was brave enough to say that the vote was null and void and it was re-polled. One only hopes that a returning officer in the United Kingdom in future might be brave enough to make a similar judgment.

What was really interesting was the comment from a greatly respected Indian publication, the Hindu, which congratulated Sri Lanka on its free and fair elections and said that a decisive mandate had been given in Sri Lanka for President Rajapaksa, whose party got more than 60 per cent of the vote.

What has been happening over the past three or four months? First, there has been a total relaxation of the emergency regulations, which is an absolutely vital step forward. In particular, they have been relaxed for the media, which was a bone of contention, as well as for meetings of people, for the restriction on the rights of the security forces and on curfews. Not only has there been a statement to that effect, but the journalist called Tissainayagam has been released, and I am happy to say that he has been released totally unharmed. Secondly, there is a new commission on the lessons learnt in reconciliation, which is based very much on the South African framework. In the north, there are 45 humanitarian agencies working like absolute beavers, and there is an enormous amount of good work happening there, based around the Jaffna area. I put on record my compliments to my right honourable friend in another place, Dr Fox, who has had the initiative to establish a Sri Lanka development fund to focus on the Tamil-speaking areas.

De-mining is such an important part. Colleagues may recall that after the war there were nearly 300,000 refugees who had fled from the Tamil Tigers and who had to have somewhere to live and were in camps. Those figures are now down to 60,000, but they cannot reduce any further until the mines are removed from the area around Kilinochi, which is roughly in the north-central part of the island, across to the sea. I congratulate all those who are actively removing mines. Obviously, the burden falls largely on the Sri Lankan and Indian armies, but there is additional help from Holland and the UK, with the HALO Trust, and that work is moving forward. My only wish is to put a tiny bit of pressure on my noble friend on the Front Bench, given that we are sticking at 0.7 per cent, to find the odd extra £1 million to get some more machinery in there to get those mines removed so that those remaining 60,000 can return to their homes. Despite the banners outside on Parliament Square, they are not concentration camps; people can come and go as they wish. All the NGOs are working there; in particular, the Red Cross has helped enormously with its work on hospitals and on the medical side. Schools have been set up there. Nobody wishes more than the Sri Lankans for those 60,000 to return to their homes.

So what of the future? The last British Government had four major concerns about the country—on elections, media freedom, independent judiciary and the equality of rights, including minorities. I would argue that there never has been a problem with elections in that country, nor has there been any real challenge that there has not been an independent judiciary. On the other two areas, media freedom is an important area, but that has now been addressed, or that is the universal view, with the release of the journalist that I mentioned. I have spoken to Sri Lankan friends, who were not necessarily friends of the Government, and certainly their Sunday Times is just as strong as our Sunday Times—that is perhaps the way to put it.

That leaves the equality of rights. There is more work to be done, but some encouragement is needed to go further. I put it to my friends in the coalition Government that the UK now has to think again about the punishment of suspending GSP Plus, which is an incentive to help Sri Lanka to trade with the EU. If that is to continue as a punishment, it will hit well over 1 million civilians—mainly women, and a substantial number of them Tamils. There are wider issues, and my noble friend on the Front Bench has rightly mentioned India, which wants a strong democratic Sri Lanka and must be worried by the increasing influence of China on the country, although that is mainly caused by the fact that over the past two or three years we have turned our back on it. Whatever we say or think about it, the war against the Tamil Tigers is over and the leaders are dead. They did kill two presidents, including President Gandhi, and they recruited child soldiers. When I read the International Crisis Group report, which calls for an extensive war crimes investigation, it seems illogical when, as it is said, quite rightly, the main perpetrators are the Tamil Tigers, and they are gone now, so it would be rather a one-sided investigation.

In my judgment the UK must be vigilant in helping Sri Lanka return to being a proper, normal, democratic country, which it basically is and wishes to continue to be. That means some vigilance over the diaspora here in the United Kingdom, particularly the new Global Tamil Forum and, underneath that, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam. None of us can want a Northern Ireland or Cyprus in that part of the world. India does not want that and nor do any of the other south Asia countries. It cannot be in our interests, so we have to be very vigilant. Sri Lanka has a new foreign Minister, Professor Peiris, who many of us know. We should welcome him when he comes to London and look for a means of going forward to rebuild our relationships.