Afghanistan: Quarterly Statement

Lord Richard Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

Yes; I have noted what the noble Lord has said. It was not known until today that this Statement would be repeated in the Lords. The fact that I am speaking on behalf of DfID but answering on behalf of the MoD and the FCO may have made people think that the Statement would be DfID-focused. My noble friend who is the Minister for the MoD usually gives those names, and gave them when he last answered a Question. Therefore I left a gap as noble Lords began to leave. I hoped that they would hear what I was saying, but I think that some of them did not realise. I saw noble Lords pause and stop, and when they heard what I was saying they responded. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right.

[Lord Richard (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness was somewhat overcharitable in her previous remarks, but she is not at fault for that. I want to ask a purely factual question; I do not want to make a big speech about Afghanistan. What was the percentage turnout in the election? Although the election itself is an enormous tribute to our commitment in Afghanistan, the key to whether it was a good election depends not only on the number of people who voted but upon the percentage turnout. If it was a high percentage turnout, it was quite clearly an expression of the genuine views of the majority of the population. If it was a low percentage turnout, it was not. I would be grateful for that figure.

[Baroness Northover]

Interestingly, I was trying to work that out myself when I was noting down the figures. I am not sure that I can answer the noble Lord precisely. I noted that the population of Afghanistan seems to be 30 million, and that probably 7 million turned out to vote. The noble Lord can probably do his own maths, bearing in mind the size of the young age group in the country. It is significant that 4.5 million people turned out in 2009, so that number has now gone up to 7 million. I will be very happy to get somebody who is better at maths to work that out, but I hope that it gives an indication of the upward trajectory.

Niger

Lord Richard Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord is right to flag up the problems in the area generally. Indeed, the knock-on effects from the problems in Nigeria are having an effect. So, too, are the returning mercenaries from Libya who instead of sending back remittances now need to be supported in that area. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State today spoke to the Commissioner about the situation in the area and the EU has just doubled its contribution. We are acutely aware of the difficulties of working in this area as it is very unstable.

[Lord Richard]

Can the noble Baroness give us a figure on what the British contribution has been so far and what she intends it to be in the future?

[Baroness Northover]

The United Kingdom has just contributed £2 million to this directly in response. It is worth bearing in mind that the United Kingdom is also a major contributor to the UN Central Emergency Response Fund which has just put in £7.9 million, of which £1.9 million was from the United Kingdom. The European Commission contribution, as I have just mentioned, has doubled in the past few days to £105 million and we contribute 17 per cent of that. Maybe the noble Lord would like to do some of the maths. For historic reasons, the French are the leading country in this area, and DfID staff are in France right now seeking to gear up the response.

European Union Bill

Lord Richard Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

My Lords, I will say nothing about the comments that have just been made, except to indicate that the experience this afternoon, not only in relation to the Statement but also in relation to the debate, has strengthened the argument that we should have a Speaker with greater powers than the Lord Speaker.

I am delighted to take part in this debate. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has come back. With him sitting immediately behind me, my shoulder blades tend to itch a little; I am never certain what is going to happen.

This is a bad Bill. When I read it and thought about it, what came to my mind was Churchill’s pudding: it has no theme. The Bill has two main thoughts, which unfortunately are mutually contradictory. There is no overarching theme into which we can slot the argument. The first half of the Bill is designed specifically to curb Parliament’s ability to act on its own via the so-called referendum lock. The second part seeks to emphasise the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, which by definition means that Parliament should be entitled to do what it wishes. It is difficult to see the euphony between those two principles.

In order to understand the Bill, perhaps it is worth recalling the origin of this piece of legislation. It began with the Foreign Secretary making a somewhat overblown speech to the Conservative Party conference in 2009. He said, ringingly and passionately:

“If you believe in an independent Britain, then come with me, and I will give you back your country”.

This apparently is what he is giving back. It is not often that I quote Mr Bernard Jenkin, but he said at Second Reading in the House of Commons the other day:

“I am bound to ask, as should we all, whether the scene that we observe in the Chamber today was really what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary envisaged when he came up with the brilliant idea of a referendum lock at the Conservative conference in 2009. At that time, I think what he saw looming was the imminence of the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, and the difficulty of holding a referendum on a treaty that had already been ratified. He was looking for something to throw to the crowd, and his idea got a wonderful round of applause at the conference. Little can he have imagined, however, that that simple promise would give rise to a Bill of such byzantine complexity … No one, with the exception of a few aficionados, can have imagined what a mess the future Government were getting themselves into by making such an apparently simple pledge”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/10; col. 252.]

The Bill provides for the possibility of referendums in a large number of disparate situations. The provisions of Clause 4 are comprehensive to the point of absurdity. If one then adds to it the provisions of Schedule 1, implementation of the Bill will produce a constitution in which the electorate are consulted by way of referendum to an extent as yet undreamt of even by the Swiss. Does anyone really believe that a referendum blizzard of this sort on some of the most technical issues in relation to the development of the European Union could conceivably attract public interest to the extent that the result of the referendum could be understood and expressed to be a national view? I do not think so.

The Select Committee on the Constitution, in its 13th report, set out its view on the circumstances in which referendums could be used. It believes—and I agree—that referendums should be used to determine issues of constitutional importance. It concluded that,

“if referendums are to be used, they are most appropriately used in relation to fundamental constitutional issues. We do not believe that it is possible to provide a precise definition of what constitutes a ‘fundamental constitutional issue’. Nonetheless, we would consider to fall within this definition any proposals: To abolish the Monarchy; To leave the European Union; For any of the nations of the UK to secede from the Union; To abolish either House of Parliament; To change the electoral system for the House of Commons; To adopt a written constitution; and To change the UK’s system of currency”.

That would seem to be a sensible and well ordered approach to the difficult and complex issues of holding referendums in a country where Parliament is meant to be sovereign.

One inevitably has to ask what the object of this exercise is. Who are the Government trying to legislate for? The answer is quite clearly the Eurosceptics inside the Conservative Party. If that is so, I can only say that the Government have been spectacularly unsuccessful. In the Second Reading debate on the Bill in another place, some extraordinarily strong—almost venomous—speeches were made against these proposals, and we have heard one here this afternoon. One said that it was,

“a mouse of a Bill … what we need is genuine reform of the European Union so that it delivers what it should be concentrating on … and not be passed across to shyster lawyers arguing the case in the Supreme Court”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/10; col. 225.]

Moderate language, my Lords! It is perfectly clear that the people whom the Government are attempting to placate with the Bill have no intention whatever of being placated by it. They do not like the concept of a referendum lock. What they want is a Bill presaging withdrawal from the EU.

It is worth noting, too, that in that Second Reading debate of 30 speakers, only one was a Liberal Democrat, and, if I may say so with respect to him, his speech was tentative, quiet and questioning. It was hardly a model of a speech strongly supportive of this legislation. I have to ask the Liberal Democrats—and I do so, I hope, in not too attacking a manner—how they can support this Bill. I know the views of a large number of people on those Benches and I have known them for years. I know their views on Europe. At one stage, they were so far in advance of me on European issues that I felt that I had to run in order to catch up with them to prove my European zeal. However, for them now to have their spokesman supporting a Bill in which referendums are proposed to be used not as they should be but as a weapon in order to weaken the functioning of the European Union, I find totally inexplicable.

We are now in a position with Part 1 of the Bill where the mechanisms designed to placate the sceptics are being rejected by them on the grounds that they do not go far enough, whereas most objective observers seem to take the view that the profusion of referendum issues in the Bill would, if implemented, produce a constitutional monstrosity.

The other part of the Bill is in almost direct contradiction to the first. The provisions of Clause 4, re-emphasising the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, seem totally unnecessary. Everyone seems to agree that the clause makes no difference at all to the legal position that Parliament is sovereign. The Thoburn case of 2002 has been referred to and I should like to quote what Lord Justice Laws said in his judgment. He said that,

“there is nothing in the”,

European Communities Act,

“which allows the Court of Justice, or any other institutions of the EU, to touch or qualify the conditions of Parliament’s legislative supremacy in the United Kingdom. Not because the legislature chose not to allow it; because by our law it could not allow it. That being so, the legislative and judicial institutions of the EU cannot intrude upon those conditions. The British Parliament has not the authority to authorise any such thing. Being sovereign, it cannot abandon its sovereignty”.

Lord Justice Laws was absolutely right. The law is clear and pretty well unchallengeable. Parliament is sovereign and remains so, despite our membership of the European Union.

I am bound to say that I dislike declaratory clauses. The danger is that, while they attempt to clarify the law, they complicate it. If the clause is not necessary, it should not be in the Bill. I cannot put the argument better than the way in which Vernon Bogdanor put it in his evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee. I have now reached an age at which, when I find a quotation that expresses the argument better than I can, I am prepared to read it. He said:

“Although there is therefore a basic rationale for the European Union bill, it seems to me that its provisions are inconsistent with the declaratory clause insisting that Parliament is sovereign. Indeed, the purpose of the bill is unclear to me. A government will not provide for a referendum unless it wishes to support a proposal for treaty amendment or transfer of powers. If it is opposed to such a proposal, it can use its veto, since all matters to be made subject to the referendum require unanimity. The present government has indicated that it will not support any amendment or transfer of powers in this parliament. Therefore, the purpose of the bill must be to prevent a future government from supporting such an amendment or transfer without a referendum. The bill seeks, in other words, to bind a future government. That seems to me inconsistent with the declaratory proposition that Parliament is sovereign”.

This, of course, is the fundamental problem with the Bill. Its purpose is not to legislate in accordance with the normal doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty but to do what it can to bind successor Governments. Not only is that excessive; in some ways, the Bill is positively frivolous in its demand for referendums and unnecessary in its declaratory provisions relating to parliamentary sovereignty.

I suppose that the Bill has to be given a Second Reading, but in its present form it hardly deserves to go very much further.

Afghanistan

Lord Richard Excerpts

Wednesday 28th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

I agree with everything that my noble friend has said, and of course part of our programme is designed to ensure that Afghanistan has this road-building capacity. We are also determined to ensure that the MDGs are reached. We have therefore increased the extension for Afghanistan to 2020, because it has started from an incredibly low base.

[Lord Richard]

The noble Baroness has not answered the question put by my noble friend Lord Hughes, and she does not answer it merely by reiterating the first Answer that she gave—which, again, does not answer it. Is the £200 million fresh money? Is it new money or is it a reallocation of existing funds? It is a simple question.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, the £200 million is being allocated to Afghanistan alongside the budget. We are determined to ensure that we are there to eliminate poverty.