Israel: DfID Secretary of State Meetings
Debate between Lord Robertson of Port Ellen and Lord Bates(7 years ago)
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Lord Bates
This case has highlighted some ambiguity in the operations in travelling overseas for Ministers. The benefit that will come from this is greater clarity on what those rules and procedures should be. Clearly, we are entering a very important stage in the UK’s global relations. We want to make sure we are as joined up as possible, working together as a team and leveraging all our personal contacts around the world for the UK national interest. Lessons will be learned, not least by the Secretary of State.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
We have the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs telling a Select Committee of the House something that was not correct, and now we have another Secretary of State—for International Development—telling the press and the world that she had told the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in advance of her visit, then saying that she did not do it. What do you have to do in this Government to get sacked?
Lord Bates
The point the noble Lord raises is one of procedure, in terms of how these meetings take place. The noble Lord was a very senior Cabinet Minister for many years and has held many senior positions; he will know that one of the great benefits he gained from that time is personal contacts and friendships around the world that occasionally, even on unofficial visits, it is possible to have. That is for the good of the country. Therefore, using those contacts is something the Secretary of State has done; she has said that she is sorry for that, that she did not do it in the right way and that in future she, and all other Ministers, will behave differently as the changes to the ministerial code come into play.
Counterterrorism Policy: Syria and Iraq
Debate between Lord Robertson of Port Ellen and Lord Bates(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that there is something absurd about the security services being blamed in any way for what has happened where people may or may not have gone to Syria to fight for ISIL? Instead of criticising the security services, which have a huge job not only in detecting or identifying people who might be involved in this kind of terrorism but all other kinds of terrorism at the moment, we should be giving full support to them. Is it not completely unrealistic to think that everybody who is followed or identified by the security services should somehow be locked up? There is no prison system yet invented that would be capable of identifying and imprisoning all those who might conceivably in the future be guilty of some terrorist act.
Lord Bates
The noble Lord is absolutely right that when it comes to this, we should pay tribute to the security services for the immense work which they have done. Since 2010, 750 people have been arrested for terrorist-related offences, 210 have been charged and 140 have been successfully prosecuted. It is in the nature of these things that we focus on the one or two who got away rather than the many that the security services have detected.