Commonwealth

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I am honoured to follow in the steps of the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and also of my noble friend Lord Howell, who lead on these matters.

I am a by-product of the Commonwealth. I was brought up in Canada; my family were Australian-Scots; my great-uncle was Stafford Cripps and then Ghana came into it. I feel rather homeless. While I was pro the EU, I am now rather anti the EU and becoming more and more pro the Commonwealth.

In my office I have a large map, a chart, which I look at every day. Most of it is covered in red and it shows the position of His Majesty’s ships at sea and in harbour on the date of my birth. I will not say when that was. That chart reminds me that the Empire, if I may dare call it that, was based upon trade and created added value. I looked at the chart this morning and saw that in those days we were out there not for political reasons but to buy. We took 60% of the tea crop of India; 30% of the tea crop of Ceylon; 27% of the Caribbean coffee production; 42% of Africa’s; 32% of New Zealand’s butter and 60% of its cheese. It went on and on, with wheat, flax, aluminium, zinc, copper and lead from Australia. All these things were creating added value, and that was trade.

As development in the economies grew, so people went out to them to find work. My Scottish family had the opportunity to ship masses of people out to Australia, but they had no back cargo. Then they found that there was meat. British technology developed the chilling machinery so that lamb and other meat could come back from Australia. To me, the Commonwealth should be more about trade and less about politics. But when looking at the world I conclude irrevocably, partly from being a navigator and recognising that Greenwich is the centre of the earth, that the United Kingdom is now in effect the centre of the earth in terms of politics, trade, intellectual property and people.

Having been brought up in Canada, I have wondered whether I am a Commonwealth citizen. If I am a member of the Commonwealth, why can I not have a little tampon or stamp for my passport saying, “Commonwealth citizen”? In the early days of immigration and migration, people wondered why we could not give precedence to people who were from the Commonwealth nations, but as time moves on, I realise that politics comes into this. For example, we seem to be a bit worried about the Gambia at the moment.

In my days in the banking world, I thought it would be a good idea to look at all countries, not just the Commonwealth countries which seemed to have run out of money. I wanted to get back as much money as possible from Claude Cheysson at the Commission, who was spending it on French projects around the world rather than on British ones. I went on a trip. My noble friend Lord Moynihan will recall that we had a great mentor in the person of Lord Jellicoe. I went to west Africa with Lord Jellicoe and the Duke of Kent to visit the French territories and I found myself being adopted by Société Commerciale de l’Ouest Africain. The society asked me to help it in Senegal, saying that there was a problem with the British territory over on the other side of the water. I went on holiday to Senegal with my wife and small son because people are kind to children when you are travelling abroad and not being too commercial. Later, back at my bank, I looked into the possibility of creating a “Senegambia”. That was because the Frenchman I met wore a rather smart khaki bomber jacket-type uniform, while the other one was dressed in what was in effect British gear. I use that just as an aside, but the idea behind it is that we should co-operate with France as well.