Middle East and North Africa

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, my interests are declared in the register, most notably a recent visit to Bahrain, funded by the Bahraini Government, from which we produced the report in my hand, which I will happily make available to any Member of this House. It was written by myself and the other four members of the visiting group, from both Houses, and published by the noble Lord, Lord Noon. It is an important item, to which I want to return. Before I do, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Risby, on this debate. I know of his great interest in Syria and the tragedy there. He will, I think, know that Assad was a constituent of mine and I always feel that this is something of a reflection on me, but I am not sure how real that is.

We are debating the Middle East generally. When I have taken part in debates before, we have often talked about the region in terms of gloom and doom. There is a lot of gloom and doom and some of the speeches today have been very powerful, most notably, that of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who made an excellent speech and is a great loss to the Front Bench—it probably will not do her any good for me to say so–not least because she always mastered her brief. That is a big plus for any Minister from any political party. None of that reflects on the current holder of the post, I hasten to add.

All is not gloom and doom and I want to focus my remaining comments on two countries: Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, part of the Emirates. I was interested in Bahrain because it had an enormous flair up of trouble in 2011. Bahrain is in what many people would describe as an impossible geopolitical situation. It is joined as an island by a causeway to Saudi Arabia. Just across the gulf is Iran. A very large section of the population of Bahrain—some would argue up to 80%—are Shia. The Government, or the royal family, are largely seen as Sunni, although to the king’s great credit, he said to me when I discussed this with him that he saw himself as a Muslim and not as a Sunni or a Shia. I respect that and I know that he is trying to hold a difficult balance. I also know that since the ayatollah took over in Iran in 1979, the gulf between Sunni and Shia, which was always there, has been greatly aggravated and I fear that younger generations identify themselves much more as Sunni and Shia.

Following the riots in 2011, the Bahraini Government set up the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, with some very significant international figures running it. An independent report was produced and the recommendations made in it were all accepted by the Government, although the problem is that of translating them into reality. I think that the Government are doing a good job. If anyone doubts that, I would ask them to read my report and challenge or question it where necessary. What I felt was so positive about it was something that I have been arguing for over the past 10 to 15 years. I began to realise that the rule of law is infinitely more important to many of these countries than democracy. In the past it has been a mistake on the part of the West to think that somehow or other we can hand democracy out on a plate; we cannot. What people in these countries are often looking for, apart from jobs and a decent economy, is justice and fairness. The rule of law is what brings that about. It is important.

The Bahraini Government are focusing on that and we were all very impressed by the efforts being made both within the prisons and outside with the police and the judiciary to modernise their approach. I do not have the time to do so, but I could give the House the details of a number of things they are doing that make me feel confident that they are moving in the right direction. However, we must recognise that this has to be a slow movement. It is not easy for them because the proposals that the king and other members of the Government have made are not universally accepted throughout Bahrain. There is opposition to them and I was very sorry to see that members of al-Wefaq, the main opposition society but what we would call a political party, have actually resigned and refused to take their seats. Yet this is a country which has introduced universal suffrage for elections to the Council of Representatives for everyone over the age of 20. Obviously there are shortcomings in the structure, but I will say, as I said to members of al-Wefaq who I hope to see again shortly, that if they do not take part, they simply aggravate the position. They do not make it better. That is an important message and we in this House should be doing all we can to help the Bahraini Government with these matters. I hope that at some stage we might be able to offer a bit of help to some of these elected representatives on how to work with Select Committees and so on.

I also want to mention the role of Bahraini women, which brings me neatly on to Abu Dhabi because in both cases the role of women is rapidly improving. I met a number of women judges in Abu Dhabi and often the greater number of people attending classes at the university are women. They are becoming increasingly important to the economy and in society. The reason I got involved with Abu Dhabi was because I had a battle with the authorities over what I thought was probably an injustice which should have been resolved by the rule of law, but it was not. As a result, and to their credit, they asked what I would suggest. I said that a postgraduate course should be established in the university and that because the injustice had involved a Palestinian, there should be some outreach to Palestine. I am pleased to say that there is now a course at the University of Zayed being taken by some 26 Palestinians who are being funded in all ways by the Government of Abu Dhabi. I did that with the help of the head of mission for Palestine here and the British Foreign Office, which has been immensely helpful both here and in Palestine.

I hope that the course is continuing, although I have to say that I need to check on it again. However, I am pretty confident that it will do so. I tried to persuade the university to host an annual lecture on the rule of law, but I probably failed on that. There was one lecture but we have not had another. That is because one of the things I want to say—I will end on this note—is that if we can get people over there talking about the importance of the rule of law in order to bring about stability and allow the freedom to expand progressively, we will do a very great deal for the region without sounding too judgmental in how we speak about it.