United Nations World Humanitarian Summit

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords—

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Will the Minster consider the United Nations duty to protect, and remind herself that at times non-intervention can cost far more lives than intervention?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, we have to do what the UK Government are doing, which is working very closely with our partners, making sure that we are there on the ground when we are needed and providing support where we cannot be present. Generally, I think that we are doing exactly what has been asked of us and we should be proud of the commitment that the UK Government have made.

Ebola

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The UK is supporting the training of many local workers. That is key, not only in Sierra Leone but in the other countries. UNMEER, which is the United Nations organisation set up to co-ordinate efforts across all the countries, including ones which are not affected at the moment, will have to be extremely vigilant. It is acutely aware of the need to make sure that health workers are in place in those countries.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, has the Minister seen the report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Intergovernmental Organisations in 2008 and the Government’s response in Command Paper 7475 dealing with infectious diseases and the threat to the world? Two of its recommendations dealt with the inability of the WHO to have the proper structure necessary—mainly because of some of the supporting countries—and with the all important issue of developing health services within those countries. If she has not seen that report and the Command Paper issued by the Government, will she look at it because many of its recommendations are still relevant and not all of them have been carried out?

[Baroness Northover]

There was indeed a report and it had very sensible recommendations. When we finally get past this crisis, which I hope will be relatively soon—but who knows?—it is extremely likely that many lessons will be learnt as to how the international community and nations play their part in dealing with crises like this. We have many lessons to learn.

Afghanistan: Quarterly Statement

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

DfID remains very committed in terms of its financial contribution, which is based on the fact that we believe that we can deliver that. A question similar to that was put to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in the other place, and she was very reassuring about what we can do. She is keeping a very close eye on exactly what we can do to ensure that DfID staff are not, for example, office-based back in the capital but actually able to monitor projects as the noble Lord seeks.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for spelling out the advances that have been made in Afghanistan because, sadly, outside this House there is still a tendency to see it as a failed operation. It is important that we change that perception. People think back to what Afghanistan was like when it was a base for al-Qaeda. If they think of the dangers to not just Britain but the wider world and of the enormous advances that have been made in Afghanistan, thereby giving those people a chance to recover from 30 years of war and revolution which ripped the country apart, they will see that we have made enormous progress while recognising the sacrifice that so many people have made.

Foreign Affairs: Global Role, Emerging Powers and New Markets

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

In endorsing the comments about the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, to this House, I would simply add that he is a great loss to the Government’s Front Bench. I also thank him for the way that he introduced the debate. However, following his description of the “repositioning”, as he called it, of the world, I have had to reposition my speech very slightly and adjust it accordingly. The essence of what he said is that whereas we used to live in a unipolar world, and prior to that a bipolar world, we now live in a multipolar world—and that will last for a long time. He linked that to the emerging powers and new markets. It is about that issue that I want to say a few words.

When the phrase “British Empire” is used—it has been used only a couple of times today—we then talk, quite rightly and with some pride, about the Commonwealth. However, I sometimes think that the phrase “British Commonwealth” holds up a distorting mirror to Britain’s past. It was of course an empire but it was actually the world’s first power that, because of the industrial revolution, had a global reach. It is that which makes the difference. It was that global reach that resulted in the English language being the world’s premier language. It is that, together with a whole range of other things—including education, rule of law and the BBC; I could name them all—that forms the basis of our influence today. Notwithstanding the insightful comments of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, about the nature of soft power and how it trips over into hard power, we have to build on what we have here, because it is important.

I want to talk about how we link up these things in relation to the “new markets”, which is the other phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, used in introducing this debate. It is an area in which I have recent personal experience. I had great help from the noble Lord when he was a Minister, and I continue to get such help. I hope that I will continue to get it, not only from his successor in the department but from the Minister who will answer this debate, because it relates to this issue. I felt some time ago that Britain had an enormous contribution to make in terms of soft power. It was not just the BBC, education and so on; it was also that this country is seen as important in terms of the rule of law and good governance.

I must declare an interest because I set up the Good Governance Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation—which is just as well because it does not look like it will make a profit at any time soon—which is designed to use our experience and knowledge with emerging countries, which is the other issue that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, put in the title of his debate. As the result of an argument that I had with the authorities in Abu Dhabi about the treatment of a Palestinian family in 2010, I said to those authorities, “If you do not do something about the rule of law you will have big problems”. To my surprise and, I must say, my pleasure, they asked whether we could help in some way. The result, as some noble Lords know—the noble Lord, Lord Howell, certainly knows of my work there—is probably the first postgraduate course of law at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. I was over there the other weekend and was introduced to probably the first two female judges in the Middle East. I was suitably impressed by their confidence, ability and training. I have yet to check whether any other Middle Eastern country has a female judge, but I have not heard of any yet.

In May this year I gave the first annual Sheikh Zayed Memorial Lecture on the rule of law. Initially I proposed setting up the annual lectures to promote the idea of the rule of law but I was then also asked to give the lecture, and I did. We hope that, as a result, the late Lord Bingham’s book on the rule of law will be published in Arabic. It is in this sort of area where we are able to do far more. I have now talked to about half a dozen other countries about this sort of approach.

The Minister may know—the noble Lord, Lord Howell, certainly knows, because he has been helpful on this—of the work that I am currently doing with Burma, which is sometimes known as Myanmar. There is an argument within Burma as to which name to use, but I will use Burma for the moment. We are now talking to Burma about similar options on the rule of law. The opportunities are therefore great. We in this House underestimate our strength which we can use in conjunction with such efforts. I am currently trying to arrange for people with suitable experience to go to Burma to help form good governance because, too often, that country receives visits from people from all over the world who will look at what the Burmese need and then go back to their own country and talk to other people there. We need a more in-depth and continuing involvement.

We have in this House people who have run the Civil Service, others who know about the relationship between a Secretary of State for Defence and the armed forces and police force, and, above all, people who know about the rule of law. We have many ex-Lord Chancellors in this House and, indeed, more lawyers than I can count. I hasten to add that I am not a lawyer. However, the depth of the contribution that we can make is far greater than we envisage, and we should have a structure to do it. That is what I am trying to do, particularly in Burma. Zayed University in Abu Dhabi is already involving us in more areas, and I want to continue and expand that process. We rightly talk of our use of soft power, but many of the emerging nations mentioned in the title of the debate also represent a vast opportunity as new markets—because the new market is for good governance. However you dress it up, good governance is a very wide phrase. It is not just the law or the relationship between the armed forces and a government; it is also education, health and a host of other areas where people are willing to learn from what we have done. It is not a case, nor should it be a case, of us telling them what to do. It is a matter of us working with them to deliver that change. I hope the Minister will address that in his comments.

Open Public Services White Paper

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

I thank my noble friend for his warm welcome for the Statement and I absolutely agree that it is about decentralisation and being able to give more and more control over to local people and local authorities, so that we can actually get the sorts of services that local people need in those local areas. There is no point in trying to micromanage local areas when one does not have the special needs of those local areas within one’s own way of delivering. My noble friend is absolutely right that it is really important that the decision-makers are part of the communities that are being served.

Personalised budgets, which are something that I know about, are one very good way of being able to deliver. In her response to the Statement, the noble Baroness talked about personalised budgets. Not enough people are signed up to them; we want to deliver, we are building upon what the previous Government were doing, but, of course, it takes time to roll these things out and make people aware. It is about an awareness campaign as well to make people aware of what is available to them so that they will make informed choices.

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I do not have a problem with the direction of travel that the noble Baroness is mapping out; indeed, as she said, it builds on what the previous Government were doing, and more acknowledgement of that might make it easier to reach agreement on some of these areas. The problem that the Government are not addressing—as far as I can see, although I will need to look at the White Paper—is the detail of it. I am very much in favour of co-opting mutuals, but I know from personal experience that, for example, setting up a housing co-op and making it work is very difficult and, frankly, it fails more often than not. That has been tried on many occasions.

On more personalised and individual budgets, again I am very much in favour of that. I have argued for children to have budgets enabling their parents to give them extra lessons in whatever they chose—music, or whatever—but that runs into the problem that every now and then a parent wants something which is not considered to be in the interests of the child. To take what is perhaps an extreme example, a parent might say, “I do not wish my child to be in a science lesson which teaches Darwinism; I want to take them out and give them lessons in creationism”. We will run into that problem, so we have to have managerial structures which decide how the money can be used, in what format and who says yes or no. It is not just an issue of money; it is an issue of management structures which allow us to do what I think most of us would like to do, which is to devolve downwards.

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Lord raises a number of interesting points. I did say that we are building on what the previous Government were doing. We are trying to make it a build-on that will be a bit more directed and focused on what the outcomes are going to be. I think that we are still in that mode of debating. It is important that we debate and discuss the best possible ways of delivering. These conversations do not stop just because a paper is produced. Consultation is an ongoing process, but it is also very important that we do not become so blinkered that we decide that the White Paper is not going to deliver anything. The White Paper is already able to deliver a lot, because we are building on what was already in place.

The structures will, of course, have areas that we will need to fine-tune and to look at how things can be made much tighter, but the Government are making sure that we have continuity plans and safety nets in place so that we can ensure that, when people make those choices, they are not left without support mechanisms. That is why we want to encourage champions to come forward through organisations such as Which? or HealthWatch and also make sure that there are ombudsmen for each sector, so that everyone knows that there is a line of recourse if they face difficulties.