Commonwealth

Lord St John of Bletso Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord St John of Bletso (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, for introducing this topical debate following the CHOGM in Kigali last week. The noble Lord has played a pivotal role in promoting the role of the Commonwealth as well as the challenges that it faces. As my noble friend Lord Bilimoria mentioned, the Commonwealth represents 2.5 billion people, of whom 60% are under the age of 29.

At the outset, I congratulate the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, on her re-election as Commonwealth Secretary-General and express my regret that our Government chose to oppose her re-election. In her manifesto for her second term, she highlighted the need to deliver a smart, connected, digital Commonwealth that can unleash the talents of the population as well as close the Commonwealth digital gap in health, education and trade, building the digital infrastructure to boost connectivity between Commonwealth countries. It is to this that I want to devote my remarks in my short time, as well as the need to promote more education on the impact of climate change within the Commonwealth and what its members can do to mitigate it.

As technology continues to build our digital economies and value continues to move into the development of digital systems, promoting technological standardisation and regulatory harmonisation that fit the digital world is essential in enabling a collective and productive global economy, particularly among Commonwealth members. We must look at the innovators who are looking at architecting both financial systems and decentralised systems of co-ordination to unlock new value networks and optimise the very fabric of society and common nations. We are witnessing a new renaissance in how we organise people, societies, systems of government, supply chains and systems of value creation and distribution.

Compliance data networks can facilitate greater national security, reduce the cost of cross-border co-ordination and system co-ordination, and provide a platform for the Commonwealth to unite its members and citizens. I have for many years advocated and promoted digital ID, which helps vulnerable populations in the developing world to gain access to global services and provides aid and resources to assist with education and technology capabilities.

To fight crime, reduce corruption and enable more privacy, we must look to how the Commonwealth can build universal policies and digital regulations to streamline economic co-operation and growth globally. Embracing new technologies such as blockchain can assist in creating more transparency and accountability, as well as enforcement. In this regard, I warmly support the Commonwealth Connectivity Agenda to boost the digitisation of economies and potentially achieve the $2 trillion target in intra-Commonwealth trade by 2030. I join in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Marland, on his able chairmanship of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, as well as the business forum.

Finally, though much was achieved last year at COP 26, much more needs to be done now to follow up on the initiatives and resolutions. As the Commonwealth represents one-third of the population of the world, I hope that more initiatives can be taken to educate the youth on the impact of climate change and what can be done to mitigate it. We are sadly seeing an increasing frequency of climate change catastrophes which are invariably impacting on the poorest people in the world. Apart from education, what can be done to incentivise financial tools such as green bonds? Time precludes me from elaborating on this subject. Long live the Commonwealth. I look forward to the answers of the Minister.