Afghanistan
Lord Suri Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the current situation of the Taliban taking control of Afghanistan. The Taliban have been fighting in Afghanistan for many centuries. This week, they walked into Kabul and other provincial areas to claim them as their territory. The Taliban have been emboldened by this, which could lead to the imposition of their ideology, especially denying girls and women access to education and careers.
Such difficulties are also faced by non-Afghani residents. At one time, 500,000 Sikhs were living and working in Afghanistan, but that population is now considerably reduced to 3,000. Sikhs were subjected to discrimination and harassment. They were forced to wear yellow scarfs or aprons so that they could be readily identified as Sikhs. They were prohibited from fulfilling their religious ritual of cremation. To this day, it is forbidden to carry out a cremation; I understand that a deceased person was sent to Pakistan for cremation. During the civil war in the 1990s, several gurdwaras—Sikh temples—were destroyed. President Ghani sometimes claimed that Sikhs and Hindus were an integral part of Afghanistan. I urge our Government to engage with the nations of the world to seek a path where women—girls in particular—and minorities are not subjected to the hostilities previously inflicted by the Taliban.
Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration
Lord Suri Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, we stand at a crossroads, and the choice we now make as people and as parliamentarians is a seismic one. The Prime Minister has negotiated the withdrawal agreement. It is a flawed deal.
As a Conservative and a Unionist, the Northern Irish backstop is a particularly uncomfortable compromise, but a necessary one none the less. As we heard from the Attorney-General in the other place very recently, there is no reason for it to be used unless we fall short of our obligations and fail to take proper care. There are enormous costs to the EU in triggering the backstop too, as they do not have a unilateral right of exit either, despite the backstop granting an additional set of access rights to the single market without membership.
No deal is ever perfect, as I have been reminded in business and in life, and this deal is no exception. But it does represent the sole existing deal that the EU will agree to for a withdrawal, and for a future framework.
The fact is that Parliament cannot take any of the other routes sketched out by continuity remainers in the press, and in this and the other place. The fantasy of a second referendum would take months for consultation on the questions and the format, and would take further months in the primary legislation required to implement it. It would divide this country all over again, and would most likely come to the same result as the first referendum. We must not underestimate the rage and anger that would be felt outside of here and London were we to force the people to the polls again.
As far as the majority is concerned, we were given our orders, and it is our job to implement them. The majority was narrow, true, but this is not a 100% Brexit. There are no World Trade Organization terms, no pulling up the drawbridge, no clean breaks. This is an orderly, negotiated Brexit. This withdrawal agreement delivers on the number one priority as expressed by voters at the referendum, namely immigration. We would regain the right to control free movement, and to limit and discriminate based on skills, education and demand for labour. We also maintain a close alignment on security and defence matters, which is crucial in a world of great threats and rising opponents.
One idea which seems to have picked up steam in the febrile atmosphere of the last few weeks is that of some sort of temporary EEA membership. I will deal with this bluntly. The immigration controls specified in the EEA agreement are so weak, and have so rarely been used, that freedom of movement would continue indefinitely. This will not be acceptable to leave voters. Even the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, recognises the need for controls and limits on free movement. I share with him the view that the move from free movement of labour to free movement of people was a huge error, but it is a fantasy to imagine that this shift can be reversed by one state when majorities in all other states are in favour.
It is right that we are leaving. I speak as a former remainer when I say that this process has shown the EU to be inflexible and occasionally capricious. The lack of democratic control over some of the Commission staff is at turns astounding and worrying. We have a great future outside the EU, but we must first settle our bar bill and divide up the assets. I will be voting in favour of accepting the withdrawal agreement.
Outcome of the European Union Referendum
Lord Suri Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, it has happened: Project Fear, for which my side was mocked and sneered at, has become Project Fact. The pound has plunged, with terrible short-term consequences for businesses which import large quantities of stock. The FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 both took hard knocks. The vast overseas operations of the former have brought it back up but the FTSE 250, far more indicative of our economy, is still being battered by the markets. However, I will not dwell on this. I fully accept that the will of the people is sovereign, and the power that this and the other place have is entirely sourced from them. There can be no talk of a second referendum or of overturning the result. That would be a democratic outrage and poison British public life for generations. The people have spoken and it is up to us as lawmakers to implement their decisions. That said, there are important choices to make ahead.
We will need to renegotiate our position not just with Europe but with the world. We are now free to make trade deals and should move quickly to get into contact with our Anglosphere colleagues and the Commonwealth, so that we can make up more of our trade with countries that are proving to be channels of global growth. Having been in the EU so long, and not in control of our trade policy, our own departments responsible for trade have been run down. We will need to take on far more trade negotiators, up from the 40-odd that we currently have. A sensible idea would be to have the trade department set up a training scheme in conjunction with friendly countries, so that we can get negotiators learning the skills from those with experience.
I noted recently that yields on our 10-year gilts have fallen under 1%. Now is not the time to be making swingeing cuts to the trade department and Foreign Office, which will be crucial to our future success. I encourage the next Prime Minister to rethink these savings and recognise that investment in diplomacy yields significant economic rewards, not just political capital. Furthermore, we will need to rethink our European policy. The people voted to leave the EU but they did not vote for a recession. If we were to leave the single market, which was pushed for by the late Member for Finchley, we would do tremendous damage to our economy. I have heard numerous friends in this place say that the single market is an anachronism, shrinking and burdensome. This may be right but an essential fact remains: the single market is the only existing free-trade bloc built for the demands of the British economy and designed to cover high-value service industries. Without financial passporting, the City of London would suffer huge movements of banks from the UK to those jurisdictions with access. Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris are already making overtures to banks domiciled here.
Since we have only two years to negotiate a new deal before our time expires under Article 50, it makes sense to go through a stop-gap while we negotiate a more comprehensive settlement. The EEA is off the shelf and can be an effective placeholder. We would have uninhibited access to the single market and regain control over our own agricultural, fishing and trade policies.
I will make one final point. Now is not the time to turn away from the world. Global challenges face us which can be faced down only by governmental co-operation. In a way, I am glad that we have left the EU. The new European integration will be characterised by more governmental co-operation. The age of integration, meaning ceding powers and sovereignty to Brussels, is over. We must be a part of that change and work with our European allies for a better future for all our citizens.
House of Lords: Domestic Committees
Lord Suri Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, I was pleased to hear the opening speech from the Leader and speeches from other noble Lords. This is an interesting report and raises a large number of salient points. One of the most key is point 44 on communication. The committee is right to diagnose poor communication between the domestic committees and the House. As a result, I and other noble Lords are sometimes not made aware of the issues under consideration until well after the report is published and sent to the House to seek approval for publication. It goes without saying that this means that we cannot lend our voices and expertise to the reports while they are being written. That undermines confidence in the domestic committees and sucks a great deal of accumulated wisdom out of the final product.
The report endorses,
“a need for significant improvement in communication between domestic committees and the House”.
That is easily enough done. Even our most senior Members have phones in their pockets that can get email, or, failing that, computers that they can get email on at home. What is so hard about circulating a monthly email with all the issues under consideration by the domestic committees, so that we might glance at our screens and have a look? It is a simple enough solution and I cannot see why it would not work.
Another key point raised was on the appointment process. The current system works on a party-representation basis. This is important to the functions of investigative Select Committees, but party proportionality is less critical on the domestic committees. We all have a shared interest in keeping this House working as effectively as possible. Any attempt to manipulate the rules for political gain would be rapidly neutered by the other place, which would not mind curtailing the powers of this place further if given a good reason. Party representation is not a good idea. We need senior Peers and experts taking the reins in the committees, not people picked by the Whips. With the removal of this restriction should come greater scrutiny. At present there are no clearly defined lines of inquiry when one wants to raise a point or contest an assertion. When you want to raise a certain issue, it is rare to find an accountable committee member. Members ought to be assigned priorities so that we can use them as points of reference when we need to ask questions and get answers.
Furthermore, it is not unreasonable to expect Members to be able to question chairs and other reports when those reports come out. The Dispatch Boxes are reserved for Ministers, so we cannot use those. However, an informal drop-in session in which to raise concerns post publication could be a useful innovation.
One area in which the report falls short is on progress in lowering the number of committees. It clearly states that there are too many committees and, to be fair, it recommends downgrading the Works of Art Committee to an advisory panel. However, it also recommends the creation of two new committees, springing up like a hydra’s heads. The answer to too much bureaucracy is to reduce it, not increase it and create three new posts.
Finally, this report recommends a new senior committee, chaired by the Lord Speaker. This committee will have certain powers, and I submit another now. If committee members turn up to less than 30% of their domestic committee meetings, then the senior committee should have the power to strike them off and ask for a replacement. There can be no room for half-hearted effort if we want the governance of this House to run smoothly into what are potentially turbulent times.