Arab Partnership Initiative

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

A number of countries have contributed but the partnership funds are mostly administered through the so-called G8 Deauville partnership and the European Neighbourhood Policy. The countries co-operating in this include Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. So there is a good support cadre working alongside us and our colleagues in promoting these aims.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, the programme is certainly to be welcomed and we share the Minister’s ambition that it should help strengthen the rule of law, democratic practice, institution building and the development of think tanks. We welcome all of that. However, can the Minister tell the House what specific targets the Government are setting and how they will measure the outcomes that will result from the expenditure of these significant sums? I suspect that the House would regard this programme as sufficiently important to wish to see a timely—not necessarily frequent, but periodic—report on progress on those specifics.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

We will certainly try. It is not all that easy to pin down and specify the outcomes as time goes by. I know that the noble Lord will be the first to appreciate that these developments, particularly in the field of democracy, are owned by the countries themselves. We are not in a position to score specific targets and to tell them to get to this point or that point. That is not at all the language in which we conduct our affairs. Our respect is for these countries and for their efforts to struggle forward to better and more settled democratic structures. It will not be easy for any of them, but we will give our support and try to score the outcomes and results that we want.