Chilcot Inquiry

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Trimble; he may not be, but I am. Will the Minister reassure the House that the Government understand that the delays in publishing Chilcot—whether justified or not—are eroding public confidence in the report and in the inquiry process itself? Even allowing for the fact that this is an independent report, is there really nothing that the Government can do to impart some urgency and immediacy to this matter?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have no doubt that the members of the inquiry are fully aware of the urgency. If I had been advising them, I would have put a limit on the amount of time to be taken to respond to these Maxwellisation letters. That is one of the issues that remains. But certainly one of the lessons learnt will be that we need to ensure that inquiries do not take as long as a number of inquiries—not just this one—have taken in recent years.

Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there will be an associated event for representatives of civil society at the London conference, and another associated event for private sector investors. We are very much aware of how much effort we need to make to strengthen relatively weak civil society organisations in Afghanistan.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, 450 British soldiers dead; thousands of Afghans lying alongside them; probably £100 billion overall spent on this campaign; a “short war” that lasted 13 years, during which we have written the textbook on how not to conduct these kinds of operations—surely my noble friend will agree that the case is made for a proper inquiry into the conduct of the Afghan war and the lessons we should learn from it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it may well be the case that we need a proper inquiry, although I am not sure that we need one of the length of the Chilcot inquiry.

Syria: Refugees

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have already announced that the Government are giving specific aid to the Jordanians to support a number of activities. We are well aware that drinking water is a particular problem. As the noble Lord rightly points out, a number of refugees in Lebanon and Turkey, as well as in Jordan, are not in refugee camps but have been taken in by local families. That is a good thing in many ways but it does of course increase the strain on local communities.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the president of UNICEF UK and in that capacity I thank the Government for their generosity, not just to UNICEF but also to many other charities in helping with the terrible suffering of children, who of course suffer most in these circumstances. The last case of polio in Syria was 14 years ago, in 1999, but this terrible disease is now taking hold, especially among the children of the refugee population. In past conflicts it has been possible to arrange agreements for immunisation between the warring parties. I wonder whether the Government have pursued this matter with both the Syrian Government, who seem perfectly prepared to do this, and the rebels. Are the Government pursuing this opportunity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as my noble friend will be aware, alongside the United Nations Security Council resolution on chemical weapons there was a United Nations Security Council presidential statement on humanitarian access. That has not yet been fully accepted by the Syrian regime. There are many difficulties for humanitarian agencies and their staff in getting visas to enter the country and, as he rightly said, there are also difficulties in some of the rebel-held areas.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Asking us to provide a full sketch of a plan B at 23.00 on a Thursday night is not possible. I am of course not privy to what the Americans may or may not be planning. We all take what is being said on the opposition Benches under consideration, but at the moment we cannot predict what will happen over the next few days.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

My Lords, I have no wish to make life more difficult for the Government when they are already in a rather difficult position, but I really do think that, given the wisdom we have heard from both the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition and from other speakers, it might be worth while for this House to take a 10-minute break. If there is no news to deliver, that is fine, but a 10-minute break is a sacrifice we could make to our sleep if it would give us some clarification on what should come next. I find it quite difficult to believe that we cannot find some news to deliver to the House in that time.

House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon

Friday 29th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, again, we do not wish to go too far into the other Bill. We are all conscious, if we are critical, that of those of us who turn up regularly, many of us work extremely hard but not all of us work as hard as the others. That will very likely be the same in an elected House, but we hope that the level of hard work will be even broader than now.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon]

I apologise to my noble friend for intervening, but since I seem to have uncharacteristically ruffled the feathers of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I suppose that I ought to put matters on the record. I do not insult the work done by Members of this House. The work that noble Lords do is partial, since it is a revising Chamber, but noble Lords do it exceedingly well. I wish that noble Lords also had the power to hold the Executive to account more effectively, since the place at the other end does not do so. That we do not do so effectively—that is not noble Lords’ fault but the fault of the institution. I do not in any way cast any aspersions on the integrity or hard work of Members of this House. What I cast aspersions on is the way in which we get here.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

I am very glad that I let the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, speak first, because I am very pleased to hear his admission that this is a revising Chamber and not one that makes the law, as the Deputy Prime Minister has tried to claim.

Will the Minister address the point again about constituency work? What is there to stop elected Members of this House choosing to do constituency work? The fact that the Government would rather they did not do it is neither here nor there. When they are elected, it will be up to them to decide whether or not they do that work. It is very unlikely that I would ever be one, but if I were ever to be an elected Member of this House, I would be tempted to cherry pick the constituency work to choose those high-profile cases that might have a real impact, thereby undermining the position of the constituency MP. The Minister looks puzzled, but I assure him that this subject was discussed over and over again on the Joint Committee of both Houses when we looked at the Bill. It is a matter of real worry to colleagues at the other end of this building, and I would be very grateful if he could answer. What is to stop elected Members of this House doing constituency work?