The UK’s Relationship with the Pacific Alliance (International Relations Committee Report)

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to join and engage in this debate, and to have the opportunity to learn from the considerable experience and expertise that your Lordships bring to it.

I have relatively little experience of the region. I have, however, had the opportunity to visit Mexico on a number of occasions, most recently when I was part of an election observation delegation that saw Andrés Manuel López Obrador elected. I was therefore interested in the phrase in the report that said that countries in the region remain

“vulnerable to political swings at future elections”.

I merely observe that either the maintenance in power of a party or a change to a different party in power, as has just happened in the US, is what we tend to think of as democracy, so “vulnerable” seems a slightly odd word to me.

I will make a couple of observations about Colombia, which I have had visited a number of times with British and other parliamentarians and trade unionists. The reason for those visits was to engage with human rights defenders who have come under considerable attack and to meet trade unionists, many of whom have been imprisoned under the catch-all legislation of rebellion. When the report talks of the UK having

“a set of shared values, whether on democracy, or the way we want to see the international system working, based on rules”,

I am pleased that the recommendations and conclusions contain the following:

“The UK should also continue in its bilateral engagement to support and help to strengthen the rule of law in these countries.”


Specifically, I was recently pleased that the Minister was able to engage with some of these issues in response to a Question. I will add to the large number of questions already put to him today. As the penholder for Colombia at the UN, the UK has a particular responsibility to play an active role in ensuring that the Colombian Government uphold their commitment to end violence against human rights defenders and trade unionists. When the Minister spoke of these matters in response to the Question, the answers were very fulsome, but I want to take the opportunity provided by this debate to ask the Minister for an update on the UK’s recent work as the penholder for Colombia and to say what assessment Her Majesty’s Government have made of recent levels of violence there.