Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for securing this debate. In introducing it he spelled out the remarkable advantages of the Commonwealth for Britain. The CHOGM in Malta was by any standards a success. Thankfully it has succeeded in re-energising the Commonwealth and instilling a stronger sense of purpose. Equally successful were the meetings of the Business Forum, the People’s Forum, the Youth Forum, and the first ever Women’s Forum—and above all, as we have heard, the Commonwealth has elected its first ever female Secretary-General, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. I send her my warmest congratulations and I wish her well in this very important and challenging role.

I am pleased that the next CHOGM will be held in the UK. It will be an opportunity to build on the success of the 2015 Malta CHOGM, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and it will be our opportunity to provide leadership. This success must be built upon and the momentum for reform kept up. No doubt it will be the intergovernmental Commonwealth which will be the driver for change, but the non-governmental Commonwealth is a crucial partner if the Commonwealth is to become an effective force for good.

The professional, social, cultural and personal connections of peoples are the Commonwealth’s enduring features because they are embedded in people’s hearts, identities, experiences and memories. They are now vastly strengthened by the information revolution and modern communications. Commonwealth Governments and the official Commonwealth machinery must now catch up with the real network of relationships. The Commonwealth Secretariat must become less top-down.

Two changes are needed to do that. In 2013, in a debate in this House, I suggested that the Commonwealth Secretariat should aim to have three regional offices—in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean—with the Secretary-General retaining the leadership and overall responsibility for implementing decisions by Commonwealth Heads of Government and acting in accordance with the Commonwealth charter. These centres would channel impetus and initiative from the regions and would be guided and supported by the secretariat.

These regional offices would not only increase visibility but would help to build strong, purposeful partnerships and links with the non-governmental Commonwealth. At present, the relationship with non-governmental sectors is far from satisfactory. Steps need to be taken to bring more closely together the significant and representative Commonwealth organisations in partnership with the secretariat. The Commonwealth Secretariat would be better supported and more effective if the major non-governmental bodies representing civil society, professions and interests were engaged in a routine, constant dialogue and exchange, and worked together to tackle the challenges facing them in the 21st century. It is about a different way of working to maximise impact, which is why I was very pleased that the Prime Minister mentioned civil society, youth and education bodies when committing £1 million each year for five years to counter extremism. Will the Minister assure the House that the Government will continue to encourage the secretariat to involve the non-governmental sector more meaningfully and urge reforms to make the secretariat less top-down and more inclusive?

Finally, does the Minister agree that it is in Britain’s national interest to be fully engaged with both the Commonwealth and the European Union, and that it is not a binary choice as suggested by some? It was significant that when talking about migration, which is now a global problem, Heads of Government noted the outcomes of the Valletta summit on migration.