Queen’s Speech

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I warmly echo the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on the right of the Chagossians to return to their homeland, from which they were ejected many years ago in one of the most shameful episodes in British colonial history. I also join her in welcoming the review by the Government of their Chagos policy, which I hope will lead to the removal of this blot on our reputation.

Up to this point the Government have had an excellent record on international development and I am proud, with my noble friend Lady Northover, that we hit the target of 0.7% of GNI this year, as promised in the coalition programme for government. However, as several noble Lords have said, the Bill to enshrine this commitment in law, which is also in the programme, is not in the gracious Speech and it has been reported that the Prime Minister has dropped it entirely. That cannot be because of the pressure of other legislation, so it looks as though the Tories are laying the ground for cuts in spending after 2016 if they get the opportunity. I am sure that Liberal Democrats will note this breach of the coalition agreement.

Another Bill that has disappeared from the list is the one on the standard packaging of cigarettes. This would have been consistent with the proposed European directive to strengthen the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which was supported by your Lordships’ European Union Committee and strongly backed by Cancer Research UK but which is desirable independently as a means of deterring people from taking up smoking, as the director of health and well-being at Public Health England has advised. The opposition comes from the tobacco manufacturers and from Nigel Farage, who is apparently unconcerned that almost a quarter of a million young people between the ages of 11 and 15 take up smoking each year. One assumes that the Bill was axed in the panic over UKIP’s threat to the Tory vote even before the local elections.

Mr Cameron also pandered to the supposed dislike by the electorate of everything European in September last year by again attempting to placate the UKIPs and Tory crypto UKIPs when he announced during a visit to Brazil, rather than in the Commons, that the UK would opt out of some 130 EU pre-Lisbon justice and policing measures. The coalition agreement committed us to approaching legislation in the area of criminal justice on a case-by-case basis with a view to maximising our country’s security. There is no doubt whatever that European measures on corruption, drugs, pornography, terrorism, illegal migration, cyberattacks, organised crime and racism have enhanced our security, because these offences are all borderless.

Co-operation between law enforcement authorities across Europe is essential for investigations, the exchange of evidence and information and for the recovery of the proceeds of crime. We need institutions such as Europol and Eurojust to manage the links between the 27 member states, and we need the European arrest warrant to ensure that we do not get saddled with all the criminals in Europe. It is the height of folly to jeopardise all this as it is by no means certain that we can walk back into the measures that we like the day after leaving them.

We all agree that the European Union can be improved, but we do not improve our chances of contributing to that discussion by constantly threatening to leave it. What conceivable grounds are there for thinking that other member states would agree to renegotiate membership on more favourable terms for us—a point on which I agree with my noble friend Lord Lawson? There are more likely to be demands from other European countries for the annulment of the extraordinary rights that we already enjoy in the European Union.

Unsurprisingly, the word “Europe” does not appear anywhere in the gracious Speech, but there is no mention of the Commonwealth either, as several noble Lords have remarked. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are both attending the CHOGM in Sri Lanka in November, as are the heads of all the other member states so far except Canada, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, mentioned. The Australians say that it is better to stay engaged because of the extra leverage that it gives us in the run-up to CHOGM, but how has that been illustrated? Amnesty International describes the systematic attack on dissent, including the impeachment of the chief justice without due process, her replacement by a close associate of President Rajapaksa, the blocking of BBC broadcasts, the arbitrary detention and disappearance of hundreds of government opponents and the targeting and removal of journalists such as the chief editor of the Sunday Leader, Frederica Jansz, after she had been threatened by the Defence Secretary in a foul-mouthed diatribe.

If the Commonwealth does have the influence that Australia believes it has, will the Government suggest to Sri Lanka that it issues an open invitation to the UN Special Procedures so that their advice on human rights issues can be considered before the CHOGM?

How can the Commonwealth encourage Bangladesh to uphold the fundamental values of the recently adopted charter, including democracy, human rights, the rule of law, the separation of powers, freedom of expression, good governance, tolerance, respect and understanding and the role of civil society? In Bangladesh, political objectives are pursued on the streets instead of in Parliament, most recently when Islamist mobs rioted in downtown Dhaka at the beginning of May in support of a 13-point list of demands that included the execution of atheist bloggers, a law against blasphemy and restrictions on women at work. These objectives are clearly incompatible with the Commonwealth charter, but at the same time security forces used disproportionate force against the Islamists, causing many deaths, and the Government closed down two TV channels that were reporting the mayhem.

Previously, huge demonstrations and counter- demonstrations had erupted over the death sentence passed by the war crimes tribunal against a person for offences committed in the liberation war of 1971. Those proceedings were not conducted in accordance with the rule of law and are the source of violent divisions in Bangladeshi society.

There are also gratuitous attacks on members of religious and ethnic minorities, particularly the indigenous inhabitants of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The Government have failed to implement the CHT accord of 1997, promised by Sheikh Hasina within the lifetime of this Parliament, and they no longer recognise the native inhabitants of the CHT as indigenous people. As co-chair of the international CHT Commission, I asked the Government to raise these matters in the Bangladesh universal periodic review, which has just taken place, and I would be grateful if the noble Lord who is to reply can tell me whether they did so.

Pakistan, too, in spite of the successful elections, warrants the attention of the Commonwealth. As the Commons International Development Committee says, it exhibits unstable politics, a large defence budget, historic levels of significant corruption, tax avoidance, and low levels of expenditure on education and health programmes, and its status is that of a middle-income country. Pakistan is the largest recipient of UK aid, but our aims of promoting peace and stability in the border areas, thus creating the conditions for achieving the MDGs there, have already failed. During the election, more than 100 candidates and election workers were murdered by Islamist terrorists. Over recent years there has been a crescendo of murders and massacres of religious minorities throughout Pakistan, which the international community cannot and must not ignore.

My noble friends Lord Ashdown and Lord King of Bridgwater both raised the issue of the global threat of Salafist terrorism against the Shia Muslim communities. This is nowhere more acute than in Pakistan. The movement is alternatively aimed at the creation of a universal caliphate based on a supposed model from the 7th century. Its activities will not be confined to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Mali or Syria, and we ignore it at our peril. I regret that neither in the gracious Speech nor anywhere else in government policy do we see the prospect of a coherent strategy to combat this ideology.