Piracy

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

On the first point, the noble Lord is not quite correct; the figures that we have show that there were 47 hijacks in 2009 and 41 in 2010. In the first six months of this year the number was down to 18 and the number of unsuccessful attacks has also dropped very dramatically, so the total number of attacks so far this year is way down on last year. There is no room for complacency there at all because it is still a very ugly situation, as the noble Lord indicates, but a number of measures are being taken on land in building the prisons to deal with convicted pirates and on the high seas through unprecedented co-ordination between all the navies of countries such as the United States, Russia, all the NATO countries, Japan and China—a degree of co-ordination never before seen among navies. This is having the effect of reducing, not increasing, the incidence of piracy, but we still have a long way to go.

[Lord Chidgey]

Is my noble friend aware that the African Union has stated that the United Nations is actively considering an air and sea blockade of Somalia in an attempt to prevent infiltration of insurgents into the Horn of Africa and to meet the crippling piracy challenge? Has such a blockade been agreed? If so, when might it come into play, and what part might the United Kingdom play in it?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend is perfectly correct that the African Union has proposed an air and sea blockade of Somalia, and its idea is to blockade ports such as Kismayo to put pressure on al-Shabaab logistics and funding. I should have said to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, that we have very little evidence of connections between al-Qaeda and the piracy operations, although there may be some at an individual level.

As to blockades, an issue that my noble friend Lord Chidgey raises, the difficulty with permanent blockades is that they are hugely demanding on resources and a lot of the pirate operations are from beaches, not ports, so if you blockaded the port you still would not catch the pirates. However, intermittent or occasional blockades make sense, have already been tried against several operating bases and appear to have had a dramatic effect in reducing pirate operations. As a “from time to time” operation, this makes sense, but mounting permanent blockades would be immensely expensive and probably not very effective.