Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I certainly could be a lot more specific if I had more time because an enormous number of important objectives will be pursued. Among them, as I have already indicated, we are keen that the upholding of the Commonwealth core values of human rights, good governance, the rule of law, democracy and parliamentary development should be pushed very hard indeed, and that new machinery may be needed in the Commonwealth to do that. I do not guarantee that all these things will be accepted exactly as they are proposed by the Eminent Persons Group or the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, which is proposing similar ideas, but these matters will be pushed extremely hard and are a very high priority for Her Majesty’s Government.

[Lord Chidgey]

Does my noble friend agree with the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, which I understand shares the view that the current failings of the Commonwealth Secretariat are the result of long-term underinvestment over many years, and that one of the ways forward is to enable it, through better funding, to recruit more capable and perhaps well recognised staff to undertake the functions better? In that context, can my noble friend tell us whether the Government will endorse the report of the Eminent Persons Group and support the range of essential recommendations? He has already mentioned human rights, but there are many other important issues, particularly the publishing of the group’s report.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend is right. There are 106 recommendations in the EPG report and many more in the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group report. There are funding implications for the Secretariat and for the machinery of the Commonwealth, and we are looking at those very carefully. We will have to evaluate them and decide what we can do, given the inevitable limits of resources. One also has to remember that a large part of the Commonwealth is both bilateral between Commonwealth countries and, even more important, separate from government. The unique nature of the Commonwealth is its huge latticework of professional, business, scientific, medical and judicial relationships that exist in no other multinational organisation. Those, too, will need to be developed and encouraged.