Democratic Republic of the Congo

Lord Chidgey Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Chidgey (LD)]

My Lords, the news that the Government of the DRC are to postpone—basically, to suspend—a controversial oil extraction bill is welcome news. However, will the Government support the NGOs, other donors and local MPs in using this delay to press for the inclusion of strong transparency measures to root out corruption and to ensure that the country’s oil wealth goes towards helping the very poor in the Congo rather than disappearing offshore in dodgy deals through companies such as Nessergy, with links to the controversial businessman Dan Gertler?

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point and he is right: corruption means not only that the wealth of the country does not help the poorest but that money earned from minerals in that country serves to finance conflict and abuses of human rights. That is why we have been pushing both for UK businesses engaged in that country to make sure that they follow the OECD guidelines and for the DRC to make progress on the EITI, the extractive industries transparency initiative. The noble Lord may be aware that its candidate status was suspended and we hope that it will be restarted. We also hope that the new DRC oil law, which is under consideration, will make some progress.