Trade Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments & Lords Hansard
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Henig) (Lab)]

I will now call the following eight speakers in this order: the noble Lords, Lord Cormack, Lord Lansley, Lord Shinkwin and Lord Blencathra, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, the noble Lords, Lord Balfe and Lord Polak, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. I first call the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Having been called first, I lead a very distinguished company; I am most grateful to the occupant of the Woolsack for that.

I have taken part in all these debates, and I have become increasingly impressed by the dogged, persistent leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has carried the flag with distinction throughout and is certainly not laying it down this afternoon. I have also been very impressed by the way in which the Minister has sought to respond. Although he is new to your Lordships’ Houses, I think he has a genuine understanding of how it works, and he certainly has a genuine understanding of the evil that has motivated those of us who have, on three occasions, formed part of a massive majority in your Lordships’ House.

I use the word “evil” very deliberately. One thing that I have been doing during lockdown is to read, as I am sure we all have, and I read again the three volumes of the diary of Harold Nicolson dealing with the 1930s, the lead-up to the war and the war years themselves, then carrying on until 1965. Many of your Lordships will be familiar with those diaries but, if you are not, I warmly commend them. The theme—although he does not put it in those words—particularly in the diaries covering the period from 1937 to the outbreak of the war, is that democracy cannot and must not compromise with evil. If we do, we lose our democratic credentials. Of course, one of the great evils of history was the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi regime in the war, and we have seen other things in my lifetime. Stalin’s purges began just before my lifetime and continued through. We saw terrible things happen in China under Mao Tse-Tung, and we have seen many others, in Rwanda and Bosnia—who can ever forget Srebrenica?—and with Pol Pot, as a noble Lord interjects from the back.

It is a challenge to democracy to repudiate evil. Although one may have to pay a price, which may be to lose a lucrative trade deal, there must never be compromise with evil. That, to me, has really been the theme of our three very passionate debates, and now we move towards the end. Of course, those of us who supported the various Alton amendments, as I shall call them, have not achieved all that we set out to do. But the Government have listened to a degree and have moved, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, readily recognised a few moments ago. For that, we are grateful, but I do not consider that a great victory. What I consider is that Parliament, to which government is accountable and responsible, has impressed on the Government that there are certain things in the immortal words of the great Churchill “up with which we will not put”. So this Bill is going to go on to the statute books significantly different from how it was when it was brought to your Lordships’ House, and with a recognition on the part of the Government that genocide is indeed evil and that anything approaching genocide must make us very careful about what we do.