Burma

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

As the noble Baroness knows, because she follows these things closely, we support the idea of a commission of inquiry, but we are anxious not to rush into it and have an early failure. We also note the view of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is slightly cautious about the pace of such an inquiry; but that there should be such an inquiry is, in principle, right and is, indeed, government policy. It is the pace and the approach that we have to watch. As for EU policy on sanctions, the EU has expressed its very serious concern about the elections and has made it clear that sanctions should be eased only in response to tangible progress, which we have not really seen yet. So there is an agreed EU position on Burma: the sanctions are tough and we are totally in support of them. On the noble Baroness’s middle point about the role of the UN, I will look further into it, but we are broadly in support of the activities that she mentioned. I shall elaborate on that in a letter to her.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Does not the Minister agree that one thing that we could do is to increase our aid projects in Burma to non-governmental organisations and those who work for humanitarian purposes in medical and educational areas? That would be a good way to show that there is an alternative to the sort of regime that Burma has now.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I agree; indeed, the UK is one of the largest bilateral donors to Burma. We have significantly increased our humanitarian assistance from £9 million in 2007-08 to £28 million in the current year. Our aid focuses on health, basic education, rural livelihood, civil society and helping the refugees. I add as a personal observation that China is deeply involved in Myanmar, getting more involved all the time, pouring in vast sums of money for schools, infrastructure, and so on. We have a real problem considering aid—which is right—against the apparent determination of the People's Republic of China to have a massive involvement in Myanmar in every conceivable way.