China: EU Committee Report

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to welcome the speech just made by my noble friend and the report of the sub-committee under his chairmanship. As his presentation made clear, it produced a comprehensive, clear and constructive report containing some plain and important messages both for the United Kingdom and the European Union, as well as the People’s Republic of China.

The central message is clearly important. If ever a subject cried out for pan-European consideration, it is the management over the long term of our relations with China. That proposition contains no suggestion of hostility, although I noticed with some irony the use of the word “tentacles” by my noble friend. I know that that was not meant to be a demonstration of hostility. There is no question of hostility, but there is a growing significance and diversity of common interests, all requiring the consideration of collective response by the European Union—on climate change and energy, the WTO and IMF obligations, intellectual property rights, the impact of Chinese investments on developing countries and the possible sources of political tension in North Korea, Myanmar, Taiwan and so on.

I am glad to be able to welcome what is said in paragraph 303 of the report. It states:

“China… has gradually been prepared to play a more constructive role in respect of some armed conflicts in Africa”.

My noble friend did indeed make that point. One must hope for a continuation of that—a less passive role by China, for example, in relation to a different style of conflict, whether in Myanmar itself or in Zimbabwe.

I am glad, aside from my noble friend, to be able to endorse the recognition by our new Foreign Secretary, who made his celebrated maiden speech at a party conference in the debate to which I had to reply. He outshone me throughout the evening as I commented on his speech, rather than he on mine. I have great confidence in him. He has been emphasising the value and necessity of approaching these problems and others from a European base. That is an important proposition.

I agree with my noble friend that the formalities of the Lisbon treaty are far from being a magic wand in this context. I venture to suggest that our own colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, although she is not here, has an important role to play in this. Because of her demonstration of leadership qualities in this House, I think that she will achieve a constructive partnership—even leadership—with our own Secretary of State and other colleagues in the foreign affairs field.

My second major point is no less important than the first. In Britain’s case, at least, and not just in relation to foreign policy, there is truly an important independent role to be played. There are two reasons for making that point. The first is the probability that both our countries, the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic, are likely to remain permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. I know from limited experience in that context that it gave an opportunity for me to collaborate with my then Chinese opposite number in that venue. It is no disadvantage that the only other European member is France.

The second reason for confidence in this relationship is the fact that the United Kingdom and China have a long, although sometimes chequered, mutual relationship with each other. We share a sense of history that we are not able to share in quite the same way with other countries.

For me personally, if I may digress for a moment, my own contact with this concept first arose on 5 January 1950. Together with my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, who is not here today, and one other Cambridge undergraduate, I was, rather surprisingly, in Ebbw Vale preaching the cause of Conservatism and holding what was laughingly called a “brains trust” in the constitutional club of that important community. On that day, the news had broken that Ernest Bevin, that terrible socialist Foreign Secretary, had announced Britain’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China. Surprisingly, members of the club asked us the question, “Do you Conservatives agree or not agree with this rash decision taken by this socialist Foreign Minister?”. We had all been well trained by Professor Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, and we all responded collectively to say, “Of course we agree with Ernest Bevin’s decision”. That laid a firm foundation for my relationship with China thereafter.

The next step came, a little more seriously, in 1973 when I had my first meeting—in the United Kingdom, as it happens—under the benevolent surveillance of my noble friend Lord Walker, who, unhappily, is not with us at the moment. I was Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs, and I met my Chinese opposite number. Again, the bridge was being built a little further. For that reason or some other, I became a friend of China to the extent that, in 1978, I found myself invited as a guest by the People's Republic together with my noble friend Lord Brittan of Spennithorne and my noble kinsman who is not here. The three of us were in the party together. I remember one episode. There was a notice put out by the China Daily newspaper to the effect that:

“Vice President Gu Mu had received British Member of Parliament Geoffrey Howe and his wife Leon Brittan”.

We overcame that.

During that visit one of our missions was to search for the existence and effectiveness of anything resembling the rule of law in China. We found very little evidence of it. The gang of four were only just being identified as being responsible, with Chairman Mao, for the destruction that had taken place. In Beijing itself we searched for lawyers and eventually met three ageing and retired lawyers from what had once been Beijing University, and that was not very encouraging. In Shanghai, on our last day, we went inside a police cantonment and were there shown what purported to be a law court. There were only two characters there with white shirts on who claimed to be judges and turned out to be retired generals. When we asked them whether there had been any acquittals during their time at the court, they said they could not recollect anything of that kind. I say that not to be humorous but to emphasise the extent of the depth of uncivilised culture that the Chinese themselves are beginning to acknowledge as they get away from the rules that had been made.

Six years later, I was privileged as Secretary of State, under the leadership of my noble friend Lady Thatcher, to take part in the Hong Kong negotiations. One saw then, in the wisdom with which those were conducted by the then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, the extent to which their leadership was developing wisdom that would lead it far into the future not just in economic terms but in political and institutional ones as well.

Deng Xiaoping’s four-word phrase “one country, two systems” was one of the wisest things that one has ever had to work within. He hoped that it might one day work for North and South Korea, and we must share his hope. He hoped that it would one day work in Germany, but he was overtaken by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It enabled him to ensure that the agreement we made for Hong Kong guaranteed the survival of the rule of law in a strong form and guaranteed the existence of the Court of Final Appeal, which still includes two members of our own Supreme Court. It provided for a Legislative Council constituted by elections to come into existence in due course and that the Executive should be accountable to that legislature. That process moves on. Universal suffrage is now likely to arrive in 2017.

I mention that for our own significantly useful impact on the future of Hong Kong and then offer a word about such influence as we may have on the great mass of China itself. It is well known that China regards human rights as a strictly internal matter. None the less, it does recognise pragmatically that her own commitment in that direction—and there is such a commitment—as well as to the rule of law requires technical support which makes her willing, in practical terms, to study the models of other legal systems. China has long felt that the United Kingdom has much to offer in this area. We have found ourselves leading a handful of countries—the United States, Canada, Germany and Scandinavia—at a serious level on these human rights issues.

In that context, Beijing was persuaded some years later by John Major in his premiership in 1992 to receive a mission from this Parliament of ours, of which I was the modest leader, to study—this is carefully drafted—

“Matters of common interest, including human rights”.

The party included my noble friend Lord Higgins and, more important than that for tonight, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who is in the Chamber. We were members of a party of 11 who went together. I remember the way in which we were warmly received by the then General Secretary—later President—Jiang Zemin. He made the point—also made by my noble friend Lord Teverson—that the most important human right for China at that time was the feeding of 1.25 billion people, coupled with the enlargement of social freedom to move, and so on. That was the point that the General Secretary emphasised. However, we made specific recommendations, and we were delighted that four years later, in 1996, the NPC—the Chinese Parliament—enacted legislation providing for a presumption of innocence, a bail system and the existence of defence lawyers. In fact, two out of three of those propositions are now in place. Bail remains a rather shadowy proposition, and it does not surprise one that shortly after the NPC passed the legislation, a Beijing newspaper reported that a retired police superintendent—a member of the NPC—had protested to the meeting that, given all these changes, how could he be confident of capturing criminals? There is that balance of debate in more places than one.

In that context, perhaps I may declare an interest in the Great Britain-China Centre, of which I have been president since 1992. Many colleagues may not have heard a great deal about it, but it has been, and is, a vital vehicle in pressing for the objectives that I have been talking about—the rule of law, human rights and the various missions financed by the European Union and this country that are being undertaken, together with highly technical assistance in sensitive areas of work. The centre helps in the fundamental role of building up trust with key institutions, such as the Supreme People’s Court and the Procuratorate. The centre of our current work includes the reduction of the use of torture and firmly addressing the excessive role of death penalties. We are all clear in our memory of that, due to the recent tragic execution of Akmal Shaikh—despite our protests.

It now gives me pleasure to draw attention to a report in China Daily on 31 May, under the headline:

“New rules on confession to limit death sentences”.

I shall quote just two sentences:

“Evidence obtained illegally—such as through torture during interrogation—cannot be used in testimony, particularly in cases involving the death penalty, according to two regulations issued on Sunday … jointly issued by the top court, the top procuratorate, the ministries of public security, state security and justice”.

One has always to hesitate regarding the difference between that which is proclaimed and what happens, but I draw attention to the fact that this is part of steady progress in the direction which we seek to encourage.

My final point concerns the uniquely purposeful quality of the Great Britain-China Centre’s achievements. They involve what strikes me, as an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a very small spend indeed by Her Majesty's Government. The grant-in-aid received by the centre was £300,000 last year. It has been reduced to £270,000 this year, with which we are able to lever other funding institutions, including the European Union, to raise our resources to about £1 million. We are anxious that we should not be further squeezed in the present circumstances.

I dare to say this: in so far as money becomes a problem, given what the Treasury may seek from our overseas budget, I urge the Chancellor to reach out—this may sound very inhuman—towards the huge proportion of that budget exercised by the Department for International Development, so as to allow strong and worthwhile projects, such as those that I have described in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office budget, to continue to prosper in Britain’s and Europe’s joint interests in the People’s Republic of China.

My Lords, I rest my case.