China: Human Rights and Sanctions

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I completely agree with my noble friend, as does the Foreign Secretary. These issues are raised. The sanctions against parliamentarians for things they have said are completely unwarranted and unacceptable. The Foreign Secretary met with Speaker Hoyle before his trip to China to reiterate that this was a concern to him. It is a concern to the Foreign Secretary and to all of us in the Government. It is inappropriate that parliamentarians in this and the other House should be sanctioned in this way, and we will consistently raise this with China.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that it is right to raise where Chinese behaviour is deplorable and to challenge China robustly, but should we not seek to switch the emphasis to a less defensive and more positive side? We can outsmart the Chinese by showing that our kind of liberal capitalism, when we reform it—it needs reforming—is vastly superior to anything they can deliver, and that freedom under the law and free speech are of more benefit to nations than falling under the Chinese hegemon, as they will find in time. If the security and prosperity of the developing world are the prime requirement, the Commonwealth contains six of the fastest-growing economies in the world—a very much better bunch than the dodgy deals of BRI and other arrangements with the Chinese, where countries just find themselves loaded with more and more debt. Is there not a more positive side to take, as well as raising these issues that have very properly been raised?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

On this Government’s approach, we want a consistent, strategic and pragmatic relationship because we think that is the best way to make progress on some of these issues that are of concern to all sides of the House. The way that we are describing this is that we will co-operate where we can, compete where we need to and challenge where we must.

Somaliland

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right in her strong support for Somaliland, but that does not change our position on the question of recognition of Somaliland as an independent state. She is right, and we have a very long-standing and deep relationship with Somaliland, not least because of the large number of Somalis living here in the UK, but also our support for the port there, for health, education, security and in many other ways. We are very pleased to continue that relationship.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, are we sure that we have got this completely right? I remember 10 years ago at the Foreign Office having to give exactly the same answers about this as the Minister has given now. On reflection, and in totally changed conditions, particularly in the Middle East and in east Africa, surely those new considerations come in. Why do we have to wait for every other nation to recognise and help Somaliland? It is an extremely feisty country, if I might use that word. It is quite well run and passionately pro-British. It would do us enormous help to have a good friend in that very sensitive area, with the Chinese pouring in next door. It makes utter sense for our own foreign policy to think about this positively. Would the Minister take it back to the Foreign Office and ask it to think again?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Well, I am very pleased to provide consistency in the Government’s approach. The UK needs to tread carefully in the Horn of Africa in regard to this, given the situation that the noble Lord has just described. We have strong links; we have a permanent diplomatic presence in Somaliland. But my sense is that it would not be the right thing to do for stability in the wider region to wade in and take such an action at this time.

Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and International Committee of the Red Cross (Status) Bill [HL]

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I will talk entirely about the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association part of the Bill. I declare my interest, having had a long-standing concern for and interest in all Commonwealth affairs over many years.

At first, the Bill may seem a little small or marginal, compared with some of the vast issues we are grappling with internationally at the moment, but from small things often surprisingly large consequences flow. It may well be that we are dealing here with something that looks minor but could lead to very great changes in the way our own affairs are managed and our position in the world is established.

We had a very good Second Reading on the Bill on 17 May. I was just rereading what I and my colleagues said then. It is a bit of a Groundhog Day, because the truth is that one could perfectly get away with just repeating the speech of 17 May and probably no one would notice. In fact, there is a serious aspect to this, and a serious case for starting again—it was sunk by the general election.

There is a new urgency in this whole area—it is important for your Lordships to recognise that, and I am sure they do—because the Commonwealth network, which is vast and extends to 56 nations, with a queue of others wishing to join, is the biggest network of any kind on the entire planet and is changing very fast, as are overall world conditions. There is a need for us to recognise at every opportunity the enormous effects of these changes, which are taking place at this moment. It is not just trade, which is often cited as the main issue—trade and values are extremely valuable, of course—and it is not just that all the great growth of the next 30 years will be in Asia and driven by organisations like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which we have just joined and half of whose the members are, incidentally, Commonwealth. It becomes clearer every day that it is a security issue, and our position in the Commonwealth and the position of our representative organisations concerned with the Commonwealth, such as the CPA, are becoming more and more intertwined.

One has to be pretty blind nowadays not to understand that the Chinese are busy hoovering up influence throughout the entire Commonwealth—through Asia and the small islands of south-east Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and everywhere else. The Chinese are there and are taking an enormous interest—sometimes, I fear, a greater, more detailed, more expert interest than we ourselves take and have taken—in the progress and affairs of many Commonwealth countries, large and small.

Do we sit back and say, “That’s far away and doesn’t matter”? Are we entitled to shrug our shoulders and say that the Commonwealth has had its day? I do not think so at all. In fact, because of certain fundamental changes, the entire Commonwealth network is becoming infinitely more important to security; first, through the changes in the law of the sea—it is about 20 years old—which gave every island, however small, the rights of law of the sea on the shelves surrounding them, and in effect pock-marked the entire oceans not with the freedom of oceans that we believe in but in a series of controlled zones and areas going right across the planet. This is something the value of which, and the potential weaponry behind which, the Chinese have welcomed.

Secondly, there is the fact, which is just dawning on people, that war will be fought increasingly not with vast aerodromes and airstrips—although, as we know, the Chinese are building them in the South China Sea—but with drones. It is drones that are just holding the line for the Ukrainians at the moment—they will not hold it for very long unless they are further equipped—and it is drones that can be launched from tiny little islands and areas of land throughout the Commonwealth and can suddenly create an entirely new pattern of defence challenges.

Those are two reasons why we need to watch what is happening throughout the Commonwealth and what the Chinese are up to. I very much hope that the new Labour Government recognise this danger. I am sure they will, perhaps a little more vividly than the Government of the past 14 years did, with their other preoccupations. This is an emerging role. Certainly the time has come to recognise that the parliamentary aspect of this is increasingly important.

As the world, the Atlantic relationship and the European relationship change around us, as we reposition, I hope that Labour will understand the need to and will seek to bring this whole process of the Commonwealth and its changing and evolutionary features much nearer to the centre of our national affairs and our national strategy. From a desperately small start, more countries in Africa are seeking to join the Commonwealth. Two or three joined recently, and there are said to be three or four more anxious to do so. This is not a dying club but a growing club, and I hope that the new permanent members will be mentioned.

Yesterday, in this House, a noble Lord mentioned one tiny little non-country—Somaliland. It is a disgrace that that country, which is full of vigour, operating in very difficult circumstances, as separate from Somalia, does not even have the status of a nation. It is treated as some sort of pariah, some difficult and unacceptable break in the pattern of international affairs. I hope that those in the new Government who are interested in the Commonwealth will look at the issue of Somaliland again.

The Bill not only reminds us that the Commonwealth is very much part of the future, as the late Queen mentioned: she called it an entirely new conception and in many ways the platform of the future, which statistically it literally is, because 60% of its 2.6 billion people are below the age of 28. We are looking at taking a tiny step today that helps our Parliament, and all parliaments, to assert and develop their role in the world that is to come.

We in our Parliament are hopelessly underequipped in an age of vastly expanding executive power in a state that is incredibly weak—it is large but weak—and our Parliament is finding itself perhaps ill-equipped to perform even the basic functions that a populous age demands. In that sort of age, we very much need to have every kind of strengthening we can—to strengthen our own Parliament and to work with the rest of the parliaments in the network, about 53 of them, in ways that ensure that they all play their role.

In a strange way, as populism arrives everywhere because people are now empowered by carrying in their pockets the power to project their views, baked or half-baked, around the world, and every challenge to government can be mobilised with an enormous impetus that did not exist even 10 years ago, parliaments now have the task of improving the way they work and call everything to account and improving the way in which populism is filtered and executive tyranny and executive dominance are effectively held in check.

We stand in the middle between the forces of incoherent populism and the temptations of the Executive to act in their own threatening way. We could be seeing parliaments move into a new age. All the parliaments of the Commonwealth countries are now better placed as a result of a Bill such as this, which in Britain gives the CPA legal status as an international organisation. This is a positive result that gives parliaments a bigger role in a new digital age.

I have one final reflection. This is about people; it is not just about government institutions. That is why diplomats, including our FCDO, which labours splendidly in many areas of international diplomacy, find it difficult to cope with and to understand the huge significance of the Commonwealth in our future position. Why? It is because it is not just governmental. Large parts of it operate at every level in the interest of every group and every one of the 2.6 billion people in the Commonwealth. That is difficult for a diplomat to grasp: that there are forces at work outside of government control. Many Commonwealth Governments and leaders may differ from day to day and argue about specific issues. A lot of them do not necessarily agree with what the British Government have done or are doing in many important areas.

Nevertheless, the Commonwealth is becoming stronger all the time, because what is pulling it together is more effective and more forceful than what is pulling it apart. It is rooted in the ancient principles emanating from this old nation of ours, established painfully over centuries: free speech, parliamentary government and democratic practices—not just elections but behaviour in democracies, by which I mean upholding human rights, courtesy, honesty, presenting issues to the people, respect, good manners and other qualities which you cannot put into law and yet which make a democracy work, or not work in some cases. Of course, above all, we are bound together by the very wide usage of the common language of English, which is now the protocol of the planet and carries within it all the values which a language enshrines.

We are going to find that the Commonwealth will play a larger, not a smaller, role in the future international networks of the parliaments of this planet. This Bill brings that future, clouded though it may be by the present turmoil and troubles, a little nearer, and it deserves our strongest support and commitment. I welcome it very strongly indeed.

Global Combat Air Programme International Government Organisation (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2024

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)]

My Lords, in December 2022, the United Kingdom, Japan and Italy jointly launched the global combat air programme, known as GCAP, to deliver next-generation aircraft by 2035. On 5 July, the Prime Minister reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to promoting co-operation and collaboration between the UK and Italy, with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and on 6 July between the UK and Japan, with Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida. It was agreed that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are indivisible. His Majesty’s Government are committed to ensuring the security of the Indo-Pacific, working closely with our allies.

For the UK, this aircraft will sit at the heart of a wider system, networked and collaborating with a range of aircraft, including the F35, and broader military capabilities. It will use information systems, weapons and uncrewed collaborative combat air platforms to complete the capability. Replacing the capability provided by Typhoon, this system will sustain the UK’s operational advantage. In addition, GCAP will attract investment into research and development in digital design and advanced manufacture processes, providing opportunities for our next generation of highly skilled engineers and technicians.

The signing of the convention on the establishment of the GCAP International Government Organisation, known commonly as GIGO, by the parties of the United Kingdom, Japan and Italy took place in December 2023 and was conducted by the respective defence secretaries of the three nations. The GIGO will function as the executive body, with the legal capacity to place contracts with industrial partners engaged in the GCAP. Through the GIGO, the UK will lead on the development of an innovative stealth fighter jet with supersonic capability and equipped with cutting-edge technology, to facilitate collaboration with key international partners that will raise the profile of the UK’s combat air industrial capacity.

The GIGO headquarters will be based in the UK, employing personnel from the UK, Italy and Japan. The chief executive and director posts shall be filled by nationals of different parties, according to a mechanism that shall preserve a balance between the parties. Given the nature of the GIGO as an international defence organisation, the Ministry of Defence, with support from the FCDO, has been leading on trilateral engagement and negotiations on its establishment.

The convention, once in effect, will enable closer collaboration between the parties—being the Governments of Japan, Italy and the UK—and support the development of His Majesty’s Government’s defence capabilities, stimulated by development of the UK-based headquarters. It will enable further collaboration with key industry partners, with the headquarters supporting hundreds of jobs, working in close partnership with Rolls-Royce, Leonardo UK and MBDA UK, and with hundreds of other companies from across the UK in the supply chain to deliver the GCAP.

This Order in Council is a statutory instrument and forms part of the secondary legislation needed to confer legal capacity and privileges and immunities on the GCAP International Government Organisation. It accords certain privileges and immunities to the organisation’s personnel and the representatives of the parties to the convention. This order was laid in draft before Parliament on 23 May 2024, is subject to the affirmative procedure and will be made by the Privy Council once it is approved by both Houses. Subject to the approval and ratification, the treaty would enter into force on the deposit of the last instrument of ratification, or acceptance of the parties. This is anticipated to be autumn 2024, to meet the 2035 in-service date.

This order confers a bespoke set of privileges and immunities, to enable the GIGO to operate effectively in the UK. The Government consider these privileges and immunities both necessary and appropriate to deliver on the interests and commitments that the UK has towards the organisation. They are within the scope of the International Organisations Act and in line with UK precedents. The privileges and immunities conferred on agency personnel and representatives are not for their personal advantage but are in order to ensure complete independence in the exercise of their functions in connection with the GCAP. To be clear, agency personnel have no personal immunity if they commit a crime, and there is a clear carve-out ensuring that they have no immunity in any vehicle incident. These immunities in respect of the GIGO cover immunity from suit and legal process, inviolability of premises and archives, and appropriate tax exemptions and reliefs in relation to its official activities.

In respect of representatives of the parties and staff, the provisions cover functional immunity and an immunity waiver. Additionally, the order includes an exemption from the legal suit and process immunity in the case of a motor traffic offence or damage caused by a motor vehicle. This is a standard clause included in statutory instruments and treaties, providing for privileges and immunities.

To conclude, the support for the GIGO’s establishment ensured through this order is a unique opportunity to showcase UK leadership and innovation in the combat air industry on a global stage. Through the GIGO, the UK will collaborate with its international partners on the development of an innovative stealth fighter jet and facilitate collaboration with key international partners that will raise the profile of the UK’s combat air industry. The security of the United Kingdom will always be of paramount importance to this Government. Defence is central to both UK security and our economic prosperity and growth, including by harnessing the strength of our well-established defence industries. This GIGO is key to GCAP, and the UK continues to make positive progress with our partners Japan and Italy. I beg to move.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as in the register. Behind this necessary and detailed order lies an enormous project, one of the biggest ever, which we are to undertake with Japan and Italy. We are talking about billions of pounds involved. This is only a small part of it but the importance of the bigger picture is colossal. Behind that lies a weaving together of the most advanced parts of Japanese and British industry in a way that I find immensely encouraging and that we have been working towards for years. We reached a peak of co-operation at the end of the last century, but it rather fell away in the first 10 or 15 years of this one. Now, the scene is much revived, and there are enormous gains for Japan and ourselves. Japan is our best friend in Asia, as they used to say; and I do think Japan still sees us as its best friend in Europe. There are enormous opportunities for prosperity in this country.

All I am asking of the Minister, who introduced this very clearly indeed, is that if there are any bumps along the road, any postponements or any difficulties arising out of interpretation of this order, please could they be handled with the utmost consideration of that wider picture, the sensitivities on both sides and the fact that an enormous amount is at stake? No aircraft will fly for 11 years. It is a long way ahead, and we have many challenges to pass through, and world conditions will probably change enormously by the time we get there. I am sure what I am saying is obvious to the Minister and her government colleagues and I ask to be forgiven for reiterating it. There is a great deal at stake.