Somalia: Piracy (EUC Report)

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Jay of Ewelme]

My Lords, I, too, greatly welcome the opportunity to discuss this report by Sub-Committee C. As I am about to be rotated—perhaps in this context I should say helicoptered—off the committee, perhaps I may also pay tribute to the stewardship of the committee by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I say “stewardship” because I am not sure that Liberal Democrats accept the concept of chairmanship. I also welcome the chance to comment—as did the noble Lord, Lord Davies—on a European Union activity that is working well, and to which the UK has made an important and perhaps even determining contribution. I will come back to that general point at the end of my speech.

I welcome, too, the way in which the effectiveness of Operation Atalanta today draws on the lessons from its own operations at the start. I think that there is a lesson here perhaps for other European Union operations and policies too—that there needs to be a constant rethinking in the light of experience. The first example which strikes me in particular is the stronger co-operation between Atalanta and NATO and others including India and China. I think that the way in which this has become a much more international anti-piracy operation is very impressive. The second example is the inclusion of security teams on board ships. The committee did indeed have reservations about this at first but, in the light of experience, it, too, changed its mind. It is clear that having security operations on board has proved itself in the past couple of years or so. Finally, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out, persuading the World Food Programme to provide larger and quicker ships to reduce their vulnerability to piracy, which has had a very marked effect on the ability of the programme to deliver food to populations in Somalia and elsewhere who really need it, is something which I greatly welcome, too. However, I welcome in particular the realisation that piracy is largely the result of chaos and instability within Somalia, which has effectively for the past 20 years or so, with a slight improvement recently, been a failed state.

We need to see Atalanta as part of a broader EU approach to the Horn of Africa, not just an operation in its own right. The Horn of Africa strategy adopted at the end of 2011, including the training mission in Uganda for Somali security sector training and the mission to strengthen coastal defence capabilities through the region—the horribly named EUCAP NESTOR—have not only been very worth while but add up to an overall approach by the EU to the Horn of Africa that is admirable. At the same time, it is encouraging that some economic and political stability is emerging at least in and around Mogadishu and that the influence of al-Shabaab is at least for now—and let us hope for longer than now—on the decline. Ensuring that that continues must be the main aim of EU and our own policy from now on. This should largely be an African task, not just an EU or western task, although it is very hard to see how EU and western help will not be necessary in the foreseeable future.

It seems to me that the African Union will have a key role to play here. It has huge challenges at present, and it has weaknesses, but it is far more effective than it has been in the past. I hope that the European Union and the UK will continue to do what they can to strengthen it. It would be very helpful if the Minister could say something about that.

At the same time the EU must focus its development on capacity building in Somalia. I declare an interest here as the chair of a medical aid charity, Merlin, which operates in Somaliland, Puntland and Somalia itself. Britain, like the EU, has an important role to play in helping with education and medical aid both through its own funds and through the help that it gives to non-governmental organisations.

I should like to branch out just slightly from Somalia and look at two other African issues that have arisen since our report was produced—as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said—some months ago. The first is Mali and the second is piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. Sub-Committee C has expressed great concern about the destabilisation of Mali and the impact that that could have on Britain and on wider European interests since the break-up of the country two years ago. The attack on the oil refinery in southern Algeria and the recently—alas—proven murder of hostages, including a British hostage in northern Nigeria, show only too clearly how developments apparently remote from us can affect us and damage us directly.

I would not accept the argument that these attacks are the result of western action. We have a role to play in supporting west African countries in countering al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups, but I do not underestimate the difficulties in doing it. I greatly welcome the help that we are giving the French in what could still be a long and unpredictable campaign in Mali. I believe that our contribution there really matters and is important.

More related perhaps to the debate on Somali piracy is the growth of piracy in west Africa, in the Gulf of Guinea. In some ways this seems to be of a different kind of piracy from that in Somalia, including attacks in port—for example, in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast—and it is centred more on stealing cargo for money than on kidnapping ships and crews for ransom. The effect of piracy in west Africa can be particularly dramatic on fragile economies, increasing insurance rates but, much more than that, reducing revenue—by up to 70% in the case of Cotonou, the only port in Benin. That has had a pretty dramatic impact on the state of a fragile economy.

From the recent Parliamentary Statement in another place by the Foreign Office Minister, Alistair Burt, I am glad to see that the Government are taking the growth of west African piracy seriously. I am also glad that the Royal Navy is deploying at least one ship in the Gulf of Guinea and is working closely there with the French. When the Minister responds could he say whether that deployment has been stepped up in the light of the growth of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea?

I would make one final point in drawing some of these threads together. We see a mixture of piracy, conflict and terrorism in Somalia, Mali and the Gulf of Guinea—all of these seem a long way off but this can affect our interests directly. As a nation with global interests and, as a member of the UN Security Council, of NATO and of the European Union, with global responsibilities too, we cannot stand aside from nor ignore instability of this sort. Nor, given budgetary pressures of which I am sure the Minister is only too aware, can we respond to them on our own. We also need to recognise that political influence, development and military intervention where necessary need to be looked at together—as has been the case in Somalia—and not as separate activities. As we have seen in Somalia, the European Union is uniquely able to do this, by bringing together actions through its defence policy and its common foreign and security policy. All those are important for the African countries themselves, for the EU and, I would argue, for Britain as well. None of those policies is perfect; all would be better with the full engagement of the United Kingdom, and British interests would be well served too. In the context of common foreign and security policy and of bringing together policies in Somalia, that argument is relevant to our policy towards the European Union in a wider sense where critical, constructive engagement can be in our interests and can make a real difference to the policies of the European Union itself.