Queen’s Speech

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, most people in the world do not believe the agendas of international deliberations are their agendas. Repeatedly these agendas are seen as those of the traditionally powerful and privileged and dominated by a determination to preserve their advantage. Reform of the United Nations Security Council and its membership is long since overdue to make it representative of the world as it is rather than the world of 1945. Its credibility depends on this; so, too, do the arrangements for governance in the international financial institutions and climate change negotiations. The world as a whole has a stake in the outcomes, and this must mean that it has a stake in the making of the agendas.

Transparency and accountability in the appointment arrangements of the United Nations Secretary-General and the chief executives of the other global institutions is crucial. The world also needs a United Nations Economic and Social Council with clout and of the same status as the existing Security Council.

Consider the acute threats to humanity across the world, as 1.3 billion men, women and children are trapped in absolute poverty, struggling desperately to survive and not knowing when or where they will have their next meagre meal, let alone any other basic essential. Consider, as the noble Lord, Lord King, powerfully reminded us, the Sahel. There are between 18 and 19 million people in imminent danger of starvation, with hardly half the required emergency assistance yet provided. This is no time to consider modifying our aid commitment—in other words, reducing it. Of course we must constantly strive to ensure the best possible use of the resources that we provide, but to ensure that it is essential to listen to the experience, the truth as seen by them, and the priorities of the disadvantaged themselves. They are tired of being hectored and lectured on what they must do; they want to be heard and to share in the ownership of the solutions. This is something that the Prime Minister would do well constantly to remember in his new role on the United Nations high-level panel to design a post-2015 development framework. To succeed, the panel must speak with and for the dispossessed and poor, not about or at them. The world needs solidarity.

How can we settle for less than a world in which every new-born child has a meaningful prospect of reaching its full physical, mental and creative potential? With all the ingenuity, information technology and expertise on hand, it is obscene to settle for anything less. That is why I am glad that, despite the regrettable absence of promised legislation in the Queen’s Speech, the Government remain committed to the 0.7% of GNP target. It is high time that we joined Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden in demonstrating that this is an imperative.

Of course, the battle for a stable, secure and just world is not just about aid but about fair trade and fair access to limited and finite resources. In other words, it is about social priorities in economic policy. At times of stringency these matters become more essential, not less. Monetary disciplines and social justice are never incompatible. To claim that they are is blinkered, fatalistic nonsense. We shall have neither stable, secure societies nor the basis for sustained economic well-being and progress unless this is understood, as must be the indispensability of prioritised and targeted investment to ensure our future.

In our highly unstable age, with its threats of terrorism, the cause of global social justice has never been more vital. So also, of course, is the cause of human rights. Terrorist potential may be impossible to eradicate, but it can be contained, minimised and marginalised. It is no exaggeration to say that where there are few human rights issues, the phenomenon of extremism and terrorism can be marginalised. Where there are significant human rights abuses, the breeding ground for terrorism will always be present. Human rights are not an optional extra for society; they are a muscular indispensability for stability and security. We erode or neglect them anywhere in the world, not least in the UK itself, at our peril.

That is why institutions such as the European Court of Human Rights are so essential. They establish an agreed shared commitment in a wider context. That is why they must be properly resourced. It is also why ruthless action by the Russians or their surrogates in the North Caucasus, or by Israelis against Palestinians, about which my noble friend Lady Blackstone spoke so well today, not least the military detention of children, is so inexcusable and wrong. It fans the flames of extremism. It is never irresponsible, and always right, to ask why people are recruitable as suicide bombers.

We must also beware counterproductivity here in the United Kingdom, with the pressures to amend and streamline our well tested legal principles and systems. The pitfalls of counterproductivity should always be uppermost in our analysis when confronted with abominations such as the Syrian or Gaddafi regimes. Have we always researched as thoroughly as we should have what we are intervening in and what the longer-term consequences will be? Did we get that right in Libya? Did we have in place what was needed in time to make a success of Kofi Annan’s peace initiative in Syria? These situations are too complex to be seen largely as just a matter of ridding the world of a particularly nasty tyrant.

I conclude by reflecting for a moment on the arms trade treaty, in which the United Kingdom has played such a commendable role and on which it is planned to have its final diplomatic conference in July in preparation for its adoption. It is a highly desirable, urgently necessary treaty when we are faced with so much conflict, and possible conflict, crushing the already disadvantaged people of the world. Do the Government agree that it is better to have no treaty than a weak treaty? Is not the essential principle that states shall never transfer arms where the end-use cannot be guaranteed and where there is a clear risk that they will be reused to commit violations of humanitarian and international human rights law? Will the Government refuse to compromise on this and resist the subtle pressures—or sometimes the blunt pressures—to settle for words such as “take into account” as compromises? What progress is being made in these respects to bring Algeria, Syria, Iran and the United States itself on board?