South Africa: Money Laundering and Corruption

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I disagree with the noble Baroness’s final point. The Government have accepted the amendment that was made, and we are working closely with the overseas territories. She will also be aware that we have a very effective exchange of notes scheme already operational with key overseas dependencies, which provide law enforcement agencies and tax authorities with direct access. On the specific issue of registers, I am sure that she has observed very closely recent statements that have been made publicly, such as those by the Turks and Caicos Islands and by the Cayman Islands only yesterday, that they will be in line with the whole issue of public registers, reflecting European Union priorities and consistent with European priorities as will be required. The noble Baroness will be further aware that we are working directly with the OTs. We have technical groups set up to ensure public registers will be operational by 2023.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

What assessment has the Foreign Office made of the efforts by the current South African Government to crack down on corruption?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As I have already said, we are working very closely with the South African authorities and the South African Government. The action that they have already taken is reflective of how they are tackling corruption at the core and heart of government which has plagued South Africa since the initiation of democracy. I assure my noble friend that we continue to support and co-operate with our South African colleagues through all channels.

Commonwealth: Decriminalising Homosexuality

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lexden]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in decriminalising homosexuality in Commonwealth countries since the Prime Minister became the Commonwealth Chair-in-Office.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, at last year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the Prime Minister announced a £5.6 million programme to assist member states seeking to reform legislation which discriminates on the grounds of sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. Several countries have expressed interest in this offer and the UK is supporting them while respecting their request for sensitivity. Three countries—Trinidad and Tobago, India and Botswana—have made progress on decriminalisation.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, that is indeed good news. In the years ahead, will it not be important to remember the Prime Minister’s statement in 2018 that the British Government have a special responsibility to help Commonwealth countries get rid of anti-gay laws? While there has been recent progress, as my noble friend said, in India last year and Botswana this year, should we also not remember the many countries where there is terrible oppression? An example is Uganda where violently homophobic debates occupying nearly 50 days of parliamentary time have taken place since 2014 which is designed to buttress and strengthen cruel anti-gay laws.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend’s comments, and I am sure he will agree with me that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has prioritised this issue not just at the Commonwealth summit but subsequently. I am sure the House will join me in thanking her for the important progress we have seen on this important human rights issue. My noble friend is right to draw attention to parts of the Commonwealth where suppression and persecution of the LGBT community is very much in evidence. We continue to work bilaterally to raise these issues of concern. I have had various discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Collins, on this issue, and his idea of having champion countries in different parts of the world is something I am pursuing with colleagues at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I look forward to working with Members of your Lordships’ House in further strengthening our work in this area.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, all those most welcome visitors who will be with us next month in connection with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting will surely be struck by the scale and extent of the programme which the Government have organised. It underlines the importance Britain attaches to this unique partnership of nations, linked to each other in full equality.

Equality between the member nations must be matched by full equality for all the peoples living within them. How one yearns, particularly here in Britain, for full and equal respect to be accorded throughout our land to members of different religions who profess their faiths with deep sincerity within the law. How one yearns too for the law in all members of this unique partnership of nations to accord full and equal rights to communities within them who are entitled to the protection of the law, but in some cases have been denied it for far too long.

LGBT people are always in the forefront of the minds of a number of us who contribute regularly to debates about the Commonwealth. The noble Lord, Lord Cashman—my friend in this matter—is prominent among our number and has spoken with his customary passion again today. The oppression which gay men and women suffer in so many Commonwealth countries is an affront in this age which has enshrined human rights in binding international treaties. No one feels more strongly about this than our Lord Speaker, as he made clear in speeches from these Benches in previous years. We must emphasise again today the wide cross-party agreement that exists in this House on this issue.

It is now over six years since the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group called unanimously on all Heads of Government to take active steps to secure the repeal of discriminatory laws against homosexuals. Countries which have such laws are in flagrant breach of the Commonwealth’s own charter. Our own Government have shown unwavering commitment to progress with successive Ministers in this House—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, in the coalition, followed more recently by my noble friend Lady Anelay, who has reiterated her personal commitment again today, and now my noble friend Lord Ahmad, all of them demonstrating great concern and sensitivity.

The recent report of our International Relations Select Committee urges the Government,

“to continue to take a robust position on all aspects of human rights”.

High hopes of progress have been invested in next month’s meeting and our Government must ensure that LGBT people throughout the Commonwealth, who will be looking expectantly to London, are not disappointed. The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, expressed some serious fears. I hope that the Government will be able to allay them. Perhaps our International Relations Select Committee would consider taking evidence from the Commonwealth Secretariat. It would be interesting to hear in some detail what it is doing to try to help advance the cause of human equality throughout the Commonwealth in this and other areas.

I am among the many people in these islands who harbour the hope that one day the Republic of Ireland will return to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is today a completely different organisation from the one that the Republic left in 1949. Anglo-Irish relations have been completely transformed too, although they are going through some temporary difficulty at the moment because of Brexit. Now is perhaps not the time for any major public initiative, but I hope that Ministers and officials will look for opportunities behind the scenes to make the point that this great Commonwealth partnership is incomplete without our Irish friends, south as well as north.

I remember hearing the Commonwealth described some 30 years ago by an eminent Tory as an anachronistic embodiment of a sentimental memory. Today, a marked change of attitude is evident in the Conservative Party, as in the country at large, due in no small part to the sustained work of my noble friend Lord Howell. The Government have responded very admirably to our present stronger feelings about the Commonwealth by organising a truly impressive programme for the meeting next month, which could well set the scene for a new phase of Commonwealth development to the benefit of the world as a whole.

Asset Freezing (Compensation) Bill [HL]

Lord Lexden Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard) : House of Lords
Friday 27th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a great personal pleasure to speak in the same debate with my noble friend Lord Empey, particularly in one that he has initiated. We came into the House at the same point, nearly seven years ago. I strongly share his view that Northern Ireland should be involved as fully as possible in the national affairs of the country of which it is part. We are at one in believing that this Parliament must keep the province firmly within its sphere of work. We are united in detesting the dread phrase, “devolve and forget”.

For me personally, this is a particularly poignant year. It was exactly 40 years ago that I left my job in Queen’s University Belfast to come and assist Airey Neave, then Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland. I saw him almost daily until his murder at the end of March 1979. His murderers remain at large.

It was largely thanks to Colonel Gaddafi and his regime of terror that the IRA was able to continue its campaign of murder and destruction in Northern Ireland and Great Britain until the mid-1990s. Victims of that campaign have been seeking compensation from Gaddafi’s frozen assets, amounting to some £9.5 billion—no modest sum—in this country since 2002, 15 long years ago. Many of them are growing old; all of them despair of ever receiving compensation. A huge sense of frustration exists among them—understandably so, when they see that those who suffered as a result of Libyan terrorism in Germany, in France, and above all in the United States, have gained the compensation that they deserve. The final indignity is that their own Government here in the UK seem to give little priority to assisting them in their plight. As my noble friend Lord Empey explained so clearly, the Government seem unwilling to go beyond offering to help their own private efforts to reach agreement of some kind with the Libyan authorities. How can private individuals be expected to do that, in a country in the grip of grave instability? It is a task for government. A proxy war was waged by the Libyan dictator against the United Kingdom and its citizens. Would tough-minded British Governments in the past, Labour or Conservative, have left our fellow countrymen and women to their own devices in such circumstances? I remind the Government of a passage in this year’s Conservative and Unionist election manifesto. Interestingly, the party made use of its full name for the first time since 1959. The section of the manifesto in question has a heading that refers to, “standing up for victims”. Here is a group of victims for whom the government should surely be standing up.

My noble friend Lord Empey has long been prominent in the campaign to secure redress for those who have suffered. He is a man of great tenacity. His very important Bill, which he has reintroduced in this Session, was passed by this House before the election and attracted widespread support in the Commons before the Government blocked it. There can be little doubt that it is the wish of Parliament that this Bill should become law. The Government assert that to dip into the ill-gotten Gaddafi billions would be in breach of UN Security Council resolutions, EU sanctions regulations and the European Convention on Human Rights. How strange that organisations and agreements that exist to promote justice, international order and human well-being should, in this case, frustrate them. Should a Government committed to standing up for victims tamely accept that state of affairs?

Since my noble friend’s last Bill was extinguished, there has been an important development. The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in the Commons has published a report on this very subject, following a detailed two-year inquiry. Six months on, the Government have yet to respond, which comes as no surprise, since prompt government responses are as rare as amicable agreements over Brexit issues. The Commons report states that if nothing has been achieved for the IRA’s victims by the end of this year—and we will soon be there—the Government should set up a fund of their own to finance community projects and provide individuals with compensation. What is the Government’s view of this recommendation?

In these deeply unsatisfactory circumstances, we must surely show our support for my noble friend’s commitment to ending a long-standing injustice by giving his Bill a Second Reading.