Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a justifiably thorough debate, which not only does justice to the agenda from the Cabinet Office and the Commonwealth Secretariat but to the work of the Minister—I join with Members from across the House who have given credit to his work. I also give credit to the committee, on which I have the privilege to serve under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Our short report, gladly, is aligned with the Government’s strategy, and there is a degree of consensus.

This debate has also seen us welcome a new Member to our House, the distinguished noble Lord, Lord Geidt. It is always great to have another Scottish Peer who can be utilised. Now that he has a voice after his maiden speech, I am sure that he could bring his extensive diplomatic skills to the devolution clauses in the Brexit withdrawal Bill, which we will need a little diplomacy to work our way through in the coming months.

[Viscount Waverley]

That will drive him away.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I hear the noble Viscount say from a sedentary position that the prospect of taking part in those debates will drive the noble Lord away; it may well do.

My noble friend Lord Chidgey reminded us that we should recall Vanuatu and the difficulties it faces as we welcome our Commonwealth friends to London, because it was due to host the summit. I will return in a moment to the focus we should have on our small and vulnerable Commonwealth states, especially those vulnerable to climate change.

I also endorse the work of the CPA, which is over a century old. I was pleased to host the CPA young representatives in this House on Commonwealth Day and to participate in the parliamentarians’ forum, which has been mentioned.

With the honourable Okechukwu Enelamah, the Minister of Industry and Trade of Nigeria, it has been my privilege to chair a geographically and gender-balanced eminent persons panel for the All-Party Group on Trade Out of Poverty for our inquiry, in partnership with the Overseas Development Institute, which focused on how trade and investment can remove people in the Commonwealth out of poverty. Our report will be published on 3 April. The inquiry was informed by a wide range of witnesses from across the Commonwealth and by many discussions that I had with a large number of Ministers of Trade from Commonwealth countries. The report will be titled “Our Shared Prosperous Future: An Agenda for Values-led Trade, Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Jobs for the Commonwealth”.

The issues of human rights, especially for the LGBT community, capital punishment and press freedom have all been raised in this debate, but I want to focus my remarks on trade and removing people in the Commonwealth from poverty. In essence, our report will make the case for the summit to agree a new agenda for trade and development in the Commonwealth, with a series of recommendations to Commonwealth member countries and the secretariat, and specifically to the UK Government as Chair-in-Office, leading to the next summit in Malaysia and finally to a greater alignment of Commonwealth development to the global goals period leading up to 2030. We hope that our recommendations will form a degree of consensus at the business forum and within the four areas of focus.

We recommend a step change in activity, with more targeted outcomes. It is worth remembering that 13 of the Commonwealth’s members are among the UN’s least developed countries. Nearly one in five people—some 440 million women, men and children—in the Commonwealth live below the international poverty line of $1.90 a day. That is almost twice the global average, so, unless we take action, people born in the Commonwealth today are on average twice as likely to live a life in extreme poverty as people around the world as a whole.

Two-thirds of the world’s small states—states with populations of less than 1.5 million people—are members of the Commonwealth, but in one Commonwealth country, India, the workforce alone is expected to grow by 138 million people by 2030. That shows not only the breadth but the complexity of the Commonwealth. Many of the small states are also highly vulnerable to climate change, as I mentioned. There are immense development challenges but opportunities to utilise the regional networks—the modern Commonwealth, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said—are also present.

We should also recall that two of the G7 and a quarter of the G20 are Commonwealth members. The Commonwealth as a network can lead at all the top tables of the economies around the world and be a conscience, setting the values for the development agenda. We therefore need to see a greatly enhanced cross-regional and cross-country level of participation in removing trade barriers, sharing legislative good practice and supporting wider economic participation. For example, in the World Bank’s flagship index of ease of doing business, which captures a range of barriers, from corruption to bureaucracy at borders, Commonwealth countries ranked first, with New Zealand, but also 77th, with Bangladesh.

Our report focuses on five areas where our many recommendations will fall. The first is reducing the costs and risks of trade and investment. This is where, as we heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and others, it is necessary for the Commonwealth to work with the WTO and other organisations around the world, assisting the development of trade facilitation support for vulnerable countries.

The second area is boosting services trade through regulatory co-operation, utilising the network characteristics of the Commonwealth and, in particular, its relations with APEC, ASEAN, the OECD and others.

The third area is making trade more inclusive. Quite rightly, we heard about the need for much more work to be done to support not just the Commonwealth’s minorities but, in many respects, the majority, with economic participation by women and of course young people. The report will highlight the secretariat’s SheTrades initiative, although scaling that up is critical. Quite frankly, the Commonwealth will not be relevant in the future if it does not focus on young people’s and women’s fair participation across the piece—at the political and business levels and in society. We are also proposing a Commonwealth fair and sustainable trade initiative, capturing not only fair trade and values but also the spirit of the Commonwealth charter in the way businesses trade.

The fourth area is addressing the special needs of small and vulnerable states, as I have mentioned.

The fifth and final area is strengthening partnerships, through Governments, business and diaspora in particular. We need to move away from looking at the Commonwealth diaspora as one that simply sends remittances back to countries and instead see it as a network within each of the Commonwealth countries that can enhance our shared agenda—and of course including the valuable role of the CPA. There should also be a greater focus on co-ordinating regulations, standards and capacity. We cannot forget that many of our Commonwealth countries have a very weak capacity as regards trade ministries and development ministries, and the larger and more developed economies can focus much more on that.

Finally, we also want to see values-led trade. I had the good fortune, through the support of the CPA, to attend the ministerial conference MC11 for the WTO in Buenos Aires last year, meeting many Commonwealth members. Perhaps it is the zeitgeist of the moment, and CHOGM can meet this time, when we focus, not only on trade, finance and economic co-operation but on that which is based upon values and a conscience. The Commonwealth is not, nor should it be, nor will it ever be, a rules-making forum. But it can do more to co-ordinate on an equal basis the least developed and the most developed, the smallest and the largest, in a consensual manner, with mutual respect, to make sure that the rule-making bodies around the world operate better. We should eschew the idea of country first and wealth for the few, and replace it with a commonwealth for all in the world.