Autocrats, Kleptocrats and Populists

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the UK board of a global peace-building charity, Search for Common Ground, and am an associate with Global Partners Governance, a UK-based not-for-profit focusing on supporting representative politics. During the February recess, I shall be in Baghdad and then Beirut, working with those wishing to strengthen their Parliaments. The Minister knows of my declared interest in Sudan and the retrograde step of moving away from the transition to democracy there. In all those three countries, brave young people and, primarily, women have been in the vanguard of supporting the basic and fundamental democratic norms that we are debating today. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for bringing this vital debate to us today. Far too many people this year alone, as well as last year, have lost their life fighting for a cause which we here take for granted.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, referenced Tunisia. Literally just before this debate, I was on a call with our ambassador in Tunisia through the Inter-Parliamentary Union. We discussed the retrograde step of military courts being used against civilians, the displacement of opportunities for many people and the move away from a parliamentary system. That is just one example of global goal 16—supporting institutions and building the rule of law—now under assault.

The debate seems to be broken down into three broad areas: the global counter-democracy movement towards absolute rulers, theocrats and autocrats; the lack of a coherent and credible UK approach to counter it; and the urgent need to clear our Augean stables here at home. A reliable indicator, the democracy index, states that only 8.4% of the world’s population live in a full democracy, with more than a third under authoritarian rule. My noble friend Lord Wallace highlighted the sweep of those who wish to maintain degrees of authoritarianism and absolute rule.

The UK’s trade with China, to give one example, has doubled over the last decade. We now have a trade deficit with China of £40 billion—unprecedented in history—and are seeking ever-increasing foreign direct investment from the Gulf states into the UK. What leverage do we have in reality against those we seek to build a “network of liberty” against? These are hollow words when we are dependent on many of them. As my noble friend said, the silence on democratic norms in the Gulf is matched only by the volume of the arms we sell there.

The noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, mentioned the pandemic, and in many ways he is absolutely right; it has exacerbated these areas. Not only is there vaccine nationalism and condescension for many countries, but we slashed our development co-operation at the height of the pandemic. In many respects, we are not a leader in this. But the pandemic has also had deeper elements that should trouble us: data harvesting of many populations, with data now a commodity to be traded as well as a tool for Governments against their people; open-ended emergency powers; and fraud in the response, which we hear of at home. It was right to mention the governing party having a VIP stream for contracts that were not made public, as well as youth displacement and other challenges.

My noble friends Lady Kramer and Lord Thomas highlighted that here at home we do not lead by assertion; we have inaction. The assertion that we are ridding London of its reputation is not matched by action. The world’s leading laundromat status for London is a stain on our global reputation. I have been to too many events around the world to count at which UK Ministers have sought to persuade other countries to crack down on corruption, only for people in those countries who are desperate to do exactly that to say to me and others that London is one of the key problems and the greatest facilitator of all.

It is remarkable to me that President Xi, Putin and other autocrats say their style is no different from that of our new western leaders, as the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, indicated. They say they are not hypocrites and would not ask them to do anything that they would not do.

The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, asked us not to be partisan. Let me just quote from the resignation letter of Munira Mirza, the Prime Minister’s former head of policy, who resigned today:

“This was not the normal cut-and-thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse … you did not apologise for the misleading impression you gave.”


In too many areas we are now using a playbook that autocrats and others we seek to move away from are using. We will never be a global Britain if we reject the corrective of seeing ourselves as others see us. The tragedy in all this is that we in our country, which I am desperately proud of, in many areas have built the norms of democracy and supported others in that great ambition, but we are not offering more. Our actions, and not assertions, are playing into the very hands of those we are concerned about in this debate.