Middle East and North Africa

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I join everyone in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Howell, not just on introducing the debate but on giving us such a fine overview of the issues. I greatly appreciated it, as I did the speech of my noble friend Lady Symons of Vernham Dean for the depth of her analysis, and indeed that of all noble Lords who have taken part. It would be hard to invent an occasion that could be more timely or more liable to turn out to be dramatically wrong before we even walk out of the door. However, I have been told by my noble friend Lady Symons that while huge numbers of people are out on the streets in Cairo, the latest information suggests that there have been no attacks on palaces or other institutions. Thank God, at least as matters stand, that there is little possibility of worse things happening.

As anyone who has been a Foreign Office Minister in this place will know, there is huge complexity in the whole of the region. There is complexity over regional security—Israel/Palestine is right at the heart of that, to which I shall come back if I may. There are intrastate complexities between some of the communities—for example, the Sunni and the Shia Muslims—which are not to be underestimated in efforts to achieve stable outcomes. There are huge interstate complexities in the security area. Although I do not want to dwell on them at any length because there plainly is not time, I, too, look to the south of Egypt and the pressures that have always come on to Egypt from there because of what the upper waters of the Nile have to sustain in Sudan. I, too, am delighted that the referendum in Sudan has gone peacefully. I just hope from experience that discussion about where the border lies progresses with equal ease, although I am apprehensive about it because it relates to where the oil is, where the resources are and who will benefit.

Security issues in the Gulf are more about Iran than America or any of the rest of us. These are tangible questions. Water security is another. There is the problem in many countries of dealing with an extensive desert, while increasing desertification in others squeezes what is available as arable land. There are difficulties surrounding commodity prices—not just food prices and soft commodities but most other commodities aside from oil such as rare metals. Every country that wants to see an increase in its economic dynamism finds itself under pressure. There are problems, too, because the biggest commodity in the area is often the only commodity that is traded to any extent by any one country: oil. There are also the problems that are being faced on the streets of so many cities as we speak. Democracy is right at the heart of them, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, so rightly said. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, pointed to the lack of alternative leaders. In countries that have had too narrow a political system, it is hard to see where people of great quality and leadership will come from—we need to return to the overall issue of leadership. There is also the question of how traditional authoritarianism in some countries can be overcome with the least turbulence. There are problems in economies in which the role of the state has been too great and that of the private sector too small, and where as a consequence transformational questions are fundamental.

However, whatever these generalisations, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. These are very diverse regions. They include, as we know, the oil-rich economies of the Gulf and countries that are resource-scarce in relation to population, such as Egypt, Morocco and Yemen. The region’s economic fortunes over the past quarter of a century have been influenced by two factors above all: the price of oil and the legacy of economic policies and structures that have overemphasised the leading role of the state, leaving too small a space for others to emerge. As a consequence, about 23 per cent of the 300 million people in the region that we are discussing today live on less than $2 a day.

I shall choose one brief example to illustrate the point, although I have no doubt that, with the expertise that exists around the House, many others could be chosen. That is investment in education, to which I often turn back. I wonder what could be achieved if more was put into education. The paradox about this region and all the people in it is that investment in education, certainly in comparison with that in some other parts of the world, is high, yet the feed-through to the success of the economies is very low compared with that in most other parts of the world. Egypt is a very good example of that.

That must be in major part because there is such a small number of modern enterprises compared with such a large informal, low-skill service system underpinning economic activities in those countries. Whatever reforms are achieved politically, they had better be achieved alongside economic reform. The human capital dilemma is an enormous one. I emphasise that in education not just because of economic success, but because of the roots of democracy themselves.

There are rising aspirations. Everyone can see them around the region. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, made the point about electronic communications, and I must say that over the past few days I have been watching Al-Jazeera. That is not supposed to be an advertisement for the channel, but I have been impressed by the depth and seriousness of its commentary the whole way through.

There are rising costs, but there are very few real and clear ways for people to fulfil those ambitions. Even when they produce more—and many do—it goes unrewarded. Pluralism must be seen by so many people as the route to spread rewards other than to those who have been in power for a very long time. Access to the polity is what will help access to economic reward. My noble friend Lady Symons says that we need to capture the moment in this regard, and I wholly agree with her.

In the remaining minutes of this speech, I will turn to the key areas in which we need to be clear about what we can and cannot do. The first concerns aid. It is imperative that we understand from DfID what its aid programme for the region will be and how that aid programme—to which my noble friend Lord Stone made direct appeals—will help to grow economic success. That will also grow security success, which is always the case. On institutional reform, how can the Government seriously justify the cuts to the role of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy? I do not make a narrow political point. I tell noble Lords now that whichever Bench I sat on I would make exactly the same point about how we work to improve democracy. It has nothing to do with which party we support in this House or which parties or organisations people support in their own countries. My noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, said that we should not interfere, and they are right, but it is not interference. It is enabling; it is making sure that people are funded to achieve what they can achieve.

I strongly commend to the House the words of the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, on human rights because those are fundamental issues in the countries that we are talking about. On economics and trade, there has to be, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, emphasised, far more scope for EU relationships, which should not just be with Arab organisations and Israel, because there has to be at some stage a pattern of economic development and support for economic development that binds together to a greater extent the people who are currently antagonistic towards each other. I will not quote many examples in Northern Ireland, but there is no doubt that EU funding was important to the development of many of the institutions that went across the border. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, shakes his head, but I watched the road building and I heard people tell me what it had done for their access to markets.

Someone once said that if you do not make those things work—if you cannot export your fruit and your products—you export your people; they end up going to where they think they can get an economic future. In this regard, I was so impressed by what my noble friend Lord Stone had to say. In applauding him, I want to add something. I know that we cannot use visual aids, but he was kind enough to give me a photograph of some Sainsbury's rosemary, which is “great with lamb and roasted vegetables”. How very true. I notice that the label tells us the source is “West Bank Palestinian”. That should always be the proper labelling of source so that people understand these matters. Others are working in the area, such as Sir Ronnie Cohen.

The political dialogue, as the noble Lord, Lord Luce, said, requires diplomats and people who are capable in that regard. I hope that the Foreign Secretary, whose work in this area in the past few days I applaud, will try to avoid the monochrome view that the diplomatic role has shrunk to being a super salesman for the United Kingdom plc. It is more than that, and this is the time when the skills are absolutely needed.

On security, I simply reiterate what others have said about the two-state solution. I wholly agree with the noble Lords, Lord Trimble and Lord Fowler, that those are the central propositions. The Foreign Secretary is entirely right to say that the clock is ticking and people will run out of time. Respect for international law, not least on settlements—as the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, so correctly said—is fundamental, as is the whole question of building walls and lines. Those are matters of international law as much as anything else. I understand the fear generated as the rockets continue to come in; it is wrong that that should happen, but it is wrong that recognition should be denied. I agree with my noble friend Lord Judd that denying recognition to the Palestinians is not a particularly helpful way of approaching the question. Those are all fault-lines that we need to try to assist in overcoming. I am, I think, a real friend of Israel and I wish Israel nothing but national health, but health also depends on the willingness of all the participants to behave in a healthy way. I think that that is a statement of friendship.

Among the last few points that I wish to make is that we should always be straightforward about the history, as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said. There is no point in misshaping history; we have to understand the sources of tension and understand them accurately. The noble Lord, Lord Wright, reminded us of the full text of the Balfour declaration, rather than just the parts that are sometimes selectively quoted, which provides an important corrective in this regard. If we are to be accurate in advancing the case from history that we should respect the outcomes of democratic elections and that democracy trumps everything else, I respectfully suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that the election in Iraq was won by Prime Minister Maliki, who supported the intervention in Iraq. He won the election with the full support of very large numbers of people from the communities in Iraq. That was a democratic outcome. We might like it or we might not like it, but that was a democratic outcome.

[Lord Alderdice]

Both the noble Lord and I know that the situation in Iraq, both before and subsequent to the election, was substantially more complex than the way in which he has described it.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, as I know from replying to one or two debates on Iraq, Iraq is incredibly complex, so I accept that point. I am just saying that we cannot be selective about the outcomes of elections in arguing the point about history. An election produces a result, and the result is the result.

Another quick point that I want to make is that there is obviously a lot that we can do in the area of culture, including through university exchanges—ensuring that students and academics from the region come to our universities—and exchanges in sport. I had some familiarity with such exchange in the Football Association, which did a lot of work training both Israeli and West Bank referees together. They found it much more interesting to talk about the state of English football than about the things that might otherwise appear to divide them. There are lots of cultural things that we can do, not least of which is that we really ought to look at how we support the British Council and the World Service. I wholly support what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said about DfID money in that regard. It is astonishing to me that, having gone to such lengths to set up Arab and Farsi TV services, within months we cut the resources for one of our best advocates of soft power. That is just completely astonishing.

Finally, I know that whatever the difficulties of today and the past few weeks, and however difficult the negotiations at Camp David or in Washington, in my humble judgment—and this is my humble judgment; I do not say that as a matter of form—it is important to know when the tide is going to turn, what events might precipitate a favourable turn in the tide as well as those that precipitate unfavourable turns in the tide. That is why I have gone through the issues that I have, because we must be ready to catch any favourable tide available. Even in unpromising circumstances, we must be ready. For those reasons, the FCO faces a great challenge; its political skills are its decisive assets, on these occasions possibly more important than any other asset that it has, although I do not exclude the importance of generating good business with people around the world. Bringing people together, helping to find the common ground, and doing that—as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, wholly rightly said—with our own national interests at the forefront of our minds must be among the things that we focus on through these next days and weeks.

Once again, I thank all noble Lords, especially the opening speakers from the two Front Benches, for speaking in difficult circumstances on a difficult day but on an issue that, whatever its difficulties, needed this ventilation.