Queen’s Speech

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, aside from some issues concerning Europe, I believe that everyone approaches foreign policy matters in this House in terms of the interests of the United Kingdom and our allies. Party advantage has been almost entirely irrelevant to our debates, and I want to follow that course today.

I want to express an anxiety that our country and this Parliament is at risk of becoming rather more inward-looking and somewhat more self-referential. It is plainly not simply the case that that is true: the current conference which the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, was describing to us, the work being done in sexual violence in law and the work which deals with the core commitments plainly address a much wider set. Yet it is far more common to wonder in a public way about whether we should focus at all on places in which it is erroneously believed that we have little interest or which do not directly threaten our security.

Of course, in this interconnected world, almost all places can be potentially difficult for us. However, this inward-looking trend—which is so plain, for example, in UKIP policy and much of what is said about Europe or NATO, or, indeed, what is being said in the context of the Scottish referendum, and in the discomfort with the potential burden of enforcing, for example, the United Nations rights of protection—is, in my view, a trend that we should resist.

I am making no appeal here to antique “great power” or imperial stances. I abhor war. I am not advocating intervention where goals are undefined, vague or beyond achievement. However, we have an historic and contemporary responsibility. We may no longer be a great power in the sense that that was understood, but we are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. We have a veto. We are expected to act appropriately, or this standing seems certain to be challenged. This standing cannot be cast in our minds as a burden. It is, rather, a privilege that we enjoy in the world.

My apprehensions may, of course, be wrong. What surprises me is that, notwithstanding the depth and variety of knowledge in this House, we have no standing committee to analyse in depth the United Kingdom’s role in the world. There is work undertaken effectively on Europe in committees but, in a complex world, it cannot be grasped on the basis of the occasional debate that we have. Work, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, earlier, on FCO strategy which is plainly needed would be greatly advanced by having such a capacity.

As today’s debate also includes DCMS, I hope noble Lords will let me comment on the regulation of football in the United Kingdom, and the massive and growing evidence of corruption in FIFA and international football. I start by thanking so many Members of both Houses for their support over the past four years. I have learnt that whistleblowing is an extremely uncomfortable experience; I am not sure that I would advocate it to anybody. The efforts of parts of our media—“Panorama” and Andrew Jennings; the Sunday Times with its “Insight” tradition; and Channel 4’s “Dispatches” and Geoff Atkinson—have been exemplary. Those in the United Kingdom’s World Cup bid, with the very honourable exception of the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, whom I am delighted to see in his place, spent much of their time condemning the investigative media, while he applauded it. I congratulate him most sincerely on that.

I wonder if I may try, even briefly, to tell it like it is. FIFA, I am afraid, behaves like a mafia family. It has decades-long traditions of bribes, bungs and corruption. About half of its executive committee who voted on the previous World Cup have had to go. Even its previous president, João Havelange, has been removed from his honorary life presidency in his 90s.

Systematic corruption, underpinned by non-existent investigations where most of the accused are exempt from the investigation, makes it impossible to proceed. Foreign construction workers dying in their dozens in Qatar stadium construction sites are essentially ignored. I applaud Greg Dykes’s rebuttal of Sepp Blatter’s grotesque accusation that all those criticisms are simply racist. The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, and other noble Lords in this House have demonstrated that concern with racism and concern with proper dealings and anti-corruption go hand in hand.

Don Corleone would have recognised the tactics and would probably have admired them. Domestically, the Burns report on football has been permanently shelved. Take the fit and proper person test for the ownership of football clubs. It failed to stop a Thai politician—a former prime minister with a notorious human rights record—from acquiring a major club in this country, or unknown owners from controlling other great clubs which are essential to the sporting culture. It is important to our sports culture and to fans.

I understand that there is no room for a sports law in the Queen’s Speech—I am coming to the end, I promise. Governments should stay out of sport. However, the deal ought to be that they are entitled to designate the lead associations to regulate each sport, to set out the regulatory requirements and standards in the conduct of international sport. In the case of the FA, it will be a daunting task to take even the most modest steps. However, it is time for that organisation and for other sporting organisations to step up to the mark. Let us try to eliminate corruption wherever it exists, not least in those things which are so dear to people’s hearts.