Saudi Arabia

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, very much for introducing this debate. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, in the place of the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, who I also now welcome. I am speaking in the place of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who was speaking in the Moses Room as she came up. Much mention has been made of the Arab spring and of change across the Arab world, in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and we hope perhaps in Syria. The question is how this affects Saudi Arabia.

One hundred years ago, Saudi Arabia was, with Yemen, the most traditional, tribally based society in the Arab world. As a Christian from a country which has slowly moved, over 10 to 15 generations, from a traditional society to a modern, liberal society, I have to recognise that Saudi Arabia has been moving at immense speed—in two to three generations—from a very conservative, traditional society to one which is facing up to the challenges of modernity. It is, after all, still being governed by the sons of the founder of the kingdom.

I am not qualified to discuss what the authentic Islamic approach is to human rights. I am uncomfortably aware that the Christian tradition has advanced and embraced highly diverse assumptions about the toleration of minorities and of other faiths, the acceptable rights of women, and freedom of expression and dissent. I am conscious that the rights of women were very limited in Britain until less than 150 years ago. We have gradually reformed our laws and social attitudes over several generations since then, and we press the Saudis to pass through the same evolutionary process, but at a much faster pace. The progress that the Saudis are making with education, and in particular the education of women, carries its own dynamic. It is very praiseworthy that they are educating women: educated women are not going to accept, for themselves or their children, the continuing denial of their rights.

We therefore have to recognise that the human rights position in Saudi Arabia reflects widely held conservative social values, but there are indications that the Government and the media are trying slowly to encourage Saudi society to open up. The interfaith initiative that the Saudis are sponsoring is a good example, but it comes up against many Saudis of a more conservative tune, who are not supportive of this. We are attempting to work with those in Saudi society who are advocating reform in order to build support for a full application of human rights standards.

Her Majesty’s Government have serious concerns about the current human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. We have made our views well known, and continue to do so through the universal periodic review process. We make those concerns clear to the Saudis at the highest levels, just as they are frank with us on issues that concern them.

In 2011, we have maintained this frank dialogue, working both bilaterally with the Saudis and with the EU. We have encouraged progress in four priority areas, which for us are women’s rights, the death penalty, the rights of foreign workers, on which the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, spoke with particular concern, and judicial reform. We funded a number of projects in 2010, including training for Saudi security forces in forensic analysis and investigative methods, including DNA analysis, which has helped to improve the treatment of suspects.

The British Council trained female entrepreneurs through its springboard training programme. On the question of funding, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury that of course the British Government use our money, as do other wealthy countries, including the United States, to encourage what we value so highly and to encourage others to see Britain as a friendly country.

In September, the Saudi Government announced that women would be allowed to participate in both voting and standing in the next municipal elections. This is another small, but, we hope, constructive step forward and, as such, should be congratulated. Of course there can be further improvement. The next one is the rights of women moving around, including, of course in driving. That underlines the wider issue of the guardianship system, on which the UK consistently calls for modification to allow women fully to participate in society.

The Saudi Arabia All-Party Parliamentary Group recently visited the kingdom—last week, I think—led by Daniel Kaczynski, and discussed with the Saudi Government a draft law on terrorism, which is, I emphasise, only a draft law. A number of amendments have been proposed from within the Saudi Government and society. It reported back to the British Government that it sees the process of reform as slowly moving forward. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, referred to the pace of reform as glacial. We would of course like it to go a great deal faster, but we think it is slowly moving forward.

A number of other questions were asked in the debate: how many British citizens are there in Saudi jails? I understand that there are currently four British nationals in Saudi jails. We are in regular contact with both them and the Saudi authorities to ensure that they have access to legal advice and to ensure their welfare. We are currently in the process of negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement with the Saudi authorities. This agreement will cover any British nationals held in our respective countries and, of course, the return of some Saudis in prison in British jails.

The rights of foreign workers are a major concern. I think that there are nearly 8 million foreign workers in Saudi Arabia and, as the noble Lord has remarked, many of them come from south and south-east Asia. They are clearly denied rights. The rights of maids and women workers are of particular concern. We have made our case to the Saudis on this, as do a number of other Governments, including the Governments of the countries from which those workers come. It is a matter of universal concern. The human trafficking law which the Saudis have just introduced provides some small progress in that direction, but it has still not been enough to move Saudi Arabia off the worst trafficking in persons rating. External pressure is still there, not only from NGOs but from international organisations, and the Saudis are responsive and deeply conscious of criticism which comes from the outside. I stress that the anti-terror law which the Amnesty International report focused on is a draft. It is highly likely that it will be considerably modified before it is introduced.

On the question of the Salafist ideology, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, it is correct to say that 10 to 15 years ago, a considerable amount of Saudi money was flowing through Zakat to Islamic charities which were funding madrassahs promoting violent views of Islam. I am told that those flows of money are now a good deal less; that they do not come from Saudi governmental sources; and that the Saudi Government are co-operating actively in attempting to promote a more non-violent and modern-oriented version of Salafism.

The noble Lord said that there has been very little attempt to analyse this movement and its motivation. I can assure him that, since 2001, there have been a number of active attempts to analyse the nature of Salafism and the various movements that we are now facing. It is not the case that it is a matter entirely of Saudi leadership and drive; there are now indigenous forms of Salafism in a wide range of Muslim countries. Part of what is driving the growth of Salafism among the young is, very often, reaction to modernity and what are perceived as incursions by the West.

On the death penalty, torture and mistreatment we continue to raise our concerns with the Saudi Government. On Bahrain, we were very concerned but we understand that the Saudi troops who arrived in Bahrain under a Gulf protection treaty have not themselves been involved in human rights violations. We are doing everything we can to promote dialogue between the Bahraini regime and its Shia minority and others.

We have an honest relationship with Saudi Arabia—we are a critical friend. We all know that it is not always easy to be a critical friend. Her Majesty’s Government have critical friendships with a number of other Governments with very different circumstances; these range from Israel to Pakistan. Many of the Governments with whom we have these critical dialogues do not like the things that we say, but we continue to be honest and frank. We share inseparable and intertwined interests with the Saudis, and we do our best to build on our long-standing relationship.

We wish to encourage evolution rather than revolution. The aftermath of the revolution in Iran, which some at first hoped would lead to a more open and liberal society but which has led instead to a narrower, more authoritarian and theocratic regime, strengthens our view that evolution through reform is preferable to pushing for the sort of revolution which would lead to destabilising what is still a relatively stable regime.

We recognise the steps that the King has already taken to widen discussion of key social, political and human rights issues through the national dialogue initiative. Through our Arab partnership, we stand ready to work together with Saudi Arabia as partners in building and increasing citizen participation as the only way, we assure them, to ensure long-term stability and prosperity.

Constitutional Change: Constitution Committee Report

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government value enormously the work of this Committee in focusing greater attention on the intricacies of our constitutional protections and of the process of constitutional change. We look forward to a continuing dialogue, spilling over, we would hope, into a more informed public debate.

On this occasion, as we have heard, the Committee has found our response disappointing. I am sorry for that. The Government are not persuaded that the recommendations represent an appropriate way of proceeding.

At the heart of our disagreement, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, in effect suggested in his speech, is a fundamental difference of view about our current constitutional arrangements in their current unwritten form. As it stands, constitutional legislation has no special status. To provide a special process for deliberating on constitutional legislation, therefore, runs up against the problem of definition, which the committee itself acknowledges, as well as the question of what is significant and not significant.

The Government’s argument, therefore, is that constitutional legislation has to go through an effective, proper, constitutional process. We have parliamentary sovereignty. The legislative process is, therefore, the way to proceed.

I have been sitting here trying to remember what it was that I taught, as a very young university teacher, when I tried to teach the British Constitution. Things have changed a great deal since then, but the question as to what is constitutional has in many ways become a great deal more complicated. I moved on to teach international relations and the European and International dimension is in many ways the most difficult; confusions over British sovereignty and constitutional sovereignty hit us very regularly.

We have had the debate on the EU Bill, which I helped to take through this House—the question of what happens when British sovereignty is infringed. On the other hand, the IMF programme of 1976 fairly clearly infringed British sovereignty. I recall one of the Cross-Benchers some months ago arguing that the placing of British troops under foreign command would be a fundamental invasion of British sovereignty, which would have clear and significant constitutional importance. The Secretary of State for Defence remarked to me the following day that British troops had just been serving under Turkish command in ISAF in Afghanistan and that indeed British troops had first served under foreign command in the First World War. So the question of what we think is of constitutional significance—indeed what we think constitutional sovereignty is as such—is itself deeply contentious.

I got myself into deep trouble two years ago in Jersey for suggesting that the relationship with the Crown Dependencies was a matter of constitutional significance which was open to constitutional change. I was denounced for a week as a French spy and various other things in the Channel Islands press.

The domestic issue of what is constitutional—the relationship between the Executive and the legislature, and between the Government and Parliament—is clearly fundamental, but the question of whether the courts are part of this is something that we rather skirt around. When we said goodbye to the Law Lords, I was fascinated to discover that the move to a Supreme Court had indeed been taken by legislation on a partisan basis by a Gladstonian Government that was in office for only a short time more than a hundred years ago; and that the collapse of that Government and the return of the Conservative Government led to this reform being pushed back for a mere 130 years.

The relationship between central government and local government is not, it seems, a matter of constitutional significance, although we make it so on a regular basis. The relationship between central government and the devolved Administrations has clearly become part of our constitution now. The relationship between the political elite in government and Parliament and the wider public—the disillusioned, even alienated, citizens—is one that, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, rightly pointed out, we all need to take much more into account. The question of the interrelationship between different changes is, again, one that we stumble over. I have heard several people over the past few weeks suggest that a future referendum on the relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU might provide a result in which those in England had a clear majority in one direction and those in Scotland had a clear majority in the other. That would absolutely have constitutional significance.

The process of constitutional change cannot be apolitical or consensual. It is essentially political; it defines the rules of politics. The idea of non-partisan constitutional reform, which one or two contributions suggested, seems to me to be a chimera. Alfred Venn Dicey, much cited as a neutral constitutional authority, was also rabidly anti-Irish and wrote pamphlets against home rule. Professor Philip Norton, whom I have long regarded as one of the greatest living authorities on the British constitution after only Professor Peter Hennessy—and therefore as authoritative and neutral—is also the noble Lord, Lord Norton, who has very strong and partisan views on House of Lords reform and a number of other constitutional issues. We cannot criticise government proposals as political; of course constitutional reform is political. The question is: how do we handle them and do we need different procedures?

One of the defining principles of the British constitution is its flexibility and that it is based on parliamentary sovereignty. Therefore, constitutional change is made through legislation. The core of the committee’s recommendations was for a special statement to accompany any constitutional Bill to set out the expected overall impact of the legislation. What consideration had been given to the measure before publication? What public engagement had there been? Had there been formal pre-legislative scrutiny? What post-legislative scrutiny was envisaged? The Government’s response indicated that most of the information suggested for publication is already available in the Explanatory Notes that accompany each Bill on publication. It may be that we need to consider further whether the Explanatory Notes might be accompanied by a written ministerial statement, which would be different in form but perhaps not in substance.

There are a number of other comments that one needs to make. I do not think we would wish to go into the details of internal government deliberations. I can assure noble Lords that the Cabinet committee system works extremely well at the moment, partly because this is a coalition Government and we have to negotiate through Cabinet committees. Some of our discussions are extremely sharp. The Cabinet committee system now works much more fully than it did under the previous Government for obvious reasons.

The additional hurdles—parliamentary or wider—that are suggested, will be the subjects of continuing discussion. As the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, suggested, these would be part of a major process of constitutional change. The House of Lords itself is perhaps now the largest backstop to ill-considered or overpartisan constitutional reform being pushed through the Commons. But for the Government to spell out exactly what it means by constitutional change would itself be a change in the fundamental constitutional arrangements. When the Public Bodies Bill is quoted as a constitutional Bill, we are exploring what is the outer fringes of what we regard as constitutional.

The process of post-legislative scrutiny is a matter for Parliament and the Government to determine, and I hope that noble Lords would accept that is a useful piece on which the Government should leave post-legislative scrutiny for Parliament to decide.

A number of noble Lords have quoted the Cook-Maclennan model. I remind noble Lords that I was myself a little involved in that, and so was the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, as a neutral adviser on all this. Part of the basis for the Cook-Maclennan discussions was the expectation that Labour might not get an overall majority in 1997, so it was in effect part of a necessary preparation for what might have to be a coalition Government. Perhaps that is something that political parties should think about for the future, but it was on that occasion a preparation for something that did not happen. On this occasion, perhaps none of us prepared for something as fully as we should have done, which we had not expected to happen.

There were particular reasons of urgency underlying the decision to introduce the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill and the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill without publishing them first in draft. I hope that I have done my best to explain that. In contrast, the process of House of Lords reform has been one on which we have gone through all the stages of consultation—Green Papers, White Papers, committees—that noble Lords could ask for, and I am not sure that it has necessarily built consensus yet or will ensure easy passage for the Bill when it is published. That is, again, of the nature of constitutional change. Building a consensus for a non-partisan constitutional change is something that academics may hope for but politicians may think is perhaps beyond what is acceptable.

The UK is facing a period of continuing constitutional change, because it is going through a period of significant social and economic change and coming to terms with highly significant changes in its international environment and in the relationship between domestic arrangements and its international obligations and constraints. We will therefore continue to need and value the work of this committee and we look forward to a continuing dialogue with the committee.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

The Minister referred to facing constitutional change, which rather implies that the Government know what “constitutional” means. As far as I interpret his speech, he seems to be confirming that the Government do not know what a constitution is and that the “two Ps” test, which worked quite well for the Constitution Committee, appears to be beyond the Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the question of constitutional change is one that we will continue to argue over, and the definition of what is constitutional and is not constitutional is something that evolves through debate and argument in Parliament as well as in academic seminars. Most of us think that we know what is constitutional when we see it, but sometimes we disagree with each other.

[Lord Desai]

The Minister describes how exemplary the Government have been about the House of Lords Reform Bill, although they were was in a great hurry to do the other Bills. Would it be right to conclude that the Government will abide by the rules when that does not bother people in the recent past, but that if it was the past they will not call it constitutional?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government, as I hear the Leader of this House say frequently, are strongly committed to the process of House of Lords reform. We will bring a Bill before the House and we look forward to the welcome that it will receive from the House’s resident constitutional experts.

EU: Repatriation of Powers

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grenfell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have agreed a list of powers to be repatriated from the European Union, and, if so, when they expect to launch negotiations with the United Kingdom’s European partners.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are committed under the coalition agreement to examining the balance of competences between Britain and the EU. We have made no commitment to a particular outcome of this review. Work on the review has begun and is in its early stages.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I am relieved to read that the Prime Minister has recognised that Friday’s negotiations on a fiscal compact are not the occasion to try to repatriate any powers. That is good news, and it should at least save the Prime Minister from having another ASBO slapped on him by the President of France. The Prime Minister says that he wants to be constructive at these negotiations but that he will have some modest demands to make. Does the Minister agree that the chance to participate constructively in the negotiations being held among the 27 depends on them being among the 27, because that gives him a seat and a voice, whereas if negotiations were confined to the 17 eurozone members he would have neither? If the Prime Minister arrives in Brussels with a list of concessions which he wants granted as a price for his co-operation, there is a serious risk that the 17, tired of Britain’s repeated requests for special treatment, will simply close the door on the 10 outsiders and negotiate without them. What influence will he then have on the outcome?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are now facing a clear difference of timescale in the things under way. There is a real urgency about managing the eurozone crisis. That is a matter of weeks. Examining the balance of competences within the European Union is a much longer-term investigation, with which the British Government are engaged, and on which we expect to have plenty of allies among the other member states of the European Union.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, would my noble friend accept that, in a spirit of constructive engagement, the Prime Minister has made it very clear that he is not about to go to the European Council with a shopping list of powers to be repatriated, that the coalition agreement did not envisage that, that the coalition agreement envisaged only a review of the working time directive and that the repatriation of powers is not on the agenda here and now?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we all recognise that Britain’s future economic prosperity depends on the eurozone not collapsing and that it is therefore very strongly in our interest to do everything we can to assist in the management of this current crisis. Britain’s priorities are: first, to maintain the integrity of the EU 27; secondly, to maintain and strengthen the single market; thirdly, to promote recovery and economic growth; fourthly, to defend specific British interests in financial services; fifthly, to ensure that social and employment legislation does not hold back growth; and also to rebalance competence away from detailed regulations on matters better left to national, regional or local government.

[Lord Tomlinson]

Many Members of the House will agree with the first five items on that list, but as far as the sixth item is concerned—the question of better balance—will the Minister recognise that at the moment his right honourable friend the Prime Minister, in trying to appease his Back Benches, is making it almost impossible to negotiate properly in Brussels?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the problem of creeping competence has been there for some time. I remember a pamphlet published 10 years ago by a rather bright young man, whom my wife once taught, called Nick Clegg on doing less better. That is what many of us want to achieve in Brussels. We all know that the Commission sometimes wants to take powers over everything. I regretted that there was a report the other week from this House’s EU Committee on Commission proposals for closer co-operation on grass-roots sport. It seems to me that grass-roots sport ought to be left to the grass roots and that sport at the international level should be dealt with by the EU. That is a reasonable, long-term proposal. Liberal Democrats have held that view for a long time and continue to hold it, perhaps against the centralisers at the European level within the Labour Party. I see the noble Lord shaking his head.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, what would the Government’s response be if, in the intergovernmental conference about to meet, a member state other than Britain were to introduce a proposal for the repatriation of some portion of the single market?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am happy to say that that is extremely unlikely. We are some way off an intergovernmental conference. The German Government believe that we can have a very short IGC next March and hope that ratification of limited treaty change can then take place by the end of 2012. The position of Her Majesty's Government is that treaty change is not necessary, as we argued when ratifying the Lisbon treaty and again on the EU Bill. The Lisbon treaty has an enormous amount of headroom under which powers can be taken, and we think advantage should be taken of that, rather than getting into the messy, unavoidably uncertain and long process of treaty change.

[Lord Liddle]

Does the noble Lord agree with the article in the Financial Times this morning by the Conservative Member of Parliament, Jo Johnson, in which he says that the last thing the City of London needs to protect its interests is for the British Eurosceptics to plaster a union jack all over it? Does he agree that the best way to defend our vital national interests in Europe is to be in, engaging our partners, rather than out, shouting on the sidelines and demanding repatriation of powers?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the article, which I thought was excellent, and I am very happy that the chair of the relevant European Parliament committee on this is a British Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament, Sharon Bowles.

[Lord Dykes]

Would my noble friend agree that the only important repatriation of powers for the Government—because they need to be careful on this matter—would be to repatriate Bill Cash away from the chairmanship of the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons? Would he further agree that with so many exclusions, derogations and exceptions already, not least on the single currency, we have gone far enough down that road and that we need to be a good European partner again?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Lisbon treaty envisaged that national parliaments should play a much more active part in scrutiny and indeed in insisting on the importance of subsidiarity and resisting overcentralisation. This House currently does it better than the other House. We very much hope that the House of Commons will also improve and extend its scrutiny of EU measures.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, given the requirement for unanimity among 27 nation states before a single comma can be retrieved from the treaties of Rome, is not all talk of repatriation a convenient red herring?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

No. There is constant negotiation. The working time directive is currently under review, as the noble Lord will be aware. Sixteen member states, including Britain, currently have opt-outs. Twenty-three member states, not including Britain, are currently under contravention for not implementing the working time directive. There is therefore room for reconsideration.

Poland: Restitution of Property

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare that I may have a possible interest.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government’s priorities for the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe were announced by my right honourable friend the Minister for Europe on 26 October. Our main priority is for the reform of the Court of Human Rights. The Government have no plans to augment these. The Government take the issue of property restitution very seriously, as the noble Baroness will be well aware from her participation in conferences on this subject. We will continue to remind Poland of its stated intention to reinstate a restitution Bill, currently stalled, when its economic situation allows.

[Baroness Deech]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. Is he aware that Poland is the only post-Communist European nation without legislation to help the victims of Communist and Nazi property seizures, whereas other relatively poorer countries have such legislation? Is he aware that Poland is not engaging with the formal process that he mentioned and is unlikely to attend the conference on this next year, so will he take steps to help the claimants by, for example, pressing for a European representative on reparation and asking for a quid pro quo for the £2 million UK contribution to Poland which was recently made for the preservation of Auschwitz?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are several complex issues in that supplementary question. Legislation has indeed been passed in all the other post-Communist countries although I am advised that its implementation has been patchy. Poland has suspended its legislation on the grounds that the €5 billion which it estimates would be the cost would take it above its current budgetary limit. We all understand that in current circumstances national Governments find these things difficult. I am very conscious that restitution in Poland is an unusually difficult issue after 80 years in which first Nazi and then Russian troops have rolled over Poland. There was confiscation and enormous destruction, then Communist confiscation, and a great deal of movement of boundaries and forced relocation of Poles, Germans and others.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I also declare a sort of interest in that one of my late grandmothers was Polish and did not come out of Poland at the end of the war. However, I will not be one of those seeking compensation. Further to what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has said, when and if Her Majesty’s Government press the Polish Government, will they ask them to ease the evidential requirements needed to make claims, which are very complicated, and assist people to access the records, as that assistance is not always given? My noble friend the Minister spoke of the financial difficulties that Poland is experiencing, but will the Government ask it in very strong terms to set up a central fund to at least meet a small percentage of the claims rather than blocking any claims whatever?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government have said on a number of occasions to the Polish Government that we regret the slow progress on this issue. We supported the 2010 Terezin declaration. We will be an active participant in the review conference next year and are actively engaged with other like-minded Governments on this issue. We do not have a formal position at present on the question of an EU representative for Holocaust restitution.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, will the Government be more ambitious in, at any rate, the field of cultural property? Will they take this opportunity to put forward proposals for a treaty, possibly a convention—perhaps under the auspices of UNESCO—to establish internationally agreed legal principles for the determination of claims for compensation for, or restitution of, cultural property that was wrongfully taken in circumstances of war or occupation?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not sure how far back the noble Lord wishes to take that. I remember being taken around Prague Castle in 1993 and shown the empty spaces on the walls where the pictures that the Swedish army had taken away in 1643 had been. As we know, the issue of cultural property, particularly that of the 20th century, is actively being pursued. A number of museums are extremely hesitant about this, and there was an interesting article in one of last weekend’s supplements about this. We are engaged in the whole issue of cultural property and restitution but, as the noble Lord knows from a number of current cases in New York, this can sometimes raise immensely complicated questions.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Is the Minister aware that at least one case on this very issue is already pending before the European Court of Human Rights, and it would therefore be completely inappropriate for the United Kingdom, during its presidency, to take up this issue? Is it right that British Government received £5.4 million under the indemnity agreement made after the Second World War to cover the international legal aspect; that under the Polish law of 1997 Jewish religious communities in Poland can file applications before a regulatory commission on Jewish religious communities; and that 5,500-odd applications have been received?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am aware that the issues of restitution of communal property are in some ways rather different from restitution of individual property. I stand to be informed by the noble Lord on the case before the European Court of Human Rights, and he is of course correct to say that we are, in a sense, in the second round on the issue of restitution. There was a first round in the years immediately after the Second World War. The second round began with the end of the Cold War and the whole set of issues that then opened up regarding restitution from post-Communist Governments.

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, when do Her Majesty's Government expect full implementation of the Terezin declaration by all countries, including Poland? What measures are Her Majesty's Government taking to ensure that this might happen before the 70th anniversary in 2015 of the end of World War 2?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, these will be very much the topics for discussion at the review conference next year.

Palestine

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what level of support they will give to the latest efforts of the Palestinian Authority to secure admission to full United Nations statehood.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, on 9 November the Foreign Secretary announced in a Statement to the House of Commons that the United Kingdom will abstain on any Security Council resolution on Palestinian UN membership. We will not vote against the application because of the progress that the Palestinian leadership has made towards meeting the criteria for UN membership, including statehood, but we cannot vote for the application while our primary objective remains a return to negotiations and the success of those negotiations.

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I understand that point but, none the less, in the general background, how long can this basic madness go on after 44 years? Indeed, over the weekend, Defense Secretary Panetta issued a very serious warning to Israel about it being isolated in the Middle East. Surely Palestine cannot be the only country in the world denied statehood at the almost exclusive request of the USA and one other country. What next step in ethical British foreign policy will be taken to promote this matter?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we certainly recognise that the case for progress on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has become more urgent as the pace of change across the region has quickened. The quartet issued a statement at the end of September in the context of the call for a vote in the UN, calling for negotiations to be resumed within a month. That, of course, has not succeeded. The quartet will meet again in a few weeks’ time. The possibility that negotiations will in effect end raises some very difficult questions for both parties in this conflict. Palestine remains an occupied territory. It has, however, with a great deal of support from the United Kingdom and others managed to build a number of the basic aspects of the framework for statehood. We welcome that, we have supported it, and we wish negotiations towards a two-state solution to resume as soon as possible.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, what support will the Government give to encourage states in the region to recognise the state of Israel, which has of course been a member of the United Nations for 62 years?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely briefed as to which states recognise Israel and which do not, let alone what the implications of changes in regime might mean for that, but I promise to write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, in my Question to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on 13 September, I asked whether he accepted that granting statehood to the Palestinians would not of itself preclude future negotiations. Does the Minister accept that acquiring statehood, rather than inviting punishment from Israel and the United States, would put the Palestinians on a more equal footing with their Israeli negotiators and thus improve the chances of achieving the credible and substantial negotiations that are, as I understand it, the Government's objective?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I repeat that the Government’s primary objective is to press for the resumption of negotiations between the two parties, based on the principle of a two-state solution around boundaries to be agreed but based on the 1967 boundaries. We are conscious that we are slipping away from that possibility for a range of reasons. We are also conscious that if neither side were to believe any longer in the possibility of a negotiated solution, the threat of a return to violence would be real.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that the case for Palestinian statehood would be much improved if Fatah and Hamas—in other words, the two different jurisdictions within former Palestinian lands—were able to meet in accordance with the reconciliation agreement of May 2011, the Cairo agreement, and speak with one voice on a Palestinian state rather than with two?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government would be extremely happy to see a successful reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas based on the acceptance of the state of Israel within a two-state solution and the provision of a viable shared Administration for both Gaza and the West Bank.

[Lord Turnberg]

My Lords, while we are all very anxious for a two-state solution to emerge from all this, to follow the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, does the Minister agree that it is rather unhelpful for a Palestinian Government who include Hamas to seek membership of the United Nations at the same time as they deny the existence of another state that belongs to the United Nations, namely Israel?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, a great deal of unhelpful statements are being made on both sides. It was brought to my attention that one British national newspaper the other week published an advertisement by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism that showed the state of Israel as including Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights. That is not entirely helpful for an agency of the state of Israel, either. There are real problems, and both sides recognise that. If we concentrate on the problems on both sides, we will not get back to negotiations, which is, above all, what we need to do.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, if the matter were to come before the United Nations General Assembly and the proposition was that Palestine should be given a status higher than its existing one, and one that has been used in the past by sovereign independent states such as Switzerland, would we in that circumstance be able to vote for it?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is not yet a proposition before the General Assembly. When that emerges, we will take our decision in the light of our commitment to make sure that everything that is done promotes negotiation between the two parties.

[Lord Teverson]

Can the Minister please explain to me how there can be a two-state solution where there are not two states?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the two-state solution is intended to be the end point of a successful negotiation.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, as the state of Israel steadily pursues its policy of appropriating land, evicting Palestinians from their own land and steadily encroaching on the territory that Palestinians hope to include in their part of a two-state solution, was abstention really good enough?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I appreciate that passions run very high on both sides of this argument and that passions also rise high on the ground. Low levels of violence are being experienced on both sides at present. The worst thing would be for negotiations not to resume and for the current level of intermittent violence on both sides to blow up again into a more general conflict. The alternative to peace is conflict, which is why negotiations for peace are very important.

Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was just discussing with my noble friend Lord Shutt the West Riding asylum, with its own dedicated railway siding and room for 1,200 people, which was still there, although thankfully empty, when I first stood in the Shipley constituency. We have thankfully moved a long way from the Victorian age, but there are still some issues which we have to remove from the statute book.

I can tell the House that the Government support the Bill, although we will ask for some amendments to be made in Committee. A number of the provisions put forward demonstrate a shared purpose with the objectives of this Government. They are in line with the Government’s strategy, No Health Without Mental Health. Tackling stigma and discrimination is at the heart of the Government’s mental health strategy.

This is an issue which goes way beyond the Government and the Opposition. Shifting public behaviour and attitudes requires a major and substantial social movement, including more sympathetic treatment in our mainstream media. So let me remind noble Lords that the Government have already publicly committed to the repeal of Section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983 and that, as has already been mentioned, we stated last February that the section would be repealed when a suitable legislative vehicle became available. This Bill seems to be that suitable legislative vehicle, and we are glad to see that it is linked with similar amendments on the role of company directors, school governors and jurors. On the question of jury service, the Government have been considering the detail of what is proposed and wish to ensure that any amended provisions are fair and effective. They support the principles underlying the Bill, including Clause 2 on jury service, and propose that the clause should remain in the Bill. However, it is possible that my noble friend the Deputy Leader of the House and his colleagues at the Ministry of Justice might bring forward a government amendment at a later stage.

Given the lateness of this Second Reading in the Session, it may not be possible, even with the best of good will, for the Bill to complete all of its stages before the Session ends, let alone to take it through the Commons as well. If, however, it fails to be carried during this Session, the Government hope that it will be reintroduced at the beginning of the next Session, and can assure the House that it will have the Government’s support. We look forward to seeing it on the statute book.

Government Procurement Policy

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this debate has ranged widely. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, for drawing the House’s attention to such an important issue. Procurement is central to the Government’s programme for reform and efficiency in public services and, as the Autumn Statement will make clear, to the growth agenda. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate and will do my best to address many of the points that have been raised.

In October 2010, in a debate on Sir Philip Green’s report, the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, argued that,

“it is time to centralise buying and to bring in some kind of head honcho from the private sector who knows what they are doing and pay them the right amount of money, which they would be paid in a large organisation”.—[Official Report, 14/10/10; col. 593.]

Our head honcho—the government chief procurement officer, as we prefer to call him—is John Collington. John is a highly respected procurement professional who joined the Civil Service five years ago after having spent 25 years in the private sector in a number of senior commercial and supply chain roles, operating on a global basis. He is well paid. He is not paid on the scale of the CEO of one of our major banks, but then the Government are not entirely happy with the scale on which our major banks are paying their current CEOs.

Since then the Government have embarked on a new procurement strategy to reform the way in which they buy those goods and services which they need to fulfil their responsibilities. The strategy focuses on having a centralised approach to the purchasing of common goods and services, appointing Crown representatives—of which there are now nine—to work with the Government’s largest suppliers, removing the red tape that stops SMEs competing for government contracts, improving our procurement technology and, above all, investing in our staff to improve our procurement capability. The noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, called for a procurement revolution. This is under way.

The scale of government procurement should be set out. Central government procures some £62 billion of supplies a year. The wider public sector, including local government, procures some £168 billion and the total public sector procurement, including that of arm’s-length bodies, is some £230 billion. Some of that is accounted for by commodities and some by services. Then there are the major long-term contracts for infrastructure construction, manufactured systems and trains, armoured vehicles and aircraft carriers. These do not, of course, require entirely the same approach. There are unavoidable tensions between central control and local diversity and—as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, pointed out—between the squeeze on costs and the political requirement to achieve regional balance where that is possible. I should say that the Olympic Delivery Authority has done extremely well in delivering on time and within cost. I regret that the regional balance has not been as good as it should be but on other criteria it has been a remarkable success.

Much of the criticism in this debate has been about the practice of the previous Government regarding, for example, the ETS and the other enormous IT contracts, and the vast expenditure on consultants. The Government are setting out to be a lean Government in procurement. If I may say so, it is a lean Government in every single aspect through and through. As noble Lords will know, the Government Car Service has been considerably pruned. Ministers are now walking twice as much. I have not yet assessed how much weight they have lost but we are a leaner Government, I think, than our predecessor was in that respect.

Eighteen months ago the Government promised to drive out inefficiency and unjustifiable costs from all parts of central government, including procurement. As part of that drive, in just 10 months we have saved £3 billion from reduced discretionary spend and smarter procurement that has allowed departments to protect essential front-line services and jobs. This has included more than £870 million saved by cutting departmental spend on consultants; nearly £500 million saved by reducing spend on temporary agency staff; some £400 million saved by taking stronger control of our marketing spend; some £360 million saved by centralising spend on common goods and services; and £800 million saved from renegotiating deals with some of the largest suppliers to government. Last March, for example, we announced that nine different commodities would be jointly purchased by October: energy, office supplies, professional services, travel, fleet, telecoms, IT commodities, print, and advertising in the media. I am very happy, as a Yorkshire resident, to say that the domestic travel component was awarded to a small enterprise based in Bradford—so it is not merely a matter of large suppliers. A month later John Collington announced that, over the next four years, this new procurement model is estimated to cut 25 per cent from the £13 billion spend on common goods and services in central government.

This is a very good start, but we also need to do away with the unnecessary bureaucracy that adds wasteful time and costs to the procurement process. Following a lean review of the procurement process, we are adopting a new approach to sourcing that focuses on those practices that add value to the way that government procures goods and services.

Another major step forward has been the transformation of the Buying Solutions trading fund into the Government Procurement Service. This organisation is now established as the delivery arm of the centralised procurement strategy, delivering expert sourcing and category management for common goods and services. It is focused on delivering savings to the taxpayer and increasing the proportion of spend that is centralised. For major projects we have established the Major Projects Authority, which, with the pre-existing Major Projects Review Board, takes particular account of defence procurement, major infrastructure procurement and IT.

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, made a characteristically robust speech. I look forward now to his speeches in the way that I used to look forward to those of the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, who would always robustly tell us how well defence procurement had taken place while he was a Minister and how appallingly it had deteriorated since he left. The only problem, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, is that he left the MoD 10 years after the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert. Perhaps he should consult the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, on how they could better reconcile their narrative next time round.

Over the past six months the Government Procurement Service has already made significant progress. It has developed centralised strategies for energy, office solutions, professional services covering consultancy, contingent labour, legal services, and so on. It has driven much-improved data and significantly increased the transparency of operations and performance through a procurement executive board. It has moved central government customers on to the first centrally let commercial arrangement—the government office supplies contract. The Government Procurement Service has established a process for using surplus income to fund Government Procurement Service and government procurement improvements, with four key investments made to date. The procurement service has managed procurements, extensions and renegotiations of contracts worth approximately £3.6 billion in annual value.

We are conscious that Britain does not compare well with Germany, France and the Netherlands in the relationship with suppliers. Perhaps I may quote the speech made by my colleague Francis Maude on Monday. He said that,

“the British public sector has taken a speed dating approach”

compared with those countries’ mutually beneficial long-term relationships. We are aware of that and looking at it, and we very much hope to improve the relationship. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Broers and Lord Hunt of Chesterton, that we are also well aware of the role that this long-term relationship can play in encouraging innovation and, in particular, new innovative companies.

The noble Lord, Lord Sugar, made a number of remarks about not sending contracts to foreign companies that pay little tax in this country. I say to him that it is not only foreign companies that, in some cases, do not pay very much tax in this country; some of our major domestic media companies do not either. One has to remember that Siemens employs a large number of people in manufacturing plants in this country, and therefore the question of what is and what is not a British company has become a little more complicated. We are also well aware of the French, German, Dutch and other examples. What the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, called the procurement game is, therefore, something that we intend to learn.

Moreover, we are working not just with the biggest companies. In February this year, the Prime Minister outlined measures to open up the way that government does business in order to ensure that small and medium companies, charities and voluntary organisations are in the best possible position to bid for contracts. Since February we have delivered the following building blocks aimed at supporting SMEs. We have eliminated the use of pre-qualification questionnaires in 15 departments for procurements below the EU threshold of approximately £100,000. Evidence suggested that the length of those pre-qualification questionnaires was one of the biggest inhibitions to small companies in applying for government contracts. The two departments still using pre-qualification questionnaires are doing so only for security reasons. We are also now publishing all central government tenders and contracts through the Contracts Finder website. More than 2,000 tenders have been published, of which 50 per cent were flagged as suitable for SMEs, and more than 30 per cent of contracts listed were flagged as awarded to SMEs. We are also piloting a new e-sourcing solution, the Dynamic Marketplace. Nine departments have signed up and more than 500 suppliers have registered, providing themselves with free and easy access to opportunities below the EU threshold. We have even introduced a “mystery shopper” scheme to allow suppliers to report bad procurement practice by government purchasers. More than 100 cases so far have been received and dealt with under the scheme.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, that there is no 25 per cent rule regarding the turnover of SMEs in bidding for public procurement contracts. Consideration is given purely to the financial viability of SMEs bidding for contracts, and we are aware of the need to encourage SMEs in all ways. In July 2011 we published the first SME progress report and departmental action plans outlining how departments are supporting SMEs. We ran an Innovation Launch Pad, which received 351 proposals from SMEs. Two of the best companies have since won new business with government, and we hope that others will do so as well. To help with suppliers’ cash flow—a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill—the Government aim to pay 80 percent of undisputed invoices within five days. That is not on the same model as supermarkets. In all new contracts we require main contractors to pay their subcontractors —which are more often SMEs—promptly.

We have also taken steps to raise the competency and professionalism of public sector procurement staff. We are building a training programme that will increase the skills of the Government’s key procurement professionals in line with the use of lean techniques. This will become a prerequisite for procurers who lead on major procurements for government. We have also implemented a two-way commercial interchange pilot programme with industry to bring private sector expertise into government and interchange with our procurers who will benefit from experience of private sector best practices.

I therefore respectfully suggest that in the 13 months since the debate on the Green report, this Government have done far more to transform public procurement than the previous Administration managed to do in 13 years. However, we are not resting on our laurels. We recognise that there is still more to be done, and we have a clear programme to do it.

I turn to the question of EU rules, which clearly need to be substantially reformed. We welcome the European Commission’s intent to publish proposals to simplify the procurement directives by early 2012, and in our response to the Commission’s Green Paper on the modernisation of EU public procurement policy we have called for significant simplification to free up public procurement markets and enable a light-touch, modern regulatory framework. We have been in active dialogue with the Commission on these proposals. This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to simplify the procedures, cut red tape, embed transparency, and increase cross-border competition to the benefit of citizens, business and public authorities across the European Union. As a priority, we must ensure that these reforms catalyse and drive growth.

Alongside this work, in July the Government stated that we would consider whether the UK was best applying the EU procurement rules and managing our procurements in order to meet our strategic needs, cost effectively, in the long term. We will be publishing more details as part of the growth review on 29 November.

Three days ago, at the Cabinet Office conference on 21 November, my honourable friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office unveiled a radical package of measures that will change how our Government buy from the private sector in a way that supports business and promotes growth. The Government will provide an open door for current and future suppliers to discuss forthcoming procurement opportunities, cutting the time taken in the procurement process. We will work with industry to identify and address any key capabilities needed to meet future demand. We have published a pipeline of £50 billion of potential business opportunities across government, giving an unprecedented view into the Government’s expected future requirements and helping business to build the confidence to invest long term in plant, machinery and people.

We aim to make it 40 per cent faster to do business with government—another issue which matters enormously to smaller companies. All but the most complex procurement processes will be completed within 120 working days from January, compared with the average of 200 days now. By engaging earlier and more openly with business and the wider supply chain, government will be able to reduce the time taken during the procurement process and provide the greater certainty and visibility of this forward pipeline to unlock investment. We will require all civil servants responsible for running major procurements to be trained in the Government’s new approach.

The noble Lord, Lord St John, talked about the advantages of payment by results and procuring for outcomes. As he will know, a number of experiments on this are going on in different sectors. It is something that we are well aware of. We intend to experiment with it further and we hope to benefit from it more in the future. As Francis Maude said on Monday, we will follow the example of our EU neighbours and, indeed, of best practice in the private sector by making it easier for our suppliers to do business with us.

The Government Procurement Service, now based within the Efficiency and Reform Group in the Cabinet Office, will continue to implement the category strategies and deliver centralised contracts in the core category areas. Only last week, we awarded the central government travel management services contract—that is, the domestic and international contract—which is projected to save the Government some £20 million, equating to a saving of approximately 30 per cent against the existing arrangement. I shall not mention which airline I flew with the last time I went on government business, but that is part of the saving.

The Government are committed to continuing the work that we have started, to promoting growth, to increasing savings and reducing bureaucracy, to making public procurement a slick and efficient process, and to making government a reasonable and straightforward customer for businesses to work with.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

The one question that the noble Lord has not addressed on which I should welcome some comment is why in public procurement contracts we do not stipulate, as the previous Government did, that it is a perfectly reasonable quid pro quo to indicate how many apprentices there are and what training they will be undertaking. I thought it disgraceful when I discovered a very large government contract with a company that did not have a single apprentice on its books. I would welcome the Minister’s response to that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the noble Lord will know, the number of apprentices has increased considerably in the past year, and this is something to which we are paying a great deal of attention. However, on his specific question, I shall investigate and write to him.

Voluntary Sector Funding

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for introducing this debate. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Wood, on what I think is his first speech from the Front Bench. I give him a particularly personal welcome. I think that I first met him when I was asked to give a seminar with some colleagues in the Treasury. I was especially nervous because my daughter was going to be one of those who would be listening to us speak. I have to say that, from my knowledge of his role as a special adviser in the Treasury, he was always very warmly spoken of by the officials. For a special adviser, that is an unusual and considerable compliment.

We are discussing a very serious and broad matter today. I want, if I may, to go a little wider than the brief that I was given in terms of what we are all facing. I, too, remember the Faith in the City initiative. Certainly, in the Bradford diocese, I saw this as a Church of England initiative to try to persuade the congregations in the better-off parts of the diocese that they were part of the same community as those in the worst-off parts, and they needed some persuasion. It was an extremely worthwhile exercise, but it required to be done. I am very conscious, in respect of the Leeds diocese, that the richest street in West Yorkshire, according to the Yorkshire Post, is less than two miles from Gipton and Harehills, which is one of the poorest and most deprived estates. My wife and I spent an afternoon some two months ago with the West Yorkshire Police going around and looking at how neighbourhood policing works in Gipton and Harehills.

It is not that we live in a country in which the two sides are very far apart but they do not interact enough and we have unfortunately lost our sense of mutual obligation. The rich do not provide enough in terms of philanthropic giving and resist paying their share of tax. That is part of the problem which we need to address. The gap between the public’s reluctance to pay higher taxes and the public’s expectation of high-quality services is something with which the previous Government struggled. The media, above all the Daily Mail, feed the expectation that you should have lower taxes and better quality public services. We constantly read that the wicked National Health Service is depriving us of a new cancer drug costing only £25,000 a year per person. We are also told that that is not our fault, we do not need to contribute to that and somehow the state should provide it. Only one party has included a commitment to raise taxes in its manifesto in any recent general election campaign and that was the Liberal Democrats in 1997 and 2001. I remember my Labour friends saying in 1996, while I was writing the party manifesto, that this would be a disaster. It was not a complete disaster. I suggest that all parties should educate the public with regard to the fact that in an ageing and highly unequal society we cannot expect to have lower taxes because demands will rise, not fall.

Part of the problem we face is due to the fact that after 2001 the Labour Government accepted a substantial increase in public expenditure on welfare and social support but did not increase taxes proportionately to pay for it. That is why we went into deficit from 2002 onwards, leaving a structural deficit, the consequences of which this Government are now struggling with. Along with implementing very painful cuts the coalition Government are focusing on tax avoidance and tax evasion to ensure that the better off pay their fair and proper share of taxation. I hope that we have the active support of the Opposition in this.

In addition, the Labour Party believed that the state should take over more and more of the functions previously undertaken by the voluntary sector and that services should be provided only by trained and vetted professionals. Long-term problems arise when a voluntary sector is too dependent on the state. However, I am told that only 20 per cent of society organisations depend on state support but that some 50 per cent of public support for the voluntary sector comes from local authorities and 40 per cent comes from central government. I very much support what the right reverend Prelate said about co-operation between civil society organisations and local authorities, not dependence. We all face the long-term challenge of raising public and private funds to pay for social welfare. The public funds will come not from a shrunken state but, sadly, not from a much larger state because the public will not pay out taxes amounting to more than 50 per cent of their gross national income. Therefore, we need to seek a partnership between taxation and philanthropic giving in this respect.

We also believe that central government should not direct what local authorities and schools do too directly and too intrusively. Surveys have shown that some local authorities have cut into support for voluntary organisations much more than others. Liverpool and Sheffield in particular have cut into this support while others have managed to maintain it, and one or two have even increased it. There is substantial evidence that local authorities working in partnership with the voluntary sector have been successful in managing cuts and actively protecting the funding of certain groups. That is something which we, in our capacity as citizens, should all be concerned with. The churches, of course, play a major role in this area, including in providing funds for some of these bodies. Community foundations also have a role to play. I am about to visit the Leeds community foundation to learn more about how it operates.

Voluntary organisations that are also social enterprises can provide funds. I was rather distressed to find one body in Bradford with which I have had some contact cutting back on its income-generating activities because it felt that these were not core to its activities, whereas generating income from what you do while providing social objectives is a highly desirable development.

We certainly need to encourage philanthropy. I have a particular feeling of aggression against the bank for which my father worked for 40 years, which paid for my secondary schooling, and which had a very old Quaker philanthropic tradition. Those who run that bank today have entirely lost that tradition and in some ways seem to have lost any sense of moral shame about the large amount of money they earn and how little of it they give to charity—living offshore, avoiding taxes offshore and denying any sense of responsibility towards the society from which they emerged. We have to turn that around. All of us from all parties have to turn that around.

Central government is doing what it can to help these bodies through the transition. The transition fund, which was mentioned, was intended to be for one year and will not be renewed. There are a number of other activities. The Big Society Capital fund is getting under way. Its interim committee has just made the first grant and we are therefore not leaving everyone to sink or swim afterwards. A new fund of £20 million will also be available for bodies providing advice, and a number of things are in place to help us through the very difficult transition.

While we are conscious of the real difficulties that current cuts are bringing to voluntary organisations, as they are to a range of other essential services, the Government are working to provide what assistance they can through the transition. However, how we see the direction of travel is for support for local organisations to come, as far as possible, through local authorities. That is the appropriate way forward. Central government grants for local activity should not be what one would want in the long term. Again, I am aware of one or two useful organisations in Yorkshire that have been dependent on central funding. That is difficult for local organisations and involves them in the organisation of very complicated contracts. The long-term funding implications of that relationship are something that we will all have to work through as we go on, and as we come—we hope—out of the current crisis.

Meanwhile, the Government are funding the training of community organisers. We have started a national citizen service, we have a new Community First fund for communities in disadvantaged areas to help them take action to improve their lives, and we are working across a range of different voluntary activities by assisting them and their funding to enable people to take greater responsibility for their own communities and their own lives.

As a Liberal Democrat, I think of not precisely a big society but a responsible society. I think that part of what has gone wrong with this country over the past two generations has been that people—again supported by the media, rather too uncritically—have begun to talk about their rights and not about their responsibilities. The noble Lord, Lord Glasman, has written quite powerfully on this, so it is not entirely a single partisan point. We need to get back to a society in which we all recognise our responsibilities to each other, including our financial and philanthropic responsibilities. I hope that that is common ground among us. I know that it is part of the message that I learnt as a choirboy in the Church of England.

House adjourned at 5.14 pm.

UN: Specialised Agencies

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I was not entirely sure what to expect from this debate. There are a great many agencies, boards and programmes in the world. I remembered when I started to read the briefings beforehand that I used to teach a course on international organisations at the London School of Economics. As I discovered, the students were hoping that this course would help them to get good jobs in international organisations. It evolved over the years into a course that, as I told them in the first lecture, was intended to dissuade them from joining an international organisation.

I did my best to explain the structural problems that all international agencies unavoidably suffer from, and the necessarily good work that they do in some rather difficult circumstances. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out, functional agencies long pre-dated the UN. Some of them were 19th century agencies such as the Universal Postal Union and some riparian bodies. The International Labour Organisation was founded just after the First World War. Then the United Nations sponsored and provided a degree of accountability for a whole generation of new bodies. There are now a great many. Unfortunately, some duplicate each other’s activities and there is some overlap.

That is part of the problem of assessing how valuable they all are. I recall that the FAO, the World Health Organisation and UNESCO had enormous problems in their secretariats and in their effectiveness 30 or 40 years ago. All agencies have suffered from American ambivalence. The Americans wanted agencies to serve the global good, as the United States saw it, which meant, in those days, opposing the Soviet Union; and Russian, Chinese and Saudi ambivalence has been a problem for many years. Agencies are unavoidably imperfect, even more imperfect than national Governments. Recruitment and appointment is part of the problem. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that we should find the best people on merit, not on nationality. He knows very well from his time in the European Commission that that does not apply even in the European Union. It is much harder to apply in organisations that have well over 100 state members and in which the Finance Minister of a particular country wants to get his nephew into a really good job, or the President wants to get his son into a really good job. Those are the problems with which we have to deal.

There are also perverse outcomes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, has pointed out, not just in UN Women but on the Human Rights Council, with which, in this imperfect world, we have to deal. I can recall taking part in a conference associated with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, in which I dared to crack a joke about the Iraqi approach to a number of matters, whereupon I was immediately denounced by the Iraqi delegate at this informal conference and an official apology was asked for. One has to be very careful how one behaves in international bodies.

The United Kingdom is an active and major player in this complex world. We provide between 6 and 7 per cent of contributions to these various agencies and our contributions are rising. The United Kingdom is now the largest contributor to international agencies in Europe. As the United States becomes a more ambivalent player, in a number of ways we are becoming more important; we are an engaged player. I hope noble Lords agree that the multilateral aid review was a very constructive assessment of the limited effectiveness of a range of different bodies. It was extremely complimentary about the effectiveness of some and constructively critical of a number of others.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, whom I think I remember first meeting at a UN association meeting a very long time ago—

[Lord Judd]

A very long time ago.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

—when I was young. The noble Lord talked about the problems of a number of agencies, in particular UNESCO, with the loss of US funding and with the United Kingdom having just been elected to the executive board. UNESCO continues to have a number of problems with effectiveness. This new blow will be an additional one, but we also recognise that UNESCO carries out a number of functions that are not provided by other international agencies, and it is in all our interests that those functions continue to be effectively provided.

I should perhaps admit to a very small personal interest; I was rather upset that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, did not point out that Saltaire is also a world heritage site. I hope that he will visit it soon.

The UN Population Fund is also under fire from the American right, but that is not a new story. Agencies have been under fire from the American right for as long as I can remember. The Cold War had even more attacks of that sort. The UK is again playing a constructive role on the executive board. UN Women, a reorganised body, is too young for us to be able to see how effective it will be, but we are giving it our full support.

The International Labour Organisation, on which the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, commented, has a number of problems. Only 40 per cent of its staff are currently working in the developed world. The International Labour Organisation, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, will know, has negotiated and agreed a very large number of conventions on aspects of labour, many of which still lack enough national ratifications to be carried into practice. There is a limit to how useful it is to design things on child labour, and other such things, which are not then carried through to ratification and implementation by the majority of the members of the organisation.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, thinks that we are a little too critical of the Food and Agriculture Organisation. I would suggest that we remain constructively critical of an organisation which has been in deep trouble in the past, and is now improving but has some way to go.

Noble Lords asked about the British approach, and how far Britain should press on its own for improvement. Of course we should work with others, and we do. One of the pleasures of my work in government, as someone who goes to regular Foreign Office ministerial meetings, is to hear how frequently the Foreign Secretary says, “Well, the most important thing in this is that we must work with our European partners to maximise our influence in X, Y or Z”. Of course we do that. We work with all of the partners we can do—European and Commonwealth—through as many networks as we can. However, we often discover that the Western caucus within these organisations has to be careful not to upset what is still seen as the G77 caucus and that tensions within these agencies about who tells whom what to do remains a source of problems. The question of who pays and who does not pay is a rather different thing. The multilateral aid review, as a national contribution, was a constructive contribution. It provides a basis from which we can talk to other Governments about what needs to be done.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about reports to Parliament and parliamentary oversight. He may recall that there have been suggestions in this House in the past four or five years that we might experiment with an ad hoc committee on international organisations which might look at the how Britain relates to international agencies and which ones provide us with the best value for money. That suggestion might again, if he wishes, be raised with the Liaison Committee.

It is right that the British Government should be asking, since we are a major contributor, what value for money we receive from these bodies. Since we are on a rising curve in our international aid budget, and in our contributions to these organisations, we have to have some concern about public acceptability. Perhaps not every noble Lord in this Chamber reads the Daily Mail with as much attention as I do every day, but the Daily Mail is not an enthusiast for rising British contributions to international agencies. It is not enormously enthusiastic about international agencies as such, be they the European Union, the FAO or the UN Population Fund.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about the balance between the FCO and other departments. These are functional agencies and it is therefore proper that the functional departments should provide the lead. A lot of the work, particularly that of some of the environmental and meteorological agencies, is highly technical and expert and there is an expert community, particularly in the climate change world, which works with the Government and with their counterparts in other countries to progress the work that is under way. The FCO does not attempt to duplicate that work. It has a small department which co-ordinates what others are doing and works with them through our representatives and our delegates in those various agencies when they meet. Engagement with outside experts and lobbies is high. At the UN conference on climate change, the number of British lobbies represented has been astonishingly high. It is not something that takes place behind the scenes.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that I do not see the contradiction he suggested between prioritising bilateralism and downgrading multilateralism. We are doing both and it seems to me that the stronger one’s bilateral relations, the stronger one’s multilateral relations can also be. We are working with others to try to improve these organisations. Building coalitions within organisations such as the European Union, the Commonwealth and many other global organisations seems to be the way forward.

I end where I started. These agencies will never be perfect. As we all know, internationalism suffers from structural problems. We have our own ideas about how the world should be organised and how agencies should be organised, which are not always shared by the Governments of all other countries, so we have to work with them.

[Lord Liddle]

Will the noble Lord give a commitment to consider the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for a regular report to Parliament and greater transparency?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will gladly commit to considering that. The British Government, here as elsewhere, are very concerned about transparency. I apologise: I should have taken up the point that the noble Lord made about transparency of data. Data are extremely important in many of these areas. We are doing our best to provide better data. In the multilateral aid review, a great deal of emphasis was placed on how much data are available about the effectiveness of work on the ground, in-country, by particular agencies. That is very much part of the way forward.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Could there not be a commitment to be more IT? We are in an IT world and I would like to be able to read more stuff from the Foreign Office on my BlackBerry. How about that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I promise to write to the noble Lord on that. I have now extended my time. In spite of the fact that we are running a little short, I should probably draw my remarks to a close. Again, I thank the noble Lord for raising this issue. We ought to spend more time looking at how international agencies work. They play a very important part in holding the world together and I agree with him that we pay much too little attention to the work that they do and to assessing its quality and how it might be improved.

Arrangement of Business

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as no amendments have been tabled to the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill, it may be helpful if I announce at this point the advisory speaking time for the Second Reading of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. There are 54 speakers signed up. If Back-Bench contributions are kept to a maximum of seven minutes, the House should be able to rise at around the target rising time of 11 pm.