National Parliaments (EUC Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a rich debate which has ranged widely from the lack of a European demos to the future of Britain’s role in the European Union, to the popular disenchantment with the European institutions across much of the EU to the role of COSAC. Having read the report and having listened to the first two or three speeches, I must say that I was beginning to think that COSAC had improved enormously since I was last a member. Then I heard the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, almost say that it might take another generation before COSAC becomes an effective body. I remember eating very well when I went to COSAC and some of the discussions were useful. However, all that was a long time ago, and I am sure that it has improved a great deal.

The British Government do accept that the European Parliament, the British Parliament and other national parliaments have complementary roles. We absolutely insist as part of our proposal for European reform that national parliaments need to be more actively engaged and that relying on the European institutions alone to provide legitimacy is no longer acceptable, possible or publicly achievable. We all know about the negative image of the European Union—the image that UKIP puts out that the EU is attempting to accumulate more and more powers in Brussels and has to be resisted so that power is pulled back. I am old enough to remember the old idea when I first went to meetings in Brussels and elsewhere when we were discussing joining the EU that it was there to replace national Governments. National Governments represented the old way and national parliaments were part of that. Jean Monnet, who hated the French National Assembly and was never himself a parliamentarian, believed that technocracy was much better and more efficient than democracy. There were those like Altiero Spinelli who had a passionate belief that the European demos was there, somehow, to be discovered, if only one worked hard enough for it.

We have discovered in the generations since then that it was not really there, that all politics remains local, and that the problems we are now facing are that while politics remains local, economics, finance and markets have become international and often global, security has become international and often global, and the gap is one that we are all struggling to fill. We also had a number of discussions about rivalry between the European Parliament and national parliaments, with the European Parliament sometimes claiming greater legitimacy because it represented the European demos. I recall one Member of the British Parliament attending the convention when the European Convention met and feeling from the start that she was being patronised by Members of the European Parliament. She became and she remains a rather sceptical Labour MP.

There is something of a Brussels bubble. We understand that Brussels does need a culture change, and I listened with interest to the optimism expressed about the new Commission, perhaps about the new European Parliament, and abort some of the new Commission officials. Again, I mark that we do not send enough British officials to the Commission for a whole range of reasons. I am glad that my own Government have reinstituted the European fast stream and are working to try to get more British officials to go through the concours and to come in as seconded national experts at all levels because that is part of the way we can change the culture of Brussels.

[Lord Spicer]

The Minister is making an extremely interesting point about the gap between the demos and the economics, as he put it. Is not the reason for that gap, which will always exist, that the Parliament will permanently be constrained by two things? The first is the European Court and the second is the treaty, which was the subject of a little discussion between me and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, I was making a slightly different point, which is about the global market and global manufacturing. The fact that, for example, when the French sell an Airbus a third of the value added to that Airbus comes from British manufacturers, and that every time the Germans sell a Mercedes, it contains a large number of British components, means that markets have gone beyond the nation state but legitimacy has not. That is a fundamental, structural problem of the world in which we now live. I will not touch on the migration dimensions of that, but the security dimensions are also extremely difficult. That leaves us with a set of dilemmas which are not solvable and which we have to cope with.

A number of noble Lords made the point about the resources and time required. Resources are needed for scrutiny, as the report suggests. If we are setting up for national parliaments to be more closely in touch with each other, that requires a good deal of travel and time. One noble Lord remarked—it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood—that, in some ways, a European Parliament that was drawn directly from national parliaments was more appropriate. However, it did not work before 1979, partly because national parliamentarians are elected to serve constituents in their national parliament and the more time we expect them to spend elsewhere, the less time they will have to do their primary job. So there is a set of real problems there.

I noticed, as a member of the Government talking to newly elected MPs—there was a very large turnover in the British Parliament last time—that a great many newly elected MPs coming from outside politics had very little idea of the complexities of international negotiations in which we are engaged with other European parliaments, or of the contacts one needs to have with members of other national parliaments or, indeed, members of the same political family as yours in other Governments. They have learnt, but it takes time. After all, more and more of our parliamentary candidates, I saw in one newspaper at the weekend, are now being drawn from people who have established roots within their local constituency. They are not elected to Parliament because of their international experience and they are unlikely to get re-elected if they spend too much time travelling around Europe and beyond. That is one of the obstacles with which we have to deal.

The new Commission has signalled that it is open to a much more positive dialogue with national Governments. New President Juncker has stated this on a number of occasions; Vice-President Timmermans, as has been remarked, has made it very clear that this is one of his priorities. As a Minister in the Dutch Government beforehand, he was already heavily committed. Closer co-operation among national parliaments was mentioned by many noble Lords. The offices which we now have in Brussels are to be strengthened. It is a very good way of using Brussels as a means of communication that enables you to find out earlier what is going on, examine proposals at an earlier stage and talk among national parliaments about how one might use yellow cards—lowering the threshold. The green card question is a very interesting one which the Government will wish to consider. We are not yet committed. We note the proposal that the coverage of these mechanisms should be extended to cover proportionality as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, talked about first reading deals. One of the problems that the Government have in responding to that is the sheer complexity of a multilateral negotiating process, with co-decision with the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Ministers coming in. The points at which national parliaments insert themselves into that process and how national parliaments keep up with that process is, again, part of the problem with which we all have to deal. Over the past year, as I have struggled with the EU balance of competencies exercise—a fascinating exercise—I have changed my mind on whether it would be useful for this Chamber also to examine other international organisations through which the British Government work. Time and time again in the EU balance of competencies exercise we have had evidence which has said, “We work through the EU on this, and we also work with OECD or the World Health Organization”. Indeed, the EU operates in some respects as a regional member of the World Health Organization in specific areas. Explaining that to the national public, as far as we can, and examining how effective those other international organisations are—most of them are a great deal less effective than the European Union—is perhaps also something which this Government might be able to achieve.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, remarked that perhaps it would be easier if we explicitly had a confederal Europe rather than a federal Europe. I thought the chapter in this report on economic governance was particularly interesting and difficult because the contradictions of where we have got to with international markets come in because you need some power to decide as soon as you have an integrated single market, let alone a common currency, and when you face a global economic crisis, the legitimacy to decide above the level of the nation state is not there. So we are again stuck with the problem that it is not possible to reconcile the principles of democratic accountability and legitimacy and the need to take these decisions among a range of different actors.

[Lord Judd]

Is it not highly relevant here to recognise that in what the Minister is saying about what has happened to international finance, the real discussions that influence policy are going on in the G7 and places such as that? In this sense, it gives us room to reconsider the structures that built up before this was of such manifest significance.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I suspect that any incoming British Prime Minister does not begin to understand just how much of his time he will now have to spend out of the country dealing with other Governments and so on. One of my very small roles within government has been trying to say, “No, the Deputy Prime Minister cannot go to that international conference, in spite of the fact that he speaks the language”, or whatever it may be. The pressure on Ministers to travel, particularly those in the British Government who have much more pressure to spend time being accountable in Parliament and to parliamentary committees than many of our counterparts, is among the real strains that I see our senior Ministers facing.

On consulting the public, I shall briefly remark on the balance of competences exercise. The final report will be published this Thursday. The two-year exercise has consulted British stakeholders on the single market and a range of other areas. We have had more than 2,000 pieces of evidence from a very wide range of organisations—economic think tanks and others—and have attracted contributions and evidence from more than two-thirds of the other member states.

One of the most pleasing aspects of it has been to hear people in other Governments saying, “This is a very useful exercise. We should do something like it ourselves”. People within the French Government, the Dutch Government, the Finnish Government and others have said the same. One of the small achievements of this coalition Government has been to consult widely on how far the current arrangements under the Lisbon treaty suit British business, British interests, British trade unions and others. I cherish the evidence from easyJet, which began, “If it were not for the European single market, easyJet would not exist”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, touched on the exchange of information between national parliaments and Brussels. I welcome her as someone who has made the transition from being a witness before committees of the House of Lords to being a Member of the House of Lords—a route that I remember transiting myself rather too long ago.

The question of how far we co-operate with other national parliaments raises some difficulties. There are other national parliaments with which we are in very close touch. There are others which do not have quite the same style or tradition. Two years ago I had lunch with the chair of the European affairs committee of a particular national parliament, who did not seem to have the sense that he should ever criticise his own Government or should disagree with their approach to Brussels. It was a rather surreal experience.

Some, however, are very active. I note, incidentally, from the table in Appendix 6 of the report that second chambers in several countries are much more active than first chambers. We are not the only ones who are able, because of our second-chamber status, to do what we can.

The European Union is, of course, a political system. How it works depends on how actively different institutions engage with it. We wish, as far as possible, to encourage other European parliaments to engage with us. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, asked about the government response and how this fits in with the Government’s reform agenda. I remind him that the Foreign Secretary, my right honourable friend Philip Hammond, is engaged in active conversations with other national Governments. He has so far visited 11 national capitals. The feedback he has been getting demonstrates very clearly that there is an achievable, broad-based reform agenda shared by many other Governments which does not require treaty change.

Indeed, other Governments are vigorously saying, “We can do this without treaty change”. It is achievable within the headroom provided by the Lisbon treaty, and it covers a stronger role for national parliaments, effective regulation, the budget, completion of the single market in areas such as services in which the obstacles come from Germany rather than from Britain and others, the digital single market and so on. We have an active reform agenda that we are pursuing.

Time is short, and I am sure that noble Lords would like their dinner before everything closes. I think that one has to stress the obstacles, such as travel requirements, yet again. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, suggested that one could spend more time visiting others. I am sure that the Daily Mail would take very careful note of the sort of hotels in which Members stayed. Again, all of these things require time and effort. If you do one thing, you cannot do another. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, suggested that we need to get ordinary people involved, not always members of the elite. Unfortunately, politicians by definition are part of the elite. We are not ordinary people, otherwise we would now be at home watching television or doing something else. Part of the underlying problem of democracy that we now have is that it is easy to decry those engaged in national, let alone international, politics as part of an elite.

[Lord Judd]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I find what he says, as ever, very powerful, but I will give a practical illustration. When under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, we were doing a report on drugs in the European context, the noble Lord was at pains to make sure that we were hearing from people working with drug addicts on the front line. That is what I am talking about. It seemed to me that the remarks I was making were being addressed to us in the committees as distinct from the Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lord, I understand that, and I take that as read. Time is very short. I will therefore turn to government engagement with our Parliament and our committees which the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, mentioned in his opening. He made a number of strong remarks about the Home Office in particular and also about the Cabinet Office, which I will take back and to which we will respond in time.

I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that Ministers are delegates, as I think he said at one point. We all understand that we ask our Ministers to engage in a series of complicated negotiations. The importance there is to have a constant dialogue with Parliament and with parliamentary committees as to how far we can go.

This has been an extremely valuable debate. We all understand how vital is the question of restoring a sense of the electorate’s own membership of the European Union, and how difficult that is—as well as how much we hope that what we do in this Chamber and what is done in the other place and other national parliaments can help to rebuild a sense of legitimacy and accountability for the very necessary tasks that we ask the European Union to fulfil.

House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of the Opposition, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, that this is timely and long overdue. We support all three amendments. How good it is to know that something survives from the 2012 House of Lords Reform Bill and goes forward in this Bill. We support it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the important thing is to get all stages of the Bill through the House in good order. We entirely accept that the Bill is about Lords’ conduct and therefore their reputation. As such, it is a useful addition to the procedures available to the House, although—to repeat what has been said—we all hope that the powers will rarely, if ever, be needed.

The question of what happens in another place will, of course, have to be discussed. I have assurances that the Leader will be discussing that matter with others but, meanwhile, we welcome the clarity of these amendments. The Bill is now in good order and we should accept this as the Report stage.

[Baroness Hayman]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to everyone who has spoken for their support for the amendments, which I believe have now struck the right balance, particularly on the issue of retrospectivity. I am very grateful to the Minister. He said that the important thing is to get the Bill through this House. That is an important thing. I think that the most important thing is now to get the Bill through another House. I know that the Government have made very clear that they will not stand in the way of the Bill. I hope that in willing the ends they may be able to move towards willing the means as well. I know that there has been real good faith from the Government Front Bench on this issue. I hope that we will see the fruits of that in the new year and that this small but important measure will become law before the general election.

Economic Leadership for Cities

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is a timed debate. I note the wealth of experience and expertise on this fascinating subject. However, we are now almost five minutes behind where we should be. If noble Lords make sure that they finish when four minutes is still being shown on the Clock, that will allow the Minister time to speak at the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—and indeed the arrival of his new colleagues on the Lib Dem Benches. But I was surprised, from his opening remarks, to hear that somehow the clocks started in 2010. In 2010, as you will recall, the Lib Dems did not demur from the coalition Government’s reduction, or taking away, of the regional economic organisations. This of course is another example of stop-go—and now we are going again with more funding and providing more impetus to these areas.

It is, however, excellent that the House of Lords is debating the issues of urban areas. We had a discussion on planning a month or so ago. I believe it would be advisable for the House of Lords to have a Select Committee to review all the relevant aspects of the development of urban areas. There has been a circular note from the Chairman of Committees, the noble Lord, Lord Sewel—and if noble Lords are minded like me that this should be a very topical and appropriate area for the House of Lords, I ask them to write in with their views, as I am doing. If they would like to copy me in with what they say, I would be very pleased.

Another important feature of this discussion is that the Government Office for Science has been producing documents. Maybe these have the statistics that have been referred to. For example, in August it produced The Evolving Economic Performance of UK Cities: City Growth Patterns 1981-2011. There are interesting and surprising results in it. There are statistics of employment, population, output and productivity. The biggest qualitative change seems to have been in small and medium-sized cities, and these seem to be the ones most successful in employment, health, environment and output. The largest cities have either grown, like London, or have, as it were, reduced in northern areas —northern cities—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

Whether or not they are growing or not, there seems to have been a significant growth in inequality in these large cities—also inequality in health. Indeed, Sir Michael Marmot has pointed out that the mortality for males between one part of London and another may be affected by as much as 20 years. In fact—this might have been raised earlier—as Jonathan Glancey wrote in his powerful essay in the book on London’s environment, the morality of London is more like that of piracy than civic duty. I applaud Sheffield for remarking that this is an important area which cities should think about.

Over the past 20 years in the medium-sized cities mostly in southern England—Telford, for example, is counted in the north in these statistics—there has been a substantial rise in population and in output. For example, the economics of these areas has been associated with services, commerce and retail. But a clutch of northern cities have experienced a much lower population growth and output growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, explained.

The surprising result of these government reports is the question of whether high-tech cities are the future. Surprisingly, it shows that in the high-tech Meccas of Oxford and Cambridge, where Nobel prizes abound, the average income and growth rate have in fact not been very impressive. The argument given is that a lot of these people work in the public sector and, as noble Lords all know, if you work in the public sector you have pretty low pay. The cities that are in fact growing fastest in population and productivity in income are those such as Milton Keynes and Crawley.

The other feature of these high-tech cities—I have some experience in this area, having been a city councillor in Cambridge and set up a company—is that quite a few companies have been set up and then all sorts of takeovers have occurred. Very few significant companies have grown, so it is very far from the Silicon Valley phenomenon. ARM is of course a great company in Cambridge, as is Oxford Instruments in Oxford. In fact, if you are involved in running a company in Cambridge you will get endless e-mails from people in London saying, “Can I invest in your company?”. However, you know that it is a trap; they want to raise the value of the company and then sell it off. It is all a kind of gambling operation as opposed to a long-term investment using companies to develop services and products. The word “start-up” in the English language now almost means a company that is on a path to making a lot of money for someone who then sells it off.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are very short of time.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

The other important feature of the cities is that we have not yet developed enough of the citywide companies, such as those in France, that are developing cities around the world.

Food Poverty

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this report is a serious contribution to an important and wide-ranging debate, which recognises the multiple factors behind demand for emergency food assistance. As a country, we have enough food to go round. We agree that it is wrong that anyone should go hungry at the same time as surplus food is going to waste. There is a moral argument, as well as a sustainability one, to ensure that we make the best use of our resources.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I pay tribute to my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, for co-chairing the inquiry. When the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury launched the report, he said that a party -political approach will not solve a problem such as this because of its complexity. I wonder whether the Minister would agree with that sentiment and whether, therefore, a genuine cross-party approach can be adopted to implementing the recommendations of the report. In particular, will the Government liaise and work closely with voluntary agencies, with the food banks and with industry to address the pressing problem of food waste and redistribution, whereby millions of tonnes of perfectly good food are going to waste at great cost, at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are still hungry?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are very happy to do that. After all, the whole food bank movement is a major civil society initiative. I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate that this is a long-term problem and that we should not approach it in a partisan manner. Perhaps I might quote from the report:

“How a society protects the poorest from what appears to be a fundamental change in the way economies of the Western world are operating – which results in cuts in their living standards”—

that is, those of the poor—

“faster than other groups – calls for developing a political agenda which can only be delivered over decades”.

[Baroness Corston (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister accept that the number of families using food banks rose considerably during the recent half-term? What does he think is the reason for that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have been told by a friend who is involved in the food bank movement that demand for food banks has dipped when schools go back. The Government take some comfort from the fact that the expansion of free school meals in primary schools is clearly, therefore, a help in this regard, whatever the Daily Mail may have said in attacking the whole initiative.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, noble Lords may be aware that I have been a member of this inquiry, which over the past few months has travelled from Birkenhead and South Shields to Cornwall and Salisbury to take evidence, as well as indeed taking evidence from a large number of witnesses and organisations in London, many of whom do outstanding work in their local communities. I would like to take this opportunity to say how much I regret the wording of my remarks at the launch on Monday, not least because they have overshadowed the 76 other recommendations in the report. I ask my noble friend to urge Ministers in the eight different departments responsible to read the report and its recommendations with great care.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the enormous amount of work that the noble Baroness, together with others, has put into this inquiry. I know that she has been committed to these issues for some years. Perhaps I might draw particular attention to the chapter on resilience in this report, which talks about the problems of families who do not have the skills or confidence to cook. I note that the Trussell Trust has been providing courses on cooking for some of those in order to help with diet, so that they eat well and spend less.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, noble Lords will be aware that the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, and I have taken part for four years now in the Live Below the Line extreme poverty initiative every spring, and I welcome very much her statement here today and the way that it was received in the House. I also chair the Cash for Kids charity in the west of Scotland and have done for three years. This year, we experienced a 12% increase in the number of families and children applying for Christmas grants for food vouchers, cash or gifts to ensure that they have some pleasure on Christmas Day. It seems to me that, regardless of what debates take place in 2015 on welfare benefits, the economy or other issues, it would be an absolute tragedy if that figure were to be increasing again this time next year. Therefore, I hope that the Government will indeed take this report and our discussions with NGOs and charities throughout the land on board, to ensure that the Government, the public sector and the third sector can work together to serve those families who are still going to be in need, regardless of the initiatives that we take on welfare benefits or other aspects of the economy in the immediate future.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for that. The report is also addressed to the utility companies and to problems such as having mobile phones on “pay as you go” tariffs meaning that you pay more. The poor pay more due to a whole range of structural reasons and the report therefore identifies a large number of targets to be addressed. It talks about debt, addiction, utility pricing, low pay, housing costs and mental health. The problem of low pay and the minimum wage, and how we increase pay, turn around troubled families and rebuild local social networks, are all part of the issues we need to address.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Food and Health Group, and I must say that we have had so much evidence over the years on why the national diet is inadequate, with malnourished people, obese people and so on. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, correctly identified that responsibility for food in the national diet is spread across eight government departments. Does my noble friend agree that the time has come for a national food strategy?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We do not need just a national food strategy. The Government are well aware of the complexities of this, which is why I am answering this Question on behalf of the Cabinet Office. This is a large, long-term problem. I was struck to read in the report that there are 1,000 food banks in Germany and 2,000 in France. It is not just a British problem.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)]

My Lords, now that the report has identified a gap, particularly in relation to children when they are not in school, can the noble Lord, with that knowledge, assure us that the Government will address the issue with urgency?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that takes a great deal of consideration and the Government certainly will do so. The report recommends that free school meals should be provided in the holiday period. That involves a lot of implications and cost, which the Government of course will have to consider.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that many of these people are living in multioccupancy buildings, with either shared cooking facilities or none, and have extreme difficulty in providing proper square meals for their families? Can that be taken into account when people are criticising them for not being able to support themselves?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I agree with that. Another of the recommendations in this excellent report, which I encourage noble Lords to read in full, is that landlords should be expected to supply basic cooking facilities and equipment. There was also some good material on encouraging people to grow their own food. I have had some association with the charity in Shipley that deals with people who have mental health problems, runs a series of allotments and indeed encourages people to grow their own food and then cook it themselves. There is a whole range of issues that we need to address, some of which the Government can address but quite a lot of which civil society is at least as well equipped as government in addressing.

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for strengthening the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to strengthening the capacities of the OSCE, particularly in relation to its crucial role in the Ukraine crisis. In 2014, the UK has been among the largest contributors to the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, providing more than £3 million-worth of funding and equipment and seconding more than 20 UK nationals. Additionally, more than 170 UK election observers joined the two OSCE observation missions in Ukraine this year.

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

I thank the noble Lord for concentrating his reply on Ukraine. Would he agree that violations of the ceasefire and the presence of Russian military equipment and personnel, as well as the devastation of civilian areas and the onset of winter and diseases, all make the case for strengthening the OSCE’s mandate and personnel in the field?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, at the Basel ministerial meeting of the OSCE last week, Russia was supported only by Belarus in resisting precisely the proposals that the noble Lord has just made.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that one of the great problems at the moment with the monitoring mission in Ukraine is that it also comprises Russian observers. He will also know that the border by which Russia enters Ukraine is about 100 kilometres long, but only 1 kilometre of that is actually monitored by the OSCE. Would he be able to tell us whether he believes that it is possible to resolve a conflict when one side to a dispute is engaged in assessing whether the other side is playing by the rules or not? That does not seem entirely fair.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Russia is a member of the OSCE, which is one of the advantages of the OSCE. We wish that Russia were a more constructive member of the OSCE and we are very conscious of the heavy constraints under which the Special Monitoring Mission is now being forced to operate.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the OSCE’s main purposes is to provide an inclusive regional instrument for early warning conflict prevention and crisis management. With this in mind, what more could the OSCE have done to prevent the conflict in Ukraine from developing?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It would be easier if we had all anticipated quite how the conflict might develop. Ukraine has many problems and its last Government were in some ways structurally corrupt. There is a great deal that Ukraine needs to change to recover its economy and provide a much better quality of governance. I have to say that the number of new Ministers in the new Government who have experience outside Ukraine and who are not part of this corrupt network is very encouraging.

[Lord Christopher (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government given some thought to the IMF announcement yesterday that Ukraine is going to need some billions unless it is going to collapse into bankruptcy? Russia will have won by default if that happens. Have we given some thought to that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are acutely aware that Ukraine needs extensive and continuing financial support and the IMF is engaged in that—and we are talking about billions of pounds over the next two years. The IMF is leading on this and the European Union is a major player. We are conscious of the energy problems of Ukraine. People in Donetsk and Luhansk may possibly even freeze to death this winter if we are not careful. We are also providing assistance in energy sector reform.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, can we be clear that this is not just about Ukraine? There are other countries where Russia is doing something very similar: I, for one, would be worried about Moldova, given the electoral split in last week’s election. Are we raising at the OSCE the whole activity of Russia in neighbouring states by promoting dissent and, most importantly, providing support for it from outside, often with disguised troops?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have continuing, active and widespread dialogues with as many of those in positions of authority in Russia as we can. Those dialogues include Moldova and other frozen conflicts: in Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, may I press my noble friend a little bit on his last reply to me? Given that Russia is a party to the conflict—in other words, it is conflicted in being part of the monitoring mission—have there been any discussions with the leader of the OSCE mission to ask whether the Russians might stand down from this particular mission while remaining members of the OSCE?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I very much doubt that. Russia is one of the major partners in the OSCE. We wish to retain Russia as a member of the OSCE and therefore we have to work within the very difficult constraints of 57-state membership.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, 25 years ago the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain were torn down by the bare hands of eastern Europeans, because they respected the moral authority and values that we express in the West. After yesterday’s report about the violations of the CIA in pursuit of other wars, where does the Minister think that that moral authority stands today?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a very broad question, on which we might possibly have a full debate. Clearly, the report on CIA violations does damage the reputation of the West, but I stress that on Ukraine, the EU is leading. In answer to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, has not raised on this occasion, it is not the case that the EU or NATO has tempted Ukraine to join. I was at a conference in Kiev in December 1991, when Ukraine had been independent for less than a month. The Foreign Minister declared as his opening statement that Ukraine had two strategic objectives for the next three years; the first was to join NATO and the second was to join the EU. I was asked to reply and explained that it was a little more difficult than he thought.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords, since the noble Lord has mentioned me at such length, is it not true that President Putin offered a free trade agreement from Lisbon to Vladivostok in 2010 and that the EU responded with the offers that we all know about? Is it not true that Russia always made clear that it could not tolerate the Crimea going under the sphere of influence of Brussels and, eventually, NATO?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord obviously watches “RussiaToday” rather more than he watches the BBC. We are quite willing to discuss broader issues with the Russians. There are severe problems about negotiating a free trade agreement with a country in which the rule of law is so extremely weak.

Political Parties: Funding

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, looking around the Committee room, I think we can say with great confidence that none of those here bought their peerages. I do not think that it was open for us to afford any such thing. Indeed, part of the negative attitude towards the House of Lords is the image that somehow we all bought our peerages. That is not the case, although most of us have probably paid too great a proportion of our salaries to our political parties. We have walked too many pavements over too many years. We have fought too many elections, and that is how we eventually ended up here in this place. It is part of the problem of politics, however, that the popular image is one where money plays too great a role.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I have been in the House for almost five years. When I filled in the forms I was in the bizarre position of having to explain that I was actually being paid a salary by the Labour Party. It paid me money.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I wish my party had paid me. The first time I worked for my party, in the 1966 general election, when I took four weeks off from writing my PhD to be the party’s assistant press officer, I worked flat out—probably 14 to 16 hours a day for four weeks. At the end of it, Lord Byers, who was then the party’s chair, presented me with a £50 note, which I had never seen before and which in those days was a substantial sum of money. I and a friend spent a very enjoyable holiday in France on the basis of that £50 note. That is the only occasion on which I have benefited from money flowing the other way.

There is a consensus on the need to limit the impact of money on politics. There is also a particularly negative campaign from the right-wing media that we are all in politics only for the money. All I say on that is that I would encourage the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who pursues many very effective campaigns in politics, also to campaign to ensure that those right-wing newspapers pay their full taxes in the country which they seek to defend because we all know that they do their utmost to avoid that.

The problem for all of us is that political campaigning costs money and the public, as consumers of politics, expect the parties to put leaflets through their doors, to phone them and to maintain websites, Twitter feeds and so on. When I was out in Hull two or three weeks ago, people told me on the doorstep, “How good to see you. Hardly anyone ever comes round and asks us about our political attitudes”. I was glad that we were doing it there, but in quite a lot of constituencies, no parties really manage to do that actively. We know that it does not come for free and that maintaining a basic constituency organisation requires a level of funding. Voters complain vigorously when parties do not maintain contact with them but show no willingness to help pay for those activities.

That pushes us towards the question of donors. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and other noble Lords asked whether all the political parties could manage on less money and depend more on volunteers—but we all face similar problems in how many volunteers we can attract. Perish the thought, but if UKIP had three or four really major donors, that might drive the three parties together to an eventual consensus on this issue.

We all know the context for this debate. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 introduced some important changes in the field of party funding. It established the Electoral Commission, about which the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has rightly raised issues today and on previous occasions. It required political parties to register with the Electoral Commission, set down accounting requirements for parties, introduced controls on donations to parties and their members, and controlled campaign expenditure within certain periods, both for parties and third parties in national election campaigns. I stress “control periods” because I suspect that all three parties have spent a fair amount of money in the last four weeks. We are just about to start the control period for the election; that is part of the problem. The Act set down rules on the donations received and expenses incurred in election campaigns and required companies to obtain approval before making political donations. These provisions are useful and important. Political parties have to keep records of donations over £500, and donations over £7,500 have to be declared to the Electoral Commission, which publishes details every quarter of donations received by political parties. That information is published on its website and is accessible to all—so far, so good. Parties can only receive donations from permissible sources: individuals who are on the electoral register, UK-registered companies—I stress “registered” as that raises a number of questions of definition—trade unions, building societies and other bodies such as unincorporated associations and limited liability partnerships.

The Electoral Administration Act 2006 introduced further provisions on the disclosure of loans to political parties. Since these reforms, there have been continued public and media attacks on large donations and on trade union funding—to which I shall return—which have led to further reports. These include the 2004 review by the Electoral Commission, reports by Sir Hayden Phillips and the Constitutional Affairs Select Committee in 2006 and, most recently, in 2011, a report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which recommended, among other things, a £10,000 annual cap on donations, trade union members having to opt in to fees paid to political parties if donations are to be counted individually—I stress that was a proposal from the Committee on Standards in Public Life; it was not a partisan proposal by other political parties—and an increase in public funding.

The problem is in getting consensus among the political parties on this. We all have different interests and we all have different sources of donations. My party has proudly said on its website that when the Electoral Commission has published the number of donations to political parties, over the past three years we have received on several occasions more individual donations than the Labour Party. The problem is that we have not received half as many large corporate donations or donations from other collectivities known as trade unions, or indeed any other large donations—let alone those received by the Conservative Party. In that sense, it does us good as a democratic principle, but it does not provide us with the money we need to employ staff, work on our website and do all the other things that need to be done.

We had a further round of discussions in the light of the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life which the Deputy Prime Minister convened in 2012-13. Seven meetings were held and the Deputy Prime Minister made one thing clear in setting out the remit, which was that in the current circumstances of a squeeze on public spending, there was no possibility of increasing state funding for political parties. After those discussions, the group failed to agree, and it is quite clear that between now and the next election we are not going to make any progress. Over the past 25 years we have established a whole set of additional funding for political parties—Short money, Cranborne money and the like—which has been very useful and has helped us to carry out our parliamentary functions and to raise the quality of our political research. However, public support for the expansion of political public funding is clearly absent at the present moment. So those talks broke down and we are stuck. We need to fund political parties and we benefit enormously from not having to pay for radio and television advertising, but politics and political campaigning cost money.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, raised the question of the extent to which the harsh regulation that we all suffer, including under IPSA once you are elected, discourages political recruitment and political retention. I think that that is an enormous problem and we will all need to address it once the election is out of the way and we have seen many good MPs from all parties retire rather than continue. I think that the noble Lord and I would probably agree that some of the best of the new Conservative intake are retiring after one period in Parliament, regrettably, because they really do not want to put up with the situation in which they live. That is a loss to us all in terms of democratic politics as much as those retiring from other parties.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have listened very carefully to the noble Lord. Is he suggesting that there will be discussions about reform of the regime? Has he heard something that we have not heard?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, for many of us, the world in its current form ends on 8 May 2015. If anyone here knows what the shape of the new Government will be, I would love them to tell me so that I can put down a large sum with the bookmakers and donate the winnings to my political party. I have no knowledge of that. What I am saying is that awkward people like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, should insist, as soon as they come back, that it is put back on the agenda because it is a very important question and we cannot get away from it. I therefore encourage him to continue to stir on all of this.

I am not entirely sure that I agree with the noble Lord that trade unions act as virtuous collectivities, which I think is what he was saying, with benign general secretaries representing the enlightened interests of their diverse memberships. That is not quite how I see all the general secretaries of trade unions, so there are some questions around that.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Will the noble Lord accept that our contributions come from individual members paying in so many pence per week? The contributions come from individual trade union members paying the political levy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will accept that. A proportion of the fees that individual members pay is deducted for a political fund which goes to one political party. How conscious or voluntary that is is, of course, part of the dispute.

I have a great deal of personal sympathy for the argument made by several noble Lords in support of gift aid tax relief. That is absolutely part of the way forward and it is one of the issues that quite a few of us, in whatever position we find ourselves after the election, should put straight back on to the agenda. We can then argue about the cap to be set, but again we are facing the problem that so far, the evidence of the number of voters who are sufficiently committed to any political party to want to pay money to it has fallen and we therefore need to increase it yet again. Some of us, and I am one of them, do our best to narrow the gap by entering the EuroMillions lottery each week and promising that we will give a substantial part of our winnings to our political party. Unfortunately only the SNP has benefited from that so far, not the Liberal Democrats or any other party.

I had expected the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, to ask me why the Government have not commenced the part of the last Act which deals with the tax status of donors. The answer I was ready to give to him, and which I cannot resist giving to him, is that the tax status of donors is actually not very easy to establish during a current tax year. For example, whether someone is domiciled in Britain or not is not entirely clear until after the end of the tax year. It is also a matter of confidentiality between the taxpayer and HMRC. If we are to have an information data gateway between HMRC and political parties that political parties can access, which might well be part of what we need to do, it will take us a year or two to establish—my notes say a minimum of two years. That, again, is an issue which we may wish to return to after the election. The question of whether or not a company is registered within Britain and carrying out serious activities in Britain is also a very difficult issue.

[Lord Dykes]

Would my noble friend also consider the possibility of imitating the American regulations so that owners of newspapers in Britain have to be based in the United Kingdom and pay UK personal taxes?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the coalition Government have no policy on that, so I had better not comment. I think that that covers all the issues which have been raised. I encourage the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Dykes, to continue to press this. It is an issue to which we will all have to return after the next election.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The Minister referred to my amendment on this question of foreign donations, over which, if I remember rightly, we defeated the Labour Government. He has given the Committee an explanation, although I did not raise the issue. Could we have a written explanation as to exactly why we have had difficulty in implementing that particular area of the law?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I will see what can be done in that respect and, if possible, I will write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I also mentioned the whole issue of freepost. I know he does not have figures here, but maybe we could look again at how much we spend on freepost in the UK, and use that money in a slightly different way.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Again, I will take that back and see whether we can write to the noble Lord.

Committee adjourned at 6.05 pm.

Sudan and South Sudan

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Sandwich]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are taking a lead in the diplomatic and humanitarian response to the conflicts in Sudan and South Sudan.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the timing of this debate is very tight. The current allocation of time comes to 58 minutes, and we have a request for a two-minute speech in the gap. I would therefore be very grateful if noble Lords could be succinct.

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Minister and thank all colleagues for joining this debate. I have chosen the anniversary of the fateful coup in South Sudan last December as a reminder of the continuing conflict in the north and the south.

I start with a brief interview with a woman from Upper Nile called Nyantay, who went blind at the time of South Sudan’s referendum and then became a refugee. Nyantay, a mother of four, fled from gunfire in her village but then found herself alone. “I just kept running”, she said. She fell into holes, ran into trees and suffered from heat exhaustion. At one point she sat down expecting death. She went on, “I thought, if the animals eat me, that’s fine. If the soldiers kill me, that’s fine. I no longer felt fear”. Luckily, she was found and taken across the border into Ethiopia and later reunited with her family, whom she had presumed had died.

Nyantay has survived but many thousands have not. At least 10,000 have died in the south—perhaps twice that number. Nearly 2 million have fled from their homes; half of them are in neighbouring countries. Ethiopia now has the largest refugee population in Africa. Some 100,000 are in UN camps in the south but many of them still live in fear for their lives, the Nuer from Salva Kiir’s SPLA and the Dinka from Riek Machar’s opposition SPLA 1.0. There have been terrible massacres on both sides. With the onset of the dry season, fighting will resume and further genocide may be around the corner. One-third of children are acutely malnourished and literacy levels for women remain among the lowest anywhere.

South Sudan is now a level 3 crisis, which is the highest UN category. The figures from UNOCHA’s situation reports are staggering: 618,000 are displaced in Jonglei state alone. Can we even imagine the challenge this presents to aid workers? Nyantay, the blind refugee, nearly gave up hope and, as onlookers, we, too, at times feel helpless and hopeless. So long as the warring parties fail to agree, South Sudan—the world’s youngest country—will remain in a state of chaos.

We may ask why we should care. We should care because people are suffering; because we may have friends living or working there; because any failed state threatens its neighbours; because we, as a country, have a historic commitment, not least as one of the troika who have been continually present at the talks in Addis; and because if we do not end the conflict in South Sudan, more refugees will come to Britain.

If we do help, will aid through the Government reach the people, considering that oil revenues have gone direct to the SPLA and South Sudan is near the top of the corruption list? Did not the World Bank health programme seize up altogether so that NGOs had to take over? Is this not a reason for some to argue that we should reduce our aid budget, or will the Minister confirm my view, which is that through the UN, aid agencies and NGOs, we can and do help effectively if we apply strict conditionality? In principle, humanitarian aid is given safe passage by both sides but there are many obstacles and restrictions, especially on foreign aid workers. The UN doctrine of responsibility to protect is the hardest to apply in such conditions.

I do not want to imply that South Sudan is not functioning, because it has a professional elite and a vigorous civil society—and not only in Juba—with many NGOs and heroic individuals providing essential services where the Government have failed. I remember them from my last visit. For the moment, famine has been averted. Although the UN mission is constantly harassed by the Government, the ICRC is now active again. The British Council has stayed open for most of the conflict. Ministers and celebrities such as David Miliband are also constantly visiting. There is a Jamaican singer in town this week. The churches are preaching reconciliation and, despite widespread unemployment, people are getting by. So I ask the Minister: what part has the UK played in the recent Addis negotiations, and to what does she attribute their failure? Does membership of the troika give the UK a particular advantage? Can the Ugandan army remain on one side of the conflict when IGAD, the regional authority, is promoting dialogue?

In Sudan itself, while there is a so-called national dialogue at the political level, whole areas of the country are still cut off by civil war. The UN say that 6.9 million are in need of humanitarian assistance across the north. Over half of these are in Darfur, with 431,000 displaced up to November of this year alone. Peace negotiations with the JEM and SLM factions in Doha, and more recently in Addis under Thabo Mbeki, have stalled yet again. One can sympathise with the writer who said that Addis is just a paid holiday for wealthy male negotiators in large cars who bring home nothing for anyone else.

Meanwhile UNAMID, the UN mission, has been severely criticised by NGOs and others for inaction and providing too little security. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, can testify that it was slow to respond to allegations of rape of 200 women and girls by Sudanese soldiers. Lubna Hussein, the human rights activist, says the UK should stop funding UNAMID, as it may be causing more harm than good. DfID has turned lately more to WFP and the other humanitarian agencies. In any case, UN peacekeepers have been progressively opposed and are now reduced in numbers by Khartoum. South Kordofan and Blue Nile are the other two provinces most affected, with civilians now caught between two wars, with the overspill from the southern conflict, and continuing hostilities between north and south. Um Dorein county has suffered renewed aerial bombardment since October. Other counties see regular overflying and troop movements. Only last week, Antonovs dropped 32 bombs in six different locations. The two areas have also suffered heavy rainfall, although it is said that SPLA-controlled counties are less affected by flooding and damage to crops. However, food insecurity has raised market prices in general, and there has been a higher incidence of malaria and malnutrition.

In Abyei, since the murder of the Ngok Dinka chief in May last year by a member of the Misseriya tribe, there has been no progress in negotiations. The town is scarcely functioning, even with the presence of peacekeepers, and the hospital is short of drugs. The national dialogue, which has offered some hope to reformers, has stalled again, with Khartoum resiling from AU-backed agreement, and Islamist rhetoric taking over from serious commitment on the part of the National Congress Party. The landmarks this year have been the Paris declaration in August which brought together the Umma party and the Sudanese Revolutionary Front; the Addis Ababa agreement in September, which included members of the Government’s dialogue mechanism; and valiant attempts by the AU Peace and Security Council to bring parties to all the conflicts together. Some of us had a positive glimpse of this dialogue when Sadiq al-Mahdi came to address our All-Party Group on Sudan and South Sudan, although it is hard even for a seasoned politician to hold the line between so many power blocs.

Two points emerge. First, we should not—in our natural concern in the UK for the Christian south—be diverted from the necessity of a political solution in the north, intractable as it is. We must give the strongest support to the AU high-level panel and IGAD forums. Taking account of Sudan’s oil revenue, there needs to be a concerted international effort on the scale of the peace agreement between north and south, which, in spite of its many failures, at least led to South Sudan’s independence.

Secondly, Khartoum seems to be reverting to its old habit of suppressing legitimate opinion in the media and civil society, and there our embassy and the NGOs must be especially watchful. There have been some alarming attacks on universities and discrimination against Christians in Khartoum, including the partial demolition of a church last week.

What is HMG’s response to the Government’s attempts—and, more recently, their failure—to achieve greater openness to dialogue? How do they judge the performance of the UN mission in Darfur and the security of aid workers? Can our Government, as a major contributor to the UN’s Common Humanitarian Fund, match their generosity with more diplomatic effort and results? Finally, will they give an assurance that the Sudan unit in the FCO will survive the cuts and be strengthened, if necessary, to inform and advise diplomats, politicians and civil society? Does the Minister share my regret that the position of EU special representative was combined with that for the Horn of Africa?

We should remember that ECHO, the EU’s humanitarian agency, has warned of famine in the south. I end with the words of the new Commissioner, Kristalina Georgieva:

“Aid operations will remain inadequate as long as the conflict continues. It is the responsibility of the political leadership of South Sudan to end the unnecessary suffering of its people”.

Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the most reverend Primate has given us the basis for a fascinating debate, starting with his own very helpful speech. The Government of course strongly support its underlying premise that soft power and non-military actions have a critical role in preventing conflicts and in building stronger societies, state structures and economic development. We are indeed deploying smart power as well as we can, which brings together all the tools at our disposal. That must be the cornerstone of our approach.

This year, sadly, we have seen an unpleasant increase in the number and intensity of high-profile armed conflicts around the world: some new, as in Ukraine, some revived and continuing, as in Libya, and some with a new and dangerous slant, as with the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, while prospects for lasting peace in the Israel/Palestine conflict appear dimmer now than at the start of the year. The UK has been at the forefront of efforts to resolve these and other conflicts by peaceful means. Such is the complexity of modern conflicts, most often involving rather more non-state actors than state actors, as in the Sahel and across the Middle East, that we and like-minded members of the international community need to use the full range of tools available to us to try to restrict, contain and end these conflicts.

Conflict prevention is much more difficult than post-conflict reconstruction. The unexpected outbreak of the Arab spring in Tunisia, which no one, even in Tunisia, had suspected, is a perfect example of how difficult it is to anticipate just where conflicts might break out next and do one’s best to anticipate it. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, pointed out the unanticipated spillover of the NATO and Gulf states intervention in Libya. We have to remember that that intervention was in large part intended as a humanitarian one to prevent the large-scale killing that was threatened within Libya at that time. The subsequent collapse of state and society into conflicting militias and the dispersal of weapons across the Sahel from abandoned military bases across the country was not foreseen. Sadly, as he rightly says, we are now faced with a huge problem of ungoverned areas within what we think of as states, albeit very weak ones, with which we now have to deal. Peacekeeping, post-conflict resolution and the containment of conflict have therefore to be our major preoccupations.

The Building Stability Overseas strategy, which has been mentioned, is the Government’s strategy to help to shape a stable world and tackle threats at their source. It has three areas where the Government wish to focus efforts: first, early warning, improving our ability to anticipate instability and potential triggers for conflict, so far as we can; secondly, rapid crisis prevention and response, taking fast, appropriate and effective action to prevent a crisis or to stop it from developing further; and, thirdly, investing in upstream prevention by trying to build strong, legitimate and robust societies in the many fragile countries and weak states around the world.

We fund this partly through the interdepartmental Conflict Pool. Again I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, that there is a great deal of cross-departmental co-operation in this, and it is improving. The National Security Council has now agreed to reform decision-making on the UK effort within fragile states. A new Conflict, Stability and Security Fund will therefore replace the current Conflict Pool in April 2015. That will have £1 billion, of which £100 million is new additional money. It will operate across several different departments and include work focused on reconciliation, intercommunity dialogue and weapons reduction and support focused on strengthening other countries’ institutions.

I welcome the general support for the size of our current development budget. It focuses on long-term development but deals with short-term and immediate humanitarian assistance. With the Norwegians and some others, we are now a leader in world development, and we are very proud of that. DfID has been scaling up its work in fragile and conflict-affected states and in the previous SDSR committed itself to investing 30% of total UK ODA in fragile and conflict-affected states. A great deal of effort goes into those many fragile countries across the world.

In addition to that, some of the ODA is being spent in other departments. I was in Istanbul at the weekend where the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, the UK trade envoy to Turkey, had just launched the UK’s Newton Fund, which is a DfID-funded but BIS-administered fund for promoting scientific and technological collaboration between British scholars and scholars in the developing world. I can assure the noble Lord that there is increasing co-operation across Whitehall to promote our broader developmental objectives.

On defence engagement, which a number of noble Lords asked about, the defence attaché network remains a key part of integrated UK support. I am told that in South Sudan we have worked extremely hard developing a Conflict Pool programme to try to support the evolution of what had been a guerrilla force into professional armed services. Sadly, there is a long way to go. In Ethiopia, we are bringing together defence engagement activity—the Conflict Pool and DfID’s development programme—to pull together the different dimensions of security and justice, as we all recognise that domestic policing is as important as armed forces. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, referred to military training, the Royal College of Defence Studies and many others. We are similarly engaged in training on the ground in fragile states and also back here.

Others talked about the immense value of all sorts of education that the British are engaged in. As an academic, partly at St Antony’s, which has been mentioned, and at the London School of Economics, I am very conscious of the extent to which, as I travel as a Minister, I meet my former students, who include one Prime Minister at the present, the retiring president of the Commission, one Commissioner and various other people. It helps—and it also helps add to my credibility with the FCO from time to time.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, asked about the 0.7% commitment. I am glad that the Bill has now passed the other House. It is a little too early for me to say how we will respond, but I take her point and we will see what we can do in January and then on. The British Government are among the leaders in development aid. We are entitled to ask for more from others. The Deputy Prime Minister, when in Berlin last week, made that specific point to our German partners: we are doing well, but we expect others to come up more to the mark.

The most reverend Primate also mentioned the strategic defence and security review. I am struck that many noble Lords responded on that. Since I have already had to answer Questions in the House on what is happening on the SDSR, I welcome the surge of interest in that debate. The review is led by the Cabinet Office with a range of different departments, not just the Ministry of Defence, concerned with it.

I remind the noble Lord, Lord Admiral West, and other noble Lords that the 2010 strategic threat assessment had more non-military than military threats on its list of the most serious threats facing Britain. Those threats included: climate change; international criminal networks; terrorism driven by radical or violent ideologies; global epidemics; cyberattacks, including threats to critical national infrastructure; to which I would add global population growth, weak states, the spillover of civil conflict into state collapse and the surges of refugees as migrants towards safe countries such as the UK. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, that part of the argument for development assistance is that it enables people to stay within their own countries rather than flee across the Mediterranean to safer countries like our own. Then there is hybrid war, and the information war, which again, as the noble Baroness said, the Russians are currently waging, as well as their attempts to subvert political parties and other institutions within our safer Europe.

We should certainly consider some of these very large questions. How do we best respond to such a much wider range of threats? What mixture of assets should we best invest in—how much military and how much non-military? How much do we invest in overseas issues of this sort in meeting those threats, in comparison with our investment in domestic education, health, welfare and other public services? There are no soft choices here; this is a matter of very hard financial—

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Before my noble friend completes his very helpful display of what the Government propose to do, I will ask him about a question that was raised by my noble friend Lady Miller and the noble Lord, Lord West. Given that it will cost nothing and that, as he knows, there is a meeting on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in the spring of 2015, will he tell the House whether he would consider the United Kingdom Government throwing more of their weight behind the idea of ending very early warning? One of the real fears that many of us have is that as the Russian Government begin to lose their capacity to maintain the highest quality of inspection and maintenance, there is a great danger that, with such tiny periods of alarm, an extremely serious accident could occur.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government have already invested in considerable preparations for the next NPT review. I take the opportunity to answer the question asked earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. The Government have decided to accept Austria’s invitation to attend the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, which will get under way this weekend. The UK will be represented by Mrs Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque, the UK’s ambassador to Austria and permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. I hope that is welcome news to all concerned.

In his opening, the most reverend Prelate talked about the importance of narrative. It is very important, with soft power, to talk about the importance of ideas. We all know that ideas shape the world in the long run, be they Christianity, Islam, the Enlightenment, communism, nationalism, fascism, or whatever; and radical Islam is now replacing the attractions of secular ideologies across the Middle East. We certainly need to think about our counternarrative. The traditional western and Anglo-Saxon narrative has been about open society, limited government, civil society, tolerance and human rights. The Reformation and beyond and the importance of non-conformity were not entirely appreciated by the Church of England in the 17th century, but it accepted them in the 19th century. I declare an interest as a member of the Liberal Party, which grew out of the alliance between the Whigs and the non-conformists.

We need to have a debate on what our national narrative now is. The other week I was in a seminar, off the record, with a fairly senior Conservative MP who said, “We can’t discuss the SDSR until we’ve decided who we are and where we think we are in the world—and we don’t know”. That is a real problem, and we all recognise that that is part of our problem. We need to get back to the question of what Britain is about. We have several contradictory narratives at the present moment. The excellent report on soft power produced by the British Academy earlier this year called itself something like the power of attraction—and that is fine, but, actually, the power of attraction means that we have enormous numbers of people of all backgrounds and levels of attainment wanting to come and live in Britain, which is something that we know many of our public no longer want to have. They want Britain to be a rather more closed society.

Part of our open society is that we accept that foreigners can buy whatever they want in Britain, and part of the popular reaction against globalisation in Britain is a sense that somehow we are losing our own country. So there is popular disillusionment with rapid change and continuing immigration. That suggests that politicians, churchmen and public intellectuals need to open a much more active debate about national identity. Gordon Brown as Prime Minister made one or two speeches on this, but we need to think about where we go from here. I am a member of the advisory board on the commemoration of World War I, and part of what we are trying to do through the programme of commemoration is to remind people where we came from. We did not stand alone; the Commonwealth, particularly the Indian Army, the West Indies Regiment and others, were all part of where we evolved from, into the multiracial society we are today.

Of course, it is also a matter of a national narrative and a sense of national identity that is changing and developing. Yesterday, I had an argument with a young woman, an official from the Foreign Office, who was being a little rude about the attitude to women in developing countries, and I reminded her that 75 years ago attitudes to women in this country were also pretty backward-looking from our current perspective. The transformation of the role and status of women over the past two to three generations in Britain and the other western states has been one of the most wonderful things that we have developed. Now we are trying to transfer those new British values to the rest of the world, and we recognise that the role of women is one of the keys to economic and social development—and also, incidentally, to population limitation. I pay tribute to the Foreign Secretary and the International Development Secretary for the work that they have done, including the work on the prevention of sexual violence against women—and also to the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, whom we have just welcomed into the House.

There is a lot more to do in this area. I am very happy to say that BIS now has a UK student outward mobility strategy, which was launched last year because British people do not go abroad enough. Lots of people come here, but we do not pay enough attention to making sure that our younger generation understands the rest of the world.

Multilateral work is how we have to approach much of soft power. There is little we can do on our own. We work closely with others. In South Sudan, for example, Britain and Norway are the joint chairs of one of the frameworks through which we try to negotiate, working closely with the African Union and the Arab League, doing our best to draw on Chinese participation wherever we can. International NGOs and NGOs based in Britain play a very valuable part in our endeavour. They are part of the soft power projection for Britain. Of course, we are very worried about the shrinking of space for NGOs to operate with Russia and in many other countries, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Commonwealth has also been mentioned—the language, culture and history—but, fundamentally, the rule of law, which we need to make as much as we can of, with India and South Africa in some ways as our key partners. The successful development of the rule of law in that regard is flawed but, nevertheless, is making real progress.

I have many more notes but I shall be as rapid as I can. We welcome the role of the churches in promoting tolerance and understanding among faiths as well as within each faith community, and in talking about different paths to God, particularly among the three faiths of the Book—Judaism, Islam and Christianity. I note that Ibrahim—Abraham—is now becoming one of the more popular boys’ names in Britain. That should remind people that these are not entirely incompatible traditions. The Government can assist in this regard. There are now university centres for Islamic theology and one needs to take that further. I take the opportunity to praise the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, for the work she did, and the speeches she made, on tolerance to Muslim audiences in Istanbul, Oman and Kuala Lumpur as well as for the speeches she made in Washington and Rome on interfaith understanding. That work, and the work on human rights, is being continued by my noble friend Lady Anelay.

A number of noble Lords talked about student visas and the whole problem with visas. We recognise that we have a problem. That is partly because so many people want to come to Britain. However, applications for university student visas continue to rise, as does the student overseas population in Britain. There was an 18% increase in visas granted for skilled workers and a 14% increase in visitor visas last year, so we are not going backwards on that. However, we are struggling to meet the pressure resulting from the number of people wishing to enter Britain.

Some noble Lords mentioned the BBC World Service. It may be better if I write to them on that very large subject. On the economic side, the Prime Minister has made it entirely clear that we are concerned about finding the golden thread that links conflict-free development with prosperity—namely, the absence of war, getting rid of corruption, the establishment of the rule of law, decent government and having markets that work. That involves us in a great deal of co-operation with others in fighting international corruption and criminal regimes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, asked a number of questions, including whether the Government had undertaken a risk analysis of the implications of withdrawal from the ECHR. My clear answer is that of course we have not because the Government have no intention of leaving the ECHR, so no such analysis is necessary.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

Surely the question may not be one just of leaving the ECHR but of considering the judgments as purely advisory.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was involved in the Brighton initiative. We are concerned to reform and improve the quality of the court. I am happy to say that the last report I saw suggested that the backlog of applications under the ECHR has declined rapidly over the last two years, so British efforts to reform the Council of Europe have made real progress.

I agree that the European Union is the ultimate soft power element but we also have to recognise that popular disillusion with the EU is a common phenomenon in most member states. That is why the coalition Government, with others, are committed to a programme of EU reform.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, asked about a conference on Bosnia chaired by the Soul of Europe. I hope he will be reassured to hear that the FCO has written to the director of the Soul of Europe, informing him how he can access funding.

If I have not responded to other points made in the debate, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I write to them on those points. This has been an extremely valuable debate. I thank the most reverend Primate for introducing it and look forward to the next debate introduced by him, perhaps next year.

Iran: Ghoncheh Ghavami

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made representations to the government of Iran on behalf of Ghoncheh Ghavami, a joint British and Iranian citizen who was jailed for a year after attending an International Volleyball Federation World League match in Iran.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have raised the case of Miss Ghoncheh Ghavami with the Iranian authorities on many occasions, most recently on 23 November. We welcome the news that Miss Ghavami has been released on bail, and will remain in close touch with her family.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, while welcoming the news that following the Foreign Secretary’s intervention, Ghoncheh Ghavami, a British and Iranian national, is no longer serving the sentence of a year in prison for seeking to attend a men-only volleyball match in Tehran, will the Government do all that they can to ensure that the result of her forthcoming appeal does not return her to prison, that all charges against Ghoncheh are dropped and that she is released from her two-year travel ban?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government have been actively engaged on this case and will continue to be so.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for raising this case. When a British citizen is being wrongly treated anywhere in the world, we have to be active on that person’s behalf. I thank the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Ministers for the efforts they have made, as well as the work done by Miss Ghavami’s Member of Parliament, the honourable Andy Slaughter, on his constituent’s behalf. Please will the Minister ensure that the strenuous diplomatic efforts that have already been made continue—perhaps in the margins of today’s Afghan conference—so that, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, this British citizen may return home as soon as possible?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I understand that Mr Zarif is not attending today’s Afghan conference, but there will be Iranian representation. Those conversations certainly continue. One problem is that Miss Ghavami is a dual national, and the Iranians do not recognise the status of dual nationality.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, talking of returning home, 92 years ago yesterday, the cruiser “Calypso” steamed into Phaleron Bay and picked up a family going into exile. The youngest child was 18 months old and was in an orange box for his cot. He became an Admiral of the Fleet 30 years later. Would the Minister like to thank the Duke of Edinburgh for the huge amount he has done for our nation over that period?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

When the noble Lord mentioned an orange box, I thought we were getting into Mosaic dimensions. Of course, we thank him for his contribution.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that it is a delicate business to seek to interfere with the judicial and legal process of another country? However deplorable we know it to be, the law of Iran is the law of Iran. We must therefore act delicately, let us say, in seeking to assist this young woman.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are certainly acting delicately. We all understand the delicacy of raising human rights issues with other countries. However, the human rights situation in Iran is dire. The periodic universal review of the Iranian position on human rights by the Human Rights Council, which is now under way, has raised a number of serious issues. Her Majesty’s Government contributed to raising those issues and we look forward cautiously to Iran’s response at the next meeting of the Human Rights Council in March 2015.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, while I do not necessarily suggest that we emulate the Don Pacifico incident, there is a limit to delicacy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, of course there is a limit to delicacy. The Iranian political system is one of the most complex in the world. We are dealing with a democratically elected President, a judiciary that is partly responsible to the clergy and a Supreme Leader, not to mention the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. We are never quite sure, as we negotiate with the Iranian authorities, which authorities have the key ability to respond.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, an area of serious concern is the public hangings that take place in Iran. Next week, we celebrate International Human Rights Day. Is it possible for the Government to make representations to see whether some sort of moratorium could be established until such time as progress is made with these discussions?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we all know that Iran is second only to China in the number of people executed per year. That is an issue that we and others have raised during the UN human rights review.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)]

My Lords, given that Iran has apparently been involved in bombing IS in Iraq, will the Government take great care to ensure that human rights are not decoupled from other activities in relation to Iraq, as well as Iran? Will my noble friend assure the House that representations will be made to ensure that the Iranian Government do not begin to hold sway over human rights issues arising in Iraq, where they are looking extremely influential at the moment?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Iran is not the only state in the Middle East with which we have issues about human rights. We certainly do not intend to uncouple human rights from other issues, but we are also in the middle of some immensely complex nuclear negotiations with Iran, and then there are the many complications of the anti-ISIL campaigns.

Electoral Conduct

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are all aware of the difficulty of distinguishing between free speech, robust campaigning and incorrect and improper speech. I think all noble Lords in the debate have taken part in some fairly robust campaigns. The first campaign I took part in, in 1970, had National Front candidates. To say the least, they stretched the boundaries of acceptable campaigning in a whole range of ways. The Liberals in Huddersfield did our best to stand up to them. We were complimented by our Conservative and Labour counterparts for so doing. They were not quite so explicit but they captured more votes; that is always part of the delicacy of campaigning. We have to remember that the electorate do not solely consist of liberally, openly and tolerantly minded people, which means that the sort of robust campaigning we are talking about often has real appeal and gains great political dividends. When she presented this report in a Commons debate, Natascha Engel said:

“We tried to achieve balance in our report”—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 98WH]—

between “where … robust political campaigning” ends and discrimination begins. That is the problem we all have.

All parties have suffered embarrassing moments, usually from local election candidates and campaigns but sometimes also from parliamentary candidates and campaigns. As has been said in the debate, all parties have done their best to tighten up their procedures: to produce internal codes of conduct and to vet, assess and train their candidates and agents in advance. That does not always succeed and there are occasions when our local representatives slip beneath the standards that we would like. We are also aware that there are parties outside what one might call the consensus of established parties. We are going to have an election in which there will be a large number of candidates from a range of different parties, some of which will not want to accept the current consensus. They will decry what they will call political correctness and wish to be politically incorrect. We are going to have to cope with that when the next election comes along but it is much easier to cope with through the established procedures when conventional methods of campaigning take place, through leaflets and so on.

The new media, all the way from telephone canvassing through to the internet, with Twitter and so on, are much more difficult. In one of the seats where I was campaigning in the last election, I was very conscious that telephone canvassing appeared to be putting out messages that the Liberal Democrats were in favour of uncontrolled immigration into this country. That message was clearly coming back at us in the last week on the doorsteps; it clearly came, I suspect, from a script provided by one of the other parties for telephone canvassing. Of course, that is very difficult to get hold of and when you then move on to social media, we are all familiar with the internet trolls who exist and the dreadfully negative comments that are attached to so many of the media areas that we see. How you get hold of those politically minded internet trolls is, again, going to be very difficult for us all.

The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has done us a good favour by raising a range of questions. Let me try and answer the government questions because, of the 30 recommendations in this report, only five were really addressed directly to the Government. Some were directed to the parties themselves; others were to the Law Commission, the EHRC, the Electoral Commission and so on. On the question of issuing a voluntary code of advertising, the Government are certainly prepared actively to encourage political parties themselves to agree such a code. Recommendations 25 and 29 suggest that the requirement for an imprint for parties and non-party campaigners should be extended to incorporate online and other election communications. We are certainly willing to look at that. The Electoral Commission is of course directly responsible for looking at such issues but it will be very complex to devise workable rules that would extend to online materials, let alone in primary legislation. That is part of what we are all going to have to struggle with in this coming campaign.

Recommendation 27 suggests that non-party campaigners in local campaigns should register with the returning officer and submit spending returns. We went through the issue of non-party campaigns on the transparency of lobbying Act. I bear the scars of that Act, during the passage of which a number of non-governmental organisations refused to accept that there were real problems with non-party campaigning groups and that we needed to take a degree of action to limit them, as the Act has now done, in spending limits and in requiring them to retain receipts for expenditure, both nationally and within constituencies.

Recommendation 28 proposes that non-party campaigners be required to maintain a database of election campaign literature to assist the police when accusations of misconduct arise. That would be ideal, although I am not entirely sure that every established political party maintains a correct library of all the leaflets that they have put out.

I now address some of the other issues touched on. There are recommendations to parties on the diversity of candidates—women, the disabled, ethnic minorities. My party has had a particularly worthwhile scheme, led by my noble friend Lady Brinton, who I am happy to say has just been elected our party president, to encourage candidates from those groups. I have no doubt that the other two parties have been doing the same—indeed, the evidence is there in some of those elected last time. It is very important that all the parties—at least, all the three parties—now have clear internal codes and elements of training for candidates and agents.

I turn to the EHRC, which has been criticised. First, the EHRC is not the CRE; it has a more limited remit. Some of the areas where the CRE worked are now being managed by the Electoral Commission and a number of these are matters for the police. We are all aware that there have been concerns that the police, in past election campaigns, have not treated allegations of this sort with sufficient attention. I am very glad that this report has drawn attention to the need for ACPO to pay much more attention to problems of electoral fraud and campaigning of the sort which we have seen evidence of in parts of London and elsewhere in recent years. Certainly, from my limited experience of talking to police in Yorkshire and elsewhere, the police are now more aware of this as a problem, so we hope that there will be greater attention to this in the coming campaign.

The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, suggested that a single code of conduct would be better than a proliferation of different party codes. I have to say, speaking on behalf of the Government, that that is a matter for the parties to agree among themselves. The Government should not interfere too sharply in what parties do among themselves, but it is something we encourage the parties to talk further about. On the question of guidance for campaigners from the Electoral Commission, I say that the Electoral Commission will be publishing its guidance in time for the 2015 election, and the chair of the commission has written to Natascha Engel to say that it will engage with those parties which are not part of the statutory parliamentary parties panel on the form of this guidance. We are all conscious that five, six or seven significant parties will be fighting a wide range of constituencies in the coming election, so we need to engage with a wider number of participants.

The EHRC is now looking at how best to update its guidance on elections for local authorities and other organisations for use in 2015. That is thought to provide the sort of guidance that others have been asking for.

On the question of the role of IPSO, clause 12 of the editors’ code of practice, which is administered by IPSO, deals with discrimination. It is vital that editors adhere to the code at all times, not just in elections, and we look to IPSO to ensure that the code is obeyed by the media during the course of the campaign.

Lastly, I touch on the role of the Law Commission. The commission will be publishing a consultation setting out its proposals for electoral reform early this month, with a report to be published with recommendations in the summer of 2015, which thus will not be of use to us in this coming election but means that we are moving forward for the campaigns after that.

The Government are extremely grateful for this report because it raises a whole set of questions that all parties need to think through. I hope that this conversation will continue and that all those who are consulting on this, with the Electoral Commission and elsewhere, will ensure that the three parties we now refer to in some ways as the established parties, and indeed which UKIP loves to accuse of being the established parties, will draw in others as well—the regional parties, the other national parties—to ensure that we have a robust but clean campaign and do not stretch the boundaries of free speech too far.