Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and Philippines

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I fear that I have not seen any other coverage of how it was reported in Sri Lanka. Obviously my friends at the Foreign Office and so on will have done. I am sure that they spend their days doing that and other productive things. Oh dear, I can feel that my briefing is now going to dry up on me.

On the point that some of the world’s press were able to go there, I saw the transcript of the press conference that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister gave on, I think, the Saturday morning, which had representatives of the press from both Sri Lanka and the rest of the world. That gave the opportunity for a wide range of people to report honestly and openly on what went on.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Minister to be a little clearer about what the Government are going to do to persuade the Commonwealth to take action to mitigate the very real damage that will be done to the credibility of the Commonwealth and the charter signed only this year, with all its emphasis on human rights, if the Government of Sri Lanka are to carry on representing the Commonwealth in international forums for the next two years. The Prime Minister did a good job, and I congratulate him on all his work on behalf of human rights in Sri Lanka on his visit, but it is clear that the regime has ignored him, just as it has ignored all representations in the past and clearly intends to ignore all such representations in the future. It is crucial that the Commonwealth takes such action to mitigate the damage that this regime will do to the credibility of the Commonwealth. What will the Government do about that?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will be brief because I think the essence of that question was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon. It is something that the whole Commonwealth is going to have to do. The noble Lord asks what the British Government are going to do. We are only one of 53 members and the institution operates by consensus.

My earlier answer was that we will seek to work through that body by emphasising at every possible opportunity, as we did again in Colombo, through the Commonwealth charter, that these values are important and need to be upheld. I do not have a magic wand to wave, much as I would like to, because I share the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wills. I cannot say that we can simply do A, B and C and that it will all work in the way that we would like.