Zimbabwe

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness and other noble Lords for their work on and interest in helping Zimbabwe to secure a sustainable democracy and the prevailing rule of law—important points that we have raised in your Lordships’ House and beyond. On her specific question on the MDC, as I indicated in an earlier answer, the British ambassador, along with international partners, met the acting Foreign Minister, the Home Affairs Minister and also the opposition MDC leader on 16 January to ensure a joint approach with international partners and the opposition to ensure, first and foremost, that the conflict and violence that we have seen on the roads are stopped and that the rule of law can prevail.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, as one who went on the inspection of independence elections in Rhodesia in 1979, I can say that there is a sickening familiarity in what is happening. There was a glorious burst of democratic enthusiasm, of friendliness, of brotherhood and of peace. I stood next to the district commissioner, who, four days before that election, said, “I cannot believe what I am seeing. Those guys there”—20 people dancing in a circle carrying placards—“have swapped to placards when six weeks ago they were throwing petrol bombs through each other’s windows”. Here we are again. It is getting more and more violent, and we must have got to the stage where occasionally those who negotiate on our behalf say, “Or else”—and it would be very nice to know what follows those words.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that, as I have already indicated, constructive discussions are taking place with international partners and there is direct engagement with all parties on the ground. We are making it very clear that the current violence, the violations and abuses of human rights and the actions initiated by the security forces that we have seen are unacceptable. We will continue to work to ensure that that is communicated and will take all appropriate steps to ensure that the rule of law can prevail and that human rights are respected.

China: Uighur Muslims

Lord Elton Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises an important point, but let me assure him that through our membership of the Security Council and the Human Rights Council, we raise these issues with like-minded partners but also with countries from the Islamic world—to which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred—to ensure that a consistent message is delivered. China is an important partner of the United Kingdom on a range of different issues, but that should not preclude our raising human rights issues clearly and unequivocally.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My noble friend’s replies have been encouraging, but I understand that the situation is even worse at present. It is now reported that the Chinese authorities are removing the children from these camps, which are full of 1 million of their nationals, and taking them away to be re-educated separately. That is totally heartless and should be a central part of his inquiry.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, my noble friend raises a disturbing turn of events, which has been much reported. Any parent of any child can relate to the issue he has raised. The issue of the Uighur Muslims in particular, but also that of all the different religious minority communities in China, is a concern. Let me assure him and your Lordships’ House that in my role as the Prime Minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion or belief, I will raise it consistently, both bilaterally and in all international fora.

Asset Freezing (Compensation) Bill [HL]

Lord Elton Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard) : House of Lords
Friday 27th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I too thank those who participated in today’s debate. I want to go over a few points. My noble friend Lord Rogan referred to Semtex and the escalation of the campaign, and the fact that citizens from other countries have achieved compensation. I acknowledge that that was salt in the wound to many victims.

I appreciated the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan. I understand the technical points he made about the letters, but of all the things that have happened over the years, the production of pieces of paper in a court, the existence of which was not known to anybody outwith the Government of the day and the terrorists who held them, was a big shock, to put it mildly. The truth is that someone charged with four counts of murder and contributing to an explosion in this country—the first person to be brought before the courts between 1982 and 2014 on this matter—was able to leave the court a free man. You can look at all the technicalities that surround it, but that is what happened. It was a shock to the core for many people.

We know that mistakes were made, perhaps at police level—I accept that. But the fact is that pieces of paper existed that were not known about. Through my involvement in the negotiations I am well aware that the on-the-runs was a very sensitive issue. It was a matter that could not be left hanging in the wind. Nevertheless, people were shocked by the way this was done and by the fact that some of the people in possession of these letters were the same people hounding members of the security forces who were acting on our behalf. They were having their cake and eating it. The noble Lord, Lord Reid, also mentioned the imbalance, which is at the core of why people are so upset.

I am well aware of the personal experiences of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Carswell—my late aunt and uncle lived across the road from where he lives. Very few people would get under their vehicle like a mechanic in a garage to search for a device, but he was so conscientious. I thank God that he and his family escaped.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

In that context, it might be worth reminding the Minister that an exactly similar device killed one of Margaret Thatcher’s Ministers, Ian Gow.

[Lord Empey]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. If noble Lords look inside the Chamber of the House of Commons they will see above the door the names of those Members of the House of Commons who were killed—Airey Neave, Ian Gow, the Reverend Robert Bradford and Anthony Berry in the Brighton bomb. That was a very poignant intervention.

I appreciate the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, about parliamentary procedure. As a hand in these things, I am sure that over the years he has been quite happy to use the odd bit of procedure himself, as I am sure we all have in the different fora in which we have operated. Nevertheless, he makes the point—he knows and everyone knows—that a private Member does not have the resources to draft all of the technicalities that are needed in a Private Member’s Bill. Although I thank the Public Bill Office for its assistance, I am well aware that without the backing of the Government, it is difficult for a Private Member’s Bill to make progress. However, it creates a platform for Members to bring issues into the public domain. I make no excuse whatever for that because that is what we are trying to do here. I thank the noble Lord very much for his contribution and support just as I thank the noble Lord, Lord Reid. When we discussed the Bill last time, the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, also contributed on behalf of the Labour Party. We appreciate all those matters.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, mentioned fairness and transparency. Those things have been sorely lacking over the years. My noble friend Lord Lexden used the dreaded phrase “devolve and forget” with regard to devolution. With the circumstances in which we find ourselves in Belfast at the moment, I sincerely hope that we see that devolving and forgetting does not work. We know that it is not a good policy. My noble friend Lord Lexden also mentioned Airey Neave and what happened in March 1979 and standing up for victims. He has been one of the most consistent and persistent supporters of Northern Ireland over his lifetime and we greatly appreciate that.

On the Minister’s response, in my speech I quoted what Prime Minister Cameron said in 2011 and what the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said in 2014 and said that they were totally inconsistent—one excluded the other. The Minister used a phrase that I welcome when he said that Her Majesty’s Government would now be prepared to pursue more openly and communicate more effectively with victims. He used the phrase “seek redress”. That is an improvement in their position because in 2014 they were saying that they would have no involvement whatever. The Foreign Secretary hosted a meeting with Alistair Burt. Our ambassador to Libya was present as were a number of officials, so he was taking the matter seriously. I believe that his approach is beginning to focus the Government on doing something about this.

Look: we all know that the people of Libya were the principal sufferers over the regime of Gaddafi. The country was a personal fiefdom. It was brutalised. People were disappeared and murdered and treated appallingly. We are not seeking to ignore them or to set those people aside. But the people of Libya have to understand that they are not alone. People in this country have to be taken into account. It is the first duty of Her Majesty’s Government to protect their citizens. That is the first and important duty of government. I attended hearings of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee when a number of other persons were present including the former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and when the question of compensation was raised he said that people had already received compensation. Many of them may have from the British taxpayer, but it is not the British taxpayer who should be paying. It is the people who perpetrated and provided the material so that the terrorists could operate in this country. There is a state-to-state issue here. I think we can claim today that the Government have moved from their position of saying that it is purely a private matter to saying that there has to be state-to-state involvement. The two are not mutually exclusive, but that represents a step forward, and I welcome it.

Reference was made to Jim Fitzpatrick in the other place. He has been a stalwart campaigner. I attended a debate that he had in Westminster Hall last year. He was present when we met the Foreign Secretary a few weeks ago, along with the group chair, Andrew Rosindell, the Member for Romford. We have quite a substantial amount of support and we meet from time to time, so this is not a party issue. This is a parliamentary issue. It is a national issue. We do not know the politics of the people involved and it is none of our business. The fact is that a group of our citizens have suffered directly as a result of the actions of the state of Libya under the Gaddafi regime. While people will be free to take private cases against individuals who they know or believe were involved, this is not a matter that the Government can sit on their hands over. I hope that the contribution that the Minister has made today when he said that the Government would seek redress implies that they will actually do something.

I hope that the Minister will be able to anticipate that, if we do not see that redress is being sought—and sought in a proactive way—I am quite certain from what all noble Lords have said in their remarks that we will be back to ensure that this matter does not fall down through the cracks. We have brought Bills forward two years running and we will bring them forward every year if we have to. It is not something that we will give up on. If it takes letters and delegations—whatever it takes—we will persist. The Government must realise that this is not something that can be put on the back burner any more. That will not happen. I think that there is unanimity in the House on this matter and I hope that a message can be brought back to the Foreign Secretary to say that we appreciate that he is taking the matter seriously but, to coin a phrase, we are not going away. With that, I ask the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.

North Korea

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend have any information about the number of Christians who are now incarcerated in North Korea for the sake of their religion? It is one of the countries where they are most harassed and oppressed.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My noble friend is right to raise the plight of Christians in North Korea. Although the constitution in the DPRK provides the right to have freedom to believe, those who practise religion outside very closely state-controlled faiths find themselves subject to appalling persecution. It is matter that we raise frequently with the North Korean Government through our embassy in Pyongyang, the United Nations and the Human Rights Council. But it is a continuing, appalling, flagrant breach of international norms.

Turkey: Judicial Personnel

Lord Elton Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I have with me only the figures on the number of judges and prosecutors who have been sacked out of those who were suspended, but I will look specifically to see whether we have those figures. The noble and learned Lord is absolutely right to point out the different, investigatory system that pertains in Turkey. We have represented throughout that any response must be proportionate and that the rule of law has to pertain, which includes having a proper, independent judicial system.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, are newspaper reports that the Russian air force is now stationing military aircraft on Turkish territory to be believed; and if so, does that relate to my noble friend’s earlier answer?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the Russians still have a base in Syria and their aircraft are certainly based there. Turkey is a valued partner in the battle against Daesh. Without it, the coalition forces would not be able to have their bases there.

Saudi Arabia: Executions

Lord Elton Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister said that we deplore executions for political reasons in all countries. Have our representations been equally private and powerful with Iran?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, of course, our diplomatic relationship with Iran has only recently resumed, and it is important that we are able to nurture it. Iran will be under no misunderstanding about the strength of opinion of the British Government—indeed, of all British Governments in recent decades—that the death penalty is wrong in principle, wrong in practice and can undermine a successful society.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Elton Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, like many other noble Lords, I start by congratulating the absent noble Baroness, Lady Helic, on her admirable maiden speech. She has a valuable new perspective for us and the gift of focusing it down very precisely in excellently clear language, as well as the seductive gift of expressing it in terms that make us feel even better about our own self image. When she is free of the restraints of the conventions concerning maiden speeches and the prudence of new membership, I hope that she will develop and hone her critical faculties, because what we really need to hear is not how good we are but how much better we ought to be and how we can be. I am sure that she has a great deal to say on that.

The scope of this debate has been admirably demonstrated by the brilliant speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in its geographical and moral terms. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for focusing briefly first, for reasons that will become clear, on the forum within which it is being conducted. I find a certain curiosity in the fact that we are very much concerned with the size of the membership of that forum, which, following the resignations taking effect that were published in today’s Order of Business, will be one more than it was in 1945. When I joined this House, the membership was over 1,100, and it still continued to function effectively thanks to the Salisbury convention from the day when the Labour Party had a government membership of 16 in this House and the Conservative Party of 400 had an overall majority in the House as a whole right up to recent times.

I mention that because at the back of my mind are the disadvantages with the scale of the influx that we now have. There is pressure on our machinery at a very large cost to the taxpayer. This is not a debate in which to go into the reasons for that, although I would like to do that at a future date, but I would like to bring to the attention of the Government what I believe to be the general consensus of this House and the public that maybe we should diminish the flow into this House. We have already accelerated the exits from this House. We are not accelerating death, but political death is being accelerated by pressurised retirement.

That brings me to my justification for mentioning this. In this debate, where we are focusing on our defence powers and must look at our recent wartime experiences, there are just five people speaking who are able to recall in adolescent memory—childish memory really—the world before the start of the Second World War and our close interest as we grew through that war of how it started. It is the duty of my generation to point out that in the 1930s a great European power considering itself to be disappointed and belittled by history—I am talking about Germany and the Treaty of Versailles—threw up a dictator, Hitler, who gained immense popularity by annexing neighbouring territories on the grounds that they spoke the same language as his. He did so at a time when our defensive forces were greatly diminished. Your Lordships will already be thinking of the remarkable speech made a few minutes ago by the noble Lord, Lord West. I am thinking of the spectacle of virtually the entire British Army being swept into the Channel in a matter of weeks, some time after a Prime Minister came back from conversations saying that all would be well for the foreseeable future.

I look to the east and I see a country that considers itself to be belittled by history—the break-up of the Russian empire, as it was—throwing up a dictator who gains immense popularity at home by annexing neighbouring territories on the grounds that they speak the same language as his people, and doing so at a time when our forces have been hugely diminished. Those forces must not suffer the fate of the British Expeditionary Force in 1939-40.

We are at a crisis of security, and I endorse all noble Lords who have said that we have to turn our attention to our defences and to our organisation. The only way to protect the peace of our people is to make it clear to aggressors that we have not only the means but the will to inflict such punishment on those who threaten us that they will not be prepared to take us on. That involves convincing them that we are not only able and willing to use these resources, but ready to. I cannot see NATO, at the moment, scrambling to the rapid defence of western Europe as it now stands. I sound a threatening note.

May I turn briefly to other matters that have arisen? We need forces to defend our society to enable us to conduct our role, contributing to the development of an equitable and stable world community, and within it an equitable, stable, fair and sound British population. What have we done for that so far? One thing that was very undersung in the general election—if indeed it was mentioned at all—was the extraordinary work that has been going on in the last few years through the Troubled Families programme. It started with six government departments making available £448 million. We are talking joined-up government here, also involving all 152 upper-tier local authorities in England. Key workers from those departments were allocated one to one to the whole-family care of people who were struggling. More than 105,000 families’ lives have been turned around, enabling people to get jobs, contribute to the community, come out of prison and live civilised lives in communities that they were disrupting. That programme has now been extended by £200 million in the first year of a five-year programme to reach up to 400,000 other families. This is having a real effect on cities and on the lives of citizens in this country, and I do hope the Government stick to that and carry on with it more aggressively.

There is also the realisation, which some of us have been preaching for decades, that it is much better to intercept children before they become criminals, rather than to try and fail them afterwards. At the moment, we have a high crime rate. We catch a percentage of the people who commit crime. A percentage of those go to court. A percentage of those—the numbers are getting smaller and smaller—have their cases heard and brought to a conclusion. Of those, a percentage are convicted, of which a percentage are put into programmes for rehabilitation, a very small percentage of which are actually turned around into decent citizens. How much better to spend a fraction of that money on early intervention—and by “early” I mean very early. I was impressed to see that the Early Intervention Foundation runs a troubled families programme parallel to the one I have just described, which goes into families when the children are born. Its work has been shown by academic research to reduce criminality and increase productivity and the contribution made to society.

We have been asked to stick to 10 minutes. I may be becoming incoherent, but I am also becoming enthusiastic and I would like to go on. “Go for it”, I say to my noble friends on the Front Bench. “Get to our young people and see that they turn into decent citizens, not refugees from the police”.

EU and Russia (EUC Report)

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I must begin by congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, on what I can only describe as an impeccable maiden speech. I hope to hear him very often in future. I also thank my noble friend Lord Tugendhat and his team for an outstanding report from which I have learnt a very great deal—and I have learnt a great deal more from the debate that has followed.

I have one regret about it, and it comes pretty early. In paragraph 5 we read:

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the cornerstone of defence for its EU Members, is outside the scope of this report”.

I understand the reasons for that, and it would have been an unmanageable task to have written that into this report, particularly in the time available, and I dare say that it would have been pretty difficult to assimilate, but it has to be said that in Putin’s mind NATO stands as a very important shadow behind everything that is going on in Europe.

This brings me on to sadly familiar ground. I speak really out of a sense of duty because I realise that although here they are more numerous, in the country as a whole the proportion of people who have lived through history since before the Second World War is small. I was fortunate enough to have a highly intelligent historian as my father and guide who had fought through the First World War, and I have read a bit of history myself, and I find what I am hearing and seeing now extraordinarily, sickeningly similar to what happened when I was a child under tuition.

I was born in 1930, and at that time, a nation that felt itself to have been humiliated by recent history threw up a dictator who achieved astronomic popularity by playing on that card and annexing neighbouring territory on the grounds of ethnic appropriateness. He did so with the freedom afforded by neighbouring states being ridiculously underequipped to resist him. The fate of the gallant, brave but tiny British Expeditionary Force underlines what I am saying. What have we now? We have a great European country that considers itself to have been recently humiliated by history, led and dominated by a tyrant who has no respect whatever for human rights—which is another echo—and who is annexing neighbouring countries on the grounds of ethnic similarity. We also have a British Government, as we had in 1937 to 1939, who seek to restrain the policies of that dictator, backed by wholly insufficient military force to give credibility to any threat that might be made.

Clausewitz said, if I remember correctly, that war was diplomacy carried on by other means. If I say that, I suppose people will begin to dismiss what I have to say, thinking that old men who recount the past are trapped in the definitions of the past. However, the Putin era has redefined not diplomacy but war, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Howell. The equivalent English word is “masquerade”. The word I want is “maskirovka”—my noble friend nods—which is very different until it shades into warfare. The definition is important because NATO, in Article 5—hence my regret that it could not be in this report—has a very clear definition of the infringement of the rights of a country, which is based entirely on the old-fashioned concept of tanks rumbling across the frontier. However, in Ukraine we have what has been—and, I do not doubt, will continue to be—the infiltration of personnel and light equipment across the border. Therefore I see a repetition and I just pray that it does not go the full course, as it did in 1939.

How long does it take to prepare and to be sufficiently credible in one’s armaments? Noble Lords will recall that the turning point in the downward spiral of our fortunes in the 1939 to 1945 conflict was the building of the Supermarine Spitfire. The Air Ministry gave the contract to develop the prototype on 3 January 1935, and 14 months later, on 5 March, the first flight of the prototype took place. The Air Ministry ordered the first 310 Mk1 aeroplanes on 3 June 1936, and 23 months later the first production Spitfire flew for the first time. It was not until August 1939 that No. 19 Squadron became the first to receive the Spitfire in bulk. Much less glamorous, in the background, and differently constructed, the Hurricane was statistically far more important in the Battle of Britain. The Spitfire was built of stressed skin, which was the up-to-date method; the Hurricane was built of steel tubing with fabric over it, with a Merlin engine inside, and had four machine-guns.

Despite that time lag, of 1935 to 1939, we are still wondering whether we should stick to 2%. We have to, and there may be costs to that which are not very acceptable. But I, for one, do not want my children to have their children in the middle of another world war. It has to be fought if we are to protect all the values of our society, and world health.

If the right reverend Prelate, who has gone back to his flock, were here, he would perhaps be muttering, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, and saying that we should be beating our swords into ploughshares. But it is beating your swords into ploughshares that precipitates war if the other chap has not done it as well. When the Americans say, “You are not strong enough—you can only be a small unit within our army”, that says to the Russians, “Come on, have a try”. We have to be strong and make the sacrifices necessary to do that now. They will be hugely greater if we do not.

Russia: Arms

Lord Elton Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

Each country must have the right to determine its own future, and Ukraine has indicated that it would like a closer relationship, certainly with the EU. Membership of NATO is not on the cards at the moment as regards Ukraine. However, ultimately, this is a matter which the Ukrainian people have to decide through their legitimately elected Government.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

Does the Minister agree with the proposition that the aim of every Government should be to maintain the defence or military capability of this country at the level at which it is least likely to be called upon, and that to reduce it beyond a certain level invites others to make it necessary to use that capability?

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point. He will probably be aware that NATO has set a target for its members to retain defence spending at 2%. I am pleased to say that the United Kingdom has met that target, and has done so since the day it was met. We will meet it this year and will meet it again next year. Let us also not forget that the UK has the biggest defence budget in the EU and the second largest in NATO.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, I am a refugee in the sense that this is the only night on which I can be present for the start and finish of the debate. I apologise for the fact that my three very short subjects are not on what might be considered the notional Order Paper for tonight.

I congratulate both the noble Lord, Lord Bamford, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on their contributions. I was particularly heartened by the right reverend Prelate’s plug for the north-east as the sole region in profit on its overseas account, and regarding the charming nature of almost all the population. Coming from the south-east I am not familiar with the latter condition. In fact, I decided some time ago that I wanted to address the extraordinary change that has come over the nature of British society during my lifetime. I could go into lengthy detail, but it is worth condensing it by saying that one’s default expectation of anybody who one was dealing with was that they would be honest, spoke the truth, kept the law, kept their word, honoured their cheques if they were the sort of people who had cheque-books, be faithful to their spouses and, of course, would know the difference between right and wrong and would stand on the side of right. That is what one expected and anything else was a disappointment, and quite a severe one on some occasions.

An illustration of the extent of the change is simply the length of the traffic jam going to primary schools in the mornings—parents cannot risk their children going to school on their own. In my youth children of six were expected to be able to walk four miles to school and four miles back every day unaccompanied, and people did not worry. They played in the street and people did not worry. They played in the fields and people did not worry. In many rural communities the way in which you told your neighbours what was going on at home was that you locked the front door to show that you were away and left the back door unlocked to show that they were welcome to come in, even so.

Life has changed and one has to ask why. The reasons are many and complex; they are economic, political, and so on. However, right at the basis is the difference that in my youth and until my middle age—decreasingly towards my middle age—the lifeblood of this country flowed through its churches, chapels, cathedrals, synagogues and meeting houses. People could not escape the repetition and emphasis of the moral truths which sustain the civilised society we wish to sustain—a safe, stable and mutually respecting society.

If noble Lords doubt my emphasis on the extent of the influences of the religious establishment at an appropriate point in our history, I should say that I remember clearly Sunday 26 May 1940, when we went to the big church near to where we lived in Old Headington in what is now north Oxford. We went 20 minutes early but could not get in without a struggle—many people could not get in at all—because King George VI had issued a call to the nation the previous week to pray for our troops surrounded at Dunkirk. I will not go into the history of the miracle that followed, but the nation went to pray—and the nation knew its morals because the nation went to church.

It is not the business of Government to fill churches but it is their business to ensure that there is some connection between the morality of the individual and the ethics of society. Indeed it is their business to see that individuals have a morality. I want to put an idea into the heads of the Ministers in the Department for Education that perhaps the time has come to reinstate religious studies in schools up to the sixth form and to give it the same status as the STEM subjects now have. If you make a subject an examination subject there is a great enthusiasm to study it and you do not damage your educational career by doing so. On the other hand, if it is not of that status and does not carry examination weight—it is not examinable in some schools—you lose customers. And it should then be connected to the teaching of civics so that people can see a connection between the morality which gives the reason for ethics, and the ethics which give stability to society. That is all I wish to say about that.

I chimed a little with the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy—with whom I also communicate via Hansard—when she spoke about the necessity for a fair society. I am an unashamed Tory. There must be inequality—you cannot have competition without inequality—but you also need fairness, and it worries me that there is no apparent restraint on the increasing vertiginous gap between the richest and the poorest in this country. My tiny suggestion is that we need more effective charitable giving in this country. At present we use gift aid, but that only provides motivation for the charities to ask donors to subscribe to the gift aid scheme. We want to motivate people who are not yet donors to become donors. This means that they want to get some benefit from it too. If what I am about to suggest was carried out 100% it would probably cripple that part of the Treasury that depends on income tax but, done proportionately, if mega-rich people were given a fractional percentage reduction in the income they do not give away, they would have a large incentive to give a proportion away. If you want to find a way of moderating it—we were talking about the connection of the churches, ethics and society—there is a good biblical example of 10% being a suitable amount to encourage people to give away. Anything more, of course, would be welcome.

On the Queen’s Speech, I find it extraordinary that we, in seeking to strike a figure on the world stage and influence policy despite our reduced military strength, stand as the founders of the greatest commonwealth ever seen. Our population is 64 million and the Commonwealth population is 2.2 thousand million. It embraces almost every ethnic group and just about every religion in the world and spreads around the globe. It was our invention and we are part of it. Ministers write speeches declaring the situation in this country and how we are going to deal with it. They prepare it for delivery in this House, with the other House present below the Bar, by the head of that great institution—who has been for decades the head of it—with not one word mentioned of what it is achieving, what it has achieved, what it could achieve, or how we are to exploit it or improve it. It does not mention the fact that CHOGM commissioned and received a report on the restriction of sexual violence in conflict, which is one of the flagship policies the Foreign Office is promoting. I find that extraordinary.

I hope that the Minister, through his colleague, will let us know the importance that the Government—and other Governments have not done any better—this country and all parties give to this great organisation, which could give us so much influence and support around the world. What do they really think of it and how often has it figured in the Queen’s Speech in the past 10 years?