Venezuela

Lord Hacking Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I know what the noble Lord is getting at. As far as parallels go, the UK is judged on the UK’s actions, and I do not think that this makes any difference at all to our ability to make the case for international law to partners—he mentioned Africa—and certainly it would not make our ability to make those cases any different.

I have heard people trying to draw some sort of parallel with events in 2003 in Iraq. Clearly, no two situations are precisely the same, but the situation as it exists today in Venezuela is very different to what happened after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the entire infrastructure in Baghdad. I do not know whether lessons have been learned, and hence the change of approach that we are seeing, but it is well understood that, with the Government in Venezuela, the elite that remains and the way that that Government are still being led today, there is such a different situation. There needs to be a transition; we cannot just leave things as they are, but there is the capability, and the stability is sufficient to allow for that transition. That is the hope, and that is what we need to see.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, as my noble friend will be aware, this is not the first occasion when the United States has invaded another country and taken the leader for trial in the United States of America. Manuel Noriega was a military dictator in Panama in the 1980s and, in 1990, following the United States invasion of Panama, he was arrested and brought to the USA for trial for racketeering, drug smuggling and money laundering. He was convicted before a US federal court and sentenced to 40 years imprisonment, of which he served 17 years.

I have been a lawyer for a long time and, like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, one of my areas of practice was international law. But unlike, as I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I have always had doubt about the veracity of international law on the sovereignty of states. When one country, particularly a neighbouring country—

[Noble Lords]

Question.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

I am putting it in the form of a question. When one country, particularly a neighbouring country, perpetrates gross human rights errors on its people—for example, as Idi Amin did in Uganda— I put to the Minister: do we not have a duty to interfere? Are we not one human race? This Government are entirely right not to be preaching issues of international law but leaving the United States of America to explain or justify its own conduct.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The noble Lord started with Panama. I am not really sure what to say to him. I take his point to be in support of the Government’s pragmatic position and thank him for that.