UN Peacebuilding Fund: Financial Support
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(5Â years, 3Â months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, on my noble friend’s second question, we are seeking to do that at the earliest opportunity, but I can reassure her that the equalities assessment across all areas was very much part of our thinking and our decision-making, including across bilateral country spend. We are working on the annual report and looking to produce it—it will be later this year. When I have a specific date, I will of course inform my noble friend.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]
My Lords, is the Minister aware that when António Guterres became Secretary-General of the UN—I am delighted that the Minister will be seeing him tomorrow—among his top priorities were conflict prevention and peacebuilding? Our Government supported those priorities, including with resources. Does the Minister recognise that the cuts he referred to today are, in fact, us letting down the United Nations? I suggest that is hardly an auspicious way of recognising the 80th anniversary of that first Atlantic charter, which laid the foundation stone for the establishment of the UN.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
The noble Lord will know that I respect his deep insights into the workings of the UN. However, as I indicated, my experience, through my direct dealings, is that, while these are challenging circumstances, the United Nations recognises the circumstances we are working in and, equally, the importance of the United Kingdom’s continued support of the multilateral system, through the UN.
Genocide: Bringing Perpetrators to Justice
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(5Â years, 4Â months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]
My Lords, I personally went through two traumatising experiences of genocide in the 1990s when I was Britain’s representative on the UN Security Council: Rwanda in 1994 and Srebrenica in 1995. That is why I strongly support and welcome my noble friend Lord Alton’s debate today. If proof was needed that the lack of any enforcement provisions in the 1948 convention against genocide left a wide-open door to that most reprehensible of crimes, that was it.
Since then, attempts have been made to remedy that lacuna, with the establishment of regional courts and then the International Criminal Court, and with the endorsement by the 2005 UN summit of the emerging norm of the responsibility to protect. But, as the evidence before us of genocide committed against Iraq’s Yazidis and Myanmar’s Rohingya, and of the threats to the Uighurs of Xinjiang and the Tigrayans of Ethiopia, demonstrates, these attempts have fallen short of what is needed. So, what should be done to bring perpetrators of genocide to justice and thus strengthen the deterrent effect which the 1948 convention was intended to have?
Here are four suggestions. First, the UK, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, should press for the council to extend the jurisdiction of the ICC to cover countries which have not signed up to the Rome statute, but in whose territory genocide may have been committed. That route was used successfully in the cases of crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region and in Libya; it should now be used in the cases of Iraq’s Yazidis and Burma’s Rohingyas. Secondly, the UK should also maintain its support for the French initiative to get the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to agree not to use the veto when the risk or actuality of genocide was involved. Thirdly, our Houses of Parliament should prepare the ground to make use of the opening in the Trade Act to consider allegations of genocide by any proposed trade partner. Fourthly, we should tighten up our own immigration and residence legislation and its enforcement so that never again, as was shamefully the case with some of those accused of genocide in Rwanda, could perpetrators find impunity in the UK.
I hope that the Minister can say at the end of this debate whether the four points I have identified—others have mentioned most of them too—are part of the Government’s agenda.
Israel and Gaza
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(5Â years, 4Â months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, we must engage directly with all initiatives which seek to bring peace to the region. This conflict has gone on for far too long. We know what the ultimate goal should be and should ensure we exercise all opportunities in achievement of that goal. We have taken immediate steps, as I have already indicated. On the issue of extremism and radicalisation, I agree with the noble Baroness; we have to ensure that the whole ideological base and the hijacking of the agenda by extremist and terrorist organisations are put to rest. The best way to do that is to bring together voices that want to see progress on this most important issue.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]
My Lords, perhaps I could press the Minister a little further on some of his earlier answers. Could he say whether, in the meetings of the Security Council between 16 and 19 May, our representative gave full support to the call by the UN Secretary-General for an early ceasefire? If the answer if not unambiguously “yes”, why not? Does he not agree that, as I think he has said, we have now seen beyond demonstrable doubt that the policy of neglecting the Palestine-Israel negotiations over recent years is neither producing security for Israel nor generating well-being for the Palestinians?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, on the second question the noble Lord raised, I think I have made the position clear. In reply to his first point, both at the Security Council and in the Statement yesterday we called for an immediate ceasefire.
Integrated Review: Development Aid
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(5Â years, 5Â months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]
My Lords, we owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for providing the occasion for this overdue and necessary debate about the swingeing cuts Britain is making to its aid budget. It is shameful that we are not holding this debate in government time and on the Floor of the House, although I understand why the Government are in no hurry to defend the indefensible. If these cuts are defensible, is it not a trifle odd that we have now heard from 20 speakers and only one has attempted to defend the Government’s decision?
I will make one critical point to be clear at the outset. What is at issue is not whether to cut Britain’s aid budget at all during the economic contraction caused by the pandemic. The 0.7% commitment, which is in our domestic law, contains a self-correcting mechanism. If our economy shrinks, as it did last year, our 0.7% commitment does too, since it is linked to our GNI. Last year, that automatically cut our aid budget by £2.9 billion or thereabouts. It is the second massive, additional cut, made by switching from 0.7% to 0.5%, that is at issue.
It is too easy to think of these figures as abstract. They are not. These are cuts in food for starving people, cuts in girls’ education, cuts in support for primary healthcare provision and cuts in scientific research programmes, which also bring benefit to our own universities. When will the Government come clean about the detail of the consequences and try to defend them?
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, posed the question of whether the cuts will damage our worldwide influence—that is, our soft power. Frankly, anyone who denies that effect is inviting ridicule. Of course they will. We will lose bilateral influence around the world. It will also show up in loss of support as we compete for multilateral influence in the great aid-giving agencies and in elections at the UN.
I note in their integrated review the Government’s
“commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development when the fiscal situation allows.”
However, that formula is pretty meaningless. Could not the Minister mark this debate by giving one simple undertaking: that Britain will return to full 0.7% compliance in the year following our economy’s return to growth?
Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(5Â years, 5Â months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]
My Lords, the review we are debating today is an impressive and perceptive analysis of the threats, challenges and opportunities that this country faces as it charts its way in a new chapter of its history, following our departure from the European Union, so it should be welcomed. There are some blemishes, of course, including the silliness of the reluctance to mention the European Union except in passing. Less estimable, I suggest, is the fact that the cart of key security decisions—the merger of the FCO and DfID, the savage cuts in the overseas aid budget and the detail of defence spending over the next few years—has preceded the horse of the review. Those decisions should surely have been shaped by the review, not have pre-empted it.
One overall impression stands out: Britain can no longer hope to overcome these threats and challenges acting alone. We need allies and partners if we are to prevail. In the period following Brexit and four years of alliance disruption and disregard from President Trump’s White House, that is no small order. That challenge is underlined by last week’s decision by the US to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by September, best characterised tersely by our own Chief of the Defence Staff as
“not a decision we hoped for”.
What should we think about the much-trumpeted tilt towards the Indo-Pacific? Leave aside the fact that the review does not even give geographical definition to that region. Does it begin in east Africa and extend to the western coast of Latin America? Does it include Pakistan, for example? Is it welcome to our closest ally, the US, or would it have preferred us to put more effort into Euro-Atlantic security and into Africa, where it has never been deeply engaged?
It is a pity more was not said about multilateral peacekeeping by the UN and by regional organisations such as the African Union. With the retreat from coalitions of the willing expeditions, such as those to Iraq and Afghanistan, there will inevitably be more demand for peacekeeping if some parts of the world are not to fall into chaos and insecurity. But that sort of peacekeeping needs to be made more effective and, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, we have a responsibility to provide training, mentoring, specialised services, and equipment.
The sections of the review on nuclear weapons policy have been criticised by many others. I suggest that they lack any developed rationale, let alone any justification. Just when the two largest possessors of these weapons have frozen their strategic missile arsenals for another five years, we are going to head off in the opposite direction, thus undermining our capacity to pursue the objective of strategic stability at this year’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. The doctrine of “deliberate ambiguity” as to the numbers of our warheads and the purposes for which they might be used, which has been proudly proclaimed by the Government as a new kind of doctrine, does not strengthen our security at all. If all nuclear weapon possessor states practised that doctrine, would we be less at risk from nuclear war? I rather doubt that.
In conclusion, the review, if not some of its policy prescriptions, is welcome but we will soon see whether there is a gap between rhetoric and reality as it is put into practice. I fear there will be.
The UK’s Relationship with the Pacific Alliance (International Relations Committee Report)
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(5Â years, 8Â months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]
My Lords, I welcome this debate. I regret having to begin my contribution to it with a procedural issue, which is the lengthening gap between the publication of Select Committee reports and the holding of debates on them. In the case of this report, it is well over a year. I do so free of any accusation of self-serving, because I am no longer on the committee, as I was when the noble Lord, Lord Howell, so brilliantly chaired our committee and produced this report.
I challenge anyone who is aware of the speed with which international affairs develop to defend gaps of this sort between publication and debate, or indeed the failure so far to schedule a debate on the committee’s report on sub-Saharan Africa, which was published more than seven months ago. I really plead with the Minister, when he comes to reply to the debate, not to take cover behind talking about this committee or that group being responsible for such delays, and rather to agree to go and consider with his colleagues how we could do better. If we can set a two-month limit for the Government to respond to the conclusions and recommendations of these reports, as we do, why on earth can the House not set itself a time limit of, let us say, four or five months after publication to have a debate?
This debate is a timely reminder of just how thin our relationships are with the countries of Latin America and their regional and subregional organisations, such as the Pacific Alliance. Months, if not years, go by when neither the Government nor Parliament pay much attention to those countries, yet they comprise a substantial portion of the world’s population and economy. In the 19th century we played an important and often beneficial role in their development, and I am not referring just to football. Since then, our role has dwindled through neglect, yet these countries are natural partners and allies in trade, in promoting human rights, in protecting democratic institutions and in dealing with climate change. This makes all the more lamentable the Government’s decision to renege on our commitment to the UN target of giving 0.7% of our gross national income to aid. Can the Minister say what effect that decision is likely to have in the next financial year on our aid to Latin America in general and to the countries of the Pacific Alliance and their programmes in particular?
One key area in which we could strengthen our links with Latin America is that of trade policy. It has been stated time and again by the Government that leaving the EU would enable us to negotiate free trade agreements worldwide, but what sign is there of that in Latin America? So far, there is nothing more than rolling over agreements which simply replicate what already existed when we were an EU member state. That is just running to stand still, however much hyperbole the Secretary of State for International Trade may lavish on their signature. One might ask, quite literally: where is the beef? Are we, for example, going to move ahead with Mercosur while its agreement with the EU is not yet ratified, and can we improve on it? What work has the DIT done to identify products—ethanol, for example—from the countries of Latin America on which we could offer better access than the EU? I hope the answers to these last questions will be given by the Minister and will not be similar to that given in the context of our report on sub-Saharan Africa, which was, “We have done absolutely nothing to identify improved access.”
The Government speak often about the objective of pursuing a “global Britain” foreign policy. So far, that remains a slogan without much content—more a branding exercise than a policy. But if it is to become more than that in reality, it will need to have a Latin American dimension and to encompass the countries of the Pacific Alliance. I hope the Minister will be able to say something about that when he replies to the debate.
Official Development Assistance
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(5Â years, 10Â months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, on the proposals on tax, I am sure that the Chancellor will listen very carefully to the noble Lord. On the issue of the manifesto pledge, I have already answered that question.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick [CB] (V)
My Lords, will the Minister be so kind as to respond to the very forceful letter that was sent to the Foreign Secretary by your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee last Wednesday, arguing that the decision taken was wrong economically and wrong politically? Does he not think that it is shameful that in none of the statements made by the Government, including his own answers to questions, has it been admitted that we have already cut £2.9 billion from our aid by applying the 0.7% calculator, and that all that is proposed now comes on top of, and in addition to, that?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord on his final point. The reduction in GNI has meant a circa ÂŁ2.9 billion reduction in the current aid spend, but we will fulfil our commitment to the GNI for this year. I also accept the principle that the proposal of 0.7% going down to 0.5% for 2021 presents an additional reduction. I know that the letter from my noble friend Lady Anelay to the Foreign Secretary is in the course of being responded to.
Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(6Â years, 2Â months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I have spoken to my noble friend specifically on the scheme. We have received her letter of 2 July and I know that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary will respond to her. However, I take note of this, since I subscribe strongly to the scrutiny function of the House of Lords. I will certainly feed that into discussions and the response.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]
My Lords, while I welcome the action the Government have taken on this matter, can I press the Minister a little further on his reply to the noble Baroness who chairs our Select Committee, on which I also sit? Would he be able to come and talk to members of that committee about how best they can assist the House in scrutinising these important decisions, many of which will no doubt come forward, and play a useful role in that way?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I am always very pleased to speak to Members of your Lordships’ House. We will seek a time when I might come and brief the committee and engage some of its thinking.
Hong Kong: Human Rights
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(6Â years, 4Â months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the course of action on which the Chinese Government have embarked, imposing unilaterally on Hong Kong a wide-ranging security law, risks damaging grievously all concerned, including China itself. I endorse the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, in introducing the debate, and endorse too the wise advice of the seven former Foreign Secretaries that we should work with the widest possible group of like-minded countries to forestall the damage. Certainly, a wider group is needed than that so far mustered, welcome though it was.
I applaud too the Government’s willingness to ease the terms of visas for those holding British national overseas passports. That is the right and honourable course.
Can the Minister say what the Government’s view is of the US Administration’s intention to withdraw the special trade status and treatment they give Hong Kong? Were we consulted before that move was made? Is it not likely that that will only make a bad situation worse, damaging mainly the people of Hong Kong, whose welfare we should be seeking to protect? If that is our view, are we conveying it in Washington, to the Administration and on the hill?
Refugee Crisis: Greece and Turkey
Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts(6Â years, 6Â months ago)
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Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the Minister said that the Government are giving additional funds to Turkey to support the enormous burden it has been bearing. Will British support for that effort by Turkey continue beyond the end of this year, when we are no longer bound, as we are currently, by obligations under European law?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Having assumed wider responsibilities in DfID, I know that in 2019-20 we allocated ÂŁ118 million for the crisis in the north-west of Syria. We continue to support that. The noble Lord rightly asked about the continuation of funding. As I said in response to a previous question, the additional ÂŁ89 million we have announced reflects the changing needs on the ground. We will continue to review the situation and keep in mind whatever support we can extend, be it medical, shelter or support for vulnerable girls and women. That will continue to be a priority for this Government.