Human Rights: Burma

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, noble Lords will have seen the Written Statement issued yesterday on the visit. It does not specifically mention the issue of child soldiers, but it touches on a very large number of human rights issues. I will check and get back to the noble Baroness on the specific issue of child soldiers. We are monitoring the situation; we recognise, for example, that the Kachin ceasefire has been agreed but not yet fully implemented. The President promised, when he was here, that all remaining political prisoners will be released by the end of this year, and we will of course be watching to make sure that that promise is carried out.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

There is a sort of race here. The Chinese are pouring in vast sums of money and investment into Burma, which is potentially a very rich country indeed. While we must obviously maximise our pressure, counselling and support for overcoming human rights abuses, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has specified, the right approach must be to embrace as fully as we can that country in its efforts to modernise and move away from military rule, and we should consider supporting it and working with it, perhaps in the context of a future membership of the Commonwealth.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on managing to get the Commonwealth into this discussion. Burma is currently the poorest country in south-east Asia. If it is to pass through this transition successfully, it also needs economic assistance. My noble friend Lord Green has also been in Burma. We are engaged in the question of how far British companies, as well as British technical advice, can assist in the transformation of the Burmese economy.

G8 Summit

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, we should all be grateful to my noble friend Lord Trimble for initiating this debate and for his excellent opening speech. I also welcome siting this G8 conference in Fermanagh, which is one of the most beautiful areas of our United Kingdom. I got to know it well during my privileged time as a Minister in Northern Ireland for two and a half years. As my noble friend Lady Falkner has reminded us, the Prime Minister’s priorities for this G8 are the three Ts—trade, tax compliance and transparency. All are excellent issues which we should pursue with vigour.

I shall concentrate mainly on trade, although on the tax compliance issue I merely observe that obviously the efforts are completely commendable. However, in dealing with the hyper-connected world of unbelievable complexity in which we now live, it is difficult to see how Governments will ever catch up completely on a multinational scale with all the devices for avoiding and minimising tax liabilities. I leave your Lordships with this thought: we should be a little uneasy about the idea that the answer is more and more power to the tax-gathering authorities, on almost Bourbon levels. It will not solve the problems, which are undoubtedly there. The complexity is very great.

This leads to my main point which I want to share with your Lordships. In this transformed world, the character of trade has changed almost beyond recognition. Modern trade now follows a totally different path from anything that the world has ever seen. In today’s heavily interconnected world, it is no longer a question of products manufactured in one country being sold to another. The advent of the modern supply chain means that most manufacturers use components from a variety of different parts of the network and from different countries.

In these novel conditions, markets are simply no longer definable in terms of tariffs, quotas and other protections. On Europe, for instance, we hear the current mantra that the single market must be preserved, but the nature and meaning of the phrase “single market” has been completely transformed. The common trading platform of the world wide web is building up a new kind of supranational single market which is highly competitive and very transparent; it is criss-crossed by intricate supply chains and knows no regional boundaries whatever. The often asserted “fact” that the European Union is the world’s largest single market is in fact no longer correct. Cybermarkets on the world wide web are much larger. Pacific rim markets, including the vast market of China’s new middle class, are just as large, with the growing consumer markets of India, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Thailand, Vietnam, east and west Africa and a score of other places all coming on extremely fast behind.

Not only have old classifications such as “manufactured goods” ceased to have any statistical meaning but the trade in services—which 30 years ago was hardly worth mentioning—has taken centre stage with its knowledge-intensive products. The driving forces of international business have shifted into a world which is only dimly understood even now. It certainly was not at all understood all those years ago. In particular, the old idea that the path to free trade lay through negotiating down various tariffs and quotas has lost much of its meaning. It is the non-tariff barriers which are woven into countless procedures, customs and attitudes that now stand in the way. Their existence and persistence depends not on tariffs but on deep cultural factors and processes. The assault on them has to begin not with numbers or even with detailed negotiating facts but with the deployment of soft power in all possible forms.

That all, in turn, depends on the power to communicate and persuade and to open up our economies—for which, incidentally, the modern Commonwealth network, with its common working language, its vast and intimate professional links and its dazzling cross-cultural cross-pollination, is of course ideal. When listening to the Canadian Prime Minister just a short while ago I was a little sorry that, in an otherwise splendid speech, he did not mention that aspect. However, I agree totally with my noble friend Lady Falkner in her remarks that the Commonwealth, as a network, ought to be an ideal vehicle for the kind of proposals that she put forward on improving transparency and tax compliance.

We have to recognise, in the background to all the changes I am describing, that we are dealing with a world which is totally transformed, with 2.5 billion people on the internet at all times. Mr Eric Schmidt of Google estimates that there are now more mobile telephone subscribers on this planet than there are human beings. Every morning, 300 million Chinese go shopping online. We are doubling the data we draw out of the system for trade and other activities every nine months. I will share one further blinding statistic with your Lordships. Under the present system we generate in two days more data than were generated between the dawn of civilisation and 2003. We are, in short, in a completely transformed atmosphere in which trade is operating in totally different ways. That is one point that I hope will be understood by the G8 dignitaries when they gather at Enniskillen and in Fermanagh.

My second point is that there has been a lot of talk about the G8 being the top table, but it is not. There are many top tables today. The rioters last Sunday in the City of London were completely deluded when they talked about this being the power centre—the centre of wealth and riches and so on. Not even the G20 is the top table today. There is a new alphabet soup of organisations, alliances and networks springing up all over the planet, and they are beginning to exert as much power and influence as the old G8 and the other institutions of the 20th century, such as NATO, the UN, the IMF and the European Union, all of which are struggling to adjust. New sets of initials are swirling round in this alphabet soup which we have to adjust to: OIC, SCO, AU, GCC, AL, UNASUR, SAARC, ANMC, PIF and Caricom. I will not take time to spell out what all those stand for. I can see the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, shaking his head. Those are just a few. At the end of the list I put the largest and densest network of all, the Commonwealth network, which unites 2.25 billion people in a common system, as I have already described.

Procedures, attitudes, organisations and institutions have only dimly begun to reflect what is happening, and most of the media, with some brilliant and insightful exceptions, have hardly done so at all. A network world—for that is what it has really become—operates quite differently from one of hierarchies and blocs. Relationships emerge of a quite different quality; priorities are reshuffled; new elements, previously ignored, come to signify. Suddenly, in a digitalised network system, everyone has to be kept in the loop, small nations and large. More than that, the networks become part of the legitimising process. Agreement for international action at the United Nations has to be supported by agreement across the networks. All have to be consulted, won over and brought along, because all are now instantly, and in most cases continuously, connected.

I will end by saying that I hope that at Fermanagh our colleagues and leaders engage with these new issues, because they are entirely new, and do so with a suitable degree of humility, fully realising that in today’s world they are not the top table; they are only players in a far larger and newer scheme of things. They are not the bosses; they are the partners. They have to grasp the opportunity to understand that status, otherwise they could well find that they are not players at all but merely spectators.

Retail Prices Index

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, one of the best things done in this area by the previous Government was to establish the UK Statistics Authority as an independent body. The decision was criticised on all sides. Some noble Lords will remember the article in the Financial Times by Chris Giles which said that it was appalling not to have abolished the RPI and move all the way towards the CPI.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Did the Minister notice the other day that Sir Mervyn King, the outgoing Governor of the Bank of England, said that one of the main contributors to rising RPI and therefore rising inflation was higher energy taxes? Every time the RPI goes up, it generates a gigantic increase in public expenditure through indexed provisions in the public sector. Could he possibly advise his friends to think again about some of the higher taxes that are being piled onto our energy costs in industry and in the home?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right to say that the extent to which tax increases are factored into the calculation of inflation is one of the problems. If you are not careful, when inflation is rising, you get into a positive feedback as mortgage interest rates rise, and that increases the measurement of inflation.

Commonwealth and Commonwealth Charter

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his kind reference. I am looking forward to hearing the words of the right reverend and noble Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth. I gather it is not strictly speaking a maiden speech, but I look forward to it with great anticipation. The noble and right reverend Lord is joining us on what Her Majesty has called the platform of the future, and his voice will be eagerly listened to on these affairs.

I shall start my brief intervention by quoting from an article in the Daily Telegraph earlier this week which said about Britain that,

“the best vision of what its 21st century economy could become”,

is,

“a Britain which rediscovers the Asian and wider global links that propelled the country’s economic growth in the 19th century and could do so again”.

That is entirely right. It is not a dream but a practical vision. Here, in what we now call the emerging economies and powers, is where our future prosperity and destiny clearly lie. That is something that I—not only me, of course —have been saying for 20 years.

The Commonwealth network is a vital and central part of this totally new landscape and this new scene. I once described the Commonwealth as the “necessary network”, in the sense that if it did not exist we would certainly have to invent something very like it. My right honourable friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary was showing commendable prescience when a year or so ago he described the Commonwealth as,

“a cornerstone of our foreign policy”.

The peoples of the Commonwealth are family, not foreigners. Commonwealth Governments may be unfriendly at times, awkward, difficult or, frankly, even hostile, but these are family matters, not foreign policy matters. Today’s Commonwealth is an all-powerful network concept. The Governments and policy-making establishments in a number of countries may not have fully understood this but, outside Government, the peoples, businesses and civil societies of the Commonwealth nations certainly have. It is both people-driven and driven by the magnetism of shared values, language and culture, a network of peoples and societies as much as of Governments and states—possibly even more so.

The Commonwealth is of course a generator of soft-power linkages and contacts on an unparalleled scale. That is crucial to our national interests here. It used to be said that trade follows the flag. Today, the situation is that trade, capital flows and investment, inward and outward, follow the softening-up of markets through the intertwining of cultures, languages, social contacts, professions and common interests, all nowadays instantly and continuously communicated. This can be even more important than winning orders through one-off trade missions.

The Commonwealth family has evolved as a design of great intricacy, subtlety and complexity, and is a true reflection of a very complex world. That has not been so for 20 years past. So completely were Commonwealth markets washed out of British concerns in the previous century that, even today, it is frankly very hard to come by any statistics of what is now happening with incredible speed across the global trade and investment pattern. Most figures are gloriously out of date. However, we know that exports to Commonwealth countries have jumped by 120% in the past decade, and much more if one just looks at services. We know that a fast-growing Commonwealth GDP is poised to overtake the GDP of the entire European Union, and that intra-Commonwealth trade has been rising fast. We know that vast new consumer markets are opening up in India, south Asia, parts of Africa and Latin America. We know that thanks in part to the new shale oil and gas revolution, which is totally transforming the world’s energy balance, many African countries now face a far brighter future. We know that countries such as Australia and Canada, with which we now co-locate embassies—which is excellent news—and Malaysia are turning out to be both our best allies and powerful sources of finance for our investment needs.

It should be no surprise that other countries want to join what is clearly seen as one of the world’s best clubs, with clear advantages for its members. Of course they want to join. Anyone can see that the Commonwealth badge of trust and commitment to the rule of law, once earned, are good for business, and I hope that the new Commonwealth charter will make it very much more so. As the noble Lord rightly said, a string of countries have expressed interest in being associated with the Commonwealth. Could the Republic of Ireland even be among them? I have had clear signs of interest from Dublin that suggest that it could.

Most important of all are the links of learning and education at all levels, and the personal contact and friendship that these bring to every corner of the Commonwealth system. We know that this is where the real spread of sympathies, values and good business and trade begins. It is a similar story in area after area: legal and judicial systems, administration, medicine, accountancy, the creative arts and science. The Commonwealth may no longer be Anglocentric, but this is where our interests and influence radiate out and where our readymade UK opportunities truly lie.

This is really our Great British repositioning. This must be our strategy and our narrative. Not everyone yet sees or grasps what has happened, or how a transformed Commonwealth coincides again with our global future and interests and makes for us a vast asset. However, it is here that our energies need to be directed as never before if we want to survive and prosper in a thoroughly dangerous and uncertain world.

EU: Salaries

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it may surprise the noble Lord, but I do not have the exact figures to hand. Of course, any international parliament costs a great deal more because of the travel, dual residence and so on that are involved. Members of this House who also attend the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe or the NATO Assembly also cost rather more than the rest of us.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Does my noble friend have any figures on the European External Action Service? Has he noticed recent criticism that it is not performing very effectively? Does he have any measure of cost versus performance for that body?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do not have that. The European External Action Service is still very much in its early stages. It is now performing rather better than when it was originally established. Multinational operations take longer to get going than others—I am looking at various people here who have served in the European Commission—and have a level of built-in efficiency.

First World War: Centenary

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I entirely share the noble Lord’s concerns. The Prime Minister in his speech at the Imperial War Museum to launch this said that the important elements that the Government wanted to see in this process of commemoration, which will last about five years, are remembrance, youth and education. This huge series of events in our history and in the history of a large number of other countries included an awful lot of civilian and industrial issues. It transformed the role of women. The Bradford Industrial Museum will be among those leading a recollection of what happened in the transformation of the industrial base of that northern city. So we will be commemorating a great deal which is not simply about the Armed Forces.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

What part will be played by the Commonwealth in this commemoration, since so many Commonwealth or imperial troops died in that war?

Gaza

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on promoting this important debate. As has been remarked on, this is the second time today that we have addressed the issue and we will address it again tomorrow. No one can accuse your Lordships of lack of focus or interest. I know that for many speakers it has been a rushed job but it is amazing what punch and wisdom can be put into two minutes. Many wise and effective points have been made—of course, not all of them agreeing with each other. I will make some points in a general context before coming on to details.

The Government agree that the restrictions on movements of goods and people, including access to agricultural and fishing areas, do tremendous damage to the economy and living standards of ordinary people in Gaza. As a result, industry in Gaza is currently a quarter of what it was before the restrictions and agriculture a half. We recognise and welcome the fact that the volume and range of goods entering Gaza has increased somewhat over the past year but much more still has to be done. In close co-ordination with our European partners and the Office of the Quartet Representative, we will continue to press the Israeli Government at ministerial and official levels to ease access restrictions. When I say we will continue to press them, we maintain an almost daily and continuous pressure and seek responses. In particular, we want an increase in imports of construction and raw materials, both for private sector and international projects; an increase in exports; a relaxation on movement of people, particularly between Gaza and the West Bank; and an extension of the fishing zone from three to 12 miles, which the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and other noble Lords mentioned.

I make this quite clear to those noble Lords who made the point: we understand Israel’s legitimate security concerns over Gaza. One could not fail to understand the facts when one sees the amount of rocketry that continues. However, the current restrictions are ineffective in stopping the flow of illicit goods into Gaza. As was graphically described, these goods enter anyway through the tunnels and thereby generate income for Hamas. There are advantages for Israel in reducing the restrictions. In the Government’s view, any easing would strengthen the moderates in Gaza and lower the dependency of the population on Hamas. It would provide better opportunities within Gaza for education, jobs and legitimate interactions with the outside world. It is in Israel’s long-term security interests to have a stable and prosperous Gaza, which we have certainly not got at the moment with unemployment well over 28 per cent and youth unemployment at 38 per cent. The figures may well be higher than that.

Like your Lordships, the Government are obviously concerned at the broader human costs of the current situation. We are deeply concerned about the horrific reported shooting of 29 children between March 2010 and December last year near the border fence between Gaza and Israel. We have raised and continue to raise these issues with the Israeli authorities. We are concerned about reports of abuses carried out under Hamas rule in Gaza, including arbitrary detention, mistreatment, intimidation of civil society and the use of the death penalty. As I have already intimated, we are also very concerned at the all too frequent exchanges of rocket fire and air strikes between Gaza and Israel. We consistently urge all sides to show restraint and work to reduce tensions.

I obviously cannot physically cover all the many points raised in the time available. I read with great interest the report of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on his visit last July with the Council for European Palestinian Relations. It painted a very grim picture. We are concerned at the deterioration in the quality of healthcare in Gaza as a result of Israeli movement and access restrictions, and political and institutional separation between the West Bank and Gaza. The shortage of essential drugs is now critical. We have urged and will continue to urge Israel to enable uninterrupted access for medical supplies, personnel and patients from and into Gaza. The World Health Organisation confirmed the detrimental impact of movement and access restrictions on children’s health. There has been an increase in stunting in children under five resulting from malnutrition. Some 65 per cent of mothers of pre-schoolers report a negative impact on their children’s mental health.

What are we doing about that? This legitimate question comes up again and again. UK financial assistance has supported the Palestinian Authority to the tune of £87 million in 2009, 2010 and last year. About half of that goes into Gaza to support services there. We work with the UN Relief and Works Agency to provide primary healthcare and hospital care to Gazans. The Relief and Works Agency is delivering real improvements in children’s health. That includes 100 per cent immunisation of the under-fives and progress to reduce child mortality. We also support the UN Access Co-ordination Unit to facilitate the transfer of medical equipment and personnel into Gaza. Of course, we work with the European Union and the World Food Programme. I am told that DfID helps 24 UN agencies and 132 non-government agencies. The activity from the United Kingdom to support the people of Gaza in the challenges they face in all those aspects is considerable. I am sure we can always do more. We are always searching for new ways to develop our programmes.

The House can be assured that Her Majesty’s Government will continue to work extremely hard with our partners to encourage Israel to ease the restrictions further. We will also continue our important support through DfID for the people of Gaza, as I have just described, including our work to address the key access constraints, promote economic growth and provide support to the poorest and most vulnerable parts of society. Of course, all these actions are overshadowed by the bigger fact that the longer-term answer to the problems faced by the people of Gaza, and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, lies in reconciliation.

That includes reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, resulting in free and fair elections in 2012 and the formation of a new Palestinian Authority composed of independent figures who will continue the excellent work on state-building and uphold the quartet principles. We welcome recent moves in this direction. We are aware of reports that Fatah and Hamas have agreed and that President Abbas will become Prime Minister. It is a bit too early to make a detailed assessment of these changes but in our view it is important that any new Palestinian Authority should be composed of independent figures, will uphold the principle of non-violence, is committed to a negotiated, two-state solution and accepts the previous agreements of the PLO. We also look to the Palestinian Authority to continue the important progress on state-building achieved in recent years. We have made it consistently clear that we will engage with any Palestinian Government who show, through their words and actions, that they are committed to the above principles.

We also welcome the aim of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. That is what we must work for. We encourage both sides to build on their recent talks in Jordan. We will continue to do all we can to support and encourage negotiations which lead to a sovereign, viable and contiguous Palestinian state, living in peace and security alongside a safe and secure Israel and its other neighbours in the region. When those conditions develop, the people of Gaza and their present condition can really, tangibly improve. Until we have those conditions, we will be prevented from moving in the right direction. I do not have time to go into the wider issues of the Middle East peace process or the many problems that trouble your Lordships, such as the settlements issue that continues to be, in our view, an illegal operation. I hope that I have indicated our determination and hands-on approach to the problems. This is one of the sores and tragedies of the modern world that can be resolved with determination, if we really work hard to do so.

International Renewable Energy Agency (Legal Capacities) Order 2011

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the International Renewable Energy Agency (Legal Capacities) Order 2011.

Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I beg to move that draft Order in Council be approved together with an Explanatory Memorandum, as required for all affirmative statutory instruments. This Order in Council confers, in the UK, the legal capacities of a body corporate on the International Renewable Energy Agency, IRENA. It is a new international organisation that will work to increase the deployment of renewable energy technologies globally. It has been established by a treaty, the IRENA statute. This Order in Council was approved by the House of Commons Committee on 14 July 2011 this year.

The UK signed the IRENA statute in 2009. The Government believe that the UK should now ratify the statute. To that end, a copy of the statute was laid before Parliament on 7 June, together with an Explanatory Memorandum, in accordance with the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. The statute requires that all members of IRENA should confer legal capacity on IRENA in their territories. We therefore need to make this order to enable the UK to ratify the IRENA statute and become a full member of the organisation.

Let me explain the background to IRENA in a little more detail. This was a German initiative. The statute was agreed in Bonn in January 2009 and subsequently signed by the UK on 26 June 2009. The treaty entered into force in July 2010, after the deposit of the 25th instrument of ratification in Bonn. The statute establishes an international renewable energy agency to promote the widespread use and increased adoption of renewable energy technologies. The principal effect of the order is to enable the UK to become a full member of the agency.

So far, IRENA has 149 signatories. To date, 82 of these signatories have ratified the statute, including the United States, Japan, 18 EU member states, the European Union itself and 49 developing countries. With such a wide membership, IRENA will be the first truly global organisation devoted solely to renewable energy technologies. This is a young organisation, with its first assembly taking place in April this year. However, it has high ambition and is seeking to become an international centre of excellence for renewable energy technologies, with a specific focus on the developing world. IRENA will be able to bring together renewable energy experts from across the world to develop best-practice technical and policy examples. It will also be able to produce objective reports on the renewable energy market to help inform regional development across the world.

Renewable energy needs to play a key role in meeting global energy demand. Deployment has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Of the approximate 300 gigawatts of new electricity-generating capacity added globally during 2008-09, 140 gigawatts, nearly half, came from renewables. Global co-operation, through an organisation like IRENA, will be essential to ensuring that renewable energy deployment continues to increase.

The use of renewable energy has great potential to tackle climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that between 2010 and 2050, renewables can make CO₂ savings of between 15 per cent and 37 per cent against the world economic outlook 2009 reference scenario. There is also a role for renewables in increasing global and domestic energy security. The greater the deployment of renewable technologies internationally, the less pressure there will be on traditional energy sources such as oil and gas.

The deployment of renewable energy technologies can also support greater energy access, particularly in rural communities. IRENA will mean that the UK and others will have a framework within which to share technical and policy expertise with those most in need of securing innovative energy solutions.

The UK has a strong reputation internationally in the deployment of clean energy technologies. We are world leaders when it comes to offshore wind and have just introduced the world’s first financial incentive for increasing levels of renewable heat. In the future, renewable energy will play an increasingly important role in the UK’s energy mix. The renewable energy road map, published in July, sets out the Government’s vision for meeting our domestic renewable energy target for 2020. Increasing our domestic renewables capacity will mean that we can decrease our reliance on fossil fuels. Greater deployment of renewables globally will also mean that costs for these technologies will fall, making fulfilment of our domestic renewable energy ambitions more cost-effective. We want to remain at the forefront of this growing industry and ensure that UK interests are represented in what will be such a landmark global organisation.

The UK Government have made a commitment to push for greater efforts to tackle climate change internationally and to deliver investment to increase deployment of renewable energy technologies. We will thus be acting in accordance with this commitment by becoming full members of an organisation whose activities will help to make this happen. This is an important order, which reflects cross-party commitment to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. I therefore commend it to the Committee and hope that it will receive the Committee’s full support.