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Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon): I agree with where the Under-Secretary is taking the debate. Has he seen any evidence in the past two or three years that the UN is achieving a new focus on its stated priorities?
Mr. Rammell: May I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new post and congratulate him on his appointment? I was just about to give an example in which fundamental change is taking place. I believe that the reprioritisation required by the process that I have described gives rise to some tough decisions for all of us.
Let me take an example close to home. Many hon. Members will have had contact with the United Nations information centre in London over the years, and will rightly have valued the service that it offers. Nevertheless, the Secretary-General has rightly said that, in the age of the internet, information on the UN in western Europe can be more efficiently delivered through a single hub in Brussels. As a result of that change, resources can be focused on higher-priority activity elsewhere, including developing the information capacity of the developing world. Painful though it was to lose our information centre, we believe that that was the right decision. It is in such changes that we all need to hold our nerve and support the overall process of change that is taking place.
We need further progress in the direction of reform and we are encouraging others to accept that other low priority activities and programmes should be ended. We want to ensure that new activities have built-in reviews and end dates, so that programmes must prove their value, rather than simply drifting on indefinitely. That is a critical point. Anyone who has visited the UN and looked in detail at how the system works—as several hon. Members have done—will recognise that
committing the UN to a programme that carries on regardless of changed circumstances and priorities is not acceptable.
Angus Robertson: The Minister mentions institutional reform. He will be more aware than most that many countries in the UN would like reform to the way in which the Security Council works, which would enable other countries such as Germany and Japan to take on a more permanent role. What is the Government's policy on that question and on the suggestion for a permanent representative on behalf of the European Union, who might be able to speak in the Security Council on behalf of all 25 members of the Union?
Mr. Rammell: I shall address that issue later in my speech, but we support an enlarged permanent membership of the Security Council, especially regarding Germany and Japan. We do not advocate membership for the European Union; the current structure of the Security Council provides membership for sovereign states, not for bodies such as the European Union.
The General Assembly has an important role to play in the process of prioritisation, but if it is to be effective, it must get its own house in order. In his recent millennium declaration progress report, the Secretary-General described the Assembly's "repetitive and sterile debates", and its
- "agenda crowded with items that either overlap or are of interest to only a few states".
One important innovation might be to move away from set-piece interventions. It is right that the general debate that opens each year's Assembly should consist of prepared speeches. It is the opportunity for world leaders to set out their vision of the UN's developing role and to influence the political agenda for the year ahead. It gives us all a chance to take the temperature of world opinion—and that is an important opportunity. However, the remaining months of the General Assembly should not consist simply of ambassadors talking past each other in formal sessions, as too often happens at the moment. We should look for opportunities to have debates on matters of real and topical importance, where the views of different countries are listened to and receive a legitimate response.
The agenda needs also to give due priority to the most important subjects. It is open to question whether resolutions to establish an international year of rice or an international year of mountains have really added significantly to the greater good of the international community. It cannot be right that the General Assembly should be the forum for pursuing individual hobby-horses.
Part of the problem is the way that the General Assembly operates for the most part as a series of large blocs. Sometimes those are electoral groups and sometimes they are groups that reflect a genuine commonality of interest, as with the EU or the Arab group. Some organisation on such lines is clearly essential if we are to avoid 191 member states expressing
a separate view on every issue. However, too often, the Assembly operates as an extended negotiation between two monolithic groupings—the developed world and the non-aligned movement. That division hides the real diversity of views within their memberships as negotiating positions are brought down to a lowest common denominator, and we should try to avoid that situation. Ministers and our missions in New York and Geneva are active in reaching out across those divides and encouraging constructive engagement from individual countries. We take care to include UN issues in bilateral discussions at ministerial and official level with key partners in the developing world, and we have institutionalised regular dialogue with some key partners, such as India. We will look for further opportunities to break down the barriers and will be encouraging our partners to do more in that area.We are not alone in seeking General Assembly reform. Following his election in September, the General Assembly's President, Foreign Minister Julian Hunte of St. Lucia, has been quick to raise the banner of reform. He has launched his own initiative to streamline and revitalise the General Assembly, building on many of the ideas that we have been promoting, as set out in our Command Paper. Other UN members are also pursuing separate reform initiatives complementary to those going on within the General Assembly framework. I was particularly pleased recently, when visiting Mexico, to discuss the establishment of a friends of reform group, led by the Mexican Government, whose membership will be drawn from across the UN. Already, countries such as Canada, Sweden, South Africa, Japan, Argentina and Algeria have joined in the discussions. Although the intention is that the permanent five members should not become members of that group, there is much in common with our own agenda and I intend to follow the Mexican initiative closely and feed in to the process.
We also want to encourage reform of the subsidiary bodies of the General Assembly. The most important of those is the Economic and Social Council, or ECOSOC. This body has the primary responsibility for overseeing the work of the UN's various funds, programmes and agencies. It can, therefore, potentially ensure that the UN's contribution in many parts of the world is coherent and co-ordinated, and that there is no duplication of UN effort. A UN working group that sat from January to June this year decided that ECOSOC should produce a multi-year work programme. That will begin to improve the situation significantly, and we will work hard within that promising climate to make some meaningful improvements to how those bodies operate and function.
The UN, under Kofi Annan's stewardship, has also recognised that a successful organisation needs an effective administration to deliver its priorities. The Secretary-General has drawn on his experience at the heart of the administration to shape the reform agenda that he initially launched back in 1997. Much has been done, but there is still room for improvement. As a friend and strong supporter of the UN, that is an argument that we should make.
In September 2002 the Secretary-General launched the latest round of his programme of reforms with a
report entitled "Strengthening the UN: An Agenda for Further Change", which was fully supported by the UK Government. The latest reform agenda includes many important items such as priority setting, management of human resources, financial management, working practices and ensuring appropriate staffing levels. All of that is crucial to providing an efficient administration that can deliver priority activities and go on to achieve the objectives set for the UN by the international community. We will certainly not resile from continuing to play a leading role in pushing for reform of UN bureaucracy.I should also mention that this year's session of the General Assembly will agree the UN's budget for the next two years. As a large contributor to the UN, we want to ensure that the budget is focused on UN priority activity, to ensure that the organisation is as efficient and effective as possible. Linking spending to priority activity is an essential part of the overall reform process. However—and this point is sometimes lost in our debates on the issue—it is important to stress that our aim is not to cut budgets, but instead to ensure that the organisation delivers better value for money and spends its resources on the issues that are of concern to us and to the whole international community.
Hugh Robertson (Faversham and Mid-Kent): The Minister mentioned the budget, and he will be aware that a high proportion of it comes from the United States, Japan and the European Union. Does he consider that that proportion is too great and does he think that a larger amount should come from other countries that currently contribute very little?
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