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Mr. Blunt: A junket and a half.
Tony Worthington: That is the first time that the words "junket" and "Albania" have been heard together, but I had better move on.
Those joint enterprises are very valuable in bringing together the developing world and the developed world to subject the international organisations to scrutiny. As I said earlier, there is a real danger that, unless we as hon. Members sharpen up our act in relating to international matters, our constituents will ignore us. There is no doubt in my mind that various major NGOs in this country have more influence on Governments and international organisations than we have as parliamentarians, because we tend to ignore such issues or deal with them very badly.
Another issue that the Minister mentioned, which I hope will be explored thoroughly in talks about reforms, is conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction. There are an enormous number of low-level conflicts around the world that may explode into much more serious conflicts, in relation to which we must do preventive work. After conflict, we have the sheer difficulty of making sure that our intervention is successful. To see how not to do it, we need only look at
what happened to the Americans—the most powerful nation in the world—in the person of General Jay Garner. That is the covered-up and never-talked-about bit of the Iraq story nowadays. The person who was put in charge of Iraq's reconstruction, his team and his philosophy had to be replaced within about a month because their approach was not working. It is complicated, difficult, dangerous work, which requires much more than armies and police; it requires people with expertise in legal services, education and water provision, and it needs to be done in a sensitive and aware way.I am pleased that, in this country, we now have an NGO—Peaceworkers UK—working on the issue, because until its involvement, that work did not have a focus. I am delighted that the Minister will meet a delegation of MPs and Peaceworkers UK during the next few weeks to see whether our response can be more coherent. I use the word "coherent" not in a critical sense; it is inevitable that when things are done in a higgledy-piggledy way—through the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the EU, the UN or the Department for International Development—we neglect the overall picture, which is to make sure that we have a balanced, skilled team that we can send out to such situations. Peaceworkers UK is raising in an intelligent way the issue of how we can respond to the emergencies that spring up.
To conclude, let me point out that, as has happened in this debate, when people talk about the United Nations they tend to have in their minds political bodies such as the General Assembly and the Security Council. Unfortunately, as tends to happen all the time, people concentrate on the couple of pages at the beginning of the document about the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, and not the 30 pages about the family of the UN. We do not realise the sheer skill involved. I accept the criticisms, too, but sometimes we must be grateful that an organisation such as the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs exists, organises Governments, UN organisations and NGOs when sometimes millions of people can be in trouble, and finds the resources to deal with that. We also need to consider the World Food Programme, the World Health Organisation, to which we turned when severe acute respiratory syndrome looked like being a huge problem, UNICEF and so on.
The United Nations Development Programme has had some criticism today, which may be justified, but it is generally very serious about political capacity building and is worthy of esteem. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney and his colleagues would have recently seen the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Palestine, which has been looking after Palestinian refugees for as long as the UN has existed.
We tend to ignore all of those organisations and we do not esteem them enough. I hope that the annual debate will continue to take place, but I hope that the Minister will recognise that we need more than that. We need to look at how we organise ourselves, perhaps through the Select Committee structure—the Foreign Affairs Committee cannot cope with global issues on its own—and at how we relate to those organisations in a much more sensible way than we do at present.
5.14 pm
Angus Robertson (Moray): I am in a slightly curious position because I have taken part in three debates today during which I have found myself almost entirely in agreement with almost every word that has been spoken by hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is even more extraordinary that I cannot disagree with a single word of a contribution made by a Scottish Labour Member—the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington). I am enjoying today's proceedings greatly and I underscore the fact that I would certainly sign up to much of what he said. I apologise to hon. Members that I was unable to be here for much of the early part of the debate, but I was firefighting on fishing and whisky, which are important to my constituency. I shall be brief because I have to attend other meetings on those issues.
Despite those important meetings, I was especially keen to participate in the debate for two reasons. First, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru are long-standing supporters of the United Nations. They support multilateralism and a forum in which the different nations of the world may meet and work under international law. Given the peroration of the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell), in which he described the new and emerging nations that are queuing up to join the UN, he be would be disappointed if I did not again put on record my wish that Scotland will take its rightful place, as a normal country, as a member of the United Nations in due time.
My second reason for wanting to speak is because I worked as a diplomatic correspondent before I became a Member of Parliament. I was based in Vienna for seven years and as a member of the United Nations Correspondents Association, I covered the various organisational parts of the UN that are based in that city—it is the third United Nations headquarters. I should put it on record that I worked for the United Nations as a trainer of its staff in Vienna, so I have a personal and political interest in its work.
I, too, put on record my appreciation of the staff of the United Nations and the many people who have worked on its behalf, not least servicemen and women who have laid down their lives. I fully endorse the suggestion of a permanent memorial in the House to Fiona Watson.
I shall touch on three points, the first of which is reform. The hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) gave us a long list of sensible proposals, which I would support. The hon. and gallant Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) touched on staffing, which can be, euphemistically speaking, occasionally problematic. Every hon. Member knows that there are staffing issues in the United Nations and I hope that the Government will examine that closely. The extremity of the need to ensure that people of specific nationalities secure posts regardless of their alleged talents undermines the United Nations, so that needs reform. Serious questions are often asked about the way in which the budget of the
United Nations is managed, so the Government should examine that closely.Many hon. Members have talked about reform of the United Nations Security Council, as did I in an intervention. It is interesting to contrast the UK Government's support for a Security Council of 24 countries—that is not an unreasonable number of members—with their opposition to a European Commission of 25 members, which is roughly the same size. They say that such a Commission would be unworkable, but I think that both a Security Council with 24 members and a Commission with 25 members would be manageable.
The Minister said that the question that I asked about the inequality of permanent member states was a good debating point. If the Governments of other countries such as Germany and Japan raised the point, it would be more than a debating point because it would be central to their worries about reform of the UN Security Council. We need proposals on reforming that structure so that everyone feels that they have an equal say and are of equal standing within the UN Security Council.
Mr. Rammell: For the information of the House, is the hon. Gentleman advocating that there should be 10 permanent members of the Select Committee, all with a veto?
Angus Robertson: No is the simple answer. I believe that serious consideration should be given to getting rid of the veto altogether. Either we should trust the UN system or put in what some people would regard as safeguards. There is a strong precedent in the approach taken by both the Conservative and Labour parties to vetoes in the European Union. Margaret Thatcher, of course, was responsible for getting rid of the largest single number of vetoes in the history of the EU, and the Labour Government now want to get rid of even more. A precedent on getting rid of vetoes has therefore been set by the two largest UK parties in the House, and I believe that we should consider seriously the prospect of getting rid of the veto in the UN Security Council. Either we believe wholeheartedly in the UN system or we do not. That does not mean that there are not associated problems, but we should look at the possibility of getting rid of the veto.
Secondly, we need to respect the UN institutions and their decision-making processes. I was disappointed by the way in which both the UK and US Governments dealt with Iraq. Having mandated UN arms inspectors to carry out a job, we went over their heads and did not let them finish their work, despite the fact that they were asking for more time. We then got involved in unilateral military action without a specific UN mandate. Like everybody else, I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power in Iraq, but I am less happy about how that was achieved. In future, I hope that the UK Government and every other member state of the UN will pursue military action only when they have gone the full distance to secure a mandate from the UN Security Council.
Thirdly, I want to put on record my appreciation of a frequently overlooked aspect of peacekeeping and peacemaking: the contribution made by small countries. Hon. Members have rightly praised the role of countries
such as India that have made significant peacekeeping contributions. However, some peacekeeping missions would not have worked without the contribution of countries such as Ireland or Austria—small, neutral or non-aligned European states that have made a significant contribution in places such as Cyprus, the Lebanon and elsewhere. In UN operations in many small and medium-sized countries, their military have had the moral authority and capability to deliver on the ground.I am particularly concerned, therefore, about reports about the amalgamation or disbandment of Scottish military regiments. I sincerely hope that when the Ministry of Defence outlines its plans on the future of the UK military it does not proceed with such plans, as they would undermine the UK's ability to deploy forces in UN missions. The Scottish National party is strongly in favour of a well-funded, capable Scottish military that can take part in UN-mandated missions. Anything that would undermine the integrity of the Scottish regimental structure concerns me greatly.
In conclusion, I am glad that the Minister said that the Government support strongly the strategic review on reform of the UN. We need to look at the UN system, but we should also look at the Bretton Woods institutions. The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie raised the problems associated with the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank. Unfortunately, that PR battle has been lost, and many people who are sceptical about globalisation hold those institutions in contempt. We need to ensure the integrity of the entire international decision-making and representative system so that we can bring the world community together and advance as one world.
I firmly support a multilateral route, not a unilateral one. The United Nations is the hope for the world, and Kofi Annan is well placed as one of the most able Secretaries-General for a long time to help to pursue that agenda. I firmly support it, and I hope that the Government will too.
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