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Mr. Bellingham : That was Peter Carrington.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Yes, it was Lord Carrington. I know what happened for a fact, because the chief executive of Cheshire county council, Sir John Boynton, was returning officer for the election in Zimbabwe. Many representatives of the Cheshire constabulary were also there to monitor the election, and ensure that it was free and fair. The views that they expressed on their return to this country suggested that in many areas it was far from free and fair.
We cannot allow things to go on as they are. Some action must be taken. I suggested to the right hon. Member for Swansea, East (Donald Anderson), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee with great distinction, that switching off electricity might be a way of concentrating the minds of the people of Zimbabwe and perhaps securing action to bring about the removal of Mr. Robert Mugabe. I do not want to bring any additional suffering to the already long-suffering people of that country, but I believe that, given our special responsibility, we must do something to save them from Mugabe and bring about his removal.
3.48 pm
Mr. Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab): I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the Foreign Secretary. As I am supposed to be at a meeting of Borden parish council early this evening to discuss a problem relating to speeding in Oad street, I may not be here at 5.30 pm for the winding-up speeches—and my own speech will be amazingly quick.
I thank the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) for his kind comments about my chairmanship of the all-party committee. I can tell him that it is impossible to ban the internet, although I will not say why. It is possible for Mugabe to do many things, and he will close down some parts of the internet; but he will not be able to close all of it down, which is a relief.
I want to make one or two comments following on from the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram). There is a cultural deficit, which he said nothing about. Although Hitler burned the books in the libraries and Stalin and Khrushchev banned music, or allowed only a certain type of music or art that they liked, we should remember that out of that came such things as the fantastic works of Solzhenitsyn and many fine musical compositions, as well as samizdat, the system by which photocopied works were smuggled out. In Zimbabwe, however, there is an absolute cultural deficit: there is no music, art or literature. That is a terrible shame.
I took on the founding of the all-party group because I have constituents who have farms who had come to me in tears to ask me what on earth I was going to do. A reasonably good constituency MP tries to take some action when that happens, and it seemed to me that we needed a focus in the House.
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A point has been made about the United Nations. I have received a comment on that, which says that it is "unlikely" that the subject of Zimbabwe
"would be brought to the Security Council, unless the members of the Council perceived the situation in Zimbabwe as a serious threat to the stability of neighbouring countries."
It is said that the number of Zimbabweans moving out of Zimbabwe to South Africa, Namibia and Malawi is a problem, but I can tell the House that President Mbeki's brother, who lectured the all-party group about a month ago, said that his country welcomes the coming of the Zimbabweans because they include dentists, nurses, doctors, farmers, skilled plumbers and builders who are making a phenomenal difference to the economy in South Africa. We have to bear that in mind, coming from a man who has close knowledge of those matters in South Africa. Only if there were a large exodus of refugees to Malawi, especially its northern part, would there be a serious problem for the area.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster are keen to hold our Government to account over Iraq, and rightly so; however, I wish that they would also consider their statements, comments and positions on Zimbabwe. They have a particular opportunity, even now at this late stage, to come together to make a statement to President Mugabe, who was trained in a Jesuit college, apparently pretends to be a Catholic of some sort and has caused huge problems to Archbishop Ncube. Why could not the Christian churches come together to go to Zimbabwe and produce an official report? Why can they not discuss the matter? It seems improbable that they could not do something about the position. We need them to stand up and be counted.
Some 20 years ago, I was a head of history at a school, where I taught world history. I used to teach on the Foreign Office and give a lecture called, "The Foreign Office: a disaster abroad." I used to tell my students, "Look at Palestine on the one hand and, on the other, the creation of modern Israel. Look at the Saudis: we backed the wrong family. Look at Persia: blow it, we backed the wrong family. Look at South Africa: for far too long, we backed the Afrikaners. We even got it wrong in Rhodesia." There were many more examples.
If I were giving that lesson today, I would be discussing a real dilemma that we are not being honest about and on which we are not taking any sort of leadership. Since 11 September, the world has changed. If we look at the institutions that pretend to represent us in the world—the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation—we see that they are by and large run by the west. They skew votes and use vetoes. It is very hard for a country to get its own way in the WTO unless America wants it to and the UN is skewed in our favour. The UN was born out of the first world war through the League of Nations, but the other institutions were born out of the second world war. Since 11 September, I would say, they are almost redundant, and we have not challenged the institutions that purport to represent us. It is no wonder that the African bloc uses the United Nations to block us continually over this issue. Would not we do the same? After all, we created the system. They are doing their damnedest to make sure that it does nothing.
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We ask why the UN cannot do anything, but what or who could? Let us consider the Commonwealth. Zimbabwe is not in the Commonwealth, so what on earth can that organisation do? President Obasanjo is supposed to be going to Zimbabwe, but he does not seem to have gone there very often since last December. In reality, the Commonwealth is powerless. It might be good for the Commonwealth games and the odd Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, but what does it really do?
In a sense, we have left only the EU and the G8, and we should focus on the latter. It is terrible to think that, in a year's time, we might still be confronting this issue, but next year we will hold the presidency of both the G8 and the EU. It is not too late to put Zimbabwe on the agenda for the G8. It is a scar on our conscience and no one can disagree about how bad the situation is. It is the Palestine of Africa and what is going on there is terrible. I hope that the Minister will think about using the G8 as a way to solve this problem.
I wonder whether we should make use of the technology that enables intelligence surveillance from space. I have three prisons in my constituency. I have also discovered that pictures are taken of fields to check whether rape or wheat is being grown so that that information can be checked against the common agricultural policy regulations. In the same way, it would be possible to check whether Mugabe is telling the truth about the food. Why do we not take such pictures and put them into the public domain? What would be wrong with that? Why do we not expose the hypocrisy and allow people to see the evidence?
The Secretary of State said earlier that certain things are going on in readiness for a post-Mugabe situation, but what things? What is going on? All economists agree that, if Mugabe were to die next year or to stand down—what a miracle that would be—it would take Zimbabwe at least 10 years to recover economically. It is no good waiting for next year or the year after. We need to act now and to corral the goodness inside and outside Zimbabwe in order to put in place the necessary systems, investment and training. It surely is not beyond the wit of Britain to take that lead. I want far greater investment in the people of Zimbabwe who are in this country to prepare and train them for when they return.
Sport has obviously been a big part of my life. I once played on the wing for England; fortunately, it was the left wing. [Interruption.] I am glad somebody got that one. The International Cricket Council is registered here but, cleverly, it is also registered in Monte Carlo for tax purposes. I employed a solicitor and a Queen's counsel to try to get the ICC's constitution from Lords, but I was refused five times. That happened because the constitution contains clauses on the aims and objectives of international cricket. I see that the Minister is looking at me, so perhaps I might ask him a favour. So that I can stop paying money to my solicitor and QC, will he ask Malcolm Speed, chief executive of the ICC, to send him the aims and objectives and the complete constitution of the ICC?
The Football Association of Wales had a problem recently, involving the late registration of a Russian player, and it went to the international Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. Why is the case of Zimbabwe not being argued out in the only international court of law for sport? Let us take
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Zimbabwe there, get the constitution and issue the writs. The Government could do that, and we could stand up and be counted in that way, instead of being so lily-livered about sport as a whole. I hope that the Minister will address this issue.
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