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Lord Eden of Winton: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has given us some very interesting information. As the House knows, he speaks with great knowledge of this subject.
I join with other noble Lords in expressing gratitude to my noble friend Lord Naseby for enabling us to have this short debate. In a memorable speech, he was extremely constructive in his observations. I shall be a little more critical than him, and I am encouraged in my criticisms by an article that appeared in prime position in the Daily Telegraph just over two weeks ago, on 28 May. I shall quote a couple of brief commentaries from Peter Foster's report from Colombo, in Sri Lanka. The article states:
"Despite almost unlimited resources—the relief fund stands at more than £1.75 billion for Sri Lanka alone—victims are cooped up in camps waiting for news of progress that never seems to come".
Later on, the article quotes the comments of the Sri Lankan-born director of the Irish Sri Lanka Trust Fund, who said:
"This hard-earned money was raised by schoolchildren and old folk to help the people of Sri Lanka. It was not raised for the Sri Lankan government to swipe 15 per cent for itself".
Those are pretty tough words. I do not know how right it is that comments like that should be made, but they are troubling—particularly when I heard just the other day that apparently the Sri Lankan Government have authorised the expenditure of a considerable sum of money so that every Member of Parliament in the Sri Lankan Government has a new S-type Mercedes car. How can that really be so? If it is really so, where has the money come from? Have the Sri Lankan Government really, to quote the Sri Lankan-born director of the trust, swiped
The sad thing is that the horror that overtook so many people with such brutal suddenness, while it triggered great charitable responses from this country and elsewhere, did not in the countries directly affected stimulate great co-operation among all elements of society and among all factions in government and public administration. The sadness is that they seem to have seen the tragedy as an opportunity to advance their own partisan political purposes.
I can illustrate that with details of what has happened to some small charities. As I have declared in this House before, members of my own family are involved with a charity called Friends of the South. They do not try to obtain publicity or to draw attention to themselves. They get down to the humdrum work of actually helping in a practical way the people who need the help—in many instances, in small villages and towns that are not in the headlines at all and many of whom are being bypassed and ignored by government and authority. I should
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emphasise that many of them are frustrated in their attempts to recover their way of life by pettifogging, stultifying bureaucracy.
The awful thing about a country such as Sri Lanka—and one must admit that it might happen here—is that no one dares to take the responsibility for decisions. So, decisions have to be referred to committees. And committees, when they meet, look over their shoulders to see what the Government are doing. Over all of that looms the dark shadow of the president. She could have unlocked all of this with one turn of the key. She could have required immediate action. She could have required that her administration go out into the field to see precisely what people wanted. The tragedy was that neither she, nor the head of the LTTE in the Tamil areas on the north-east coast that were affected, were able to get together and put aside their years of strife and conflict. Now, just at the moment when she is reaching out to the head of the LTTE, when there is a prospect of some type of agreement and a package for settling some of their differences, and to ensure that the aid is distributed to the people that most need it, what do we see? Her power base is falling apart, because the other political elements that formed the coalition are refusing to go along with the plan and are threatening to walk out of the Government—the Marxist JVP being one and the Buddhist monks the other. Both are demonstrating in the streets and playing merry hell with the situation. They are not interested in what is happening to their own people who need help. They are interested only in gaining partisan political advantage for themselves. That is the tragedy. That is Sri Lanka's shame, too.
I could give many examples of the frustration of efforts by others who try to bring help where it is most needed. The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned the matter previously raised in this House about the government restrictions on people being able to re-establish their own businesses. The Government are, apparently, trying to use this opportunity to control and regulate the lives of the people. People do not want to be housed in government-provided housing, where the Government can choose that they should go; they want cash compensation, so that they can live in their own homes. They do not want to be shovelled off into a government-provided market centre or marketplace; they want cash compensation, so that they can restart their own businesses in the places where they had their businesses previously.
There is only one solution to this: that we should ask for less posturing and more performance. I hope that, when she replies, the Minister will give an undertaking that there will be no hesitation on the part of the British Government in encouraging our high commissioner in Sri Lanka to make the strongest possible representations to the government of Sri Lanka that they release some of the relief funds so that they go directly to people who need them. Will the Government give an assurance, on behalf of the generous-hearted British people, that they will demand a full and detailed account for the expenditure of every penny of tsunami relief money that has gone to Sri Lanka?
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5.15 p.m.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno: My Lords, I, too, welcome the debate and am grateful that it has been put before us. It is important that we are kept up to date with such experiences, with exactly what is happening in the tsunami-affected area and with exactly how our aid is being spent there.
I was told only last week by the Disasters Emergency Committee that the total raised in voluntary donations in the United Kingdom has now reached some £350 million—the largest amount ever raised for any appeal of this type. That has meant that the immediate needs of some 5 million people have been met and that some £150 million of that money has already reached the people who are in greatest need. There is money available and that, of course, will be spent. The agencies in the area handle the necessary day-to-day work and the projects that need to be put in place, but over the next three years that money will be used for rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes.
As other noble Lords have said, we can never appreciate enough the tremendous work that is carried out by these voluntary, charitable organisations and all those who have supported them over these past months. It has been an incredible experience to see how people have responded. The people saw the need and the people responded to that need. Some noble Lords have spoken from first-hand experience. I cannot do that. I can speak only from what we hear and see from the various agencies.
Oxfam, one of our major agencies, says that this is the largest aid effort in its history. Over 1 million people have been helped and over £150 million has been available to provide that help. Its report states:
"Our long-term reconstruction programme aims to give people the chance of building something better then the poverty that existed before the tsunami".
The reconstruction provides opportunities to alleviate poverty and to restore dignity. Due to the giving and the work being done, the people will enjoy a better life and will have something more hopeful to look forward to.
The need for an adequate warning system has already been mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Giddens and Lord Hunt. I am sure that we were all impressed when last week we were told that such a warning system was envisaged and that it would not cost a great deal of money, when one considers all the money that is needed for other efforts. For £1 million, we could have an adequate warning system in that part of the Indian Ocean.
To me, the co-operation between the various agencies is fascinating. They have always worked together and helped each other—the need is greater than the organisation that is providing it. But 160 different agencies, in addition to United Nations agencies have been working in Indonesia alone. That
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is a tremendous number. It is to be hoped that this new spirit of co-operation will also continue and that it will have long-lasting, long-term, beneficial results.
Some of the difficulties that have been faced have been mentioned. Some are due to the political, ethnic and religious differences in parts of the affected area. The tensions in Sri Lanka between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels over the distribution of aid has caused and still is causing problems. On the southern coast of India the right-wing Hindu groups are angry with the local Christian organisations which are involved in the reconstruction programme. They are afraid that the Christian organisations are using this in order to try to make converts in that part of the continent, but the Church denies that there is any intention, in any way at all, of using relief operations to try to win Christian converts.
The Andaman and Nicobar islands have been mentioned, but the anger there is different. It is that the central government have received millions of dollars and are paying out paltry sums to the people who suffered most. I have an instance of one person being offered 2 rupees as compensation. I might not be good on currency exchange but that is about 3 pence in our money. We must make sure that the tension between central government and local administration does not impede the flow of aid to where it is needed most.
In Africa, the coast of Somalia was the place most affected; it was one of the few African countries that was affected. Between 150 and 200 people are thought to have died there, but thousands more were rendered homeless and many fishermen are still unaccounted for. But the tsunami could well have affected Africa indirectly in a different way, because it has focused our attention on the desperate need of so many people—on the poverty level of so many. This new awareness may have led to some of the increasing sensitivity in these past few weeks to the needs of Africa as well as of other parts of the world. When do we last remember newspaper after newspaper daily headlining the needs of the third world and the needs of the desperately poor? The tsunami might indirectly have led to that awareness and the new response to that need.
Finally, this is an opportunity to build bridges between the rich countries and the poor countries. They have seen our response; we have seen their need. We must make sure that that confidence is maintained, that the pledges of aid and help are fulfilled, that the pledges are not forgotten or watered down. If people have confidence that we can be relied on to keep our word and to fulfil our promises, despite the horror of the tsunami some good might come out of it. They will say that there is the possibility of a new understanding. That, in its way, could be the main reconstruction following the devastating effects of 26 December.
5.23 pm
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