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Lord Avebury: My Lords, the Minister may reflect on the remarkable contrast between the huge international efforts made to resolve the crisis between the Government and the opposition in Kenya, which we debated earlier this afternoon, involving the UN, the AU and many states, and the puny attempt by President Thabo Mbeki on his own to ward off the far greater catastrophe that is engulfing the people of Zimbabwe, including endemic unilateral violence by the Government against anyone they think may be against them. That includes not only the official opposition but the 2.5 million shantytown dwellers in Operation Murambatsvina, and now university students and teachers. The plight of those people and
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There was no mention of Zimbabwe at the AU summit which ended last Sunday. SADC got a report from Mr Mbeki in the margins, but it has said nothing about the reforms that will be necessary for even a partial approximation of free and fair elections on 29 March. The signs are ominous, with opposition rallies being prohibited, activists beaten up, and the police chief being given a grand new title and new car and making public threats against what he calls “those bent on exploiting the economic situation”. We can expect to see violent attacks against candidates and supporters who campaign against the policies that are beggaring the nation while handing new privileges to the army, the police and the so-called war vets.
It is a tragedy, as my noble friend Lord Alderdice said, that the two wings of the MDC failed to reach an agreement on joint presidential and parliamentary candidates, but with ZANU-PF and Mugabe universally hated by the people, there could still be a sporting chance that Mugabe could be defeated. There are splits within the ruling party, with Simba Makoni, the former finance Minister, deciding to contest the presidential election. Apart from him, there are several incumbent ZANU-PF Ministers and former MPs being sidelined in the selection of candidates. No one imagines that there will be a free and fair election, but if the presence of well-resourced observers over the next seven weeks could make a difference—and I believe that it could—what efforts are we making to see that observer teams are properly resourced and financed?
Could we perhaps ask the SADC countries to sound out the Commonwealth about possible technical help that it might be able to give not only to the SADC observers but also against the possibility, as has been mentioned, that Zimbabwe will need substantial reconstruction after the election? The observer team might have something to contribute to that.
The regime has said that it will relax the restrictions on foreign journalists, who can play a crucial part in monitoring conditions in the run-up period. I would like to mention the intrepid Sue Lloyd-Roberts, who last autumn got in to show people starving and disease rampant; and, just the other day, John Simpson, who exposed the divisions within ZANU-PF. The free media, particularly journalists from SADC countries, can do more than politicians to ensure that Zimbabwe does not wake on 30 March to a disputed result, with consequences that could be even more disastrous than the horrors we have seen in Kenya.
8.20 pm
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, it is of course impossible in the few minutes available to me from this Dispatch Box to summarise or do justice to this
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Looking back on our endless debates on this subject, I find that we were told again and again that quiet diplomacy was the best course and would work. I gather that the Minister has just been touring parts of Africa, and I hope that he found out for himself what some of us have long argued. While we obviously could play no direct and confrontational part in the unfolding Zimbabwean tragedy, we could and should have been much tougher from the start on sanctions against individuals, companies and interests that were enriching themselves while supporting the regime, and on doubters at the UN who persistently blocked attempts to bring the horrors of Zimbabwe to the Security Council. We could and should have pressed Mr Mbeki and South Africa to be more robust and creative. We could and should have urged China sooner to stop sending aid and succour to Mugabe—as my right honourable friend David Cameron has now rightly done. This is not the fault of the present Minister, as he was not in place, but the Government did not do any of those things. Instead we were constantly and repeatedly told that quiet diplomacy would do the trick.
Now where have we got to? We have inflation touching anything between 13,000 and 100,000 per cent—somewhere between the two. We have unemployment at 80 per cent, a quarter of the population relying on food aid, refugees streaming over the borders and the rule of law collapsing. To repeat the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso: it would be interesting to know about British subject Simon Mann and why all his legal rights seem to have been ignored in his illegal extradition to Equatorial Guinea.
This is a disastrous scene in which, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown—I think that I have them right—we have an aid and development policy in Africa but not a foreign policy. That has been the trouble. When one looks at the huge imbalances between the resources available to DfID and those available to diplomacy and the Foreign Office, it is only too obvious what has happened. In the new Comprehensive Spending Review up to 2011, the FCO gets a 0.2 per cent reduction each year, and DfID—which already has a budget four times larger—gets an 11 per cent increase. This is a dangerous imbalance. Instead of having a foreign policy alongside our aid policy, we have been left to drift along with spineless international policy on Zimbabwe and, just somehow, to hope for miracles.
Maybe a few small miracles could be about to happen, but I do not know. We have heard about Simba Makoni, who has had the enormous courage to emerge to challenge Mugabe in the elections. We know that the Government are now being forced to take back farms that were parcelled out to cronies and officials because they have produced nothing, and that they will now be put in more competent managerial hands. While the MDC opposition is sadly split, so now is ZANU-PF, and that must be good.
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What more can we do now, on top of the long list of things that we have urged should have happened but have not? I believe that the Commonwealth could play a forward role, even if Zimbabwe is not at the moment a member. I would like to see a Commonwealth working committee drawn from both African and other member state personnel to explore real land reform options, to encourage donors to re-engage and to plan an effective recovery strategy post Mugabe in that once rich country. I am sure that point has not yet been reached, and maybe things are going to get worse before they get better. We can only pray that, when it comes, there will be recovery and prosperity. Again, it ought to prosper and it ought to be free—and it is not.
8.25 pm
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Malloch-Brown): My Lords, let me echo the noble Lord’s last words. We can indeed pray for that outcome and I hope we will achieve it. I join all those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, on having tabled this debate on Zimbabwe. We all respect his continued commitment to raising the crisis in Zimbabwe at every possible opportunity. He has shown himself a real friend of the people of Zimbabwe if not of its president.
We all support the view that our primary focus must be on helping ordinary Zimbabweans. The UK is the second largest bilateral donor, giving £45 million in the current year and some £173 million since 2000. As we have frequently reassured this House, this aid is distributed via third parties—the UN and NGOs—and not via the Government. As many noble Lords said, on every indicator, the country faces worse times ahead. The harvest will be poor. We are spending £10 million a year tackling the HIV/AIDS crisis. As the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, said, that does not do justice to the fact that this money is not achieving the results we would wish. Life expectancy is now a catastrophic 35 years.
We continue to spend money to support democratic change, supporting civil society as well as lawyers to try and improve the climate for free and fair elections. We have ensured that EU targeted measures are in place to punish President Mugabe and the elite and not the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, that we are confident that those targeted measures will be renewed again later this month.
We speak regularly with other countries in the region, in particular South Africa and other SADC countries, to encourage them to resolve the crisis. But I take the point about quiet diplomacy. I met the South African Foreign Minister at the end of last week, in the margins of the AU summit. We also have word of the briefings that the South Africans made to the other SADC member states. I am not quite as well informed as the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, on how the countries are divided on the issue, but we are seeing a disappointing failure of the neighbours to stand up for the kind of change that we must see in Zimbabwe.
I do not agree that withholding aid from other SADC members is the way to achieve change there.
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President Mbeki’s efforts to mediate have essentially now expired. The election has been declared by President Mugabe and he has not accepted the MDC’s demands for delays. By so doing he has negated the few conditions that had been negotiated, all of which depended on time for implementation to allow for a freer and fairer election.
President Mugabe has stated that there will be no amendment to the constitution until after the elections. One must therefore assume that the conditions for genuinely free and fair elections remain far away. The electoral roll is incomplete and inaccurate. It seems that millions of those outside the country have no prospect of being able to vote. The many new constituency boundaries introduced under the negotiations have been introduced in a rush and essentially amount to gerrymandering, favouring ZANU-PF. To this day, the opposition is unable to hold rallies freely or complain without harassment and is not being given equal access to the media. The military and the police continue to crawl all over the election management process.
On the point about international election observers, it is very unlikely that credible international teams will be allowed to monitor the elections. I therefore use this debate in the House tonight to appeal to the SADC Heads of State and Government who have established very good principles of electoral conduct for their sub-region to insist that those principles be applied in Zimbabwe, and to be the first to declare that they have not been met if indeed they are not met.
The issue of cricket, was raised by my noble friend Lord Morris. There are no sporting sanctions on Zimbabwe, but the Foreign Secretary and others in this Government have made it clear that we do not encourage the England and Wales Cricket Board to allow Zimbabwe to tour England in 2009 or England to tour Zimbabwe in 2012 if the situation in the country is as it is now. We continue to speak to the ECB about these issues but it remains a decision for the board. We have decided that the Government can make their position clear, but that it is not for us to intervene directly in this matter.
I shall say a word about Simon Mann. Before his appeals process had exhausted itself, and therefore completely in contravention of Zimbabwe’s own legal standards and system, he was removed from the country and sent to Equatorial Guinea. We have sought consular access to him there without success to this point. We are pressing both there and here in London for Simon Mann’s rights to be met. We are extremely concerned about the situation given the history of what has happened to prisoners before in that country. We shall certainly press fully for Mr Mann to enjoy his full legal rights.
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A number of noble Lords including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark raised questions on the future situation in Zimbabwe. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in another place that we stand ready to assist in the economic recovery of Zimbabwe once our benchmarks for change in that country have been met; once there is a Government who are genuinely committed to economic and political reform and to the restoration of the rights of its citizens; and once there is a Government who enjoy the support of their people. At that point Britain will be generous in its support to economic recovery. I can assure noble Lords that we are already preparing for that day. We have been working with international institutions such as the World Bank, about which the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, inquired. We are looking at the cost of recovery. We are planning for it and talking to international partners. I agree entirely that recovery must deal with the issue of land, which remains at the heart of so much of the dispute in that unhappy country.
I share the views of those who contrasted the international attention given to Kenya and that given to Zimbabwe. I hope it does not prove the point that several noble Lords made, that the international community will be stirred into action only if there is violence. We all devoutly hope that that will not happen in Zimbabwe, although we all also recognise that a very high level of state violence is already being applied to the citizens of that country.
Zimbabwe is the guilty secret of Africa and the international community. There is a terrible double standard. There has been a failure to point the finger publicly and to declare what a terrible crime is occurring against the citizens of that country. We hope that this election will enable those who run against President Mugabe to champion that point of view. We wish them all the best in the election. To go any further than that would be to undermine their own standing. Even these words will be passed on by President Mugabe and his propaganda sidekicks in an attempt to suggest that one or other or all three of them are British stooges and the British candidates to replace him.
We hope, as others have said, that there is a glimmer of hope; that, even in a snap election conducted under impossibly unfair conditions, with all the levers, advantages and cards in hands of government, God and good fortune will smile on that unhappy country, and that perhaps out of these elections will emerge a surprising electoral upset. In order to try to ensure the possibility of such an outcome we will insist—and impress on Europe, the region, the UN and the rest of the international community the need to insist—that the right standards of freeness and openness are met in that election to allow the country to return to democracy and prosperity. Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation rate, lowest life expectancy and, as has been pointed out, an ever-growing number of HIV/AIDS orphans. It is clear to everyone that the solution to this crisis cannot come soon enough.
We still believe that that solution must first and foremost be an African solution supported by the region and the wider international community. We
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Lord Blaker: My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate. It has been a particularly good one.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: Forgive me, my Lords, but the noble Lord who initiates a Question for Short Debate is not allowed to respond.
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
8.38 pm
House again in Committee on Clause 9.
Lord Kingsland moved Amendment No. 68:
The noble Lord said: After the wide-ranging debate on the previous group of amendments, I might well be accused of condescending to the particular in this amendment. Indeed, it is an amendment about a particular and clear matter.
Financial compensation orders are not often used by the courts. Why is that so? There are some links here to reparation orders. Financial compensation orders could be an effective way of impressing on offenders the significance of their crime—to take just one example, crimes associated with vandalism. The reality is that the number of financial compensation orders made in youth courts is extremely limited. Offenders who commit property or shop-lifting crime often do not accept that there are any victims. Here is an opportunity to change that. Obviously, a financial compensation order would have to be tailored to the offender and take into account his circumstances. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): I thought that it was an interesting amendment, and I have a great deal of sympathy with the reasons for proposing it. I am clear that young people who have offended should be held responsible for their actions and that proper reparation, including financial compensation, should be an important feature of making young people accountable for their actions.
We do not think that there is a specific need for the noble Lord’s amendment for a number of reasons. Reparation is a key theme within the current framework of the youth justice system, which is why it should be included as a purpose of sentencing for the court to consider. The court can sentence a young person to a specific reparation order, which will remain a separate sentence beneath a youth rehabilitation order. A reparation order focuses on reinforcing personal responsibility
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I took part in such a community payback programme in relation to a scout hut in Northolt some months ago and met a number of young people who were required to take part. I must say that I found it useful. It is interesting that through such schemes and their contribution, some of the young people have found skills and work. They also contributed to renovating a much-needed community asset, when it would have been difficult to find the resources to do it.
There are many other marvellous examples to which we must pay tribute. As we discussed yesterday, I thought that reparation must be an element within the youth rehabilitation order itself. Reparation activities can be used in some of the requirements and as unpaid work.
In terms of the legislation, we believe that courts already have the power to order any offender to pay compensation under existing legislation. Section 130 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 provides for that power. A compensation order awarded by the court in favour of the victim is the primary sentence of the court, like a fine. Its main purpose is to punish the offender, not necessarily to compensate the victim fully.
I noted the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, that it is all very well there being a provision but it does not seem to be used often. I have some sympathy with that, although no doubt he would acknowledge the benefit of the courts’ discretion in these matters, as he has pointed out to us. The problem is probably that the courts take the view that it would not serve a useful purpose to award an amount and require payment at a level that the offender had no hope of repaying within the foreseeable future, which might merely tempt him or her to commit further crime.
That may be the reason, but as I have said, my figures for 2005-06 show that 15,492 compensation orders were given to young offenders. Clearly the power is used to a certain extent, but I am happy to take away the provision to see whether anything more could be done to encourage more use of the order in the future.
8.45 pm
Lord Kingsland: I am most grateful to the Minister for his reply. I could not have asked for a more constructive response to my amendment. In those circumstances I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 69 and 70 not moved.]
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