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I once had to talk to the senior partner of a certain London firm about his business. He lived in, and his firm worked from, a building that I would have said was designed by quantity surveyors. We used to have many of those in London. It was a very profitable business and I asked him why he did not set to and produce a decent building. He said, “Our business is to provide good service for our clients and not to leave articles of national heritage”. Unfortunately, that is a common attitude.
In my days at County Hall I was responsible for many of these quantity surveyor-designed buildings, but one has to remember that, going back to the 1950s and 1960s, which was when I began in public life, that was the height of architectural expertise. Those buildings were designed to cost limits and architects were ingenious at producing more building for less cash. One could admire that but the bill came home about 15 years later as the buildings began to fall to bits. We had a study done that showed that you could afford to double the cost of the building for a 5 per cent annual saving in running costs. Building design improved immediately. That is another factor that everyone needs to keep in mind and it applies to all buildings. As has been said, good design is fundamental to the acceptance even of very utilitarian buildings.
Lord Lucas: I agree with my noble friend that the cost of buildings is important because, as we were reminded at four o’clock today, we are about to enter another phase. The projects will be very big; money for them will be extremely short; people will be desperate to get them done; and they will be done cheap. I disagree with my noble friend that design should be there because the commission feels the need for it; design should be there because we feel the need for it. The commission should always be aware of that.
I very much go for Amendment No. 17, which pulls the commission rather than pushes it, as the other two amendments do. That is really what ought to be done. The commission ought to know that design is important. Every year it will have to tell us what it has done to ensure that the projects that it has allowed through are beautiful, or striking, or have other aspects of design excellence about them.
I do not mind if this turns into a list. A good way of influencing the commission would be for Parliament to say that it regards such matters as important. We might well add the environment to the list. It should
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Baroness Andrews: We have been anticipating a debate that will range over a number of these issues, but we are fixed on a couple of specific amendments here. My noble friend, having raised questions, answered them very well. He anticipated what I would say and what other noble Lords have already said. First, we have the proof in the Housing and Regeneration Act that we take design seriously; we were pleased to reflect that on the face of the Bill. However, that was a different Bill with different circumstances and requirements. Like the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who gave a marvellous illustration of design, I am passionate about design in the work that I do. Like my department as a whole, I am absolutely serious about the importance of good design in development.
Much of our debate on this series of amendments and on the longer set will turn on how we can be most effective. The general case in relation to the national policy statements is that they will have to take into account, reflect and reinforce where they can the existing planning principles. The keystone planning document overarching everything that we do in planning is policy statement 1. In policy statement 1 there is a very clear recognition of the importance of design and sustainability. That is the principal driver.
Under the new regime, Ministers will set out their policy according to individual areas of infrastructure in national policy statements. Those are of primary consideration for the IPC, as we have already discussed at some length today. It will base its decisions on the policy set out in the NPS and it will be bound by those policies in relation to design, as in relation to everything else. We will have a full and robust framework for the application of good design principles in everything that we do. I take the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that this is a matter not of taste but of functionality. Good design makes things work. We will be bound to take account of design issues to the extent that they are relevant to each NPS and the process will reflect that.
On the amendments, we have had a good debate today on the need for our commissioners not to represent narrow areas of expertise. I am not saying that design is narrow, but we want the commissioners to have a wide range of competences. I take the point that we are also looking for an ability to judge what constitutes good design and to be on the cutting edge of that judgment. I do not think that a single commissioner representing design serves the point at all. I am sorry if I left it out of the list, but I also left out a whole range of other professional competences that could be included. As I said, we are looking for individual commissioners who can be chosen on the basis of their expertise, their experience, their ability and their diversity of background. There will need to be generic skills and policy area skills—transport, aviation and so on—and there will
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I have the same problem with Amendment No. 17. I do not think that we should specify what should be in the IPC’s annual report. The IPC is an independent organisation and to specify design opens up the notion of a list. I am surprised that the noble Lord can think only of environment and design. I am sure that around the Committee we could put together a list of almost infinite possibilities that might be included. However, we all know that we have a problem with lists on the face of legislation. We must be wary of thinking that a token reference to design solves the problem. I do not believe that my noble friend thinks like that at all, but we need to be careful about what we specify and what we ask to be specified.
The schedule allows the Secretary of State to direct what issues the IPC should report on. It would be slightly bizarre for us to insist that it emphasise one thing rather than another. We will address all those issues at some length and in a wider context when we come to debate later amendments, but for the moment I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Howarth of Newport: This has been a short but exceptionally useful and important debate. I am enormously grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the Committee who have expressed support for the essence of what my noble friends and I are seeking to achieve. The noble Lord, Lord Best, was absolutely right to say that we have to be ambitious to create beauty. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said that Parliament must insist that the IPC not only does not neglect design but is ambitious in promoting good design. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, made the point that members of the commission will need critical discernment and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, put it, they will need taste. I am very grateful to both Front Benches for their support for the principle of what I seek to achieve in these debates. I note that the noble Lords, Lord Dixon-Smith and Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, were of the view that one commissioner was not enough, so perhaps we should have an option to consider more commissioners.
On the group of amendments headed by Amendment No. 28, we will have a fuller opportunity to examine ways and means to achieve an objective that I think is genuinely shared on all sides of the Committee. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that good design will help acceptability of these major infrastructure proposals, is enormously important politically and economically. I note that the Minister is serious in her desire that there should be good design. She says that the Housing and Regeneration Act was different. However, we will return to this in a later debate and see how we can achieve what we all want. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 8 to 10 not moved.]
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Business
Lord Patel of Bradford: I beg to move that the House be resumed. In moving this Motion, I suggest that the Committee stage begin again not before 8.30 pm.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Pakistan
7.30 pm
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne rose to ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the political situation in Pakistan.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, it is my pleasure to invite Her Majesty's Government to give to this House tonight their position on the political situation in Pakistan.
My questions are quite simple. I ask the Government to give us knowledge of how closely the British Government are linked to the USA on Pakistan. Is there a greater role for the United Kingdom in Pakistan today, bilaterally or with our partners in the European Union, the USA and India? How realistic are the DfID goals, given the rapidly deteriorating situation of Pakistan? Turning to the elections, given that the UK Government’s requests and this House’s Statements for a modest wish list for the February elections were not fulfilled, what next steps do Her Majesty's Government foresee? Seeing that the empowerment of minorities and the achievement of fundamental freedoms are so far off, how do Her Majesty's Government intend to tackle the fundamental lack of freedoms in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan—freedom to worship, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, lack of capacity to vote and, indeed, lack of access to the key millennium development goals?
Having myself recently held meetings in Lahore, Islamabad and along the line of control in Azad Jammu-Kashmir, I speak tonight with the voice of the people, with the messages that they requested to be delivered to Westminster, Whitehall and Brussels. Their message is that the election in February this year was fatally flawed, that it was neither free, fair nor democratic and that the situation has drastically worsened for the people since the ruling coalition has fallen apart.
As an example, 20,000 Pakistanis recently fled to Afghanistan for shelter and protection, leaving 300,000 internally displaced persons on borders in recent weeks. Twenty per cent of the state budget is spent on the military and only 2 per cent on education. Of the $2 billion given by the United States annually for the war against terror, 90 per cent goes to the military and almost nothing goes on social education, health or developmental projects, or on enhancement of the fragmentary fundamental freedoms.
Surely Her Majesty's Government would agree that the war on terror, as with so many other wars, can be won only in the hearts and minds of the local population, of the people of Pakistan. But the advance of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is aided by the ISI of Pakistan—
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Indeed, I think that it is correct to say that the country is currently in a complete political vacuum comparable in its sense of drift, instability and fragmentation to the break-up of East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh. One can feel the same loss of identity as a nation, the lack of implementation of the law, the barriers rising to democratic solutions and the fundamental freedoms and rights of the people being progressively ignored.
As a member of the European Parliament and delegate on the European Union election observation mission to Pakistan, I gave my backing to our final report on the February 2008 national and provincial elections. I and my colleagues found that, although some improvements had been made since the 2002 poll in Pakistan, the overall standards fell short of a number of international standards for genuine democratic elections.
I visited more than 20 polling stations in Lahore on polling day on 18 February 2008 and took part in the delegation that met President Musharraf and the leaders of all the main political parties as well as with many other civil society groups. I and my colleagues concluded that the February election represented the will of the people in its achievement of political change but that unless, as a matter of urgency, the recommendations of the European Union and other international observers were taken forward, Pakistan’s democracy would find it hard to survive and develop beyond its current weak and unsustainable form.
For example, what is the justification in a democracy for limiting the pool of parliamentary candidates to only those who had bachelor degrees—2 per cent of the population—or who had qualified in madrassahs? That outlawed 95 per cent of the entire population of Pakistan from putting their name forward as candidates for election. That is clearly not democracy. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, were unable to vote. Many were constitutionally excluded, some—many hundreds of thousands—because they did not have the required national identification card. A system is now in operation that is strictly limiting, whereby the national identity card has to be of a certain type. If you cannot get it, you cannot vote.
Worse than that are the discriminatory practices against certain elements of society. Let me take the Ahmadi minority. They are not recognised as Muslims by the Pakistani Government. Although they are required to register on a separate voters’ register, they must declare that their faith is not a true faith. Naturally, the Ahmadi cannot bear to vote under those conditions nor, constitutionally, are they allowed to take jobs of merit and importance. The Kashmiris in Azad Jammu-Kashmir and the northern areas were also constitutionally
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Of course there were some positive points about the election. The people came out to vote but, given that the electoral register had been manipulated, with an additional 25 million names put on at short notice with no one able to check because the electoral register was not published, by the time that lunch had arrived and I had visited 15 or 20 polling stations, perhaps a dozen people had voted in each, because the people had no idea whether they were on the electoral register.
Before the election, Her Majesty's Government asked the Pakistani Government to be clear about where the polling booths would be. Far from it. The Government chose to alter the places of many of the polling stations and did not signpost where they were. Literally millions of people were struggling to find out where the new polling stations were with no messages, no signposts, nothing. When they got there, they did not know whether they were on the list.
There were shortcomings in the voter registration process, unreliability in the electoral roll and significant numbers of people who could not vote because they did not hold the required national identification card. There are also credible reports of the police harassment of opposition party workers and agents and of the public broadcasters who could not live up to their responsibility of maintaining balance.
I also draw your Lordships’ attention to the underlying problems of the constitution. The constitution is profoundly undemocratic. It is punitive against those who are outside specified religious or ethnic boundaries. There is an Islamic court overruling, and a blasphemy law that states that whoever defiles a copy of the Holy Koran, or an extract thereof, uses derogatory remarks, and by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or any imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defies the holy name, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for life.
This constitution is therefore exceedingly difficult for even the best of the judiciary to support. In a democracy, institutions are strengthened. I leave Her Majesty’s Government with this thought and this challenge; in Pakistan, democratic institutions are being progressively weakened, and while we are doubling our aid, making Pakistan the second largest recipient of our aid, how and where can we tell that we are going to make any difference at all? What do Her Majesty’s Government propose to do?
7.41 pm
Lord Ahmed: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, for providing us with this opportunity to discuss the political situation in Pakistan. Some of her comments make me wonder whether I know Pakistan well, because I am very much connected with it. I was born there and have a school with 350 children. We
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Pakistan is a young nation; it is not a Westminster democracy. I saw from the Pakistani newspapers that the elections were not fair as they are in the United Kingdom, but all political parties have said that they were probably the fairest because General Musharraf’s party—the Pakistan Muslim League-Q party—was in charge but lost the elections. The Pakistan People’s Party got the highest vote, and Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-N came second, followed by other nationalists. It is therefore probably not fair to say that the elections were totally unfair and ridiculous.
Pakistan, as we know, has a population of 166 million and the highest population growth rate in the world. Its population is expected almost to double within 20 years. Pakistan ranks at almost the lowest level of the Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index—144th out of 158—along with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Tajikistan. Although the Government report an overall literacy rate of 48.7 per cent, many NGOs estimate it to be closer to 20 per cent of the total population. Both sources agree that literacy among women is half that among men. Thirty-two per cent of Pakistanis live below the official poverty line. Access to basic services such as primary healthcare and safe drinking water is denied to nearly half the population. About 38 per cent of children under five are malnourished.
In the past five years, the Government’s initiatives to improve health, education and the economy—the three major sectors for assessing the development or progress of a nation—have not worked. Youngsters in Pakistan are very bright and aware of their surroundings, but they have no guidance and no jobs and hate the West. This makes the grounds of Pakistan worse than Palestine and Chechnya. They perceive their Government as in bed with the West and a beneficiary of it, and see no advantage for themselves. They see American and NATO forces attacking Afghanistan and South Waziristan as an attack on their very survival.
The billions of dollars that have been given to the Pakistan Government over the past seven years have not really changed the lives of ordinary citizens; they have made no real improvement to education or their socio-economic status. What do the people of Pakistan see? They see more arms coming into the area and killing their own people, whether in Waziristan, Baluchistan or Afghanistan. I thank Her Majesty’s Government for the hundreds of millions of pounds that they have given for development in Pakistan, but has that made any difference to ordinary people in villages and in schools? Has it made a difference to building the institutions?
There are bigger questions, such as the national reconciliation order, which was passed by the Pakistan Parliament but was seen as being more for the rich, for those who had corruption charges against them and for those who are leaving presidential palaces and government buildings rather than as genuine reconciliation in Pakistan. What is needed is a genuine truth and reconciliation commission—a genuine centre for peace and dialogue where the Bughtis, the Mengals, the
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Since the terrible events in the Red Mosque in Islamabad just over a year and a half ago, more than 1,200 have died in more than 90 tragic suicide attacks. I pay tribute to Benazir Bhutto, who was a victim of one of them. The Government of Pakistan should not have raided the mosque and madrassah, killed some people, thrown others into jail and then sent them back to their villages. They should have taken them out of that place and run a deradicalisation programme from which those young people could have gone into the communities and other madrassahs, recited from the Koran and the hadiths, said that what they were taught in the Red Mosque was wrong and said what they needed to do as citizens of Pakistan and as Muslims.
We missed opportunities. In Swat, for example, we saw radicalisation and Mullah Fazlullah and his people taking over the running of the area. However, do we really understand the difference between the Pathans, the Taliban and al-Qaeda? Everyone with a beard and a turban is classed as the probable terrorist who will attack us. Do we really understand the tribal code, the Pashtun code? Do we really understand the type of tribal system that they have always had? If we expect Pakistan or other countries in Africa or Asia, to have Westminster-style democracies, we are expecting a bit too much. We need to ensure that those Governments deal with poverty, inflation and extremism. They should deal with education, health, the economy and representing people.
More importantly, we need to make sure that Pakistan is not destabilised further. We have to ask the Americans not to continue bombing inside Pakistan, which will increase radicalisation. If they continue with this policy—and we have difficulty in controlling 20 million Afghans—what about the 160 million Pakistanis? Even sending the Pakistan Army is difficult.
On a point made by the noble Baroness in relation to the attacks on the Indian embassy and the Marriott hotel involving the ISI, I should like her to give some evidence in her final reply.
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