Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-483)
Professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann
11 JULY 2008
Q480 Lord Haskins: That is one which
frightens people.
Professor Lehmann: That is one which
frightens people, yes. On the other hand, there is no regulation
so everybody is going round doing their own patchwork. Even in
Europe we are not being particularly successful in that. I do
not know what Pascal Lamy's reaction to this suggestion was, but
it would be very, very important to get a sense of realistic direction
and inspiration, coming back to the question from Lord Moser about
people being bored with WTO and Doha, partly because the issues
it is dealing with, apart from certain vested interests, are seen
as being very remote.
Q481 Lord Haskins: You could argue
success creates boredom. The WTO has achieved a heck of a lot.
Professor Lehmann: It has, absolutely.
This comes back to the PR bit. Those of us who have been able
to witness, as many in this room have, during the course of the
last several decades GATT before WTO, it is a very different world.
I was living in the UK in the late 1960s and 1970s and I remember
when I was going over to Calais and had to be stopped and the
car was searched and so on, and vice versa. It is a very, very
different world now and it is fantastic world in which we live
and it is taken for granted but has to be heralded.
Q482 Lord Maclennan of Rogart: In
a sense this has already been answered. You have repeated that
perhaps the best thing would be to end the Doha Round. I am not
sure exactly what you mean. You talked about the possibility,
for example, I suppose of locking in existing tariffs as being
a way of ending it, but by most tests that would look like a failure.
Your answer to what happens in that circumstance seems to be it
has failed there, but give it a bigger job. Why do you think that
would have any more prospect of success? I look at the presidential
communiqués that come out of the European Union on climate
change and every single one of them over the last two or three
years has spoken of it remaining the sovereign choice of each
member country which energy form they will choose. If we cannot
get it into multilateralism in the European Union, what prospects
for WTO? Perhaps that is wider than my Lord Chairman wanted me
to take the question. What prospects really is the question.
Professor Lehmann: I think that the prospects
for the kinds of things I am talking about are very remote if
looked at from a realistic perspective. I continue combating for
them, but with lots of members of my family and friends saying,
"Don't you have better things to do with your time",
is a bit reminiscent of that guy who was running after windmills.
You say it is a broader question but my conviction is that the
multilateral trading system, improving it, developing it, enhancing
it, is fundamental to the general objective of making this world
a more equitable and wealthier place in the sense of distribution,
human dignity and so on and so forth. I come back to the impact
that Kenya had on me. It was the second time I had gone but I
was there for 12 days. Sixty per cent of the population of Nairobi
live in slums, which is five per cent of the territory of Nairobi.
The population is going to increase by another 15 million over
the course of the next 20 years. On the basis of the current situation
it is the slums that are going to get increasingly full with probably
a diminishing amount of space because they are also looking at
land development, et cetera. This is the kind of trend that needs
to be reversed. I do not believe that it is because we get a Doha
deal that the trend is going to get reversed, it is a general
thing of trying to improve global governance, domestic governance,
national governance and trying to get economic systems in place
that are going to be conducive to growth but also to what is now
being called inclusive growth. I admit it is a bit of a buzzword,
but I think it is a reasonably useful buzzword. That is a struggle
that is going to take place over time. I bought William Hague's
biography on Wilberforce. I have not read it yet, but a couple
of years ago I did read a fantastic book on the abolition of slavery
in the UK called Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild The
thing that was so striking about it was that it did take several
generations even to get into people's consciousness. Without being
pompous, because that is certainly not my intention, we do have
a very long-term challenge ahead of us. While I am extremely gloomy
insofar as the near future is concerned, I am much more positive
insofar as the longer term is concerned if we can go through some
of the series of obstacles we have right now. Right now I do not
think there is particularly any cause for encouragement. There
are problems of governance, as The Economist pointed out,
there are problems of politics, attitudes of people, and so on.
The struggle has to go on and we have to try and perfect the institutions
that we have even if it is on an incremental basis. That is why
I think reaching out is going to be terribly important, to try
and provide some sense of hope. The idea of a Development Agenda
could have been a good one but it needed to be much more precise
in what its definition was and what its objectives were meant
to be.
Q483 Chairman: This has been extremely
interesting, Professor Lehmann, particularly following our meeting
with Monsieur Lamy, who has his mind and heart concentrated solely
on the Ministerial and, if you like, a dash to get this deal done.
It will be very interesting to see which of you turn out to be
more right than the other.
Professor Lehmann: I hope he will be.
Chairman: In terms of the immediate perspective,
of course. This has been very interesting and very clear, thank
you very much indeed for coming to talk to us.
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