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I congratulate all in this House, in the other place and in the NGOs who have been involved in the very important cluster munitions Bill. Cluster bombs are air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapons that eject smaller sub-missions. They have been used extensively in recent conflicts around the world in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Lebanon and are still active in 31 countries. I ask the Government to put
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I support the Prime Minister and the Government in their commitment to our strategy in Afghanistan, which is vital to Britain's national security. Along with the international community, the United Nations and the World Bank, we are the third largest donor and have committed a further £510 million over the next four years to enable the people of Afghanistan to develop their government and society.
Today, President Karzai has been sworn in for a second term. As part of his new presidency, I ask the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Douglas Alexander to insist that the president leads the fight against corruption at every level to ensure its eradication, and to ensure that he has regular meetings with Members of both Houses. To date, I am informed-I know-that he has not had positive meetings with elected female Members of either House. Female Members of the House do not have offices in Kabul, their offices are in their constituencies, so it is very difficult for them to form any caucuses among themselves or with male Members of either House. He must also promote education of girls and women's rights.
I welcome the Government's commitment to the international development Bill, which will make a binding government commitment to spend of 0.7 per cent of gross national income on international development by 2013. That Bill puts beyond doubt the Government's determination to deliver on our long-held international development commitments, particularly at this time of global economic downturn, to meet the millennium development goals and to ensure a flow of aid to developing countries.
In June next year, the G20 will be meeting in Canada. The G20 has continued to play a crucial role in tackling the international financial economic crisis that we face. The global economy cannot recover or be rebuilt if half the world is left behind, or if half the world remains at risk of falling even further behind as a result of the global economic crisis. All recommendations emanating from the next G20 summit must be considered and developed, with a particular focus on the inclusion of women at all levels of decision-making and all aspects of economic empowerment.
To ignore women would not be smart economics. Invest in women and improve the world. Further, I ask the Government to request that two further items be on the agenda: maternal health-every woman must have the right to a safe birth-and that rape no longer be a tool of war.
3.20 pm
Lord Tugendhat: My Lords, I have listened with some amazement to the strictures about the Conservative Party's attitude to Europe from the noble Baroness on the Labour Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, and even my friend the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. I have certainly disapproved of a good deal of the recent history of the Conservative Party's attitude to Europe. Much of it, I think, has been counterproductive and contrary to Britain's interests. Indeed, with a
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First, it has enabled an incoming Conservative Government to avoid getting embroiled in the sort of protracted domestic campaign and subsequent referendum-as well as the international negotiations which created so much difficulty for the Wilson Government in the 1970s-that it put much of the rest of their foreign policy in balk for the period. Had the Conservatives stuck with the principle of a referendum, it would have dominated the first two or even three years of a Government and left little room, time and energy for the other important issues that will confront an incoming Government next year.
The second achievement of the speech is that it sets out a policy on the basis of which a constructive approach to and engagement with Europe can be built. I base that judgment on the section of the speech that comes after Mr Cameron praises the European Union's contribution to the spread of,
in which he sets out the objectives that he wants to achieve.
I welcome his stated intention to be an active member of the European Union. I believe he sets the right priorities when he talks of working with our partners on climate change, fighting global poverty and boosting global growth. I think that he is right, too, when he commits his future Government to keeping open the European Union's doors to new members and to standing for open markets and a strong transatlantic relationship, as well as open relations with rising powers like China and India.
I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Howell said in his opening speech about the importance of Asia, and I pay tribute to the fact that he was in many ways ahead of his time some years ago in drawing attention to that. But there is no zero-sum game between engaging with Asia and engaging with the European Union. Indeed, by building a constructive policy within the European Union, we will enhance our ability to engage constructively with the rising powers of Asia, and that should certainly be our objective. Contrary to what some members of my party might feel, I think that Mr Cameron will find a warm welcome for his approach when he enters Downing Street and will find that there will be allies with whom he will be able to work.
I would like to say also a few words about Mr Cameron's ambition to restore Britain's opt-out from social and employment legislation and from the charter of fundamental rights. I note that in making those points he says:
"If we want to make changes, we will need to do that through negotiation with our European partners, and we will need the agreement of all 27 member states".
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That is indeed true, and it is very different from the approach that some others have recommended in these matters. I would urge him, in seeking that agreement, to negotiate quietly and temperately and not to turn the negotiation into some sort of totem or virility test, as some will urge upon him. The more he does so, the harder it will be to achieve success.
I also think it is important to weigh the price of success. By that I mean that, once you start unpicking elements of the treaty, you do not quite know where it will lead. Others may be very happy to make concessions to Britain on the areas in which Britain is seeking concessions so long as they themselves can get concessions in other areas. We might find that the price of securing the objectives which I have just been mentioning is that others will want derogations from competition policy or from the internal market policies or from some other area to which Britain itself attaches great importance to the application right across the European Union. So by all means seek to bring about changes, but look at those changes in the context of the overall picture and weigh the price that might have to be paid in achieving them.
I should like to make one final point. All the member states of the European Union have suffered from the financial crisis in material terms, some more than us, some less. Britain, however, has in some ways suffered a double blow. All of us will remember the way in which the Prime Minister would go to Brussels and boast about the British model and our unprecedented record and hold out Britain and his policies as a model that others should follow. All will remember how he worshipped at the shrine of Alan Greenspan and the plaque which is up in the Treasury to record that fact. All will recall how he held up the way in which regulation was conducted in this country as the model that others should follow.
In many ways, Gordon Brown epitomised the zeitgeist of the boom years-a rather improbable association for such a puritanical person, but, none the less, he did in many ways embody the zeitgeist. As the boom years have come to an end and as some of the fallacies and mistakes of the boom years are coming home to roost, so Britain has suffered a reputational loss as well as the material loss. This is the point on which an incoming Government will have to do a good deal of work to rebuild our reputation and to pursue our policies with, I hope, a success but also a humility which the present Prime Minister has so sorely lacked.
3.30 pm
Lord Roper: My Lords, as chairman of the European Union Committee, I am not able to take part in partisan debate on these issues but, as usual, I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, extremely wise. In discussing the European Union, this year's gracious Speech was able to move on from the incessant discussion of institutional issues to consider the effective role the Union can have in sustaining economic recovery and combating climate change. However, as we meet here, the European Council will be beginning to meet in Brussels to try to decide who will be the President of the European Council and the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. I do not intend to
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The first of these is the new powers given by protocol 2 of the Lisbon treaty to national Parliaments to submit reasoned opinions on subsidiarity to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. The principle of subsidiarity in the European Union, whereby the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objective of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states at central, regional or local level has been explicit in European law since the treaty of Maastricht. It has been an issue that the European Union Committee has watched carefully, and it is interesting to note that in the past 12 months questions on subsidiarity have been raised by the committee in correspondence with Ministers no fewer than 31 times. A recent example was a proposal from the Commission for a Council recommendation on seasonal influenza vaccination that was considered by the sub-committee on social and consumer affairs last month. The sub-committee shares the Government's doubts about the compliance of this recommendation with the subsidiarity principle and has held it under scrutiny, but it has done more than that. It has notified other Parliaments and their scrutiny committees of its concern and understands that they have followed it up with their Governments.
The Lisbon treaty, which invites national Parliaments to submit reasoned opinions, also makes a provision whereby if a given proportion of Parliaments submit reasoned opinions arguing that a piece of draft legislation breaches subsidiarity within eight weeks of its publication, it will oblige the Commission to review the legislation and, if a majority of Parliaments have submitted reasoned opinions-the so-called "orange card"-it is obliged to resubmit it to the Council and the European Parliament. In addition, under Article 8 of the protocol that will come into effect on 1 December, we as a Chamber of a national Parliament are given the right to refer enacted legislation to the European Court of Justice in respect of subsidiarity. All of this represents significant increases in the powers of national Parliaments with regard to European legislation. In recent months, your Lordships' European Union Committee has been giving a good deal of thought to how this will operate in practice. This is set out on its webpage and in appendix 8 of its annual report, which was published last week.
The second development following the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty will be effective parliamentary scrutiny of opt-ins. The United Kingdom has had the right to opt in or not to opt in to legislation on visas, asylum and immigration and the free movement of persons since the treaty of Amsterdam when those parts of the justice and home affairs areas ceased to be subject to unanimity in the Council. Under the treaty of Lisbon, unanimity will also come to an end on other matters of justice and home affairs; namely, police and judicial co-operation. The UK will now have the right to opt in to legislation on them as well. If the UK wishes to involve itself in the detailed negotiations on such proposals, it must indicate its decision to opt in within three months of the draft legislation being published.
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Noble Lords may remember that during the passage of the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008, both the European Union Committee and the Select Committee on the Constitution argued that there was a need to have a proper parliamentary procedure for considering UK opt-ins. Our then Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, assured us that,
the example given was readmission agreements with third countries-
- "they would not opt in during the first eight weeks of the three month period; that if during this period this Committee published a report on the proposed opt-in recommending a debate, time would be made for one".
- "would be on an amendable motion, allowing for a vote; and that the Government, although not bound by the views expressed, would take note of them".
As with the subsidiarity changes, this will clearly require changes not only to the working arrangements for the European Union Committee, which we have now agreed, but to the scrutiny reserve resolution that was passed by the House and to the committee's terms of reference. We are in discussions with the Government about these matters, but we hope that there can be an early decision as your Lordships' Procedure Committee will also need to consider changes to the procedures of the House.
An example of problems in the application of opt-ins can be seen in recent work by our sub-committee on justice and home affairs. When the protocol allowing opt-ins was negotiated as part of the treaty of Amsterdam, no thought was given to the situation that would arise if the Commission proposed amending a regulation or directive into which the United Kingdom had opted. What would happen if the Government did not wish the new version of the measure to apply to the UK and did not opt in? This is precisely the situation that arose earlier this year. The Commission is proposing entirely new versions of all the main instruments that govern the common European asylum system, and last December it proposed a new version of the directive that laid down the reception conditions for asylum seekers. The Government do not like it and have not opted in.
Once the recast directive applies to the rest of the European Union, will the existing directive continue to apply to the UK? For the Home Office, which believes that its repeal will extend to the UK, the answer is no. However, the committee pointed out that the repeal is made by a provision in the new directive, none of which applies to the UK because we have not opted into it. The recast directive includes the repealing provision. The Home Office was not persuaded by our arguments, but we sent our report to the Commission, whose response, which was received last month, comes down firmly on the side of your Lordships' House. It states unequivocally:
"The Commission considers that the UK would remain bound by the unamended form of the Reception Conditions Directive. That directive would not be repealed for the UK".
These issues do not seem to have occurred to the Commission or the Home Office until they were raised by the Select Committee, but they are not technical
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The third consequence of the Lisbon treaty, as far as parliamentary consideration is concerned, is the significant increase in the amount of European Union legislation that will now be subject to co-decision by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. As well as extending co-decision to the remaining justice and home affairs issues, as I mentioned, it will apply in future to decisions on trade and agriculture, on which up to now the European Parliament has had to be consulted but has not had the right to co-decide. The distinction between compulsory and non-compulsory expenditure will also be eliminated, which means that the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament will have to reach agreement on all parts of the European Union budget in future.
Earlier this year, the European Union Committee conducted an inquiry into the impact of co-decision on national parliamentary scrutiny. We examined the suggestion that the growth in agreements between the Council of Ministers-in practice, between the country holding the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers-the European Parliament-in practice, the rapporteur for the committee of the Parliament concerned who worked on the dossier-and the Commission in informal "trilogues" made national parliamentary scrutiny more difficult. To continue to perform scrutiny effectively will require a regular flow of information from UK officials in Brussels to the committee and its sub-committees. It also raises the question of our continuing contacts with Members of the European Parliament. With increased co-decision these become more important.
The Lisbon treaty includes specific references to co-operation between national Parliaments and the European Parliament. The Speaker of the Swedish Parliament has convened a meeting of the conference of European Speakers in Stockholm in early December to discuss these and I shall represent the Lord Speaker. We already have COSAC, which brings together the committees dealing with European matters in the 27 member states and Members of the European Parliament. The future lies in developing that body and not in creating any new institutions.
3.41 pm
Lord Cameron of Dillington: My Lords, we are covering a wide-ranging agenda today and I want to speak about African agriculture. I sat on the APPG for food, agriculture and development, and chaired some of the sessions. We received evidence from a most eminent and international group of witnesses. I have spoken before in this House about world food security and I believe that the world as a whole will be
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Africa contains 23 of the 30 least-developed countries in the world. There nearly 80 per cent of the population depend for their livelihood on agriculture. Yet Africa's agricultural performance is the worst in the world. It has appallingly low yields; it loses a high percentage of its crops, both before and after harvest; it uses only a tiny proportion of its rainfall for irrigation; and it has little infrastructure in terms of training, transport, microfinancing, crop storage or even local markets. The farmers, 70 per cent of whom are women, have little understanding of how to sell their surplus crops to earn an income and thus pull themselves out of poverty and their neighbours out of famine. However, there is huge potential for agricultural growth in Africa. It has abundant resources and 12 times the land area of India with only half as many people to feed. International Food Policy Research Institute data show that doubling the productivity of food staples across Africa by 2015, which is certainly physically possible, would raise GDP growth to 5.5 per cent, lift 70 million people out of poverty and turn Africa from a food deficit region to a surplus region with 20 per cent to 40 per cent lower food prices.
Most people now recognise that it needs an agricultural revolution to take Africa out of poverty. Asian Governments kick-started their green revolution by spending 15 per cent or more of their budgets on agriculture. This, for instance, allowed Vietnam to turn itself from being a net importer of rice into being the world's secondlargest exporter and allowed China to take 400 million people out of poverty by focusing on smallholder agriculture. Smallholder agriculture is definitely part of the solution in Africa and should not be viewed as part of the problem. Agriculture is the key. The World Bank estimates that a 1 per cent increase in agricultural GDP in Africa reduces poverty by four times as much as a 1 per cent increase in non-agricultural GDP.
Donor countries now spend less than 5 per cent of ODA on agriculture. It was 18 per cent 30 years ago, but we took our eye off the ball. The UK gives a smaller share to agriculture than most others-a mere 1.37 per cent of its total African aid in 2005-06. With our own efforts so weak, how can we possibly chivvy African Governments to fulfil their vital 2004 Maputo commitment to invest 10 per cent of their budgets into agriculture? We have to get our own house in order.
We are at last seeing a turnaround of the outrageous slashing of agricultural R&D budgets which has occurred in this country over the past 30 years. However, the main point I wish to make today is that any R&D is still completely useless unless it is translated into work on farms and in communities. I know from my own experience in the UK that such knowledge transfer is a two-way process, a partnership between growers and scientists, and if the pipeline between the two is fractured then everyone is wasting their time. Blue sky research with no bearing on the grower's ability to produce is pointless.
We used to have a revered reputation for agricultural extension in Africa, which we are losing. So, please, let us have less talk about DfID not having a "competitive
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It is vital that DfID's country programmes fully support the overall agricultural agenda. At the very least we should be putting 10 per cent of our ODA into agriculture in those countries that are upholding their Maputo commitment-that is, we should be helping those that help themselves. I repeat, agriculture is the key and DfID must be in there helping to unlock that potential.
3.46 pm
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, we are at a watershed moment in international affairs. Less dramatic, admittedly, than the last such moment when the Berlin wall came down 20 years ago, but nevertheless a watershed moment for Britain's foreign policy, for that of the European Union and for the wider world. That brief unilateral moment when the US was the sole world power left standing has ended, its end hastened by the misconceived and clumsily executed policies of President George W Bush.
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