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Commonwealth

My Lords, I echo the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for introducing this debate. We should emphasise that the Commonwealth is an extraordinary resource for the United Kingdom. It hugely enriches our experience in many areas of life. It is the envy of many European countries, particularly in the university world. In the world of science, engineering and industry, the UK gains enormously from the Commonwealth, including the new Commonwealth. One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century is Ramanujan from India. When I was at the Met Office, Professor Chan of Hong Kong university provided the key idea to improve the Met Office’s forecasts of tropical cyclones, which, as I have mentioned before in this Chamber, was the most accurate forecast of Hurricane Katrina. We need to understand and appreciate the Commonwealth more. Culture is, of course, a remarkable dimension of that, and we now have bestseller novels and films coming from all over the Commonwealth. One is very pleased to see them coming from Africa as well as from south Asia. But I believe that we need to strengthen further our links with Commonwealth countries, strengthen institutions and make better use of our existing arrangements. Perhaps because so much of the new Commonwealth was born out of struggle, it can help in the complex world to reduce misunderstandings. I have been privileged to see a little bit of how the Commonwealth emerged, as I enjoyed an exotic childhood in India, in the colonial era, with dancing cobras on the floor on Christmas day. I was present at Merdeka in Malaya in 1957, when the guerrilla war was still under way. The United Kingdom’s deputy high commissioner was asked to play on his piano for the Tunku Abdul Rahman Benjamin Britten’s submission for the national anthem in an international competition; you can imagine that Benjamin Britten’s submission was characteristic but unsuitable, and Malaya decided instead to slow down a local dance tune, which is still the national anthem. The deputy high commissioner was my father. In the 1960s, I saw an interesting aspect of the development of independence, with the Ugandan army not always working correctly as that country was tormented by crises following independence. In my career as an academic, working at the Met Office and as president of an NGO, I have made many visits to Commonwealth countries—14 in all—and worked with many colleagues at universities here in the UK. I was in Accra last week in a conference on coastal zones of sub-Saharan Africa, where we were bringing together technical people, including scientists and local government people. I shall make a few specific points on which the Minister might comment in her reply. First, as I have said before in this Chamber, we have many visiting experts coming to the UK, some of them to provide information to us but some of them to learn from our institutions. I believe that we have an inadequate way of introducing them—in fact, we do not introduce them—to the culture and history aspects of the UK. They come here and have a technical and academic experience and then go away. Last week we heard about the tragic expert who came to the University of Reading, learned about explosives and automatic systems and was one of the people involved in the bad events in Indonesia. The United States does much more to introduce people to the whole aspect of that country. Even mathematicians and scientists are told about the constitution of America. I am afraid that there seems still to be a feeling in Britain that if you are a mathematician, when you come to Britain you should just stay in your lab. I should remind noble Lords that the current Prime Minister of Singapore is a mathematician who was trained in Cambridge—so mathematicians can be quite important! My second point arises from our meetings last week with mayors of cities in Ghana. They commented that twinning cities is a very valuable way in which to share experience. There are two cities in Ghana that are twinned with cities in the UK. The high commissioner there commented that the process of facilitating and improving that system may need further work; I hope that the DfID could do that, as it is certainly called for in those countries. The Minister of Tourism and Modernisation of the capital city in Ghana commented that the city of Accra has three town planning officers and that the city of London has many hundreds, while Amsterdam has 600. He believes that our town planning and local government experts could perhaps be seconded to help with the extremely complex issues which arise when dealing with the urban areas in Africa. Thirdly, in non-governmental organisations, networks are flourishing, but more help needs to be given. It is interesting that the Commonwealth is not exclusive—it works with other networks—and in Africa the NePAD network is beginning to help in working with Commonwealth initiatives. I believe that we need to work wherever there are appropriate local networks. Academic support was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, with regard to the role of computers, which is very important. It is a tragedy to see academic and technical institutions in Africa having almost no scientific literature provided, when libraries here are throwing that out and it is not being circulated. There are projects for that, but it still does not seem to be getting through. My noble friend Lord Desai talked about natural disasters, which, along with climate change, are an important area, and not only for future emergencies. One of the real causes of concern is shortages of food as the climate changes. UK government agencies can provide the expertise to help and they could do more, with encouragement from central government. There always seems to be a budgetary problem in Whitehall about that. We have seen the RAF doing excellent work in India, but I believe that our government agencies could be encouraged more. Finally, I have a political question for the Minister that has not been raised: what are the rules for joining and leaving the Commonwealth? Mozambique is now in the Commonwealth, but I believe that Hong Kong is not. In fact, when I was at the Met Office, there was the interesting business of ensuring that Hong Kong remained as an independent member of many of the UN agencies. It is hosting the World Trade Organisation because it is in the World Meteorological Organisation. I believe it is no longer in the Commonwealth, however, and that affects people in terms of their eligibility for arrangements in the UK. Do we have an arrangement for those countries that, for special reasons, leave the Commonwealth, so that they have some associate category? That may be important.