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Commonwealth

My Lords, I join others in warmly thanking my noble friend Lord Freeman for promoting this debate. The timing is very nice. Next week we have the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta, a country, a state, a nation that I had the pleasure of visiting recently to participate in preparatory discussions on the prospects for CHOGM. That will be a big event in what is admittedly a small island community. We should give them our full support and warm feelings in carrying out that important conference event. It has been a stimulating debate, because there is much experience here among your Lordships. I was especially thrilled to hear the voice of Australia coming through strongly in the debate in the contribution from my noble friends Lady Gardner and Lord Goodlad, who returns from a highly successful tour as High Commissioner in Canberra. A decade ago, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the other place, which I then had the honour of chairing, issued a very positive and optimistic report about the future role of the Commonwealth. We argued in that report that the Commonwealth was acquiring a new significance in a networked world and that Britain should make much more of its connections and overall Commonwealth potential. We came up with a long string of recommendations and said that there were hard practical reasons for Britain to give much more attention to its Commonwealth links. That was in 1996, just under a decade ago. What has happened in that decade? Not much, I fear. Of course, there were a lot of speeches. We were warmly applauded on all sides for our report. The incoming Labour Government produced some fine rhetoric about how they were going to renew our commitment to the Commonwealth. I hope that it does not sound as though I am being world-weary in saying that a great many of the speeches made then are still being today and a great many of the ideas promoted then are still promoted today—some of them in today’s debate. The unwelcome truth is that for too many people, the Commonwealth remains a useful talking shop with no particular new role in this turbulent and dangerous world. That applies in particular to the printed media, which have a spasmodic and infrequent interest in the Commonwealth. Some things that have happened since that report have been negative. The whole Zimbabwe saga, about which my noble friend Lord Blaker spoke, has settled down now in that Zimbabwe has gone, it has walked out, but it has not been a glorious affair. Coming down to detail, my noble and learned friend Lord Howe rightly raised with such strength and feeling the deplorably negative development of the Commonwealth Institute. He is absolutely correct to do so. What is happening there and how the trustees have been left with no way out is deplorable. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, when she replies, will tell us that the Government will apply their mind to a way forward on that front. Things cannot be left as they are. Despite all that striking of a gloomy note looking backwards, the arguments that we advanced 10 years ago for putting the Commonwealth much more at the centre of British foreign and commercial policy are many times stronger than they were in the middle of the previous decade. I should like to share three overriding reasons why that is so. First, the Commonwealth is a living network of relations that stretches across all continents—Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas—and across almost all religions in an age when global reach is the essential quality and characteristic needed of our institutions to tackle global problems. In particular, I emphasise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar: that the Commonwealth is not just what we see on the surface of governmental organisations, it is a vast web of more than 200 non-governmental and sub-governmental organisations creating the sort of network that is relevant to the information age. That does not exist in many of the other institutions that we invented back in the 20th century, which cannot produce that quality. Secondly, the Commonwealth happens to be the fastest-growing entity in the world. I do not think that people have quite adjusted to that, but it is growing faster than China and contains at least six of the most dynamic knowledge-driven economies in the world. It is not just a question of raw materials and commodities, it now contains some of the fastest growing economies. As our trade and investment tilt away from Europe, as they are bound to do, towards the rising Asia, as the whole centre of gravity continues to move in the Asian direction, so the whole Commonwealth network becomes infinitely more relevant for us in hard commercial terms, not just symbolic or historic terms, although they stick in people’s memories. My third reason why we should consider the matter anew is the most significant. The Commonwealth as an institution not only survives but attracts new members—plenty of nations want to join and several have joined in recent years—when the world’s other multi-national organisations, designed, as I said, for the 20th century, are, frankly, failing us and in deep trouble. The Commonwealth provides scope for a real North-South dialogue on trade and security matters on equal, rather than patronising terms. When we have problems at the UN, with its members at loggerheads over fundamental issues and with severe internal problems to boot when we have the EU apparently ““stalled””—I use that word taken from the Prime Minister—or at least becalmed, with sharply divided views among its members on trade liberalisation, security and world affairs; when we see the WTO struggling to avoid deadlock at Doha on farm subsidies with zero help, I am afraid, from some of our European partners; and when those outside existing trade blocs feel increasingly frustrated that their access to the richer markets is still barred in many ways, we begin to realise that there must be better ways forward. I suggest that we turn to the Commonwealth where the scene looks far more positive. On the economic side, intra-Commonwealth trade appears to be expanding steadily and intra-Commonwealth investment flows between Commonwealth members, although the statistics are hard to accumulate, also are clearly expanding. More than that, the Commonwealth offers, at least potentially, the kind of forum in which the faster-growing and richer countries, and the poorer and smaller countries, can speak on equal terms, and in which the faiths can sit down and discuss their problems calmly. There are 500 million Muslims in the Commonwealth. I know that there are some backslidings, but almost all Commonwealth members are seriously committed to contributing to global peace and stability rather than pursuing endless vendettas against America, the West, colonialism and all the other shibboleths of yesterday. It is time to think about how a more ambitious Commonwealth of nations building on this successful model could become a real force in opening up the world economy and in uniting the more well intentioned and responsible countries on our planet in facing up to all the ugly dangers of the age: terrorism, pariah nations, paralysing poverty, inter-ethnic wars, corruption, rotten governance, and so the list goes on. One is left with the final question: can the Commonwealth rise up to and meet that wider role and more ambitious challenge in its present form? There are perhaps ways to move on to a Commonwealth ““Mark Two”” which could fulfil some of those hopes. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned the idea of closer association between existing Commonwealth and other countries. There is a great deal in that. There are other democracies—countries in the ““good guy”” camp—which would love to work much more closely with the Commonwealth. I cannot resist mentioning Japan. It is a nation returning to normal country status; it wants to abandon decades of pacifism; and it wants to contribute to global peace and stability in a decisive way and on a scale commensurate with its economic weight, which happens to be colossal, because it produces 13 per cent of the world’s GNP. If we ponder on the idea of an intimately allied grouping, built on the Commonwealth model, which brought along in association Japan, but included India—the giant awakening—Australasia, which is almost the most dynamic area in the world; the UK, which is also, I am happy to say, extremely dynamic; and a number of other countries, that would be a network of common wealth, interests and power able to speak on friendly, but firm and equal, terms with the American giant, which is so important, and also, of course, to stand up for the common values of justice and democracy in a way that no other international institution currently seems capable of doing. The other day a very able and leading commentator, Wolfgang Munchau, at the Financial Times—a super-sympathetic, EU-centric newspaper—described the European Union as,"““the wrong institutional platform to deal with globalisation””." Some would say, sadly, the same about the deeply troubled United Nations. Perhaps, as the new century gets under way, there is a gap to be filled in the architecture of our global institutions, or perhaps a Commonwealth ““Mark Two”” might do the job better.