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Latin America

My Lords, it is privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, whose depth of historical knowledge of Latin America is unparalleled. I add my thanks and congratulations to the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for providing us with the opportunity for this debate. He spoke with all the authority of a lifetime’s work and engagement with Latin America. I add my voice to those that have argued that it is essential that the United Kingdom remains fully engaged with Latin America—diplomatically in terms of power politics and economically—and continues to make the contribution that we can to environmental and social progress in Latin America. We have seen the closure of some embassies, notwithstanding the fact that the Foreign Office provides remarkable value for money. The British Council has been engaged in some retrenchment and DfID is reviewing its regional assistance programme. DfID categorises nearly all the states of Latin America as middle-income countries but that bland terminology ignores the extreme inequality that persists in Latin America. The corollary of extreme inequality is extreme poverty. Earlier this week, Bob Blizzard who admirably chairs the All-Party Parliamentary British-Latin American Group, of which I have the privilege to be an officer, told the other place in a debate that 57 million people in Latin America live on less than $1 a day and 132 million people live on less than $2 a day. NGOs, including British-based ones, do remarkable work in assisting social progress but I would contend that the Government cannot avert their gaze, not least with the commitments that they have rightly made to the millennium development goals. In truth, Latin America needs not so much cash help as technical assistance to enable its countries to play their part and thrive in a global, knowledge-based economy. Because of the population balance, Latin America is a young continent, so there are important opportunities for educational links with our colleges and universities. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, alluded to this. The growth of the Latin American economies has been and is impressive. As has been said, this is important in a whole variety of ways, not least because of their role as commodity providers. There is impressive growth in many countries and, of course, we have recently become vividly aware of the economic performance, potential and power of Brazil. It was deeply pleasing to hear the speech that President Lula made at the Mansion House and to hear the response of the City of London to what he proposed. While there is impressive growth in many Latin American countries, it has not yet led to discernible poverty reduction in all too many of them. Therefore, it is in our interests as well as theirs to play our part in developing relations, including trade. It is also in our interests to encourage and help the countries of Latin America to achieve environmental sustainability. Equally, it is in our self-interest to play a very constructive part in relation to the problem of drugs. When I was, until a year ago, the Member of Parliament for Newport, I was painfully aware of the activities of yardie gangs who, having saturated the markets in Bristol and Birmingham, turned their attention to Newport. About three years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Key West, which is the base of operations for the combined United States and United Kingdom international and inter-agency drive to interdict drugs traffic.  The intelligence-led operations are of great sophistication and are a model of collaboration, but they were grievously under-resourced and, indeed, became more so when resources had to be diverted to Iraq. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that there is a determination to continue to invest what resources we can in this extraordinarily important work of ensuring that the drugs that emanate from Latin America and transit across the Caribbean are not able to proceed further in our direction. I hear that SOCA is to withdraw drugs liaison officers from Peru. If that is the case, I believe that it will be an error of judgment. Crop eradication in Colombia has recently been almost matched by extensive planting. There is increased production in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia; there is processing in Argentina and in many countries in south America. Between 1981 and 2001, the United States spent £8.57 billion on international narcotics control, mostly in Latin America, yet estimated production in south America during that period rose from 150 tonnes to 870 tonnes and the price halved. We now see US budgets for that purpose falling, the war on drugs apparently being lost and the will to fight it attenuating. We have just heard that Mexico has decriminalised personal drugs use, a policy that will no doubt add to the difficulty of the relationship between illegal Latin American immigrants in the US and others in that country. Are we to give up? We could of course go down the same route of decriminalisation as the Portuguese have done—as far as I know, the end of the world has not occurred in Portugal—but if that is not to be our policy, we must renew our work. That is extraordinarily important for our own communities. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, told us, the progress of democracy in Latin America has been remarkable, in contrast, sadly, to what has been seen in Africa. Although I would not wish us to abandon Africa, should we not also, however, be backing success in Latin America? Twenty years ago and more, the governments of Latin America were all too often authoritarian regimes. They failed to deliver the promises of reform that they made when they came to power. There were civil wars, military coups and border conflicts. In Colombia there was the drugs cartel and, effectively, two armed governments facing each other. Then there was the debt crisis and the terrible fall in living standards that followed. The turnaround has been extraordinary. We have seen revived democracy in Uruguay and Chile, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, told us, against the historical and cultural background of Chile the election of President Bachelet is a remarkable event. There is democracy now in countries previously without that tradition: Paraguay, Bolivia and many of the countries of central America. Changes of government have been handled peacefully. Mexico has moved from being a one-party state to a multi-party democracy. But democracy in Latin America still needs support. It takes time and intelligent effort to develop democracy. We should offer our experience in helping states to develop their administrative capacity, improve accountability in their institutions of representative government, including political parties, and ensure that governance is good and the judiciary incorrupt. Deepened democracy will make possible sustained and equitable growth and fiscal stability will help to relieve endemic poverty. We, in particular, need to be there. Unfortunately, the Americans are unpopular in the region, as President Bush recently found in Argentina. There are bitter memories of United States intervention in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. I believe, although I would not expect the Minister to comment, that there is a poor quality of analysis by the State Department. It is curious that they allow themselves to be so nettled by President Chavez. We can take a cooler and more pragmatic view. As the noble Lord, Lord Walker, reminded us, China is highly energetic in the region. Britain, with and through the European Union, must remain fully committed in Latin America, for ethical, commercial and strategic regions. Of course it is a problem to spread ourselves everywhere but it would be a huge missed opportunity if we neglected Latin America.