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Africa: Corruption

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on introducing this debate. I also declare an interest as a co-founder and vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Africa. This has been a very important initiative, and we trust that the Government will take its recommendations seriously; indeed, I am sure that they will. I can also, perhaps, echo the thanks extended by the noble Lords, Lord Chidgey, Lord Hughes and others, to all those responsible for the report. I would like to add a couple of themes which have not so far been mentioned. ““The Other Side Of The Coin”” is a brilliant inspiration as a title. Let me take the metaphor a stage further. How can we get beyond the blame game, and ratchet up each other’s performance and accountability? Attributing blame, even if it is 50:50, does not matter in one sense. What is the relationship between the failures of the two sides? When I was on a CPA delegation to Nigeria recently, we were repeatedly asked when we would get President Abacha’s $5 billion back. Now, I do not think that people seriously thought that somewhere in Westminster, or even in EC4, there was $5 billion in somebody’s account. There was the perception, however, that that was where the money was and that we could do something directly about it. I will come later to the question of who can do what about what in this field of enforcement. I have no doubt that Nigeria has not been suddenly transformed into the social democracy of somewhere such as Sweden. I also echo, however, the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, that it is no justification for any part of Africa to say, ““You earn a lot more than we do, and we are justified in demanding and taking for ourselves, out of the bank account, the expatriate lifestyle””. That is the way to ruin for us all. This points to the problem of developing mutual obligations, which is the theme of the European Council’s report on strategic partnership with Africa. The European Select Committee is producing a report, in which I have been involved, on the implementation of the AU-EU idea as a strategic partnership. The right way to proceed is to bypass the blame game, with charges of imperialism and corruption, which are, in a sense, a cul-de-sac, and to take forward more creatively the question of how to raise each other’s game. Transfer pricing was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hughes and others and, economically, it is probably 10 times more important in terms of loss of income than money laundering and so on. Here, I echo the tributes paid to Transparency International. I am not the greatest fan of single-issue pressure groups, but Transparency International has worked to consistently high standards and it has concentrated on the areas where the focus must be, which I shall now come to. How can we bring about improved auditing in the north and the south as well as in Africa? The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned that some of us tried to push amendments in the Company Law Reform Bill for the dollar, or the pound in this case, and the euro to be followed in all the subsidiaries, but the reply was, ““Burdens on business; over-regulation””. However, we must acknowledge that there are huge responsibilities. If a company’s headquarters are in London that is for the convenience of the company. It will have all the advantages of being in London and all the advantages of being able to adjust its accounts to minimise tax in the higher-tax regimes. I then come to the real question on which I want to focus: how can we get more coherence into the international regulatory regime? This is a sine qua non for raising Africa’s economic performance—which, incidentally, is absolutely dreadful. Africa’s GDP is one-tenth that of Europe, even at the present purchasing power parity. I ask the Minister whether there is a real understanding of the relationship between the international tax treaties, the UN, the OECD and the other bodies in this field. If that were better understood and there were no chink between them, it might be a big step forward.