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International Tribunals (Sierra Leone) Bill [Lords]

That saves me reading out a paragraph of my briefing, but it is important. I am sure that the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey will welcome the fact that the Special Court has an outreach and education programme, which is recognised as a model from which other international criminal tribunals can learn. As well as our support for the court’s outreach programme, the United Kingdom is contributing £160,000 to a major BBC World Service Trust project that feeds the outlets to which my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby has referred, and that develops, deploys and supports a team of six Liberians and Sierra Leonean journalists to cover the court proceedings from The Hague. I know that hon. Members will welcome that. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Banbury for mentioning the curse of the diamond trade. He knows this, but Sierra Leone has been working hard to achieve Kimberley process certification. It remains a fragile region and the UK is working hard with Sierra Leone to ensure that progress is maintained, including in preventing conflict diamonds from entering Sierra Leone from Côte d’Ivoire. As I said, the hon. Gentleman drew our attention to the curse of ad hockery. He is right that we have to get the structure and system of international law properly organised and funded. The international community must tackle that project with much greater urgency and determination than it has shown until now. You would not, Madam Deputy Speaker, allow me to stray from the content of the Bill, but that should be one of the centrepieces of the reform of the secretariat and of the operation of the United Nations. The lack of reform has been nothing less than a scandal. So often one wonders why countries that seem to be the ones that would benefit most from that reform are those which oppose it. I think that it has everything to do with corruption and with the disgraceful behaviour that we have seen in the past from the leaders of those countries. The United Kingdom Government, with the support of the House, have argued long and hard for much greater reform of the United Nations, of its secretariat and indeed of the priority that it gives to such issues. As the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey said, international law is much the poorer if it does not have a chapter that is effective, robust and able to try international criminals—not in an ad hoc way but in an organised way. I could not agree more. I have heard the message of the hon. Member for Banbury and I will try my best to ensure that the United Nations secretariat hears it, too.