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Commonwealth

My Lords, I also warmly welcome the Minister. I congratulate the noble Lord on his initiative, and thank him particularly for mentioning the sterling work of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the UK branch of which I had the privilege to chair for four years. Time permits only to mention some of the leftovers from the Valletta CHOGM two years ago and to ask what new initiatives Her Majesty’s Government propose for that. The consensus is that Valletta was very positive on the political agenda and on good governance and democracy, as well as in trade and development, but questions still arise from it. First, we think of the Commonwealth as a wonderfully informal organisation, yet at Valletta we had the longest communiqué ever: 103 clauses. Who bothers to read those? Is it worth the effort? I hope we can bear that in mind. Secondly, the Commonwealth is not just about governance but about peoples. The 85 Commonwealth civil society organisations have already been mentioned. What further proposals do the Government have at Kampala to engage civil society, remembering that civil society has been increasingly mainstreamed? One of the excellent initiatives at Valletta was the valuable meeting between the Foreign Ministers and the business and civil society forums. Three matters were leftovers for the Secretary-General. One was paragraph 26 of the communiqué, asking the Secretary-General to explore initiatives to provide mutual understanding and respect among all faiths. We look forward to the Sen commission report on that. Another of those matters was paragraph 101, on future membership. CMAG has been something of a disappointment. Do the Government now see that there should be limits on new members? Lastly, with regard to paragraph 17 of the Valletta statement strengthening intra-Commonwealth dialogue and networking collaboration on trade and economic issues, what progress has been made and what input has there been from the Government? Brave promises were made about increasing the contributions to the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-Operation by 6 per cent per annum in real terms over the next five years. Has anything happened further to those promises? One postscript: at Kampala, the Commonwealth will be saying goodbye to Don McKinnon, the Secretary-General. Someone at least should pay tribute to the sterling work he has done in his term.