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Commonwealth

My Lords, while I was waiting rather impatiently for this great debate tonight I was having a pea and ham soup with Martha in the Bishop’s Bar and we were saying that it is funny that the Ethiopian flag and the Jamaican flag are the same. I got out my book of flags and I had a look. I then said that it is strange that military power is becoming less and less important in the world, absolute wealth is becoming less and less important, and the most important thing is influence—that strange, mystical, airy bit that no one knows how to put together. If you are too strong, you have enemies. So I thought we would look at the Commonwealth again. I have always been brought up on the Statute of Westminster, I have roamed the world around the Commonwealth and I said let us see what we have got now. We have 53 countries, which represent roughly 25 per cent of the world; add to that 20 dependent or overseas territories and the odd island here or there and we are pretty important. We have 2 billion people, which is a very significant 30 per cent of the world. We have roughly 12 million square miles of land, and if you add to that the territorial rights of 12 miles out to sea and airspace we are again pretty influential. And of course we have Her Majesty the Queen, probably one of our greatest assets, who is head of state in 19 countries. It does not stop there. We still control 90 per cent of the cricket in the world. While people may suggest that it was the Commonwealth that effectively brought South Africa to heel, I can tell you it was the Gleneagles agreement. I remember sitting with President Bush—he was not president then—in Jamaica, talking about boycotting Grenada, when suddenly Eddie Seaga turned to me and said, ““Is it true that Boycott is going to play cricket in South Africa?”” That was a momentous occasion. Now we are losing out on the rugby side. We have only 70 per cent of the rugby in the world, but what have the Americans got besides baseball and American football? Hardly any sporting influence. If you look further, you realise that it was effectively Cuban music that helped develop the Caribbean and you see that rap and other music has spread right across the world to create that form of culture. This adds up to the observation that the Commonwealth has greater value than any of us appreciate—and probably more than it appreciates itself. It is a remarkable collection of people who have taken over from when the sun never set on the British Empire. They are probably playing rugby in some of the Pacific Islands even at this minute. We could then look at some of the strange joint ventures, including the joint claims on Antarctica, and involving Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and ourselves. It is how we put it together. I have always felt that the House of Lords should set out to represent the Commonwealth. No greater leader could we have than the noble Lord, Lord Luce, who was one of the best and most honourable Foreign Office Ministers that we have ever had. So I sit down saying: we have influence; let us use it.