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Debate on the Address

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, on becoming the new Defence Minister for appropriations. We all recognise that this is an extremely tough job to take on. Not only is the job surrounded by tremendous pressures but there has always been concern here about whether unreasonable, and indeed unfair, pressure is being used. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, will rightly call on her experience as a former distinguished Leader of the House of Commons. She will need every element of that reputation to maintain a position that now needs to be kept. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, about the formidable set of questions and requests that now lie before the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown; it is one that I do not in any sense envy. He will have covered the whole world and discovered that the House of Lords is full of experts and people knowingly committed to all kinds of causes. I can only say that he now has my sympathy in trying to deal with such a huge range of requests and impossibly high expectations. I am sure that, in so far as any human being can meet them, he will. On that, I wish him the very best. I will start with just a word on Pakistan, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, referred, although I am sorry that he is not in his place. We should say right away that one of the most impressive things about Pakistan is that the huge opposition to the intent to impose martial law has come from a range of people who are essential to Pakistan’s transition to democracy. It has come from judges who have put themselves at risk in upholding the concept of the rule of law and from lawyers who have shown clearly that their concern for the public good is greater than that for their own advancement. It has come from the very heartland of the people who, one day, will build democracy in Pakistan. We need to record our recognition of their courage and determination. It is in Pakistan’s interest that, as soon as possible, their detention should cease and they should be returned to the public company of their colleagues in order to be able to advance Pakistan’s future. One of the features of Pakistan in the past few years has been a sharp move towards growing criticism of the West and, in particular, the United States. An opinion poll conducted by Pew showed this year that only 15 per cent of Pakistanis indicated that they had faith in the United States. One of the reasons for that was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, when he talked about the world that we are living in and referred to the extraordinary power of global communications. We must recognise that satellite television is to be found throughout the Middle East and South Asia, perhaps unexpectedly, because satellite is not always owned by the people who have television sets. Nevertheless, it extends everywhere and it has concentrated in a very dramatic fashion on the shortcomings of the West. It has concentrated on Iraq, on scenes of prisoners being abused and on occupational commitments to such things as collective punishment. It has spread throughout the Middle East and South Asia a representation of what we are doing that may not be entirely fair, but which has been terribly powerful in its ability to recruit people to the terrorist cause and to the rejection of western values and western objectives. In Pakistan, that has had the effect of rapidly moving public opinion in a direction that is not sympathetic to us. However, the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, will appreciate that nothing is so important in Pakistan at the moment as civilian support for what the Government are attempting to do. For a long time in Pakistan, there has been a close relationship between the military and civilian support for that military—a belief and trust in the military, which, incidentally, as all of us know, contains the people with a key determination over how nuclear weapons might one day be used. It is therefore vital that that relationship should be reconstructed, with support by civilians of a military that they believe to be responsible. One of the lessons that we must draw from the Pakistan crisis is that we have put too many of our eggs in the basket of just one leader, General Musharraf; we have not sufficiently recognised the need to keep very close to the public in Pakistan and to support them in every way. I wish to raise two other issues. The first follows the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay of Cartvale, about the Middle East. I hope that her rather optimistic view is right, but I have to say that we are now looking in Gaza at an impending crisis of the most extreme form. We know now that only one passage, Kerem Shalom, is to be permitted in that area. Sufa has been permanently closed. That one entry into Gaza can carry only one-third of the necessary supplies, not only basic food supplies but also the supplies necessary to keep the infrastructure of Gaza working. The hospitals in Gaza are closing because they have no means of keeping open. Electricity, benzene and other forms of energy have been cut off to that pathetic enclave, which is now described as a hostile enclave. As things stand, it is a matter of weeks before the population of 1.4 million people in Gaza will be virtually at the end of the road. We cannot allow that to happen. I fully understand the anger of Israelis at the rockets that have reached them, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsay, referred. However, we cannot find a way out of the terrible dilemmas of the Middle East by allowing one part of what is one day supposed to be the independent second base of a new Palestinian state to collapse in ruins all around us. It is simply impossible. What can be done to sustain Gaza and the West Bank in a situation where a viable second state—a Palestinian state—is becoming day by day, because of what are sometimes cynically called ““facts on the ground””, almost impossible to sustain? Have the British Government raised the issue of the misuse of funds intended to support the authorities in the West Bank, but used to buy arms, the so-called Elliott Abrams policy, which in turn will lead to a massive civil war? I am deeply concerned also about missile defences being built in eastern and central Europe, in Poland and the Czech Republic. On 28 February 2007, we were promised by the Prime Minister a major debate in Parliament and outside Parliament on the decision to be made about whether we should partake in the missile defences now extending to Poland and the Czech Republic. There has been no debate or discussion with Parliament. There has been only a decision, made in a Written Ministerial Statement on the last day of the last term of Parliament, that we will go ahead with supporting this ballistic missile defence and being involved in Menwith Hill. Russia has understandably become extraordinarily troubled about this. One moment’s thought on how we would feel if missile defences were being placed by Russia in, say, the Republic of Ireland will tell us something about the way the Russians feel. The outcome of this is an increasing lack of co-operation by Russia at a time when the world’s global structures are coming under the most extreme pressure and we are moving in some parts of the world towards chaos. The Russian Government have now decided to walk out of the conventional treaty on arms in Europe. They have decided to resume their global flights of surveillance all around the world and have announced that they will target European cities in retaliation. All this was unnecessary. I hope that it can be dealt with by co-operation between the United States, Russia and the European Union, but at present it is very hard to see how this can contribute in any way to peace. Were the British Government consulted before the United States decided to embark on placing missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic? Did they object in any way? Were they aware that, for one reason or another, it was decided not to put this issue to Parliament, despite the very clear commitment in the Queen’s Speech to restore the influence, the power and the sovereignty of Parliament?