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The United Kingdom and the Commonwealth

I was caught off guard to be called now, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I naturally assumed that a colleague of greater seniority would catch your eye before me, but I am most gratified by your beneficence. It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate. We are a few days late for Commonwealth day. I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister for myself being a few minutes late for her speech, but I was a little surprised that she sat down so soon after I arrived. Perhaps she will enlighten us with further thoughts when she responds to the debate, because this debate is about an important topic. The Commonwealth is always in danger of seeming like no more than a hangover from bygone days, a fading institution, and those who talk about it are often caricatured as latter-day blimpish figures harking back to the glory days of empire. However, the reality of the modern world creates potential for a 21st-century Commonwealth that far exceeds anything that most people associate with it today. We have heard a lot in this debate about kith and kin, historical and cultural relationships, and development. We have heard powerful speeches on those issues, but I wish to turn principally to the economic relationships. Let me say at the outset that I do not claim originality for the fundamentals of this idea, which have been expounded in many articles and speeches by my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Howell of Guildford. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) has just graced us with a powerful and profound speech about the challenges facing the modern Commonwealth and modern world. However, I take exception to his assertion that the world is increasingly breaking into power blocs. Lord Howell makes the opposite observation: he has marked the transition of global trade and politics from the superpower blocs of the cold war to what he calls a ““network world””—one in which global communications technology is progressively neutralising many of the limitations imposed by geography that we grew up with and accepted as fact. It is a world in which, to quote my right hon. and noble Friend:"““Thanks to the extraordinary power and pervasiveness of the information revolution we live in an era now not of blocs and pyramid tiers of power and management but of networks and meshes, both formal and informal.""By accident as much as design the Commonwealth emerges from a controversial past to take a perfect place in this new order of thinking and acting.””"