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G8: 2008 Summit

My Lords, will the Leader of the House say a few words about views on the size of this gathering? I refer to the number of countries represented at the meeting, not the number of people who attend, to which the noble Lord, Lord McNally referred. Has not the time come to look again at the limitation to the eight countries which currently go to these meetings? When they were set up in the 1970s, the countries which went represented a very large proportion of the world’s economic activity. Doing the same sums now shows that the figure is 15 per cent or 20 per cent lower, and it is going south all the time. Has not the moment come to think about bringing in countries such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa to this gathering? I am not talking about them coming for just a day or half a day, being politely received, and then going away and saying that they have nothing to do with the conclusions. Since the subjects that are being discussed are subjects to which the agreement of these countries is absolutely necessary, should not they be built into the whole process of preparation? How do we reach conclusions on climate change if we have half an hour with the Chinese President who then goes away and says that he does not want anything to do with it? That surely demonstrates that this is not working very well. On Zimbabwe, will the noble Baroness confirm that if there is a mandatory resolution in the Security Council, which I hope very much there will be in the near future, and President Mugabe is one of those whose travel is interdicted, it will override the arrangements which previously allowed him to abuse the generosity of the UN system and come to meetings from which it would have been much better if he had stayed away?