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Liaison Committee

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord and the Liaison Committee for their helpful comments over the past year or two, and the members of the Clerks’ Department on the Intergovernmental Organisations Select Committee—the ad hoc committee referred to by the noble Lord. I place on record that I of course originally asked for a sessional committee. I share the Liaison Committee’s view that an Intergovernmental Organisations Select Committee should not be ad hoc but sessional. All members of the committee and other Members of this House who have discussed this with me believe there is a need for such a sessional committee. We will return to the Liaison Committee with such an application. I have a couple of other points in relation to this. First, it would have helped if the report that will come out next Monday on the control of globally transmitted infectious diseases had been before the committee in time. It was not because—as I know the noble Lord fully accepts—the two Ministers could not give evidence on the date originally agreed at the beginning of June and had to delay until the end of June. It would have been wrong to produce the report without having the Ministers’ comments before the committee. The report will now be out next Monday. When the noble Lord looks at the report—I hope that other Members of this House will do so—he will find that it meets the aims discussed at the last Liaison Committee and published in House of Lords Paper 118, which suggested a more thematic approach to this. By addressing the profoundly important question of infectious diseases we were able to focus not on the governance of intergovernmental organisations—I have always been clear that a committee of this or any House should not do that—but on the way British taxpayers’ money is used and how government departments focus on and use the decisions and functions of intergovernmental organisations. The report on infectious diseases makes important recommendations. I make this point as clearly as I can. Members will see when they look at the report the welcome response we got from those who gave evidence to us; it came not only from people in this country—the British Government welcomed it—but also from the World Health Organisation and a number of other organisations. In view of the first Question this afternoon, I emphasise we had to go abroad only twice: once to Geneva and once to Paris. We took the rest of the evidence through video links. I hope to use the Skype system should we be able to continue our work in future. In doing that, I again emphasise that many of the intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations involved in the spread of infective diseases told us how important this was and that they wished other Parliaments were doing it. Indeed, in the case of the United States, we not only took evidence via a video link but two people from separate organisations came over to see us, one of whom came entirely at the expense of the institution for which they worked. That is an indication of the seriousness and importance of the issue. I share the view that it should not be an ad hoc committee. I say that again because that was my original application. However, the importance of the intergovernmental organisations is enormous, not only in what is happening in global governance but in terms of the money that goes in from the British taxpayer. For example, the committee was concerned about the proposal by one of our members to look at a peacekeeping operation. Regardless of whether or not the British are involved in a peacekeeping operation, we have to pay between 5 or 6 per cent of it. That is an important matter for the taxpayer and I ask the chairman of the committee to consider this when we come back to him in the next Session.