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Queen's Speech

My Lords, it is good to be in the House on the day when the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells has made his maiden speech. Those who know him will know that he is a person of rare knowledge and insight, humour and courage. I have no doubt that the House will receive much from him, especially when he is not constrained by the conventions of making a maiden speech. I look forward to the future. Along with others, I was simply astonished that the gracious Speech did not contain the word ““Africa”” and paid no attention to the realities of Africa at all. What of the commitments of the Commission for Africa, of which the present Prime Minister was, after all, a committed and active member, whose report Our Common Interests—note those words—was published as recently as March 2005? The Government should surely have used yesterday’s most public of stages, and I am sure cheered Her Majesty up in the process, to emphasise the importance in the face of and through the present financial pressures of maintaining our commitments to the developing world with the G8 countries and others, countries which have been responsible for the greed and lack of forethought and care that have caused the present international crisis. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells and others that this was surely a moment for highlighting the millennium development goals and trade justice; a moment to express what I understand from other correspondents to be the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the next generation of international financial arrangements takes more note of these commitments than those that have now broken around us. I wish to speak about the Democratic Republic of Congo. I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and appreciate the quality of the service of the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown, whose knowledge, experience, sheer hard work, openness and accessibility to parliamentarians and others are striking. I shall not attempt to lay out the present situation, particularly in the eastern Congo. Noble Lords will have read the press. Although they may not have read some of what others have read, they will have read enough. They will have been following the development of the wretched situation in the central part of the eastern border, 400 miles south-north, 150 miles east-west, bordering the other profoundly delicate places of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. They will know that the immediate roots of the situation lie in the Rwandan horrors of 1984 but that the roots of it all are much deeper in the history of the region, colonial and indigenous. They will know, too, that it is a region like the rest of the country—if possible, more so—where there is no effective Government and no infrastructure, even by central African standards. Like some noble Lords, I have been there, I have flown over it and I have been driven on some of its roads, which make transporting troops and anything else extraordinarily difficult. This fact is often missed by those who write about it in this country. In the time that remains I wish to ask seven questions, all of which, and a few others, give substance to the urgency expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons. By what means, through whose intervention and how soon can any persuasive encouragement be offered to the perhaps 1.2 million people in that area who are away from their homes, either in camps, in the forest, on the roads, and therefore vulnerable to every possible difficulty one can imagine, or crowded out with relatives and friends? What can encourage those people that it is safe, and will continue to be safe, for them to go home? How can such encouragement, such a level of security, be made to last through the considerable time that it will take to work through the complicated political questions? These include the building of trust and collaboration between the DRC and Rwanda; the disbanding of existing forces when their members are convinced that they have grounds to fear those around them; the resettlement of at least some members of those forces, which depends in part on the resolution of conflicting claims to land; the repatriation of some to Rwanda; the integration into the national army of those not guilty of murder, rape and pillage; and the development of the DRC Government into a national government in more than just name. Will the Minister and the Government continue to encourage politicians, including, it sometimes seems, some of his colleagues, to allow that although there can be no military solutions to these delicate and complex issues, political solutions will for some time require an outside military presence to provide the security that only competent and reliable troops—which, among them, means first-world troops—with the right equipment and the right mandates, can guarantee and, if necessary, enforce? How soon will the recently agreed reinforcements to MONUC, the UN force, be in the DRC and in active service, with the necessary equipment, training and, critically, interpreters, and without the caveats that handicap some of the contributors in the DRC as in Afghanistan? What delay does the noble Lord consider acceptable granted the fragility of the situation, now and going forward? Put the other way up, what delay will make irresistible the clamour from Congolese NGOs and communities, let alone from friends outside the country, for a short-term, first-world force, the presence of which in the eastern DRC could free MONUC to attend to more of its mandates? In the light of their enormous financial commitment to the development of the DRC, should not Her Majesty’s Government be more positive about the need for such a force and about contributing to it more than the necessary command and logistics expertise? Especially in the light of the very recently published Human Rights Watch report vividly entitled, ““We Will Crush You”” The Restriction of Political Space in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which chronicles in detail the violence, torture and intimidation practised from the highest levels of the Government elected in 2006 on those they have seen as challenges to their security, how can this same Government be held to their commitments to the UK and other donors to do away with the effective impunity from any accountability which gross abusers of human rights have so far enjoyed across the DRC through these past terrible 14 years? How can there be an end to the recycling of such people, not into the national army, the FARDC, but to high rank in it and to high office in the state; and how can that be made to impact on Laurent Nkunda, whose record, at least since 2000, is appalling? Will the noble Lord ensure that his Home Office colleagues read the report that I have just named? Will he encourage them at last to listen to those of us—notably the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, some of my colleagues and others in this House and elsewhere—who have been telling the Home Office for some years that the UK must not deport anyone, whatever their asylum status, back into the DRC, least of all women? All those who know the DRC agree that its wealth in minerals and forests—and its failure to keep this wealth out of the hands of a long succession of rapacious and violent extractors going back to the notorious King Leopold—is, perhaps, the major driver of the sufferings of many millions of its people, a point mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. Are Her Majesty’s Government prepared to offer, with others, the necessary assistance to and pressure on the Congolese Government to enable them to put their own house in order and to get to grips with these realities? Crucially, are Her Majesty’s Government prepared to put an utterly different level of effort, resource and urgency than to date into their management of the OECD guidelines process and the UK contact point? Will they make adherence to these an absolute condition of government assistance and financial support to British companies trading in the resources of the DRC and of other conflict and post-conflict states? Will they appoint really senior civil servants to manage these processes and then hold those individuals accountable—and perhaps even a Minister for a period to change the culture completely and quickly—rather as the SFA has recently acknowledged that it was simply silly to use relatively junior officials to regulate the major banks. The situation for millions in the DRC is dire and getting no better. As I have said, I respect the noble Lord for all that he is seeking to do, but there is more that can and should be done by the Government of which he is part.