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China: EU Committee Report

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and also for his undertaking to come back to us with a full Government response. We have had a response already from the previous Government and I want to thank the now Opposition for their positive response to our report when they were in government. I particularly thank non-Sub-Committee C members for contributing to the debate. Their contributions were as excellent as those from members. Two noble Lords talked about the importance of the parallel role of EU and member states. That is absolutely right but most importantly, both understand what each other's roles are. They are consistent on that and it is not all about the way in which it is written in a legal treaty—Lisbon or whatever. It is around making that work in practice. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, about the death penalty in China. That should have been covered far more strongly. We did not cover Taiwan because this report was broad enough as it was, but the plain fact is that Europe has no effect on the strategic relationship and the risk of that conflict between Taiwan and China. That is an entirely Chinese-United States issue and, regret it or not, the EU has no leverage in any defence way over it. I shall respond briefly to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock. I take her point about the European Parliament. I am not absolutely sure that we did not ask for help when we went to Brussels and asked for an interview. I may be incorrect. She is absolutely right about all these reports. I was interested in the idea, which I take particularly from our history, that we might have a paternalistic attitude towards China. What concerned us most as a committee was the opposite of that—as if Europe in many ways has already said, ““Game over. China is the future; Europe and the West is the past””. It was that fatalism about the future that concerned us. We wanted to see Europe as a major player in the future. Various development issues are important and in many ways we were positive about China's future role there. Finally, I join many fellow committee members in thanking our committee clerk, Kathryn Colvin, and Oliver Fox and Bina Sudra who gave us a huge amount of positive clerical and organisational assistance. In particular, I thank our special adviser, David Kerr, who gave us superb assistance during this assignment. I commend the Motion. Motion agreed.