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Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to underline a couple of the points which have been made in this debate. I declare my interest. I have been to Azerbaijan this year, supported by the European Azerbaijan Society. One of the things that has clearly come out of this debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Laird, is the huge amount of foreign direct investment that the UK has in that country. What needs underlining is the potential for more. It is a country which has enormous amounts of regeneration prospects and the opportunity for other forms of investment from UK companies. I am afraid that we may be losing out to others, particularly Germany, which is seeking to do better and bigger business there as well.

In his winding up, will the Minister agree that we need a high-level trade delegation from this country led by a senior Minister to promote those new opportunities? After all, this country needs more opportunity to trade, to invest and to gain funding for this country.

The second issue that needs underlining underpinned some of our discussion. The amount of trade and investment that we have enables this country to be a critical friend of Azerbaijan. After all, we must recognise that it is not a perfect democracy—perhaps not even ours is a perfect democracy. It has had 21 years of existence since its life within the Soviet Union but it takes a huge amount of time to make the changes to reach a full democratic status. It is a country leaning towards that and it wants to achieve it.

As a critical friend, it seems that that is a role that the UK is well established to play. I regard investment in human rights and investment in justice systems as a crucial part of that journey, which I think this country wants to move on to. I suggest that justice systems’ support, supporting alternative measures and ways of approaching public order issues are things that this country can achieve. I believe that it is much better to support that from within than to try to complain from without.

We are in a unique position to influence the way in which Azerbaijan moves forward. It wants to move forward in a direction to which this country is sympathetic and I believe that we can undertake that. I have met Opposition MPs in Azerbaijan who have a role in human rights and say that they need support and help. They are not overcritical of the way in which their Government behave but they need the extra help that this Government could provide in the way of support. They need support for a free and open media. They have Opposition-leaning newspapers but we can provide more assistance in that direction.

In summing up, I hope that the Minister will give reassurance to noble Lords that we will be a critical but supportive friend working from within.

7.25 pm