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Trade Bill

Having been called first, I lead a very distinguished company; I am most grateful to the occupant of the Woolsack for that.

I have taken part in all these debates, and I have become increasingly impressed by the dogged, persistent leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has carried the flag with distinction throughout and is certainly not laying it down this afternoon. I have also been very impressed by the way in which the Minister has sought to respond. Although he is new to your Lordships’ Houses, I think he has a genuine understanding of how it works, and he certainly has a genuine understanding of the evil that has motivated those of us who have, on three occasions, formed part of a massive majority in your Lordships’ House.

I use the word “evil” very deliberately. One thing that I have been doing during lockdown is to read, as I am sure we all have, and I read again the three volumes of the diary of Harold Nicolson dealing with the 1930s, the lead-up to the war and the war years themselves, then carrying on until 1965. Many of your Lordships will be familiar with those diaries but, if you are not, I warmly commend them. The theme—although he does not put it in those words—particularly in the diaries covering the period from 1937 to the outbreak of the war, is that democracy cannot and must not compromise with evil. If we do, we lose our democratic credentials. Of course, one of the great evils of history was the genocide perpetrated by the Nazi regime in the war, and we have seen other things in my lifetime. Stalin’s purges began just before my lifetime and continued through. We saw terrible things happen in China under Mao Tse-Tung, and we have seen many others, in Rwanda and Bosnia—who can ever forget Srebrenica?—and with Pol Pot, as a noble Lord interjects from the back.

It is a challenge to democracy to repudiate evil. Although one may have to pay a price, which may be to lose a lucrative trade deal, there must never be compromise with evil. That, to me, has really been the theme of our three very passionate debates, and now we move towards the end. Of course, those of us who supported the various Alton amendments, as I shall call them, have not achieved all that we set out to do. But the Government have listened to a degree and have moved, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, readily recognised a few moments ago. For that, we are grateful, but I do not consider that a great victory. What I consider is that Parliament, to which government is accountable and responsible, has impressed on the Government that there are certain things in the immortal words of the great Churchill “up with which we will not put”. So this Bill is going to go on to the statute books significantly different from how it was when it was brought to your Lordships’ House, and with a recognition on the part of the Government that genocide is indeed evil and that anything approaching genocide must make us very careful about what we do.

2.45 pm

There is a certain ambivalence between the statements of Dominic Raab, which I warmly welcomed yesterday, as did the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the one where

the Prime Minister talked about trade with China. I give the Prime Minister’s remarks about being a Sinophile a charitable interpretation, because what I hope he really meant is that he is, as I am—and I believe all your Lordships probably are—an admirer of ancient Chinese civilisation, which is the oldest surviving civilisation in the world and has achieved great things. However, that does not mean that it should be translated into any sort of admiration for the frankly evil Communist Party regime that exists in China at the moment. China is going to be the dominant power towards the end of this century and is already one of the dominant powers in the world—but look at its record, with the belt and road, and giving aid to buy influence and to subvert. Even we are in danger of Chinese subversion, and we have to recognise that. If we do not, that will be to our own peril.

There are two fundamentals of our unwritten constitution. One, of course, is that the Government are answerable to Parliament, no matter what their political complexion and no matter what Parliament’s political complexion. The other is that the unelected House must in power be subordinate to the elected House. I am a passionate believer in your Lordships’ House, a House of experience and expertise, but I am also a passionate believer in the ultimate supremacy of the other place, in which I had the honour to serve for 40 years. That is why I would not have personally countenanced a vote today. We have given it its chance to think again and to some degree it has. The Government must surely have been influenced by the concerns of people like former Secretary Hunt, Iain Duncan Smith and others. At the end of the day, they have said, “No, we won’t take all you’re trying to give us from the second Chamber”, so we must with reluctance accept that, while being thankful for the crumbs that have fallen from the masters’ table.

Although we are a subordinate House in political power, we are a unique House among the second Chambers of the world. There is no other Chamber as large—and, of course, many of us believe that we are too large. The Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber, which I have chaired, assisted by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, for almost 20 years now, has campaigned on that—but that is another issue for another day. But we are unique in the extraordinary accumulation of legal wisdom. I talk not just of those who have held high judicial office, important as they are and respect them as we do. We have such Members as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who brings extraordinary wisdom to this subject. I hope that the Alton suggestion, made towards the end of the noble Lord’s admirable speech, will be acted on, the Liaison Committee will look at it, and we will have a committee composed largely or wholly of judicial Members. I would like to see a Joint Committee of both Houses, because I believe in the two Houses working together. We are embarking on a journey, which must not end in the victory of those who perpetrate evil.