House of Lords - Debate on the Queen’s Speech - November 24th 2004

My Lords, the Gracious Speech noted the Government’s holding next year the G8 Presidency “which will include working on the important issue of Africa...”; and in this connection I welcome the progress already made by the Prime Minister’s Commission, its preparedness to seek further advice and its recently published Consultation Document Action for a Strong and Prosperous Africa.

Both in Northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo there is some good news to note. 

In the former, there are signs that both sides are prepared to discuss an end to the LRA’s long and vicious war. Can we be assured that HM Government is doing whatever it can, at this very delicate moment, to encourage Uganda to grasp what may at last prove a real opportunity – and to trust and value as trail-blazers and colleagues the Acholi – and other – united groups of Religious Leaders.

I welcome the very recent Commitment to Peace on the part of 11 Central African states; and I ask how HM Government will support this delicate flower and assist its realisation. I welcome, too, the UN Security Council’s current presence and work in Central Africa; it is a critically necessary sign of the world’s commitment to the needs of Africa when so much attention, and vast amounts of financial and other resources, are focused on Iraq. And a further 5000 personnel are beginning to arrive in the DRC to strengthen the UN Force in the Congo, MONUC. 

But fighting continues in parts of the Eastern Congo, and lawlessness and danger are the daily experience of most of its millions of people - noble Lords may have seen, in the last few days, Mark Doyle’s graphic reports on BBC News On-Line. Pillage of resources continues on almost as grand a scale as ever, arms still flow into the country, and its eastern neighbour-states continue to be more interested and influential, and more often present on the ground, than they should be. Some at least of those charged with responsibility under the Peace Accords for the rebuilding of the country maintain their fiefdoms and their armed bands in the East. 

Two recent reports of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region, that on Arms Flows in Eastern DRC recently communicated to the Security Council, and that on its very recent visit to the DRC under the title To Elections and Beyond, contain important recommendations to the Government and to the international community more widely. These concern the equipping, priorities and leadership of MONUC; and the vitally important elections that are due next summer and about which critical decisions still remain to be made – elections that must be at least as difficult to organise as those to take place in Iraq in January. I should be grateful to know the Government’s responses to these recommendations. I anticipate that it will make them in the context of its re-writing of its Country Engagement Plan for the DRC; but is the Government seeking Parliamentarians’ advice, and if so how, on this very important piece of work.

And is the Government satisfied – because its NGO partners (as I hope that it sees them) are not - with the performance with relation to DRC issues of the UK’s National Contact Point for the OECD’s guidelines on the exploitation of natural resources?


My Lords, I also welcome the commitment in the Gracious Speech “to support efforts to build peace in the Middle East, to promote democratic reform and reduce conflict and extremism”; especially as my wife and I spent six days earlier this month in Bethlehem, with a day on either side in East Jerusalem at the Guest-House of St George’s Cathedral which just before we left was so regrettably invaded by an unnecessarily large Israeli force in search of the peaceable Mr Vanunu – a few hours after the death of President Arafat. 

Like most if not all of your Lordships, I had read a good deal, not least in a regular e-mail correspondence with my Palestinian friend and colleague in Bethlehem through these last six years, and most recently in the second excellent Christian Aid Paper, Facts on the Ground, which was launched here last month by the noble Baroness the Lady Williams of Crosby. But much as I had read, my Lords, the realities that we saw, and that so many people, both Christian and Muslim, told us about and tried to help us understand, were profoundly shocking. 

The surrounding, overlooking settlements and their network of dedicated roads, tunnels and viaducts, all on Palestinian land; the wall, the electrified fence and the outworks of each, imprisoning tens of thousands of people – just three checkpoints in the circle enclosing Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour; the vast scale of all this, which must have been carefully planned long before the present intifada which is claimed to justify it. The lack of visitors, and unemployment at 60 or 70%. The roughness, the delaying of people trying to get to hospital, the demeaning treatment - especially but not only to women - at Checkpoints throughout the Occupied Territories. The racism that explicitly says to Palestinians that they should not have decent, attractive buildings, modern equipment, good facilities - and vandalises them when it can. The destruction of hundreds of thousands of precious olive trees, symbolically as well as economically valuable, and the demolition of thousands of houses most often to punish families and communities for actions for which they are not responsible. The baleful effects of all this on people’s livelihoods, health, childhood, old age, family life, education. The killing and maiming of so many, especially of so many children – which of course does not in any way justify the killing of Israelis by Palestinians – each is as wrong as the other.

My Lords, I shall not go on – and it is all too familiar. Yet we are seen all over the world to collude with Israel’s illegal, inhuman, oppressive Occupation and its effects, when from the Prime Minister downwards those who represent us lecture only those on one side of the Wall about “democratic values”. The more we are committed, as we should be and as I am, to a secure future for Israel that is defensible morally and politically as well as militarily, the more important it is, and especially in this “moment of opportunity”, that the rest of the world is brave enough to be both honest and principled with both Israel and Palestine; and I hope that the noble lady the Minister will be able to assure us, when she winds up this debate, that the Government will in the future be a whole lot more brave, honest and principled in its dealings with both parties, with their neighbours and –crucially - with the United States. Anything else, my Lords, exposes us to accusations of “double standards” that are disastrous not just for our reputation but for our security from terrorism.

My friend the Bishop in Jerusalem’s dictum, my Lords, still has a lot of truth in it: “The road to Baghdad lies through Jerusalem”.