Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:04 pm on 13 July 2009.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer and I thank the Foreign Office for its useful briefing on general entrustments and individual entrustments, and the technical terms of which I had not been previously aware. Is it not extraordinary that the Government of Bermuda negotiated directly with the United States Government that senior members of the White House staff would accompany the Uighurs from Washington to Bermuda without informing the British Government? Do the Government think that it is possible to sustain the current relationship with our overseas territories in the western Atlantic and the Caribbean, given the extent of their dependence on the United States for American money—legal and illegal—in those territories and the extent to which the American Administration now expect to influence what goes on in those territories, and I have not even mentioned Grenada yet?