Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: On the security question and the Chinese issue, does the Minister agree that the United States Administration are in quite a good place to assess the security of the base in Diego Garcia? Will she again confirm that they have warmly welcomed the agreement? I was always less diplomatic than the noble Lord, Lord Jay. Would the Minister like to confirm that it takes chutzpah verging on hypocrisy...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: My Lords, I join those thanking the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for securing this debate and pay tribute to his long and sustained personal interest in Africa. I feel that we ought, as a country, to acknowledge some responsibility for the ongoing disaster in Sudan. For half a century, we were the colonial power. I was taught at university by a former governor of the Blue Nile province. He was a...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I was lucky enough to serve on the economic committee when the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, was chairing it, so the quality of the report and the skill with which he introduced it tonight came as no surprise to me. I shall pick up what it says about transparency and accountability and draw on two examples to illustrate the point made very powerfully in the report at paragraphs 83 and 85. I shall...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: One of the striking and shocking aspects of this brilliant report is the proof that requiring regulators to operate commercially, competing for business, risks their capture by business. Grenfell shows the piper playing the tune that business wanted and that cost lives. I hope the Government will take up the recommendation to have a single regulator for the construction industry, and I really...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: My Lords, my views are very much in line with those of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. My father was an Army doctor who was at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, when 13,000 unburied bodies were found, alongside 60,000 surviving skeletons, 14,000 of whom died in the first three months after liberation. My father would certainly have demanded an appropriate Holocaust memorial in central London, as...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I thank the Minister for a thoughtful introduction to the debate and I warmly welcome that the response will come from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker—the hero of our Rwanda debates. The House is well aware that Portobello Road in London is so called to celebrate Admiral Vernon’s great victory in 1739. I expect Rwanda Road to follow soon. It was an Anglophile Dutch statesman who once said...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: My Lords, I am not quite sure what follows the soft cop and the hard cop; certainly not the fair cop. I would like to add three points to the case against these changes, which has been so brilliantly put by the two cops. I have two points about process, one about substance. On legislative process, it is absurd to produce a 289-page volume of detailed changes with no impact assessment. It is...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: My Lords, I used to work for Peter Carrington and Denis Healey, two great Defence Secretaries. I have been trying to work out how they would have reacted to this Statement. They would certainly have welcomed the increase in defence spending. It is clearly necessary and they would have said so. I think they both would have said that it is not enough but that it is certainly to be welcomed....
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I think the noble and learned Lord is talking about Article 10(3) of the treaty. He will know what I am going to ask, because this is the fourth time I have asked it. Article 10(3) commits the parties—us and Rwanda—to “cooperate to agree an effective system for ensuring” no refoulement. That system clearly did not exist when the treaty was signed. The signatories of the treaty,...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I entirely agree with the Minister about ISDS. Will he confirm that ISDS will be in any trade deal we sign with India?
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Marland. I shall be slightly less concise, but I bear the earlier discussion in mind. On my tombstone will be the words: “He was an inaugural member of the International Agreements Committee”. No more need be said: it is the peak of my career. I was lucky enough to be on that sub-committee of the EU Committee which preceded and then...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I agree with the noble and learned Lord. My point can be put much more succinctly. I warmly welcome the Minister and look forward to his remarks, and would be grateful if he could convey to the Leader of the House the point that I am about to make. As a Scottish unionist, I believe that our debates in this Chamber would be much improved if the SNP took part. I would also, of course, like to...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: My Lords, I was alerted to this strange case by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, when he raised it in our debates in October. I still know very little about it that I have not learned from his speeches, and from the excellent report by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. It is a very strange story and I worry that I am beginning to think I am...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: When the House voted to delay ratification of the treaty, it did so on the basis that there was unfinished business and on the basis of a list of 10 requirements, most of which were for the Government of Rwanda, which should be fulfilled before Rwanda could be declared safe. Among these was the requirement in Article 10(3) of the treaty “to agree an effective system for ensuring” that...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: Have the procedures required under Article 10.3 of the treaty to ensure that refoulement does not take place, as it did in the Israeli case, yet been devised?
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: My Lords, there is an irrefutable case, in my view. It is very odd when you think about it. We had three days in Committee and a long Second Reading, and the Government have heard nothing from us which is of any interest to them. There are no government amendments on the Marshalled List today, not a single one, and the Government have shown no signs of picking up, improving, adjusting, or...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: Can the Minister confirm that the arrangement described in Article 10(3) of the treaty has been devised: that is, the arrangement to ensure that refoulement does not in practice occur? The treaty imposes an obligation on both parties to agree a process. Has it been agreed, and can we see it?
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: It is quite wrong to insult the Civil Service.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: I strongly agree with the point that the noble Baroness has made. My name is to Amendments 57 and 59. It is rather appropriate that we come to these amendments immediately after the House has considered the murder of Navalny. There is a precedent for what we are asked to do in Clauses 5(2) and 5(3)—a Russian precedent. In 2016, the Russian Parliament passed a decree enabling the Russian...
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard: The noble Lord is well aware that the Strasbourg court has decided to pass various reforms and the anonymity of the judge is a thing of the past. I am not an expert on the Strasbourg court. However, I am a believer that if we maintain that we believe in the rule of law, we cannot pick and choose which bits of international law we comply with. That is a point I put forward at Second Reading...
