United Nations

HC Deb 11 November 2003 vol 413 cc199-254

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Kemp.]

2.2 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell)

I am pleased to open this important debate on reform of the United Nations. The United Nations is frequently mentioned in this House when we debate foreign policy issues, but it has rarely had the detailed attention that it deserves. That is why we decided in September to publish a Command Paper setting out the immense breadth of the UK's role in the UN, why we followed up its publication with a debate in Westminster Hall and why we have initiated this debate.

Angus Robertson (Moray)

I cannot disagree with a word that the Under-Secretary has said so far, but does it not concern him slightly that, in a debate that he has billed as so important, only three Back Benchers are present?

Mr. Rammell

That is a good debating point, but if anybody should be subject to criticism on that score, it is all of us. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that on a one-line Whip, as now, attendances are not always as high as they might be. Nevertheless, this is a significant and important debate. When the same subject was discussed in Westminster Hall, a number of contributions were made, although I do not recall whether he was present.

In the debate that took place at the General Assembly in New York in September, many contributions focused on the important need for reform of the United Nations. The Government believe that that is a vital issue that deserves broad public and parliamentary attention. Indeed, that is why we have gone out of our way as a Government to ensure that we give opportunities—I think that they are unprecedented—to debate these issues, as we did in Westminster Hall and are doing today.

On a day on which we commemorate those who sacrificed their lives in two world wars, we need little reminder of why the United Nations was needed in 1945. Today, when two fifths of the world's population live on less than a dollar a day and there is a conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has probably already cost at least 3 million lives, to take just one current example, it should be equally obvious to all of us how much the United Nations is needed.

The drafters of the UN charter were sufficiently visionary to ensure that its aims in respect of a collective approach to security underpinned by respect for human rights and economic and social development sound just as important, relevant and fresh today as they did when the charter was established. In an increasingly interdependent world, we need collective approaches as never before. We certainly pursue such approaches through the EU, NATO, the World Trade Organisation and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, but the only comprehensive global organisation is the UN, and I believe that it has a unique and significant role to play. That is why, ever since a Labour Government invited the General Assembly to hold its inaugural session in London in 1946, we have placed the UN at the heart of Britain's foreign policy.

Support for the UN does not, however, mean unconditional hacking for current structures, activities or methods of working. I genuinely believe that real friends of the UN should be the ones who ask the toughest and most challenging questions of it. I have often found that those who profess the strongest political support for the UN have only the scantiest knowledge of its workings and shortcomings. I do not think that we do the UN any service by hiding away from that fact.

That is why the Government have been a strong supporter of the Secretary-General's reform programme, which has sought to focus work in the secretariat on the highest priority areas, in line with the goals identified by world leaders at the millennium summit. The millennium development goals that emerged as a result of that summit can be seen as evidence of the progress that the Secretary-General's reform programme has already instituted at the United Nations. Today, the 191 UN member states agree that the organisation must focus its work on the key priorities that were agreed at the millennium summit, and not on others. The objectives focus on concrete and measurable outcomes, rather than process. I believe that that is what Governments and peoples around the world want the United Nations to concentrate on.

Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon)

I agree with where the Under-Secretary is taking the debate. Has he seen any evidence in the past two or three years that the UN is achieving a new focus on its stated priorities?

Mr. Rammell

May I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new post and congratulate him on his appointment? I was just about to give an example in which fundamental change is taking place. I believe that the reprioritisation required by the process that I have described gives rise to some tough decisions for all of us.

Let me take an example close to home. Many hon. Members will have had contact with the United Nations information centre in London over the years, and will rightly have valued the service that it offers. Nevertheless, the Secretary-General has rightly said that, in the age of the internet, information on the UN in western Europe can be more efficiently delivered through a single hub in Brussels. As a result of that change, resources can be focused on higher-priority activity elsewhere, including developing the information capacity of the developing world. Painful though it was to lose our information centre, we believe that that was the right decision. It is in such changes that we all need to hold our nerve and support the overall process of change that is taking place.

We need further progress in the direction of reform and we are encouraging others to accept that other low priority activities and programmes should be ended. We want to ensure that new activities have built-in reviews and end dates, so that programmes must prove their value, rather than simply drifting on indefinitely. That is a critical point. Anyone who has visited the UN and looked in detail at how the system works—as several hon. Members have done—will recognise that committing the UN to a programme that carries on regardless of changed circumstances and priorities is not acceptable.

Angus Robertson

The Minister mentions institutional reform. He will be more aware than most that many countries in the UN would like reform to the way in which the Security Council works, which would enable other countries such as Germany and Japan to take on a more permanent role. What is the Government's policy on that question and on the suggestion for a permanent representative on behalf of the European Union, who might be able to speak in the Security Council on behalf of all 25 members of the Union?

Mr. Rammell

I shall address that issue later in my speech, but we support an enlarged permanent membership of the Security Council, especially regarding Germany and Japan. We do not advocate membership for the European Union; the current structure of the Security Council provides membership for sovereign states, not for bodies such as the European Union.

The General Assembly has an important role to play in the process of prioritisation, but if it is to be effective, it must get its own house in order. In his recent millennium declaration progress report, the Secretary-General described the Assembly's "repetitive and sterile debates", and its agenda crowded with items that either overlap or are of interest to only a few states". He rightly called for improvements.

One important innovation might be to move away from set-piece interventions. It is right that the general debate that opens each year's Assembly should consist of prepared speeches. It is the opportunity for world leaders to set out their vision of the UN's developing role and to influence the political agenda for the year ahead. It gives us all a chance to take the temperature of world opinion—and that is an important opportunity. However, the remaining months of the General Assembly should not consist simply of ambassadors talking past each other in formal sessions, as too often happens at the moment. We should look for opportunities to have debates on matters of real and topical importance, where the views of different countries are listened to and receive a legitimate response.

The agenda needs also to give due priority to the most important subjects. It is open to question whether resolutions to establish an international year of rice or an international year of mountains have really added significantly to the greater good of the international community. It cannot be right that the General Assembly should be the forum for pursuing individual hobby-horses.

Part of the problem is the way that the General Assembly operates for the most part as a series of large blocs. Sometimes those are electoral groups and sometimes they are groups that reflect a genuine commonality of interest, as with the EU or the Arab group. Some organisation on such lines is clearly essential if we are to avoid 191 member states expressing a separate view on every issue. However, too often, the Assembly operates as an extended negotiation between two monolithic groupings—the developed world and the non-aligned movement. That division hides the real diversity of views within their memberships as negotiating positions are brought down to a lowest common denominator, and we should try to avoid that situation. Ministers and our missions in New York and Geneva are active in reaching out across those divides and encouraging constructive engagement from individual countries. We take care to include UN issues in bilateral discussions at ministerial and official level with key partners in the developing world, and we have institutionalised regular dialogue with some key partners, such as India. We will look for further opportunities to break down the barriers and will be encouraging our partners to do more in that area.

We are not alone in seeking General Assembly reform. Following his election in September, the General Assembly's President, Foreign Minister Julian Hunte of St. Lucia, has been quick to raise the banner of reform. He has launched his own initiative to streamline and revitalise the General Assembly, building on many of the ideas that we have been promoting, as set out in our Command Paper. Other UN members are also pursuing separate reform initiatives complementary to those going on within the General Assembly framework. I was particularly pleased recently, when visiting Mexico, to discuss the establishment of a friends of reform group, led by the Mexican Government, whose membership will be drawn from across the UN. Already, countries such as Canada, Sweden, South Africa, Japan, Argentina and Algeria have joined in the discussions. Although the intention is that the permanent five members should not become members of that group, there is much in common with our own agenda and I intend to follow the Mexican initiative closely and feed in to the process.

We also want to encourage reform of the subsidiary bodies of the General Assembly. The most important of those is the Economic and Social Council, or ECOSOC. This body has the primary responsibility for overseeing the work of the UN's various funds, programmes and agencies. It can, therefore, potentially ensure that the UN's contribution in many parts of the world is coherent and co-ordinated, and that there is no duplication of UN effort. A UN working group that sat from January to June this year decided that ECOSOC should produce a multi-year work programme. That will begin to improve the situation significantly, and we will work hard within that promising climate to make some meaningful improvements to how those bodies operate and function.

The UN, under Kofi Annan's stewardship, has also recognised that a successful organisation needs an effective administration to deliver its priorities. The Secretary-General has drawn on his experience at the heart of the administration to shape the reform agenda that he initially launched back in 1997. Much has been done, but there is still room for improvement. As a friend and strong supporter of the UN, that is an argument that we should make.

In September 2002 the Secretary-General launched the latest round of his programme of reforms with a report entitled "Strengthening the UN: An Agenda for Further Change", which was fully supported by the UK Government. The latest reform agenda includes many important items such as priority setting, management of human resources, financial management, working practices and ensuring appropriate staffing levels. All of that is crucial to providing an efficient administration that can deliver priority activities and go on to achieve the objectives set for the UN by the international community. We will certainly not resile from continuing to play a leading role in pushing for reform of UN bureaucracy.

I should also mention that this year's session of the General Assembly will agree the UN's budget for the next two years. As a large contributor to the UN, we want to ensure that the budget is focused on UN priority activity, to ensure that the organisation is as efficient and effective as possible. Linking spending to priority activity is an essential part of the overall reform process. However—and this point is sometimes lost in our debates on the issue—it is important to stress that our aim is not to cut budgets, but instead to ensure that the organisation delivers better value for money and spends its resources on the issues that are of concern to us and to the whole international community.

Hugh Robertson (Faversham and Mid-Kent)

The Minister mentioned the budget, and he will be aware that a high proportion of it comes from the United States, Japan and the European Union. Does he consider that that proportion is too great and does he think that a larger amount should come from other countries that currently contribute very little?

Mr. Rammell

This is a difficult process and is part of the ongoing debate. Some nations—Japan is one of them—have significant concerns about the level of their contributions. That is why it is crucial that we scrutinise in detail proposals for further UN expenditure. Over time, we may see increased contributions from countries that currently do not contribute so much. But all that should be focused on ensuring that we are spending the money on the right priorities, not simply the spending for spending's sake that advocates of the United Nations sometimes appear to promote.

Much UN reform is a gradual process in which we have been engaged for many years. The UN is a body that has, rightly, continually evolved as it has been faced with new challenges. It can come as a surprise, for example, to realise that the UN charter makes no explicit mention of peacekeeping, even though blue-helmeted forces are now one of the UN's most familiar manifestations. From the first simple observer mission in Palestine in 1948, UN peacekeeping has grown into a complex set of tasks in which political, humanitarian, policing and military elements are closely woven together. The UN is now running throughout the world some 13 simultaneous peacekeeping operations involving some 42,000 military and civilian personnel, who are soon to be increased by the 15,000-strong mission in Liberia—a mission that we have strongly supported. The UK has been at the forefront of the Secretariat's efforts to implement the Brahimi report of August 2000 on peace operations. We are encouraging the reforms that are under way through a programme of assistance under the UN strategy of a global conflict prevention pool, and we will continue to work in the Security Council to ensure that peacekeeping operations have robust, but realistic, mandates.

Peacekeeping is a good example of gradual evolution having worked well for the United Nations—although there is undoubtedly still more to do—but there is also a case for a more strategic review. That is why we welcome the Secretary-General's announcement of a high level panel to examine the way in which the UN handles threats to international peace and security. Kofi Annan has chosen people of high calibre with a wide variety of experience in dealing with the UN, including our own David Hannay. We welcome their appointment. The panel offers a real opportunity to break the deadlock on reform. The Secretary-General's backing for the reform agenda is fundamental and key, but it is encouraging that support goes much wider than that: I have been convinced through my contacts with a wide range of countries that there is, at long last, a critical mass of interest that will genuinely move the reform agenda forward.

The Secretary-General's panel was launched against the background of differences in the past year about how best to deal with the threat posed by Iraq's failure to comply with its obligations under 10 years of Security Council resolutions. Some may see the primary issue for the panel as being how the international system can better constrain unilateralism. However, the wish to pursue multilateral solutions should not become a means of enforcing inaction—rather, the panel should consider how we can ensure that we have the means and the political will to tackle collectively the threats that face us.

Subsequent disputes over military action have obscured the fact that the Security Council was united in holding Iraq to be in breach of its obligations under previous Security Council resolutions. The problem was not that the Security Council disagreed over the nature of the threat, but that when it came to the point, its members could not agree to follow through on the serious consequences that had been so clearly threatened in resolution 1441. In that regard, I welcome the comments that the Secretary-General made in his contribution to the UN General Assembly. He said that it is not enough to denounce unilateralism, unless we also face up squarely to the concerns that make some States feel uniquely vulnerable, since it is those concerns that drive them to take unilateral action. We"— the international community— must show that those concerns can, and will, be addressed effectively through collective action. That is an important point that goes to the heart of some of our debates in recent months on the role and position of the United Nations within the international community.

When such serious issues are at stake, it is perhaps not surprising that there are disagreements. The views on all sides of the Security Council, particularly on Iraq, were sincerely and strongly held. That is not a sign that the institution of the United Nations has failed. However, such circumstances give us an opportunity to look afresh at how the Security Council works and at how it can—as I believe that it should—maintain its pre-eminent position in the maintenance of international peace and security. The Security Council holds a privileged place among the UN's institutions, in that it alone can create binding legal obligations on the whole membership. Those responsibilities must be backed up by the trust of the wider UN membership.

The Government have long argued that the Security Council's effectiveness would be enhanced by broadening its membership so that it better reflects the modern world. The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) alluded to that. It is idiosyncratic, to say the least, that the permanent membership of the Security Council largely reflects the outcome of the second world war an event that took place more than 50 years ago. In particular, we would like representatives of the developing world to gain permanent membership. We have therefore argued that the Council's membership should be increased from 15 to 24, including five additional permanent members. We support Japan and Germany's candidacies in recognition of their political and economic weight and their broad contribution to the United Nations. In our view, the other three seats should be filled by countries from the developing world—one each from the African, Asian and Latin American regions. We have made it clear that we see India and Brazil as the pre-eminent candidates for the latter two regions, but it is of course primarily for aspirants to make their own cases within their own regional groups.

Hugh Robertson

I am sure that all hon. Members would agree that increasing the numbers to give greater representation is desirable, but is not the key factor what happens to the veto? If the use of the veto were to be extended across the Security Council, that could produce not better action, but more inaction.

Mr. Rammell

That is an important point. However, an increase in permanent membership does not have to go hand in hand with an increased possession of the veto, which we do not advocate, and which could lead to a permanent gridlock in decision making.

Angus Robertson

Will the Minister clarify that? Is he advocating a two-tier system of permanent members of the Security Council? Alternatively, if membership were to be extended, would it not make sense to take the veto away from the five member states that currently have it, so that there is equality across the Security Council?

Mr. Rammell

That is a good debating point. If we reflect, however, on the circumstances in which the United Nations was originally established, one of the reasons for the creation of the veto was to prevent certain pre-eminent nations and global powers from simply walking away, as in the case of the League of Nations. We have to deal with the realities and practicalities of the situation. We certainly do not advocate the removal of vetoes. If we are to move forward with an enhancement and expansion of the permanent membership, a significant increase in the possession of vetoes would not help the process of reform.

Mr. Michael Moore (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale)

The Minister gives an important enough response to the question put by the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), but he avoids its starting point, which is the idea of a two-tier permanent membership of the Security Council. How exactly would he sell that to the Germans, the Japanese or anybody else?

Mr. Rammell

I think that I have answered the question. I want an expansion of the permanent membership, but we have a long way to go in achieving that. We therefore need to work with all our international partners to create the consensus that will enable us to take the situation forward.

Institutional reform of the Security Council can help to build wider support for its actions, but changes in its membership alone cannot provide an answer to the security challenges that face us. We should ask ourselves what the charter's call to uphold international peace and security means in the modern world. It must mean facing up to threats from international terrorism. We have made a good start by setting up the Counter-Terrorism Committee—a unique mechanism of peer review to spread good practice in the fight against terrorism—but we must maintain the political momentum behind it by ensuring that it focuses attention on the most serious shortcomings and tackles those countries with least commitment to the fight against terrorism.

That must also mean considering the threat from proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It is striking, noteworthy and worrying that the Security Council has not discussed this as a generic issue for something like a decade. We therefore welcome the impetus given to the subject by President Bush in his speech to the General Assembly in September. We are currently in consultation with partners to decide how the Council can best fill this gap in its agenda. I believe that it is important for us to do that.

In revisiting the definition of international peace and security, we should also bear in mind how notions of state sovereignty have evolved since the founding of the United Nations. We have all rightly become used to the idea that one country's internal decisions on, for example, environmental or economic matters can become a cause for global concern. We also recognise—even if some of our closest partners, regrettably, sometimes do not—that these problems should be the subject of collective responses. Similarly, the governance, internal security and stability of an individual country are legitimate subjects for international concern and, where appropriate, collective action. Internal conflict quickly draws in neighbours, and repression by Governments leads to outflows of refugees. A breakdown in the rule of law can lead to the export of organised crime. All those factors can destabilise entire regions. The international community should not use the excuse that they are internal matters as a reason for waiting until they develop into full-scale regional emergencies. We need better systems of conflict prevention, drawing in the whole UN system.

We should also look again at the criteria that we use to decide when the international community should intervene. There is no guarantee that the Security Council would be any more willing to intervene today if it was again faced with a situation like the Rwandan genocide or the Serb actions in Kosovo. No one should be in any doubt that, in some circumstances, it is right, acceptable and just for the international community to intervene in another sovereign state. What happened in Rwanda in 1994 provides the most powerful argument in support of that. It was a damning indictment of the international community of the time that action was not taken.

Starting with the speech made by the Prime Minister in Chicago in 1999, the Government have put forward to the Security Council some possible criteria for intervention, and it is time to look at that issue again. We suggested then that we needed to build a better understanding of the circumstances and conditions in which the international community could act when conflict prevention failed. Intervention can take a number of forms, and the use of force should always be a last resort. We believe that the development of a set of pragmatic understandings on action in response to humanitarian crises would help the Security Council—acting on behalf of the members of the UN as referred to in the charter—to reach consensus when such crises occur, thus ensuring effective and timely action by the international community. Action should be taken only to prevent genocide or major loss of civilian life that could destabilise other states and threaten international peace and security. In those circumstances, force should be used only as a last resort and when a Government have demonstrated their unwillingness or inability to end large-scale civilian suffering within their jurisdiction.

There also has to be a pragmatic element. The scale of actual or potential human suffering must justify the risks and dangers of military action, and there must be clear and relevant objectives and the military means to ensure a high probability of success. The use of force in such circumstances should be collective and limited in scope to actions necessary and proportionate to achieving the humanitarian objective. It must also respect humanitarian law and the Geneva conventions. That, however, is only one possible way of expressing the conditions under which intervention should take place. I believe that it is timely and important that we are having a debate on this issue.

Alan Howarth (Newport, East)

The criteria that my hon. Friend has just sketched out reflect what has happened in the history of Iraq over the past 10 years. Do we not need reforms that would ensure that United Nations resolutions were not flouted, and that there would be no more failures to enforce them over such long periods and with such calamitous consequences?

Mr. Rammell

My right hon. Friend makes an exceedingly important point. One reason that we ended up in that situation over Iraq was that, over an extraordinarily long period, Iraq had flouted the will of the international community through the United Nations, and the international community—through the UN—had effectively sat back and allowed that situation to develop. I referred earlier to discussions with the Mexican Government about their ideas for reform, and one of the issues that they are considering—and which we should all consider—is how we can ensure that the international community enforces the relevant Security Council resolutions.

We also need to consider how the UN can better deal with post-conflict situations. Some two thirds of all conflicts reignite within five years and the international community needs to do more to break that cycle of violence. There is much expertise within the UN system and in national Governments, accumulated from a wide range of post-conflict situations. That needs to be drawn together in a more readily accessible form.

During our recent presidency of the Security Council, in September, we started work on one aspect of that, namely, the transition to justice and the rule of law. As part of that process, the UN Secretary-General has agreed to produce a report setting out the UN's experience in this area and making recommendations for future action, to help to ensure that the components of a justice system in a post-conflict society—police, prisons and an equitable legal system—are put in place. Justice and the rule of law are essential building blocks for stability and prosperity, without which a secure political and economic framework cannot be constructed. The UN has progressively become more involved in this area, but so far in a rather piecemeal fashion. We envisage that it will use the current exercise to develop a more coherent and targeted strategy for future action. It could also provide a more systematic way of co-ordinating individual contributions in this area by the international community.

It is right that the UK should seek to influence the debate on UN reform. Our own interests are global, and many of them are better advanced in partnership with others. An effective UN is the right body to achieve much of that. We are also well placed to exert that influence: first, as a permanent member of the Security Council; secondly, from next January, as the fourth largest contributor to the UN's regular budget; thirdly, as the provider of more than £600 million worth of support to the UN in 2002, nearly two thirds in the form of voluntary contributions; and fourthly, as a provider of key personnel across the UN's operations. The full breadth of our UN contribution is astonishing, as can be seen from the Command Paper produced by the Government, and we intend to participate fully in the debate on UN reform. The programme of reform is one to which Members from across the House can subscribe and I commend this agenda to the House.

2.37 pm

Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon)

This is an important time in the life of the United Nations. That significant organisation must face many tough choices if it is to adapt to the new geopolitical realities of the modern world, so I welcome this timely debate. I am delighted that my first speech in my new role in our foreign affairs team should be on such a crucial issue, and I thank the Minister for his kind welcome to me, earlier in the proceedings.

May I take this opportunity to place on record my own and my party's appreciation and respect for the dangerous but vital work being undertaken by UN personnel in Iraq, and indeed across the world? May I also record our appreciation of all those who have suffered injury or given their lives while working in Iraq with the UN to build a better future for the Iraqi people?

Much that I say here today will have a familiar ring to it, because my party and my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) have made considerable efforts to develop and state our policy in respect of reforming the United Nations over many months. None the less, much of it deserves restating in the context of this debate. That is not simply a way of saying that I have only just taken over and have not had the chance to create my own thoughts on the matter; much of our stated policy needs to be repeated and underlined today, and I know that the subject is held to be particularly important by many of our electorate, who care passionately about these global issues.

I consider myself always to have been a strong supporter of the United Nations, and I agree with the Minister that the organisation's strongest supporters should also be its strongest advocates for change. In a speech in Oxford, my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes addressed the need for dialogue to be at the centre of international relations today. He stated: Dialogue is not only the first step but also the continuing staircase to the understanding and tolerance we must build. He went on to say that it was his firm view that an understanding of the past provides the background that is necessary to inform dialogue. It discloses the sources of the fears that in turn have given rise to bitterness and hatred. It rapidly becomes the basic building block of discourse. Knowing how and why the knots of hatred and mistrust came to be tied is the only route to loosen, to unravel, and eventually to undo them. That goes to the heart of why the UN remains so important. Among many other things, it is surely a forum for dialogue.

In an increasingly interconnected and globalising world, dialogue as a means of preventing the spilling over of disputes into conflict is more important than ever. Dialogue builds the understanding that dispels the fear that can give rise to conflict, and the UN is undoubtedly the foremost forum for the promotion of dialogue, understanding and tolerance as well as the peaceful resolution of disputes.

As a small aside, I recently returned from North Korea. If ever there was an example of a country becoming isolated, North Korea is it: 23 million people live in a closed society and, unfortunately, it has or is on the brink of having nuclear capability, so dialogue, contact and engagement are critical in ensuring that things do not go wrong. We can bring that unique country into the family of nations, and I am sure that the UK and the UN have an important role to play in that.

Recent events surrounding the conflict in Iraq have served to underline weaknesses in the UN that have been in play for some time. The Foreign Secretary—in this very Chamber, on this very day—admitted that today's machinery has been shown to be inadequate to cope with such a fast-changing world. The lead-up to conflict with Iraq and its aftermath led to gridlock in the Security Council after France, back in February, made it explicitly clear that it would veto any second resolution, thereby preventing any progress from being made.

The UN, the European Union and NATO all suffered damage in the Iraq crisis as their multilateral machinery showed itself to he unable to cope with the stresses and strains of national interest and disparate viewpoints. Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall spectacularly. The question, posed back in September, remains valid today: have recent events truly undermined the effectiveness of the Security Council or only its reputation in Washington? How can we repair the damage? Can Humpty Dumpty be put back together again?

First, we must understand how we have come to a position where the UN appears to be out of touch with some realities of the geopolitical landscape. As the Minister said, the UN was in many ways a product of the post-second world war climate. It developed during the cold war in the context of two superpowers and their attendant blocs balancing one another in an uneasy equilibrium in which neither had a free hand to act internationally due to the nuclear balance. Balance and compromise were, in many ways, the watchwords.

With the fall of the Berlin wall and subsequent events, that international power structure was swept away, but many international institutions and much international thinking failed to recognise that and to adapt quickly enough. Just as there is often a tendency to fight the last war, both in reality and perhaps in general elections, so there can be a desire to stick with institutions that were designed to keep the last peace.

After the collapse of the USSR, the reality was that only one power remained—a hyperpower, to use the current term. That hyperpower—the United States of America—possesses military, economic and technological power that gives it a dominance unknown in history. I recall one fact to which the Prime Minister himself referred in this Chamber some months ago, and it must be true because he said it: the military might of the United States of America is equivalent to that of the next 27 strongest countries put together. If that is absolutely true, what a terrifying and sobering thought it is—unparalleled dominance indeed.

No longer does the balance that dominated the UN's coming of age exist. The United States can, if it wishes, do anything it desires. It has the means to do so and, as its recent national security strategy shows, it has the will to do so if it perceives a threat to its national interests. That reality has driven US policy in areas such as Iraq where it perceives a threat to exist.

America was often accused of unilateralism in its actions before the recent conflict in Iraq. It was accused of using its power, irrespective of the UN, to carry out its policy objectives whether the world liked it or not. The Administration felt that the UN's view was already clear, as expressed through many resolutions, the latest being resolution 1441. The US believed that the UN had a duty to enforce its resolutions or be seen as powerless, and thus redundant. The French Government, however, viewed matters differently. They felt that the UN would make itself redundant if it simply agreed with the US, rather than retaining its right to say yea or nay.

To many in Europe, and indeed around the world, America seemed to be saying that it hoped the world backed it, but, if not, that did not matter, because America would go ahead anyway. Multilateralism and consensus appeared to be holed below the waterline in this new world of conviction diplomacy. In reality, of course, matters were more complex. Recent events in Iraq have shown that the world is not unilateral and, as Joseph Nye recently argued, America cannot "go it alone". Acceptance is vital for power to be effective.

It is time for a reality check. The UN must recognise the dominant position of the US. In turn, the US must be encouraged to act through the UN. The UK has a unique and historic role to play as a friend of America and a believer in the UN to help to square that circle. I urge the Government to continue their efforts to make that work.

President Bush is well aware of the need for international co-operation in international affairs. He knows that America cannot really go it alone, hence his going to the UN to secure resolution 1441 and his attempts to secure a second resolution. He has further shown that he recognises the UN's value by channelling much of the reconstruction work in Iraq through the UN by way of the recent resolution, and we remain hopeful that all members of the international community will strive to work together to put that country back together again.

The UN has never been free from the constraints imposed by great power politics and there was never a golden age when pure multilateralism and consensus politics functioned irrespective of national interest. Throughout the cold war, America and the USSR exercised the veto in defence of their allies or their political stance, one versus the other. So let us, appreciating that backdrop, briefly examine how the UN might be made more effective, bearing in mind the stark reality of current geopolitics.

The UN charter—the document from which all else in the UN flows—aspires to save people from war, practise tolerance, promote human rights, justice and respect for international obligations, and promote social progress and better standards of life". Those objectives remain as valid as they were 50 years ago. They also show that there is far more to what the UN does than simply the top-level political and diplomatic work that most people see acted out in the Security Council. A host of other aspects of its work deserve recognition and perhaps greater prominence in thinking through the UN's future role.

The debate on the future and reform of the UN is highly important, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes said in a lecture earlier this year, which I encourage hon. Members to read if they have not already done so. He argued for the need to expand the Security Council, as well as exploring areas such as the growing debate on peacekeeping versus peacemaking.

I very much welcome the Minister's speech and the one that he made last June. We know that his commitment to reforming the UN and to modernising it so that it can adapt to the modern world are genuine and beyond doubt, but I pause to reflect for a moment on whether he has thought through all the points that he has put forward over recent weeks.

One thing that the Minister talked about today is expanding the Security Council by bringing in Germany and Japan, and perhaps India, Brazil and another country from Asia. However, he also talked about those countries perhaps coming in without the power of a veto. When pressed, I am afraid that his answers were not as satisfactory on that point as they might otherwise have been. This important area requires further consideration.

I am also concerned that one of the things that this organisation suffers from more than perhaps any other is the paralysis of an overweening bureaucracy. I do not see too much in the Minister's proposals that will strip away some of that paralysing bureaucracy, make decision making more streamlined and make the implementation of decisions more effective. That being said, we recognise his commitment to the debate and wish him well in taking forward the Government's arguments.

I welcome the UN's willingness to address the question of reform, which the Annan proposals strive to do. I welcome them also, and the discussions that have been held at the UN, as I do the Secretary-General's assurance that the process of considering reform will be deep and ongoing. It is important that the reform process keeps up with events, which, of course, are developing all the time.

We were pleased to note the attendance of so many world leaders at the discussions earlier. Our Foreign Secretary attended, but it is surely a matter of regret that our Prime Minister was not able to do so. Few things are more important than the existence of modern and effective global architecture to head off conflict and build a peaceful, prosperous world, and the UN is the pre-eminent organisation when it comes to trying to do that. It really does deserve some quality time from the Prime Minister.

The UN is, of course, as much about humanitarian and social work as it is about global politics. Peacekeeping and, increasingly, peacemaking play a vital role in preventing the spread of conflict and concomitant problems; but the UN's humanitarian and economic aid work is central to the tackling of the root causes of many of our current problems. We all know that global instability results from global poverty. We want to place on record again our support for the millennium targets requiring us to bear down on global poverty and some of the worst abuses and excesses that we see on so much of the planet.

I urge the Government to make more use of the UN in respect of difficult problems such as that in Zimbabwe, perhaps by tabling a resolution to internationalise the situation using both the UN's political clout and its humanitarian resources to help that deeply troubled country. I do not understand why the Government still refuse to table such a resolution; perhaps the Minister will explain.

Many Members have travelled the world and seen some of the excellent work done by many UN organisations, subsidiary bodies and agencies over many years. The World Health Organisation successfully co-ordinated the international response to the severe acute respiratory syndrome crisis, and has been combating various lethal diseases in developing and developed countries for decades. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been doing vital work, not least in Iran recently—although I note that, in a recent article in The Economist, Mohamad el-Baradei of the IAEA set out in persuasive terms his analysis of his organisation's shortcomings and of possible reforms. Perhaps we could hear the Government's response to some of those thoughts as well. The World Food Programme is relieving starvation in areas afflicted by famine, not least in North Korea, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees continues to relieve the suffering of people made homeless and stateless by conflict and natural disasters.

Everywhere we turn, the UN is active. I sometimes pause to wonder whether it is too active, whether it spreads its resources too thinly, and whether it tries to do too much. There is, perhaps, a case for doing less and doing it better. The Minister mentioned recent decisions to prioritise and focus on core business. I should like to see a greater focus on particularly important aspects of security and humanitarian work.

Perhaps I may be permitted the observation that some UN agencies suffer from an excess of bureaucracy and poor planning. In considering how we can best reform the UN, we must strive to take every opportunity to minimise such constraints on effective action. Might there be in some areas—particularly on the humanitarian side—a more enabling role for the UN? Could much more of the implementation of its policies be subcontracted to non-governmental organisations and other agencies, rather than its doing so much of the work itself with, sometimes, less than effective outcomes?

Like my predecessor in our last debate on this subject, I have tried to offer a broad-brush view from the Opposition Front Bench, safe in the knowledge that Members in all parts of the House will have important and well-informed contributions to make on more specific matters. The key underlying concept for the modern United Nations must be a blend of idealism and realism that recognises both the noble aspirations of the organisation and the practicalities of the modern world. It is a difficult balance to strike, but an important one to seek.

The United Nations may have been conceived in a different era, but if it can adapt to the changing needs of the international scene it will be able to make a crucial contribution for many decades to come—a vital contribution to global stability and prosperity, which are issues of concern to us all.

2.54 pm

Valerie Davey (Bristol, West)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on initiating our second debate on the United Nations since the summer recess, and on his strong commitment to it. I also congratulate the Government on their report on the United Kingdom in the United Nations, a valuable document to which I am sure we shall often return.

That document uses the word "revitalisation" rather than the word "reform" when referring to the UN's future, and I too prefer it. Within the last few years various proposals have been advanced, and various groups have expressed concern about how the UN could be re-established to meet the needs of the 21st century; but none of those involved anticipated what would follow in Iraq, or indeed the more immediate results of the attack on the UN itself in Baghdad on 19 August.

As has already been pointed out, our debate takes place on an auspicious date. To hold it on Armistice day is indeed fitting. The hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) reflected on the UN's history, but the crisis we now face and the challenge posed to so many people associated with the UN were brought sharply into focus by the 19 August attack. I was shocked to the core that that building, and the UN's work, had been challenged in such a way. As the days passed, there arose a sobering reflection on the understanding of the UN by the perpetrators of the act—and whether the UN itself fully aware of the difficulty it had got itself into. Was it prepared? Had it done enough work? Was it allied too closely to the coalition groups? A range of questions emerged from the incident, serving as a catalyst for the wider questions that we have all been asking for years.

That focus, as it were, led to many personal tragedies, and in particular to the death of the individual sent by Kofi Annan, Sergio Vieira de Mello. I shall say something shortly about his life and his contribution to the UN.

All of us who are here today are committed to reform and revitalisation of the UN. But before becoming involved in what is potentially a fairly arid debate on the number of seats on the Security Council and the order in which its members sit, where buildings will be sold or relocated, or the nature of the General Assembly, let us pause and reflect—as my hon. Friend the Minister did—on the reasons for the UN's establishment, and on its new nature. What is to be its role in the 21st century?

I think that the millennium projects have given a lift to the concept of the UN, and given it a new focus and priority that are to be welcomed; but, like my hon. Friend, I am concerned about intervention in sovereign states where human rights have been virtually abolished and humanitarian aid for large numbers of people is disintegrating. What should the protocols be? We know how complex and difficult the situation is, but the UN must be prepared to view it as a new aspect of its work.

Many people—I admit to being one of them—are ever hopeful that the UN will prevent war, will stop war when it has started and, when war has ended, will be there to pick up the pieces, provide humanitarian aid and re-establish democracy. That is a huge agenda, given that at the same time we want the UN to deal with natural disasters by doing all the humanitarian work for which it has such a good reputation. I readily accept that none of that will be done without reform. Tedious, painstaking committee work will be essential for the reform of the United Nations. I commend the work that the Government are doing to bring that about.

Last December, in a speech in the General Assembly, the Polish Foreign Affairs Minister said that he was looking forward to what he called "a group of sages". Whether Kofi Annan reflected on that and whether his new panel of international statesmen—I gather it is all men, unfortunately—is a reflection of the Polish Minister's consideration, I do not know, but the Polish Minister was certainly reflecting on the need for fresh impetus to be given to the work of the United Nations and for a reinforcement of the basis for the United Nations mandate. No one is asking for the basis of the United Nations charter to be changed, but many people around the world are looking for a reinvigoration of the claims on each individual nation, within the concept of a multi-nation, multilateral organisation. In his speech, the Polish Minister asked that the group of sages draft a document to provide an inspiration to and a basis for the work of the United Nations". It is that element of renewing inspiration that prompted my request to speak in the debate.

Often following a tragedy, I gain huge inspiration from obituaries, and that was the case following the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello on 19 August. I understood the work that he had done. According to commentators, he was a hugely accessible, non-bureaucratic, hard-working and inspirational United Nations administrator. He was a Brazilian educated in France. He worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, made links and did work in Bangladesh, southern Sudan, Cyprus and Mozambique. He then represented the UNHCR in northern Latin American countries, went to the Lebanon, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bosnia and Kosovo before going to East Timor and Iraq, where after a short time he met his death.

The life of Sergio Vieira de Mello should be capturing the imagination of others, particularly young people, and inspiring them to take on that work. I hope that in this country we take on board the fact that civics is not just about the state within Britain and Europe. We should teach young people the context of the United Nations. The UN flag used to fly at schools and public buildings on 24 October. I did not check whether it did so this year; I think that I may have been disappointed. We need to allow young people to see that the United Nations is a key factor in many of the things in which they are interested.

Recently, to my delight on the doorstep, a young person asked me in rather longer terms than I shall express it whether, if she wanted to be involved in aid, she should go into charity work or politics. That young person of 14 has since visited the House and she is thinking that she will he an aid worker first and perhaps enter politics later. We should inspire with the work of the United Nations, too, because I would like young people to be challenged by that work. The UN is not just UNICEF, a charity to deal with those concerns. It does not just meet the needs of the many destitute people of the developing world. It is not just a humanitarian organisation. It is a hugely political organisation, whose role we need to clarify. It should inspire young people.

Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate)

While I entirely agree with the hon. Lady about the need for the UN and the UN ideal to be an inspiration, does not the tragic example of Mr. Vieira de Mello illustrate the problem? She has made clear the inspirational quality of his life and mentioned his obituaries, yet according to the UN report on what happened in Baghdad, he ignored advice from two teams of UN security specialists to move his office to a safer place, saying that he would leave the matter to his successor". Is not the problem that we are wrestling with that, while the UN is an inspirational institution, the reality of how it carries out its functions is sometimes a long way short of what is desirable or optimal?

Valerie Davey

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He underpins exactly what I was intimating in terms of 19 August. That tragedy showed that the United Nations had huge questions to answer about the single building that it was occupying in Baghdad, let alone about the buildings in Washington, London and elsewhere. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that huge mistakes were probably made, which allowed, in part, that tragedy to take place. I accept all that, but the inspiration of the organisation and many individuals within it would enable young people to come together and to do the work. Dialogue is simply one to one; we need the group factor. We need people from different countries, especially young people, to be inspired to take on that work.

I do not know in what way Vieira de Mello's life will be commemorated, but the idea of scholarships, and of young people getting to know the work of the United Nations better and sharing in some of its work, would be a fitting tribute. I want to ensure that in all the education work we do, and in all the scholarships we offer, the United Nations is an integral element. It should not be a matter of saying that the United Nations is over there. We are a strong member. We are, we hope, leading the way in Europe. We should also make an important contribution to revitalising the United Nations.

3.7 pm

Mr. Michael Moore (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale)

As the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) said, it is fitting that we should have this debate on Armistice day and reflect on the causes that gave rise to the need for a United Nations organisation. I also welcome the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) to his new position and commend him for participating in the spirit in which many of the debates on the issue have been held in the past few months, fresh from the difficulties that the House had during the Iraq debates.

Two months ago, when we debated the United Nations in Westminster Hall, the Minister promised that the occasion was to be an annual event, in response to which there were cross-party pleas that in future the debate should be held in the main Chamber. I do not think that a Minister has often responded so positively or so quickly, and he deserves appropriate credit for that.

Liberal Democrats hold a deep-seated commitment to the United Nations and a belief that the United Kingdom, as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, must give a firm lead on matters of international peace and security. The UN remains the only truly global institution with universal membership and universal principles, which bestow upon it a unique legitimacy. Its remit is vast. Beyond peace and security, the UN and its agencies work diligently to improve the economic and social condition of people across the globe. The UN has also performed a valuable and unique role in assisting countries in transition in recent years. However, in the past year the UN has rarely been out of the headlines, often for the wrong reasons, as the world has grappled with the situation in Iraq. The organisation has had to come to terms with the August tragedy in Baghdad, where it found itself in the front line and lost 22 of its personnel. As the hon. Member for South-West Devon said, this House and the country should never lose sight of the danger in which members of the UN organisations put themselves daily. In response to that terrible event, one commentator reported that the grief at UN headquarters was heightened by the sense that those who died were not simply working for an institution, but rather serving a cause. That encapsulates the complexities of the UN, which adds up to more than the sum of its intergovernmental parts. It also illustrates the difficulties we face in contemplating reform of the organisation.

The Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has set out his concerns more boldly than most. In a press briefing in September, he said that, on peace and security, he was not sure whether the consensus and the vision that the Millennium Declaration expressed are still intact. Member States have been sharply divided about some of the most fundamental issues that this Organization was set up to deal with…I think all States need to take more account of global realities, and of each other's views and interests. They must set a higher priority on finding common ground and agreeing on common strategies, rather than striking out on their own. And if they do not want others to strike out on their own, they need to show how multilateral systems really can deal with the problems that are of concern and worry to others. Hear, hear to that.

The Secretary-General highlighted key institutions such as the Security Council as being in need of reform. Never mind the recent difficulties that have been much debated; the world has changed and, to a large extent, the UN has not. In nearly 60 years, the UN has increased its membership from 51 countries—when the world population was 2.5 billion—to 188 countries, with a world population somewhere in the region of 6 billion. In that time, the institutional structure of the UN has barely changed. The need for reform is self-evident.

Liberal Democrats have long supported the expansion of the Security Council. We support the enlargement of the Security Council to include Germany and Japan and to include an additional member each from Latin America, Africa and Asia as new permanent members. We would add the caveat that any new members must have a clean bill of health at the UN and have no outstanding UN resolutions with which they have not complied.

The work of the UN has changed, as has the world in which it operates. The Security Council has on occasion become more proactive and has undertaken field missions to Indonesia and East Timor, Kosovo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This trend is to be encouraged, but such missions must be adequately resourced and member states must follow up on the recommendations of the Security Council. The Security Council must give conflict prevention a higher priority in its work, and must develop a more systematic and professional approach to the prevention of conflicts.

Mr. Blunt

On the operation in the Congo, what does the hon. Gentleman have to say about the EU setting up its own force there, separate from the UN? Surely it would have been better for the EU to act in support of the UN by joining the UN force, and by helping to provide Security Council resolutions to enable the force to act effectively.

Mr. Moore

My understanding—I stand to be corrected—was that the EU was approached to carry out its functions in that matter and that it does so under the auspices of the UN. [Interruption.] I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman speaks in the debate, he will explore that issue further.

One area that has not been touched on this afternoon, but where there is a glaring need for reform, is the number of outstanding Security Council resolutions that gather dust and which have been ignored or not been complied with. Surely a UN designed for the 21st century should have systems in place to ensure that, in future, the terms of Security Council resolutions are not allowed to gather dust. In that respect, the Secretary-General should undertake an annual resolutions review to determine which obligations are outstanding and what action needs to be taken to comply with them.

The Iraq conflict threw the international order into chaos because it challenged the existing notions of sovereignty and what is or is not legal under the charter. There is a legitimate debate about this area, some of which has been rehearsed here this afternoon; there is no need to repeat the finer points.

Earlier today—as the hon. Member for South-West Devon said—the Foreign Secretary highlighted the need to reform the charter to take account of failing and rogue states. There are echoes here of the Prime Minister who, in his much-quoted keynote speech in Chicago on 22 April 1999, said that the most pressing foreign policy problem we face is to identify the circumstances in which we should get involved in other people's conflicts". In September of that year, the Secretary-General—in his address to the General Assembly—noted that no legal principle—not even sovereignty—can shield crimes against humanity". If we are to make progress in this area, there must be a clear framework for intervention, defined and qualified by formal criteria and principles. It is important to remember that humanitarian intervention could in itself serve as a deterrent to future conflicts. It is also important that those criteria and principles are understood in the wider UN.

We believe that a framework of humanitarian intervention should also recognise that the objective of any intervention should be a better state of peace. The UN and its members must be prepared to commit not only to peace enforcement, but to the provision of substantial economic resources in the long term once stability has been restored.

Hugh Robertson

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the basis for humanitarian intervention, but unless the criteria are tightly tied down, we can get Mogadishu-type situations; indeed, UN forces in Bosnia encountered similar problems. Unless the two parties involved in the country concerned want to resolve the conflict, it is extremely difficult for the UN force to do it for them. If the UN tries to do that, those delivering humanitarian aid get sucked into the conflict, becoming targets and a part of the problem.

Mr. Moore

The hon. Gentleman makes an entirely fair point. Clearly we need to ensure that the parties to a conflict make every effort to end it, and ensure that they are committed to peace. I cannot help but feel that, in so doing, the UN would be a great deal more credible if it had a set of guiding principles and criteria on the basis of which it was prepared to commit an intervention force to a particular country or region. That is what we lack at the moment, and that is where much of the pain and grief of the past year has come from.

There must be a better way of planning for the aftermath of conflicts and the reconstruction efforts that flow from them. The unseemly diplomatic battles after the end of the formal conflict in Iraq should not be forgotten. Even yet, the situation is far from clear.

The International Criminal Court has become a major tool of the international community in advancing the rule of international law in general and international humanitarian law in particular. Britain's role in bringing the court into being deserves praise, but it is sad to note that the British Government appear at the same time to be undermining the cohesion of the European Union on the issue and assisting in the bilateral article 98 immunity agreements that the US is keen to introduce with many countries. There will be looming difficulties in coming months as the US and the EU clash over their approach to the court in their relations with third countries. Hopefully, the Minister will be able to make the British stance clear in that regard.

The Government wrote in 2000: We strongly urge all countries to sign and ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, so as to consolidate and extend the gains we have achieved in bringing to justice those responsible for crimes against humanity. There can be no stronger measure to break the culture of impunity that has for so long shielded those guilty of crimes against humanity. I hope that the Minister can stand by that commitment today.

Peacekeeping has long been recognised as one of the key areas of UN activity, producing successes and, sadly, also many failures. There is a well-recognised need to develop the UN's capacity for peacekeeping, and we support the creation of an early-warning intelligence-gathering unit. A capability for the rapid establishment of operational headquarters in the field should also be developed. That would allow for better co-ordination of UN peacekeeping missions in the early stages of an operation, especially between UN headquarters and those in the field. Once deployed, UN peacekeepers must be able to carry out their mandate professionally and successfully. That means that UN military units must be capable of defending themselves, other mission components and the mission mandate. Rules of engagement need to be sufficiently robust, so that UN contingents are not forced to cede the initiative to hostile elements. No longer must UN blue helmets stand by while the most serious crimes against humanity are being committed.

Peacekeeping has become central to the United Nations and is perhaps the most important yardstick by which its performance is measured nowadays. The funding of peacekeeping therefore needs to be placed on a firmer basis. In short, we firmly believe that the doctrine of peacekeeping, which evolved in the 1950s in the context of interstate conflict, is no longer valid for the intra-state conflicts of the 21st century. Many of those conflicts throw into sharp focus the millennium development goals, and through emergency aid and long-term assistance the UN does much of its most valuable work. It is, as one commentator put it, a court of last resort for millions of refugees, child soldiers and the impoverished". We need to ensure that it is fit to do that job.

We firmly believe that a review and strengthening of UN finances are long overdue. The scope of UN responsibilities and the hopes invested in the organisation are immense, but the budget for the core functions is just $1.25 billion a year. That is significantly less than Birmingham's annual budget for 2000–01, and about 4 per cent. of New York city's annual budget. UN resources are simply not commensurate with its global tasks. Non-payment of dues should not be tolerated, and we must hope that the Government will support efforts to get back-payments brought up to date.

Before concluding, I want to pay tribute to Britain's own major contribution to the United Nations. The Liberal Democrats believe that for many generations, Britain has lived up to its position as a founding member and permanent member of the Security Council. Although we have at times profoundly disagreed with the UK Government's approach to key issues such as Iraq, we recognise that Britain's role in the UN has none the less always been a strong one. Indeed, the diplomats based there are some of the finest to be found.

The UN has no right, divine or otherwise, to exist. It must be relevant to the principles that underpin it, and fit to achieve the objectives that we set it. We still need an international body that is devoted to peace and security on one hand, and to development and emergency assistance on the other. The principles therefore remain valid—indeed, perhaps more than ever. But no one can deny that the UN's organisational and political structures need wholesale reform. We should support the efforts of Kofi Annan and the president of the General Assembly—and, indeed, of this Government—with enthusiasm, or, as the hon. Member for Bristol, West put it, in a way that inspires. Through that, we can hope to produce an institution fit for the 21st century.

3.24 pm

Alan Howarth (Newport, East)

The United Nations has changed in the years since 1945. Its membership has greatly increased, the Security Council was enlarged in the mid-1960s, and the Counter-Terrorism Committee was set up recently, after 11 September. As the Government's Command Paper notes, the UN has responded to the great changes of decolonisation and the end of the cold war, and the new challenges of HIV/AIDS, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and civil conflict.

The UN's mission, affirmed in 1945 so eloquently, movingly and indeed succinctly in the preamble to the charter, remains valid: to maintain peace, to advance human rights, to uphold international law and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom. At the millennium Assembly in 2000, Heads of State and of Government reaffirmed those principles, while defining their priorities for the new century: the fight for development of all the peoples of the world; the fight against poverty, ignorance and disease; the fight against injustice; the fight against violence, terror and crime; and the fight against the degradation of our common home. As the Secretary-General has said in his report of 9 September 2002: The need for an effective multilateral institution—one dedicated to the service of humanity as a whole—has never been more acutely felt than in the current era of globalisation‖The challenge ahead is to strengthen our capability for collective action. Of course, the UN has its contemporary successes. Large amounts of aid are delivered, increasingly in partnership with non-governmental organisations and the private sector. Relatively unpublicised good work has been carried forward in the reconstruction of Sierra Leone, for example. The world is a very much better place in innumerable ways because of the presence and activities of the UN and its agencies.

The world, however, while pinning many hopes on the UN, is all too conscious of its deficiencies. How could it have happened that the UN, while claiming to defend Bosnia, effectively abandoned it, tacitly co-operating, it has been seriously argued, with Serbian ethnic cleansing? On one occasion, Serbs were even reported as wearing blue berets provided by UN troops. How could it be that at least 800,000 people, out of an original population of 7.5 million, were massacred in Rwanda, with the warnings of the UN commander in Rwanda and his pleas for more soldiers and materiel seemingly dismissed in New York?

Can the UN truly claim to have been doing all that it could to end the continuing conflict that has cost 2 million lives in the eastern Congo? We know of the miseries of Liberia. We know that the Taliban's abuses of human rights and the failure of Government in Afghanistan were neglected, while al-Qaeda used the haven of that failed state to build its capacity. We know that great areas of the world have become poorer now than they were 10 years ago. We know that for years on end, the UN has failed to enforce its own resolutions, which have been routinely breached by Iraq and by Israel. We can see now the results of the failure to plan adequately for post-war reconstruction in Iraq—a responsibility, however, that is as much the international community's as the UN's. One can make that distinction in this context. We have seen the culpable failure of security that permitted the tragic terrorist bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August, and the consequent evacuation of the UN's international personnel from Iraq.

No one is a shrewder critic of the UN than its Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. In his report of 9 September 2002, building on the reforms begun in 1997, he set out a whole programme of reform. He advocated a more representative and open Security Council; changes in the procedures of the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council; better prioritisation, abandonment of obsolete concerns and a sharper performance by the Secretariat; better co-ordination of UN agencies, committees and activities; a reformed budget process as a lever for further reforms; fewer meetings and less paper. In 2001–02 Kofi Annan noted—unbelievably—that 15,484 meetings were held and 5,879 reports issued. He also advocated fewer conferences and better follow-up in respect of those that are held; reform of the office and procedures of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; better communications, and much else. I am glad that the Government are giving vigorous support to the Secretary-General's agenda.

As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has pointed out, however, the issue is less institutional than political. Without the will for reform among Governments and if agreement cannot be reached on how to deal with the difficult problems of international affairs, it is no good railing against the UN. Governments do not find it difficult to genuflect to the great abstractions and the broadly stated principles of the charter. What is hard, apparently, is to make generosity of vision a practical reality.

Kofi Annan rightly upbraided the General Assembly on 23 September this year: The last 12 months have been very painful for those of us who believe in collective answers to our common problems and challenges". He drew attention to terrorism in many countries; violence in the middle east and Africa; the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Korean peninsula; and, of course, the position in Iraq. He reminded the General Assembly of the consensus expressed three years ago in the millennium declaration, but said, as the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) reminded us, recent events have called that consensus in question". He put it to the General Assembly: We have come to a fork in the road. This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself…I respectfully suggest to you, Excellencies, that in the eyes of your peoples the difficulty of reaching agreement does not excuse your failure to do so. He then announced a high-level panel to take a hard look at fundamental issues and at the structural changes that may be needed.

The panel's task of analysis and prescription is difficult and the diplomacy required for nations to reach agreement will be yet more so.

We are looking at a world in which there is no longer a balance of power and where the nature of the state and of threats to peace and security have been changing profoundly. Globalisation, communications technology, modern weaponry and migration all mean that borders and sovereignty—and therefore state identities—have different, perhaps less, meaning from what they used to have. States in which Governments have collapsed and poverty is desperate—failed states—may be incapable of undertaking the responsibilities that UN principles require of them.

Multinational corporations and financial markets, the arms trade, international organised crime and the drugs trade create and characterise global power structures that are very different from those of 1945. The crises of migration and water shortages require new thinking and new accommodations. The communications revolution, transmitting news and images instantly across the world, has profound implications for global politics. The rise of fanatical ideologies interacting with poverty and hopelessness, the absence of democracy and the risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction present the most dangerous pathology and the most pressing case for renewal of the UN.

It is far too dangerous to sleepwalk further into this new world of the 21st century. Countries are now tempted to claim a right of pre-emptive action in self-defence to take out the threat of terrorism equipped with WMD before an attack occurs. The Secretary-General rightly expresses deep concern about the proliferation of the unilateral use of force outside the bounds of article 51 of the charter. Equally rightly, as the Minister reminded us, Kofi Annan said that it is not enough to denounce unilateralism unless we face up squarely to the concerns that make some states feel so vulnerable, and he invited discussion on the criteria for early authorisation of coercive measures to address certain types of threat.

International law has always evolved—from the Pax Romana to the religious peace of Augsburg, from the treaties of Westphalia and Utrecht to the Congress of Vienna, from Versailles and the League of Nations to San Francisco and the peace of Paris in 1990—as jurists and statesmen have sought to reflect the interdependent development of strategy and constitutionalism, the new realities of insecurity and power.

In a sense, honourable and learned differences of opinion about the legitimacy of the coalition's intervention in Iraq are by the way. What matters is that the international community develops authoritative ways as a community to deal with the problems of today and tomorrow, which are different from those of 1945 or the 1980s. The alternative will be a capricious, mainly well-intended, but often blundering American hegemony seeking to police a Hobbesian international chaos.

3.34 pm

Hugh Robertson (Faversham and Mid-Kent)

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth). His was a very lucid and balanced speech, and I hope that it will not embarrass him if I say that it was hard for me to disagree with anything he said. It was an excellent contribution.

I have a direct personal interest in the UN. As a young Army officer, I served in the UN force in Cyprus in 1988. In 1994, I returned to Bosnia for six months, with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. I have always supported the UN but, in common with many hon. Members, I am not blind to its problems.

It would be fair to start by saying that there are a number of areas in which the UN has done exceptionally well. The UN General Assembly is a parliament of nations, with 191 members. Any state that becomes a member signs the UN charter and pledges to uphold its principles. In this world, that is worth having on its own.

The UN Economic and Social Council—ECOSOC—co-ordinates the economic and social work of the UN and its family of organisations. It has five regional committees that promote economic development and co-operation in their regions. Other bodies focus on human rights, social development, women, crime prevention, drugs and environmental protection. Other UN bodies do fine work in their own fields. They include the UNHCR, UNICEF, the UN Development Programme, and UNESCO. In addition, specialist agencies are linked to the UN through co-operative agreements. They include the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The UN has a considerable record of achievement, of which it can justifiably be proud.

In addition, the UN millennium development goals were announced at the millennium summit in September 2000. The pledges made then, among others, were to halve poverty and hunger by 2015, to achieve universal primary education, to combat HIV/AIDS, to ensure environmental sustainability, and to bring down the level of child mortality, which are all extremely worthwhile.

I believe, however, that debt relief is key. Globalisation should be used as a force for good, by giving developing countries access to markets that currently are denied to them. It is daft to give developing countries debt relief, yet deny them the ability to export their goods. It is vital to break the link between dependency and debt.

The UN has done good work in a number of other areas, but it has also attracted criticism. Peacekeeping is one example, and several other hon. Members have spoken about it. The House may be surprised to learn that the UN has been involved in 56 operations since 1948, but the record is rather mixed.

There are two types of UN peacekeeping operations—chapter VI operations, when the Security Council acts in a persuasive capacity, and chapter VIII operations, when the resolutions are mandatory, and the measures adopted are coercive.

A number of chapter VI operations have been extremely successful, such as those in Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador and Mozambique. In Cyprus, the UN force maintains the peace but until recently the intransigence of the parties involved has resulted in a lack of progress. Even on the Golan heights, the UN has managed to maintain a level of peace, but the situation has, of course, yet to be resolved.

Recent chapter VI operations have developed and become more all embracing. They do not deliver only a military solution, but involve delivering humanitarian aid, organising elections, and administering states' economic and social development. In many ways, Bosnia offers an extremely good example of all that.

I believe that the history of UN operations teaches us three things. If chapter VI operations are to work, they require a measure of co-operation from the participants. That means, first, that the parties involved must agree to stop fighting and settle their differences. Secondly, there has to be an acceptance of the UN's negotiating and peacekeeping role. Thirdly, adequate manpower and financial resources must be made available. Without that, it is extremely difficult for an operation to be successful.

For those reasons, the chapter VIII operations have fared less well. The sanctions that often act as a precursor do not always work as a coercive device that falls short of military force. Arms embargoes, oil embargoes and wider economic measures have not worked in places such as Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, Haiti, Angola, South Africa and, many years ago, in Southern Rhodesia. There were many ways of getting round such sanctions.

The military structures built into chapter VIII operations do not always work well. The contributing countries almost always insist on a measure of command and control, or want it delegated to an organisation such as NATO. For entirely understandable reasons, unless they have some control, western Governments are often unwilling to commit troops to stop people killing one another. Hon. Members will be aware of the wider feeling that the essence of the UN is incompatible with the use of force in such circumstances. We have to acknowledge that the UN's peacekeeping record has been mixed. If it is to be successful, it is crucial that the parties involved want to stop fighting and to settle their differences.

I want to touch on two other points where the UN's record is mixed, the first of which is justice. We have already talked about the International Court of Justice at The Hague, but there is more to international justice than a court. Events during the build-up to the war in Iraq showed that the legal backdrop of the UN needs updating, as the Foreign Secretary said at Question Time today. That should hardly surprise us, as those legal bases were drawn up more than 50 years ago, since when the world has changed considerably. As countries increasingly use the UN to establish the legitimacy of their actions, a rethink of the whole matter is vital.

The second point relates to human rights. Put brutally, many UN members have failed to live up to the principles embodied in the universal declaration of human rights. It may be invidious to name particular countries, but Burma, Algeria, Iraq, Sudan and, most notably, Zimbabwe are only a few examples. As hon. Members are aware, Libya was recently elected chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights. That is clearly wrong.

When we consider the balance sheet, we see that the UN has excelled in many things, especially in the economic and social sphere, and has done much that is positive, such as peacekeeping, on which its record is more mixed. As I pointed out, much remains to be done on justice and human rights.

What is to be done about reforming the United Nations? I have six suggestions; three are practical and three are more theoretical. My first practical suggestion is that the financing of the UN needs to be reformed. Certain countries pay disproportionate sums; the United States, the EU and Japan pay approximately 75 per cent. of the contributions, which is far too much. The US contribution has a marked effect on military operations and, in effect, gives the US a form of veto over peacekeeping operations.

We should work for a new system in which the United States and Japan pay about 10 per cent., the EU pays about 35 per cent. and a much greater percentage—about 45 per cent.—comes from others. The Gulf states, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Russia, India, Canada and Australia, to name but a few, could all contribute much more than they do currently.

Secondly, the structure of the UN should be reformed. That suggestion should not be surprising; the format was established in the post-war climate and flourished during the cold war, but the world is now a different place. Threats are less local and more globalised, and include terrorism, drugs and immigration and environmental issues. The structure of the UN must reflect that. A wide-ranging review should be conducted, and the Minister mentioned that such work is under way. It should include such things as the powers of the Secretary-General, which, by any standards, are extraordinarily wide at present. The subjects for debate at the General Assembly need clarification. Kofi Annan has described the debates as repetitive and sterile. The number and powers of members of the Security Council must be examined. I would support an increase in the number of members, but we must be careful about increasing the right of veto in case that merely leads to inaction.

There needs to be a streamlining and refocusing of UN agencies. As I said at the start of my speech, we have a huge number of UN agencies, which could be restructured and refocused. We need to examine the way in which the UN interacts with non-governmental organisations. I saw a number of good examples of that in Bosnia, where the connection between the UN and NGOs was not great. The UN stood at the top of the pile and very much believed that it was in charge of the process, and a lot of the NGOs felt that they did not get the support that they required from the UN as the lead agency.

Across the UN, working methods and decision-making processes need to be improved. We must improve the transparency of the entire organisation. The responses to the crises that we face in the modern world must also be examined. They need to be much more wide-ranging, not just military, diplomatic, humanitarian, legal and so forth. The structures currently do not reflect that. As everyone would agree, there is too much bureaucracy and waste.

The final practical suggestion is that the UN should seek actively to recruit and retain better-quality staff. The organisation can only be a reflection of the standard of the people who work in it. I shall share with the House a horror story. When I was working with the UN in Bosnia, a permanently employed UN civil servant, who occupied one of the key positions in northern Bosnia, could neither read nor write English, yet he was expected to fill out weekly returns. In the current era, that is simply unacceptable.

Too many people occupy senior positions because they are their country's representatives, rather than because they deserve to be there on merit. Too many special representatives of the Secretary-General—SRSGs—in individual countries are there because they know the right people at the right time. I should have thought that, if we are to make any progress with the UN, it must have in place a proper recruiting structure, open to everyone, with appropriate educational opportunities for all those who enter its service.

We might also take a look at some of the UN's governing principles. Ever since it first began, the UN has supported the integrity of states within their existing frontiers. However, as we all know, many of those frontiers are artificial or unrealistic. A good example is our experience in Bosnia, where a viable country was created by using new frontiers. There are other recent examples in places as diverse as Nagorno-Karabakh and, possibly more controversially, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The UN must not ignore that sea change.

In common with many other hon. Members, I support the desire for more effective preventive action. Action must be taken to defuse crises before they explode into warfare. The agenda for peace and the Secretary-General's annual report for 1993 focused on exactly that topic. It has been alive for 10 years, yet I have not seen an enormous amount of constructive action. Effective proactive measures are vital if many of the threats that we face in today's world are not to come about.

Finally, on a military basis, we must look at the command and control of the forces that the UN deploys under chapter VI or chapter VIII. There needs to be a proper military staff at the UN headquarters and the Security Council needs to be in strategic, political command, with the day-to-day control of operations delegated to an SRSG or to its force commander. The current set-ups, which are often too complicated, simply do not work well.

In conclusion, as I said at the outset of the debate, I am still extremely supportive of the UN. It has achieved a great deal in nearly 60 years of its existence. One can genuinely say that the glass is half-full, not half-empty. However, everyone would agree that the UN needs reform. I have made a number of suggestions, particularly about its structure, financing and recruitment policy. Other hon. Members will have other good ideas, as has the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The more that I thought about the subject and revisited a number of case studies, the more one central factor became obvious: the UN can certainly defuse crises, separate combatants and set the stage for negotiations, but it often cannot solve the underlying disputes—only the parties themselves can do that. To that extent, the UN is not so much a tool as a mirror: its failings are very often our failings. Some years ago, Lord Caradon, the former head of the UK's mission, said while examining the United Nations: The faults and weaknesses of the UN lie not in the charter or the organisation but in the defects of its most powerful members". In my view, the UN needs reform, but many of Lord Caradon's sentiments remain true today.

3.50 pm

Mr. Alan Campbell (Tynemouth)

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson), who spoke from practical experience of having worked under the United Nations.

As most hon. Members have said, it is appropriate that the debate is being held today, when we remember those who gave their lives in wars, from one of which came the United Nations. It is also appropriate, however, that it is being held against the backdrop of a very different war in Iraq, the build-up to which brought the United Nations to the brink. Almost a year ago, I was fortunate enough, along with other Members, to visit the United Nations. People have expressed their admiration for the contribution that Britain has made over the past 60 years to the organisation's work, but everyone whom we met there also expressed the same admiration for our efforts, even though it was a very difficult time.

At the time of our visit, there were grounds for optimism that the Iraq situation could be resolved peacefully through the United Nations. The Security Council had not only passed resolution 1441 but had done so unanimously. We now know, however, that that optimism was misplaced and short-lived. The failure of the Security Council to agree a so-called second resolution led not only to the UN being parked in the crisis, but to a very different solution being chosen. That raised serious questions about whether multilateralism could survive, and whether the UN had a role in future crisis management and resolution. Rather than push questions about reform on to the back burner, it has brought those questions further forward.

I want to make some general points before moving on to specific areas. First, there is the fundamental question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) mentioned: how does an association of 191 nation states not only survive but function effectively in a world in which the power of nation states, domestically and internationally, is increasingly challenged? It is perhaps ironic that when the cold war ended new nation states came forward and rushed to join the United Nations, which was rightly seen as a sign that they had arrived on the world stage. They must work within a global environment that is very different from that of even a decade ago, however, and for some of them it is a struggle to deal with the challenges of globalisation, especially when their authority at home, and the order that exists there, extends little further than their capital cities.

There is a temptation, of which there has been a hint in today's debate, to blame bad governance. There is no doubt that, around the world, there are Governments who can rightly be criticised and who have made matters worse. The United Nations continues to have an important role in encouraging good governance, but many of the problems associated with globalisation—global poverty, famine, drought, AIDS, refugees from civil wars or international terrorism—do not respect national boundaries. Not only do some nation states struggle to come to terms with those problems, but their failure to do so worsens the situation and exports problems not just to surrounding areas but further beyond. It seems to me that the United Nations is uniquely placed in those respects and already has many crucial programmes in place. It has the capacity to be more than just the sum total of 191 constituent parts, and is still the world's foremost transnational as well as international organisation. It must adapt if it is to remain relevant, however, and it must change if is to survive, and it must do so as radically as it did during the 1960s and 1970s to meet the challenges of decolonisation.

Problems such as famine, world poverty and AIDS are now endemic. Those problems are hugely important, but it is likely that headlines will reflect the civil wars that rage throughout the world or the threat from international terrorism for the foreseeable future. For that reason, if for no other, reform of the Security Council is crucial because it is charged, under the UN charter, with maintaining international peace and security.

The Minister has already made it clear that the UK supports an enlarged Security Council, so I hope that we will use the presidency to press the case for reform. We must be prepared to reform not only the permanent membership of the Security Council, but non-permanent membership. If permanent membership of the Security Council is to reflect the reality of economic power, it is difficult to make a case against such membership for Germany or Japan. However, if we are to avoid, as we must, the charge that the Security Council is a rich nations' club, we must also recognise the case for regional powers. There is a case for India or Pakistan to join the Security Council. There is clearly a case for Brazil to be a member. Although no one has mentioned it this afternoon, there is a case for an African state to have permanent membership—a case can be made for South Africa. If we ask more of South Africa as a regional or even a continental power, that should be reflected in the permanent membership of the Security Council.

Angus Robertson

I support the hon. Gentleman's argument about the Security Council. I do not know whether he intends to touch on the question of retaining the veto for the current permanent five members. Does he think that there are inherent dangers in creating a two-tier permanent membership of the Security Council?

Mr. Campbell

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I would have raised it specifically but I have not yet reached a conclusion. I started by thinking that we must examine the veto with a view to getting rid of it or changing it fundamentally. I then realised that the Security Council faces a big danger, not if it goes ahead to do something or if it does nothing, but if it gets caught in the middle. If the veto were removed, it would formalise divisions in the Security Council, which would be a terrible outcome. If it does nothing, we may have to live with that, and if it does something, that is fine. However, if it is divided, fundamental questions must be asked. A two-tier system of permanent members would be unacceptable, but I have yet to reach a conclusion.

My hon. Friend the Minister said that, if permanent membership was reformed, it would be the job of the countries that form continents to decide their representatives. There is a strong case to be made for countries such as South Africa because its membership would give the United Nations an effective way to link directly with African efforts to prevent conflict and restore peace in the continent. I fear that instability might otherwise go unchecked, which might encourage western powers to take unilateral or even joint action in the form of expeditionary forays into Africa to try to remove a threat or restore order. I wonder whether that would result in a 21st century scramble for Africa or an equally bad scramble from Africa, if it was decided to leave it to its fate.

A reformed Security Council will be effective only if it works within a reformed system of international law. The Security Council has a responsibility to prevent, as well as to react to, conflict. That raises fundamental questions about issues such as self-defence, pre-emption and sovereignty. We live in a world in which threats may not take years or even months to develop because they may strike more quickly and might not come from a nation state. We urgently need a much better set of guidelines for action, whether on humanitarian or human rights grounds, or in response to a threat from rogue states and international terrorism.

When we visited the UN, the Counter-Terrorism Committee was in the early stages of its work under the superb chairmanship of our ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock. There are already grounds for optimism, as all the states that have signed up have taken positive steps. However, it is increasingly clear that the CTC has a long-term job to do, and that it requires resources. It should be a permanent body, not just a sub-committee of the Security Council. It should have a wider remit so that it can tackle the proliferation, not just of weapons of mass destruction but of conventional weapons. That is not an easy task, as we discovered on our visit. We discussed the CTC with the permanent representative of a middle eastern state who said that his Government were fully signed up to the war against terror, and were prepared to condemn terrorism without reservation, except in the case of Hamas, which, in his Government's view, was a group of freedom fighters. That underlines the extent of the problem.

The General Assembly debate that we listened to made a Labour party meeting on a wet Saturday morning seem interesting and relevant—[Horn. MEMBERS: "No!"] I assure my hon. Friends that it did. The trend to involve other non-governmental organisations in the work of the General Assembly should be encouraged as a catalyst for change. There are, as has been mentioned, plans to reform the secretariat, but appointments are often short-term and do not seem to be based on a system of merit. There is certainly very little performance appraisal. The key question remains, is there a will to reform and, if so, what is the time scale? A week can be a long time in UK politics, but a year or even a decade can be a short time in UN politics.

Finally, we must invest not only in the work of the UN but in the UN itself. The UN headquarters building physically reminds people that the organisation is stuck in the 1970s, or in an even earlier period. The communications division of the secretariat is oddly out of touch with the 24-hour news-conscious world. It does the UN little good when images of weapons inspectors in Iraq are flashed up on television screens around the globe and they look startled as they are set upon by the world's media. This is not just an issue for the developed world, as we live increasingly in a global media environment. The UN often has to win hearts and minds in trouble spots around the world, and may well face another battle to win hearts and minds in donor countries, where people may question whether it is relevant in the long term. That is a battle that neither the UN nor any of us can afford to lose.

4.3 pm

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby)

Like the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell) and, I suspect, all contributors to our debate, I support the United Nations, although I often do so because it is the only show in town. I agree with much that the Minister said, and should like to talk about the effective use of taxpayers' money and how it is spent by the UN.

I have seen many UN operations around the world, both with the International Development Committee and in other capacities. Its staff drive large white 4x4s, they are on fairly large salaries and pensions, and their children's school fees are paid. They pay attention to their careers, have weekends off and usually occupy the best villas in town. I remember that in Sarajevo there were no vehicles on the streets in 1997 except UN 4x4s, and all the best villas around the city were occupied by UN personnel. However, I do not have a problem with that. If people are sent regularly to some ghastly spot they need to be well looked after.

Others have spoken of Bosnia, Srebrenica, Rwanda and the Congo, where conflict is now going on, but I should like to concentrate specifically on the effectiveness of UN aid, which is paid for to a large extent by UK taxpayers—I think that we are the fourth largest contributor—with regard to mine action. In July 1998, we passed into law the Ottawa convention; indeed, I was here at the time. Article 5 says: Each State Party undertakes to destroy or ensure the destruction of all anti-personnel mines in mined areas under its jurisdiction or control, as soon as possible but not later than ten years after the entry into force of this Convention for that State Party. Of course, the convention was very much a UN document. Those statements were made in 1998, and five years have already gone by. After the second world war and six years of war across the European continent, it took approximately five years to clear almost all the mines that had been laid in Europe. My point is that, as the Ottawa convention and what happened after the second world war show, mine clearance is a finite, short-term problem.

I should declare an unremunerated interest, as I am chairman of the trustees of an organisation called the HALO Trust, which is the largest humanitarian de-mining NGO in the world. It clears mines in Abkhazia, Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and a host of other countries, and started its activities in Afghanistan in 1988. I use the HALO Trust as an example, but other NGOs could be cited, such as the Mines Action Group, which often work under the aegis of the UN. Since 1988, the HALO Trust has cleared well over 1.5 million land mines and pieces of unexploded ordnance worldwide. The income that it used for such clearing last year was $36 million, and it employs a total of 5,500 staff, of whom only 30 are expatriates—a ratio of about 1:200 expatriates to national staff. On that income, it is reckoned that the HALO Trust cleared approximately 30 per cent. of the mines lifted and cleared around the world last year.

The HALO Trust has been operating in Afghanistan since 1988, and throughout the conflict, apart from a couple of times when it had to stop operations under the Taliban. It has three expatriates there and 1,900 local staff, 1,500 of whom are down on their hands and knees clearing ground. In 2002, it lifted 75 per cent. of the mines cleared in Afghanistan. We had money from the United Nations in Afghanistan, but trying to get it out of the UN was like trying to get blood from a stone. The fact that the money was not forthcoming from the UN led to people being laid off. At the same time, when the UN distributes money to implementing partners, it takes a slice off the top for administration. That money is not for administration in New York, which is paid for by core funding, but the slice is up to 13 per cent.

I turn now to United Nations mine action. What is it? The United Nations Development Programme website states that mine action is an interagency consultative process, involving several other agencies, to develop a collective, comprehensive and coherent UN system policy on all those activities which aim to address the impact as a result of landmine contamination. I hope that that is entirely clear. UNMAS, the United Nations Mines Action Service, describes itself on the UNDP website as a coordinator and facilitator at the field level. I thought that mine action was about clearing mines. The same website states: UNDP works in mine action rather than demining…Mine action is a comprehensive term encompassing four main components: Mine awareness and risk reduction education; minefield mapping, marking and clearance; victims assistance and rehabilitation; and advocacy at the international level…Secondary components are management and institutional arrangements. I think that hon. Members can see what I am getting at, but I should like to give a final quote from the UNDP. It says: National ownership over mine action at country level is essential for short-term effectiveness and longer-term sustainability…National institutions need to be built from the ground up. That is exactly what NGOs such as HALO do, so one has to ask who actually does it. The website also states: UNDP's primary collaborators do not encompass assistance to victims of a more medical nature. This aspect of victim assistance is better managed by UNICEF, WHO and others. So UNMAS and UNDP do not blow up mines or deal with the after-effects of mines, so my question is, what exactly do they do?

The website continues: There are situations where a mine clearance operation is needed quickly to defuse a potential humanitarian catastrophe. In these…situations…a wide range of actors"— here it gives a list, including the HALO Trust— may be better placed to respond to the need. UN DP should avoid becoming involved in these emergency situations, except to provide full logistical support to our partners. UNDP's primary interest is in building national structures able to successfully clear mines into the long term. We might term that last task "capacity building", but the Ottawa convention mentions a period of 10 years, and experience has shown that unless someone lays more mines, they are a finite problem. The role of UNMAS therefore includes facilitating, co-ordinating, management and capacity building. It involves people in headquarters, not people clearing mines.

UNMAS has 13 expatriates in Kabul in Afghanistan. What exactly are they doing? One of UNMAS's roles is co-ordination, and we agree that everybody needs coordination, but it can be achieved nationally by Government, even in a country that is being rebuilt, assuming that no corruption is involved. In Angola, which I visited recently with the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman), co-ordination was achieved between the NGOs and they did not need an overarching body. HALO took responsibility for clearing one province and the Mines Advisory Group took responsibility for another. Co-ordination can be achieved with a lighter touch.

UNMAS does not need 13 expatriates in Kabul. The UNDP agrees, as we can see from its statement to the mine action support group meeting on 9 October about Sri Lanka: Due to the fact that parts of Sri Lankan territory still are under the control of non-state actors"— that means terrorists—

there is no central mine action coordination centre yet…Despite the lack of a central mine action coordination, the cooperation of both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE"— that is the Tamil Tigers, if memory serves—

with UNDP and NGO's is satisfactory and provides overall compatibility of mine action policies. So co-ordination can be achieved, according to the UNDP, without the UNDP's assistance.

Anyone who has examined the costs and the funding of the United Nations will know that it is opaque and confused—to put it mildly. We funded more than 5 per cent. of the UN's activities last year and are the fourth largest contributor. The UN website for mine action says that $206 million is spent on that activity alone. It says that the organisation plans to have 8,000 de-miners. It does not have them yet, and I would like to know where they will be based. HALO fields a de-miner for $6,300, so the UN—on its funding—should have more than 31,000. On its own figures, it spends $154 million on co-ordination and other headquarters functions. I put it to the Minister, and to his colleague the Secretary of State for International Development, that that is not why we give money for humanitarian work to the UNDP. That is not implementation: it is bureaucratic waffle under the heading of co-ordination.

Finally, I turn to the NGO perspective as expressed in the HALO Trust's annual report. Five of the largest mine clearance NGOs—Danish Church Aid, the Danish Demining Group, Handicap International France, Norwegian Peoples Aid and the HALO Trust—met as a group that was initially called the NGO Task Force. In August this year, they reformed into a group called the NGO Perspective on the Debris of War. The group agreed to the following statement: Victims and communities affected by the debris of war deserve better support than they are currently getting from the mine action community. The mine problem is finite, straightforward and relatively simple to solve. However, mine action processes are becoming over-complicated and, as a consequence, unjustifiably expensive.

We, five experienced NGO mine action operators, are concerned that under the current circumstances the obligations of the Ottawa Treaty cannot be met. What are the implications of that? Although donor funding for mine clearance is increasing—we all welcome that—it appears that there may not be the corresponding drop in casualties. At some point, donors such as DFID will say, "What's the point? We're going to walk away from these escalating costs," and the clearance agencies will have to abandon numerous areas of mine clearance for mine-affected communities.

HALO believes that donors, including the UK,

should now review their funding priorities and decide what elements of 'Mine Action' really contribute to casualty reduction and the relief of poverty. The review should not be done by the established circle of mine action consultants who have advised on policies during the past 10 years—as they are likely to justify their previous advice. HALO is convinced that there are…hundreds of millions of dollars being spent that have little or nothing to do with casualty reduction or the relief of poverty. A whole 'Mine Action' industry"— one might even say circus—

is feasting off international donor funding—an almost continual stream of conferences, consultants, publications, studios, rewrites, IT systems", and so on. If we want Afghans, Cambodians and Angolans to live without a constant threat of landmines over the next few years, we need to switch funding from so-called "mine action", which is peripheral, to actual mine clearance.

I used the HALO Trust as an example, but other NGOs could be so used. UN mine action costs UK taxpayers and others a great deal of money, which should be better spent, but mine action is itself only one among many issues. I very much hope to hear the Minister say that the Government will hold the UN to account and will review the funding for mine action and other humanitarian work.

4.17 pm

Mr. Tony Colman (Putney)

It is interesting to follow the advocacy of the hon. and gallant Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on behalf of the HALO Trust. Having accompanied him to Angola when we were both members of the International Development Committee, I heard him take up those charges with the United Nations. I hope that the Minister may want to take the matter further, because it is an extraordinary situation.

I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on the United Nations and a member of the United Nations Association.

At 11.30 on this Remembrance day, a ceremony took place at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, as it does every year, to remember those who have died in the service of the United Nations. Last year, that service was led by Sergio Vieira de Mello. This year, of course, we mourned his sad death, and also that of Fiona Watson, who was formerly a researcher in the international section of the Library, in that terrible explosion on 19 August. That brings home to us the importance of having this debate today.

Last week, I was honoured to chair the meeting for the Ralph Bunche memorial lecture, celebrating the 100 years since the birth of Ralph Bunche, who was perhaps a predecessor to Mr. Vieira de Mello, covering the years from 1945 to 1971, when he died. It was a very inspiring lecture, given by Sir Brian Urquhart, whose biography of Ralph Bunche I recommend. It is well worth reading, and I shall be delivering it back to the House of Commons Library soon. The meeting was full—standing room only—with ambassadors, members of the diplomatic corps, Members of this House and the other place, and members of the public attending. That demonstrates the concern, which people are now understanding, that the United Nations is the key game in town—indeed, the only game in town—and that it needs to be supported, talked up and respected.

A number of hon. Members have referred to the excellent Command Paper—Cm 5898—entitled "The United Kingdom in the United Nations", and I congratulate the Minister on publishing it this September, and, as others have said, on having the second debate on the Floor of the House on this subject within three months, as many of us had advocated.

Several hon. Members have talked about reform of the Security Council, but I would like to talk about other reforms. I suggest that there are areas into which the UN should have gone but has not yet fully done so, in terms of new specialist agencies. I accept that some might need to be folded within others, but I want to draw to the attention of the House an article in the Financial Times of 10 November, headed "Plan for UN to manage internet 'will be shelved'." The subject is to be discussed at next month's world information summit in Geneva, and I strongly suggest that we do not shelve the proposal. We should get the book out and ensure that the internet comes under the auspices of the United Nations, presumably within the International Telecommunication Union.

A second area that I would like the Minister to consider is one on which I challenged the Secretary of State for International Development in the House last week: taxation. The under-secretary general for social affairs at the United Nations General Assembly special session for finance and development two weeks ago said that if we were looking at world taxation and accounting systems, they should come within the UN. There should not be an international taxation system that is the same for every country, but the UN should have governance over the mechanisms and processes.

A third area is migration. It is extraordinary, given the enormous migratory flows around the world—I am talking about economic migrants, not refugees—that there is no basis on which the UN has a locus in that area. There is the International Organisation for Migration, but it is outside the United Nations.

A fourth area is the World Trade Organisation. We have the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development—UNCTAD—but in a sense the WTO was the organisation that got away in 1995. It should have come within UNCTAD at that time, and many of us would like to see greater moves being made to that end.

There are two areas in which the United Nations has specialist agencies that are in need of reform. The hon. and gallant Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) mentioned the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which is based in Montreal. It has 188 member states, meets every two years, and decides what goes on in our airports and aeroplanes, and how airlines use the air. It has a wide range of programmes and sets environmental rules for the world.

Paragraph 209 of the Command Paper states that the ICAO has developed a universal, effectively mandatory, programme of safety oversight audits. At its next meeting, which I believe is in February 2004, I suggest, on behalf of those who have problems living near the approach to Heathrow airport—as we certainly do in Putney—that it could examine the issue of night flights, which needs to be dealt with across the world, and that of noise. I was pleased to see today that Cambridge university and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing silent aeroplanes, which seems like a good idea, and considering the issues of pollution and whether a fuel tax might be a good idea.

The ICAO is largely a closed organisation, where the discussions are not open to the public. It is extremely important that we should continue to have high-level ministerial representation there. We should also ensure that this Parliament has representation at that next meeting, and that NGOs can fully lobby and be involved in decision making in respect of a UN agency that needs reform.

The next area that should briefly be mentioned is the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was referred to by the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell). I have a particular interest here—my Nuclear Safeguards Bill eventually became the Nuclear Safeguards Act 2000—in terms of UK ratification of the additional protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. I am pleased to see in the documentation the fact that there is to be a significantly increased budget in respect of the IAEA's safeguards work. Obviously, all of us are pleased that the efforts that have been made with Iran have borne fruit, as the Iranian Government have accepted coming within the work of the additional protocol. That is a good example of the UN moving forward on a new agenda.

I would like all weapons of mass destruction to come within an IAEA framework. I am sure that we all agree that it is a great shame that the chemical and biological weapons conventions seem to be stalled, but I suggest that the world will understand if we can advance the cause and move things forward.

I want to move on to the wider role of reform, which other hon. Members have not mentioned. What is the role of Parliaments in relation to the UN system? I was pleased to discover that, finally, the UN has given observer status to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. That is the first time that this has happened. Individual delegates from national Parliaments have been given the right to initiate resolutions and to speak, but plainly not to vote. There is much discussion about whether there should be a parallel Chamber to the UN General Assembly, so that discussions can take place among Parliaments alongside those among Governments. If it is now the norm, as it appears to be, to have IPU meetings alongside the ministerials at the WTO, why not do the same at the UN General Assembly if we are looking to reform the UN and increase its legitimacy?

Another area is ensuring that the role of civil society is much fuller and more properly looked after. A major piece of work is being done on that, and I urge all Members to encourage their constituents to engage in it, as there is a real sense of disempowerment among many NGOs. That was picked up by the hon. Member for Blaby, who talked about that on the ground, as it were, but it is felt also at the UN in New York and in Geneva.

The next area was picked up by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey)—how do we promote the UN's importance, the hope that the UN gives, the role of the World Federation of United Nations Associations and the UN associations in the UK? I pay tribute to Sir Richard Jolly, chair of the UK United Nations Association, and Malcolm Harper, the chief executive.

When I was at Cambridge university, I was chair of the UN association, which had some 7,000 members—nearly three quarters of the student population. It was rather larger than the Labour and Conservative clubs. That was in 1963–64. Such involvement among the student community is something that I would like to be revived. However, there is a tremendous network of UNAs out there in each of our constituencies that we need to support. I pay tribute to my own Putney UNA—chairman Dave Crookenden, vice-chair Rob Storey and secretary Jo Stokes. I am very proud to be its vice-president.

I believe that the United Nations is the one hope for the world. At today's Remembrance day service in Putney, the final prayer ran as follows: Let us pray for the peace of the world…and for men and women the world over that they may find justice and freedom and live in security and peace". The United Nations is, I believe, the only way forward.

4.30 pm

Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate)

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman), who speaks with such authority about the UN and his contribution to the UN association. I agree with him about Fiona Watson's contribution. I hope that the House finds a way of recognising it permanently, as we should recognise the contribution of other servants and, indeed, Members of the House who have gone on to do other things and have lost their lives in the service of this country—or, as in this instance, the service of the international community.

I am sure that Sir Brian Urquhart will be delighted by the hon. Gentleman's endorsement of his book, and will regret only that he had to borrow it from the library rather than buying it.

I am not certain that I can logically go as far as the hon. Gentleman and agree that the UN is the only hope for the world, but I do not think anyone could dispute its enormous importance. After all, in September 2002 the President of the United States—a president leading a Republican Administration—found it necessary, amid all the fears about the isolation of the US, to go to the UN and justify his appeal for global support for what it wanted to do in Iraq in terms of Security Council resolutions that already existed. To sweeten the pill, he announced that the US would rejoin UNESCO. That demonstrated that even the United States, the hyperpower referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), needs the support of the entire international community. The UN is the only body that exists for that purpose, and if it did not exist we would have to invent it.

I do not agree with critics who have tried to make parallels with the League of Nations and have said how ineffective the UN is. Almost every nation in the world—if not every nation—belongs to the UN: even Switzerland, having sat on the sidelines for so long, has now decided to join. It is easy to list the UN's failures, and I shall list some of them shortly, but it is the best—probably the only—body to deal with not just security issues but all the issues of world governance arising from the 12 UN agencies. I am thinking of the World Health Organisation, the international aerospace agreements mentioned by the hon. Member for Putney, and all the other subsidiary bodies.

I agree with the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) about the importance of the aspiration and inspiration that the UN must provide. The UN did not give explicit approval for the military operations involved in the recent conflicts in Iraq and Kosovo, but the international community and the powers that had taken action had to return to it to secure authority for the subsequent operations and political developments in those places. It is, however, seriously undermined by its administrative and practical failures as an organisation.

A week ago, the Financial Times published a report of a serious corruption inquiry involving the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. There is the extraordinary business of charges being made by a senior official in the United Nations office that tackles drugs and crime. That body is involved in a fight to deal with corruption within its own organisation. The report went on to highlight the complaint of Samuel Gonzalez-Ruiz, whom it described as a former head of Mexico's anti-Mafia unit who advises governments on fighting corruption". It said that he quit his post last week in protest at what he called 'corruption and mismanagement' in the agency, including 'misappropriation of funds', 'nepotism' and 'traffic of influence…In his resignation letter"— he said that management ignored repeated reports of wrongdoing by officials, despite having detailed evidence. He charged that whistleblowers were routinely punished and that perpetrators were sheltered by senior management. He went on to say:

I do not have the stomach to be promoting a fight against organised crime and corruption around the world when I am working in an office that tolerates administrative and in some cases criminal violations". That is too often the experience of people on the ground with the United Nations. It is not typical, but it happens much too often for any of us to be comfortable with how the United Nations works.

My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) referred to his experience of a senior UN official in northern Bosnia being unable to carry out simple functions. While working for Sir Malcolm Rifkind when he was Secretary of State for Defence and then Foreign Secretary, I visited United Nations operations in Bosnia and elsewhere. As a British soldier, I visited fellow British troops wearing blue berets in Cyprus and saw the administration there. We sometimes see brilliant United Nations officials of all nationalities carrying out their work but there appears to be the most astonishing inconsistency in performance. People are put into post simply because they come from a particular nation that has to have bums on seats—jobs have to be distributed to people from those nations. Frankly, they are a serious let-down to the whole organisation.

To be fair, I want particularly to commend the efforts of the current Secretary-General to tackle that problem. He is the one who appointed Martti Ahtisaari to report on the consequences of 19 August—the bombing in Baghdad and the wider consequences for the United Nations. If an organisation is prepared to paint as deeply unflattering a picture of the way it works as he does, there is hope that that organisation is becoming significantly more self-critical and will improve. However, we cannot be complacent when Martti Ahtisaari identifies unclear chains of command, flouted guidelines, a lack of accountability and naivety about the security environment. That naivety led to the tragedy on 19 August. Frankly, it is totally unacceptable that an international organisation of the stature of the United Nations working in Baghdad in August 2003 displayed that naivety. It led to that tragedy, with all the consequences for the work of United Nations organisations in Iraq.

The scale of that disaster, combined with what has happened to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, is a serious setback to everything that the international community is seeking to achieve in Iraq and a serious setback for the people of Iraq, even if they are hostile to what the occupying powers are doing. One can hardly think of a greater own goal than the combination of those two attacks, not least in the case of the Red Cross, part of whose responsibility is to check on prisoners whom the occupying forces have taken to ensure that they are properly looked after.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), the Liberal Democrat spokesman, drew our attention to the United Nations Congo operation. I intervened on him. He made the point about the European Union's contribution to those operations. He said that the EU contributed to the operation at the request of the UN. The trouble is our lack of commitment to the UN, as demonstrated by the fact that that request had to be negotiated between the EU and the UN. The EU was not prepared, in effect, to support unconditionally the ongoing operation in the Congo, probably for sound military reasons. No responsible Defence Minister answerable to a Parliament in the EU would have been prepared to commit troops to the UN force as constituted in the Congo.

We must ask ourselves why we were prepared to allow a UN force to go to the Congo under chapter VI authority if it was ill-equipped to command and control the troops under its command and to deal with them safely to the standards on which we would have insisted had our troops been part of the original operation. We must ask ourselves searching questions. We were asked to contribute to the operation, but we were not prepared to do so. Are we saying that because the force was under the command of an Indian general under chapter VI, and because the troops were from developing countries, it did not matter if the force could not do things properly as it was never going to have the military weight to make a sensible military contribution to addressing the appalling conflict in the Congo? If so, the idea of first and second-class UN operations must be addressed.

I want to refer to reform and to make some constructive suggestions. We are not talking about the immediate future, but a debate such as this allows us to do some medium to long-term thinking. The UN has been in existence for 50 years and plainly it will develop in strength and importance because there is no alternative. It will be the vehicle, reformed as it will be, that will give us the authority of international law and the international deployment of troops.

I want to concentrate on security, not least because I know something about it. The three Back-Bench speakers from the Conservative party are all former servicemen and I hope that the House will forgive us for focusing on the security dimension of the UN, which is the most important element. All the relief work is important, but one cannot do that if one does not have a secure environment.

On the Secretariat and the reform that is taking place to it, Kofi Annan deserves commendation and support and the Government have made it clear in their Command Paper that Kofi Annan has their support. However, I want to contrast what the Government say about the secretariat with what they later say about the reform of the Security Council. It is right that the UN secretariat's abilities and energies need to be harnessed to ensure that all appointments are made on merit. That would appear to be blindingly obvious.

Until the United Kingdom and every other contributor to the UN is prepared to surrender Buggins's turn when it comes to handing out jobs, we will never have appointment on merit. It is a huge problem, because every single contributor to the UN within every international forum competes for their men and women to have posts within the organisations. Somehow we have to break the cycle, and the UK, as a sizeable nation, should be uniquely placed to take an internationalist outlook on the reform of the UN. We should no longer look at things through the prism of what would appear to be a short-term national interest. Our long-term interests are absolutely bound up with making this organisation as efficient and effective as possible.

Angus Robertson

On the question of Buggins's turn, does the hon. Gentleman concede that following that logic, it would make sense to reform the Security Council so that there would be no need for the UK and the other four permanent members to have a permanent seat and a veto? Does he foresee that as being part of his analysis against Buggins's turn?

Mr. Blunt

In a sense, the hon. Gentleman is extending the point too far, beyond the reality of today's world of international relations and security. It is undoubtedly true that the nations with the largest economies make the greatest contribution to world security, and historically those are the countries that have had the veto. There is now a debate about extending permanent membership and whether the nations that will become permanent members will come with a veto. But I am jumping ahead, so if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me I shall deal with the secretariat before considering the Security Council itself.

I commend what the Government said about initiatives such as targeted training, funding internship programmes, support for graduates—particularly from developing countries—and addressing appraisal systems. One would hope that, if the UN is prepared to be self-critical in the manner of Martti Ahtisaari's report, such self-criticism could be extended to the personnel management of the entire UN. On term limits for senior posts, two four-year terms is usually the sensible limit, but the Government appear to be suggesting that that should be reviewed and the terms made longer. It is plainly in everybody's interests that the UN, even in respect of its most senior posts, should begin to acquire people whose only loyalty is to the UN, so that they do not then return to whichever country they came from. The UN career path should attract the best and brightest of the world's graduates. The UK's best and brightest used to join our own diplomatic service, and the best and brightest of the globe should be attracted to the UN.

There is a horrifying contrast between the language that the Government used about the secretariat, and that used about reform of the Security Council. The Command Paper states: The United Kingdom remains committed to a Security Council that is representative of the modern world, efficient and transparent. I doubt whether we wanted to be committed to one that is representative of the ancient world, inefficient and opaque. On examining the rest of that paragraph, we realise that it actually says very little. That is in sad contrast with what is said about the reforms of the Secretariat; in that regard, lots of specific proposals are made and supported.

We know that, like the previous Government, this Government want the Security Council to expand. The Prime Minister has put on the record—as have other Ministers and the previous Administration—the difficulties in achieving that, but it is self-evident that the nations that make the greatest contribution to security ought to be permanent members of the Security Council. That plainly means India in the first instance, which not only has a huge population but has made a very significant contribution to UN security operations around the world. It almost certainly means Japan and Germany, given their economic weight, and Brazil. People are wondering whether, if an African country is to join, it will be South Africa or Nigeria, and in some senses that is a difficult call. South Africa has a global reputation and appears to have a rather more accountable and satisfactory Government, yet Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and is a regional power in its own right. Here, we hit the difficulty of making qualitative judgments between different candidates for permanent membership of the Security Council.

Are we really proposing to give all those nations a veto? We need to reflect much more on the whole question of the veto. It is worth looking ahead 40 or 50 years, by which time the economy of India might be as large as that of the EU as a whole and the economy of China might, on current projections, be even larger. In those circumstances, the British and French veto may come to look a little odd. We shall have to contemplate the enlargement of the Security Council and a rather more internationalist outlook than we have to date. The world is changing and it will take an awfully long time to secure a satisfactory position for the reform of the UN. We must take a much longer-term view.

Plainly, there are British interests—as there are French—to protect, but we must examine how the veto has operated and what value it has to the United Kingdom. The fact that we are prepared to consider that issue, which goes beyond the position that any Government have adopted until now, might begin to open up a debate about the future of the UN and the future structure of the Security Council. If we, as a country committed to international security and one that has made and will continue to make a huge contribution, are prepared to acknowledge that such a debate should take place, that does not amount to an abandonment of the British position. It does not necessarily mean abandonment of the veto if what we secure in return is unsatisfactory. However, if we are not prepared to begin to deal with the issue—including Buggins's turn in relation to posts—and face up to how the world will look 30, 40 or 50 years ahead, it is difficult to see which other nations will lead the debate.

The UK has, because of our history, our heritage and our inheritance of the Commonwealth, a particularly proud record as a contributor to global affairs. We have contributed all around the globe over the past 200 years. We have had special relationships with countries as diverse as New Zealand and Hungary, for example, and we are the second biggest investor in Mexico. The UK has an outlook on the world and a huge amount to contribute to the debate on reform of the UN. I hope that the Government will be prepared to engage imaginatively in that debate and perhaps go slightly further and consider options other than those that might be viewed as the most politically safe back home.

4.53 pm

Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie)

I am pleased to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt). I have never before experienced having three gallant Gentlemen sitting on the Opposition Benches and I think that I shall report it to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds—[Interruption.] It is a strange experience.

Let us not get carried away in congratulating ourselves on having this debate. Other than a debate in Westminster Hall a couple of months ago, this is the first time in 16 years that I can remember having had a debate on the United Nations on the Floor of the House. How many debates have we conducted on the UN over the past 60 years? Would we need more than one hand—or even one finger—to count them? Is this the first?

We are very poor at dealing with international issues. I congratulate the Minister on this debate and on the annual report, which is a step forward. I recognise what the Foreign Secretary says in the preface—that the report necessarily requires more background and history than subsequent ones will need—but it reads as if it has been edited by a particularly strict primary school head teacher who does not want to frighten the children. Some lively hits have been squeezed out. I shall refer to them in my speech, but we should have been given the whole truth, and not the edited version.

As well as looking at the reform of the UN and its family of organisations, we should look at how we—as a country, and as people—relate to the UN. We are told repeatedly, and correctly, that the UN is merely the sum of its members. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) is not here, but we rely on bodies such as the UNA to keep us abreast of UN activities.

I am pleased to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Putney has returned to the Chamber. I can tell him that I was just paying tribute to Putney, and saying that we need to build support for the UN, through Parliament as well as the UNA.

It is a cliché to say that the world is becoming more globalised but, like many clichés, it is substantially true. More global institutions are being set up to cope with what is going on in the world. In my remarks, I subsume the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. We should consider ending the strange anomaly that means that we talk separately about the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN organisations. They belong together, and we should see them as our collective response to common problems.

Our scrutiny of the vast family of organisations in the UN is inadequate. The debate has been valuable, as it has allowed the House to hear from people with specialised perspectives. For instance, the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) displayed specialist knowledge of UN mines operations. We must use expertise such as that.

I am pleased that the public are waking up to these matters, and demanding that we perform better in matters such as debt and world trade. About two years ago, the Trade Justice Movement campaign mounted the biggest lobby that this House has ever experienced. The House must recognise the importance of such events, or risk being seen to be irrelevant.

It is sad that so little time in the Chamber is devoted to international affairs. I applaud the fact that we now have Westminster Hall, and consider it a great step forward, but we must use this Chamber more effectively as well. Remarkably, for all the discussion about the reform of Parliament, little has been said about how we can relate better to the UN and its very substantial son and daughter bodies.

It seems extraordinary that nothing requires Ministers from the Department for International Development to appear in the House of Commons from one year's end to the next, apart from departmental Question Times. We tried to insert a requirement in the International Development Act 2002 for an annual DFID debate. Although the legislation was the first for decades, we failed to get that commitment. Yet DFID is important, because it is the Department that relates to many of the UN organisations.

Our relationship with UN organisations can have strange consequences. Are we reacting satisfactorily? Like other hon. Members, I shall use personal examples to show how that question has struck me.

To his credit, my hon. Friend the Minister said in his opening speech that there was appalling genocide in Rwanda nearly 10 years ago, when about 1 million people were slaughtered. How did the House respond? House of Commons activity consisted of a few parliamentary questions, and two Adjournment debates that I was lucky enough to obtain by lottery. Have hon. Members considered the propriety of debating—or not debating—genocide by lottery? Could it happen again? Yes, it could. There was no response on that matter from either Front Bench, and the UN Security Council, with our active involvement, was strenuously finding a way to do nothing about Rwanda while the slaughter continued. If anyone doubts that, they should read the books of Linda Melvern and Fergal Keane. We cannot be satisfied that our response to an international event of that magnitude was to do nothing.

We have done nothing in other places in the world. I am one of the few Members to have visited Liberia. I went there years ago and the place horrified me. The problems went on and on and nothing happened; we did nothing about Liberia.

It is not just during catastrophes such as the one in Rwanda when we should exert more influence at the UN. Although the annual report is a valuable step forward, there has been a general failure to report. Many highly significant issues remain—for example, the International Criminal Court, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore). Labour Members were proud when, just before the last general election, we passed the International Criminal Court Act 2001. At last there was a standing court that would bring the most evil men in the world to justice. We ratified the UN treaty and, at almost record speed, the necessary 60 nations were signed up to bring the ICC into existence.

The court is working on its first cases but, as the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale said, it is under siege from the United States, which not only does not want to sign up to the ICC but is actively trying to bring it down by bribing and bullying smaller states. We have mounted less than rigorous opposition to such acts. We have been accused, whether fairly or unfairly, of accommodating the United States in that respect. The British Government have not uttered a word; no statement has been made.

I said earlier that a primary school head teacher seemed to have taken everything of interest out of the annual report. There are about three pages dealing with various special courts—the Khmer Rouge tribunals, the international tribunal on Rwanda and so on—with only three lines about the International Criminal Court. There is no reference whatever to the fact that there was a major row in the UN Security Council about the ICC and bilateral treaties. We must have a better mechanism for reporting back on what our Government are doing. The annual report provides that to some extent, but we need to find out what is happening in each of the UN organisations, with a report from our representatives.

I belong to Parliamentarians for Global Action, which recently celebrated its 25th birthday. The organisation campaigned vigorously for the ICC with—I am delighted to say—the support of the Foreign Office, which provided funding so that, as the UN Security Council said, the PGA was a key factor in getting people involved. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Putney, I get my information about what is happening at the ICC from Parliamentarians for Global Action, which is based in New York, rather than from anything that goes on in this place. There must be accountability to the House.

There is a general trend towards the establishment of such parliamentary organisations. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney and I also belong to the Parliamentary Network of the World Bank. The World Bank recognised that it could not go on being isolated. It could not go on simply relating to Governments; it had to relate to parliamentarians. One of things that we are doing is setting up a parliamentary implementation watch, whereby we report back on various World Bank and other international conference decisions, so that parliamentarians around the world know what is happening. At the moment, it is very difficult to know about such things.

Let me give another example of the international bodies that many hon. Members may remember. I have always had a particular interest in population, development and reproductive health, so I belong to the all-party group on that subject and to the European group, and so on. The annual report states that the UNFPA—the United Nations Population Fund, which is the body to which we in Europe relate— has been an effective and outspoken champion for reproductive health and rights, but has been the victim of attacks and unsubstantiated allegations from religious conservative groups who take a different view on these issues. Let me put that into English. The religious conservative group that has been attacking the UNFPA is the US Government.

The US Government withdrew all their funding from the UNFPA, withdrawing services to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. To counteract that, the EU and the British Government stepped in to ensure that the UNFPA had the same funds as it would have done if the US had contributed. I hope that those points will be made in future annual reports, because we want to know about them. We want to know not just what the organisations were set up to do, but what the areas of contention are.

Many parliamentarians in the House and in other Parliaments are working together, for example, to set up an e-Parliament. I do not know whether that will come to anything, but it is intended to use the resources of global technology to keep parliamentarians in touch. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney visited Albania with the parliamentary network and parliamentarians from other countries to see how the poverty reduction strategies were working there.

Mr. Blunt

A junket and a half.

Tony Worthington

That is the first time that the words "junket" and "Albania" have been heard together, but I had better move on.

Those joint enterprises are very valuable in bringing together the developing world and the developed world to subject the international organisations to scrutiny. As I said earlier, there is a real danger that, unless we as hon. Members sharpen up our act in relating to international matters, our constituents will ignore us. There is no doubt in my mind that various major NGOs in this country have more influence on Governments and international organisations than we have as parliamentarians, because we tend to ignore such issues or deal with them very badly.

Another issue that the Minister mentioned, which I hope will be explored thoroughly in talks about reforms, is conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction. There are an enormous number of low-level conflicts around the world that may explode into much more serious conflicts, in relation to which we must do preventive work. After conflict, we have the sheer difficulty of making sure that our intervention is successful. To see how not to do it, we need only look at what happened to the Americans—the most powerful nation in the world—in the person of General Jay Garner. That is the covered-up and never-talked-about bit of the Iraq story nowadays. The person who was put in charge of Iraq's reconstruction, his team and his philosophy had to be replaced within about a month because their approach was not working. It is complicated, difficult, dangerous work, which requires much more than armies and police; it requires people with expertise in legal services, education and water provision, and it needs to be done in a sensitive and aware way.

I am pleased that, in this country, we now have an NGO—Peaceworkers UK—working on the issue, because until its involvement, that work did not have a focus. I am delighted that the Minister will meet a delegation of MPs and Peaceworkers UK during the next few weeks to see whether our response can be more coherent. I use the word "coherent" not in a critical sense; it is inevitable that when things are done in a higgledy-piggledy way—through the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the EU, the UN or the Department for International Development—we neglect the overall picture, which is to make sure that we have a balanced, skilled team that we can send out to such situations. Peaceworkers UK is raising in an intelligent way the issue of how we can respond to the emergencies that spring up.

To conclude, let me point out that, as has happened in this debate, when people talk about the United Nations they tend to have in their minds political bodies such as the General Assembly and the Security Council. Unfortunately, as tends to happen all the time, people concentrate on the couple of pages at the beginning of the document about the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, and not the 30 pages about the family of the UN. We do not realise the sheer skill involved. I accept the criticisms, too, but sometimes we must be grateful that an organisation such as the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs exists, organises Governments, UN organisations and NGOs when sometimes millions of people can be in trouble, and finds the resources to deal with that. We also need to consider the World Food Programme, the World Health Organisation, to which we turned when severe acute respiratory syndrome looked like being a huge problem, UNICEF and so on.

The United Nations Development Programme has had some criticism today, which may be justified, but it is generally very serious about political capacity building and is worthy of esteem. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney and his colleagues would have recently seen the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Palestine, which has been looking after Palestinian refugees for as long as the UN has existed.

We tend to ignore all of those organisations and we do not esteem them enough. I hope that the annual debate will continue to take place, but I hope that the Minister will recognise that we need more than that. We need to look at how we organise ourselves, perhaps through the Select Committee structure—the Foreign Affairs Committee cannot cope with global issues on its own—and at how we relate to those organisations in a much more sensible way than we do at present.

5.14 pm

Angus Robertson (Moray)

I am in a slightly curious position because I have taken part in three debates today during which I have found myself almost entirely in agreement with almost every word that has been spoken by hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is even more extraordinary that I cannot disagree with a single word of a contribution made by a Scottish Labour Member—the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington). I am enjoying today's proceedings greatly and I underscore the fact that I would certainly sign up to much of what he said. I apologise to hon. Members that I was unable to be here for much of the early part of the debate, but I was firefighting on fishing and whisky, which are important to my constituency. I shall be brief because I have to attend other meetings on those issues.

Despite those important meetings, I was especially keen to participate in the debate for two reasons. First, the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru are longstanding supporters of the United Nations. They support multilateralism and a forum in which the different nations of the world may meet and work under international law. Given the peroration of the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell), in which he described the new and emerging nations that are queuing up to join the UN, he be would be disappointed if I did not again put on record my wish that Scotland will take its rightful place, as a normal country, as a member of the United Nations in due time.

My second reason for wanting to speak is because I worked as a diplomatic correspondent before I became a Member of Parliament. I was based in Vienna for seven years and as a member of the United Nations Correspondents Association, I covered the various organisational parts of the UN that are based in that city—it is the third United Nations headquarters. I should put it on record that I worked for the United Nations as a trainer of its staff in Vienna, so I have a personal and political interest in its work.

I, too, put on record my appreciation of the staff of the United Nations and the many people who have worked on its behalf, not least servicemen and women who have laid down their lives. I fully endorse the suggestion of a permanent memorial in the House to Fiona Watson.

I shall touch on three points, the first of which is reform. The hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) gave us a long list of sensible proposals, which I would support. The hon. and gallant Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) touched on staffing, which can be, euphemistically speaking, occasionally problematic. Every hon. Member knows that there are staffing issues in the United Nations and I hope that the Government will examine that closely. The extremity of the need to ensure that people of specific nationalities secure posts regardless of their alleged talents undermines the United Nations, so that needs reform. Serious questions are often asked about the way in which the budget of the United Nations is managed, so the Government should examine that closely.

Many hon. Members have talked about reform of the United Nations Security Council, as did I in an intervention. It is interesting to contrast the UK Government's support for a Security Council of 24 countries—that is not an unreasonable number of members—with their opposition to a European Commission of 25 members, which is roughly the same size. They say that such a Commission would be unworkable, but I think that both a Security Council with 24 members and a Commission with 25 members would be manageable.

The Minister said that the question that I asked about the inequality of permanent member states was a good debating point. If the Governments of other countries such as Germany and Japan raised the point, it would be more than a debating point because it would be central to their worries about reform of the UN Security Council. We need proposals on reforming that structure so that everyone feels that they have an equal say and are of equal standing within the UN Security Council.

Mr. Rummell

For the information of the House, is the hon. Gentleman advocating that there should be 10 permanent members of the Select Committee, all with a veto?

Angus Robertson

No is the simple answer. I believe that serious consideration should be given to getting rid of the veto altogether. Either we should trust the UN system or put in what some people would regard as safeguards. There is a strong precedent in the approach taken by both the Conservative and Labour parties to vetoes in the European Union. Margaret Thatcher, of course, was responsible for getting rid of the largest single number of vetoes in the history of the EU, and the Labour Government now want to get rid of even more. A precedent on getting rid of vetoes has therefore been set by the two largest UK parties in the House, and I believe that we should consider seriously the prospect of getting rid of the veto in the UN Security Council. Either we believe wholeheartedly in the UN system or we do not. That does not mean that there are not associated problems, but we should look at the possibility of getting rid of the veto.

Secondly, we need to respect the UN institutions and their decision-making processes. I was disappointed by the way in which both the UK and US Governments dealt with Iraq. Having mandated UN arms inspectors to carry out a job, we went over their heads and did not let them finish their work, despite the fact that they were asking for more time. We then got involved in unilateral military action without a specific UN mandate. Like everybody else, I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power in Iraq, but I am less happy about how that was achieved. In future, I hope that the UK Government and every other member state of the UN will pursue military action only when they have gone the full distance to secure a mandate from the UN Security Council.

Thirdly, I want to put on record my appreciation of a frequently overlooked aspect of peacekeeping and peacemaking: the contribution made by small countries. Hon. Members have rightly praised the role of countries such as India that have made significant peacekeeping contributions. However, some peacekeeping missions would not have worked without the contribution of countries such as Ireland or Austria—small, neutral or non-aligned European states that have made a significant contribution in places such as Cyprus, the Lebanon and elsewhere. In UN operations in many small and medium-sized countries, their military have had the moral authority and capability to deliver on the ground.

I am particularly concerned, therefore, about reports about the amalgamation or disbandment of Scottish military regiments. I sincerely hope that when the Ministry of Defence outlines its plans on the future of the UK military it does not proceed with such plans, as they would undermine the UK's ability to deploy forces in UN missions. The Scottish National party is strongly in favour of a well-funded, capable Scottish military that can take part in UN-mandated missions. Anything that would undermine the integrity of the Scottish regimental structure concerns me greatly.

In conclusion, I am glad that the Minister said that the Government support strongly the strategic review on reform of the UN. We need to look at the UN system, but we should also look at the Bretton Woods institutions. The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie raised the problems associated with the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank. Unfortunately, that PR battle has been lost, and many people who are sceptical about globalisation hold those institutions in contempt. We need to ensure the integrity of the entire international decision-making and representative system so that we can bring the world community together and advance as one world.

I firmly support a multilateral route, not a unilateral one. The United Nations is the hope for the world, and Kofi Annan is well placed as one of the most able Secretaries-General for a long time to help to pursue that agenda. I firmly support it, and I hope that the Government will too.

5.24 pm

Mr. Rammell

With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to respond to the debate.

At the start of the debate, the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) commented on attendance. We have had an exceedingly good debate, which has been genuinely—I am not saying this merely to curry favour—well informed by a significant number of hon. Members. In the short time that is available—I have an hour and a half, but I assure the House that I do not intend to use it—I wish to respond to some of the points that have been made.

The hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), who speaks today from the Conservative Front Bench, underlined his strong support for the United Nations and agreed with the Government that strong supporters of the UN should be strong advocates of change and reform. Interestingly, he pointed out that we have moved from a cold war situation in which there was, to some extent, an equal balance of forces in the world to a situation in which, to use his words, we live with one hyperpower. His point was that, whatever view we take of that situation, it is a reality that we must face up to. He rightly argued that the UN must recognise the position of the United States, which should be similarly encouraged to act through the UN. I strongly agree with him on that point.

The hon. Gentleman also endorsed the arguments for expansion of the Security Council, and pressed me with regard to the veto. A number of hon. Members referred to the same issue, so it is important for me to make it clear that the Government support an increase in permanent membership of the Security Council and the inclusion of a further five permanent members. Clearly, the question of the veto will have to be considered in respect of those new permanent members. There would be a risk of increasing gridlock in decision making if all 10 permanent members had a veto. In those circumstances, there are key questions that all of us will have to face. Would 10 vetoes help the UN to grasp and tackle the key issues that it and the international community face or would they risk marginalising the UN? Would the wider membership want an increase in the number of vetoes? Is it realistic to expect the five current permanent members to give up their vetoes? I shall return to that issue later, but either way, any change will require the support of two thirds of the whole membership, including the five current permanent members.

The hon. Gentleman also raised a question that has been a constant refrain from the Opposition Front Bench in recent months—why the UK Government have not tabled at the Security Council a resolution on the current appalling circumstances in Zimbabwe. I refer him to what took place in March at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. A resolution rightly condemning human rights abuses in Zimbabwe was tabled, but even on such a tightly defined issue a blocking majority, including a significant number of members of the existing Security Council, opposed the resolution. The idea that we would table a resolution in the full knowledge that it would probably be defeated would serve merely to reinforce Robert Mugabe's position and entrench him in it.

Mr. Blunt

On human rights and resolutions in Geneva, does the Minister accept that it is not only in respect of Zimbabwe that there is cause for concern? In 1997, the Government inherited a position in which resolutions about China's abuse of human rights were regularly carried in Geneva with British support while we were negotiating the handover of Hong Kong. After 1997, under the Labour Government, such resolutions did not attract British support. The Government's rhetoric about human rights is very strong, but it is entirely legitimate for the Opposition to seek action rather than merely rhetoric.

Mr. Rammell

I agree, but although I want action, I do not want to see a resolution that makes us feel awfully good about ourselves, but whose rejection in the Security Council simply serves to reinforce and entrench Robert Mugabe in the position that he and his regime currently hold. The situation is very serious and all of us should focus on how we can tackle it. Some of the efforts that we are currently making, especially to urge others in the region to take a lead on the issue, are as important as anything that we can do in terms of passing resolutions or making proposals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey), in a powerful contribution, expressed her shock about the events of 19 August and the fact that the United Nations had actually been attacked and vilified in that way. Whatever view people have of the conflict in Iraq, the experience of people and organisations seeking out the United Nations and its representatives to attack and kill them is extraordinarily difficult to comprehend. It shocks and concerns all of us.

As many hon. Members did, my hon. Friend also rightly sought to underline the need to seek agreement on the criteria for international intervention in a sovereign state's affairs. She also paid moving tribute to the late Sergio Vieira de Mello. She then argued for the need to engage younger people in our debates on international affairs and the United Nations. As I attend meetings around the country on UN issues, it strikes me that they are full of people from an older generation—I am choosing my words carefully—who have the postwar experience of the importance of the UN, but too often there are too few younger people with a similar understanding and commitment. We all have a responsibility to do everything in our power to raise awareness and improve education on those issues.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) rightly paid tribute to UN staff who place themselves in danger in performing their everyday activities. He also rightly drew attention to the fact that as the UN has expanded the structures have failed to keep up with the increase in size; that is an important point. He underlined the need for a clear framework for intervention.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the issue of the International Criminal Court. He said that the UK Government were assisting bilateral immunity agreements in contravention of the ICC statute and that that was splitting from the EU position. That accusation is completely without foundation. We have made it clear that we believe that bilateral non-surrender agreements are allowed under the existing ICC statutes, provided that they follow the framework set out in the EU guiding principles and are consistent with the language of article 16 of the Rome statute. We have done nothing to contradict that position and we have made it clear that we will not sign a bilateral non-surrender agreement that does not conform with those principles. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence that shows that we are acting otherwise, I would welcome it if he put it forward.

Tony Worthington

Does that mean that discussions with the United States about a bilateral treaty are not ongoing?

Mr. Rammell

We have had one discussion with the US on that issue, in which we made it clear that any agreement would have to be consistent with the EU guiding principles. No further discussions have taken place and we await a response from the United States. It is important to debate such issues on the facts, not what some people believe the facts to be.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale made a point about UN resources needing to be commensurate with UN tasks. I have some words of caution on that point. The UK is the fourth largest contributor to the UN— £600 million—but the hon. Gentleman advocated, by implication, a significant increase in resources for the UN budget. I could not advocate that until the UN has reformed the way that it works. Simply demanding more resources for the UN is not the best way to achieve the efficiencies and prioritisation that we need.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth), in a telling contribution, rightly highlighted some of the arguable failings of the UN in Bosnia, Rwanda and elsewhere, and the failure of the UN to enforce certain resolutions. He was right to highlight the key role of the Secretary-General and underlined the fact that he is in many senses one of the most astute and well-informed critics of the way that the UN currently works.

The hon. and gallant Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) made a well-informed contribution to the debate based on his previous activities and work in UN operations. He underlined the importance of debt relief and the arguments for reform of the World Trade Organisation. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to give developing countries access to world markets: the Government have strongly advocated that, and we will continue to do so.

On the financing of the United Nations, it is important to be clear that the amount that a member state pays is based on its national income or capacity to pay. Bluntly, that means that richer states pay more and poorer states pay less. We pay about 5.5 per cent. of the UN budget. That methodology is fixed until 2006, so there is no prospect of changing it before then. It is worth stating for the record, however, that we believe that the current arrangements are broadly equitable.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Campbell) spoke knowledgeably about the way in which the UN works in the light of his experience of working with, visiting and observing it in New York. He pointed out that if it is to remain relevant and to survive, it needs to change, reform and adapt; and he highlighted the importance of its focusing on key issues such as civil wars and threats from international terrorism.

My hon. Friend referred to expanding not only the permanent membership, but the non-permanent membership, of the Security Council. Perhaps I did not articulate the Government's position clearly enough. We advocate not only five new permanent members, but five new non-permanent members. With regard to the non-permanent members, however, we need to debate within the UN and the international community the need for a firmer set of criteria to determine which nations take on non-permanent membership. Too often, such decisions are based on a regional Buggins's turn. As for my hon. Friend's comments about representation on behalf of Africa, we agree with him that that is important.

The hon. and gallant Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) referred to the importance of the Ottawa convention, of which the Government have been an exceedingly strong supporter. As regards mine action, I will give him a response now, but I am happy to talk to him about those issues at a later stage. The Government are generally satisfied with the work of the United Nations Mine Action Service—UNMAS—and it is our chosen partner for global mine action co-ordination. We believe that it does a good job in assessing projects and deciding where funding should go—particularly in the case of Sudan. DFID's voluntary contribution is £4.7 million; obviously, we work with UNMAS to seek value for money. I shall happily take that discussion further with the hon. Gentleman.

My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) made an important contribution as chair of the all-party group on the United Nations. I pay tribute to the work that he and his colleagues undertake on this issue: such work has never been more timely and important. He rightly drew attention to the thoughts that we should all have about Sergio Vieira de Mello and about Fiona Watson, who worked in this House.

On my hon. Friend's suggestion that new specialist agencies are needed, I offer a word of caution. I am not convinced, for example, that the plan to manage and regulate the internet through the United Nations is achievable, or even desirable. If we cannot achieve consensus on many of the key international issues that we face, the idea that we would be able to do so in relation to regulating the internet is challenging, to say the least.

Mr. Colman

Does the Minister accept that the current system of regulation through a private company based in California is not an acceptable way forward?

Mr. Rammell

That just underlines how difficult it is to resolve this issue. If the UN is to work, and to be seen to be credible, it needs realistic and tangible mandates. If we seek to resolve every issue in the world through the UN, however detached those issues are from the fundamental issues, I am not sure how much that would advance its cause.

My hon. Friend rightly underlined the importance of the International Atomic Energy Agency. An example that demonstrates that importance is the work that has recently been done to bring together the European Union and the international community through the UN in Iran. I also strongly agree with my hon. Friend about the role of Parliaments in relation to the UN system. Like him, I welcome the observer status that has been given to the Inter-Parliamentary Union; we need to do more to engage parliamentarians in this way. I wholly agree, too, with what he said about the United Nations Association, which is a good organisation and a force for good in all our communities.

The hon. Member for Reigate—[HON. MEMBERS: "And gallant".] The hon. and gallant Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) clearly articulated his support for the United Nations and for the fact that it is crucial to the resolution of many of the international challenges that we face. He also rightly argued that the UN is seriously undermined by its administrative and bureaucratic failures; we should not resile from articulating that point. He pressed us on the veto, which was mentioned by many hon. Members. We are not arguing that we should give up our possession of the veto. We continue to earn the use of it through our responsible use of our position on the Security Council. Our economic weight, our financial contribution and our contribution to peacekeeping and other UN missions continue to justify our permanent membership and possession of the veto. Nevertheless, the UK Government and other permanent members of the Security Council should use the veto with restraint, and in accordance with the principles of the charter. Whenever this issue is debated, people are shocked to discover that we have not used our veto since 1989. I think that that underlines the responsibility and restraint with which we have used that power.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington) made a telling contribution based on his own significant experience of these issues. I was not a Member of the House in 1994, but the fact that there were only two Adjournment debates on the subject of Rwanda at that time, given the shocking and appalling horrors that were taking place there, underlines yet again the fact that the House and all of us in the international community ducked that issue. I strongly believe that we need to focus on the criteria for humanitarian intervention, because we cannot allow the international community to walk by and ignore a situation like that again.

I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Moray is still with us, despite the pressing needs of the whisky industry.

Angus Robertson

This is serious.

Mr. Rammell

Of course it is, and I welcome the contribution that the hon. Gentleman made to the debate, the strong support that he gave to multilateral action at the UN, and the detailed knowledge of the UN that he displayed, given his previous working experience. I was pleased to be able to pin him down on one issue, which was that he was advocating the giving up of the veto by the current permanent members of the Security Council. I reiterate a point that I made in response to an earlier intervention that he made, which was that if we look back to the founding of the United Nations, we remember that we learned from the League of Nations the lesson that if key significant international players did not possess the veto, there would be a real danger of their walking away from those international structures. That issue needs to be taken on board.

We have had an exceedingly important debate, and it has struck me throughout our discussions that there is a significant degree of consensus on these issues. All of us, in our various ways, are committed to the United Nations. We believe that it is a force for good in the world, but we also believe that it needs to change and reform in response to changing international circumstances. Crucially, it must face up to the key international challenges that the international community faces. If it does so—I believe that it will—we shall see it continue to develop and prosper, and to help us to build the kind of secure future throughout the world that we all want to see.

Mr. Nick Ainger (West Carmarthen and South Pembrokeshire)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.