§ 2.46 p.m.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROYMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether a Minister has yet attended the current session of the Conference on the Law of the Sea in New York as a member of the United Kingdom delegation.
§ Lord GORONWY-ROBERTSNo, my Lords.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROYMy Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing us up to date on this subject. As more than half of the current session in New York is now over and it seems that very little, if any, progress has been made towards a written agreement, are the Government considering taking an initiative themselves during the next three weeks of the session?—because the outcome of the Conference as a whole is likely to be of more importance to Britain than to any other country in the world.
§ Lord GORONWY-ROBERTSMy Lords, I could not agree that progress has been disappointing. In fact, my information is that quite encouraging progress has been made. I agree with the noble Lord about the importance, especially to the United Kingdom, of this Conference. As to any new initiative, I think we are constantly taking new initiatives in this Conference. The noble Lord will know, from his own very wide and deep knowledge of these matters, that we have set the pace in more than one particular in these important matters. As to the initiative of a Ministerial intervention, as he knows, the present phase is one of informal discussion rather than of plenary discussion. But I can assure him that we hold ourselves instantly ready to feed in, as it were, a Ministerial spokesman as and when that will prove useful. Our delegation is being led by a Minister of State, and a high ranking official expert. To my knowledge, not more than one, perhaps two, other participating countries in the Conference have so far fed in a Ministerial intervention at this stage.