MOZAMBIQUE: MISS JUDITH HART'S VISIT (Hansard, 8 December 1977)

§ Lord ORR-EWING
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, an official Press release was issued on 18th October announcing the signature of a £5 million loan agreement in Mozambique that day by the Minister for Overseas Development. The cost of the journey was charged to public funds.

§ Lord ORR-EWING
My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that that Press release was not available in the Library of the House of Commons? I should not have put down the Question if I had had that. Is it really sensible, at a time when the Government are claiming to be the paramount Power in Rhodesia, to give aid, succour and finance to the Marxist Government in Mozambique while they are murdering both black and white Rhodesians?

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, this Question is about a visit and a Press release. I am sorry that the Press release was not available in the Library of the House of 1743 Commons, but for that I am scarcely responsible. The rest of the noble Lord's supplementary question I think I need not answer, but I will do so because I think it is essential that noble Lords opposite should reflect on the fact that the Government of Mozambique is showing an increasing wish for non-alignment and to come closer to the Western nations. I think it very, very unfortunate that remarks of the kind that sometimes come from the Benches opposite could only push Mozambique, in extremity, to others who will help them.

§ Baroness ELLES
My Lords, while accepting the statement by the noble Baroness, may I refer to a letter written by the Minister, Mrs. Judith Hart, to my honourable friend Richard Luce in which it is stated—if I am allowed to quote from the Guardian of today: We have no evidence to suggest any fundamental abuse of human rights in Mozambique"? May I suggest that the noble Baroness takes further evidence from those people who have been imprisoned and released and who have suffered in Mozambique? And, my Lords, this has to do with the Question.

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, this is another Question, but may I suggest that the noble Baroness and some of her colleagues should visit Mozambique and not complain when the Minister for Overseas Development does visit Mozambique.

§ Lord LEE of NEWTON
My Lords, could my noble friend say whether the lack of publicity for Mrs. Hart's visit to the Marxist Government in Mozambique has not been more than overcompensated by the huge publicity given to Mrs. Thatcher's visit to the Marxist Government of Yugoslavia and her opinion that much of the industrial organisation in the Communist world was better than ours?

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, such a visit can only have done good.

§ Lord ALPORT
My Lords, may I ask whether it is not true that her honourable friend is an honorary member of the 1744 Frelimo Party and whether it is Government policy that Ministers should belong to Parties in foreign countries?

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, I have absolutely no knowledge of what the noble Lord has just said.

Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON
My Lords, could the noble Baroness tell us something about Parliamentary responsibility in this? Is it not a little alarming to find a lady of somewhat extreme views spending £5 million of our money to finance the murder of people for whom we claim responsibility? Is it not rather a shock?

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, I am deeply resentful of every suggestion that my noble friend—if I am supposed to call him so—has made. The British Government have given no money to assist in the murder of anybody. The original£5 million loan has gone on textile machinery and on all sorts of equipment which has nothing to do with war. We have sent food; and even the food that we sent has gone to the northern part of Mozambique and not to the areas devastated by the Southern Rhodesians in the South of Mozambique.

Lord INGLEWOOD
My Lords, could the noble Baroness say whether this £5 million is additional to the £15 million which we discussed in this House some time ago?

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, it is. It was announced in July this year and was in response to an appeal by the United Nations for international organisations and nations of the world to come to the assistance of Mozambique.

§ Lord ORR-EWING
My Lords, could the noble Baroness bear in mind that we have given £20 million to Mozambique? Could we not withhold giving the other £20 million, announced in the recent Budget, to that country until it is proved that that country is really coming away from the dictatorship State which has been set up in the last year?

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, in the first place, 1745 we have not given £20 million; we have only announced grants and loans spread over a number of years. They are grants which are interest-free, but we shall get the money back in due course. We do not want to wait for proof of good conduct where people are starving and without houses and schools, partly as a result of attacks from outside, and where the relief has been in response to an appeal from the United Nations itself.

§ Lord HALE
My Lords, would the noble Baroness, who by her answers today has moved many of our hearts and obtained a substantial measure of agreement, not make a further forthright statement that to lay down political conditions on the relief of poverty—to take the suggestions that have been made from the other side today—would be wholly to undermine the whole of the labours, and most noble labours, that have been undertaken in an attempt to fight world poverty? You just cannot lay an embargo on Mozambique or, if you like, on the empire of Central Africa.

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his support. May I again remind the House that the Question was about a Press release?

§ Lord LOVAT
My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the use of Land-Rovers in Mozambique is their principal form of transport for taking troops up to the Rhodesian frontiers? That is surely an instrument of war.

§ Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE
My Lords, indeed I am. The aid which the Government are giving are bus chassis and spare parts for them.

§ Lord BOURNE
My Lords, is it the normal practice to succour our enemy? We might as well have succoured the Germans in the last war.

§ Lord ELTON
My Lords, may I—

§ The LORD PRIVY SEAL (Lord Peart)
My Lords, I think we have gone on for a long time on this Question.