HL Deb 29 April 1985 vol 463 cc76-80

Baroness Young rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 3rd April be approved. [18th Report from the Joint Committee.]

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft order be approved. With your Lordships' permission, I shall speak at the same time to the draft Eumetsat (Legal Capacities) Order 1985.

The first draft order before your Lordships relates to the World Health Organisation. The order is very specific, conferring only exemptions in respect of social security contributions on officers of WHO who are neither United Kingdom nationals nor permanently resident in the United Kingdom. This order would enable effect to be given to an Exchange of Notes between Her Majesty's Government and WHO.

This draft order will have no effect on the Exchequer. WHO currently employs only one staff member in the United Kingdom and he is permanently resident here, and is therefore unaffected by this order. If in future there are in the United Kingdom officers of WHO not contributing to the national insurance scheme, they will, by the same token, be unable to claim from it; so again there will be no effect on the Exchequer. WHO currently enjoys other immunities and privileges under the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations Order 1974.

I am confident that the objectives of WHO are well known to your Lordships. It aims at the, attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", and its range of activities includes directing and co-ordinating the promotion of world health generally and working to eradicate disease and to maintain standards of medical training. It counts among its considerable achievements the virtual eradication of smallpox and significant progress in the containment and control of malaria, tuberculosis, trachoma and bilharzia. I believe that these are achievements worthy of congratulation and our continued support.

I now turn to the draft order concerning the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat). Under an international convention of 1983 its objective is to co-ordinate and develop European satellite systems for weather forecasting. The signatories to the convention include most Western European countries, including the United Kingdom.

Article 1 of the Eumetsat Convention provides that the organisation shall have legal personality, and that it shall in particular have the capacity to acquire and dispose of movable and immovable property and to be a party to legal proceedings. That is the sole purpose of the draft order before your Lordships. It would confer no immunity from jurisdiction on the organisation or its staff.

Eumetsat is a new international organisation and its work will be essential to the future needs of European weather forecasts. Although Eumetsat is powerless to improve the weather, given our national preoccu-pation with it, I venture to guess that your Lordships would welcome any improvement in the accuracy of the forecasts. I hope that your Lordships can show your support of the work not only of Eumetsat but of WHO by approving these draft orders. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 3rd April be approved. [18th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Baroness Young.)

Lord Boston of Faversham

My Lords, your Lordships will be grateful to the Minister for explaining the purposes of the two orders. Both deal with international immunities and privileges, so it is indeed appropriate to take them together. I hope that it will be no less acceptable to your Lordships if I say straight away that on behalf of noble Lords on these Benches I am able to welcome the orders and need not detain your Lordships more than a few minutes.

I could not help noticing on one recent occasion when the House debated another order under the same general heading that the body being dealt with not only had a somewhat pretentious title—the World Intellectual Property Organisation—but also had what my noble friend Lord Cledwyn described as a somewhat frivolous acronym, WIPO. I am relieved to see tonight that at least one of the bodies with which we are dealing this evening, the World Health Organisation, has not only a happier acronym but also one which is perhaps, one might almost say, wildly popular in some quarters, especially with the young, for we are after all dealing here with "The Who".

Having begun on what I hope is that harmonious note, I may continue. As the noble Baroness indicated, the WHO is a thoroughly worthwhile organisation. It does admirable work and has some notable achievements to its credit. There are just two points that I should like to raise with the Minister, if I may. Can she give us any idea of the number of people likely to be affected under the terms of the order, and can she say whether those WHO officers who might be entitled to benefit under our social security system through some quite separate entitlement will not be precluded from benefiting under any entitlement of that kind? She has already explained that the order applies to officers of the WHO who are not British citizens, British dependent territories citizens or permanently resident in the United Kingdom. But it could be that an officer of the WHO who is not in one of those British citizen or resident categories might be a citizen of a country with which we have a reciprocal arrangement on social security matters; in which case, may we take it that a person such as that will continue to qualify for any benefits arising from that entitlement even though that person was ruled out as an exempt person for strictly WHO purposes?

I now turn to the Eumetsat order. The purposes of the organisation itself are clearly beneficial, as the noble Baroness indicated, serving the various needs associated with weather forecasting—farming, travel, warning of possible disasters, safety needs generally and presumably defence. Clearly it is necessary, as the Minister indicated, for the body to be granted legal capacity so as to function properly. That capacity would include power to acquire and dispose of movable and immovable property, as we have heard. Presumably that would cover property in any of the member states.

We see from the convention that the body is provisionally based in Paris in premises of the European Space Agency. I am wondering whether the noble Baroness can say where it is likely to be based permanently and whether there is any present likelihood that Eumetsat would wish to acquire real property in this country. I wonder, too, whether it really needs to have separate premises of its own. Could it perhaps manage just as well, and so keep down costs, by continuing to share premises with a body like the European Space Agency or another international body?

In mentioning costs perhaps I could ask the Minister whether she is satisfied that there will be adequate machinery for keeping costs under control. It is known that there is a belief among some within the aerospace industry that high technology costs much more through international collaboration than if confined to one country, or even to one company, paradoxical though that might seem to some people. The Minister will know, for instance, that a committee under Sir John Kendrew is examining the organisation CERN to see whether we get value for money. I wonder whether there is a similar monitoring committee needed or contemplated for Eumetsat.

My only other point concerns the power to make contracts which are to be included among the legal capacities for Eumetsat. The convention itself provides for the organisation to conclude agreements with non-member states as well as with member states, or bodies in non-member states as well as those in member states. I am wondering whether, so far as the non-member states and bodies in those states are concerned, that means that if Eumetsat, say, provided services through contracts of that kind it would be able to charge for those services and so perhaps provide a useful source of revenue. Whether or not the Minister is able to provide answers tonight—and I appreciate that with these technical matters it might not be possible on this occasion—or indeed whatever answers the Minister is able to provide now or later, I can still join her in commending these orders to your Lordships.

Lord Walston

My Lords, from these Benches may I very briefly add our support for these two draft orders. They are not of enormous significance in themselves. They certainly do not involve this country in any awkward obligations. But I should like also to underline the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Boston, concerning the entitlement to health services of those who otherwise would be entitled to them but who are not British nationals. That I believe to be an important minor point. Apart from that, I should like to support any activities of the kind to which these draft orders apply. Although we are not altogether happy, particularly at the present time, with some of the meteorological forecasting which we listen to, it cannot be the full fault of the forecasters. I wish they had recently been more often wrong than right, but they have been remarkably and uncomfortably accurate.

The advances that have been made in meteorological forecasting are really quite remarkable and of enormous benefit, not only to farmers (although to a certain extent they benefit from them), but to many other people, private citizens, and undoubtedly to travel, aeronautics and aviation and in many other ways. Anything that this country can do by way of facilitating their work is undoubtedly worthwhile and to the benefit of all of us, particularly to us as a maritime nation and as a nation which is very much engaged in the aviation industry.

With regard to the World Health Organisation, here too the results are even more remarkable. They have been going very much longer. They certainly would not claim that the disappearance of smallpox from the world at large is due entirely to them, but they have undoubtedly played a very major role in ridding us of what used to be one of the great scourges of the world. There are many other cases where their activities have been of inestimable benefit, above all to the third world but also to those of us living in what is sometimes inaccurately called the developed world. There is still a great deal of work to be done.

The noble Baroness mentioned bilharzia; that is something which is well on its way to being conquered, due in large part to the activities of the World Health Organisation. It has for many years been a most debilitating disease in many tropical countries. The effect it had in the early days when it was first discovered in Egypt is well known to all your Lordships. But there are many other diseases, including malaria, which at one time we thought was well on the way to being conquered but which now appears to be having a very unfortunate recrudescence, as a result of the resistance of the organism to the various forms of quinine derivatives and synthetic treatments which have been evolved. There is still scope for an enormous amount of work for WHO to do in maintaining our control over existing known diseases and in discovering means of treating some of the new diseases which are now arising. So anything we can do in this country to facilitate their work deserves wholehearted support which we, from these Benches, certainly give.

7.47 p.m.

Baroness Young

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lords, Lord Boston and Lord Walston, for saying they will support these two orders. The noble Lord, Lord Boston, has asked me a number of questions and I shall certainly do my best to answer them. On his point about acronyms, I agree with him: I think we have some rather strange ones. I cannot help thinking, in the case of WHO, that WHO knows; and that is perhaps why Dr. Who goes under that name. In regard to the number of people likely to be affected by the order, it is in fact one person to whom I referred in my opening remarks.

His second question, referred to also by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, was: if an official of WHO comes from a country where we have reciprocal arrange-ments, would he retain that entitlement as a WHO official? The draft order would exempt the official from the United Kingdom system. What his position would be under his own national system would of course depend upon the law of his own country. On the various questions that the noble Lord —

Lord Walston

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Baroness and ask for clarification of this point. The Minister tells us that in this matter the official would still be subject to the laws and regulations of his own country. Does that mean that if his country had reciprocal arrangements with the United Kingdom he would still be entitled to those facilities?

Baroness Young

My Lords, my understanding of the situation is that that is the case, but if there is any doubt about it I shall of course write to the noble Lord.

On the particular points which were raised about Eumetsat, first of all I can confirm that it has the power to acquire property in any of the member states. So far, no decision has been taken about where it might acquire property, but we do not expect it will be in the United Kingdom. On the question of whether there is any indication that Eumetsat is likely to acquire property in this country, the answer is that we do not have any indication of that nature. But we are required by the convention to give it the power to acquire property.

The noble Lord, Lord Boston, asked me a series of questions, one of which was whether or not we were satisfied with the machinery for keeping Eumetsat costs under review. To this I think I can only respond that this is a new body and that we would expect that the United Kingdom representative would try to keep costs to a minimum consistent with the proper functions of the organisation.

The noble Lord then asked me whether or not we needed a similar committee to that under Sir John Kendrew, which is looking into CERN. At this stage, the answer I think would be, no, because it is a new organisation; and that committee is doing something, which is having a review of an organisation which has been in existence for some little time. Thus the positions are not the same.

The noble Lord asked me whether or not the new organisation has power to make contracts. The answer is, yes it does. He then went on to ask whether or not it can charge for services of concluding agreements with non-member states and so bring in revenue to keep costs down. I think this is a very interesting suggestion, and if I may say so seems a very sensible one. I shall undertake to draw it to the attention of those who will be involved with this organisation.

I hope that that has covered all the points that have been raised this evening. As I say, I should like to thank both noble Lords for their support for these orders. I think we can further agree that we all hope that as a result of them the weather will improve. I beg to move.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

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