Lords Sitting of 9 December 1992

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Peterborough.
Lord Newton Lord Newton —Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.
Viscount Cowdray Viscount Cowdray —Took the Oath.

Human Rights and Bilateral Aid
Lord Archer of Sandwell Lord Archer of Sandwell asked Her Majesty's Government:
In what ways they encourage governments in receipt of bilateral aid from the United Kingdom to observe human rights.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, good government is an important condition for sustainable development. We take fully into account recipients' performance over time on human rights before deciding aid applications. We support projects to help developing countries raise their standards of government, including the observance of human rights.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. Does she recollect that on 12th November my noble friend Lord Judd asked in relation to Indonesia whether we were using the threat of withdrawing aid or were just making polite representations, and that she replied: "My Lords, indeed we are"? Can she elaborate a little on that answer; and can she say specifically in relation to Indonesia how many more political murders, what degree of torture and what further evidence of genocide would be required before the human rights situation is reflected in decisions about aid?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I realise that my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on that occasion was rather short. Let me assure your Lordships that we have ensured that the Indonesian Government are fully aware of our views on the human rights situation, not only in East Timor but also in general terms. We shall continue to use every available opportunity to make our concern clear to the Indonesians. I believe that there have been some improvements over recent years, but by no means enough. We shall continue to work with friends and partners to influence the Indonesian authorities and to make sure that they realise that no torture is acceptable, no genocide is acceptable and that none of the reports that we have been reading should ever have any foundation, although we believe that some may be exaggerated.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the Minister aware that some of us would warmly welcome her reference to taking every opportunity, but does she accept that during the past year Britain has now become the
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largest arms supplier to Indonesia? Does not the question of approval for arms exports arise? Is it not appalling that at a time when the Government are apparently using their influence we are gaining from arms supplies to Indonesia when, as she has herself admitted, torture is continuing in that country, which is in any case occupied by Indonesia illegally?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I did not admit that there is torture. I could not do so because I do not have correct information any more than anyone else has. I also believe that some newspaper reports have been exaggerated, but I do not say that they all have. So far as concerns military expenditure, let me say this. Every nation is entitled to defend itself but we do not export arms to a country where we believe they will be used for internal repression.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the noble Baroness not understand that there is a problem of credibility on this issue? We do not doubt her sincerity of intention, but how does she use the aid programme to bring effective pressure to bear? In Indonesia 2,000 political prisoners are languishing in prison for their religious and political beliefs. Some have been there under sentence of death since 1965. How has she used the aid programme to bring pressure to bear to bring justice to those people?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has taken every opportunity he has had to make quite clear to the Foreign Minister of Indonesia our complete rejection of the way in which they have dealt with political opponents in Indonesia, be it in East Timor or anywhere else. The Indonesian action against the military personnel involved in the Dili incident was unprecedented. We have made it absolutely clear that all those issues must be dealt with by the Indonesian authorities and we shall continue to do so at every level of government.
Lord Judd: My Lords, will the noble Baroness please explain what she means when she says that she assesses the human rights record of a country when deciding what the aid programme should be?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, one has to consider whether there has been any improvement, no improvement or a worsening of the situation. While I fully accept that noble Lords, together with many of my noble friends on this side of the House, believe that the situation is still very grave, it is somewhat better than it has been. We continue on every occasion—in consultative groups and all the multilateral agencies, as well as on our own account bilaterally—to make quite clear that if that improvement does not continue and if people who are held without trial are not released there will need to be a change.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, British aid is important, but does the Minister recognise that the pressures on governments receiving aid would be much more significant if the views she expresses were shared by some of our European allies? May I have an assurance that when pressure is brought to bear on

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some of those countries it can be done with other donors in the European Community who make a much larger contribution to aid than we do?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, Britain was the fifth largest bilateral aid donor in 1991. But the noble Lord is absolutely right to say that combined pressure from all donors, not limited solely to the European Community but other major donors too, is just as important. Indeed, we promoted a resolution in the European Development Council over a year ago urging that every country in the Community should take such steps. Our partners in the OECD Donor Assistance Committee have taken similar steps.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, is it too much to hope or dream that governments who are responsible for breaches of human rights will be brought before a world court?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I do not know about a world court. I know that there is a good deal more honesty in 1992 about what is going on in terms of breaches of human rights than there was even five years ago. All donors are quite determined that people should be brought before the law and—what is always asked for—if a government of a sovereign country arrests somebody, that that person must be charged and brought before their own courts. If that is not done, further steps must be considered by the United Nations.
Lord Prentice: My Lords, the terms of the original Question go much wider than Indonesia. Will my noble friend confirm that her policy and the policy of other aid donors are having practical effect in some parts of Africa, particularly in Malawi?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that question. We have begun to see a change in the attitude of many countries. The very fact that the Government of Malawi are to hold a referendum on their one-party system is an indication that they, like others in Africa, see the need to address human rights issues and to address the whole issue of democracy and good government. We are giving good support for those who follow a policy of democracy and good government.

Tobacco Advertising
2.47 p.m.
Baroness Jay of Paddington Baroness Jay of Paddington asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, in view of the recently published findings of the Department of Health research into advertising and tobacco, they will implement an immediate ban on all tobacco advertising.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Henley): My Lords, the Government continue to believe that the voluntary agreements with the tobacco industry represent the best way to control tobacco advertising
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and promotion. The Department of Health discussion document on the effect of tobacco advertising is a useful contribution to the literature, and we have invited comments on it before 29th January 1993.
Baroness Jay of Paddington: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Department of Health study shows that in those countries where an advertising ban has been implemented, consumption has fallen by what the report describes as a significant degree for reasons which cannot be attributed to other causes? Given that the Government have established very ambitious targets for their Health of the Nation policy in reducing tobacco consumption in this country, are they not in danger of shooting themselves, perhaps not in the foot but in the lung?
Lord Henley: My Lords, as I said in my original Answer, we feel that controls on tobacco advertising have a part to play. However, we believe that voluntary controls are the best way forward. I do not accept that the evidence from other countries is quite as conclusive as the noble Baroness seems to suggest. One might think that merely because Norway, Finland and Canada have imposed bans they have seen reductions. One forgets that they started from a much lower level of restriction on advertising. We have had restrictions through our voluntary code on advertising for some 25 years. Through those restrictions and from other causes we saw smoking decline from about 45 per cent. in 1974 to around 30 per cent. in 1990. We hope that the decline will continue but I do not think it is necessarily the case that a compulsory ban on advertising will take us much further.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, does that answer mean that my noble friend feels satisfied with the reduction in tobacco smoking? Is he aware that a great many young people can be seen on the streets using tobacco? Does he agree that advertising plays a part in encouraging them to do so?
Lord Henley: My Lords, obviously I accept that it plays a part. We have tried to get advertising reduced. My noble friend knows that the target in the Health of the Nation White Paper is to get smoking down some 20 per cent. by the year 2000. But there are other means of reducing tobacco smoking than by imposing a compulsory ban on advertising. We have a commitment to maintain, at the very least, the level of taxes as they are now. That commitment is unprecedented in taxation terms. We shall continue to advertise and promote health awareness in regard to smoking and obviously we shall maintain the existing voluntary controls.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, while the Minister rightly explains the problem in relation to tobacco advertising, can he give the House any indication at all as to the contribution which the British taxpayer makes towards EC subsidies designed directly and specifically to make tobacco production cheaper and, therefore, the consumption of it wider? Does he not believe that that is a difficult issue to defend?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am not in a position of having to defend it. That is another question. I can confirm that we shall continue to campaign to reduce the subsidies to the CAP tobacco regime. We have consistently criticised that regime and will continue to do so.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, is the Minister aware that people should have the right and freedom to enjoy smoking tobacco? Is he aware also that a ban on tobacco advertising would also be a denial of commercial free speech? The paper to which the Minister refers is a consultative document and not an official report. Is he further aware that the Department of Health has received a research paper which shows that in the OECD countries where advertising has been banned, tobacco consumption per adult has also increased?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I would be the first to agree with the noble Lord that we should have the right to smoke tobacco if we so wish. As to whether we should go further towards a compulsory ban on tobacco advertising, I agree with the noble Lord that one should beware of legislating to deny advertisers their natural liberty to advertise what is at present a legal product without firm evidence that such a ban would have concrete results. One should remember that we have seen considerable progress with a voluntary ban.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that taxation on tobacco is so high in this country that a British pack of 20 cigarettes is much more costly here than it is in any other country, with the possible exception of Denmark? That means that a person who takes a 40-foot lorry loaded with cigarettes and drives it from France to England will make a profit on that one load of £460,000. Is it not highly undesirable to encourage such a trend? Is my noble friend aware that on that one trip the Revenue would suffer a loss of £750,000 in taxes?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I can only reiterate the commitment that I have given that, at the very least, we intend to maintain the real level of taxation on tobacco.
Lord Ashley of Stoke: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the question of freedom is quite irrelevant? My noble friend Lady Jay is not seeking to stop people from smoking. People are quite free to smoke. She is attempting to discourage people from smoking. The basic facts are that smoking kills and advertising increases the level of smoking. What are we waiting for?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord when he says that the question of freedom is quite irrelevant. As I said in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, the right to smoke tobacco is a legal right which we are not trying to deny. At the same time there is a legal right for people to advertise products which can be sold legally. The Government will continue to advise people not to
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smoke because of the dangers involved, but we do not believe that there is any conclusive evidence that we should bring in a compulsory ban on advertising.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, as a former smoker I take the point about human rights made by the noble Lord, Lord Mason. However, does the Minister agree that there is substantial medical evidence to indicate that smoking is one of the greatest health hazards of the age and that the evidence from Canada and the Scandinavian countries is that their bans on advertising have been particularly valid in reducing the level of smoking by young people at whom many of the advertisements are targeted? Finally, does the Minister agree that the major medical organisations in this country are uniformly in favour of a ban on tobacco advertising?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord when he speaks of the evils and dangers of smoking. In no way was I seeking to imply that smoking is anything other than a potentially dangerous activity. I was trying to say that the evidence as regards tobacco advertising, and as to whether a compulsory ban would be effective, is not as conclusive as the noble Lord maintains. The restrictions imposed in Norway, Finland and Canada were imposed from a much lower level of restrictions beforehand.
We already have considerable restrictions on advertising. It would be wrong for the noble Lord to interpret the evidence as implying that an immediate ban would bring the results which he believes would arise. Nevertheless, if evidence can be brought forward to show that a ban would assist in that cause then, as I tried to imply when speaking of the liberty to advertise, it might be the time to consider imposing more restrictive controls on tobacco advertising.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, will the noble Lord confirm that this is a consultative document? Is it not unfortunate that those who are in favour of a ban on tobacco advertising should wish to silence the voices on the other side? Will the noble Lord confirm also that in Italy and Portugal, where bans have been in force since 1977, tobacco consumption has increased by 8 per cent. and 7 per cent. respectively?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I cannot confirm the noble Lord's figures as regards Italy and Portugal. I can confirm that their record on reducing tobacco consumption is less good than our record in spite of their total ban on tobacco advertising. As regards the other part of the noble Lord's question, he is right that it is a consultative document and we await his comments before January 1993.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Wakeham): My Lords, I think my noble friend should ask his question next, followed by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals.
Lord Finsberg: My Lords, some years ago I had responsibility for drawing up one of the voluntary agreements. The facts then showed that advertising did not increase the level of smoking but merely caused people to change brands. Is that still the case?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I note what my noble friend says. Some would argue that that is the case while others would argue that advertising of tobacco increases the level of smoking among certain categories. It is difficult to reach a definite conclusion on this matter.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, should we assume that the Minister is saying that he does not accept the result of the research carried out by his department? More relevantly, are the Government influenced in any way by the fact that Imperial Tobacco gave 2,000 poster sites to the Conservative Party during the last election campaign? Is there any influence there?
Lord Henley: My Lords, I refute totally what the noble Lord says. As regards the first part of his question, the noble Lord is guilty of somewhat over-interpreting the evidence put forward in the discussion document.

School Uniform
2.58 p.m.
Lord Skidelsky Lord Skidelsky asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they intend to encourage the wearing of uniforms in schools.
The Minister of State, Department of Education (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, the final decision as to whether to adopt a school uniform must remain one for the governors of each school.
Lord Skidelsky: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Will the Minister agree that not only can school uniforms help to disguise differences in background among pupils but they are also conducive to good learning and conduct? A school which adopts a uniform as part of a new approach sends a most important signal to both parents and pupils that it attaches a high value to such matters.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I have no difficulty whatever in agreeing with my noble friend. Many people believe, as I do, that school uniform can help to develop a sense of community on which good behaviour and high standards depend. Noble Lords may remember that my noble friend Lord Elton produced a report which suggested that an emphasis on the value of wearing uniform was one way to help pupils to identify with their school.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, I agree with most of what the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, said. However, does the Minister not agree that in some cases families have difficulty in finding the money for a uniform? In those circumstances what does the Minister suggest? I expect that she will tell me that that is a matter for local education authorities, but she knows that at present education expenditure is very restricted. What does the Minister recommend to parents who cannot afford uniforms?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, many local education authorities have a hardship fund. As a parent of
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children I should say that it is a far more cost-effective option to put children in uniform than it is to compete with day to day fashion.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, if there is social value in uniforms and if uniforms are required, they should always be affordable, practical and widely available so that parents are not forced to go to a particular supplier, which can distort the prices that they are expected to pay?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the noble Lord makes an important point. I go in and out of schools on a frequent basis and I know that many are adopting such an approach to uniform. They are adopting simple uniforms, often based on colour, but with rigorous application to wearing that.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the wearing of uniforms may reduce the incidence of stealing, which can be a problem in many schools?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I cannot be scientific in my answer to that question but I agree with the general proposition. It is true that the wearing of uniforms has many benefits.
Lord Morris: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that those who complain most loudly about the cost of uniforms rarely blink an eyelid at spending £70 on a pair of child's trainers and other fashionable clothes?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, my noble friend makes the point for me; that is true. Many parents heave a great sigh of relief when they learn that a school has adopted a uniform. The other serious point to make is that a good governing body will consult with the parents about a policy for uniforms.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, as the Government have standardised all other aspects of life in schools so that they all teach the same subjects for the same amount of time, can we not at least allow children to show their individuality in the clothing that they wear?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I made it absolutely clear in my first answer to the Question that the matter is for local determination by the governing body of a school in consultation with the parents. That decision should be made at a local level. We have made it clear that we have no plans to predetermine at a national level what children should wear.

Teachers: Subject Shortages
3.2 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington asked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they are taking to increase the supply of teachers of modern languages, mathematics, science and music.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the Government have already taken action to increase the supply of teachers, especially in those secondary subjects which have traditionally presented the most severe recruitment

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difficulties. I am delighted to say that there are few vacancies in primary and secondary schools in any subject.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, in spite of that Answer does the Minister agree that there are persistent shortages in the subjects that I have listed on the Order Paper? Has any research been carried out into the causes of those shortages because we should know more about the situation? Furthermore, what consultations have taken place with the teachers' unions about the problem, particularly as it affects the national curriculum?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I disagree with the premise upon which the noble Lord based his remarks; there are not persistent shortages in those subjects. According to the latest count, there is only a 0.5 per cent. vacancy rate. Out of 400,000 teachers there are only 43 vacancies in music, 77 in maths, 85 in science and 176 in modern foreign languages.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that those figures will be widely welcomed? To what extent have those improvements been brought about by the introduction of articled and licensed teachers in the teeth of opposition from the teachers' unions? Furthermore, if a problem does arise, will she consider paying more to those teachers in the subjects of shortage?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I agree that opening up the routes into teaching has brought into the classroom more teachers with an expertise. Therefore, the articled and licensed teaching routes have helped. In addition, there has been the setting up of the unit of Teaching as a Career and the bursary schemes which involve paying more money to those who come into teaching to teach the shortage subjects. The tax-free bursaries for those shortage subjects have also brought about an improvement.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, what use, if any, has been made of the considerable number of older people, many of whom are nationals of other countries such as Germany and Austria, and who are active in what is known as the University of the Third Age? Undoubtedly they could help with conversation classes, which is one of the most important aspects of language teaching. Has that source been adequately tapped?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an important point. It is open to the school and its policy to recruit language assistants from wherever. If they are available in an area, whether or not they are of the Third Age, that is a good policy to follow.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, if there is no great shortage of teachers, when do the Government intend to begin teaching modern languages at the primary stage in common with most of our European partners whom we lag behind?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, it remains government policy to teach languages to pupils at a younger age. However, there are two serious problems, one of which is logistical. Until the national curriculum
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compulsory language teaching from the age of 11 is fed into the system we shall not have a cohort of young people leaving school at 16, 17 or 18 from which our new teacher recruits will come. The second problem is the finance to support that. That is our aim but, in the meantime, we hope that where a primary school has the expertise to teach a language it will do so.
Lord Judd: My Lords, has the Minister been able to study the tables prepared by her department which will form part of the 1992 secondary schools staffing survey? Does she agree that they reveal that 10 per cent. of maths teachers have no academic qualifications in maths; 9 per cent. of French teachers have none in French; 13 per cent. of German teachers have none in German—
Noble Lords: Reading!
Lord Judd: That 9 per cent. of general science teachers have no academic qualifications in general science? Indeed, overall almost one teacher in five has no professional academic qualifications in the subject which he is teaching. How can that he satisfactory? What will the Minister do about that?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I can answer the noble Lord's question precisely. He is referring to teachers with no qualifications for teaching those subjects. Perhaps I can put it another way: 95 per cent. of people teach music as a primary subject; 90 per cent. maths; 96 per cent. Physics—
Noble Lords: Reading!
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, 97 per cent. chemistry; 89 per cent. biology; 91 per cent. French; and 87 per cent. German. I believe that that is a very good record.

Business
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House to know that at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. a Statement will be repeated in this House which is to be made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. In view of the constitutional importance of the Statement, and with the agreement of the Leaders of the other parties and of the Convener of the Cross-Benchers, I have asked my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor to repeat the Statement on my behalf.

Hong Kong and China
3.8 p.m.
Lord Geddes Lord Geddes rose to call attention to the situation in Hong Kong and China; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving my Motion I am sure that we are all delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, has chosen today's debate to open his account in your Lordships' House. As the most immediate past Governor of Hong Kong he will be listened to with great attention, as will his predecessor but one, the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose of Beoch.
We are also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, for finding time to speak in today's debate. It is indeed sad that the other two Hong Kong resident Members of your Lordships' House—the noble Lord, Lord Kadoorie, and my noble friend Lord Cromer —are unable to be with us. The noble Lord, Lord Kadoorie, is unable to be here on medical grounds and my noble friend Lord Cromer has last-minute business reasons.
As many of your Lordships will be aware, I have one overriding objective in the debate; it is to do what is right and best for the people of Hong Kong both before and after 30th June 1997. The present unhappy relations between Hong Kong and Beijing give considerable cause for concern, but I suggest that it would be a mistake to concentrate only on that present situation.
It was entirely deliberate to include China as well as Hong Kong in the title of today's debate. It is no longer realistic or even possible to consider one without the other. Hong Kong and China, particularly southern China, are now interdependent to such a degree that economically they should already be viewed as one entity.
Much has been made in recent days about the volatility in the Hang Seng Index. I am sure that those who know Hong Kong, particularly its stock market, will agree that it is probably the most emotive market in the world. For the record, the Hang Seng dropped 18 per cent. in the past four weeks, but that was from an all-time high on 12th November. It is still 423 per cent. higher than in September 1984 when the Joint Declaration was signed; 98 per cent. higher than the day before the Tiananmen Square incident; 153 per cent. higher than the day after Tiananmen Square and 27 per cent. higher than a year ago. As in every society or political system the economy is the heart of the matter, the fulcrum, the driving force. The Asia-Pacific area is undoubtedly the fastest growing in the world and Hong Kong is still very much at its centre.
In 1991 nearly one-third of all Hong Kong's trade was with China. Around 85 per cent. of Hong Kong's re-exports either originate from or are destined for China. In the first nine months of this year, Hong Kong's domestic exports to China rose by 16 per cent. In Guangdong, the province nearest to Hong Kong and where there are three special economic zones, some 3 million people are employed by Hong Kong businesses in 25,000 enterprises. Directly or indirectly, Hong Kong is said to be responsible for up to 90 per cent. of the investment in Guangdong, which itself has a population of 80 million. Nor is it all one-way traffic. Hong Kong and China are now each other's largest trading partners. China invests heavily in Hong Kong's manufacturing industry. Mainland Chinese interests already own around 5 per cent. of all the real estate in Hong Kong and 70 per cent. of all purchase and sales agreements filed with the Hong Kong Land Office this year have been with China. Without even allowing for acceleration of that trend, China will own 20 per cent. of Hong Kong by June 1997.
The businessmen of Hong Kong have not waited for 1997. With the ingenuity and economic astuteness
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for which they are justly famous they have looked into the future and acted accordingly. To them, 1997 represents opportunity as well as a step into the unknown. They have not been slow to seize the former in an attempt to mitigate the latter. It must not be forgotten that 98 per cent. of the population of Hong Kong is Chinese—a people with a strong sense of cultural unity and desire to preserve their ancient civilisation. Even in Taiwan, the 1991 elections demonstrated the electorate's overwhelming rejection of the concept of total independence and divorce from mainland China.
Above all, the Chinese are prepared to be endlessly flexible and utterly pragmatic in their approach to achieve their objectives. The concept of "one country, two systems" is, if nothing else, ingenious! The way in which China's economic structure has advanced during the past 13 years, when the modernisation programme started, is further proof of the Chinese versatility and willingness to adapt circumstances to their needs.
Two months ago I had the real pleasure and privilege of accompanying the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose of Beoch, on a visit to China—a follow-up to the one he and I made in April of this year to Fujien and Guangdong Provinces. Our most recent visit was to Wuhan in Hubei Province, 1,000 kilometres north of Hong Kong and to Shanghai. Both in their different ways were equally fascinating and impressive. Wuhan stands at the crossroads of the Yangtze River flowing west to east and the north-south railway, and as such could become a huge inland container entrepot for goods destined to and from Kowloon via the new double track north-south railway presently under construction.
We received most interesting general briefings from the Hubei planning authorities, together with a visit to the Wuhan Iron and Steel Company, itself occupying a site of 10 square kilometres, and a specific briefing with regard to the planned Three Gorges Dam. That dam is truly mind boggling in its conception. If built, it will take 18 years to complete; it will require 20 million tonnes of cement and will eventually produce 84 gigawatts of electricity per annum.
To me, Wuhan was also interesting in that it is in the same state and position as Guangzhou was 15 years ago; that is, ready, able and extremely willing to embark on a period of major expansion. Shanghai was, in a different way, equally fascinating. The historical city is sprouting high rise buildings at an incredible rate. But the biggest and most impressive expansion is in the area of Pudong, south of the Wangpo River, where the authorities have embarked on a 30-year programme to develop 350 square kilometres of land to be turned into, "the financial and economic centre in the Asia area". That development, including construction of a second international airport and a sea port, will be divided into four zones specifically designed for free trade, export processing, finance and high technology. As with, but different from, the projects in Wuhan and Hubei Province, the Pudong development is a truly gigantic one, and again the Chinese seem to have got it right in insisting on years of concentration on infrastructure before

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opening up the development to investors. In both Wuhan and Shanghai, the majority of foreign investment which is "pouring" in comes from Hong Kong.
Deng Xiaoping defined China's economic policy as "socialism with Chinese characteristics", which amounts to free market capitalism with a highly centralised political system: to the western way of thinking, those are concepts which are mutually exclusive. However, Mr. Deng continues to urge on a programme of deregulation and a free market. It is not without interest that economic reformers dominated the appointments to the Communist party's Politburo and Standing Committee at the 14th Party Congress in October.
China's economy has doubled in size since economic liberalisation began in 1978 and could well double again by the year 2000. Despite chronic losses in the state-owned sector, China's GNP for the first three quarters of 1992 was up by 10.6 per cent. over the same period last year and projections for China's economic growth during this year were revised upwards from 6 per cent. to 10 per cent. by the Beijing Government in July. Over the past 13 years China has averaged an annual growth of 9 per cent., which is something they intend to maintain at least until the end of the decade. In 1990 official stock markets were established in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Although there is a risk of the economy overheating and inflation, few can argue that China's economic achievements are little short of miraculous.
China's pragmatism extends to the loosening of controls in order to achieve her aims; the system allows just so much liberty and personal prosperity as is necessary, although Tiananmen Square was more than a sharp reminder of how the state can flex its military muscles and exercise political control if provoked. It is tempting to compare China with the former Soviet Union and to forecast that political liberalisation will be the inevitable result of the economic progress. However, I suggest that the Chinese have learned well from their neighbours and that economic reform must come a very long way first.
So, where does that leave Hong Kong? The trite answer of course is on the front page of virtually every newspaper every day; not necessarily an ideal position or situation, particularly for Hong Kong which basically just wants to be left alone to get on with what it knows best, and that is to make money. The present bout of decibel diplomacy is deafening, dangerous and potentially destructive. It is doing no one any good at all; not Beijing, not London and certainly not Hong Kong. At the end of the day, what is that decibel diplomacy all about? Apparently, it is about democracy with an important sideline as to whether Westminster intends to abscond with Hong Kong's silver—perhaps I should say jade—before the handover.
I have not a shadow of doubt that the latter is neither true nor a practical possibility. As to the former, democracy, I wonder whether that is not more a symptom than a cause. The real reason seems to be that of trust. The background for what became the 1984 Joint Declaration and the 1990 Basic Law was
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lack of assurance that Beijing would stick to its word and allow Hong Kong to continue with its previous way of life for at least 50 years after 1997. I suggest that the Governor's present proposals—and they are only proposals, which can be amended or, indeed, overturned by the Hong Kong Legislative Council —are a natural extension of that unease and therefore an endeavour to strengthen the democratic safety net. Beijing, in turn, is increasingly distrustful of the motives behind such constitutional reform and indeed its possible implications for the rest of China. In my view, it is a classic situation of each side becoming more and more convinced that only its view is right.
I suggest that were it not for the fear that Beijing might not honour its agreements of 1984 and 1990, the vast majority of the people of Hong Kong would be happy to get on with their business provided—this is a most important proviso—they were absolutely certain that the status quo of an independent judiciary, free speech, free assembly, a free press and freedom to travel, would remain. Given such absolute certainty, the pressure for democracy (itself an occidental concept) would surely be greatly reduced. To achieve that will require a positive rather than a negative move from Beijing and an immediate—I stress, immediate—corresponding positive reaction from Hong Kong.
I most genuinely congratulate Mr. Christopher Patten, the present Governor of Hong Kong, on his sincerity. I have no doubt that he totally believes that the proposals outlined in his remarkable speech of 7th October are entirely within the strict written terms of the Basic Law. His coolness under fire in recent weeks does him enormous credit and I greatly honour such courage. However, what he has done is to bring very much an occidental mind and a Westminster approach to what is an almost entirely oriental situation where "face" and "principle" assume proportions which, if not unknown at Westminster, are of far less consequence there in the hurly-burly of daily political life.
I am reminded of a simple story told many years ago by an eminent Member of your Lordships' House regarding different interpretations of identical words. The story, as I recall it, was of two bachelor girls, one living in New York and one in London, who said, simultaneously, "I'm just wild about my flat". Of course, we know that the New Yorker was singularly unamused at having had a puncture in her car whereas her opposite number in London was ecstatic about her new home.
I do not believe that the present "difficulties" in Hong Kong, which amount to different interpretations of the same words, are as great as is being made out. As the Sunday Times said three days ago:
"Patten's proposals for an extension of Hong Kong's limited democracy in the proposed elections for 1995 may have been modest: it was the manner in which they were announced as much as the content that infuriated Peking and prompted a wave of hostility that frayed the fragile nerves of Hong Kong's investors".
The 18th century philosopher, Kant, said that,
"the mode of government is incomparably more important for a nation than the form of state".
The framework for a mode of government which will serve Hong Kong and its people well beyond 1997 is

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there in writing in the 1984 Joint Declaration (an internationally recognised agreement) and the 1990 Basic Law. What is absolutely vital is that both sides should lay down their loud hailers and start listening to each other again in the tried and tested forum of quiet discussion. In that context, this week's meeting of the Joint Liaison Group is encouraging. The route of quiet discussion may well not suit the media but its co-operation is, if not vital, then certainly an important ingredient.
I most earnestly urge both Governments to build on the solid foundations laid down in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. And I also encourage them—London, Beijing and Hong Kong—to take to heart the words of the late Mr. Chou En-lai that we should,
"set aside differences and concentrate on points we have in common".
In the interests of the future lives and prosperity of the people of Hong Kong well beyond 1997, I do most earnestly advocate that sentiment. If it needs an honest broker to bring the parties together, I am sure that there are many who, believing and caring for Hong Kong's future, could and would, jointly or severally, fulfil that role. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.28 p.m.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, we are all indebted to my noble friend Lord Geddes for initiating this debate on one of the most important foreign policy issues facing this country. We look forward very much to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn; and we are delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, with us today. I thank her for making the effort to be here; I know that it was not easy. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon returned from China just yesterday. He very much wanted to be here, but he has asked me to say how sorry he is that he cannot be here. The reason—as I am sure noble Lords would wish to know—is that he is being granted the Freedom of the Borough of Port Talbot this afternoon.
China is by any measure a significant country, as my noble friend Lord Geddes has said. Its significance is increasing. In the 200 years since Lord Macartney's mission, successive British governments have consistently recognised the importance of establishing good relations with successive governments in Peking.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 some periods have been marked more by mutual suspicion than by constructive dialogue. However, the Chinese leadership's decision in 1978, under the inspiration of Mr. Deng Xiaoping, to concentrate on economic reform and opening to the outside world introduced a long period when Sino-British relations flowered to an unprecedented degree. There are many reasons why Britain and China must maintain and develop a constructive and broadly based relationship. China is by far the world's most populous country. It is a member of the Permanent Five in the United Nations. It is a nuclear power. It is a major exporter of military equipment.
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As my noble friend has just told us, its economic growth rates in recent years, based on the "reform and opening" policies of Deng Xiaoping, have been among the fastest in the world. Southern China in particular is now regarded as the fifth "Tiger" of the Asia-Pacific rim. In short, China must be taken very seriously. This Government have done so consistently.
If your Lordships wish, I shall deal with other aspects of our relations with China, such as the important matter of human rights, at the conclusion of this debate. But it is over Hong Kong where Britain and China have the clearest interest in co-operation. I should now like to concentrate on that co-operation.
Hong Kong is making its own significant contribution to China's economic growth. Hong Kong firms employ some 3 million people in Guangdong Province alone. Hong Kong is a major source of investment, of foreign exchange, of marketing skills and of technical know-how for China. Hong Kong also benefits greatly from its economic links to southern China. This has helped to protect Hong Kong from the recession elsewhere in the world. Hong Kong's growth rate is expected to be some 5 per cent. each year until 1997.
This enviable economic success owes much to the political certainty provided by the Joint Declaration in 1984. It shows what can be achieved through Sino-British co-operation. Like other noble Lords, I have seen some suggestions in recent days from Chinese spokesmen which seem to call into question the value of the Joint Declaration. Let me be absolutely clear: the British Government remain 100 per cent. committed to the full implementation of the Joint Declaration. We want to work closely with the Chinese Government to ensure a smooth transition in Hong Kong. There has been no change whatever in that policy.
The Governor's proposals for a modest extension of democracy fit squarely into the pattern of gradual evolution laid down in the Joint Declaration under which the Legislative Council will evolve from the all-appointed body of 1984 to one "constituted by elections" by 1997. Britain has the responsibility for administering the next cycle of elections in Hong Kong in 1994 and 1995. We would like to see as much continuity as possible through 1997. But we also need to respond to the clear wish of Hong Kong people to have a greater say in the running of their affairs.
We still believe that the simplest way of responding to this wish would be to agree with the Chinese Government an amendment to the Basic Law to allow an increase in the number of directly elected members of the Legislative Council beyond the 20 now envisaged. But the Chinese Government have made plain that they will not change the Basic Law. Taking account of that position, the Governor has put forward a parallel approach which would enhance democracy within the terms of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law.
The Governor's proposals were worked out in close co-ordination with the British Government. They enjoy the Government's full support. They pose no threat to anyone. Hong Kong is a mature and sophisticated society. Meeting the wishes of its people

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for a small step forward in democratic participation could not conceivably put at risk Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.
It is not the Governor's proposals which have unsettled the markets in recent weeks and alarmed people in Hong Kong. It is China's increasingly strident propaganda attacks that have done that. The sooner the megaphones are put away, the better—how right my noble friend was. It is very much in Hong Kong's interest that Britain and China should resume calm discussion of these issues and the British Government are ready to do so at any time.
Let me emphasise that this is not an argument of our making. The Basic Law does not lay down the detailed electoral arrangements for the Legislative Council which will make the transition in 1997. So the Governor had to make proposals. But they are just that—proposals. Since the Chinese evidently disagree with them, the most constructive course would be for them to come forward with alternatives of their own. The Governor has also emphasised that he is ready to consider alternative proposals from individuals or groups in Hong Kong. He—and we—are totally sincere in this. Our only condition is that elections held under British rule should be open, fair and command the support of the people of Hong Kong.
A number of alternative proposals have already been suggested. More may come forward in the next few weeks. But the time for discussion is limited. For practical reasons, it will be necessary to put draft legislation to the Legislative Council in the early part of next year. Otherwise, arrangements may not be in place in time for the district board elections in 1994.
It is entirely right that the Legislative Council should have the final say on the electoral arrangements, having weighed up all the factors. I do not think that your Lordships would want the Governor or this Government to press the Legislative Council to go further than they judge right in the interests of Hong Kong. On the other hand, it would clearly be wrong for us to say that we would not be prepared to go as far as the Legislative Council would wish.
There really is no contradiction between a more representative system of government and continuing economic success. Indeed Hong Kong's way of life, including its open society underpinned by the rule of law, has been crucial to that success. Building up strong and self-confident local institutions before 1997 should therefore help to create the conditions in which business can continue to flourish in Hong Kong. Her Majesty's Government remain firmly committed to ensuring the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.
Britain and China have come a long way together in the implementation of the Joint Declaration's promise of "one country two systems". As 1997 draws nearer there is a need for even closer co-operation. All concerned will benefit from that: Britain, China and most of all the people of Hong Kong. We seek renewed dialogue with China, with the aim of narrowing differences and restoring a co-operative relationship. That is the best basis for Hong Kong's prosperity and stability.

The Prince and Princess of Wales
3.37 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I wish to repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Madam Speaker, I wish to inform the House that Buckingham Palace are at this moment issuing the following Statement. It reads as follows:
"It is announced from Buckingham Palace that, with regret, The Prince and Princess of Wales have decided to separate. Their Royal Highnesses have no plans to divorce and their constitutional positions are unaffected. This decision has been reached amicably, and they will both continue to participate fully in the upbringing of their children.
"Their Royal Highnesses will continue to carry out full and separate programmes of public engagements, and will from time to time attend family occasions and national events together.
"The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, though saddened, understand and sympathise with the difficulties that have led to this decision. Her Majesty and His Royal Highness particularly hope that the intrusions into the privacy of The Prince and Princess may now cease. They believe that a degree of privacy and understanding is essential if Their Royal Highnesses are to provide a happy and secure upbringing for their children, while continuing to give a whole-hearted commitment to their public duties".
My Lords, that is the text of the announcement.
The Prime Minister's Statement goes on:
"I am sure that I speak for the whole House—and millions beyond it—in offering our support to both the Prince and Princess of Wales. I am also sure that the House will sympathise with the wish that they should both be afforded a degree of privacy.
"The House will wish to know that the decision to separate has no constitutional implications. The succession to the Throne is unaffected by it; the children of the Prince and Princess retain their position in the line of succession; and there is no reason why the Princess of Wales should not be crowned Queen in due course. The Prince of Wales' succession as head of the Church of England is also unaffected. Neither the Prince nor the Princess is supported by the Civil List, and this position will remain unchanged.
"Madam Speaker, I know that there will be great sadness at this news. But I know also that, as they continue with their Royal duties and with the upbringing of their children, the Prince and Princess will have the full support, understanding and affection of this House and of the country."
My Lords, that completes the Statement.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Richard: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble and learned the Lord Chancellor for having repeated the Statement made in another place by his right honourable friend the Prime Minister. We are grateful, too, for the noble and learned Lord's statement as to the constitutional position.
The House will have heard the Statement with regret and with sadness, which we on these Benches fully share. However, it is essentially a matter for the two people most directly concerned. One cannot help wondering, however, whether such difficulties as there were between the Prince and the Princess might perhaps have been more capable of resolution had the tabloid press not taken such an excessive interest in their personal affairs.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: And The Sunday Times.
Lord Richard: But these are perhaps matters for another occasion. I am sure the House would wish to be restrained in its comments today.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, I join in thanking the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for repeating the Statement. Beyond expressing our sympathy with those involved at the circumstances which have occasioned the Statement and endorsing the plea for privacy in the future, I do not think that any precipitate comment would be helpful or appropriate.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have spoken for their understanding of this position.
3.42 p.m.
The Archbishop of York: My Lords, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury would wish to have been here today; but, as your Lordships know, he is in Sri Lanka. We have consulted together and I wish to speak on behalf of us both. We share the great sorrow which this announcement will cause to Church and nation. We ask the public to join us in praying that God will bring comfort and strength to the Prince and Princess, their children and the wider Royal Family. We urge the public to react with compassion and understanding and not to add unnecessarily to the pain already suffered by those involved. The interests and feelings of Prince Henry and Prince William should be borne constantly in mind. In continuing to perform their unique and stressful public duties despite their personal difficulties, the Prince and Princess will have our strong support, and we believe that of the nation as a whole.
Questions may be raised about the implications of the separation for His Royal Highness's position as future Supreme Governor of the Church of England. From a legal viewpoint, marital status does not affect the succession to the Throne and hence the title of Supreme Governor. The Monarch is Supreme Governor of the Church by virtue of being Sovereign.
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There is no other legal requirement. Under the Act of Settlement of 1700, the Sovereign must be a communicant member of the Church of England.
Those who hold prominent and symbolic positions in the Church have to meet high expectations. These do not entail the absence of difficult past experiences. Indeed, the Church teaches that, although its members should all strive to follow Christ's perfect example, we can never fully achieve this ideal. All of us are in constant need of God's forgiveness, with its hope of redemption and renewal.
In the case of unsuccessful marriages, the Church of England accepts that there are sometimes circumstances, however sad, where separation is the lesser evil and the best way forward. To undergo such an experience and take such a decision does not in itself in any sense disqualify a person from holding the title of Supreme Governor.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I am sure the whole House will be grateful to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York for what he has said. As your Lordships know, we are in the habit of starting every Session of this House with prayers which include prayers for the Prince and Princess of Wales and the other members of the Royal Family. I am sure that the most reverend Primate's encouragement will make us even more fervent in these prayers, not only at the opening of business sessions in the House but more generally. I am sure the whole House would also wish particularly to bear in mind what was said about Prince Henry and Prince William and also appreciate fully the reference to grace and forgiveness which I am sure all of us feel we need.
Baroness Hylton-Foster: My Lords, the Cross-Bench Peers, for very special reasons, will, I am sure, receive this Statement with very great sadness and with great regret.

Hong Kong and China
3.46 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, for initiating this debate on Hong Kong and China. When first I saw it had been put down I wondered whether it was too soon after the last debate on the subject. I turned out to be quite wrong. It has become an extremely topical subject. I look forward greatly to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn. He brings, of course, a wealth of experience and great knowledge of the subject to our debate.
Unlike him, and indeed most of the speakers today, I am a complete novice. I visited Hong Kong and China, but only once and nearly 10 years ago. Obviously I must visit them again to try to acquire a greater understanding of the issues, which can be achieved only by directly experiencing what is going on and meeting those who are affected.
The next three or four years are clearly of crucial importance both to the future of Hong Kong and to the future of Sino-British relations. I was glad to hear

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the Minister confirm the importance that the Government attach to these relations. Both the future of Hong Kong and our relations with China are inextricably linked to each other. The UK Government and the Governor of Hong Kong have a difficult tightrope to walk in balancing the various objectives. I recognise that and I am sure that every other speaker in the debate will also do so. But, like the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, I do wonder whether the way Mr. Patten has handled recent events has been in the long-term interests of Hong Kong. And it is those interests that should be paramount in the tricky negotiations about the extension of democracy in the colony.
It goes without saying that greater democracy in Hong Kong is a highly desirable goal. The Labour Party strongly supports the democratisation that was agreed with China in the Joint Declaration and which was then embodied in the Basic Law. However, what was agreed has to some extent at least been overtaken by events, including the sweeping victory of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in the 1991 direct elections to the Legislative Council, when 16 out of 18 of the directly elected seats were won by the United Democrats and their allies. Pressure has since built up in Hong Kong for even greater democratisation. The Governor responded to those pressures with new proposals set out in his speech to the Legislative Council in October. The proposals he made are in themselves laudable. Who would dispute the need to widen the franchise and allow far more people the right to vote? Who would dispute the desirability of lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, thus bringing Hong Kong into line with most other democratic countries?
The key question is not whether we should back those changes —of course we should. The key question is whether, by announcing them when he did, and in the way that he did, the Governor may have put at risk more than he is gaining by making those changes. The Chinese Government's reaction can in no way be condoned. They have, in fact, over-reacted in a rather absurd fashion. To refuse to endorse any contracts negotiated which go beyond 1997 and which have not been agreed with China beforehand does not look like a sensible response in terms of their own interest. Some of those projects require substantial capital. The question the Chinese must ask themselves is whether Western or Japanese financial institutions will provide that capital if every new development is subject to a Chinese veto over the next four years. If capital is not provided, the extraordinary economic growth which has been produced in South China and Hong Kong could be jeopardised.
But I return to the question of how the Governor, backed presumably by the UK Government, has handled the matter. I do not often find myself agreeing with quotations from the Sunday Times these days, but I do agree with the quotation from that paper given by the noble Lord, Lord Geddes. While the Government have already claimed, in answer to a Question put down by my noble friend Lord Judd, that the Basic Law has not been breached by Mr. Patten's proposals—I accept that that may well be the
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case, although I should like some clarification from the Minister—the question I should like to ask her is whether those proposals are in line with the spirit of the Joint Declaration. By using the device of creating more functional constituencies which will give a large number of people the vote, Chris Patten has been, in one sense, very clever; but has he been a bit too clever by half?
Is it skilful diplomacy to try to pull a fast one on the Chinese in that way? Surely, having alighted on that clever way round some of the restrictions imposed by the earlier agreements, it would have been better first to canvass opinions in the Chinese Government. I am not arguing that the Chinese would necessarily have been persuaded, but they just might have been, and they certainly would have been less affronted. If it is true that the Foreign Secretary informed the Chinese Foreign Secretary of those plans in New York in September, why was not the way prepared earlier, and why did not the Governor of Hong Kong at least consult the Chinese before making an announcement? Perhaps the Minister will tell the House when she replies.
There is now anxiety that convergence with the Basic Law in 1997 will be more difficult and that a smooth transition will be jeopardised. Most commentators agree that what was negotiated in the Basic Law was something of an achievement. While, of course, one could have hoped for even more, the best should not become the enemy of the good. Mr. Patten may bring it off, and if he does we should all be delighted, but he is taking a considerable risk—a risk that could jeopardise our economic interests, but, much more importantly, could lead to less rather than more democracy in Hong Kong. Any further light the Minister can shed on that issue would be helpful. I was glad to hear her say that the Government are ready to talk to the Chinese Government at any time. Could she be more precise and say when the Government next intend to discuss Hong Kong's future, including the 1995 Legislative Council elections, with the Chinese Government? She has admitted that there is little time and that it is a matter of urgency.
I wonder whether one solution to the current impasse with China might be to offer more flexibility on the issue of contracts in exchange for greater understanding of the need for democratisation on the part of the Chinese. There is a case for more consultation on all major contracts that run beyond the handover to the Chinese. I accept that legally the Hong Kong Government have no need to consult, but politically would it not be sensible to do so?
Although there are still difficulties, we have now agreed to consult on the building of the airport since it straddles 1997. Would it not be wise to extend that to other major projects that go beyond that date? In return, the Chinese should be asked to drop their opposition to matters such as changes in fiscal policy or the granting of licences to radio stations, which in no way breach the Basic Law. Since Hong Kong and South China are now becoming a single entity in economic terms, that would surely make sense.
As the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, has already said, the economic development of South China has been

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quite remarkable. I shall not repeat the statistics with which he has already provided us. There can be little doubt that the communist system is breaking down there, from an economic point of view. One hopes that that will spread gradually to the rest of China, but the Chinese Government's decision to put economic reform before political reform, to which the noble Lord referred, in no way justifies the flagrant breaches of human rights that have been occurring in China on a large scale. Amnesty International's report earlier this year provides a catalogue of grotesque violations of the most basic human rights. Hundreds of prisoners of conscience remain in detention. Many have not received fair trials after arbitrary arrest. There have been persistent reports of torture, and, worst of all, unarmed demonstrators have been killed, and summary executions are not uncommon. The recent developments in Xinliang Province are a particular cause for anxiety.
We have heard from the Minister that the parliamentary delegation, headed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, investigating human rights abuses in Hong Kong returned from China yesterday. Perhaps the Minister will ensure that a copy of its report is placed in the Library. Will she also say what, if any, representations the Government have made recently to China on the abuse of human rights in that country? In the light of China's poor record in that respect, there is understandable anxiety about the protection of human rights in Hong Kong. I understand that a Bill of Rights was adopted in June, which incorporated certain provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into Hong Kong law. There are worries about whether the Bill of Rights and, particularly, those ICCPR provisions will still apply after 1997. Amnesty International has also raised the question of whether safeguards to protect prisoners of conscience are adequate. Perhaps the Minister will say what steps are being taken to meet those anxieties. I am sure that she will agree that everything possible should be done to ensure that human rights in Hong Kong are respected after the handover in 1997.
When the subject of Hong Kong and China was last debated, my noble friend Lord Judd referred to another important matter concerning human rights —the fate of the Vietnamese boat people. Their human rights must also be protected. It would be helpful to have from the Minister the latest estimate of the number of people now in Hong Kong and how many new arrivals reached the colony in 1992. Will she also tell the House what progress has been made since our previous debate in the screening of the boat people to assess whether they qualify for asylum? Amnesty International claims that the screening process is still deficient. What, if any, steps are being taken to rectify that?
As we all know, the very low standards of living in Vietnam are an important reason why many Vietnamese are still trying to leave the country and reach Hong Kong, despite the huge risks involved. The continuing economic embargo enforced by the US against Vietnam, including the vetoing of IMF
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and World Bank loans scheduled for that country, is, to say the least, unhelpful. The recent thawing of relations between the US and Vietnam is a start, but that crippling embargo must be lifted.
Since President-Elect Clinton has said that he values the special relationship that exists with the UK, will the Government make use of that and make representations to the new US Government to change their policy? While on the subject of Mr. Clinton, will the Government also be taking up his offer, which he was reported to have made yesterday, to help relieve the Sino-British tensions over Hong Kong? Assuming that there is an American policy change on Vietnam, can we expect a further increase in UK aid, as well as the promotion of aid and investment in Vietnam?
I conclude by saying that we have an enormous responsibility to secure the prosperity and political future of Hong Kong and its people. The previous debate on Hong Kong focused heavily on the economic miracle taking place in South China, led in many ways by Hong Kong. The economic success of this area is, of course, welcome and long may it continue. It opens up huge opportunities for UK companies as well as for business interests in Hong Kong. However, I hope that today we shall focus rather more on the difficult and delicate diplomacy to be conducted to ensure a transition in 1997 that protects the political rights of the people of Hong Kong. We owe it to them to be unstinting in our efforts to achieve that.
4 p.m.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, the whole House is in the debt of the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, not just for his choice of subject and for the expertise he showed in introducing the debate but for his acute sense of timing. It is difficult to imagine that we could have had this debate at a more appropriate time, and we thank him for it.
I am also grateful for the chance to speak early in the debate and to make my own few rather simple observations before the positive avalanche of experience and wisdom which will descend upon us from a number of Members of this House. Their views we all greatly respect, not least of course those of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, who will speak next and who I know will have the keen attention of the whole House.
Yesterday I returned from China where I was a member of a small mission led by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, to the People's Republic of China, following up the Prime Minister's visit. Our mission was designed to discuss matters of mutual interest, including human rights. As the noble Baroness has already reported, I know how disappointed the noble and learned Lord is not to be able to be here for this debate.
On the question of human rights in China, I do not wish today to attempt to pre-empt the conclusions of our mission, on which we shall report in the New Year. Perhaps I may simply say that by the standards of open, plural and liberal democracy which we take for granted in the West there are still matters of grave concern affecting individuals and communities in

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China, not only dissenters or religious and ethnic minorities but also the men and women in the streets, the factories and the fields, and too many of them in the prisons.
Even making allowances, as we must, for the very different history and culture of this ancient land, there are many weary miles yet to be travelled before China is a full part of a world community of shared values. Yet at the same time it would be foolish not to recognise the pressures, both internal and external, in China for reform of law, institutions and practices. It would be churlish of us not to acknowledge that some progress—limited as yet but potentially more dramatic—is being made.
Our mission encountered nothing but co-operative courtesy and a surprising degree of forthcoming response given the inevitably intrusive nature of our questioning of their system. I believe that this was not least due to the fact that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, is identified as a long-standing and good friend of China.
Turning to the wider issues in this debate, it is worth reporting that General Secretary Jiang Ze Min, when we met him last week, told us that for her part China is seeking to build a,
"socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics".
He went on to say that the relationship that China seeks with Britain is one of mutual respect. Both these statements—interspersed, I may say, with an impressive rendering of the opening part of the Gettysburg Address in English and with references to his reading of Adam Smith, Keynes, Samuelson and Milton Friedman—are of great significance and deserve the closest attention.
First, on the question of the market economy, as noble Lords have already said, there is an extraordinary boom in southern and eastern China which, taken together with Taiwan and Hong Kong, now make up greater China—not just another tiger but a positive super-tiger. It is one of the fastest-growing and most exciting areas of economic development in the entire world. This year the rate of economic growth in Shanghai alone will be 15 per cent.
This is also an increasingly inter-penetrated area, with both Taiwanese and Hong Kong investment playing a prominent role on the mainland. However, the British role—even allowing for investment indirectly via Hong Kong—is still, I fear, disappointingly small. Of 1,576 joint ventures in Shanghai established in the past year or so, amounting to projects worth over 8 billion dollars, only 18 are British, although the companies include BOC, Pilkington's and Unilever. It is also fair to say that a number of other companies have established offices there. The development in Pudong to which the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, referred is breathtaking. It makes Docklands look like a model village. It is a shame that there is not yet more active British involvement directly in this extraordinary development. Perhaps the noble Baroness could refer to this in her summing up.
I wonder whether the FCO and the British Overseas Trade Board at the DTI should not between them step
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up our representation and export efforts in this dynamic area on the old principle that resources should be allocated to opportunity not to problems. Perhaps more resources should go to Shanghai, and I think we should look seriously at the possibility of a consul in Canton.
As noble Lords will know, China is anxious to join the GATT, as she is to attract inward investment. I suggest that one area in which we should be firm with the Chinese is to encourage them to shape up to international norms in terms of trade. First, there should be greater transparency of regulations. There are too many regulations which are not published. Secondly, there should be a removal of artificial, non-trade barriers; there should be a removal, or at least a disclosure, of quotas. For example, the quota on alcohol is not helpful to important British interests. Further, the legal conditions which protect foreign trade transactions should be examined.
To give one or two examples, there are unpublished regulations and prohibitions on the import of beef and dairy products from France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. There are veterinary inspection regulations which make it difficult for our producers to export directly to China. Another example is that registration is required of pharmaceuticals and the criteria for registration are not sufficiently clear so they can be arbitrarily changed to make it difficult for foreign pharmaceutical exporters.
What I am really saying is that if China wishes to become a member of the GATT, as she clearly wishes to very badly, she needs to have a major sort-out of her commercial law. In fact China needs a sort-out of her law generally. Here there are encouraging signs. We were told that there is a major law reform promised for some time next year. Some noble Lords may have seen the speech last week by Xiao Shi in which he said that China must modernise her structures. He specifically said:
"We must legalise our socialist democracy in order to have laws which we can keep unchanged regardless of the shuffles of the leaders".
This from a leading member of the Central Committee is an extraordinarily significant movement towards a government of laws not men. It looks as though the old Chinese proverb or maxim that policies are better than laws, and leadership is better than policies, may be in the process of being replaced by a sense of the primacy of the law, important for human rights and important for commercial transactions.
Therefore it is a time of change in China and I believe that Britain and Hong Kong have a vital role to play in that. To revert to the remarks of the General Secretary, he called for mutual respect. I should like to suggest that we should regard this as a time to stay cool and courteous. On these Benches we certainly believe that the Governor General must be backed steadfastly in his modest and realistic proposals for amplifying democracy in Hong Kong. I fear that I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, in characterising Mr. Patten's policies as pulling a fast one. There is already a danger that some elements of the Beijing leadership believe after the last few months that the British Government are weak and easily

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deflected from their purposes, so let us be staunch in our defence of liberal values within the terms of the Joint Declaration that we have made with China.
Let us also be sure to consult and reason together with the Chinese, with whom we are enforced historical partners in Hong Kong, but, even more, potential allies for the future peace and prosperity of the region. This is a part of the world where history is being made, and it is our role to help ensure that so far as can be managed—and it will be difficult—economic and political freedom advance together and are not divided. That will best be achieved by speaking softly, by putting down our big sticks and by ensuring that a dialogue of mutual respect with China is maintained and extended.
4.11 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Tillyorn: My Lords, I speak for the first time in your Lordships' House with more than the usual degree of trepidation. Your Lordships' House contains a great deal of expertise on Hong Kong. Among noble Lords there are several former Ministers of the Crown who held responsibility for Hong Kong while I was Governor. There is one very distinguished former Governor, the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose of Beoch, under whom I was fortunate enough to serve several years ago. As the list of speakers for today's debate shows, many noble Lords have direct personal experience of Hong Kong and China. My trepidation is only somewhat alleviated by the friendly reception that your Lordships give to any new Member of this House, whether they be from down the corridor and another place quite close at hand, or, like myself, from other places much further away.
Hong Kong is indeed geographically distant, but I believe that it is close to the hearts of many of us, and quite rightly will be close to the concerns of the British Government over the years to come. It has been a tremendous privilege to have been Governor of that territory during the past five years or more, and to see Hong Kong survive and flourish despite a whole series of difficulties that could well have overwhelmed a lesser territory, or a lesser people, and that is great credit to the people of Hong Kong.
Flourish, Hong Kong certainly has. The statistics are well known to many noble Lords and I will not repeat them. One has to see Hong Kong to believe the way in which it has flourished. There can surely be few places in the world where the Financial Secretary regularly wakes up in the morning and finds that he has an even greater surplus than he had anticipated. That economic success is important not just for its own sake but because it has enabled the Hong Kong Government and its hard-working, dedicated civil service to do so much for the people of Hong Kong.
One of the unfortunate elements of fall out from the present all too public dispute is that a large section of the Governor's annual address to the Legislative Council this October, which dealt with what Hong Kong has done and will do for the people of Hong Kong—ambitious and well-founded plans—has fallen somewhat into obscurity. Nor should the present dispute allow another important fact to be obscured,
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and that is the real and commendable way in which the Governor, Mr. Chris Patten, has, with enormous energy, in a short period of time endeared himself to people in Hong Kong. I am sure that that will stand him in good stead in the months and years to come.
That prosperity of Hong Kong, that economic success, is inseparable from the economic success of China as a whole and Southern China in particular. The noble Lord, Lord Geddes, to whom we are much indebted for this debate, described eloquently and accurately the astonishing progress of China. That too has to be seen to be believed. China as a whole has grown at something like 8 per cent. every year for the last five years, and United Nations' statistics estimate that it will grow faster than that, at over 9 per cent in the years to 1996. But Southern China has grown even faster; by 13 per cent. a year every year for the last five years. The journey from the border of Hong Kong to Canton is now like going through a gigantic building site.
That economic success is not just inseparable from the economic success of Hong Kong. Each gains from what the other has done. That is one of many reasons why it is so important that Hong Kong should continue to build up its economic and transportation infrastructure, including building a new airport and developing its port. But that economic relationship is only part of a much wider relationship with China. It is never an easy relationship. The systems, the traditions, are so different. There is much suspicion on both sides. But it is a relationship that surely has to be worked at. China cannot be neglected as an important factor for Hong Kong. There must be contact; there must be discussion. In that, I believe we should always keep in mind the long-term interests of the people of Hong Kong and what really matters to them not just in the next few years but also in the years after 1997.
Nobody who has the interests of Hong Kong at heart can fail to be concerned by the intensity and the implications of the present dispute about constitutional arrangements. It cannot be good for Hong Kong and it cannot he good for China in the long run to have a long-running dispute of this sort. I noted—and the noble Baroness the Minister has just repeated this —that when the Governor put forward his proposals this October, they were just that: proposals; no more, no less; and that he welcomed other proposals.
I hope that other proposals will indeed be put forward in Hong Kong so that there may be a chance to find a structure for the 1995 elections that will be satisfactory and acceptable to the people of Hong Kong, and which, through discussion with China, can last long after 1997. I believe that continuity is of great importance to Hong Kong for the sureness that the people of Hong Kong need in their personal lives and in making commercial judgments. Continuity was one of the aims and one of the achievements of the Joint Declaration of 1984, and I believe that continuity in the Legislative Council as much as anything else remains an important objective.
Despite all the present difficulties I remain confident about the longer-term future of Hong Kong. The economic success story of China and of Hong Kong, to which those noble Lords who have already

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spoken have referred, is a key factor. It is like a great stream that is carrying Hong Kong forward into the future. In that stream there will always be rocks— political obstacles. The task must be so to navigate the boat that it does not founder on those rocks, but carries forward Hong Kong and its people to a successful future, which they look to so strongly and which they deserve so much.
4.19 p.m.
Baroness Thatcher: My Lords, it is my great privilege, on behalf of the House, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, on the most excellent maiden speech he has just made: a subject upon which he has so much knowledge and understanding. I seem to remember that I had something to do with his governorship of Hong Kong and, in so far as I did, I think it was an extremely good choice. He was a very distinguished governor at a most difficult time. People remember what happened in 1989, and he saw Hong Kong through that time.
I should also like to say thank you to him for the great part he played in the very tough negotiations with China in order to get the Joint Declaration that we eventually succeeded in having. May I also say that that took a long time. There were many setbacks: times when we got nowhere, times when we had to give ground and times when we gained ground. But had either side left the field at the first whiff of grapeshot there would never have been a Joint Declaration. There would have been a very much lesser future for Hong Kong than there is as a result of that persistence. I would also thank the noble Lord for choosing this occasion to speak, because it is the first time in my 33 years in Parliament that I have had the privilege of congratulating a maiden speaker; so it is in a way a double first.
My purpose in speaking in this debate is strongly to support the Governor of Hong Kong and to commend a policy of good relations with China. Noble Lords will detect that I do not believe there need be any contradiction between these two propositions. I should like also to thank the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, for his fascinating speech in opening this debate. As a result of the sentences I have already uttered, he will realise that I do not wholly agree with him. Perhaps I may just take up one point which both he and the noble Baroness opposite made. There seems to be some idea that it was not what the Governor said but the manner in which or the occasion on which he said it that has given rise to the problems. The Governor chose to unveil his proposals to the people of Hong Kong in an address at the opening of the 1992–93 session of the Legislative Council. It would seem to me very strange for this House to choose such an occasion as one of criticism.
Secondly, the Governor is a master of the English language. His command of it is tremendous. The speech was marvellously well constructed and I have no doubt it was wonderfully delivered. Just look! I happen to have it with me in case any such criticism arose. An instinct for these criticisms has been bred in me for many years. The Governor said:
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"Democracy is more than just a philosophical ideal. It is, for instance, an essential element in the pursuit of economic progress … Without the rule of law buttressed by democratic institutions, investors are left unprotected. Without an independent Judiciary enforcing laws democratically enacted, businesses will be vulnerable to arbitrary political decisions taken on a whim—a sure recipe for a collapse in confidence and a powerful deterrent to investors from overseas".
It was a splendid speech, magnificently constructed, and I have no doubt that it was greeted with a great deal of admiration at the time. I still have a great deal of admiration for the way in which the Governor is conducting his very difficult task now.
Like other noble Lords, I have visited Hong Kong many times. It never ceases to amaze me. It is proof that when you allow free rein to people to exercise their talents under a rule of law, they can create a wondrous economy, even without natural resources and on just a small spit of land. In these unpromising conditions they have made tiny Hong Kong the world's tenth largest trading economy. Dean Inge remarked that
"the nations which have put mankind most in their debt have been the small states—Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England".
Hong Kong deserves a place in that pantheon. It is a superlative example of how British administration and Chinese talent can succeed in combination.
China's own economic performance in recent years has been almost as remarkable, and the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, gave us some fascinating statistics. Thanks to Mr. Deng Xiaoping's reforms, the market is being allowed to work and foreign investment is encouraged. As a result, the Chinese economy is growing at an unprecedentedly high rate and living standards are improving rapidly. Like others, I have spoken up strongly in support of those changes in China, which hold out great hope for the future. Indeed, I believe that, partly as a result of them, the economic centre of gravity in the world will steadily shift towards the Asia-Pacific region over the next 20 to 30 years.
What is happening in China is extremely encouraging for the people of Hong Kong. They see great opportunities, both now and after 1997. Indeed recognition of the opportunities is dwarfing their earlier fears about what 1997 would mean for them. They recognise that economically China has changed greatly since the signing of the Joint Declaration in 1984.
The decision to return Hong Kong to China's sovereignty was not an easy one, given the differences between their political systems and their way of life. We agonised over it, knowing that it was not the people of Britain who would suffer if it went wrong but the people of Hong Kong, who were our charge and our responsibility. But no other realistic course was open to us under the terms of the original lease, which covered 92 per cent. of Hong Kong's territory, excluding only Hong Kong Island itself, a small part of the Kowloon peninsula and Stonecutters Island.
What tipped the balance, what made it acceptable both to us and to the people of Hong Kong, was Mr. Deng's concept of "one country two systems". It was

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embodied in the Joint Declaration which Mr. Deng and I agreed in 1984. It promises that, and I quote from the declaration:
"the basic policies of the People's Republic of China regarding Hong Kong … will remain unchanged for 50 years".
This guarantees that Hong Kong will keep its way of life and its freedom for at least 50 years after 1997. I asked Mr. Deng at the time why he had chosen 50 years. He told me that this was the time it would take for China's standard of living to come close to Hong Kong's. In the light of the way China's economy has grown since 1984, that may well be achieved considerably ahead of Mr. Deng's original assessment.
Democracy has not historically been the first concern of Hong Kong's people. Their priority has been sound administration and a rule of law with an independent judiciary, under which they could concentrate on creating prosperity from their trade and industry. But more recently they have clearly wanted to play a greater role in their own affairs. It is true that historically in the world an enterprise economy has usually preceded a political democracy, but the latter usually follows from the establishment of the former. Progressively the people of Hong Kong have been able to play a greater role in their own affairs.
Some would say that the steps taken so far to extend democracy have not been sufficient. In fact, I believe that supply and demand have been kept in balance, taking account of Hong Kong's special position. Most important, to my mind, has been the agreement with China, which steadily increases the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong's Legislative Council up to and after 1997. This is a crucial point. Provision for the steady expansion of democracy in Hong Kong has already been agreed with China. Indeed, China's Basic Law for Hong Kong, which will in effect be the constitution after 1997, says in Article 68:
"The ultimate aim is the election of all members of the Legislative Council by universal suffrage".
It is already agreed that half the members of the Legislative Council will be directly elected in the year 2003. That means that there could be universal suffrage by 2007, 10 years after the end of Britain's responsibility. It is not perfect perhaps, but it is a provision for steady and orderly progress towards full democratic elections.
That is the background against which our new, imaginative and competent Governor had to reach decisions about the governance of Hong Kong in the remaining years of British rule. In particular, he had to settle the arrangements for the elections to be held in 1995, which would take Hong Kong through to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. The Governor has not invented the need to come forward with proposals. Legislation has to be in place to enable the 1995 elections to be held. The Governor had to take account, first, of the views of the people of Hong Kong. There was considerable demand in Hong Kong for more directly elected seats in 1995, going beyond the 20 already agreed with China.
The Government have said on several occasions that they would seek to persuade China to increase the
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number, and I understand that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary raised the subject when he met the Chinese Foreign Minister at the United Nations on 25th September this year. China made clear at that meeting that it was not prepared to move beyond the figure of 20 seats to which it had already agreed. At the same meeting on 25th September, nearly a fortnight before the Governor presented his proposals on 7th October, the Foreign Secretary told his opposite number the proposals which the Governor had in mind. Details were, of course, sent to the professional civil servant in Beijing who deals with the Hong Kong desk.
In the light of that it seems to me that the Governor has acted with great sensitivity and skill. He had to find a way to respond to the wishes of the people of Hong Kong for a broader franchise for 1995. But he also had to take account of China's strongly expressed opposition to more directly elected seats. In short, he had to strike a balance and put forward suggestions which would go some way to enlarge the franchise for 1995 but without infringing either the Joint Declaration or the Basic Law. He constantly stressed that in his speech on 7th October.
The proposals in his speech of 7th October succeed in striking that balance. They establish an Election Committee and set the franchise for nine additional functional constituencies. Those have to be created in 1995 to conform with the Basic Law after 1997.
The proposals also enlarge the franchise for the 21 existing functional constituencies. I should point out that only the working population are eligible to vote in those constituencies.
As the Government have already pointed out, the Governor has not proposed anything which conflicts with the Joint Declaration. In the Government's view and the Governor's view the proposals are within the Basic Law.
There is a second and no less important point. The Governor has said that his proposals are not intended as the last word but only as a basis for discussion, as the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, pointed out. Others are invited to comment on them and give their own ideas. That is clearly stated in his speech of 7th October. The Governor also said:
"the proposals I am putting forward this afternoon will require serious discussion with Peking".
It is a great disappointment that the Chinese Government have so far declined to do so.
I hope that alternative suggestions will nonetheless be forthcoming from different sources in Hong Kong itself which can be considered alongside those put forward by the Governor. The essence of democracy and indeed of good government is indeed choice.
China objects to the Governor's proposals and appears to see them as an attempt to internationalise the Hong Kong issue and—as I have seen it put in some reports—as part of a scheme to "encircle" China. To back up its objections China has launched a campaign to bring pressure on public opinion in Hong Kong and has called into question contracts which extend beyond 1997. That reaction is regrettable and I believe that it is unjustified.

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In fact, the Governor's proposals are characterised by their modesty and by their recognition of China's view that there should be no more directly elected seats in 1995. I hope, therefore, that China will not go forward with its threat to interfere with contracts; indeed, that would harm its own reputation and affect the confidence of foreign investors in China itself, quite apart from conflicting fundamentally with the rule of law. We should reassure the Chinese that the Governor's proposals are not in any sense hostile to China and there is no intention to internationalise the issues.
The best outcome would be to go forward in agreement with China, as we have been able to do in the past by being patient and persistent. People in Hong Kong want continuity and a smooth transition in 1997, and China's agreement is desirable for that. But in the last resort, as is recognised in the Joint Declaration, it is Britain which has the responsibility for governing Hong Kong up to 1997. We must discharge that responsibility in accordance with our agreements and also with our principles and the wishes of Hong Kong's people.
I believe that these matters can be resolved. We have an excellent and most able Chinese Ambassador here in London. We have the example of the good relations built up between us and China in the years following the Joint Declaration up to 1989. Above all, we can draw confidence from the remarkable economic changes that have taken place in China and the promise they hold for the future.
Moreover, Hong Kong's interests and those of China run increasingly closely together. Nowhere is this more so than in questions of trade. Both have a very strong interest in open trade and in preserving most favoured nation status for China in the United States. I have personally spoken up strongly for that in the Asian-Pacific region, in both Taiwan and South Korea, and I have also spoken up for it in the United States.
The question of human rights does indeed have to be pursued, and I know that my noble and learned friend Lord Howe has just returned from a mission to China. We pursue our concern for human rights vigorously in our relations with many countries. But I believe that it would be profoundly misguided for an incoming American administration to try to put pressure on China over human rights by restricting trade. That would hit hardest at precisely the wrong people: those who are building small businesses which are the heart of China's growing free enterprise. It would also hit hard at Hong Kong itself, many of whose people have come from China to live under a rule of law and a democratic system.
President Bush was absolutely right to resist the use of that blunt weapon and I hope that a similar view will be adopted by his successor. His task will be easier to the extent that China is not seen to be acting unreasonably over the very modest proposals which the Governor has made.
In conclusion, there is no reason why the Governor's proposals should harm relations with China. They are modest; they are compatible with the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law; and they are
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open to discussion. They go some way to meet the wishes of the people of Hong Kong and at the same time respect China's position.
The best and most helpful stance which we in this House can take is to support the Governor, to reiterate our sincere wish to proceed by agreement with China, but to make it clear that that cannot be at the expense of what we believe to be right.
4.40 p.m.
Baroness Dunn: My Lords, it has given me great personal pleasure to be here for the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn. I join the House in congratulating him on a speech of exceptional quality. I am sure there will be many occasions during the coming years when his deep knowledge and experience of China and Hong Kong will enrich our debate.
I have sometimes reminded this House that Hong Kong is a community that in so many ways is far better equipped than most to look after its own affairs. It is fiercely self-reliant; aid and charity it neither receives nor expects from anyone. In only 40 years it has transformed in a most astonishing way its economy and its society through hard work and enterprise. Yet history and politics deny us the control over our own destiny for which we are so amply qualified. Hong Kong is forced to rely on the governments of Britain and China to arrange its political destiny.
Hong Kong deeply appreciated the efforts that both governments put into the negotiations which led to the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. That agreement and the underlying concept of "one country, two systems" were rightly praised as being far sighted. It was a public pledge by the two governments that they would work together to ensure a prosperous and stable future for Hong Kong.
Why is it then that the transition period which began in 1985 has been so fraught with difficulty? We got off to a good start by securing Hong Kong's future status in GATT. But since then, more and more important discussions have become bogged down and there has been more and more bickering. Some topics were resolved disappointingly, such as the composition of the final court of appeal. Some topics have dragged on year after year: for instance, the residential status of non-Chinese nationals, defence lands and air service agreements. Even after the two Prime Ministers signed the memorandum of understanding on a replacement airport only a year ago, there is further disagreement over financing which threatens the viability of this important project.
Fortunately for us in Hong Kong, and for countries throughout the world—including Britain and China —which benefit directly from Hong Kong's economic success, Hong Kong has not allowed itself to be distracted by any of these setbacks. We have seized the opportunities presented to us by the opening up of China's economy. We have been the driving force behind the spectacular growth in southern China over the past 10 years. We shall continue to play a key role in the greater China economy in the years to come. We all know that our future lies with China.

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The Chinese Government very publicly and loudly blame the Governor's proposals for political evolution for the current impasse. The British Government blame China's groundless suspicions of British motives. As is always the case, neither party can be solely to blame.
The root cause of Hong Kong's problems seems to be a conviction on the part of China's senior leaders that Britain has some mischievous hidden agenda which it is seeking to carry out. They appear to believe that Britain wants to wreck Hong Kong as some form of revenge for yielding sovereignty to China in 1997, or that Britain plans to keep some control of Hong Kong after 1997 in order to threaten China.
I should like to take this opportunity to state with all the firmness at my command that these suspicions are absolutely without foundation. If I had ever thought that there was a grain of truth in these suspicions, I would have refused to serve the Hong Kong Government, and I believe that all my colleagues on the Executive Council would have done the same.
But looking back, Britain also bears responsibility. Only three years ago, there was a community-wide consensus in Hong Kong on the sort of political evolution we wanted to see. This consensus was formed before the Chinese Basic Law for Hong Kong was finalised. The members of the Executive and Legislative Councils were united in urging the British Government to pursue it with vigour. As a senior member I came to London to lobby for it.
However, the British Government refused us in the name of convergence and in the face of China's objections. The force of those objections was not, in my judgment, adequately tested. The recent publication of diplomatic exchanges has revealed how the fate of Hong Kong people was traded.
Is it any wonder that many people in Hong Kong are bewildered by the British Government's decision, so much later in the day, to pursue greater democracy in Hong Kong? And after a long history of deals cut behind closed doors, is it really surprising that the Chinese Government find the new openness of approach difficult to comprehend?
The people of Hong Kong are faced yet again with paying the price for a dispute which is not of their making. Once again, we endure the frustration of standing by helplessly while our affairs are discussed by others.
In the war of words, the debate is no longer about the merits of the proposals. People are forced to take sides: are you for Britain, or are you for China? People are forced to choose between short-term interests and long-term aspirations. There is growing anger in Hong Kong at being placed in this dilemma.
If we examine for a moment the apparent substance of the dispute, the picture becomes even more absurd, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, has already pointed out. The Governor had to come up with detailed proposals for changing the electoral law to constitute a legislature in 1995 which will straddle 1997. This he has done. He has put forward a package of imaginative proposals. He made it clear that these
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were proposals only, which would need to be seriously discussed. Most of his proposals are uncontroversial. Indeed, they were admired and welcomed. The arguments are about only two subjects: the make-up of the nine new functional constituencies and the composition of the electoral college which will return 10 out of 60 LEGCO members when the appointment system is phased out.
Instead of forming the basis for a dialogue and a constructive exchange of ideas, his proposals have triggered a barrage of hostile statements and propaganda. I do not doubt that China has the interests of Hong Kong people at heart, but it must surely be clear to the Chinese that their strident words in recent weeks have had the opposite effect.
Hong Kong has the right to expect better than this. In the Joint Declaration both Britain and China promised to co-operate during the transitional years to ensure a smooth transfer of sovereignty and the maintenance of our prosperity and stability. The people of Hong Kong welcomed and accepted the Joint Declaration because we trusted that commitment by the two Governments to see us safely through.
This row is not about who has the biggest political muscle. The lives, the hopes, the plans, the families of 6 million people are at stake, not those who participate in the present tug-of-war. Nor is it any longer about whether Hong Kong should have a little more democracy. It is now about how Hong Kong is to manage its relationship with China on the basis of "one country, two systems". Hong Kong people realise the importance of standing up for their rights if the vision of the Joint Declaration is to become a reality. They also realise the importance of good relations with their future sovereign.
Where is the balance? Are we to retreat in the face of China's objection and allow the "high degree of autonomy" promised to Hong Kong to be devalued? Are we to proceed with the Governor's proposals and risk the dismantling of our political systems after 1997? Shall we seek a compromise? Each of these choices carries immense implications for Hong Hong's future. They are choices which must be made by Hong Kong people themselves, without pressure from either Britain or China. Both Governments mean well. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, to whom I am indebted for this opportunity to speak, that we hope that the two Governments can iron out their difficulties over the negotiating table and not through loud hailers.
However, it is the Hong Kong people alone who have to live with the consequences. When the Hong Kong Government puts the electoral Bills to the members of the Legislative Council next year it will be for them to judge the wishes of Hong Kong people and where their best interests lie. The British and the Chinese Governments must be prepared to go as far as the community is prepared to go; no further, but no less far.
4.54 p.m.
Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke: My Lords, as a former president of the Sino-British Trade Council and also as previous chairman of the Hong Kong Telecommunications Company, it grieves me to say at the outset that I find the present deteriorating relations between the Governor of Hong Kong and China, and in consequence between this country and China, to be unnecessary and fraught with danger. I say "unnecessary" because the agreement that had been painstakingly and exhaustively worked out between this country and the People's Republic of China implementing the transfer of sovereignty was a skilful balance between the different economic, political and social cultures of China and Hong Kong. Much credit was due to Deng Xiaoping for the establishment of the "one country, two systems" concept and to my noble friend Lady Thatcher and my noble and learned friend Lord Howe and his successor Mr. Hurd for their accomplishment of the Basic Law and attendant provisions on human rights, an independent judiciary and progressive opening of the democratic process.
In the context of the agreement it is baffling to me, therefore, what real, long-term, enduring benefits will accrue from the Governor's present initiative in proposing further changes in the democratic process beyond those which had been enshrined in the Basic Law. Both sides have the same declared objective of economic growth and political stability for Hong Kong, so why has the present controversy arisen?
It arises in my view from a misreading of the fundamental transitional requirements of a system moving from the present benevolent autocracy, which this country has been content to operate in Hong Kong for more than 100 years, to a democratic structure in a society suddenly confronted with this opportunity.
We all applaud and endorse the moves agreed to in the Joint Declaration for more open and democratic procedures in the governance of Hong Kong. But the development of a full flowering democracy takes decades to achieve; it requires the development of democrats as well as democratic structures. So was there in Hong Kong an impelling urgency and need for the Governor to accelerate the democratic process beyond what Beijing had accepted in the Basic Law? I suspect that evidence may well be forthcoming in the coming weeks and months indicating that the Governor is not on as firm a ground as he may think in considering that his proposals are reflecting public opinion.
The silent majority in Hong Kong operates there as it does in this country. In Hong Kong the vast majority is concerned above all in having a job, a good standard of living and making money. It applauds the initiative of Her Majesty's Government in seeking a treaty with China to effect a smooth transition of power which preserves the economic imperatives of Hong Kong. It applauds the first real steps towards a more democratic process, but it will not understand or accept a confrontation with its new masters which will imperil what has been achieved through consultation and agreement.
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I agree with my noble friend Lord Geddes that the Governor is an intelligent and sincere man with a respected reputation in this country and a developing one in Hong Kong. I have no doubt that his motives are well intentioned, but on this issue I regret that he is mistaken.
It is important to understand what the Governor proposed and why China reacted so strongly. The crux of the controversy centres on the number of directly-elected seats and the composition of the Electoral Committee. Recent publication of letters exchanged between China's Foreign Secretary, Mr. Qian Qichen, and Mr. Hurd in 1990 throw light on how misunderstandings have arisen and how accusations of bad faith and reneging of agreements are arising. In his letter of 18th January 1990 Mr. Hurd states:
"If however the Chinese side were prepared to increase the figure (of directly elected seats) for 1997 to 24 seats, i.e. 40% of the Legislative Council, I believe there is a good chance that the provisions for political development in the Basic Law would receive support within Hong Kong. We would then be enabled to give active support to those provisions".
After a further exchange of letters the Chinese agreed to raise their original proposal for 18 seats to 20 seats in 1997 and both sides agreed to an extension of the democratic process by steps so that 24 seats would be elected in 1999 and 30—that is, 50 per cent. —by 2003.
Notwithstanding that understanding, the Governor, without prior consultation, announced his proposal for additional directly elected seats, in an accelerated time frame. I cannot myself reconcile this unilateral acceleration in the democratic process with the letter and spirit of the understanding reached between Mr. Qian Qichen and Mr. Hurd, as revealed in their correspondence. Equally, the Governor's proposal to have all members of the Electoral Committee directly elected is considered by the Chinese to flout the arrangements agreed in principle by Mr. Hurd that the Electoral Committee should be constituted in accordance with Annex 1 of the Basic Law. This interpretation might be contested by the Governor as Appendix 1 of the Basic Law may be less than precise on this matter. But again, I think the spirit of the correspondence between the two Foreign Secretaries requires further explanation of why the Governor proposes fundamental change in the composition of the Electoral Committee.
The Governor promulgated his proposals in his policy address in October. He then asked for counter proposals by the Chinese. Such a procedure may be acceptable in a British democracy following centuries of traditional parliamentary procedure but frankly it makes no sense in China and Hong Kong. The Basic Law was drafted after months of debate, hard work and skilful and vigorous negotiations between representatives of Hong Kong opinion and officials on both sides with final approval by the Governments of China and the United Kingdom. It is a matter for genuine concern as to why proposed changes in fundamental constitutional matters should be conducted through the media rather than through the usual diplomatic and consultative channels.

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I understand that the Governor was several times invited by Mr. Lu Ping, the head of Hong Kong and Macau Office, to go to Beijing before his policy speech to discuss his thoughts on constitutional reform but the Governor is alleged to have declined until after he had announced his constitutional package. As late as 3rd October, Mr. Lu Ping warned the Governor through our ambassador in Beijing that his proposals which had been communicated to the Chinese on 26th September made major changes which were against the spirit as well as the letter of the Basic Law and he urged that their common interests would be strengthened if there was co-operation and prior consultation rather than open debate. That advice was not heeded and the Governor went ahead with his policy address on 7th October. I consider that lack of prior consultation to be most unfortunate, arising from a misunderstanding of the Chinese sensitivity on adherence to agreements and to the step by step democratisation of the political process.
The consequences of that deterioration of relations with China could be grave. We are unnecessarily imperilling the Basic Law itself, which enshrines agreements on human rights, the rule of law, and judicial and political independence of Hong Kong. Confidence—that delicate flower—is being seriously eroded with severe economic and financial consequences. Inevitably, the sizeable trade between China and the UK will also be adversely affected and political relations which hitherto were extremely good between our two countries will be damaged. Loss of commercial and industrial confidence is one thing. The greater danger, as the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, pointed out, is the division of the people in Hong Kong. If the confrontation escalates further, there may be social turmoil. When we weigh the risks of these consequences against the changes proposed by the Governor, where lies the balance of advantage for the inhabitants of Hong Kong?
I yield to no-one in my affection and my concern for Hong Kong. It is a unique place and its potential as an engine of growth for China itself is immense. It is also a region which has attracted massive foreign investment of some 30 billion US dollars. What we do in Hong Kong is not just a UK matter but engages a far wider responsibility than normally involved in a British administration of a foreign territory.
I have been frank in my reaction to the proposed changes in the democratic structure before 1997. That does not mean that I am less enthusiastic about a more open and representative society than those of your Lordships who sincerely believe that we should accelerate the democratic process before we hand over power in 1997. But my priorities are radically different. What I regard as essential for the well-being of the 6 million Hong Kongers after 1997 are a free enterprise society, the preservation of the rule of law and an independent judiciary, combined with a passion for the establishment and safeguarding of human rights. These are the priorities which, together with the step by step democratisation of the political structure in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law,
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will preserve the economic and political stability which the 6 million inhabitants of Hong Kong seek above all else.
That is not, as certain politicians in Hong Kong depict, a clash between ideologies—between fear of a dictatorial Marxist system and an emerging democracy. The return of Hong Kong is regarded by China as a long-lost child rejoining the family. It is a matter of national pride for China and we should understand that. It is not a matter of economics, and gambling on the importance of the economic benefits of Hong Kong to China would be very unwise.
The Basic Law provides for independence of the executive, legislative and judicial power as well as a catalogue of human rights preserving the essential freedoms of speech and the right to strike and freedom from arbitrary arrest or imprisonment. Why imperil all that and the free-enterprise system agreed for the next 50 years? I urge the Governor to think over his proposals. It is not by the quality of his intentions that the Governor will be judged, but by the consequences of his actions.
If public opinion both in LEGCO and the business and commercial community begin to reflect growing unease with his proposals and the Chinese reaction to them, then the Governor should recognise the realities of the situation and revert to the agreements which the Government of China and the UK have established in the Basic Law. When confidence and mutual respect have been restored, the normal diplomatic and consultative channels should be used for dialogue with Beijing on the infrastructure projects Hong Kong requires after 1997 and on whether any further modifications to the democratic process is possible or desirable.
If the Governor has the political wisdom and judgment to avoid a major confrontation with Beijing by recognising how the interests of all the citizens of Hong Kong are best served he will leave Hong Kong honoured and respected. The heat needs to be taken out of the present situation, and the sooner the better.
5.10 p.m.
Lord MacLehose of Beoch: My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Wilson of Tillyorn on his maiden speech. It was a remarkable speech. It is a great pleasure to have him in the House and to know that he will be addressing us often. I thank also the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, for initiating the Motion. It is most timely. The large number of speakers and the high quality of speeches we have heard show how this House approaches its responsibility towards Hong Kong.
The noble Lord, Lord Geddes, gave an authoritative account of the economic growth in China. It is against that background of economic success, which is breathtaking, that we must review recent developments in Sino-British relations over Hong Kong. On the economic side they have been spectacularly successful, to the great benefit of Hong Kong and other parts of China. The interchange of contact and commerce between the authorities and entrepreneurs of China and their Hong Kong counterparts is entirely satisfactory.

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That is on the economic side. But on the political side matters have gone sadly wrong, as many noble Lords pointed out. They started well after 1984 but were knocked off course by the brutal tragedy of Tiananmen Square and the reaction of some people in Hong Kong to it. Since then on the Chinese side there has been deep mistrust and suspicion of British political, and even, as my noble friend Lady Dunn said, financial, intentions before our departure. That has been matched on the Hong Kong side with fear and frustration. Virtually no progress has been made, at least since the Prime Minister's visit, on the many points that must be agreed if the transition in 1997 is to go smoothly.
One of those points concerns the form that elections to the Legislative Council will take in 1995. As noble Lords pointed out, this is extremely important. If it conforms with the Basic Law that will apply from 1997, and conforms to China's satisfaction, the members could form the first Legislative Council of the SAR and thus provide the legislative continuity which is envisaged in the Basic Law and which all of us hope will occur. But that will involve substantial changes to current electoral arrangements.
That was the problem with which the new Governor was faced. In his first annual speech to the Legislative Council he announced his own proposals for such new arrangements. He emphasised that they were only proposals and invited alternatives. It is those proposals to which the Chinese have reacted so violently, approaching crisis proportions, and which are the reason this debate is so timely. The reaction has taken the form of criticism of the Governor personally on a scale of invective that I cannot remember since the Cultural Revolution, and progress appears to be blocked.
The package of proposals has been presented as the speeding up of democracy in Hong Kong. But in reality it relates only to specific issues in the 1995 elections, and the proposals fall far short of democracy as we know it. Their implications have been much exaggerated, but involve a substantial increase in the influence on membership of the Legislative Council of an enlarged electorate—an enlarged electorate not expected by China. The important and necessary changes in the electoral system were foreseen and were covered in an exchange of notes in 1990 between the Foreign Secretaries. They have also been referred to by other speakers this afternoon.
The basis of the present crisis is China's contention that the Patten proposals breach the provisions agreed in those notes both as to content and as to lack of adequate consultation before they were made. I should like to go through those points as, as it were, the Devil's Advocate in the hope that when the noble Baroness replies she can set my worries at rest.
First, the Chinese say that the proposals vitally affect the degree of convergence between current arrangements and those that would apply in 1997; as they include large constitutional changes, they should have been agreed in advance. As I understand it, they were informed a fortnight before and raised strong
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objections, but nevertheless we went ahead in circumstances of maximum publicity, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharp, said. Was that really necessary?
Secondly, the Chinese claim that proposals to change the present electorate for functional constituencies from around 450,000 to 2.7 million amounts to direct elections for the nine new and 21 old seats involved. They say that that circumvents the undertaking given in 1990 that we would not increase directly elected seats beyond 20 in 1995 without Chinese agreement—an increase that we would have liked. Such a numerically large functional electorate would be quite different to the present arrangements which the Chinese and, I believe, we ourselves had in mind in 1990. That apart, the Chinese would appear to have a point that the spirit, if not the letter, of the 1990 agreement has been breached.
Finally, the Chinese complain that the proposals for an Election Committee to elect 10 members of the council are quite different to the composition set out in paragraph 2, Annex I of the Basic Law. In 1990 we agreed in principle that that could be established in 1995 along the lines of that passage of the Basic Law but subject to discussion of details. However, there has been no discussion of details and the proposal is quite different to that in the Basic Law.
I am concerned that there should be elements in those proposals that appear to be in breach, at any rate of the spirit, of the 1990 agreement. There appears to be a case to answer. I hope therefore that in reply the noble Baroness will set my mind, and I believe the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Sharp, at rest on those points.
I do not want to appear one-sided. The decision to go ahead may well have been influenced by frustration at the ineffectiveness of Sino-British negotiations in producing results on virtually anything since the Prime Minister's visit. Moreover, the Chinese pressure that has developed on Hong Kong and on the Governor personally is quite unacceptable. The threat to the validity of contracts straddling 1997 is not only wrong; it is a complete breach of the Joint Declaration.
That said, the fact we must face is that some proposals for the 1995 elections must be made and that the ones now made appear to be unacceptable to the Chinese Government even as a basis for discussion. Consequently, if passed into law in Hong Kong they would operate only between 1995 and 1997, when they would be dismantled. One may well ask what the benefit to Hong Kong people could possibly be of that limited increase in the electoral system for such a short time and at the price of a block in Sino-British relations, possibly right up to 1997, with all the uncertainty and destruction of confidence and sense of security that that would involve. Clearly some way forward must be found.
In introducing his proposals Mr. Patten used words which perfectly embody the facts of government in Hong Kong as we have come to know them over the years:
"I bring those opinions to the task of governing Hong Kong, where the ink of international agreements and the implacable realities of history, geography and economics shape and determine the way in which such views can be

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applied. That is a fact well understood by men and women in this Territory, better understood by them perhaps than by many of those who would like the people of Hong Kong to be the heroic pawns of their own doubtless well meaning preconceptions".
It was so very well said. The power, reasonable expectation and rights of the Chinese Government can be disregarded only at the peril of Hong Kong. It is by the careful observance of these facts of life over the years that Hong Kong has been able to prosper in amity with China in such improbable circumstances. To make progress now these facts of life must be borne in mind.
As regards the proposals already made, they were made, as the noble Baroness said, to the Legislative Council. I suppose that in some form or another they will eventually come back to that council as draft legislation. The members will bear a heavy responsibility, but they are very able people and we will see what they can do. I agree that they should be left to do it without pressure from either China or Britain. I do not know whether progress can be made at this stage through that channel. But I hope that in any case the British Government will continue to emphasise, as the Governor has done and as the Minister did this afternoon, that these are just proposals and that some proposals must be made. If necessary, they should be alternative to those now on the table.
As the Minister said, there is need for a new dialogue. I do so agree. It is not impossible to produce new arrangements which meet the Chinese requirements of convergence with the Basic Law and the 1990 notes and still contain an increase in electoral processes. If so, this time I hope that they will be discussed in detail with the Chinese before publication. As the noble Baroness said, we must go forward with China.
Chris Patten has had two months of trauma. Well, trauma goes with that particular job. By all accounts he has stood up to it as to the manner born. Perhaps I may say how much I admire the speed with which he has obtained the support and affection of the Hong Kong people. He is surely the most consummate communicator that there has ever been in Government House. He has great popularity and influence. He may have been mis-directed over these proposals, but I am sure that he has the political experience, flexibility and charisma to lead Hong Kong back into a working political relationship with China. That is vital for Hong Kong and in that I wish him all success.
5.24 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Geddes on initiating this timely debate and for his very well informed speech. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Chalker on her admirable reply and my noble friend Lady Thatcher. I congratulate too the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, whom we are so happy to see here. I thank them for their contributions.
I cannot claim to be a great authority on the People's Republic or on Hong Kong, although I have
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been to Hong Kong three times. I was well instructed by the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose. I then led two comprehensive delegations to the People's Republic. I was in fact in China (Shanghai to be precise) when the Joint Declaration was initialled in 1984. I was certainly struck by the fact that there seemed then to be general agreement on its terms as between Britain, the People's Republic and leading figures in Hong Kong. I therefore thought that the proposals would work. I also thought that the Governor's speech to the Legislative Council on 7th October was a very precise, detailed and interesting statement on what we should do during our next five years in Hong Kong. In my view the Governor's speech was a skilful piece of work in so far as the constitutional package was concerned, the immediate initiatives, the proposals for the 1995 election and the need for an elected election committee.
I regret much of what has been said in the media. I greatly regretted to read in The Sunday Times in mid-November that what it described as our "old guard" was closing ranks in face of the new Hong Kong. I was distressed to read that Sir David Akers-Jones, a former Chief-Secretary, Sir Gordon Macwhinnie and even the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, were among that old guard. I do not consider him to be so old. He certainly made a very effective speech this afternoon.
Since then I was also somewhat disturbed to read the letter to The Times by Sir Percy Cradock, our former Ambassador in Peking, on the hard choice in regard to Hong Kong's future. It was also interesting to read the many letters in today's Times, particularly the one from Mr. Robert Fell, the Chief-Executive of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, supporting Sir Percy's views. I am sorry that I have read depressing pieces on the subject. I was also sorry to read, on the same day as Sir Percy's letter, about the contracts' pressure which China was putting on Hong Kong and in the Economist, also on 5th December, of Governor Patten's so-called "Chinese torture" and the controversial elements in the Governor's plans; that is to say, that China feels that its sovereignty is at stake in the battle with the Governor. In particular I refer to the proposal that the Election Committee, which would choose 10 out of the 60 seats in the Legislative Council in 1995, should itself be elected.
I was again disturbed to read about my right honourable friend the Governor's dilemma over widening democracy in Hong Kong. When he spoke to some of us recently in a room upstairs I did not think that he was making a calculated gamble and that the outcome seems so uncertain. Certainly, Hong Kong's confidence, as reflected in The Times last Saturday, that the gamble seems uncertain and that the so-called
"ruthless old men in Peking",
appear determined to thwart and even humiliate him I think went too far as, indeed, did the headline in the Daily Mail on the same day that "Patten must go" in view of the growing uneasiness of Hong Kong's businessmen in regard to the Governor's battle with Peking over democratic reform.

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I certainly regret that plans within the framework of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law should so recently have been criticised when, at the time of the initialling of the Declaration in 1984, when I was in China, there seemed to be general acceptance on both sides that these plans were feasible. However, I am glad that there has been some recovery since the 300-point plunge in Hong Kong shares at the beginning of this month, even if the market still seems volatile.
I only hope that the so-called "old China hands", whom I greatly respect, will have their fears assuaged for I agree that my right honourable friend Mr. Patten deserves support from those whose policies may have been seen by some to have failed to provide sufficient democratic safeguards. I was, incidentally, interested to read that the Governor's reforms had won former President Nixon's backing. He certainly had considerable experience in the Far East. I was glad also to read that my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon, who negotiated the Sino-British Joint Declaration while Foreign Secretary—I am sorry that he is not with us this afternoon—said that he believed that the Chinese would eventually change their minds about the Governor's proposals for widening democracy. I was glad to read that at least.
I learn that the Chinese Government had already been given advance briefing on the Governor's proposals in September when the Foreign Secretary briefed the Chinese Foreign Secretary in New York. I was distressed that a Chinese spokesman said as recently as 3rd December that the Governor must abandon his plans for reform. I really do regret that.
I agree with those who think that this was disingenuous since the constitutional package does not, in my view, break either the Joint Declaration or the Basic Law, and I regret that Li Jianying went on to say that the Governor's proposals had forced China to reconsider whether the political system in Hong Kong should converge with the Basic Law, and whether a smooth transition is needed.
Finally, my right honourable friend Chris Patten is a first-rate professional politician. However, in my view, great diplomatic skill and tact is needed if we are to agree about Hong Kong's future with the Chinese Government and with those in Hong Kong who have been critical of the Governor's views. Whether we like it or not, I know that the Chinese do not like to be dictated to. I shall be seeing the Chinese Ambassador next week and shall be interested to hear his views. Above all, the last thing any of us would like to see is another massacre such as happened in Tiananmen Square. I can only offer my right honourable friend the Governor my good wishes in getting his proposals accepted.
5.35 p.m.
Lord Willoughby de Broke: My Lords, this is no platitude but I very much regret that I may be unable to remain for the duration of this debate because it is unlimited in time and I have a long-standing engagement which I must attend. For this, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Geddes, to all noble Lords who will speak in the debate, and to the House.
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This debate, initiated by my noble friend Lord Geddes, is timely. Since the debate has been on the Order Paper, relations between Hong Kong and China have deteriorated significantly, as we have heard. I hope that that is only a coincidence. We can read almost daily of China's displeasure. It does not like the fact that Hong Kong is ready to press on with the airport project. It does not like Mr. Patten's proposals for electoral reform and, above all, it does not like what it sees as the change in emphasis in negotiating style.
China has made it clear enough that it is angry. Increasingly intemperate statements have been issued by the Chinese Government and its agency in Hong Kong. As successive opinion polls since September have shown that Hong Kongers approve of the Governor's proposals, so has Beijing's aggression intensified.
China has turned the heat up—and Hong Kong is frying. The stock market has hit the skids in the face of threats to tear up the Joint Declaration, threats to tear up contracts signed prior to 1997, and threats to expel from the Legislative Council those members who vote for Mr. Patten's reforms. In the face of these loud "noises off", it is hardly surprising that some people are beginning to wobble. China's actions have given an opportunity to all those, be they businessmen or politicians, who have reservations about the merits of standing up for the guarantees contained in the Joint Declaration, if in so doing they provoke China into actions which they would see as harming Hong Kong. Their understandable concern is for stability and for keeping the "through train" on its track through to 1997 and beyond.
This position was cogently put by Sir Percy Cradock in a letter to The Times last week. Dealing with the Chinese response to the Governor's suggested reforms, he wrote:
"The logic and fairness of the Chinese response is neither here nor there—what matters is whether they will carry out their threats".
He went on to say that he believes that China will carry out its threats and, in the future interests of Hong Kong, he urged Mr. Patten to "modify" his proposals. This is a seductive argument, and one that has been backed by some of those who have great experience of China and Hong Kong. It is likely that this "modification" would buy a respite from the threats now being made to anybody who does not toe the Chinese line in Hong Kong.
I must admit that I find it rather bizarre that it is always Britain and Hong Kong which are expected to modify, as it is Britain and Hong Kong which are expected to converge. Some small modification from Beijing would be welcome. Its reactions to Mr. Patten's proposals—and, as we have heard, they remain only proposals—have been extraordinarily unconstructive and out of all proportion to their content. Incidentally, I wonder whether Beijing would be more receptive to an argument that was advanced in yesterday's edition of the Daily Telegraph by Lady Tanlaw who suggested that Mr. Patten should float the idea of an hereditary chamber in Hong Kong for —I think she said—the descendants of the heroes of the Long March and others who may not wish to go

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through the boring electoral process. Be that as it may, I believe that the argument put forward for modification contains three fundamental flaws.
First, it contains an implicit assumption that there is reasonable basis for Beijing's hysterical reaction to Mr. Patten's proposals: that they contain some radical and provocative changes. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we have heard. These proposals are modest in the extreme. They contain no suggestion of altering the number of directly elected seats in the Legislative Council or of altering the number or proportion of seats specified in the Basic Law, a document which was both drafted and ratified by Beijing. All they contain are suggestions to widen the franchise of those seats which are not directly elected. As my noble friend Lady Thatcher pointed out, the Basic Law does not cover this aspect. Mr. Patten has rightly put forward proposals which are open, fair and acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. In spite of noisy claims to the contrary, Mr. Patten's reforms do not contravene the Basic Law; nor of course do they run counter to the terms of the Joint Declaration, which, I would remind your Lordships, guaranteed Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and indeed a greater measure of representative government than that contained in the Basic Law.
If there are violations of the Basic Law, it is China which is in danger of committing them at the moment. Its most recent threat, which I mentioned earlier, to tear up contracts, leases and agreements which straddle 1997, and which do not have China's approval, is contrary to Article 160 of the Basic Law which states,
"that documents, certificates, contracts and rights and obligations valid under the laws previously valid in Hong Kong shall continue to be valid and recognised and protected by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, provided they do not contravene this law".
Secondly, the modification argument takes no account of the expressed wishes of the Hong Kong people. The Governor's proposals for these modest electoral reforms have been welcomed there: as evidence, the majority vote in LEGCO last month in their favour, when 17 out of 18 of the directly elected members voted for them, and in the consistently favourable results of opinion polls taken since the reforms were first announced. Recently, Beijing's strident attacks have naturally eroded confidence. I question whether they have altered aspirations. Equally, like my noble friend Lord Geddes, I do not believe that too much should be read into the sharp falls in the Hang Seng Index. Hong Kong is an extremely resilient place. Where was the Hang Seng in 1967, when, I believe, a mob surrounded Government House keen to see the insides of the then Governor? Where was it in 1983 and of course in 1989? Hong Kong has had to learn to adapt to instability, and will I am sure show its usual resourcefulness in the face of the present difficulties.
The third and most fundamental flaw in the modification argument is that it ignores the lessons of history. The thrust of this argument, to simplify it, seems to be that if Beijing objects to a proposal, it should be abandoned. This is a policy of appeasement
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—an ugly word, but I can think of no other. Appeasement has never worked in the past and it will not work now. Once begun it leads to more demands, each more difficult to resist once the slide has begun. Is this the best way to deal with our commitment to Hong Kong? I think not. The Governor has put forward proposals for fair, open and accountable government in Hong Kong which have been broadly welcomed. This is the time to support him, not to undermine him; and in this context I should like to suggest that some of the entrepreneurs who have done so well out of Hong Kong and who may feel that their success is due in some small measure to the freedom obtaining there as well as to their own abilities, should use their influence and contacts to persuade China that dialogue remains the most positive way forward both for Hong Kong and for China.
In the long term, the free markets and free trade on which Hong Kong's prosperity is built will depend on accountable government and on the rule of law which alone will protect Hong Kong from the corruption that is so endemic in China.
My noble friend Lord Geddes is surely right in calling for more light and less heat in the Hong Kong-China relationship, and I was glad to see that our Ambassador to Beijing, Sir Robin McLaren, was reported in The Times on Monday as calling for,
"the Chinese to start to talk instead of addressing us by megaphone".
The noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, is credited with the aphorism that "a week is a long time in politics". There remain over four and a half years before Hong Kong reverts to China. I am sure we can all be encouraged to hear from the Government that they will continue to take the long view and to remember that the promise central to the Joint Declaration remains "one country, two systems", and not "one country, one system". Democracy and freedom are values, not commodities to be bartered away to buy a temporary peace.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Shawcross: My Lords, old as I am, I cannot claim to be an old China hand, but my excuse for this rare intrusion into your Lordships' deliberations is that for the past 40 years or so I have been a regular visitor to Hong Kong, having various interests, particularly in the public relations industry, the press, television and so on, and I have travelled very extensively in China and Tibet. I like to think that I was once regarded as an old friend of both those areas.
First, I should like to say a word about China itself, not in the direct context of the relations with Hong Kong, although closely relevant to them. There is no prospect of China going the way of the Soviet Union; but eventually democracy will come there and it may come much more quickly than some of us suspect. In the meantime, not only in Shanghai, which has been making spectacular leaps forward in the past few years, but everywhere, private enterprise is springing up. There is increasing private investment, with tax holidays for foreigners. In Guangdong, that vast province to the north of China with 65 million inhabitants, the progress in the past 10 years has been

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faster than in any similar state or quasi-state in the whole world; and it is going on. That is typical of what is happening in China. This permeation of private enterprise and investment throughout China will quite soon have its effect in resulting in a more democratic system.
I want to speak about Hong Kong. I returned 10 days ago from a fortnight there. I was very impressed by the strength of opinion in the professional, business and industrial community; and this before the slump in the stock exchange. The general opinion in those communities was clearly against the Governor's proposals. Unfortunately, the Governor had no time to see me but I did see a large number of people; and I saw also the chief Chinese representative, who is virtually the ambassador for China in Hong Kong. I had a long and quite exciting discussion with him.
I formed two clear conclusions: first, that the Governor was, if I may say so respectfully, right in casting off the white uniform and the plumed hat and casting himself more as a British provincial MP seeking to know and be recognised by his constituents and regarded as their friend. That has been a most useful move on his part. Where, on the other hand, I am equally convinced he is wrong is that in doing this he has adopted the hustings mode of British politics, suitable perhaps for the British politician in Bath—not always successfully—but quite unfamiliar to Beijing.
I am sure, again respectfully, that the Governor is sincere, as has been said, but I believe him to be sincerely wrong which is the most dangerous form of wrongness. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of diplomatic relationships and etiquette would have known how jealous the Chinese are of their sovereign status, their independence and of sticking to principles once they have been agreed. Sarcasm and innuendo, the small change of British politics, are unacceptable to Chinese culture and etiquette.
I have read the Joint Declaration of 1984 and the Basic Law of 1990 together—some noble Lords may not have had the opportunity of this—with what the lawyers call travaux preparatoires, which are very important in interpreting the two basic documents. Taken as a whole, they constituted a veritable triumph of statesmanship, diplomacy and common sense, ensuring that for the next 50 years Hong Kong should not merely retain all its own rights and freedoms, with no socialism and no communism, but that its laws would remain basically unchanged and that democracy would be introduced by stated steps, in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress which is—if I may use the word used by the noble Lord—enshrined in the Basic Law, with the ultimate object, in a comparatively short time, of ensuring that all elections to the Legislative Council are by universal suffrage. It is a result which might possibly have been achieved in as little as 10 years if things had gone smoothly.
Over and over again one finds in those documents emphasis placed on gradual progress and the maintenance of stability. All that seems to have been abandoned by the Governor's method of approaching the matter and his use of the megaphone. Although
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that long address he made early in October to the LEGCO had room for minute details, even about the location of water fountains, there was nothing about co-operation and agreement with China, no mention of the liaison group which had been set up for the express purpose of discussing and resolving differences of opinion, if they arose, about matters of that kind. On the contrary, he appeared to be boasting that he had not consulted China at all.
Although I believe that is the gravamen of the criticism of the Governor, it is not merely the manner of his presentation which is so unfortunate; the substance also violates the principles and, indeed, the letter of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. Here I agree with the careful analysis which was made by the noble Lords, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke and Lord MacLehose. I shall not take time by repeating that analysis, but the Governor's proposals alter completely the number and basis of the electoral structure and, in particular, of the functional constituencies which have played such an important part in enabling expertise and knowledge to take part in the government of Hong Kong.
Similarly, there existed—this related to a small number, 10 I think—a special system by which 10 members were elected by a kind of elite Electoral Committee. Its objective was to ensure that senior people, with responsibility and experience in public life who would not have been willing to face the hurly burly of an ordinary election, could be elected. For that purpose they had a Select Committee to elect people experienced in their own right. That has all been altered, and that is a pity. It was a desirable objective, and it was an objective which we achieve in this country by elevating such people to your Lordships' House. In future those 10 members will he elected by the members of the local district boards, who are themselves elected. They will be able to nominate anyone, however inexperienced. What has happened is almost a complete switch over to direct suffrage for the whole of the Legislative Council.
The Joint Declaration contains no word about increasing democracy. The emphasis was on maintaining existing rights, and the laws were to be basically unchanged. Language does not lose its meaning when it is reproduced from a solemn international agreement in a British White Paper. That is what the agreement says. There can be no doubt that those proposals, if carried out, are inconsistent with the general understanding which had been built up: that they undermine the Joint Declaration; and contravene the Basic Law. It is only—this is a very important point—if they do not contravene the Basic Law that the constitution and composition of the LEGCO can be continued after 1997. That element of continuity in the LEGCO is a matter of the utmost importance.
Another point that worries me a little is the apparent attempt to internationalise the dispute. Why make those frequent propaganda peregrinations abroad? Previous famous Governors never did so. Are we willing to contemplate the possibility of another Cold War arising—this time between the Western democracies and Asia? I am convinced that those changes in what is contemplated are not so

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far-reaching and fundamental that they could not have been the subject of friendly discussion and some consensus with the Chinese, if only the Governor had raised them first in the Joint Liaison Committee which, by the Joint Declaration, he is required to do. It was set up expressly for that purpose. If agreement could not be reached in the Joint Liaison Committee, the matter had to be referred to joint consultations between the two governments. They are consultations which would no doubt have taken place without all the glare of publicity which has unfortunately occurred. Cannot we get back to quiet but serious negotiation? Governor Patten thinks that Chinese statements that they will reverse his proposals if Hong Kong enacts them are empty threats. That is the phrase he used. That was not the view of the Foreign Secretary when fewer than two years ago he said:
"Those who suggest that whatever we do now the Chinese will be bound to accept in 1997 are out of touch with reality".
It was also our Foreign Secretary who said on the same occasion that he attached:
"great importance to achieving an understanding between our two Governments and to re-establishing the atmosphere of mutual trust in which our two Governments have worked together. I realise that the Chinese Government has approached this matter in the same spirit".
I am convinced that there is still time to drop the megaphone and the slanging. Quiet meetings, possibly between the two Prime Ministers, could resolve those matters, which would save face, and the saving of face is not important to one side only, face has to be saved on both sides, even if it involves some recognition that the better is sometimes the enemy of the good. So we might avoid the ruin which now threatens our relationship and the future of Hong Kong itself. The Chinese could easily switch their policy to support Singapore, to support Thailand and trade there and, as I said at the beginning of my observations, to support their own remarkable development in Shanghai.
I am a firm believer in the democratic system, no one could be more so. But one must admit that so far in the Asiatic countries it has not always been a conspicuous success. After all, although we were responsible for Hong Kong which has been under our sole rule ever since 1844, it was only when we had agreed to hand it over to China that we became interested in democracy. Only 22 per cent. of the electorate took the trouble to vote in the 1991 election —a rather feeble demonstration of the enthusiasm for democracy which is said suddenly to exist.
I beg those who have so belatedly thought of democracy for Hong Kong to remember that democracy cannot be built in a day. It took the United Kingdom four centuries to build up democracy and there are even some—although I do not agree with them - who think that in this House the process has not yet been completed! We cannot do it in a day.
That is all I wish to say except to end on a purely personal note. I deeply regret having to take this line because the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, has, as a senior member of EXCO, taken a different view. She is a very old personal friend of mine who has rendered incalculable service to the politics and commerce of
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Hong Kong and I greatly respect her view. Of course, she knows far more about the colony than I can pretend to, but from what she said I think that she agrees with me that the best thing we can do about the affair now is to play it down. Let us play it down as much as we can and return to the more placid but perhaps more promising waters of diplomatic consultation.
I regret also having to differ from my noble friend Lady Thatcher who, as Prime Minister at the time, was responsible for the successful and statesmanlike arrangements to hand Hong Kong back to the Chinese. Other noble Lords and I have already referred to those arrangements. Of course, I greatly admired the smack of firm government which she gave us on a number of other matters.
6.4 p.m.
Lord Reay: My Lords, this is an exceedingly timely debate and I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Geddes on having introduced it now and on the excellent speech with which he did so. He has been able to attract a most interesting and formidable array of speakers. The maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, was particularly impressive.
Not least of the advantages of the debate is the opportunity it gives us to hear some Hong Kong opinion. I am delighted, therefore, that the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, was able to be here with us. Rarely can Hong Kong opinion have felt that so many people wanted to hear it as today.
Indeed, Hong Kong's politicians must find themselves under considerable pressure as their demands for more democracy, as interpreted and put into concrete form by the Governor, provoked such a furious reaction in Peking. I hope that Mr. Patten will not make any precipitate retreat on the proposals which he has put forward. They are not in breach, I believe, of the 1984 Joint Declaration, under the terms of which Britain remains fully sovereign over Hong Kong until 1997, as my noble friend Lady Thatcher pointed out in her powerful speech of support for the Governor. So I find him quite entitled to put forward the proposals which he has.
Since Mr. Patten had to put forward proposals for the 1995 elections and how they were to be conducted —as my noble friend Lady Chalker explained, detailed electoral arrangements were not laid down by the Basic Law—I personally consider that the courageous choice which he made to introduce a greater measure of democracy by remaining within the terms of the 1984 Declaration was the right one. The demand for democracy in Hong Kong is something which has been growing since the 1970s and has gathered pace in recent years, and again in recent months, as the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, pointed out.
The Joint Declaration provides that eventually the legislature should be entirely constituted by election. The British Government sought a greater role for democracy in the transition years during their negotiations with Peking at the time the Basic Law was being adopted, as the recently published correspondence of that time has freshly demonstrated.

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We argued then that we needed a greater measure of democracy to ensure that our ability to administer Hong Kong was not eroded. The Governor has now felt himself honour bound to introduce no less a degree of democracy than that for which a majority of people in Hong Kong were themselves calling (a policy to which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, in her closing remarks was asking him to adhere), seeing it as a means which could offer protection to Hong Kong and its way of life after 1997—in just the same way, surely, as the Prime Minister felt himself honour bound to pursue human rights issues when he went to Peking to sign the Memorandum of Understanding on the airport.
As for the reaction from Peking, this seems, to say the least, intemperate. The Basic Law states China's commitment after 1997 to one country, two systems; socialism is explicitly banished. But if China persists in her inordinate objection to these proposals, one of whose main effects is to introduce for certain seats broadly based electorates, typical of all democracies today, in place of narrow electorates which are open to manipulation, doubts can only be sown with regard to China's intention to honour that commitment in the Basic Law.
It cannot be in China's interests to affront international opinion by persisting in an exaggerated reaction to the Governor's proposals. China today provides the extraordinary spectacle of the world's greatest economic boom; moreover, one which depends on the rapid integration of her economy into the world economy. As the Economist recently pointed out, no other large country has so deliberately opened itself to foreign investment as an instrument of growth, with already a quarter of China's manufactured exports being accounted for by overseas financed ventures.
Foreign capital floods into China, largely through Hong Kong. China wants admission to GATT and depends on the annual renewal of her most favoured nation status by the United States. Her relations with the incoming democratic administration in the United States, one which is particularly concerned with human rights, are not yet established. It is hard to imagine China—modern, practical, successful China—putting all that at risk.
As regards some of the looser threats China has made, it surely makes no sense for her to flout or tear up the Joint Declaration, the one instrument which gives China sovereignty over Hong Kong in five years' time. The Governor's proposals were endorsed last month by the Legislative Council by a majority of three to two. Draft legislation should go before it early next year.
The Governor will have to decide what course to take if Hong Kong opinion drifts away from him. I believe that we should leave the matter to his judgment. He has behaved with considerable skill and adroitness. He avoided challenging Peking over the number of directly elected seats, where its opposition was well known, or by the appointment of legislative councillors to the Executive Council unacceptable to Peking.
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He successfully won international endorsement for his proposals from the United States State Department, the Canadian Prime Minister, the Australian Government and even cautiously from Japan. As my noble friend Lord Marlesford pointed out to your Lordships the last time we debated this subject, the Governor is tough, as a wider audience has now had the opportunity to see. He has many talents, literary and otherwise, and openness is his style. The days of the deals behind closed doors are surely over.
Having given Hong Kong one of our foremost politicians—one, incidentally, whom many of us feel we can ill afford to lose at home—the least we can now do is to stand by him and support his imaginative proposals. His task was never going to be an easy one. He has to reconcile the long-term interests and the current morale of the people of Hong Kong with our treaty obligations and our sense of honour, which means that we must be true to our principles. He would never have been sent there if the task had been simple. Let us hope that the path of moving forward by agreement with China to a smooth hand-over, and the achievement of that remarkable agreement contained within the Joint Declaration, can be found once again, and that we do not have to wait too long.
6.12 p.m.
Lord Skidelsky: My Lords, I too want to support the proposals of the Governor of Hong Kong. I must admit to a personal interest in the subject since I partly grew up in Hong Kong. I remember well in the 1960s having a good friend, Anthony Elliot, who was a political adviser and who was tragically killed a few years later in an accident when he was ambassador to Israel. I saw a lot of him at the time of the Cultural Revolution, and remember him telling me how the Hong Kong Government had pacified crowds of chanting Maoist youths by blaring pop music from loud speakers specially installed on all the main government buildings. I thought it then, as I do now, a fine example of imaginative statesmanship.
In the early 1980s I was one of those who favoured letting sleeping dogs lie. I believed then, and I still believe, that had the British Government not publicly raised the issue of the future legal status of Hong Kong, it might have been possible to negotiate an extension of the lease. That is a matter of judgment to which no conclusive answer can be given, and the Foreign Office concluded otherwise.
However, the main issue today is the current crisis with China arising from the Governor's constitutional proposals announced on 8th October. China's vociferous opposition to the key proposals in that package has created the present tension, particularly its opposition to lowering the voting age to 18, removing members of the Executive Council from the Legislative Council, increasing from 10 to 20 the number of geographical constituencies each with a directly-elected single member, and finally creating nine new functional seats resting on a much broader basis of occupations than the existing 21 seats do.
The net result of these reforms will be to create, for the first time in 1995, a wholly-elected Legislative

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Council which is elected both indirectly and directly. The fine balances between directly and indirectly-elected members, as well as the disproportionate influence retained by the business community, make it far from being a democratic assembly as understood in the west. Also, the Governor remains accountable to the British Government and not to the legislative assembly. But the proposals represent a significant broadening of the democratic base in Hong Kong. They will create a frame-work for representative government to develop, though they do not create representative government itself. It is for these reasons that they have incurred China's wrath.
I do not think at issue today is the question whether representative government is good or bad. We all came to our conclusion on that matter several hundred years ago in this country. It is whether or not, in the peculiar circumstances that face Hong Kong, the Governor's proposals offer the best chance of underpinning the guarantee of administrative autonomy, personal freedom and commercial stability embodied in the Joint Declaration of 1984 and the Basic Law of 1989.
The Chinese Government has made it clear which it wants to inherit the existing colonial system of Hong Kong with as few modifications as possible. It wants a chief executive which it will appoint to succeed to all the powers currently enjoyed by the British Governor appointed in London. It fears the advent of responsible government in Hong Kong just as it fears the advent of responsible government in China.
It has now promised to dismantle a Legislative Council elected according to the Governor's principles. The Chinese Government's hostility to Mr. Patten has given the business community the jitters and put a question mark over commercial projects such as the proposed airport. I am not concerned with the narrow question of whether Mr Patten's proposals breach the Joint Declaration, the Basic Law or the 1990 Agreement. These statements of principles will always be subject to different interpretations.
The real issue was put by Sir Percy Cradock in The Times on 1st December this year. The issue is whether,
"pushing on with the present constitutional proposals in face of a violent Chinese opposition will do Hong Kong … more harm than good in the long run."
Sir Percy clearly believes that it will.
The Governor's proposals have also been opposed by a large section of Hong Kong's business community. We have heard about the fall of the Hang Seng index. Part of this fear, it must be noted, is the fear of democracy itself. Mr. T.S. Lo, a prominent Hong Kong citizen and tipped by some to be the first chief executive appointed by China, has raised the spectre of a blue-collar dictatorship as a result of these modest proposals.
But Mr. Lo also sees the proposals as jeopardising Hong Kong's future as a centre of a dynamic South China. He wrote on 23rd October:
"The Government should look at the bigger picture of Hong Kong as a leader of South China and creating this area of 40 million people which will drive the rest of Asia for the next 20 years."
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Look at it in that light and not as an isolated and threatened enclosure that needs to be protected by local democracy. This is the great prize that many Hong Kong businessmen see, and it is a great prize. And how awkward, inappropriate and annoying that a western politician should step in with his inappropriate political ideas, which, as we have heard several times this afternoon, have never been accepted in Asia anyway.
I believe that many of those who share Mr. Lo's vision believe that the way to secure Hong Kong's future lies not so much with the Sino-British agreements already reached, much less with the Governor's proposals, but by doing deals. I do not mean commercial, I mean political deals with those who hold power in Peking. It must be remembered that many, if not most, of those in Hong Kong have close family and communal connections with the mainland, and genuinely see themselves as part of one country with two systems.
Nevertheless, I believe this approach to be profoundly mistaken. For all its glorious economic prospects, the political stability of China cannot be guaranteed. It is not just that the whole of Chinese history has been marked by oscillations between order and disorder. There must also be a profound question about the survival of the one major communist political system left in the world. If that regime collapses, there will be no smooth transition to a more liberal government, any more so than there has been in Russia, but a disintegration of central authority: Peking split into warring factions and possibly China reverting to an ancient pattern of warlordism.
Who then is Hong Kong to do its deals with? To which group of potentates will businessmen turn to protect their future? If central authority breaks down Hong Kong may well continue as a commercial centre —I do not believe that is actually in doubt—but the quality and security of commercial life will surely deteriorate, with adverse effects on investment and trade.
In such circumstances, the existence of an orderly self-renewing structure of government in Hong Kong, one which does not depend on a power struggle going on in the rest of China, would come to be seen as the height of prudent anticipation. But even if China remains stable, the lessons of politics and history should not be forgotten and I think they transcend all differences of culture.
"Put not your trust in princes"
is a very serviceable maxim. Currying favour with despots has never been a successful recipe for longevity. The very rich will no doubt still be able to leave after 1997, but millions will be trapped.
So I believe that Mr. Patten's instinct is a sound one. At the very least, the creation of a framework for responsible government makes it more difficult for China to intervene arbitrarily in Hong Kong's affairs. Destruction of a fledgling democracy is a highly visible act and no longer much admired in the rest of the world. It will call forth universal condemnation, which will be reflected in financial and commercial relations, and it will have an adverse effect on those relations which China is trying to build up.

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However, for Mr. Patten's initiative to have these benign consequences, I think that a further step might be needed. It must be seen as unambiguously expressing the will of Hong Kong's population. The noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, has emphasised that the choice of the pattern of Hong Kong's future constitutional relations with China should be decided by the Hong Kong people themselves. The Governor, she says, must be prepared to go as far as the community wants, and no further. But what is it that the community wants? I do not believe that we know. Soundings have apparently proved favourable, but the elections for direct seats in 1990–91 only produced 40 per cent. of the votes of those registered to vote.
I ask the Governor to consider the possibility of testing Hong Kong opinion directly by holding a referendum on his proposals. If the Hong Kong people reject his proposals, he should withdraw them. If they endorse them, he should press on. He owes it to them to give a clear choice as to how they want their constitutional relationship with China to develop. Let them judge the economic consequences of their own political choice.
6.23 p.m.
Lord Bramall: My Lords, it is with diffidence that I offer some observations in this important and timely debate, because so many speakers this afternoon have much more experience of, and a greater insight into, these matters than I have. That must be only too obvious. When I commanded the British Forces in Hong Kong in the 1970s, I too sat at the feet of my noble friend Lord MacLehose during his most distinguished governorship, and from him I learned a great deal. I can only hope that perhaps just some of his wisdom about Hong Kong's affairs may have rubbed off.
If I may, I should like to deal with just two matters. The first is one that has concerned so many other speakers: whether the constitutional development package proposed by the Governor with the full support of his Legislative Council is likely to be helpful in the run-up to the 1997 transfer of sovereignty. Secondly—and here of course I am on safer ground—I should like to say something about security in Hong Kong. As regards both issues, I am only too well aware that observations and even warnings made perfectly appropriately in private may not always be that helpful in public because of the misrepresentation and wrong signals which they may inadvertently invoke. Therefore, like many other noble Lords, I have tried to choose my words with care.
I approach the first matter as soldiers invariably approach all such problems—in a rather simplistic way. I simply ask: what is the aim of the whole exercise? I will attempt to answer the question by saying—and my noble friend Lord Wilson in his brilliant maiden speech touched on this—that I presume the overall aim, although others may see it differently, is to lead positively and optimistically a solvent and economically confident, relatively contented, Hong Kong into a totally new but nonetheless
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very exciting relationship with China, in which Hong Kong becomes for 50 years an autonomous zone of that country: one country but two systems.
I am not suggesting, particularly with all that is happening in the rest of the world, that this is not a big and, to some, very traumatic step; but if it works, as I believe it can, it is a good and advantageous arrangement offering considerable opportunities for the people of Hong Kong in the future, as the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, pointed out. However, if it is to work we will require mutual trust and strict adherence on both sides to the spirit as well as the letter of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law; all under the watchful eye of the international trading community, which will be quick to react if things go wrong. I think it is all agreed that any serious and lasting disagreement between China and Hong Kong is bound to be harmful to the territory, to business confidence and, in the long term, as has been said, to China itself.
The question we have to ask ourselves, and indeed have been asking ourselves all afternoon, is: does this broadening of the Hong Kong people's participation in their own affairs—something which was unthinkable in the days when I was in Hong Kong—and the proposed, albeit modest, extension of democracy make the overall aim easier or more difficult to achieve?
It might of course prove helpful; in the sense that if it made the people of Hong Kong more contented or more confident of their own future it might just heighten morale in what is bound to be a difficult transitional period. It could be argued, and indeed has been argued by some, that with so many people crying out for more democracy all over the world then, if the people of Hong Kong really want it, that is the least that we in the United Kingdom can do while we still have the power to do so. If, however, the aim is, as I have suggested, the smooth and untroubled transfer of sovereignty, with both sides respecting their side of the agreement, rather than a perceived opportunity to get Parliament off the Governor's back, or to give full expression to those who over the years and 8,000 miles away have advocated things for the people of Hong Kong without any responsibility for the consequences of that advice, or even to prove that we cannot be pushed around, then what is being advocated is inevitably something of a high-risk strategy.
Naturally, I hope that the Governor will succeed in pulling it off, because a complete U-turn might produce its own dangers and difficulties. We must rely on his judgment. Personally, I cannot see why the Chinese would, in practice, have anything to fear from the people of Hong Kong having a more direct say in managing their own internal and local affairs in what, after all, after 1997 will be an autonomous zone for 50 years if the Chinese keep their side of the agreement. It does not imply any direct democratic changes in the main policy-making body, the Executive Council. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, that the Chinese Government seem to have slightly over-reacted. I would certainly hope and expect that in secret diplomacy, if such a thing is possible these days, and through a two-way dialogue, the Governor would

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use all his political astuteness and diplomatic negotiating skill to reassure the Chinese on this point and get some mutual accord.
It must be recognised that China, rightly or wrongly, harbours three main anxieties about the way in which matters are developing. Noble Lords may say that the first two are so far-fetched—as my noble friend Lady Dunn mentioned—that we should have no difficulty in refuting them. Those are: first, that we intend to exhaust Hong Kong's financial reserves and hand the colony over in a bankrupt condition; and, secondly, that at the eleventh hour, from their so-called democratic base, the people of Hong Kong will appeal to the world over the heads of Britain and China for self-determination and the annulment of the agreement. Apart from its impracticability, there would be no international support for such a move.
The third concern is that after 1997 a democratic Hong Kong would try to act as a launching pad for changing China's political system before it is ready to do so. I am sure that that change will come one day and, unlike in Russia, in the wake of the economic reform which is taking place all the time. We must be careful that what we do in Hong Kong over the next four to five years, particularly in 1995, does not give more credence to that anxiety than it deserves. Noble Lords may say that political change in China is long overdue. That may be so, but for it to be precipitated from one part of what will then be its own country would be something that China could not possibly accept in the context of one country, two systems.
Whatever happens, the Governor must be supported. Nothing could be worse for the equilibrium of Hong Kong than, as the Chinese would say, for the mandarin's crown to seem to be slipping from him and for him not to have the backing of this country. But if he is wrong about his relations with China, or even if he is right, and the Chinese cannot be persuaded to see the matter in his way, the situation in Hong Kong could become very awkward over the next crucial years. There is, after all, more than one way of killing a cat.
That brings me to the security of the territory for which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, pointed out, we and we alone are responsible. The admirable Hong Kong police who, it has to be recognised, may become increasingly vulnerable as 1997 approaches, have recently taken on the time-consuming and manpower-intensive control of illegal immigration which was previous handled by the British Armed Forces. That commitment could easily increase. The police have also had to contend with a rising tide of armed crime and Triad activities, some of it now fuelled by gangster activity from over the border. In any case, for as long as I can remember it has always been necessary in any significant disturbances in Hong Kong, particularly if politically motivated as they were during the Cultural Revolution and could be again, for the police to be backed and supported by the Armed Forces in order to keep the situation fully under control.
Therefore, I hope that there will be no premature run-down of the garrison and that the principle of
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"stronger for longer" will apply. Otherwise, the Hong Kong police could have their work cut out. We would be abrogating our responsibilities for maintaining law and order and handing over a stable Hong Kong. The business community could lose confidence. I hope that the Minister will be able to give an assurance on that point.
The present garrison can easily be thinned out very quickly in the final months of British rule; and I would not say that there may not have to be discussions about who picks up any extra cost that that may entail. But I sincerely hope that we shall not weaken the garrison just because what one reputable newspaper described as that "cosy dialogue" between the Ministry of Defence mandarins and the Treasury suggests, as I suspect is the case in relation to other international situations, that "you must run down earlier, otherwise that Options for Change exercise will have to be amended and the manpower ceiling for the British Army will have to be increased, and that would never do".
Options for Change has been shown to have, as they say in another context, serious fault lines. Army manpower is now manifestly inadequate and unworkable. There has been enough of putting heads in the sand over defence matters already without it being extended to the delicate and potentially dangerous situation in Hong Kong.
Therefore, I hope that His Excellency the Governor will think most carefully about the concept and implementation of any constitutional reform, with China and the long-term whole very much in mind as well as Hong Kong in the shorter term, and, come what may—and I hope that it will not come to anything serious—that we shall remain strong enough in Hong Kong to ensure stability there until our responsibilities are fully discharged.
6.35 p.m.
Lord Nelson of Stafford: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Geddes for introducing this very timely debate. I should also like to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, on his excellent maiden speech. We were very fortunate to hear the contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn. I am only sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Kadoorie, was not able to be here, particularly because that was due to illness, as my noble friend Lord Geddes explained.
My contribution to the debate will be from the point of view of trade. I have many years' experience of trading in and through Hong Kong. My experience of China has been as a predecessor of my noble friend Lord Sharp as President of the Sino-British Trade Council from 1973 to 1983. Your Lordships will probably remember that that period stretched from the end of the Cultural Revolution—a very interesting period—through the economic developments steered by the Prime Minister, Chou En-lai. I saw economic developments and liberalisation take place in China over a very interesting period.
I remember a saying circulating at that time that in China events take two steps forward and then one step backwards. That was exactly what happened. Every

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year there were changes one way or the other. That still holds today and I hope that we may find that that principle will apply in relation to the problem we are debating. I am proud to say that I think that I am still regarded as an old friend of China, and I speak from that standpoint.
From that background in trade I turn to the position of Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been built up by trade from a population of a few hundred people some 150 years ago to what it is today. Trade has brought prosperity; trade has provided a standard of living as high as anywhere in the world; and trade has created a communication system on land, on sea, in the air, and through the airwaves. Britain can be proud of the changes and developments which have taken place under its administration, coupled with the wonderful enterprise and dynamism of the people of Hong Kong. Long may that continue.
It is of vital interest to British trade that that should continue. Hong Kong is a very important market. We are in an excellent position there, because of language, conditions of trade, contract law, understanding and technical standards. It is a fine base from which to develop into China. It has been mentioned in the debate how that has developed over the years. We have seen trade penetrate through the special economic zone of Shenhzen into southern China. It will penetrate even further. Therefore, let us not forget the interests of both British industry and Hong Kong in maintaining that developing position.
China itself is an enormous market. That has been emphasised by a number of speakers during the course of the debate. It is a market in which we must participate in the years ahead. It is potentially one of the world's biggest growth areas. On the other hand, it is a long-term development. One has to stay there and one has to work there. I believe that my noble friend Lord Sharp will agree with me that we have many friends in China.
However, it must be recognised that we also have a great many strong competitors. They want a share of that market; they want our share if they can get it. We have to cultivate the area for our long-term future. It is not a short-term matter. Five years is no time at all; we are talking about 20, 25 or 30 years. British industry must participate in that market over the years ahead. It needs that business. In my opinion we can do it. All three countries have a joint interest in gaining an understanding out of this difficult situation which will retain the trading position of this country in Hong Kong and China, and at the same time retain the trading position between Hong Kong and China. That will be of vital importance for the people of Hong Kong.
The first priority must be to safeguard the future of Hong Kong so far as we are able to do so. But let our negotiators not forget that we must also safeguard the British trading position in Hong Kong and the British long-term trading position in China.
I make one final point that has not been mentioned; namely, the position of Taiwan. My experience is that China always has one eye on Taiwan. It wishes for unification. It wishes for something similar to what has happened in Germany. It will be looking very
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carefully to ensure that the developing situation in Hong Kong proves that "one country and two systems" can live together. If that is not proven in Hong Kong, the situation will never arise in Taiwan. That is something very important to China.
I ask my noble friend the Minister when she replies to say something about the Government's thinking on our trading position in these two areas. Many people will be anxious to hear what she has to say about this matter, particularly the many businessmen and business traders who are developing, or trying to retain and develop this important market under the difficult conditions existing at the present time.
6.42 p.m.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I have no business interest to declare in Hong Kong or China. Indeed, I have never been to China. My reason for speaking is twofold. First, it was my ancestor, Captain Charles Elliot, who persuaded the Chinese to cede Hong Kong to Britain. He had been sent out to the Far East to bring the Opium Wars to an end and to safeguard the interests of British subjects in Canton. However, on his return he was dismissed from government service by Lord Palmerston, who regarded Hong Kong as no more than a barren rock. Secondly, there is my great love for Hong Kong, where I spent nearly two years as a young officer attached to the Gurkhas in 1966 and 1967, during a period of great instability in Hong Kong and China.
I have returned many times to Hong Kong, marvelling at the dramatic changes. I was last there in October, as part of the All-Party Defence Group, arriving just two days after the Governor's address to the Legislative Council.
I had desperately hoped to support the Governor, who started so well. However, I have reservations. I am concerned for Hong Kong's 5 million people, whose welfare depends on Sino-British co-operation.
I agree with several other speakers that it was the manner in which these proposals were announced that infuriated Beijing. Under the Joint Declaration, the Governor was under an obligation to consult the Chinese. This has happened successfully through diplomatic channels since 1984. But they were presented with a public fact. In an area where face is everything, that ensured a hostile response. I look forward to the Minister's comments on this point.
I carefully read the Joint Declaration, which is the agreed basis for the future, and the Basic Law. I also read the exchange of letters in 1990, which were made public and which several other speakers have mentioned, between the Foreign Secretaries. Although the Chinese are attaching far too much importance to small discrepancies, agreements have been broken in spirit and in letter, particularly in relation to the electoral base for both expanded functional constituency representation and the proposed Election Committee.
In 1990 OMELCO members arrived at a consensus and recommended that in 1995 half the legislature should be directly elected. But that was publicly rejected by Her Majesty's Government with the answer that there must be a convergence with the

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Basic Law and Chinese wishes on the pace of democracy. Like the Chinese, I am puzzled by the change of policy and I hope the Minister will comment on this point.
The Chinese have made it abundantly clear that if these proposals are implemented they will dismantle the present legislature and set up their own in 1997. Mr Patten returns in 1997, but the people of Hong Kong will have to make the best of what he has left them.
The Governor hopes to set up the new Legislative Council and allow it to work quietly so that the Chinese accept it as a fait accompli. But the Chinese will find ways to undermine a body which they consider was not part of the agreement made with the United Kingdom. Armed with a watertight excuse after 1997 they will then dismantle it, glad of a pretext for a safer system. After Tiananmen Square, it should be obvious to anyone that Beijing will stop at nothing to suppress a domestic political challenge.
We would all like Hong Kong to enjoy more democracy, but pursuing the present constitutional proposals in the face of Chinese opposition will only make Hong Kong suffer. A smooth transition maintaining stability and prosperity is also important. The large and successful Hong Kong companies, which tread the difficult middle ground between being loyal to Britain and to China, are put in an impossible position. The business community, which is so important for Hong Kong, is turning against the Governor. The proposals risk the possibility of China not only reneging after 1997 on all contracts, leases and agreements signed without its approval, but also setting up a shadow administration across the border to vet contracts. This would paralyse the Hong Kong Government for the last few years of British rule.
The situation is now deadlocked. Agreements were made between Britain and China, and must be addressed at the highest level from this country. Surely talks must be held, as a matter of urgency, in private, out of the international arena, to clear up the very small misunderstandings and discrepancies that divide us. Slight modifications—no U-turn—will be necessary to be more acceptable to China. I am sure that the majority of Hong Kong citizens would welcome them.
I sincerely hope and believe that the Chinese, who are not blameless in the current situation, would themselves be flexible and enable a smooth transition to take place in a spirit of co-operation, not confrontation.
Finally, with all the uncertainty in Hong Kong, I hope that the Government will reconsider any plans to speed up the run down of our military garrison. As my noble friend Lady Thatcher, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, said, we must remember that we are responsible for the lives of all 5 million Hong Kong Chinese, the international community of 250,000 and the families of the remaining troops, right up to 1st July 1997. I do not believe that that current garrison has sufficient troops to implement its contingency plans without reinforcement. We must not be tempted to bolster a shortage of troops elsewhere with troops from the Hong Kong garrison.
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Noble Lords may not be aware that members of the People's Liberation Army may conduct a two-day exercise close to Hong Kong involving three divisions of troops and eight warships. Its scenario is the capture of Hong Kong in six hours without a shot being fired, the British being unable to control the colony after a breakdown of law and order. I hope and believe that that will never become a reality. I was delighted by assurances given to me in the recent defence debate by my noble friend Lord Cranborne that the Government are aware of their military responsibilities to Hong Kong.
6.51 p.m.
Lord Derwent: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, for initiating the debate and for giving us the opportunity to hear the distinguished maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. It is always important to show the Hong Kong people that we care for their welfare. At the same time we must be conscious that at delicate moments we must choose our words with care. Above all, this is not the moment to justify past actions or to argue about what might have been. I am not even sure that it is the moment to argue about whether the Governor might have played his hand differently. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, has just reminded us, our overriding priority is to say nothing which might undermine the Governor's future authority.
I declare an interest because of my close business connections with Hong Kong. However, I wish to make it clear that the views which I express are strictly my own. Indeed, I urge your Lordships to listen sceptically to claims made by some to speak for the business community as a whole. Your Lordships will have noticed that the most important business leaders in Hong Kong have refrained from making public statements. That is because they believe that debate by megaphone is not useful.
I do not intend to dwell again on the detail of China's economic advance, already brilliantly summarised by the noble Lord, Lord Geddes. I wish to stress the nature as well as the extent of the major change that has taken place since the Joint Declaration, in particular in the past two years. Even two or three years ago it was true to say that China was not only politically unreformed but that from the point of view of British business practices it was 100 years behind the times. Mainland Chinese businesses could not prosper because of the doctrinal restrictions imposed by Beijing. Although Hong Kong's prosperity therefore depended on its proximity to China, that was true only while its commercial, economic and financial framework was totally outside the Chinese system. Two systems were essential not only politically but also financially and economically.
That is now changing fast because China has changed its economic system. The introduction in China of a market economy—in parts of South China a more unregulated, rip-roaring market economy than London's or New York's—means that, while the need for separate political systems remains as great as ever, from a business point of view Hong Kong now has a

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self-interest in being as closely intermeshed with China mainland business as possible. Many in Hong Kong believe that whatever happens politically, the economic transformation of China is now unstoppable. It was put to me several times in Hong Kong last week that in a world context China's economic advance will over the next 20 years probably equal that of Japan since the Second World War.
The relative importance of Europe, and even perhaps of the United States, is seen as declining fast and the promise of the future is seen to lie in Asia. During a busy round of meetings in Hong Kong last week I did not hear Europe mentioned once. This has changed the whole focus of debate.
This change in China means that Hong Kong faces a new challenge—that of competing for the first time on more equal terms against other Chinese business centres; for instance, Guandong, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other special economic zones.
It is true that Hong Kong has three advantages. The first is its deep water harbour—an enduring advantage. The second is its vastly superior business infrastructure, light years ahead of other Chinese cities, but with the gap likely to narrow rapidly as other cities are allowed for the first time to use their entrepreneurial talents. The third is its political freedoms and lack of government interference, which in the long run are essential for continued growth.
Nonetheless, Hong Kong, lying offshore China, has some similarities to Britain lying offshore Europe. Britain has recognised that it will be difficult for us to remain a leading provider of services to Europe if we are outside the Community. So it will be increasingly difficult for Hong Kong to provide services to China in competition with centres inside the country if it is not an integral part of the system, at least economically.
The point I am trying to make, therefore, is that the fact that Hong Kong will become part of China is not all bad news. Politically of course the position is different. Certainly no Hong Kong Chinese I have ever met automatically equate democracy and prosperity. Experience has shown them that countries such as Taiwan and even Singapore where democracy is limited, and Hong Kong itself where it has been non-existent, have prospered more than many true democracies in Europe. What of course Hong Kong people do want is to continue enjoying the freedoms which they have enjoyed under the benevolent dictatorship of Britain—freedom of movement, of expression and of property ownership and independence of the legal system.
The real debate is about whether more democracy now, albeit within the framework of the Joint Declaration, is in present circumstances the best way of defending these freedoms. That is the question which the Governor is giving the people of Hong Kong the opportunity to decide for themselves. In my opinion successive British Governments since the war have fallen down totally on their duty to prepare Hong Kong politically for the time when they knew that British rule was bound to come to an end. Mr.
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Patten has to live with that and the fact that the deadline of deciding how to conduct the 1995 elections is upon us, which is not of his making.
With the greatest respect, I cannot agree with the viewpoint put forward with great clarity by the noble Lord, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke, that Mr. Patten's initiatives would have been more acceptable to China if the consultation process had been differently conducted. What the Chinese are really objecting to is not the detail of the Governor's proposals. It is the very fact of popular consultation which they fear.
That is the fundamental dilemma. China wishes to impose its views on Hong Kong. Britain does not wish to and should not try to. That is why the Governor has no choice but to open up the public debate as he has done. In reality that is all that he has done. He has opened it up by producing something to discuss. I do not necessarily differ from the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose—I dare not—in his assessment of the degree of democracy that can be achieved. But I do believe that the decision on how far to push must be taken by Hong Kong through LEGCO and not by Britain, and, as I understand it, that is what Mr. Patten is trying to do. Indeed, that is what he is insisting upon.
The problem with the Joint Declaration is rather the same as the problem with the Maastricht Treaty. It is so cleverly drafted that it is possible for the two sides to agree on every word of the text without there being any real agreement on what it means or on how it can be applied. The differences in culture, way of thinking and political processes between China and the West are so great that the same text actually means something totally different to each side. I suggest that the same problem is at the root of the Government's difficulties as regards Europe.
That does not mean that the Joint Declaration was a mistake or that we should have been better off without it. It means only, as its authors would admit, that it was necessarily far from perfect and its chickens are now coming home to roost. Political catchphrases like the "through train" can be misleading. Through trains are not even particularly desirable if the passengers do not wish to be aboard and if a new driver takes it off in the wrong direction. There is only one real through train possible and that is the growing integration of the two economies of Hong Kong and southern China. If that can continue, I am optimistic that much of the politics will fall into place.
7.2 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, for introducing today's debate at a critical time in the transitional period up to Hong Kong's reincorporation into China. Indeed, I join in congratulating my noble friend Lord Wilson of Tillyorn on his outstanding maiden speech. It was an incisive maiden speech made without any notes on such a controversial issue but delivered in a non-controversial manner in conformity with the traditions of your Lordships' House.
My interest in Hong Kong and China spans back 10 years when I studied for my masters degree in

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Chinese law at London University. It may be argued that there was no extensive Chinese law in those days but I wrote my thesis on the Hong Kong lease through the eyes of Beijing.
As my noble friend Lady Dunn explained in her moving speech, Britain and China have a heavy responsibility for Hong Kong. They also have a unique opportunity. The transformation of Hong Kong from a British colony into a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China should be a rare example of a truly successful decolonisation.
Success will obviously give both Governments an achievement of which they can be proud. Obviously, failure will reflect extremely badly on both Governments. I do not believe that there is any excuse for failure. As many noble Lords said, Hong Kong is setting an admirable example. It has not allowed any of the political disputes to deflect it from building its own future as part of China. The dramatic development of Hong Kong itself and of South China bears witness to Hong Kong's determination to succeed.
My principal concern, as it is that of many other noble Lords, is for the long-term stability of the almost 6 million people of Hong Kong. While I appreciate the sensitivities and concerns of China, I find it difficult to agree with those critics of his Excellency the Governor who claim, as some have put it, that he has approached the governance of the transitional period in Hong Kong like "a bull in a china shop".
Clearly one of the Governor's main responsibilities to the people of Hong Kong is to reassure them about what life might be like both leading up to and after 1997. In his own words in an article in The Times on 8th October he said that
"it is to safeguard Hong Kong's way of life—the way of life set out in page after page of the Joint Declaration—its free economy, its rule of law; its sound administration. All the things that, together, underpin Hong Kong's prosperity and stability".
Obviously vital to his role is the smooth transition of the colony to Chinese rule in 1997, a point emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn. I believe sincerely that the governor's proposals for greater democracy in Hong Kong were not aimed at causing a confrontation with China. As I understand it, the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law entrenched a steady increase in democracy in Hong Kong both up to and after 1997. However, a number of issues needed fleshing out. In my view the governor's proposals can certainly not be seen as a radical change from the spirit of the Joint Declaration and are aimed, as he said, at being evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
My anxiety is that it appears futile to implement those proposals purely for the transitional period until 1997. For them to be of any value surely they must be for the period after 1997 as well? It is distressing that Prime Minister Li Peng and the Chinese authorities in Beijing have shown an unwillingness to come up with any counter proposals or compromise plans to the
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governor's proposals. I fear that Beijing's intimidatory approach and threats to invalidate any Hong Kong Government contracts that they have not also approved once they take back Hong Kong in 1997, can only substantially undermine economic stability and growth which is totally counter productive both to China and Hong Kong. It will invariably lead to an escalation in the brain drain and—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher—will deter international companies from doing business in China.
As the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, mentioned in his opening speech, the mere fact that 70 per cent. of China's exports pass through Hong Kong, the fact that Hong Kong generates one third of China's foreign exchange as well as the enormous economic and social benefits that the special economic zone of Guangdong has gained from trade with Hong Kong all point to the futility of China running down Hong Kong. Therefore, I find it unseemly that Hong Kong's natural parent China and its foster parent Britain should find it so difficult to co-operate properly for the well being of Hong Kong whose interests they both claim to have at heart.
Suggestions and rumours had it that the Governor should use the renewal of the Most Favoured Nation —(MFN)—status to be negotiated in Washington next year as a leverage point with the Chinese authorities in Beijing in the negotiations over his proposals for further democratisation in Hong Kong. I welcome the fact that such a move has been denounced by the Governor, as I firmly believe that he is truly committed to consultation and good relations rather than confrontation with Beijing.
I also believe that the Governor's approach to spending more on social, welfare, education and environmental needs in Hong Kong is to be applauded.
Although much attention is focused on the Hong Kong stock market as a barometer of confidence, it is remarkable that as a community, Hong Kong has remained fairly calm in the face of the current crisis. Nevertheless, it is clear that China's recent actions have turned an increasingly jittery business community against the Governor as it sees its business interests threatened. It certainly looks probable that when the Legislative Council votes in February next year, it will vote against his proposals.
In conclusion, surely the world's oldest civilisation and the world's oldest democracy can make a better job of discharging their responsibilities than they are doing at present. There should been an end to recrimination and a start to proper negotiation.
7.10 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, your Lordships will forgive me if I do not follow quite the same pattern as previous speakers in discussing the arrangements as between Hong Kong and China from now until 1997. My noble friend Lord Geddes has drawn his Motion sufficiently narrow yet sufficiently wide for me to embark upon another theme altogether. I shall not keep your Lordships long in developing that theme.

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My noble friend Lord Nelson of Stafford discussed quite shortly in his speech the position of Taiwan. When one looks at the position from the point of view of the Taiwanese, it is reasonable to note that they are gradually extending their economic democracy. While in no way wishing to become even more separative from mainland China, over the past few years more than half their businesses have returned to the private sector, and state-run businesses are diminishing at the rate of around 2 per cent. to 3 per cent. per annum. That places them in a fairly powerful position. Whether or not the Chinese wish to encourage Taiwan to become a competitor to Hong Kong, there can be little doubt that they would like that country and that country's economic wealth to complement Hong Kong.
When one adds that to the industrialisation in the new territories in South China generally, one must accept that there is a massive commercial and economic impact and change already in force. In my view, since the Chinese mainland cannot quite accept the total market-driven economy that is evident both in Hong Kong and Taiwan, it may be many years before the change is completed and fully widespread. I believe that that economic change will spread; and others before me spoke of specific areas where it is already evident. But if China maintains socialism as its political philosophy I understand the term is "tinged with Chinese characteristics"—one must accept that a powerful force will emerge. I believe that China will become, perhaps in no more than 10 years, the most formidable economic, trading and indeed political force in South-East Asia. Whether its tentacles will spread further one can only speculate.
Therefore in looking at the problems discussed by many noble Lords this afternoon, we may reasonably look to China becoming the stabilising influence in South-East Asia. Whether or not the Chinese would wish to take on that onerous responsibility is another matter. I certainly believe that they should be so encouraged. It is essential that there should be a stabilising influence in South-East Asia. As we see across the world, it is becoming more unstable. As soon as the present difficulties are resolved and China can be encouraged to take up that responsibility, it will be for the better.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I add my thanks to those of others to my noble friend Lord Geddes for giving us the opportunity to conduct this debate. It has demonstrated the great interest in Hong Kong and the great sympathy that exists for it. That is shown by the kind of people who have spoken in the debate today. For me it was particularly exciting to hear my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, make an exceptionally brilliant maiden speech, and without a note. Although I suppose it was predictable that he should speak on Hong Kong in his maiden speech, I am sure that we shall hear him speak on many other issues in the future.
I should declare an interest in that I am an adviser to John Swire and Sons. Needless to say, the views I express in this debate are entirely my own. I should
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like also to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, to the Front Bench as a foreign affairs spokesman. She made a most interesting speech, but I felt that it was rather paradoxical in that speaking for the party she does, she appeared to be so scared of the proposals that Mr. Patten has been putting forward to introduce democracy. Indeed, I was saddened that she should presume to use the phrase, "too clever by half" about Mr. Patten. It seemed ironical as I remember that phrase originally entering the political lexicon when used by an old political dinosaur, the Marquess of Salisbury, who was attacking lain Macleod for advocating the decolonisation of Africa. Nevertheless, as the noble Baroness pointed out, she only recently became a spokesman on foreign affairs and I am sure that we shall hear splendid speeches from her in the future.
The noble Lord, Lord Wilson, referred to the need to navigate between the rocks. One of the problems at the moment is that China seems to be making the navigation more difficult by laying a number of floating mines in the water. The danger of floating mines is that they can blow up your own ships. In that I am thinking specifically of Chinese suggestions of the possible abrogation of contracts relating to property and indeed other contracts.
I suspect that there are three elements in China's antagonism to Mr. Patten's proposals. The first is the horror that the Chinese feel at the fate of what they euphemistically call their northern neighbour—the former Soviet Union. I believe that China is right; it has concentrated on perestroika rather than on glasnost. I totally understand the fears of the Chinese leadership of a political vacuum which could come from internal political reform at too rapid a rate. Indeed, China herself had one of the most painful experiences of such anarchy in her long history during the Cultural Revolution. Fortunately, the inoculation of recent experiences tends at least to prevent them from recurring. At the time of the Cultural Revolution Hong Kong was at great risk. I would accept the Chinese view that Hong Kong might not survive more than a few weeks if such anarchy were to occur again. To the Chinese leadership keeping China together is the first great imperative of government.
Secondly I believe that China greatly resented the advocacy of political change inside China by the United Democrats led by Mr. Martin Lee shortly after they were elected to the Legislative Council. They won 16 of the 18 seats and started to talk—understandably in one sense as it followed Tiananmen Square—in a way which in my view was most unwise. After all, a rejection of the basic principle of "one country, two systems" is implied if China does not have her own political integrity respected by the people of Hong Kong. How then can the people of Hong Kong expect China to respect Hong Kong's political integrity? However, I hope that that episode is now water under the bridge. Incidentally, it was quite neat that Mr. Patten was able, by separating LEGCO from EXCO to ensure that Mr. Martin Lee could no longer have a claim on a seat on the Executive Council.
Thirdly, there is the understandable Chinese desire to counter the great personal popularity of the

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Governor and his novel political style. But that is surely all part of the negotiating posture. There are differences of approach to negotiating with China. There have been those in this debate who have suggested that Mr. Patten's policy is too high risk and that to antagonise China is of itself counter-productive. I respect China too much to believe that she would risk abrograting the 1984 treaty. However, that is what Sir Percy Cradock clearly does believe in his much quoted letter to The Times of 26th November.
Sir Percy epitomises one traditional Foreign Office view—not, I believe, a view shared by all senior Foreign Office officials past or present—that Sino-British relations are of paramount importance to the extent that difficulties over Hong Kong must not be allowed to damage them. On the contrary, I believe that it is Hong Kong which is of paramount importance to British relations with China. I would go so far as to say that there is no other aspect of China's relations with the rest of the world which is of greater importance than the maintenance of prosperity and stability in Hong Kong and the orderly transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
I well remember that in the early days of the negotiations which led to the 1984 agreement, the Foreign Office's position seemed to be, "We want the best agreement that we can get; but we must have an agreement". At that stage there was really little incentive for China to make any concessions. It was relatively late—I believe that it was in June or July 1984—that Ministers and specifically my noble friend Lady Thatcher, my noble and learned friend Lord Howe and Mr. Richard Luce, made it clear that Her Majesty's Government would not be prepared to recommend to Parliament an agreement which was not acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. At that stage China suddenly recognised that she had something to lose. It was in those last weeks that a number of concessions were made which helped to make the 1984 agreement as good an agreement as I believe it was.
I wish to say something about a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn; why, after 150 years without local democracy in Hong Kong, is it necessary to introduce it now? The way I see it is that in the past responsibility for the administration of Hong Kong has been shared between the Government of Hong Kong and Whitehall. The Governor has always worn two hats—a Foreign Office hat and a Hong Kong hat. But in the background there has always been Westminster as the ultimate guardian against government abuse of the people of Hong Kong.
In 1997 Peking takes over from Whitehall, but there will not for the foreseeable future, be any replacement for Westminster. That is why we need to create a legislature which has the power at least to reveal and protest if China misbehaves towards Hong Kong after 1997. That is what Mr. Patten is seeking to achieve.
Two questions of good faith have been raised. First, whether Mr. Patten's proposals do in fact conflict in letter or spirit with the Joint Declaration or the Basic Law. The noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, has raised
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specific points on that. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, has given his view that they do conflict. I do not know the answer, but I believe that Her Majesty's Government must give more explanation on that point. I hope that we shall hear more about it shortly from my noble friend Lady Chalker.
Secondly, there has been a question as to whether there has been a breach of agreement contained in the now published 1990 exchange of letters between the two Foreign Secretaries. I have read those papers very carefully and I personally cannot see it. But I recognise that a number of Chinese take a different view. It may well be that there is a real problem of cultural differences in legal interpretation. For example, I am told that senior British judges have found that the Chinese may believe that an agreement to disagree is in effect a legal agreement that there shall be no agreement. That sounds a little complicated, but there can be a real problem in two quite different cultures looking at the same legal situation.
I have not time to comment in detail on Mr. Patten's constitutional proposals. However I have very real reservations about his proposals relating to functional constituencies. Functional constituencies were designed to be a form of corporate government. I believe that they would lose this purpose if they themselves were democratised. For example, I do not believe that the banking interest would feel that it was represented (which is the object of having a functional constituency) if every employee of the bank had a vote and one ended up with perhaps a clerk who is a political activist being elected to LEGCO as the functional representative. I have considerable doubts about the particular suggestions which Mr. Patten has put forward on this.
The deep suspicions which China has of Hong Kong to which the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, referred, seem to have become focused against Mr. Patten personally. My noble friend Lord Geddes referred to the possible need for an honest broker. That may be a good idea. In that case I wonder whether Sir Edward Heath might not have a role to play. He is no friend of Hong Kong; but he is a friend of both Mr. Patten and my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, both of whom started their distinguished political careers under his patronage. But more important, Sir Edward is a trusted and respected friend of the most senior of China's leaders. In that they demonstrate an attractive aspect of the Chinese political character: loyalty to old friends. Incidentally, the noble Lord, Lord Annan, taught me when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, that that is a luxury which politicians in the western tradition are ill-advised to practise.
I believe that Britain has much to be proud of: a century and a half of altruistic and honest government under some outstanding administrators, two of whom are with us today. British investors have made a major commercial contribution to Hong Kong and have created a business environment which has attracted literally millions of Chinese to cross the border to practise their remarkable entrepreneurial talents. That is now making a crucial contribution to the economic development of Southern China and beyond. What

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has been created is far too important to China, Britain and, most of all, to the people of Hong Kong, to be put at risk by ill-judged posturing. The world has quite enough insoluble problems without allowing the soluble ones to fester.
7.28 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Geddes has indeed found a timely moment to initiate this debate. But I must begin by apologising to him (as indeed I gave him notice) that I would be unable to he here for his speech. However, it was more than a pleasure to have listened to the wonderful maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn.
Both as a Home Office Minister and subsequently as the Minister most closely handling Hong Kong and China in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office between 1987 and 1989, I had the privilege of working closely with the noble Lord in London and in Hong Kong. He is certainly not only a true professional but also one who has studied Hong Kong and China in considerable depth over many years. His wisdom and calm assessment of the pitfalls of putting one foot (let alone both feet) wrong over handling Hong Kong issues is widely respected, and particularly so by me.
Since leaving the Government in 1989, I have done my best to keep abreast of Hong Kong matters. I have visited the territory regularly, as have many of your Lordships. I have endeavoured to keep up to date with Hong Kong's sometimes conflicting opinions. I have met a number of influential representatives of the People's Republic of China and continue to do so. To that extent I have tried to continue in a more limited and personal way the pattern of dialogue which characterised the Government's approach throughout the time that I was at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The going then was often rough; the slope steep. Sometimes one slid two paces back for every one taken forward, as my noble friend Lord Nelson. of Stafford discovered in much earlier days on matters of trade with China.
Through calm persistence in formal meetings and a mostly friendly and constructive private dialogue, the activities of the Joint Liaison Group, the Basic Law Drafting Committee and, indeed, Britain's more general relationship with China were taken forward and built upon, in keeping with the Joint Declaration of 1984. However, in 1988 it seemed to me that a different perspective arose in relation to people's perceptions of the Joint Declaration—a pricking of certain consciences, perhaps. There were those who asked: had the United Kingdom achieved in the Joint Declaration the best possible outcome for Hong Kong? Were the interests of its people properly safeguarded? Could we not achieve an outcome with which we could all feel more comfortable by reopening the dialogue? Was Britain being too submissive, afraid to stand up to China?
These were understandable concerns. Nagging doubts often linger over the adequacy of deals struck. But we had struck a deal. The People's Republic of China had struck a deal, and it had been hailed at the time as a triumph, as my noble friend Lady Thatcher
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indicated. However hard a bargain the People's Republic of China strikes, it does have a reputation for abiding by the letter to internationally agreed treaties.
The pressure to think again grew with vigour after Tiananmen Square. That unforgivable and odious operation was condemned the world over. But even if they stuck publicly to their party line, I suspect that there were (and, indeed, are) many influential representatives of China who, even if they had predicted such a tragic turn of events, were sickened by it, contemptuous of it and continue to be so. Some did not even hide their feelings in private.
Tiananmen Square occurred at the time when the pressure was mounting from some in Hong Kong to accelerate the pace of democratic reforms. As we have heard, democracy (certainly in terms of directly elected seats) had been very limited before about 1986. Yet what had earlier been resisted by China in this regard had been carefully negotiated with success. The pressure to accelerate came not only from Hong Kong, but also from a body of opinion in this country. Increased democracy in Hong Kong seemed to some to be the best possible insurance against what some perceived to be the unfavourable Joint Declaration of 1984. And so, the bandwagon of opinion began to roll.
Her Majesty's Government, through all the avenues open to them, had continued to explore with China, firmly but diplomatically, ways of meeting the concerns in Hong Kong which had been genuinely and understandably thrown into sharp relief by Tiananmen Square. Continuity—a word which has been used on many occasions in this debate—was the watchword. Progress was made within the Joint Liaison Group and the Basic Law Drafting Committee. Confidence in Hong Kong remained reasonably buoyant. The "immigration package" was agreed—and progress was positive on a number of fronts. It seemed that the dictum of my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon, when he was Foreign Secretary, that the interests of Hong Kong were best served when London and Beijing were in constructive dialogue was still valid.
I served in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with my noble friend Lady Chalker and with the new Governor. I have much admiration for both of them. For the Governor, his incisive intellect, his political instinct and ability were obviously characteristics influential in his appointment. He certainly deserves the support of all those who have a keen interest in and concern for Hong Kong. The support for him, however, for which my noble friend Lady Thatcher called, should not mean that those who have a particular knowledge should refrain from encouraging Her Majesty's Government to see another point of view or to tread with particular caution. Constructive criticism need not imply disloyalty either to Her Majesty's Government or to the Governor. We are all inevitably embroiled in a public debate about Hong Kong—even if currently, as the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, has said, it is probably far too public.
The stakes are exceedingly high. There is no monopoly of wisdom on how to tackle the sensitive

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issues involved. Those who have had the often difficult task of negotiating on Hong Kong deserve a lot of credit for their experience and success. My experience is certainly limited compared to that of many, but I would not be true to myself if I did not say to my noble friend Lady Chalker that I am deeply and increasingly disturbed by the current turn of events.
Of course, while the headlines here dwell on perceived Chinese intransigence over the Governor's democracy package, and those in the Chinese press dwell on Britain's perceived change of policy and style, there are strong undercurrents, on trade with China and other matters, which represent business as usual. Thank goodness for those at least.
The democracy proposals may be a genuine attempt to bolster Hong Kong opinion against worries about 1997—and to some extent to satisfy public opinion here. They do not breach the letter of the Joint Declaration. The proposals are clever and have raised hopes for some in Hong Kong. But I am forced to ask, as others have done: Are they wholly wise in combination of content, manner of announcement, and with no apparent paving of the way? In the eyes of the People's Republic of China, they have breached the spirit of the Joint Declaration. I would not go so far as saying "breached", but I would say "dented". To some extent, the People's Republic of China has been outwitted. It has reacted accordingly and, I suspect, very predictably. Confidence among many in Hong Kong is endangered. The stock market has become very volatile. The economic engine of Hong Kong's success has started to splutter.
It seemed to me that any subtle extension of earlier proposals on democracy to meet timetables or aspirations required some sort of fallback position in case they were to land on stony ground. I am bound to say that as the war of words develops, exaggerated though it may well be, I am increasingly concerned about where our fallback lies—and, indeed, where that of China lies. To those who say—and this has been said in various quarters recently—that LEGCO could always turn the package down, I am forced to ask what good that would do the Governor's position, particularly after such a well-deserved and powerfully hailed beginning, or indeed the position of Her Majesty's Government in their relationship with China.
I most sincerely believe that Her Majesty's Government must be clear about what constituency of opinion and what interests they are striving to satisfy. I unashamedly do not subscribe to the view that being obdurate with China just for the sake of being seen to do so or to make us feel better—not "kowtowing to China" as many would put it—is likely to provide either harmony between the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China or the ultimate assurance that Hong Kong so badly needs. I very much agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, and with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, that patience; tough, perhaps depressing, even irritating, negotiations in public and in private; and the exercise
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of real diplomatic skills based on a deep understanding of the other side are likely to make the best breakthrough. A futile war of words, of threats, and of public bluff-calling will not, more particularly as time runs out.
But we are where we are, if not where I would wish us to be. So what do we do immediately? I, too, suggest that all concerned on both sides cease the rhetoric, listen to the voices of experience and calm reason, and do all possible to protect both a treaty which was so hard won, and all that should stem from it. Somehow all concerned must rediscover and revive the spirit of constructive, if difficult, debate which history will show worked pretty well for eight years. It is encouraging today to know that this week's Joint Liaison Group talks are at least still continuing.
If we do not adopt some such course, there is a real danger that much that so many have strived so hard to establish may be put at risk—or even dismantled—in 1997. I really think that that may be the case and that China's threats, however undesirable, are not hollow, particularly in relation to current proposals. To believe otherwise is a truly great gamble.
Above all, I hope that the Government will appreciate the risks and the difficulties of trying to satisfy fully a well-intentioned but sometimes over emotional constituency of opinion in this country, let alone in Hong Kong, about a very complex international issue, at the expense of a realistic approach to what is achievable by 1997, in an atmosphere which is as fragile as this one is most certainly fast becoming.
7.41 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, the House will be delighted to hear that I am not going to make a long speech. I went to China with the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, and the much respected and long gone Lord Rhodes, who went there with three parliamentary missions. He was a very old man—he was over 80, which is not perhaps very old in this House—and a very clever man. He got on extraordinarily well with the Chinese leaders whom he met. I remember him meeting one of the top men, whose name I cannot remember. They were both limping. Lord Rhodes said, "What's wrong with your leg?" The Chinese replied, "War wounds". "Same with me", said Lord Rhodes. He established a rapport immediately. While I totally support the extension of democracy in Hong Kong, what has come out of the debate is that we have to live with the realities. The realities were stated with devastating clarity by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, who put forward points which the Minister must answer.
We had another very interesting intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, who said that his ancestor negotiated the ceding of Hong Kong. He did negotiate it, I understand, but we used certain influences towards China which they did not care for. The ceding was not entirely voluntary. That is remembered over a very long period.
It is also true, as has been said many times, that face is often very much more important than money. Several noble Lords said that we should not rely on

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the obvious financial advantage to try to pressurise the Chinese Government into steps that they do not wish to take. After all, they look at us and say, "There are the British. They have ruled Hong Kong for 150 years without any democracy. They want to hand it over to us with a democratic structure". Of course we do, but I can see their point of view quite clearly.
The Minister will have to admit that while the intentions may have been good there must have been a lack of preparation in that the row which has been stirred up and the reaction of China was not expected; at least I hope it was not expected. It has gone to an extent which endangers the good work that was put in when securing the agreement. If the Governor, Chris Patten, had gone to Peking and used his charm in the same way as he used his charm and political ability to get the backing of the good people of Hong Kong, we might have had a very different outcome.
The Minister has a lot of questions to answer. It is interesting that the score is about even—but all the support has come from her own Back-Benches.
7.45 p.m.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, I should like to add my voice to those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, so warmly on his maiden speech, if he will accept congratulations from one whose own maiden speech in this House lies in the very recent past. His contribution will long be remembered both for its well informed and thoughtful content and for his wisdom in choosing an occasion on which he can speak with such great authority and without a note. This debate would have been much the poorer without his contribution.
I am grateful too to the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, for initiating the debate. I believe that it is a suitable time for the House to make known its views in the light of the very eventful period through which Hong Kong has passed since the last debate in the House in June.
The debate has been characterised, as so many debates in your Lordships' House, by contributions from noble Lords with a background of knowledge and experience on the subject. We have benefited from the wealth of that experience. Like my noble friend Lady Blackstone, I am very conscious that I do not share that knowledge or experience. I speak from hearsay and from reading, and so I am mindful that I can do little more than comment, with such humility as I can muster, on how this debate has appeared to me.
There appears to be total agreement in the Chamber that the role of the United Kingdom is as a trustee for the people of Hong Kong of their future. It may be said that that relationship was not sought by our generation and that it was conferred on us by history. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, reminded us that it is down to Captain Elliot. But no one would deny that that now exists. The questions for debate are how we can discharge that obligation, not to ourselves, nor to our own commercial interests, but to the people of Hong Kong. I would respectfully echo what was so eloquently said on that matter by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson.
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The differences which have appeared seem to me to lie between two quite understandable points of view. On the one hand there are those who say that the existing commercial prosperity of Hong Kong and the confidence of the commercial community in its future are dependent on the goodwill of the Peking Government. If that Government decline to recognise contracts placed by the present administration, or otherwise prove unco-operative in relation to commercial activities, that of course would be damaging to those who carry on commerce in Hong Kong or with Hong Kong. They urge the wisdom of maintaining good relations with the Chinese Government and of restraint in taking any steps which might endanger those good relations. That is one point of view.
The other point of view is expressed by those who believe that for the people of Hong Kong the future is not to be measured simply in terms of commercial prosperity—a community does not live by bread alone —and if the people are denied a voice in their own future they lose something which this country would not be prepared to sacrifice on its own behalf and ought not to be prepared to sacrifice on behalf of others. Indeed those who have expressed that view have gone further. They have asked not only what it should profit a community if it gains the commercial world and forfeits its soul; they point out that without a degree of control over their own destiny the people of Hong Kong are in danger of losing their commercial advantages as well. Certainly there is no commercial profit for anyone in a brain-drain.
Those are the two points of view that have been expressed. Both considerations are important. If there is a prospect of reconciling both worlds, then it is sensible to explore it. If the problems arise from a misunderstanding, then that misunderstanding should if possible be resolved.
Part of the problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, said, and as was expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, in her thoughtful and restrained contribution, may arise from a Chinese suspicion that the acceleration of democracy stems, not from a conviction, but from an attempt to embarrass China and perhaps to prolong Britain's influence. If the Beijing Government can be persuaded that the British proposals seek merely to reflect the wishes of the people of Hong Kong and that the Government have no other motivation, which I genuinely believe to be the case, then some of the differences may disappear. If the Chinese Government are prepared to enter into a dialogue no damage need be done to the colony's commercial future. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Reay, pointed out, what has particularly alarmed the people of Hong Kong is the reaction of the Chinese Government to the Governor's proposals.
I wholly endorse what was said so movingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn. If we are negotiating on behalf of the people of Hong Kong and if, as I believe, our sole objective in this exercise is their well-being, then surely the clearest criterion of that well-being is their wishes. Those wishes were expressed in the clearest terms in September 1991 when they

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demonstrated support for the programme of Mr. Martin Lee and the United Democratic Party. If there is a price to be paid, and no doubt there is, I believe that they did not overlook it at the time. Of course, the extent of the Beijing Government's power lawfully to renounce contracts and other obligations is not necessarily a measure of their capacity to interfere in their implementation. We recognise that. Nor is their capacity to interfere in their implementation necessarily the measure of the damage which their threats may achieve in relation to commercial confidence.
However, we should place on record—I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, for having referred to the point—the fact that Article 160 of the Basic Law is unambiguous. It is not something which the Chinese Government could lawfully do. Perhaps one should add for good measure that Article 120 repeats that provision in relation to leases. In any event, those provisions specify only what would be the position under international law and practice. If the Beijing Government are minded to find ways of eroding their obligations—for example, by a perverse interpretation of what is in conflict with the Basic Law by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress—then no doubt physical power is on their side. But, as my noble friend Lady Blackstone said, it is surely in the interests of all parties to have a discussion on Hong Kong's commercial future. The Chinese Government stand to gain as much as they stand to lose under the body of contracts which will straddle 1997.
If, so far as possible, we are to assure the people of Hong Kong that freedom which they seek and which we would claim for ourselves, there are two elements which have emerged in the debate which we need to have in mind. The first is the right to participate in the decision-making process. That can only mean moving as quickly as is sensible towards representative government. It means a legislature which, whatever the constituencies and the proportions, is chosen by a widely enfranchised electorate. It means that that legislature has an effective role in the constitutional process.
It may be said—indeed it was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross—that in the past government in Hong Kong has been by benevolent despotism and that there was little evidence of objection from the people of Hong Kong. The answer to that was provided by the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who pointed out that historically few communities have developed a vision of democracy in the abstract. It has usually arisen when people have had severely pragmatic reasons either to complain about the decisions of those who rule them or to fear the decisions of those who are about to rule them. That of course does not invalidate the arguments of those who seek a democratic future for Hong Kong. On the contrary, it reinforces them.
Many of those who have argued, and many of those who have voted, for representative democracy in Hong Kong are troubled, not by the textbook arguments of John Stuart Mill but, as the noble Lords,
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Lord Derwent and Lord Marlesford, pointed out, by the consequences for their own daily lives of decisions taken by Beijing or its agents if they have no redress. The noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, regretted the shortsightedness of a policy which says, in effect, "Let us rule our colonies from within closed doors, provided that they do not make too much fuss", because one day they may have occasion to make a fuss and then we may find ourselves fettered by the weight of the past.
An effective role for the legislature would not be inconsistent, even at this stage, with bringing into the Executive some of those who may claim to speak for the people of Hong Kong. Perhaps the Governor will have those considerations in mind, especially in relation to the United Democratic Party.
I ventured to say that there were two elements in the concept of freedom. Secondly, freedom means the freedom of individuals to express a political opinion without being imprisoned, tortured or subjected to other forms of persecution. The noble Lord, Lord Geddes, suggested that that may be of greater importance than representative government to the people of Hong Kong. Unhappily, there is little indication from the Chinese Government that they have undergone a change of heart on the subject of human rights. As my noble friend Lady Blackstone said, the reports from Amnesty International on the subject of human rights are most disturbing. That applies within the People's Republic itself and in areas such as Tibet. They offer little to inspire confidence for the people of Hong Kong. Those anxieties are reinforced by the well-informed comments of Mr. Derek Davies, the former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review in the correspondence columns of The Times today.
Clearly anything which can be done at this stage to institutionalise human rights and to make it less likely that the Chinese Government will seek to override them is very much to be welcomed, not just for its own sake but it may help to resolve the understandable anxieties of the people of Hong Kong. The Reverend Louis Ho writing in Basic Law, Basic Questions in 1988 said that the draft provisions at that time about basic rights were far from a bill of rights:
"Yet they were impressive enough to assure people that the future of Hong Kong was bright".
That, of course, was before Tiananmen Square.
I share the regret of noble Lords that we have not had the assistance of the impressions of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, this afternoon, although I fully understand and indeed applaud the reasons for his absence. We are grateful to have the impressions of the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham. I noticed that the Minister said earlier that she would have something to say about human rights at a later stage in the debate. We look forward to hearing her answers to the questions asked by my noble friend Lady Blackstone. I hope that she may be able to deal with the anxieties expressed by my noble friend about the position of the Vietnamese boat people. We are all hopeful that the new Administration in the United States, whatever view they take about China, will take

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account of the world's anxieties when considering their future policies and programmes in relation to Vietnam.
I hope that in his attempt to strengthen democratic institutions in Hong Kong, the Governor will have the support of all parties in this country. I share the hope of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, that nothing said in this debate will offer any encouragement to the Peking Government to believe otherwise. Of course, the Opposition reserve the right to observe how negotiations are conducted, both by the Government and by the Governor, and how effectively they pursue the objectives on which we are all agreed. That is the right; indeed it is the function of our oppositions. We are entitled to agree with the profound observation of the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, that if there had been a greater sense of urgency in the past in responding to calls for democracy in Hong Kong the task might now have been facilitated.
We are bound to reflect, as was said by a number of your Lordships, that it might well have been better if Mr. Patten had begun the dialogue with consultation rather than a precipitate public announcement in the manner which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, described as the "hustings mode of politics". It must have appeared to the Chinese people that what he was attempting to do was to pre-empt discussion. That was what was meant by my noble friend Lady Blackstone when she spoke of the Chinese people's perception of "pulling a fast one". I am bound to say, with respect and I hope without offence, that I thought that both the noble Lords, Lord Holme of Cheltenham and Lord Marlesford, were less than fair to my noble friend in their construction of what she said. What she said was clearly a well-deserved and appropriate comment to make.
Whatever we may say as to the manner of conducting the debate, I hope that the message which goes out from this debate tonight is twofold. I hope that to the people of Hong Kong the message is: "You are not on your own. The Government and the Opposition alike in Britain accept our responsibility to do all we can to safeguard your future in accordance with your expressed wishes". To the Government of China I hope that the message is: "We respect your entitlement to the integrity of your nationhood. We try to understand your concerns and we believe that the good relations between our two governments are in the interests of your country and ours and those of the people of Hong Kong. But we will not be intimidated by commercial or political threats into renouncing our responsibility to safeguard the legitimate interests of the people of Hong Kong". The more clearly that message is articulated and the less room there is left for misunderstanding, the better, I believe, for the promise of friendly relations with China and for the future of Hong Kong.
8.2 p.m.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, as one might have expected, this has been a debate of real concern, high quality and great knowledge. In many cases it is long knowledge of Hong Kong and China. I particularly add my congratulations to the noble
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Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, on a maiden speech of rare quality, of great wisdom and extremely well paced, with all that he knows about the great difficulties of dealing with an emerging and vibrant part of the world which has many tensions. We understand very well what he was saying.
I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, to the Opposition Front Bench on this foreign affairs subject. I particularly again thank my noble friend Lord Geddes, as I did in my opening remarks, and also my noble friend Lady Thatcher, for their clear and forthright speeches. I know that my noble friend Lady Thatcher experienced many difficult exchanges with China in the early 1980s and we value her realism in understanding how we take these difficult matters forward.
The aspirations of the people of Hong Kong, as the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, told us so clearly, are important and much respected. We thank her for her outstanding and thoughtful contribution tonight. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, on his return from China and I shall return to the subject of human rights a little later. We shall, of course, await the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, on this important visit with great interest in the new year.
Tonight we have had typically tough talk from many in this House, as well as having heard some exceedingly tough talk from China and from Hong Kong in recent days. That is not surprising. I hope that I made it clear in my opening remarks that Her Majesty's Government care about co-operation with China and Hong Kong to get the matter right. I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, that there is no hidden agenda. As my noble friend Lord Bessborough said, we need great diplomatic skill and tact in working our way forward and no one needs it more than the Governor in responding to the needs of Hong Kong.
I assure my noble friend Lord Glenarthur that no one is being obdurate to China, neither the British Government nor the Hong Kong Governor. But we have some real responsibilities and in answering your Lordships' questions tonight I wish to try to cover those responsibilities in specific answers.
As my noble friend Lady Thatcher said, the Governor's Address, Our Next Five Years: The Agenda for Hong Kong, was a carefully crafted and thoughtfully-planned address at the opening of the 1992–93 session of the Legislative Council. I respectfully suggest that paragraphs 101 to 147, "The Constitutional Package" are worth reading over and over again. They are, above all, proposals which needed to be put to the people of Hong Kong and to be discussed also with the Government of China. In the publication, Our Next Five Years, the Governor has reviewed all Hong Kong's needs in a most detailed and impressive way.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and learned Lord, Lord Archer, the noble Lord, Lord Sharp, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, said that the Governor was wrong not to consult the Chinese over the constitutional package. As my noble friend

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Lady Thatcher said, the Foreign Secretary gave detailed advance briefing to the Chinese Foreign Minister in New York on 25th September. The Governor sent a personal message to Mr. Lu Ping, going over the same ground. We made it clear that we wanted to discuss the proposals for the 1995 LEGCO elections fully with the Chinese and that they were proposals and not firm decisions. It is in the interests of Hong Kong that there should be calm and rational dialogue between us. We very much hope that the Chinese will eventually agree to that.
It would not, I am sad to say, have been politically possible for the Governor to have spent months and months discussing his thinking in private with the Chinese because then we would have seen a resulting speculation and uncertainty in Hong Kong which, as all my noble friends and particularly Lord Derwent and others have said, would have undermined Hong Kong in a dangerous way. It would have damaged stability and prosperity. I need only remind your Lordships of the difficulties over the airport negotiations to underline that those discussions could have carried on for a very long time.
It has also been said by my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever and others in this debate that the Governor's policy speech was a fundamental change in our approach. There is no change in our approach to relations with China over Hong Kong; we still want good co-operation in the interests of a smooth transition. The Joint Declaration remains the foundation of our policy. On an issue of this great importance in Hong Kong, we believed that having tried to explain the proposals in detail to the Chinese side beforehand, to avoid surprises, there would be debate. No one was in any doubt about that. But we emphasised throughout that on electoral arrangements the Governor would announce proposals. We genuinely want to discuss those proposals, so now is the time for calm discussion.
A number of your Lordships asked me about the use of the Joint Liaison Group. Perhaps I may say that the British Government are fully ready to discuss the electoral proposals with the Chinese in any forum they wish. We would be happy to hold such talks in the Joint Liaison Group. As my noble friend Lord Glenarthur said some moments ago, the 25th meeting of the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group is currently taking place in Hong Kong. It is covering a number of issues, sadly not this one, but I shall leave it to our senior representative to summarise the outcome after the meeting finishes tomorrow. I would simply say to the House in this respect about the use of the Joint Liaison Group that we have no hesitation in wishing to discuss with them any matters of the nature that your Lordships have raised in this House tonight.
The noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, who as ever made one of the most interesting speeches on the subject of Hong Kong, was concerned, as was the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, about the point of introducing new electoral arrangements in 1995 if the Chinese seemed determined to overthrow them in 1997. This goes back to the responsibility that the Governor has to make proposals for electoral
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arrangements that he considers to be in the best interests of Hong Kong. That is why we very much hope that the Chinese side will not take precipitate decisions as to what they may or may not do several years from now. If the electoral arrangements can be seen to work and produce a responsible Legislative Council in 1995—I am sure they can—there is no good reason for the Chinese side to overturn the situation in 1997. They would need to take full account of the effect on Hong Kong itself and also the international reaction if they were to do so.
A number of your Lordships are concerned about the composition of the Election Committee. The main focus of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary's exchanges with the Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, in early 1990, which has been the subject of correspondence now published, was the question of the number of directly-elected seats in LEGCO. On that we did not reach full agreement. We accepted 18 then as the number of directly-elected seats for 1991, but we reserved our right to press for more than 20 seats in 1995. Our view remains that an increase in that figure would be the simplest way of expanding democracy in Hong Kong. That has been a hope expressed again and again in Hong Kong, by Members in your Lordships' House and in other places. We still hope that China will reconsider its position on this.
Another part of the exchanges between my right honourable friend Douglas Hurd and the Chinese was the possible composition of the Election Committee. We agreed in principle to some ideas discussed by the two sides, but on certain important conditions. In the event, the conditions were not met. As recently as last summer Chinese officials discussed with groups from Hong Kong possible compositions for the Election Committee quite unlike those discussed in 1990. It is therefore clear that the Chinese side as well regarded the 1990 discussions as being inconclusive.
The Basic Law does not, of course, spell out details of the arrangements for the 1995 Legislative Council election. Those are a British responsibility. It is the Governor's responsibility to make those proposals. May I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sharp—and also to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, who is with us—that I think in a sense he has misunderstood the Governor's proposals. The Governor is not suggesting any increase in the number of directly-elected seats.
I know that there was, of course, the OMELCO's consensus in 1989, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, referred, and it was that which sought 30 directly-elected seats in 1995. The exchange of correspondence to which I have just referred shows that we fought hard for an agreed increase in directly-elected seats. We concluded that we should not proceed unilaterally. That remains our position. There has been no change in our policy on that. We note that in the more recent debates in the Legislative Council there is no longer a consensus on this specific point, and that is why we have not followed that through.
The noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, and a number of your Lordships, also referred to the reason for the

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release of the exchange of messages between the Foreign Secretary and the Chinese Foreign Minister. It was the Chinese Government who proposed that we should release these documents. They had referred to them in public. We decided to set the record straight, and I hope that noble Lords have read the documents because they make clear that there is no secret deal whatsoever over the Election Committee.
I have also been asked whether there was an understanding. The record of what I said a few moments ago shows clearly that we were prepared to agree in principle to the composition of the Election Committee, but as the conditions of that offer have not been realised then the composition of the 1995 Election Committee is a matter still to be decided in the eyes of the Chinese because they certainly did not decide it was settled.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, and a number of your Lordships, talked about a breach of an earlier Sino-British agreement on convergence; that is, that both sides should have agreed before the proposals were announced. I fully understand why that has been said and posed as a question. We fully accept, too, the need for as much continuity as possible, but we are in that process of discussion now on those proposals. I hope that no one says that we should have accepted that the Chinese side had a veto over any proposals coming forward for 1995 elections. We face practical deadlines. We must get on with some proposals in debate now. We have made it clear that we welcome proposals from the Chinese as well as from other bodies in Hong Kong itself, for there may well be alternative proposals which will serve the needs of the people of Hong Kong better.
I have had a good look at the composition of the Governor's proposals. They do not affect the agreed numbers in any way. But as my noble friend Lord Marlesford said, they have implications for the composition of the functional constituencies, and in turn this obviously will affect the kind of people who are to be elected. That is a matter that should rightly be discussed and debated, and that debate can now begin.
The noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, asked that we should not allow—I think that was his word—the fact that there were proposals for nine new functional constituencies to amount to direct elections by another name. I must agree with him that the Governor's proposals are a broadening of participation, but I really would not think that this was so radical that it could not be encompassed for Hong Kong in the future for one country, two systems. The functional constituency representatives would still be elected by economic category to represent people at their workplace, and that is the essence of the functional constituency system, which has of course already been largely accepted.
My noble friend Lord Skidelsky questioned whether the Governor's ideas were acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. I can only say to him that on current reading of what is going on in Hong Kong the people seem to be in favour of those proposals by a majority of about two to one. We must, of course, be sure in what is going on that those proposals are
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clearly and rightly debated. I hope that when they are better understood, that majority may even improve. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, said that the Governor must be supported. If he is right, fair enough, but if he is wrong the Governor must have the chance to push these proposals through the debating system. That is exactly what we wish to achieve with the Chinese Government.
Many other issues have been raised in this debate, and particularly the whole question of a peaceful change, which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, raised. He referred to security and law and order in the colony, and to that being an important responsibility for the Government. May I say to him that the size of the garrison in Hong Kong is, and will be, kept under regular review. I shall particularly keep in mind the advice of the noble and gallant Lord, based on his great experience, when we come to the next review. We do understand the implication of his remarks.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, both asked about human rights. The noble Lord, Lord Holme, also referred to that issue on the basis of his experience, particularly in the last week. The Hong Kong Government, with us, have taken measures to try to strengthen human rights in Hong Kong. Of course, we have the two international covenants on social and political rights, implemented in Hong Kong through the Bill of Rights which was introduced last year. The importance of saying that is that Article 39 of the Basic Law also provides that those two covenants continue to apply in Hong Kong after 1997.
That is a very good reason why we should look to the Government of China for the improvement of human rights within China. We do not take perhaps as hard a line on that as I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer, would sometimes like us to. We all regret what happened at Tiananmen Square, and nobody has any time for behaviour of that nature. However, when the troika of foreign ministers raised the question of human rights with the Chinese Foreign Minister at their meeting in New York on 21st September, on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly, they were listened to politely. Again, our Prime Minister put forward our views with the Chinese Vice-Premier, Zhu Rongji during the latter's visit in November of this year, and the Chinese should be in no doubt about the depth of our concern. That also means that those conventions are respected after 1997.
A number of your Lordships have referred to the critical key commercial business of Hong Kong and the effect on Hong Kong. In his opening remarks my noble friend Lord Geddes was very clear about the tremendous competition that exists for the whole world to see in Shanghai and other cities within China. May I say we believe that the example of Hong Kong is going to catch on in many other places which may not be currently in the economic zone of China. There is great potential, and that is why I particularly take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Holme. He commented about having better commercial promotion within the whole China region. Certainly it is

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a region of outstanding opportunities for British business, but above all it is a region of outstanding opportunities for Hong Kong business. That is why we must work away at this relationship and ensure that we can succeed everywhere that British business wants to work.
How right my noble friend Lord Derwent was in his very realistic approach to the whole situation in Hong Kong. He made some very wise remarks, although I will not go over them all. My noble friend Lord Marlesford showed a very clear understanding of the role the Governor must play in order to keep the economic future of Hong Kong going strongly. We are well aware of the anxieties about the financial future of Hong Kong and we are also well aware of the nervousness which was expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, concerning consultation with the Chinese on major franchises which extend beyond 1997 in Hong Kong.
We consult the Chinese in respect of a number of important franchises, as we have agreed, such as that of the China light and power scheme of control. I must say that when we have been talking about such matters the consultations have proceeded smoothly and we sincerely hope that they will continue to do so, because we believe it is critically important for Britain and China to do business together. Where British business is competitive, I see no reason why Britain should not continue to win contracts in China, and Hong Kong firms, too.
When Vice-Premier Zhu Rongji was here I had particular discussions about prospects in China with the deputy Trade Minister. I look forward to seeing more contracts won by British companies in China: indeed, many of them are being backed by Hong Kong money, and that is a very important aspect of Hong Kong's future—that it should be a full partner in the projects which are going on all over China.
Her Majesty's Government take very seriously their responsibility for administering Hong Kong up to 30th June 1997. It is one of the highest foreign policy priorities. Some have suggested that we are pressing ahead recklessly to build up democracy without taking account of the interests of the Hong Kong people. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I said, we believe that the Governor's proposals for broadening democracy would help to safeguard Hong Kong's way of life. I hope that those who criticise the Governor's proposals will explain how they would go about meeting the wishes of the Hong Kong people for a greater say in the running of their own affairs. It is not realistic to imagine that Hong Kong can continue to develop economically while standing still politically. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, made that very clear in her speech to your Lordships tonight.
On 7th October the Governor said in his policy speech to the Legislative Council:
"The success of the economy is central to all our hopes. We must do nothing to jeopardise it".
I believe that all noble Lords who have spoken in our debate today agree with that. Our policy, and the policy of the Governor, is directed to securing the
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prosperity and the stability of Hong Kong. Part of the answer is protecting Hong Kong's way of life and that means building up representative government within the terms of the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. Another part is achieving as much continuity as possible and a smooth transition in 1997. That means co-operating with China. I take very much to heart what the noble Lords, Lord MacLehose and Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, said tonight. However, as my noble friend Lady Thatcher said, there is no contradiction between those two propositions. We wish to move ahead in co-operation with China in the best interests of the people of Hong Kong; and the Governor and Her Majesty's Government are committed to doing that to the full.
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I wonder whether I may ask her just one question. If the Chinese Government continue to reject the proposals, is it the intention of the Governor of Hong Kong to implement them nevertheless?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, that is a question that at this stage, either in this debate or in the whole process, is simply not answerable. I believe that other suggestions will come forward, some perhaps based on the Governor's proposals. Some may come forward anew, but I do not think it does any good to speculate at a very early stage in the process, particularly when matters are quite as sensitive as they are. I think the whole House would welcome the opportunity for quiet and calm reflection; and perhaps some of that reflection might not be on the front pages of the newspapers, because in that way I am sure we will gain greater success. Above all, the people of Hong Kong must be fully consulted, and that is exactly what the Governor intends to do.
8.29 p.m.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, it would be invidious and indeed wearisome, particularly at this hour, to single out any particular speech in a debate of such amazingly in-depth talent. Having said that, that is exactly what I am going to do, but very briefly. First, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Shawcross, if I heard him aright, made the extremely interesting comment that in his opinion—and that is the opinion of a barrister of enormous eminence—not only the spirit but the substance of the Governor's proposals were contrary to the Basic Law. If that is what he said then I would urge my noble friend Lady Chalker to take a very hard look to make sure that that situation does not arise.
The noble and learned Lord also made a most interesting comment about the Governor adopting a hustings mode. This is not the occasion to go into that issue in depth. However, perhaps I may ask my noble friend on the Front Bench to impress on her colleagues, particularly in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, how difficult it is to translate an occidental mind and a Westminster mode into an oriental situation.

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The second speaker I should like to mention is the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, who, in a thoughtfully prepared and thought-provoking speech, yet again did an enormous service to this House and indeed to Hong Kong. We thank her for it.
Thirdly, I should like to mention the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose. My noble friend on the Front Bench has already mentioned his extremely interesting and thought-provoking speech. I urge my noble friend to pay particular attention to what he had to say.
Fourthly, my noble friend herself again displayed enormous courtesy and clarity from the Front Bench. Although she and I do not agree totally on this subject I thank her most sincerely for the way she handled the debate, as she does whenever she speaks from the Front Bench.
Finally, I should like to mention my noble friend —if I may now call him that—Lord Wilson of Tillyorn. All the words that I had written down with which to congratulate him on his maiden speech have been used. I certainly shall not repeat them. Perhaps the best thing that I can do is to advise your Lordships that I have it on good authority that his hatter is waiting in the Peers Lobby and is most grateful because he is quite certain that the noble Lord will have to order hats several sizes larger and wishes to express his appreciation. I jest. The noble Lord, Lord Wilson, made a truly outstanding maiden speech. We are most grateful to him for that and hope very much to hear him again. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Sudan
8.32 p.m.
Baroness Cox Baroness Cox rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy towards developments in Sudan.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to raise a number of disturbing developments in Sudan. I should like to thank all noble Lords who are participating this evening, especially for retaining their patience and a space in their diaries during successive changes of date.
First, I declare my own interest and involvement in Sudan. A few years ago I spent the summer as a nurse in remote area desert work in North Kordofan in the small town of Hamrat El Wiz developing an immunisation and health education programme for the Moslem communities living there. In August this year I had the opportunity to visit southern Sudan in response to an invitation to Christian Solidarity International from the New Sudan Council of Churches. We visited the areas of Waat and Nimule. We had also hoped to visit Yambio but logistical problems made that impossible.
I have therefore visited both the North and the South, although sadly the situation in the North has deteriorated very seriously since I was there.
My concerns, and the questions which they raise, are based on either first-hand evidence or reports received from people or organisations for whom I
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have great respect. They involve three inter-related issues: violations of human rights in the North and South; humanitarian needs; and the need for a political solution to the problems.
The right to life is the most fundamental human right of all. Yet thousands of Sudanese have been killed in recent years—by drought, flood, famine and war. Many of those deaths have been inflicted by deliberate killing or by the withholding of life-sustaining supplies. It is also reckoned that about 5 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes and homelands. Of those approximately 2 million have had to flee to the North, about 2 million to the South and about 1 million abroad.
I can speak with personal experience of the plight of those who have had to flee from their homes to seek safety in the South. Many of those are refugees from the government's brutal policies in the Nuba Mountains; others have had to flee from the war or from the effects of drought or flood, to avoid starvation in places now rendered inaccessible to humanitarian relief.
The situation for refugees in the South is desperate. We visited camps for displaced people at Aswa and Atepe, near Nimule. The authorities estimated approximate populations of 19,000 at Aswa and 23,000 at Atepe with a further 41,000 at Ame. Aswa camp had been established only within the previous two weeks before we went for refugees from war in the Torit region and was administered by the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Association. Food was being provided by various organisations, including the UN World Food Programme. However, it had been limited to a supply of only 2.7 kilogrammes of unground cereal for each person for seven days. There was no other food, such as beans or oil, except for a limited supply of food supplement for malnourished children, which had run out.
Problems abounded. For example, there was no equipment for grinding the cereal. There were no mosquito nets. The only water available was from the river, which could be as much as 3 kilometres away, and nine people, including children, had been killed by crocodiles in the previous fortnight while collecting water from that river. There were acute shortages of essentials such as shelter and blankets; being the rainy season, temperatures could fall quite low. People were living in quagmires. There were no buckets for transporting water. Cooking utensils were not available. There were no medicines to treat the numerous illnesses, including TB, diarrhoea, dysentery, scabies, kala azar, some leprosy and worm infestations (hookworms and tape worms). As the people said: "We could talk about other shortages such as soap, but because we are only displaced people all we ask for are the essentials for survival".
The camp at Atepe had been established in July and accommodated refugees from Bor, Torit and other areas, including some from Ethiopia. Most of the people there had had time to build their own dwellings and, with characteristic Sudanese initiative, begun to cultivate plants. Food and blankets had been supplied by various NGOs. So their predicament was not as desperate as that in Aswa. But there were still acute

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shortages of essential foodstuffs, including milk. Medical problems were similar to those in Aswa and people were dying daily from conditions which could have been treated if only medicines had been available.
Acute shortages of medical supplies were also dramatically evident in the hospital at Aswa. Built in 1982, it had been closed in 1986 when all the equipment and fittings were taken North, leaving an empty shell. That hospital now serves a catchment area of 700,000 people, but the only supplies which had been received were a consignment of drugs from the diocese of Torit and surgical dressings from the ICRC. Problems abounded: no running water—the only pump was broken; no electricity—the solar generator's batteries were down, so surgical operations had to stop at sundown; no sanitation; no tools to dig latrines or air-raid shelters; and an acute shortage of medical supplies. Urgent needs included plaster of Paris, needles, syringes, intravenous fluids and administration sets; surgical dressings, basic instruments; antiseptic solutions, indeed all basic supplies. In spite of those shortages the hospital was about to develop a primary health care programme with 180 clinics; 65 were already operational and had begun vaccination programmes with supplies from UNICEF. I and my colleagues were deeply impressed by the care being given by the staff in impossible conditions and we made urgent recommendations for the immediate provision of essential supplies.
I have dwelt at some length on the plight of the displaced people in southern Sudan because I can speak with first-hand knowledge. I can also testify to the aggressive policies of the government in attacking civilian populations with aerial bombardments. Attacks with Antonov planes may occur at any time, but especially on Sunday mornings when the Christian communities gather for worship. I recently received a letter from a medical colleague who described an air-raid in which a large bomb fell very near a large gathering causing some deaths; any nearer and it could have been a catastrophe.
There are other situations in southern Sudan which are also cause for great concern, such as those in Juba and Malakal. In Juba between 250,000 and 300,000 people are being held hostage by government forces. A particularly worrying development was the expulsion of all foreigners, including personnel of aid organisations. The conditions in which these hostages are being kept are reported to be horrific. They are imprisoned in the stadium and churches, subject to maltreatment and starvation. There have been recent reports of arrests, torture and executions. The roads around Juba have been mined to make it impossible for civilians to escape.
The SPLA have been allowing government flights to take food into Juba, despite the fact that government forces earlier this year used six flights by aircraft with United Nations markings to transport soldiers and military equipment into Juba. The lack of independent, international supervision of the distribution of this food is a matter for serious concern. The release of these hostages in Juba must surely be
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recognised as an urgent priority by the international community if the 250,000 to 300,000 people trapped there are to be saved from death, or a fate worse than death.
It may be of interest to your Lordships to note that the situation in Juba and other violations of human rights in Sudan are apparently highlighted in resolutions before the United States Senate and Congress.
Other areas of concern elsewhere in Sudan include the fate of the people in the Nuba Mountains and the plight of the displaced people moved into the desert around Khartoum. The Nuba people have been subjected to appalling atrocities by government forces: villages have been attacked, villagers massacred and reportedly over 100 men have been crucified. Atrocities have been going on for some time and have been documented by reputable organisations, such as Africa Watch and Amnesty International.
With regard to the treatment of displaced persons who fled to the north, there have been reports of gross violations of human rights there. Reports indicate that between 400,000 and 500,000 refugees have been forced out of Khartoum into the desert, with no adequate supplies of water, food or shelter. The only people allowed to visit them are, it is reported, Moslem agencies. It is claimed that they require refugees to deny their own religious faith and give allegiance to Islam in order to obtain humanitarian relief.
As I begin to draw to a close, I wish to make some general points and to ask my noble friend what extra help the Government can give to alleviate the suffering of the people in Sudan. First, very briefly, there are the general points. I have focused on the suffering caused or exacerbated by the present Government of Sudan. This is because I try to follow the example of Andrei Sakharov and to take the side of the victim. Although the conflict in southern Sudan involves fighting and resistance by the SPLA and although there are reports of some atrocities carried out by their forces, it is the belief of the people with whom I worked that the SPLA is in general fighting a just war for the survival of the people of the south and for the protection of their basic human rights, including religious freedom, and that it has the general support of the population who now live in the south. Certainly the predicament of the hostages trapped in Juba, the people in Malakal, the tragedies experienced by the people in the Nuba Mountains, and the suffering of the displaced people pushed out into the desert around Khartoum, are all issues for which the government in Khartoum must be called to account.
I know that the Government have made valuable and valued contributions in the form of aid through the ODA. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend details of this aid. Therefore I conclude with four specific questions to my noble friend. I gave a little notice of them, but I apologise that I could not give more notice.
First, will Her Majesty's Government be able to exert their influence to prevail upon the Government of Sudan to respect the human rights of all its people,

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to which it is indeed formally committed by being a signatory of relevant treaties? I ask in particular whether the Government are able to use any political initiatives to prevail upon the Sudanese Government to release the hostages held in Juba and Malakal, and to provide safe havens for them and for other people tragically displaced by war or natural calamities, perhaps particularly the internal refugees concentrated in Nazir and Waat? There is a precedent for the concept of safe havens in what has been talked about and provided for the Kurds. There is an urgent need for similar initiatives for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Sudan.
Secondly, may I ask my noble friend whether further thought could be given to the logistics and to the amount of the distribution of life saving humanitarian aid? As I mentioned, some aid is being provided to the south, but it is inadequate to meet the desperate needs of the people; also it often cannot reach those most in need. This raises two subsidiary questions. With regard to logistics, could some assistance be provided to help with the repair of roads and provision of appropriate trucks to enable access to refugees who at present are unable to reach the supplies provided? Could the Government use all their powers of persuasion in conjunction with the EC and the UN to require the government in Khartoum to guarantee access by independent international aid organisations to provide aid to all in need, especially those hostages trapped in Juba and Malakal; and to all internal refugees, especially those in Nazir, Akobo and Waat, and those relocated in the desert around Khartoum?
Thirdly, would my noble friend agree that it is a matter of concern that, as the West pours millions of dollars of aid into Sudan, the Khartoum Government are reported to be using some of that for forced Islamisation, with their policy of in some places making aid conditional on religious allegiance to Islam?
Finally, could this Government use all their powers of persuasion to encourage the Government of Sudan and the SPLA/SPLM to convene a peace conference under their auspices to try to achieve a peaceful resolution of the current civil war? There is widespread belief in Sudan that the British have a special understanding of the complexities of the present situation, as well as some responsibility for establishing the political framework which set the scene for the resulting tragedies. The people of Sudan are looking to Britain for help, not only with humanitarian aid, but also for political initiatives for a just political solution; for protection of basic human rights and perhaps support for a referendum for the people of the south and from the Nuba Mountains on their political future.
The situation of the people suffering from natural and man-made calamities in Sudan has been allowed to fall off the bottom of the agenda of international concern, as the tragedies of former Yugoslavia and Somalia have understandably preoccupied the media. But the suffering of the people in Sudan is horrendous in intensity and in scale. It could soon become another
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Somalia. The people there feel forgotten and betrayed by the rest of the world. I hope that we in Britain will not fail them in their hour of desperate need.
8.47 p.m.
Lord Blease: My Lords, I warmly compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, on initiating this debate. We all know of her strong, caring commitment and we applaud her dedicated personal work among the starving, oppressed, strife-torn peoples of Eastern Europe and Sudan.
As we debate the awful plight of the Sudanese people, we are mindful of the terrible, inhuman treatment of poor people throughout the world—people living on the fringes of today's modern society and its cruelly divided communities. We know only too well of the suffering and the deaths caused by drought, pestilence, disease and other natural disasters.
As communities and as individuals we cannot rationally come to terms with some of these tragic happenings. But when we are made aware of so many avoidable bitter murders, so much mayhem, cruel brutality and suffering, and when we see untimely deaths and destruction brought about by gross misuse of political power, internecine conflict, sheer greed and the evils of misplaced sectarianism, as well as the misuse of nationalism, tribalism and ideologies, we gasp with disbelief and despair. We try earnestly to rise above the depressing challenge of the words,
"Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn".
My interest in the plight of the Sudanese was quickened in 1979. Together with the late Lord Brockway and the Reverend Noel White, Assistant General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society in Ireland, we sought the help and advice of the Overseas Development Administration about an element of aid to Sudan which impinged on the relationship between Khartoum in the Moslem north and Juba in the largely Christian south.
I have not since been actively involved in the ongoing work in Ireland, both North and South, relative to the Sudan situation. However, I am pleased to be able to assure the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and other noble Lords that firm organisational developments continue among the Churches in Ireland concerning current Sudanese affairs.
In October the Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Robert Eames, wrote to me expressing the concern of the Irish episcopal bishops about the serious existing situation in Sudan. I know that the Archbishop and the Irish bishops are anxious to do whatever they can to help and are interested in the outcome of the debate.
Last week I discussed Sudan matters with Dr. David Stevens, the General Secretary of the Irish Council of Churches, and with the Reverend Dr. Gordon Gray, Convener of the Overseas Board of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. I understand that active arrangements are being made among the Churches in Ireland to promote the co-ordinated planning of aid efforts in Sudan. Those proposals for developments are being undertaken in conjunction

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with the established church organisations in Sudan and in the neighbouring parts of Kenya, Uganda and Egypt. The proposals will be aimed to include measures to give suitable relief aid to meet the plight of the peoples of Sudan, to work for the cessation of civil war and guerilla fighting and to alert the active attention of the international community to the urgent need for appropriate action.
The past history and reports of current events in Sudan are complex and difficult to disentangle in order to enable positive and reasoned aid action. Professional diplomats and experts in Sudan affairs appear reluctant to make firm pronouncements on the kind of concerted action that is required. After recent consultations with some Sudanese people now in London I believe that the objectives are clear. All efforts should be designed to help towards the establishment of an accountable democratic government; the provision of equitable law and order; the laying of foundations for economic development; and the enhancement of the social well-being of the Sudanese people based on acceptable standards of civil liberties, human rights and lasting peace.
In that connection I believe that it is important that in any proposal for action aid we fully recognise that Sudan is the largest country in Africa, with frontiers on the borders of eight other sovereign states. Other factors are that the United Kingdom and other governments have made vast amounts of finance, goods and services available to Sudan in humanitarian relief efforts. There are also partnership arrangements between the government and non-governmental agencies, as well as the amount of voluntary aid giving by the general public. However, it is obvious from the deplorable events about which we have heard this evening, about which we have read and about which we have been told by the Sudanese that more requires to be done to rescue, remedy and rebuild the Sudan community. We heard in reality and in detail an account of the terrible suffering of the Sudanese given by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. I cover a broader canvas, but it is important to ensure that the details are made to work. My broader canvas includes more detail of the accountability of others to look at the needs of the Sudanese.
I believe that, while much has been done by way of aid to the civilian population, there is a serious lack of committed political will and urgency by the UK Government and among the international community organisations to deal in an open and constructive way with the realities of Sudan's future. I recognise that urgent and constructive action is needed but at the same time caution and diplomacy are essential. It may be that, with the present alignment of opposing ideological power blocs, precipitate action will cause a worse and more difficult situation. We cannot ignore those facts.
It may be helpful if the Minister will tell the House the Government's policy on international community action. There appears to be a reluctance by the Government to place Sudan matters on the agendas of the Overseas Development Administration and the Foreign Office. They appear to have a low priority in
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both those departments. Sudan is low on the agenda of parliamentary affairs. The last date on which Sudan was mentioned in a general way was on 30th January 1991, almost two years ago. It was a debate tabled by the Official Opposition Party in another place on the subject of famine in sub-Saharan Africa. I understand from the Inter-Parliamentary Union that there has not been a visit to Sudan under the auspices of the IPU since 1975. The last Sudanese parliamentary group to visit London was in 1978.
In that connection it will be helpful if the Minister can explain the extent of the current bilateral relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the Sudan Transitional National Assembly. Furthermore, what is the extent of the United Kingdom's import and export trade with Sudan? Have government departments approved any United Kingdom contracts for public works construction in Sudan? It is important to have those facts. They may reveal a relationship at government level which is not reflected in what is seen to be reciprocated by the Sudanese powers which are in control.
The situation in Sudan is exceptionally grave. Among the many organisations interested in the future happiness and well-being of the Sudanese the following points are a consensus for action. I wish to quote from a fortnightly publication issued by a number of Sudanese who are living in the United Kingdom and other countries outside Sudan. They detail a number of the matters described by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and conclude by stating:
"we honestly fear that Sudan is on the verge of becoming another Somalia or Bosnia unless swift and immediate international action is taken. We humbly urge the International Community, Nations, Humanitarian Organisations, Non-governmental Organisations, Churches and Individuals to co-operate and ensure that the United Nations Resolution on Sudan addresses the Need for Conflict Resolution, Humanitarian Aid and Human Rights".
I wish to conclude by outlining some of the recommendations put forward by one of the foremost international non-governmental organisations which I shall not name at this stage. It is a consensus on what is considered to be necessary and feasible to cope with the serious situation in Sudan. The first recommendation is:
"Donor governments should convene a donors' meeting early in 1993 to examine human rights abuses, Sudan's humanitarian needs and the Sudan Government's food export request.
EC Governments, including HMG, should urge the UN Secretary General to convene the Security Council to discuss the human rights situation in Sudan and to consider further international means, including within the United Nations system, to ameliorate the humanitarian situation in Sudan.
HMG should use every occasion—within the UN, within the EC, within the Commonwealth, and in other fora—to secure conditions in which a just and democratic political settlement can take place".
Finally:
"If the Sudanese government continues to abuse the human rights of the Sudanese people, the international community should apply further sanctions, including an arms embargo, and should consider the first range of options for humanitarian intervention that are open to the United Nations under this Charter".

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I have not given notice to the noble Baroness of my questions but I look forward to her replies to the matters that other noble Lords and I have raised this evening.
9 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, I join with other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness for raising this matter this evening and for continuing to strive to find a date for it. I am delighted that she has found a date on which I am able to join in the debate.
It is a sign of the gravity, complexity and the horror of the situation that many of the humanitarian organisations which have been able to give information to your Lordships about the situation in Sudan do not wish to be named lest they should be hindered in the work that they are doing. Indeed, there is considerable doubt as to whether some of the workers working on entirely humanitarian lines will be given visas to go back to the country. I am particularly lucky to have been briefed for this debate by a personal friend who has been working on and off for quite a long time in Sudan and who knows as much about the situation as anyone.
This country has a special responsibility to respond to the situation in Sudan. I believe that that is based on two main pillars: first, our previous involvement with the country which means that the Sudanese themselves recognise that we have a responsibility, because of our record in the past, to help them in the future; the second—and this is probably part of the noble Baroness's foundation for her interest—is the necessity that we have still as part of Christendom to try to help in a situation in which people are suffering because of their faith. As Christians we are called upon to help anyone who is suffering because of his faith but we have it on the authority of St. Paul that we have a special duty to those of the household of the faith. In western Europe we should take that seriously. For a very large part it is the Christian communities which are suffering so badly.
The position is appalling. We have heard a great many details already and I shall not take up your Lordships' time in repeating them. I should like to mention three particular points. The first is the Iranian involvement in this matter: the production of arms, the mounting of a holy war against the Christian population, and the interest in oil combined with the two.
Secondly, there is the threat to the Nuban people; and many of your Lordships will have read the letter in The Times today on that subject. Thirdly, there is the fact that it is not merely a matter of religion. The moderate Moslems are being threatened, killed and massacred almost as much as the Christians.
There are two points, both of which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blease, but to which I should like to draw particular attention as a shopping list for the Government, particularly as regards what they urge the United Nations to do because what is needed is a strong United Nations initiative in this area. The first point, which has been
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mentioned by both previous speakers is the free passage of civilians from Juba. That is a humanitarian matter of the greatest importance and urgency.
The second point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blease, is an arms embargo. The flow of largely Iranian arms, which are almost certainly western arms from Europe, into the hands of the government conducting their jihad in Sudan must be stopped. The United Nations has the right and the power to be able to achieve that.
Those are the points which I should like to put to Her Majesty's Government this evening. I hope that we shall be given a positive answer from the noble Baroness this evening.
9.5 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Coventry: My Lords, I too express my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for posing this Question which is so crucial, and which should be crucial to many in our country at present. I saw evidence of that late last summer when a Church leader from behind the lines in the southern Sudan —a most saintly and magnificent man who had spent months walking round the whole area as a kind of apostle for his people even though they were starving and suffering at the time—came to stay with us. Having got out from behind the lines, he met me and he spoke to many people in Coventry and Warwickshire. I shall never forget the impact that he made as he described the forgotten war which no one is reading about, hearing about, or knowing much about in this country. There are not many of your Lordships hearing about it in this House this evening. It is a war in which many are dying or are abandoned and alone. As he said, "We die and the world keeps quiet".
Questions arose from large congregations in all parts of the country who heard him speak. Why are our Government not taking a political initiative on this matter and why have we never heard them speaking of it? Why do we know nothing about it? What are the media doing about it? What are the United Nations doing about it? Those were penetrating, innocent and direct questions which are reflected in the Unstarred Question this evening.
I thought that the dignity, authority and inspiring quality with which that man described the situation of a church in a place of untold horror was really saddening. To him it certainly seemed to convey a neglect on the part of the western Church and a failure on the part of European governments, but particularly our Government with all their responsibility for shaping the country in the past, to make any political intervention. The Sudan which I had experienced in the 1970s and 1980s when I was general secretary of the Church Missionary Society was a very different Sudan. It was liberal-minded, humane and positive in many ways. It was a different kind of Islamic faith. I remember a fellow passenger travelling out on Sudan Airways remarking that he felt closer in spirit to his Christian landlady in London than to some of the Moslem fanatics whom he hoped would never come to power in his own country. Now they have, and moderate Moslems like him must fear and suffer.

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I see the beginnings looming of a great catastrophe in that country about which we have heard so little and about which I do not believe any government have done sufficient—certainly not our own—in political terms. As a result of the United Nations action, originally in respect of the Kurds and now in Somalia, and the debate over Bosnia, we are seeing a widening feeling among people in this country and other countries that the extreme denial of human rights, massive human suffering and near genocide in any part of the world should be met by some kind of intervention by the United Nations.
In the Sudan we are witnessing the imminent possibility, as noble Lords have already said, of a disaster which is even greater than that in Somalia. What action is our Government prepared to take? There has been nine years of war; intolerable suffering caused not only by war, but also by terrible injustices and misgovernment which is ruthless and widespread; an abuse of powers by the Sudanese Government, and of course one must say also the conflict of murderous factions in the Sudan People's Liberation Army on the other side. But the Government show abuse not only in combat areas but in the whole country—terrible, inexcusable violations of human rights, the most recent of which has been the killing of local or foreign aid workers. In September in Juba they even executed local US aid workers. They are depriving people of food, blocking the way to good health and frustrating the non-government organisation staff who are trying to help. All that is extremely alarming.
In addition, we have heard from other noble Lords about the change of religion being imposed in order to secure food and other actions of that kind. Nearly 2 million Sudanese have died, not just in war or even for resisting the government, but as victims of enforced starvation, massacres and wrongful assault. We have heard already this evening about the treatment of refugees in the north who were forced out of Khartoum into desert camps; deprived of water, food and medical aid; abused and ill-treated. We heard about the beleaguered Juba and other towns in the south and the refugee camps where ordinary non-combatant populations are subject to a reign of terror, sudden arrest and torture in the infamous and notorious White House in Juba. That reminds me of stories of President Amin at his worst in Uganda.
We heard about the Nuba mountains. I visited there and remember the happy communities; the sense of a pre-Islamic culture even though many of them were Moslems. I remember how some of our own Church leaders came from that area where the Church is now growing. Yet in that place we now see thousands being killed on ethnic grounds alone; villages are attacked; women are raped. It is near to genocide and an upheaval of the whole population.
All that has emerged since the rise to power of the present government, strongly influenced by the National Islamic Front—the previous Party—and indeed by Iran imposing a terrible security system across the whole country. It is a fearful distortion of Islam—we must not call it "Islam". That kind of imposition of the Sharia law since 1991 and that kind
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of interpretation of the Jihad, which is everywhere preached without qualification both in the south and in the north, is serious. There seems to be some kind of an Iranian-inspired deliberate thrust towards East Africa in the preaching and propaganda that I have heard, as well as an Iranian thrust towards the former Chevron oil fields found in the south.
The Sudanese Government are trying to put a polite front on all that when one speaks to them. They are experts at sounding convincing when assuring one of their good intentions. I know because I have met and discussed with representatives and at first trusted what they said to me until I discovered that it was simply not the reality. They have even managed to suborn an Anglican bishop into their ranks to be a kind of front man in the Cabinet. One can imagine the sense of betrayal felt by every Church person that I have heard speak of him.
I trust that our Government can give us more than answers about the magnificent aid which they have already given. Aid alone is not in question; it is a question of political action. I trust that they will run the risk of not colluding with the deceptive assurances of the Sudanese Government. Far more is needed. The Senate of the United States Congress has already begun to act. On 2nd October 1992 it recognised that the government of Sudan engages in a consistent pattern of gross violation of internationally recognised human rights; that they wage war in battle without regard to the civilian population and that the government of Sudan engages in gross abuses of human rights elsewhere in the country, including the campaign of forced displacement of tens of thousands in Nuba.
It recognised all those things and decided to resolve to ask the President of the United States to meet with the United Nations Secretary-General to arrange the convening of the Security Council to discuss the human rights situation and to consider further intervention. I trust that the new President is likely to respond to that pressure and persuasion in the United States. I do not think that we should believe any assurances of change or improvement. I do not believe that we should leave the Americans to act alone as we appear to be doing somewhat in Somalia. I do not believe that the Sudan Government can adequately meet the questions that we are asking at the moment about human rights. We should look critically at their request to export tonnes of food, including products for animal foods, to the European Community. We should be asking a great many more questions about that.
I believe that the northern government in Sudan is now on the verge of a big offensive. It is at this moment that Her Majesty's Government should urge the United Nations Secretary-General to convene the Security Council to discuss this human rights situation and to consider international pressure to relieve the vast human suffering; to ensure the safe conducts that we have already heard about, and to try to press an arms embargo which, if the United Nations were to press it, Iran might still be persuaded to comply with.
We have heard talk this evening of another Somalia. Indeed, when one thinks about the figures

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—and I hate to bandy them because one person suffering is enough—and a total population of 8 million in Somalia and one under threat of famine of 5 million; and when one turns to the 26.2 million in the Sudan and a population under famine threat of 7.5 million, one begins to see the scale of what we are facing. There is real danger of a greater disaster in another part of Africa of which we seem to have heard in this country amazingly little not only from the Government, as I have said, but from anyone else. I believe that this matter must be taken to the United Nations to avert another catastrophe. Nothing less, and no reassuring replies otherwise, will do. Juba is a place of appalling suffering at this time just like other besieged cities such as Sarajevo on which we have concentrated, and with a much deeper danger of the total extermination of a large part of the population if it is allowed to go on.
So I urge that Her Majesty's Government take this even more seriously than I know they already have and seek public and political action to remedy this wrong.
9.16 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, as I served twice in Africa as a diplomat and was brought up there, and as I have visited Sudan in earlier years and known many distinguished and honourable Sudanese both from the north and the south, I feel particular sorrow and concern at the terrible situation in the south today as well as some shame that I had not fully realised how appalling it has long been.
Not so long ago the world knew what was happening in the Gulag and behind the Iron Curtain, only with great difficulty. We heard of what was happening in Afghanistan where the Russians were waging a colonial war, through such courageous and distinguished journalists as Sandy Gall. Now we know what is happening in the former Yugoslavia just as we followed the Gulf War on television. Yesterday the US military operation to safeguard aid operations in Somalia was on the television screens at the very moment of landing.
But without my noble friend Lady Cox, her courage and persistence both in seeing for herself and in bringing what she has seen to the world's attention both in this House and elsewhere, we should apparently know virtually nothing about the forgotten war; the ethnic cleansing; and the reported selling of some women and children into slavery; and the destruction of whole communities which has been going on with unremitting ferocity in Southern Sudan for nine long years since the advent of the Nimeri regime, pledged to the conversion of all non-Moslems, Christians and animists alike.
Since 1989 the regime has of course become yet more militantly fundamentalist. I agree with the right reverend Prelate that it is not truly Islamic any more. I need not repeat what my noble friend has said. A whole nation is being destroyed both in terms of its peoples and its economic and social infrastructure. When the dry season begins again in January we can expect military operations by the Sudanese Army to be renewed with yet greater force.
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In any case, we are witnessing the displacement of some 3 million people—a vast human tragedy in terms of refugees —not least people whose only crime in the eyes of the regime in Khartoum is apparently to be Christian or animist. They are reportedly being forced to embrace the Islamic faith, to die or to be taken into slavery or forcible relocation in the desert in what amounts to extermination camps.
It is hard for us to imagine the courage and desperate strength of those minors who walked from Southern Sudan to Kenya via Ethiopia to escape and those who still resist conversion and retain their Christian faith. But the world is not hearing about these apparent flagrant violations of human rights, nor the ethnic cleansing which we so condemn in Yugoslavia and indeed in Iraq.
I believe that both the US Senate and the European Parliament have passed resolutions calling on the UN to concern itself urgently with the situation and to make what representations it can, given that the UN as yet has no mandate to intervene in the internal affairs of the country on the issue of human rights. I hope and believe that Her Majesty's Government have associated themselves with such representation. I realise, however, that first there is a long history of Islamic expansion within and into black Africa, of which this is a further and more militant phase. There will be some powerful Islamic states which, far from agreeing to bring UN pressure to bear in Khartoum, will be likely at least to condone, in some cases actively to support, a fundamentalist regime. Iran is an obvious example. The UN cannot act effectively unless there is a real consensus, and that takes time and long, patient and discreet negotiations. To do it by megaphone, to quote our earlier debate on Hong Kong in this Chamber today, will be counterproductive at government level.
I am quite sure, too,—although I hope to hear this categorically stated by my noble friend the Minister —that we will have suspended any bilateral aid, whether humanitarian or development aid, to Khartoum long since, because the Khartoum Government's actions in the south not only gravely infringe human rights, but cannot possibly be described as good government when they are destroying what economic structure there was.
In this connection, I should like to ask: what are the criteria of the International Monetary Fund which, I believe, has recently granted financial aid to the Khartoum Government? Even if it is not required to relate its aid to the human rights record of a receiving country, as we do, can it really call what is being done "good government"? I realise that my noble friend the Minister may not be able to answer that now, but I should like to know later. Are any stipulations made by the IMF about ensuring that a proper share of the aid goes to the south, and that it is not made conditional by Khartoum on conversion to Islam, as is apparently the case in the distribution of humanitarian aid? I should like to hear from my noble friend the Minister how we now distribute humanitarian aid. It is absolutely unacceptable that the delivery of that aid should be impeded. Are the nongovernmental organisations prevented from going in

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through Kenya or Uganda to deliver aid where it is most wanted? If not, could not Her Majesty's Government's former humanitarian allocation and, indeed, the share destined for development, be translated into trucks, lorries, farm implements and grinders for corn?
In short, I realise that in dealing with the Khartoum Government, we can as a government use only the most delicate and gradual moral pressure, preferably through other more moderate Islamic states, to bring about a change. I am confident that Her Majesty's Government are proceeding in just that way. However, that should not prevent, first, specific encouragement to the media to go and see and to tell the story to the world. That would at least bring in more voluntary aid for the NGOs to distribute. I was much heartened by the excellent letter on the Nuba in The Times today. We need more of that. Secondly, it should not prevent moves to deliver our official aid, both humanitarian and developmental, through adjacent countries such as Kenya and Uganda. The actions of the Khartoum Government are, after all, creating large numbers of homeless and dispossessed people who can escape only into neighbouring countries which are poor themselves. A way must be found to get the aid where it is needed. Thirdly, there must be moves to persuade the IMF, the World Bank, and the European Development Council to withdraw all support from the Khartoum Government unless a mechanism of oversight can be developed which specifically ensures that a proper proportion of that aid actually reaches the south.
Finally, although I recognise that this is a delicate time to pursue the question of the Khartoum Government's human rights record when the Islamic states are themselves exercised by what they see as our failure to protect Moslems in Bosnia, in practical terms we have no levers to exert since Khartoum does not need our aid, given the powerful support which it is receiving from Iran, and no sanctions could be effective. Still, we must speak out loudly and clearly here today. I hope, through the responsible members of the media, to tell the world what is happening and to send a message of admiration and support from a Christian country to suffering Christians, and especially from Britain which has had so long and honourable a connection with Sudan.
9.23 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, the previous two speakers addressed the House from a background of first-hand knowledge of Sudan. I cannot claim that advantage and therefore certainly will not detain the House for more than a few minutes. The last time that I was in Khartoum was 40 years ago when I was passing through to southern Africa.
My initial reason for wishing to speak in this debate was my admiration for the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and for her heroic humanitarian efforts. My second reason—and in the same connection—was the horror stories which the noble Baroness retailed tonight and of which she has made me aware.
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I am very glad on this Christian occasion when there is so much ecumenical pressure that I am able to bring a message through Cafod, the Catholic body which has done so much for many years in that part of the world, from the Catholic bishops in the Sudan. On the last occasion I was less than courteous to one of the right reverend Prelates but on this occasion I am full of admiration for, and in respectful agreement with, the right reverend Prelate. I shall come to that in a moment.
I have studied this matter rather intensively, not only with the help of Cafod but with the help of a lady and gentleman who know that part of the world very well. The gentleman has spent many years in the Sudan and neighbouring countries. I was talking to him again this evening. In that sense I come with knowledge which has recently been obtained. We are all aware of the horrors in the Sudan. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and others could have spoken for hours on the subject. No one doubts the horrors of the place. But we are left asking ourselves what we are going to do about it. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, said that we must not betray the people of Sudan. I feel that that is the right way of approaching it, but how much can we do unilaterally? We could do more than we are doing now but unilaterally our achievement would be limited. It does not excuse us for not improving on our present performance, but we must look to the international effort, a point stressed by the noble Lord, Lord Blease, and other speakers.
I wish to give strong and clear support to the right reverend Prelate. Are the Government prepared to do what the right reverend Prelate suggested? Are they prepared to approach the Secretary General and call for a meeting of the Security Council? I ask the question but I do not necessarily expect the Minister to answer tonight. However, I expect an answer on the next occasion because it is a question that cannot be ducked. The answer is a straightforward yes or no. It is not a question where any evasion is possible, although a certain postponement may be necessary at this hour of the evening.
I do not say that everything else is subsidiary to that issue but everything else pales into relative insignificance compared with that. Are the Government ready to place this on the agenda at the highest possible level in the biggest possible way? If they do not do that —I do not ask the noble Baroness to answer the question tonight—they will be shirking their duty and doing what the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, said. If we in Britain are not doing that much we shall be betraying the Sudan.
9.28 p.m.
Lord Robertson of Oakridge: My Lords, I should just like to support the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, in asking this Question on the situation in south Sudan. I do so with much diffidence, not least because of a general reluctance to intervene in the affairs of another country, especially one with which we have generally had friendly relations. Furthermore, Sudan is the largest country in Africa and also the poorest, with very few resources. It must be desperately difficult to govern.

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I should like to say a few words on the situation in Juba, but before doing so perhaps I may mention a number of factors that have a bearing on the present situation. First, since its foundation in the seventh century AD, Islam has had periods of militancy and periods of relative quietness. Now, spurred on by Moslem fundamentalists, Islam appears to be entering a new period of militancy. From many Islamic countries there are reports of persecution of minority religions, including Christianity, which itself overseas —sadly not in this country—is very much on a growth tack. So the two religions are coming together on a collision course.
Secondly, as was the case in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, religion and politics in Islamic countries are pretty well the same thing. What is more, they determine the legal system.
Thirdly, the people of south Sudan are different from the people of north Sudan ethnically and in their religion. For most of known history they have not been part of the same country as north Sudan. They do not want to become Moslems and they do not want Sharia law. Their fears of being discriminated against have proved to be all too justified, and to say that their human rights, especially religious freedom, are being denied would be the understatement of the year.
Perhaps I may now turn to the situation in Juba, the capital of the south, which is currently a battlefield for the warring factions. A recent report has said that the "massacre continues unabated". There are at least 250,000 people virtually imprisoned in the city. The main roads from it have been mined to deter escape. Another eye-witness has stated that lynch law is the practice of the day. Recent reports say that people are being crucified in north Sudan. The latest reports say that that is also happening in south Sudan. Youths are arrested without reason and are never seen alive again. Women are taken in for questioning, raped, killed and then thrown in the river. In the words of one eye-witness, the population is in "absolute fear".
The food situation is desperate. Some people cultivated food along the banks of the Nile. Just before it could be harvested, soldiers destroyed the crops and the fields were mined. The people of Juba feel abandoned by the West and, in particular, by the Christian Churches of the West. They know that we are their only chance, and they are aware of what is being done in Bosnia. They cannot understand why there is so much outcry and horror over what is happening in Bosnia while there is no outcry or horror apparent about south Sudan, even from their fellow Christians. For that reason I congratulate the noble Baroness on raising this matter in your Lordships' House.
In the past few days Moslem governments meeting in Jeddah have expressed their concern about the situation of Moslems in Bosnia, as they are fully entitled to do. Likewise, the governments of Christian countries are entitled to be anxious about the fate of Christians in south Sudan. It is not our job to tell the Sudan Government how to run their country. However, there are limits to the means that can be used to enforce their policies. In the light of what the
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noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and other speakers have described, the world will not be able to go on doing nothing indefinitely.
What can we do to help? I have four suggestions, none of them very original: first, I should like to see the Government and private organisations setting up a group to monitor the position as closely as possible. I was struck by the success of the results achieved by monitoring and keeping matters in the public eye when Russia was denting the human rights of some of its citizens. It is important to have a monitoring group set up to watch the situation as closely as possible and to keep it in the public eye.
Secondly, the Government should bring to the notice of the United Nations any serious denial of human rights, especially a denial of freedom of religion as laid down in paragraph 18 of the 1948 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. Thirdly, we should give all possible support to attempts by the United Nations to improve the situation in south Sudan. Fourthly, if the food position in Juba does not improve, we should press the United Nations to take food there as it is doing now in Somalia.
I should like to make one further point. With the increased militancy of Islam, the growth of the Christian Churches overseas, the increase in the world's population, the damage to the world's environment and the gap between rich and poor countries, situations such as those in south Sudan and Somalia will become even more frequent and more dangerous to world order than they are at present. That is something which long-term planners will have to take into account.
9.35 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury: My Lords, in a volume of reminiscences called Yet being Someone Other, Sir Laurens van der Post tells the story of a wartime venture when he was in command of a camel train taking supplies and ammunition from the Sudan to the Allied forces in Ethiopia. After a gruelling journey they reached their rendezvous to find no one there. Ahead towered the huge escarpment leading to the central Ethiopian plateau. Should they go on in the hope of making contact—which would mean manhandling their loads up that precipitous trail, a mile into the sky—or turn back? The young Sudanese drivers were weary, homesick and reluctant and held a council. What decided them to go on was the speech of an older Sudanese who said simply: "You are too young to remember the time before government"—by which he meant the Sudan Political Service—"came to our country. But I do remember, and if Government asks me to carry this load up there by myself, I will do it"
That is a moving story and I quote it to remind us of the achievement of some of the finest colonial judges and administrators ever to go out from the United Kingdom. They laid the foundations of the modern Sudan. Most of what they created has tragically been thrown away. What has never perished is the tradition in the hearts of the African peoples of southern Sudan that the West in general and Britain in

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particular are their friends and friends, moreover, who believe in justice and loyalty. It is to the West that the African Sudanese look in their present anguish.
This link is strengthened by the Christian Churches. Like all the African Churches, those in the Sudan are now fully indigenous. But the Sudanese Christians treasure their ties with the nations that brought the faith to them. In the suppression of religious freedom which they are today enduring, they rightly look to the world-wide Church to stand alongside them. The Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference and the Anglican bishops and the New Sudan Council of Churches have appealed to the world to take note of what is happening.
The diocese in which I have the honour to serve has for 20 years had a special partnership with the Episcopal Church of the Sudan. During that time, we have built up by exchange visits, aid projects, educational programmes and personal contact a very considerable awareness of and insight into Sudanese affairs. In the light of that knowledge, I have no doubt that this is the most perilous hour for the basic human freedoms of African Sudanese since the days of slavery.
We have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Cox —to whom we are grateful for this opportunity—harrowing details of the privations endured by some of the 5 million Sudanese displaced from their homes by the present war. Let me add briefly to that from our own Church evidence. An experienced eyewitness visiting one of the camps in the desert outside Khartoum, to which, as we have heard, southern refugees have been forcibly evicted, wrote:
"Conditions rival any I have seen … the heartlessness of the forced removal is matched only by the total lack of amenities".
A team from our diocese recently went to camps of Sudanese refugees in Uganda. In Yondu, a fairly small camp of originally 8,000 women and children was growing at the rate of 3,000 a week. The frontier camp at Nimule is thought to hold half a million people, but who can be sure? Even in Uganda, aid convoys that try to make the arduous journey are ambushed by brigands and in southern Sudan the corridors for transport are even more hazardous.
We have already heard of the hunger and disease in Juba. A letter from the war zone there the other day contained these words:
"Lucky are the people in Yugoslavia and Somalia for the world is with them. Condemned are the people of Juba, for the world has no access and no interest to know".
It would be easy to say, "Yes, this is all very sad, but it is the result of internal rebellion against the de jure government of an independent sovereign state and that means there is little we can do". I understand that line, but I believe that it mistakes both the history and the present reality.
The second civil war, which began in 1983 while I was myself visiting the Sudan, was itself a protest against injustice: the political fragmentation of the south—and forced fragmentation; the unfair plans for southern oil; the threat to the environment and way of life from the Jonglei Canal project; the Arabisation programme; and the imposition of Sharia law on the
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Sudanese. Because of the lack of a proper constitution and basic legal code there was nothing to which an African could appeal for redress of grievance. The whole system made human rights, as we understand them, impossible.
Indeed one of the problems we face today is that the Sudanese Government does not culturally operate with the concept of human rights, which it regards as cover for Western interference. But we need to keep in mind that the vast majority of African Sudanese, although indeed they understandably sympathise with the SPLA, have never been involved in the war at all. They are simply the grass on which the elephants fight. All they have ever wanted is a fair, non-sectarian system with equal justice and equal opportunities for all, and it is for them that the world community has a right and a duty to be concerned.
After the abortive SPLA attempt during the past summer to seize Juba, the people there have been the victims of a reign of terror by the intelligence and security organisations, of which we have heard something from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge. Even the mutilated bodies of schoolboys have been taken from the Nile with their school bags still tied to their backs. The very officers and men of the Sudanese Army have been victims.
Similarly after the attack by the Nazir faction of the SPLA on Malakal in October, reliable reports indicate that the Government's security officers arrested more than 150 officials and political figures, some of whom were tortured and executed. Both in the north and south the competing operations of no fewer than five internal security organisations mean, as always, that suspicion and mistrust are setting colleague against colleague, friend against friend. Open and honest discussion of the nation's problems is impossible.
There is a danger, when one is a representative of a Christian community, that comments of this kind will be heard as being anti-Moslem. This is all the more so when much violation of human rights has a religious character. Let me say with all the force at my command that neither in the Sudan nor out of it do the Churches see their plea for justice as an attack on Islam. If diplomatic influence on Khartoum is to have support from moderate Islamic states, it is vital to make this clear.
What Sudanese Christians want is a constitution and system of justice which guarantees religious liberty for all—Moslem, Christian, and indigenous African religion alike. They had enjoyed such freedom. They know its value. That makes its loss all the more poignant. For make no mistake, it has been lost. It was already under threat during the days of President Nimeiry when churches in the Nuba mountains were burnt down or bulldozed, and permission to build regularly refused. Violence and murder against Christians were not uncommon in that area even then. Since that time such crimes have become more general.
Priests and catechists have been tortured and killed. Church workers and religious from abroad have been deported. At least one bishop has been arrested and maltreated in detention without formal charge. Harassment, victimisation and discrimination are the

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norm. In particular I would draw your Lordships' attention to discrimination in the educational system. At the youngest end, children are not now admitted to primary education unless they have first attended two years of a Moslem halwa to be instructed in the Islamic faith. At the other end, adherence to Islam is now a condition for admission to university.
What can the world do? Some would like to see a United Nations-sponsored constitutional conference at which all parties could negotiate the kind of legal basis for a unified state to which I have referred. This, if it could be achieved, would be the greatest prize but I have to say that I see little prospect of this. The only pressure that might have brought it about was a military stalemate. With Iranian backing for the government forces and an SPLA split over policy and with diminished sources of supply, such a stalemate looks increasingly improbable. The swing to the government in the fortunes of war was probably the biggest single reason for the collapse of the Abuja talks. There seems little hope of resuming them now.
Similarly, much as we would all like to see a Western-led arms embargo, I am afraid the prospects for one are frankly non-existent—all the more so in view of the shoddy record of the West in the Iran-Iraq conflict. I believe the most likely way forward is through diplomatic and economic pressure linked to humanitarian aid. The suffering of the innocent Sudanese people needs to be highlighted around the world beginning, as everyone in this debate has urged, in the Security Council of the United Nations. The corridors for aid delivery already negotiated by the United Nations need to be made secure. Outside organisations and the United Nations observers must have access to all the areas in which displaced persons are currently in need, and all aid must go through them and not through the Sudanese Government. The prime requirement is to prime the Sudan open to unhindered world inspection and make it clear that the present government will not have international support until that happens. If we can achieve that, further improvements might follow.
I had a brother-in-law who years ago went to work in the Sudan for a multinational company. Tragically, he was killed in an accident shortly afterwards but he was a man of wide travel and experience. He said that of all the peoples among whom he had worked, the Sudanese were those with whom he had felt happiest and most at home. Many of us know what he meant.
This debate tonight is known about by those people. Hopes have been pinned upon it. Let it not just be for the record. Let us hear from the Minister some assurance that those hopes will not have been in vain.
9.48 p.m.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, how ironic it is that at a moment in history when the world was rejoicing at the collapse of the second great tyranny which has afflicted this century, we should discover that what lay beneath it was not a simple longing for freedom but a seething mass of racial and tribal hatred. In spite of two massive and catastrophic world wars, the earth seems to be more full of hatred and destruction than ever. And if you add to racial intolerance the elements
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of politics and religion the mixture becomes as explosive as anything the human race has yet managed to devise. In the course of only this day in your Lordships' House we have heard of intolerance and tyranny in Indonesia and in China; the newspapers are daily full of Serbian atrocities in Bosnia, and today brings the news of the armed relief mission to Somalia.
Yet there are other tyrannies to be fought, and the Sudan is as grave a case as any even though it never makes the headlines. Here the poisons of racial hatred, political oppression and religious intolerance are as powerful and as murderous as anywhere in the world. Yet the world does little to stop the systematic destruction of a fine and historic people and of a land which has the potential to be the agricultural saviour of a whole region of Africa. It needs only peace, organisation and water. What it receives is warfare and the unholy piling up of weaponry.
No civilised country will countenance the suppression of all religions save one, all political opinions save one, and all racial types save one. And yet the Sudanese Government give every indication of doing exactly that; and they give every indication of using all the means at their disposal to do so. Their armed forces continue to fight a useless and inhuman war against their own citizens. Wholesale imprisonment and deportation are the order of the day, and religious persecution is at a level of frenzy.
Yet much of that is done in the name of righteousness. Atrocities are committed in the cause of jihad, the "holy war". No war is holy; and no convictions, political or religious, can condone slaughter and oppression. Such things done in the name of militancy or fundamentalism are every bit as evil as such things done cynically. God save us from the convictions which allow the ends to justify the means. I am reminded of a verse of Chesterton's:
"Likelier the barricades shall blare Slaughter below and smoke above And death and hate and hell declare That men have found a thing to love".
What hope can our Government see of bringing some sense of compassion and decency into the actions of the Sudanese Government? Is there anything that the Government, or any of us, can do for the desperate people of the Sudan, caught as they are by the twin claws of starvation and oppression? Or do we and the Government despair of it? We must not. A country which has been in the past so much under our influence, and indeed within our power, deserves better of us. Not only history but humanity demands it of us.
There is a new and terrible phrase abroad, invented in Yugoslavia and known to the world for years in its actions, but which now echoes across the world—"ethnic cleansing". Its evil brothers are political cleansing and religious cleansing. In the Sudan what is in need of cleansing is not the race, or the politics, or the religions of its people but the hearts and minds of the powerful.
9.53 p.m.
Lord Hylton: My Lords, only this morning I was chairing a meeting concerning protective action for Bosnia. Today is a sombre moment, not only for

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Sarajevo but also for many places in the Sudan. It is in that context that I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for giving us an eye-witness account of the sufferings of the people in a place that should be a fertile and prosperous country. We all admire her courage and commitment in delivering personally much-needed supplies to places where most people fear to tread. Such actions are all the more necessary because there are few, if any, foreign journalists allowed in the Sudan and the movements of diplomats are strictly limited by the Government of the Sudan.
It may be helpful if I try to sketch a little of the history and background. The Sudan is a country of nearly 1 million square miles—the size of most of Western Europe. Its coast faces Saudi Arabia and, as has been mentioned, its land frontiers march with those of eight other African states. It became independent in 1956 and since then there have been some 26 years of military rule. The armed forces consume 40 per cent. or more of the government budget.
Since June 1989 the National Islamic Front has been in power. As is well known, that is a fundamentalist coalition of intellectuals, officers and others. For more than 18 years the south has been in revolt, with a period of uncertain peace between 1972 and 1983. Since then there has been little by way of education or medical service in the south. War, drought, floods, famine and disease have laid waste not only the south but also the Nuba Mountains and other areas. A major cause of war has been the attempt to impose Islamic law and the Arabic language on non-Islamic peoples.
The result of these mainly man-made disasters has been a dramatic scattering of people. The total number of refugees and displaced people may well be even greater than that given by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. My information is that 2 million to 3 million Sudanese are dispersed in all the inhabited parts of Egypt; 350,000 or so work in other Arab countries. Zaire contains some 600,000 refugees; Kenya up to 200,000; Uganda of the order of 100,000; Ethiopia and other countries some 50,000. In addition —as if that were not enough—there are some 2½ million displaced people living in appalling conditions, as we have heard, in the Khartoum region. The displaced therefore amount to some 6 million out of a total theoretical population of about 27 million.
There is little doubt that food and water have been used by the NIF government as levers to force Christians and others to convert to Islam. I have myself met an eye-witness to the selling of children into slavery. Indeed, he had himself redeemed some of them. Your Lordships will know that under the Koran a Moslem may only own a non-Moslem slave. There is some evidence, as has already been touched upon, that crucifixion has been used by the army and government militias as a punishment and in order to inspire terror. Some churches—for example, those in El Obeid and El Nahud—have been closed and many missionaries have been expelled, notably from Juba. Such things happen despite the Sudan's adherence to
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the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and People's Rights and the Convention against Torture.
It is regrettable that the government in the Sudan seem to have been encouraged to violate basic human rights by their contacts with such other countries as Libya and Iran. In June the Economist reported that the Sudan was selling millet to Libya valued at £7 million in order to be able to purchase weapons. That occurred at the very moment when it was asking for 130,000 tonnes of grain relief from the European Community in order to feed its western provinces. Iran is reported to have built a powerful radio transmitter near Port Sudan and to be completing new naval and air bases nearby. Four thousand tonnes of weapons are said to have been delivered from Iranian sources during October. Are these weapons, I wonder, intended for a government offensive in the south during the dry season, beginning from now onwards?
When the major city of Malakal was recently taken by the SPLA, six Iranian military advisers were captured. Other Iranians are thought to have been piloting Sudanese military aircraft. All these developments are profoundly worrying to friendly neighbouring countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kenya.
I am glad to say that world opinion is now beginning to focus strongly on the Sudan despite the lack of press and diplomatic observers. In August this year the Catholic bishops sent out a clear appeal from Lusaka, which they repeated from Rome in October. They did not hesitate to use the word "genocide". On 8th October the United States Congress, as has been mentioned, approved a resolution on human rights and humanitarian relief. That was followed a month later by an even stronger resolution in the European Parliament. Japan has cut off all aid except for humanitarian relief. The United Nations appointed Dr. Gaspar Biro as a special rapporteur for the Sudan. Has Dr. Biro begun work and will he receive all the facilities that he needs, for example, to travel where he wants and to see whom he wishes without fear of reprisals on those he sees?
I was glad to hear by letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, that a resolution on the Sudan is being prepared for discussion at the Third Committee of the forthcoming UN General Assembly. But I am sure that everyone will agree that that is not nearly enough. We need positive action from the Security Council, as many speakers have said.
Turning to the domestic front, are Her Majesty's Government fully satisfied about the personnel of the Sudanese Embassy in London? I understand that a considerable proportion of the people working there do not enjoy diplomatic status. Will the Government seek to increase the number of broadcasts on the BBC World Service in English and in other languages which are capable of reaching the Sudan? That service is very often the only source of true information available in remote regions. It is doubly important in an era of propaganda and lies.
The Sudan is massively in debt. In 1990 it owed 13 billion dollars and since 1989 the Sudanese pound has

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fallen in value by a factor of 11 or 12. The debt thus exceeds the estimated annual gross domestic product. Those who hold that debt should insist on an immediate ceasefire, followed by real negotiations for peace and an appropriate constitution. The Nigerian Government are much to be congratulated on their efforts which brought about negotiations last summer at Abuja. Alas, the negotiations were adjourned without agreement being reached. New attempts are therefore necessary. I trust that Her Majesty's Government will play their part in the desperately needed work for peace and that full use will be made of all available techniques for conflict resolution.
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Earlier we spoke about safe havens for the Bosnians. Safe havens have been mentioned again this evening as being vitally needed in the south Sudan. They are necessary before even the ceasefire can be agreed in order that there is interim protection for vulnerable people. I hope that all donor countries which have poured in large quantities of aid and relief during the past 10 or 20 years will now concentrate their minds on protection for the most vulnerable people. One hopes that that will lead to a ceasefire and to a permanent peace.
10.4 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House shares the admiration expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, for the indefatigable work of the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. In Sudan and in many areas where human rights are violated she works on behalf of the people and shares their sufferings. She brings back graphic reports which enable us to understand the plight of those people far better than we would otherwise. She then raises those matters effectively in your Lordships' House. We all owe her an enormous debt of gratitude.
The noble Baroness has rightly singled out the Government of Sudan—military dictators—for criticism this evening because their record is deplorable as I can say from my knowledge of the situation, although that is not as great as hers. I am chairman of the parliamentary human rights group and we have listened to the representations of the Sudan human rights organisations. We have received a good many letters and reports from people who have experience on the ground. I can confirm what has been said by other noble Lords: we have been asked not to mention names because that might jeopardise the work. That is an indication of the Sudan Government's attitude to any kind of criticism.
The problem is that so far the Sudanese have proved to be completely impervious to outside criticism, pressures or influence. As I understand it, our Government ceased development aid in January 1991, which no doubt the noble Baroness, Lady Park, will be pleased to hear, and they continued to express to the regime their great anxiety about the lack of respect for fundamental freedoms including the freedom of religion, as Ministers have assured the parliamentary human rights group.
The Government joined our EC partners in supporting the decision of the UN Commission on Human Rights to appoint a special rapporteur to investigate the human rights situation in Sudan. When the Minister replies, perhaps she will say whether or not the Sudanese Government have agreed to co-operate with the human rights rapporteur in his investigation.
In regard to the civil war in the south, the Government have made it clear that they expect a solution to be found by negotiation and not on the battlefield. They have approved the efforts of the Nigerians to act as mediators. The second round of the talks was due to begin again on Saturday, according to Nigerian spokesmen, but it has been deferred. It would be useful if the Minister would take this opportunity to say something about the prospects for the resumption of talks.
As my noble friend said, Britain is historically responsible for the creation of modern Sudan. We joined the Arab, Moslem north to the black Christian south. We delineated the boundaries of Sudan at the end of the 19th century and we handed over to the northern politicians who secured the acquiescence of the south by promising to consider federalism after independence. Of course, they failed to deliver that and for 17 years after independence there was a low intensity civil war until the 1972 Addis Ababa
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agreement which gave regional autonomy to the south. That carried some hope of a solution with it. However, Nimeiry (who was one of the parties to the agreement) abrogated it in 1983, and as we have heard, attempted to impose the Sharia which reignited the civil war.
My impression is that the second round of talks, if they resume at Abuja or elsewhere, is unlikely to succeed for two reasons. First, the SPLA has split into three factions, and some of the heaviest fighting has been between Colonel John Garang and his deputy Mr. William Nyuon, who was head of the SPLA delegation in Abuja. The disagreement between them appears to have stemmed at least to some extent from Mr. Nyuon's agreement to a unified SPLA delegation at Abuja so that the prospects for any accord among the southerners as to who should represent them at a resumed meeting must be extremely dim.
Mr. Nyuon and Mr. Riak Machar, who defected earlier with 25,000 men and withdrew them to the eastern bank of the Nile, are both of the Nuer tribe, whereas Colonel John Garang is a Dinka. Therefore, tribal rivalry is added to political differences. As has been mentioned by a number of your Lordships, including my noble friend Lord Beaumont, the Iranians are pouring millions of dollars-worth of arms into Sudan—and my estimate is 600 million dollars —mainly from China, I am informed, making it a springboard for Teheran's long-term plan to spread its Khomeinist ideology throughout north and central Africa.
Several noble Lords said that that huge arsenal cannot be intended for the defence of Sudan because there is no foreign threat to her territorial integrity. But the enormous growth of Sudan's military potential and the presence of 30 Iranian military advisers in Khartoum—referred to in the Sunday Times on 1st November—constitutes a threat to peace. That is why I agree with all noble Lords who said that the matter must be referred to the Security Council. It is a serious threat to peace. I should like the Minister to say whether the Government are taking it seriously and what information they have regarding the activities and intentions of Iran in the region.
I read in the newsletter issued by the Sudanese Embassy that last week a 32-man delegation from Iran, headed by Chief Justice Mohammed Yazdi, and including security intelligence officers, was in Khartoum. The Chief Justice took the opportunity of denying that there were any military personnel from Iran in Sudan. It would be useful to know whether the Government have any evidence of their presence. We heard of the three Iranians captured in the south. I believe that there is solid evidence, but it should be brought to the public attention and raised as part of our case in the United Nations for saying that a threat to peace exists.
According to the Arabic daily newspaper, Al-Sharg al-Awsat, of 30th November, Iran is preparing to hold a meeting in Khartoum in February 1993 for the Khomeinist groups, which they support in 19 countries. They were discussing with the Sudanese the establishment of an international secretariat in Khartoum. The Chief Justice said that Iran's relations

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with Sudan were of strategic importance, and he indicated that Tehran was planning a massive increase in aid to Sudan.
As many noble Lords said, if the Nigerian-brokered talks are almost certain to fail, should we not be looking for some alternative solutions to the agony of the south which has claimed an estimated 600,000 lives according to Médecins sans Frontières? There are now four warlords competing for the territory, counting the government as one of them. The position is therefore just as desperate, as has been said, as that of Somalia and demands just as radical a solution. But unlike Somalia, they have a de jure power, however little southern territory it controls. I wonder whether the authorities in Khartoum could be persuaded to hand over the administration of Juba to the United Nations, if at the same time the rebel factions would agree to a cease fire. If that could be done, then the relief work could be enormously accelerated; the grisly phenomenon of extra-judicial killings could be ended and the Sudanese Government would be relieved of a substantial military burden. The way would be open to a constitutional conference such as has been suggested to tackle the difficult questions left unresolved at Abuja—the present religion, the unity of the state and the self-determination of the south.
The alternative is too frightful to contemplate. I was given the estimate of 316,000 people being holed up in Juba with no clean water, no electricity, no telephones, no medicines and very little to eat. According to Amnesty International the army executed 300 people without trial following the SPLA attacks on the city in June and July, and demolished the houses of nearly one-third of the inhabitants to create free fire zones in the suburbs. Hundreds of people were reported to have been arrested and the whereabouts of many others remains unknown. The ordeal of the weakened and demoralised inhabitants subjected to that reign of terror defies the imagination. At the same time, the devastation of the whole region and the advancing government forces into areas previously held by the SPLA forced many thousands of new refugees over the border into Kenya. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury referred to the huge influx of refugees into Kenya and Uganda. We heard estimates that as many as half a million have been displaced internally by the fighting.
It should be noted that the Government, in response to international criticism of what happened in Juba, set up a judicial committee under the chairmanship of Judge Muhamad Ahmed Abu-Sin,
"to inquire into the events that took place in Juba during June and July".
Unfortunately, the judiciary in Sudan is not independent and any judge who gives a ruling that the government do not like is taking a very serious risk as the example of Judge Bushara Abdalla Bushara may illustrate. Mr. Fadl Ahmed applied to the court for an order that an autopsy be carried out on his son, Dr. Ali Fadl, a prominent member of the Sudan Doctors Union, who had died under torture on 21st April 1990. Judge Bushara ruled that the initial report, which had been made by the general secretary of the
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Islamic Medical Association and his deputy, did not comply with recognised medico-legal procedures. The two army doctors who certified that the cause of death was cerebral malaria were not considered to be reliable by the judge. He ordered that a second report he made by Dr. Yassin Abdalla Ahmed Imam.
The family of the victim then filed criminal charges which were rejected by a different judge and then by the Attorney-General, who apparently has a judicial role in Sudan. The family then petitioned Judge Bushara again and he granted them access to police and medical reports. On the basis of those the family then preferred legal charges against the security forces. But when an inquiry was begun by the magistrates that was aborted when pressure was brought to bear by the government and Judge Bushara was forced to retire. The lawyer who had acted for the family has had his licence to practise revoked.
The case of Dr. Fadl was cited in a recent BMA report on the involvement of doctors in human rights abuses under the title Medicine Betrayed which I commend to your Lordships' attention. The BMA makes some practical suggestions. It appeals,
"to the international medical community to encourage effective opposition to torture in countries where the pressure for medical participation in human rights violations is considerable".
That is certainly the case in Sudan. It must be extremely difficult for doctors employed in the public services in Sudan to denounce torture, but they are under an absolute moral obligation not to countenance torture or any form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Equally, doctors elsewhere in the world should invite the Islamic Medical Association to condemn torture and to discipline any of its members who are involved in cruelty.
I mention these cases because the law, the medical profession and the universities have all been subverted by the dictator, General al-Bashir. The Washington-based Fund for Peace published a detailed report in May this year on the abuse of academic freedom in Sudan which makes very sad reading because the universities had a proud record of liberal studies under the British. The government took power to appoint vice-chancellors and appointed a hard liner who was also a long-time member of the National Islamic Front, the military's principal backers, to the vice-chancellorship of the University of Khartoum.
Then all the universities were compelled to use Arabic as the teaching medium, putting southerners at a competitive disadvantage. We have heard about the compulsory Islamic instruction being introduced not just for Moslems but for all students. In the University of Khartoum an alleged 25 students were expelled over two years to May 1991 for political reasons. Early this year the widespread arrests of students took place in the University of Khartoum. New legislation gives the chairman of the National Council for Higher Education and the secretary-general of the council, who is also a long-time NIF member, the power to dismiss academics for ideological reasons.
In April 1992 four University of Khartoum professors were dismissed out of hand and without explanation by presidential decree. One of them was Professor Mohammed Al-Amin Al-Tom, who is

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Sudan's only professor of mathematics. Not surprisingly, many academics have fled into exile and in higher education as a whole academic standards have plummeted.
We have heard that it is not only in the South that whole peoples have been targeted by the malevolent regime of General Al-Bashir. The plight of the Nuba people in the province of Kordofan has been highlighted by several of your Lordships and by many human rights organisations such as Africa Watch, Amnesty International, Sudan Update and Sudan Monitor. All have given detailed accounts of the situation. Nuba Mountains Solidarity appealed to the UN human rights chief, Jan Eliasson, when he visited Sudan on 13th September, to stop the government's brutal treatment of their Nuba subjects. I should like to know whether the Minister has any knowledge of the results of Mr. Eliasson's visit and whether he was allowed to visit Southern Kordofan to speak to detainees and to check the government's claim that all those who were forcibly removed from their homes, ostensibly to protect them from harm when the SPLA moved into the area, have now been allowed to return as the Sudanese Embassy claims.
According to a US AID report of 7th October 1992, forced relocation of Nubans was still continuing and the governor of Kordofan had ordered that 25,000 to 30,000 people who had been at Kadugli be moved to five other places in Northern Kordofan. It reported that UN personnel and NGOs were prohibited from visiting the Kadugli area, but local organisations reported that 80 per cent. of the children in the camps were malnourished; diarrhoea and skin infections were rampant, and there was no medicine to treat the sick.
The policy of gratuitously moving people from one location to another is not confined to the provinces. In the Khartoum area, as many as 700,000 internal refugees from Upper Nile and Bahr El Ghazal states in the south have been compulsorily relocated into five official sites outside the city, where they are totally dependent on relief aid. As has been said, only Islamic organisations are given access to them. Another 1.3 million are still threatened with relocation, despite growing international protests. The Sudanese authorities have not allowed international agencies to provide basic services for any of the uprooted people, who are living in the most appalling squalor and destitution.
It is impossible for any of us to convey in a few minutes the extent of the human rights violations in Sudan today, and the dangers posed by Khartoum's policies to the whole region. Not content with beggaring their own people, persecuting the intelligent, and driving hundreds of thousands of them into exhile, they are trying to export intolerance and thuggery to Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, and their acquisition of a sophisticated arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is a very serious threat to peace. We cannot afford to wait until the volcano erupts. We must take action by asking the Security Council to consider this matter as one of urgency.
10.22 p.m.
Lord Judd: My Lords, this has been a disturbing debate. We are all grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, for having provided this opportunity to focus on a grave situation which presents such a formidable challenge to humanitarian concern. The noble Baroness is widely respected both inside and outside this House for her courage and commitment on such issues. She is no armchair commentator, as her determination to be out there in the front line, working alongside those in need, seeing for herself, has repeatedly made clear. We must therefore take her observations to heart.
The situation in Sudan is bad enough. But, as my noble friend Lord Blease and the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, have emphasised, it raises wider issues—issues which must be urgently faced if similar tragedies are not to be repeated around the world. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, and other noble Lords have spoken about the refugees and displaced people in and around Sudan. There are between 40 million and 50 million refugees and displaced people in the world as a whole, and that is expected to rise to 100 million by the year 2000. Think of it: 100 million individual men, women and children destined to a miserable existence of fear, anxiety, malnutrition, disease, suffering, total insecurity and premature death. At a time of so much concern about immigration and asylum policies—about keeping people out —what kind of myopia is it that fails to recognise that massive world-wide instability and migration can only increase the flow of those desperately trying to take their children to a better life? What kind of global policies are needed to treat the causes rather than the symptoms?
As the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Coventry and the noble Baroness, Lady Park, pointed out, in our concern about Sudan there are lessons in Somalia and, indeed, in Yugoslavia. In Somalia we see, belatedly, at the behest of the United States a determined intervention to ensure that the humanitarian relief reaches those in need. But why has it taken 300,000 deaths there before that happened? What could have been done at a far earlier stage to prevent the slide into anarchy and chaos? Why did action have to wait for the end of the US election and a decision in Washington?
This is not the first time that the UN has settled for the role of tagging behind and authorising decisive US initiatives. But is this a sound basis for global governance? Great credit is due to President Bush—of course it is—for acting, but why are the world's governments, which together make the UN, with all the insight and experience of the UN system at their disposal, unable collectively to generate a genuinely international will for timely humanitarian initiatives based on early warning and forward looking analysis? What is the role and record of our own Government and Permanent Representative at the UN in promoting this kind of imaginative and pre-emptive diplomacy?
How far is the United Kingdom taking a lead in what must become one of the most acute debates in international affairs: the degree to which sovereignty can be allowed to inhibit effective international

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humanitarian action when accountable, legitimate or decent government is totally absent and the inevitable need for such international action is becoming obvious? Indeed, what are the long-term implications for internal self-generating development and self-determination when failure to act in time necessitates large-scale intervention at the eleventh hour plus, as has happened in Somalia? And related to that, what is the Government's position on the totally unacceptable difference in status, grimly illustrated repeatedly in Sudan, between those who as a consequence of tribulation cross a national frontier, acquiring the designation of "refugee" with UNHCR protection, and those who as a consequence of equally harrowing experiences move within their own strife-ridden country but do not happen to cross a frontier and are thereby categorised merely as "displaced people"? The greatly respected High Commissioner for Refugees, Mrs. Ogata, has repeatedly drawn attention to this inhumane distinction. On what remedies are the Government working? Why are safe havens right within Iraq but not elsewhere; not least in Bosnia, incidentally? Could they be appropriate in Sudan?
Turning to the immediate situation in Sudan, the FAO harvest mission started work there last month. Its report should be available by the end of December. Some believe it possible that that report will indicate a national surplus, with good harvests from the irrigated and mechanised sectors. Future plans will certainly have to take that report fully into account. However, we are all agreed in this debate tonight that it is civil war which punishes the people of Sudan. Since independence in 1956 that country has had only 10 years of peace between the Addis Ababa agreement of 1972 and the resumption of the civil war in 1983, a resumption in which I found myself caught up on a visit to Juba and the surrounding area.
The noble Lord, Lord Birkett, was right to remind us that since 1989 the war has been characterised as a jihad by the Moslem northern Sudanese dominated government, and has in recent years resulted in increased victimisation, harassment and danger for civilians. As a result of the intensification of the fighting, relief needs have drastically increased, while access to the population has decreased. Development work has also become increasingly difficult. Recent peace talks have failed to produce results and the various parties and factions seem as intransigent, hostile and at least as far apart as ever.
Although exact figures are not available, it is clear that millions are suffering. Conflict is of course mainly confined, as we have heard, to the Christian and Animist southern areas and the transitional zone between the northern and southern regions. Since the last and continuing major government offensive, which began last January, an estimated 1 million southerners have been displaced either forcibly or by fear of insecurity. Communities have been destroyed in military actions, cattle have been raided and crops have been burnt or stolen. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury has powerfully described, this process of disruption has created widespread suffering and impoverishment.
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However, directly or indirectly, the effect of the civil war has been profound on the lives of people in the north as well as in the south. Vast amounts of resources have been committed to maintaining military campaigns; resources that could be better used for the development and welfare of the country. Lives are threatened and lost not just by the fighting but, on a far larger scale, by food insecurity, disease and disruption of traditional lifestyles.
The scale of the disruption and displacement is vast. For example, over 1 million southern displaced people barely exist within greater Khartoum. Many of those people do not have adequate food rations, shelter, clothing, health care, sanitation or emergency services, because of a lack of accessibility and the inability of international agencies to deliver humanitarian services in areas of conflict.
The southern displaced people have become effectively what have been aptly described as "refugees in their own country", and have been referred to in the Khartoum press as "infidels". They have been evicted forcibly from settled squatter communities or their traditional lands into so called peace villages and camps. Rural production has been undermined. As we have heard tonight, there are repeated reports of arrest and torture, and of the Sudan Government attempting systematically to purge government-held areas of all dissenting groups.
Amnesty International has recently chronicled the depredations of the Juba security authorities in their attempts to eradicate any group suspected of posing a threat, following the SPLA's attacks on that city. Recently, local European Community and UN staff have been executed in Juba itself. The "peace villages" and camps are being serviced, almost exclusively, by Sudanese NGOs, mostly Islamic. Repeatedly, the Sudan Government have promised international agencies access to those camps to provide humanitarian assistance, but so far such access has not materialised because of obstruction by that same government.
In fact, there seems to be a co-ordinated policy by the political and security authorities to isolate displaced people from the international agencies. That containerisation of the southern population has put the Islamic relief agencies in a de facto position of supporting the Government's political and military objectives while at the same time discharging their own Islamic mission. If there is little reliable information about the true needs of the displaced groups in Sudan in their appalling plight, it has to be recognised that that is due primarily to the evident lack of co-operation by the Sudan Government refusing permission for assessment missions in the north and south.
Whatever the balance of justice referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has stressed, reports indicate that brutality and repression are not the monopoly of any one party to the civil war. The UN has recommended that pending the report of the special mission sent to investigate the deaths of two UN staff members in south Sudan last October, non-essential operations in SPLA-controlled areas should be suspended. An

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important feature of the SPLA's tactics has reportedly been the destruction of crops and widespread cattle raiding which exacerbate historical tribal animosity. In Juba, agro-pasturalist groups tell of ongoing cattle raiding and crop destruction by SPLA-backed militias. Many of those pasturalists have been compelled to move to Juba with their meagre possessions in an attempt to maintain at least a minimum subsistence level.
While the Sudan Government restrict movement in and out of the city, there is also evidently fear among the displaced, who would like to return to their villages and cattle camps, that if they do so their few assets will be stolen, their children will be coerced into the SPLA militia and their women will be abused and maltreated. The SPLA has recently threatened to shoot down food relief flights and to close Juba airport. It has shelled the city of Juba constantly for weeks on end. Naturally, it is the civilian population that has suffered. Against those stark realities, it seems, sadly, that the UN's attempt to address humanitarian needs through Operation Lifeline Sudan has proved unable adequately to protect the interests of the poor and vulnerable in south Sudan.
In Khartoum, the UN appears to lack the necessary strength, co-ordination and cohesiveness for effective representations and authority. In the face of an intransigent Sudan Government, who are often accused of showing little compassionate regard for their own people, the UN has been marginalised in its attempt to deliver goods. In effect, the Khartoum Government exercise the power of veto over where OLS flights can land in south Sudan.
The UN does not appear to have been able to stand up for the principles of OLS by ensuring access to vital supplies to those most in need. Observers report numerous examples where the Sudan Government should have been challenged for stonewalling international access.
As my noble friend Lord Longford has reminded us, what is being sought by a growing number of those with humanitarian concern for the people of the Sudan is that the UN should take a more proactive role in protecting the well-being of those affected by the war and the consequences of government action. Certainly in this respect it would be useful to hear the United Kingdom Government's assessment of the record of the new humanitarian affairs arrangements at the United Nations.
Six vital steps at least have been advocated by key humanitarian players. They include those outlined tonight by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, and the noble Lords, Lord Beaumont, Lord Robertson, Lord Hylton and Lord Avebury. The first is to appoint a very senior UN representative with clout, with the full direct backing and authority of the United Nations Secretary General himself. This person could have a regional brief for the overall crisis in the Horn. The second is to provide an effective umbrella for the humanitarian work of the international NGOs by pressing the Sudan Government and the SPLA to allow such NGOs to have unrestricted access to areas of need and by insisting that neither side has a veto
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over relief flights. The third is to press the Sudan Government and the SPLA to allow free movement of people throughout Sudan; the fourth to establish corridors of peace—in other words, specific guaranteed overland relief routes in southern Sudan; the fifth to appoint human rights observers with open access to all detention centres, relocation zones and areas of conflict, especially the large garrison towns; and sixthly, to explore further options for taking forward the peace process such as, for example, a UN sponsored constitutional conference.
It is vital to hear the United Kingdom Government's position on these proposals. The UN is not a self-contained separate entity. It is in the end nothing more nor less than the governments of which it is comprised. It is the will and resolve of those governments and their commitment which create the context in which the Secretary General and his colleagues can effectively act. What will the United Kingdom Government urgently do to support the Secretary General in taking stronger action and to help him secure a report on human rights in Sudan for consideration by the UN General Assembly in the Security Council?
If Somalia and Yugoslavia have taught us nothing else, they have surely demonstrated that the international community has to act in time. Now is the time—it is already very late—to make the plans to be implemented if all else fails; plans to protect humanitarian access routes by UN troops and, if need be, to apply an arms embargo. Now is the time, above all, to demonstrate that globally and consistently, not just on an ad hoc, piecemeal, arbitrary basis, the UN is determined to take its humanitarian mandate as seriously as any other. Would that in the orgy of introspective European pre-occupations our leaders meeting in Edinburgh these next few days could lift their eyes to the global challenges that face Europe in the wider world of which it is inseparably a part. Of no other issue is this more true than of the Sudan which we have been debating today.
10.38 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, my noble friend Lady Cox has, as usual, introduced a most timely debate. She has done so with the authority of having made a brave visit to Sudan earlier this year and I pay tribute to her. The affairs of Sudan attract depressingly little attention and I hope that my noble friend's debate tonight will help stimulate public interest in the terrible events which are unfolding in that unhappy country.
I should add that, although Sudan has not caught the British public's interest, the Government have not overlooked its needs, as I shall explain. I must disagree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blease; we have been very active in Khartoum, Nairobi, London, Brussels and New York, to try to increase pressure on the government in Khartoum and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, to improve their human rights record and take a more responsible attitude to the delivery of relief to the needy. It is also important to keep in mind the fact that neither side in the dispute is entirely innocent. Both the Government of the

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Sudan and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army have on occasion hampered relief and neither have exemplary human rights records.
Relations between the United Kingdom and Sudan have undergone a period of pronounced strain. This is not of our volition. The right reverent Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury in particular has stressed the friendship and affection that are felt towards Sudan by many in this country in all walks of life. The Sudanese people still habitually look upon the British as their oldest friends. But there are obstacles in the way of an improvement in relations—obstacles which we look to the Sudanese Government to remove.
The principal problems—discussed by so many noble Lords this evening—are the Sudanese Government's parlous human rights record; the lack of progress towards anything resembling an accountable form of government acceptable to all areas of the country, and all sectors of society—the last election was in 1986; Khartoum's apparent unwillingness to negotiate seriously to hasten a peaceful solution to the civil war in the south; obstruction experienced in the provision of desperately needed humanitarian relief. We do not see eye to eye with the authorities in Khartoum on a number of regional issues.
Finally, there is the charge that the Sudanese Government has an equivocal attitude towards terrorism. The release from prison last year of those responsible for the Acropole Hotel bombing in 1988, in which five Britons died, highlighted this point. We have warned the Sudanese Government in no uncertain terms of the consequences—both international and bilateral—of support for terrorist groups. These circumstances have persisted for some time. They caused us to terminate our programme of developmental aid to Sudan in January 1991: a programme which we have no plans to resume at present. They have prevented any improvement of relations ever since. We nevertheless consider it important to do everything we can on our side to maintain a dialogue with the Government of Sudan, in the hope of persuading them to ameliorate their policies. We do not consider that it would be in the interests of the Sudanese people to abandon this attempt.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised the question of the Sudanese Embassy in London. There are 14 accredited diplomatic staff in the Sudanese Embassy in London, and three accredited non-diplomatic staff (service stall). We have no record of the locally-engaged staff at the embassy. While there is no obligation on embassies to inform us about locally engaged staff, we do request this information annually from all missions in London. The Sudanese Embassy has not replied to any notes in recent years. We have made it clear to the Sudanese authorities on a number of occasions that we expect all the staff of their embassy in London to behave in accordance with accepted diplomatic practice.
It is not easy to persevere in our objective of maintaining a dialogue. Our relations have if anything worsened in recent weeks. Noble Lords will be aware of the shocking events in the south, in Juba particularly. Among those whom the authorities
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summarily executed there for suspected collusion with the enemy were Sudanese employees of the representative of the EC Commission, and employees of the US Embassy. These actions underlined to us, and to other countries, the circumstances of terror and oppression under which so many ordinary Sudanese people live their lives.
Our emergency aid to Sudan has formed an integral part of our efforts to avert widespread famine in the Horn of Africa. In Sudan, these efforts have been largely successful when measured against the 8.5 million people at risk at the height of the drought in mid-1991. But there are many reasons for shortages. This problem was brought to a head with the onset of the drought in 1990. The Sudan Government's reluctance to accept donor emergency aid and its antipathy to foreign relief agencies has obstructed the effective assessment and delivery of relief to those in need. But food has been successfully distributed to most drought-affected areas in the north through the concerted efforts of donors, UN agencies and NGOs. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Blease, that we were one of the first donors to pledge food aid at the start of the present food crisis. Since then, despite the Government of Sudan's obstructive tactics we have provided a continuous and substantial flow of carefully targeted bilateral emergency aid throughout Sudan, totalling over £37 million. Our aid is provided on the basis of need, regardless of political or religious affiliation. We are the second largest bilateral donor of emergency food aid, with commitments of nearly 100,000 tonnes since 1990.
South Sudan is fertile and potentially an important source of food for the whole country. However, civil war has not only destroyed its agricultural capacity but made it a candidate for food aid. The fighting has prevented agencies from delivering relief to the region.
We are concerned about obstacles by all sides in the civil war which have hindered deliveries of relief assistance to those in need. The Government of Sudan have frequently withdrawn permission for UN relief flights, causing severe localised deprivation. My noble friend Lady Cox and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, have suggested that we should press for both sides to allow NGOs unlimited access.
We have made just such representations both bilaterally and through the Community throughout 1992 to try to stabilise deliveries. The continuing lack of concern by the Government of Sudan and the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army, who have persistently breached UN Operation Lifeline Sudan's agreements, has prompted concerned countries, including Britain, to increase international pressure on both sides to allow relief to be delivered to those in need.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, I am glad to be able to tell the House that the UN has now resumed relief flights to most locations in the south, including Juba. In addition, a recent consensus by all factions offers improved prospects to sustain and expand air, road and river routes, creating corridors for relief. But the situation remains fragile.
I can assure my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth that we continue to provide emergency aid

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to the south, as and where conditions permit, using UN agencies and NGOs, some of which are working in life-threatening circumstances. I would like to pay tribute to them. I must tell the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury that we do not channel our emergency aid through the Government of the Sudan. We have provided over £18.8 million in bilateral assistance to Operation Lifeline Sudan since it was established in 1989. This includes nearly 17,000 tonnes of food aid, most of which has had to be airlifted; an expensive but essential and often dangerous operation. The food has gone to feed people in Juba, and other besieged areas in the south.
In answer to my noble friend Lady Cox, who asked about improved logistics, we have also provided transport to help get the food through. We stand ready to do more if it is possible to do so. My noble friend Lady Cox's moving description of her recent visit to some of the camps for the displaced in south Sudan illustrates for us the plight of these poor people, the victims of a protracted civil war.
We are concerned that UN agencies and NGOs are frequently denied access to the displaced, thus hindering the delivery of emergency assistance. Nearly 3 million people may be affected.
About 1 million displaced persons, mainly from the south, are in camps around Khartoum and Kosti. As my noble friend Lady Cox has said, many have been forcibly located to inadequately provisioned sites. The Government of Sudan have treated them badly. I can assure my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth that as holders of the local presidency we led two EC démarches to try to improve their conditions. We support the UN's efforts to provide planned voluntary relocation to sites with adequate basic facilities. Overall, we have provided £6.4 million in bilateral emergency aid through British and Irish NGOs to help those unfortunate people.
The position of the British Government on the war is clear. We consider the Sudanese people should be allowed to seek a solution to their political problems by peaceful means. We send this message to all involved, whether the government or the factions of the SPLA: we welcome any effort to achieve this objective. With our EC partners we have consistently given our political support to the present initiative of the Nigerian Government to try to bring the parties to the civil war to the negotiating table. We are disappointed that the parties are not yet able to take up the Nigerians' invitation to a further meeting which was scheduled for this week. However, I am sure that the Nigerians will want to continue their patient and generous efforts. I am equally sure that we should not write off those efforts.
In relation to human rights, which have been raised by all speakers this evening, three main patterns of violation have given rise to concern. The first is on the political plane. What we understand as the fundamental conditions for a democratic society are presently absent in Sudan. All political parties have been dissolved. The trade unions have been re-established but are under tight political control. There is no freedom of public expression if that
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involves any criticism of the régime. All institutions, including the army, government ministries and the universities, have been purged to ensure their orthodoxy.
The second issue is what the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, described as the poison of religious discrimination. The Government of Sudan recognised in the first round of peace talks in Nigeria in June that Sudan was a "multi-religious, multi-ethnic" society. But, in practice, the churches experience a good deal of hostility and obstruction. We have heard this evening the remarks of the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Coventry and Salisbury. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, reminded us that the Catholic Church and Catholic organisations have made their views equally plain. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, stressed, we should remember that it is not just non-Moslem's human rights that are at risk.
Thirdly, there are groups of people who are particularly vulnerable. I have spoken about the displaced and about the shocking events in Juba. I would simply reinforce the concerns expressed by other noble Lords about the disturbing reports of ethnic cleansing coming from the Nuba hills. I read with alarm the letter from Survival International published in The Times today about the threat to the Nuba people. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that Jan Elliasson did not visit southern Kordofan in September, principally because there was no assurance that he would be able to speak freely to the Nuban people.
We have expressed our concern on those points to the Sudanese Government on numerous occasions, both bilaterally and in international fora. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that we were active in Geneva in supporting the decision to appoint a special rapporteur on human rights and we fully support his efforts. In our capacity as holders of the EC presidency we made a formal démarche to the Sudanese Government in October. I should like to assure the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, in particular that with our EC partners we wholeheartedly and actively supported a resolution on human rights in Sudan which was carried by an overwhelming margin in the United Nations General Assembly last week.
The Sudanese Government respond that they are misunderstood. My response to that is simple: they should allow impartial observers to travel freely throughout Sudan to assess events for themselves. That would in particular allow us to establish the facts surrounding the circumstances noted by my noble friend Lady Cox in her speech of the civilians in Juba, Malakal and other towns in the south.
On the point of access to objective information, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, also mentioned the role of the BBC. BBC World Service English language broadcasting can be heard in Sudan on a variety of frequencies. I shall write the rest of my reply to the noble Lord. He also mentioned the possibility of using the Sudanese debt. I am grateful for that prior knowledge. I shall write to him.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blease, for his suggestion that the Government should look at the possibilities of further action through the United

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Nations to alleviate the situation in Sudan. I note the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that the UN should play a more proactive role. I should like to say at the outset that we rule out nothing on that score. The UN General Assembly has now given a clear message. It is under no illusion as to what is happening in Sudan. We have heard a number of interesting suggestions for further UN sponsored activity.
My noble friend Lady Cox raised the possibility of safe havens for southern civilians who are displaced. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, suggested a UN special representative for Sudan and the Horn, the insertion of human rights observers and the convening by the UN of a peace conference. The noble Lord, Lord Blease, raised the possibility of an international arms embargo, as did the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont. But most of those ideas would probably need the support of the Security Council.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, asked for a yes or no answer from me on this point. I apologise to the noble Earl, but the role of the Security Council in the context of Sudan is difficult to decide upon. It is not clear from the situation in Sudan that there is a threat to international peace and security. The time may well come when the majority of council members considers that it does—the moment that there is some agreement
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among UN members that pressure is most effectively exerted by reference to Sudan's human rights performance and therefore should be pursued in the General Assembly and in the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.
There is no doubt that letters will be falling like snowflakes from the ODA in answer to the questions that I have not answered. I have done my best and the hour is late. I believe that the Government's policy towards Sudan is a clear and steadfast one. No one should be in any doubt as to our position, least of all the present government in Khartoum. Our overriding concern is to continue to help those who suffer most from the present state of affairs—the people of Sudan themselves, who have endured famine, poverty, war and repression with such dignity and stoicism. I should like to assure them that we shall continue to use the means at our disposal, whether through the targeted provision of humanitarian assistance or through diplomatic pressure, to help alleviate their plight.
I should once again like to thank my noble friend Lady Cox. I hope that she will think that I have given her at least a fair bite of the cherry.
House adjourned at one minute before eleven o'clock.