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On the financial assistance scheme, the problem is not that funding has not been allocated to it but that there are practical problems in collecting the data, which is why there has been engagement with trustees to try to improve that process. I take this opportunity to revert to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott. He talked about 120,000 robbed pensioners, as if the Government had somehow done this. I remind him, however, that many of those people are not at pension age. Indeed, many of them are a long, long way from pension age.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, the Statement repeated by the Minister said that the Government were,
However, the plain fact is that they have not been prepared to consider any proposals whatever to deal with these issues. They have simply been in denial ever
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We have consistently advocated the use of financial assets for which there may be no other use in the system. We originally advocated the use of unclaimed bank accounts, which are very similar to orphaned pension assets because they belong to someone, and if someone can establish ownership, they remain the property of that individual. However, there is the question of how you use the benefit of those assets while they remain unclaimed. The Chancellor has, of course, got his hands on those and spent them many times over already, so that may no longer be a practical proposition, although if the Minister is prepared to say that it is, I am sure that we will all want to discuss it with him.
We have also proposed researching the way in which orphaned pension assets could be used. Both these proposals are practical, but neither has resulted in any serious engagement on the part of the Government, so are we to believe that they will engage with us now on these issues? We believe that these issues should be looked at in the whole scheme of how the undeniable losses to these unfortunate pensioners should be dealt with. Today’s Statement is another obdurate statement. Does the Minister not feel an acute sense of shame at having to stand at the Dispatch Box and, instead of saying that the Government’s immediate response is to deal with the issue or to engage in practical discussions about how it can be dealt with, stating that their only response is to appeal the argument? That is a shaming statement for any Minister to have to make.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, let me start by addressing the latter point. I made it clear in repeating the Statement, as did my right honourable friend in another place, that we need to understand fully and properly the import of the judgment that has come down. It is a few hours old, and we quite properly need time to ensure that we examine all the issues and draw conclusions. It is entirely unreasonable for the noble Baroness to press us to commit to detailed action literally within a few hours of that judgment being delivered.
Are we prepared to engage? Yes, of course we are. That was made clear in the Statement. The noble Baroness uses the term “orphaned pension assets”. I am not quite sure what she means by that, but if she would like to send us something on them, we would be very happy to look at it. It is not true to say that the Chancellor has snaffled other unclaimed assets. The initial record searches by banks and building societies suggest that several hundred million pounds may lie unclaimed. There may be an annual flow in the region of tens of millions of pounds from that source, but this is not a reliable income stream on which to make promises of pension compensation. It should also be remembered that, before any use of that money can be made, the banks have quite properly said that they would put a publicity campaign into effect. Indeed, they have committed themselves to doing so. It remains to be seen whether more claims are made as a result of that campaign.
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Lord Young of Norwood Green: My Lords, I find it somewhat ironic that Members opposite are so keen to criticise the Government. We should be clear that, before this Government acted, there was no protection for occupational pensions when companies were declared insolvent. Somehow that seems to have been brushed aside as being of no consequence whatever. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, could not resist repeating the hoary old myth of the advanced corporation tax and that convenient figure of £5 billion. The doubtful veracity of that was well and truly nailed by the Minister. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for putting the size of the problem into perspective—again, something that the Opposition seem unable to grasp.
Some of the people who caused the insolvencies of these companies were frequently protected from the financial consequences of their actions, while the people who dedicated their working lives to the company and who created the wealth, believing that part of their reward was a decent pension, have become the innocent victims. I hope the Minister agrees that the creation of the financial assistance scheme, with a not insignificant sum of £2.3 billion of public money to buttress it, coupled with the pension protection fund, is an important step forward. No one pretends that these are necessarily perfect solutions; these are very complex issues.
I welcome the Statement on a complex set of rulings given by the High Court on a very complex subject. The Government are absolutely right to pause and evaluate the situation before returning to the House. I share the hope that they will take the decisions of the High Court into account and come back to us with their conclusions and proposals on how we should proceed. I do not think that we on this side of the House should be prepared to take any lessons from Members on the other side of the House on managing pensions, given the previous actions of Tory Governments.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I find it impossible to disagree with the thrust of my noble friend’s comments. He is absolutely right; this Government have already acted by committing £2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money, which is no small sum, over an extended period. He is absolutely right that no previous Government have addressed the issue in this way. I repeat again my question to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and I look forward to his detailed reply so that I can understand exactly how much the Conservative Party will use in extra taxpayer resources to address this issue.
Lord Addington: My Lords, will the Minister confirm for the rest of the House that the period after the Front Bench responses is normally used to answer and respond to questions, not to statements?
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Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, my short time in the House has taught me that questions can be posed in a variety of ways. Some are short, others are slightly longer, and Members of the House are very experienced at making their points by way of questions or otherwise. That seems to be a very good practice.
Viscount Eccles: My Lords, I refer briefly to the use of language in the Statement. It says in two places,
I think the Minister will agree that that is not necessarily a trigger for the loss of pension rights, because if the pension scheme, particularly the defined benefit pension scheme, has been set up correctly, the assets of the scheme, which belong to the members, are under the legal and incorporated control of the trustees. There are many companies that have ceased to trade for reasons good and bad. In a global economy that moves at the pace that this economy moves, some of the reasons are quite understandable. For quite a number of years, I was a director of a company in which a substantial percentage of the company’s shares were held by a pension scheme that was entrusted with the assets of the members, and the company concerned had not traded for years. None of those pensioners lost any of their accumulated rights for the past service that they had with the company. I make that point only because this is a very complicated situation. The one thing that seems to be completely wrong is to turn it into a rhetorical, political debate.
Lord McKenzie of Luton: Yes, my Lords, it is complicated. I had hoped that we could have consensus on the matter, but I have to respond to the points that are put to me. The noble Viscount says that this is not just a matter of employers becoming insolvent, which is right. The financial assistance scheme, as I understand it, kicks in in circumstances where the scheme itself is being wound up or there is commencement of winding up and the employer becomes insolvent. If the scheme is fully funded, there is no reason why it should not continue in existence. If I am wrong on any of that, I will certainly write to the noble Viscount.
Iraq
2.01 pm
Lord Parekh: My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, for introducing this extremely important debate on Iraq. That Iraq is in a total mess needs no repetition from me. No one in that country feels safe. Militias and armed gangs roam the streets, and schools and universities function only intermittently. Shias and Sunnis, who despite their differences had lived together for centuries, fear and hate each other, and the entire social fabric is unravelling. Since the war on Iraq 100,000 civilians have died, five times as many have been badly
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It is important to know what mistakes are made—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hurd—but it is more important to know what lessons we can learn. Here again we need to ask ourselves what kinds of lessons we want to learn. We do not want to learn simply about how decisions on going to war were taken. We need to learn even more important lessons about limits of power; lessons about the goals of our foreign policy in this increasingly changing and volatile world; and lessons about our relations with the United States, our ability to shape the events of the world and what it means to be a junior partner without being a poodle. Equally importantly from my point of view, the war on Iraq has damaged not only that country but our own democracy. We should ask ourselves: how is it possible for us to avoid being bounced into another misconceived adventure in future?
My suggestion is that, rather than simply thinking in terms of an inquiry, we should think in terms of a national commission to explore the kinds of issues that I have raised about the nature of our democracy, democratic control on war-making, our foreign policy goals and our place in the world at large. We should debate these issues publicly; it is not just a matter of a small committee of inquiry.
It is also very striking that those who have been associated with the war are now beginning to look for a moral fig-leaf which can allow honourable men to assuage their troubled consciences, and I am struck by the arguments being advanced. We are told that Saddam Hussein was evil; and should we not be glad that he is gone? My answer to that is that you do not reply to one evil by doing another which is just as evil. Even more importantly, with all the tyranny imposed by Saddam Hussein, we are in the process of not merely dismantling the state but of destroying the bonds of social cohesion which have existed between different communities.
We were also told that, given the intelligence at the time about weapons of mass destruction, war was the only course of action and that no honourable person could have voted differently. I am not persuaded by this argument. The kind of intelligence that was available and the arguments that were made were put forward to many of us, and several of us on these Benches and elsewhere strongly opposed the war. I think that the intelligence was ambiguous, as was pointed out by our own people and the CIA. It was also widely known that it came from tainted sources and therefore needed to be scrutinised more carefully.
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Those who want to assuage their conscience also tell us that mistakes were made and that it is only human to make mistakes. My answer to that is that our mistakes follow a pattern. They are not isolated mistakes arising out of human fallibility. They reflect, as the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, rightly pointed out, a particular mindset—a mood of arrogance—and a simple and rather foolish assumption that once Saddam was toppled, people would embrace us most enthusiastically and would welcome us for going in.
We should have known that no tyranny functions like that. It is a system and a tyrant is always supported by small tyrants in different walks of life. Therefore, chopping off his head would not remove the system. We were also so determined to go to war that we did not plan carefully and even tended to suppress critical reports that were coming to us from all directions. Since we went to war without the support of the United Nations, we denied ourselves access to the wealth and experience of various United Nations agencies and networks.
What are the important lessons that we can learn from what has gone wrong? I want to highlight six important lessons, some of which are rather tentative because I am not entirely sure how they would work, but we need to ask ourselves some very important questions. First, what kind of democratic, institutionalised check can be introduced on the Government’s capability to go to war? Wars can be very attractive to politicians. They make ordinary politicians look like statesmen and national political figures rather than party-political ones. They also generate in the country at large, and certainly in political circles, a heightened sense of existence.
Precisely because of the attraction of war, it is very important to have certain checks. The Prime Minister, rightly and courageously, put the matter to a vote in the House of Commons. That is not enough. It is quite possible for people of a particular political party to have their arm twisted into voting this way or that. I believe that it would be a good idea, if a war is really in the national interest, to insist that there must be a two-thirds majority. After all, if the matter is of that importance and the country is to go to war and to sacrifice lives and property, it should carry national cross-party support. Therefore, a minimum two-thirds majority should be necessary. It is also important that your Lordships’ House should not be marginalised, as if going to war was entirely the business of the other place. I therefore suggest that the House of Lords should be involved and that decisions relating to going to war should be debated and voted on here.
The second important lesson concerns intelligence. Everyone involved knew—they say so now—that, given the intelligence, there was no alternative course of action open to them. If intelligence is so
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A further thought occurs to me. I am new to your Lordships’ House, having been here for only six years. Nevertheless, I should have thought that there were certain innovative ideas in one or two other jurisdictions that we might care to think about. One possibility might be to have two or three senior privy counsellors accustomed to handling evidence of this kind, utterly reliable men of honour who could be asked to look at the evidence and advise the Prime Minister on whether they are satisfied that the intelligence is reliable and takes into account all the floating bits of information that might have come from a variety of sources but became sanitised on their way through the system.
The third lesson we might learn concerns the Attorney-General’s legal advice. If the whole nation is to be committed to war and to make sacrifices of lives and property, it should be reassured and its conscience allowed to be quite clear that the war is lawful and right. I suggest that the Attorney-General’s advice should be published in full and debated among the pundits in the area so that we are reassured that the available expert legal advice really is agreed.
The fourth important lesson has to do with our relations with the United States. The noble Lord, Lord Hurd, made an extremely important point when he said that we cannot be a senior partner to the US, but can be a junior one. But junior partners do not have to be obsequious or behave like poodles. What does it mean to be a junior partner? Junior, yes, but nevertheless a partner. It is therefore important that we are able to speak our mind freely and bring to the Americans the wisdom that has grown out of our 300 years of political experience in all walks of life. I was struck during my time as a professor there when many of my friends in the Democratic Party would say, “Look, the whole thing is wrong. Why is the British Prime Minister not speaking up? If he did, it would give us the kind of strength we need”. Many of them either felt strongly or were convinced that if we had taken a more open and courageous stand, perhaps the course of war might have been different. If we are going to measure up to the Americans, we ought to link up with other important units of power. They could be the European Union, India, China or other countries. When we work with them it will become possible for us to carry a lot of weight.
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The fifth lesson concerns the fact that the idea of imposing democracy and justifying imperialism in terms of democracy is not at all new to the neo-cons. Those of us who know American history will know that unlike European colonialism, which was legitimised in terms of spreading liberty and civilisation, for nearly 150 years the Americans have legitimised what they have done in terms of spreading democracy. I cite Cuba in the 19th century. It was occupied and “liberated” by the Americans from Spanish despotism. The same sort of story was told of the Philippines. The project of spreading democracy was suspended during the Cold War for obvious reasons. It was resumed on 9 November, or 9/11 according to the European calendar, when the Berlin Wall came down, and it was resumed with more ferocity according to the American calendar after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We need to use our wisdom and power to try to persuade the United States that this is not the way to go.
The sixth lesson is that it is likely that we may fall into the trap of thinking that because democracy cannot be imposed, we have no duty to propagate it abroad or to promote it in other countries. That would be a mistake. We do have a duty to promote democracy, but we can learn important lessons from the European Union and how it has gone about it: through incentives, expert advice, making money available, encouragement, joint seminars, training experts, and making sure that democratic ideas are spread in the accession and candidate countries. We know also from painful experience that democracy cannot survive in a country if its neighbours are hostile, because they will see that society is fragmented. If we are to promote democracy in countries where it is badly needed, there will have to be a regional solution because there cannot be a single-country one.
2.14 pm
Lord Lamont of Lerwick: My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests in that I am an adviser to a company that has advised the Iraqi Government. I am also a director of a company with investments in Iran. I thank my noble friend Lord Hurd for introducing this Motion for debate and for a speech that was devastating in its balance and moderation. I certainly strongly support his arguments for an inquiry.
I welcome the decision that there should be a reduction of British troops in Iraq, but I note that that has caused some concern in public opinion in the United States. The Democrats have seized on it, of course, and it has underlined US isolation. However, Government spokesmen have rightly been quick, and right, to point out that the situation faced by American troops is very different from that faced by British troops. But there is no getting away from it: this is a defeat for us, not for our troops who have performed brilliantly, but the whole episode is a defeat for our country and for the Government. That is shown by the fact that until recently British troops were actually fighting the Iraqi police, who are meant
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I want to talk about the influence of Iran on the internal situation in Iraq. I apologise for wearying the House by talking about Iran yet again when I did so just before Christmas, but there have been some alarming developments in opinion as it is articulated on the other side of the Atlantic about Iran and its influence in Iraq. It is important that we have full knowledge and that our knowledge is based on facts. Our relations with Iran are already tense for good reasons. I support entirely the Government’s desire to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme, but we have to be careful not simply to open up another front of disagreement with Iran. Above all, as has been said in this debate, we do not want to repeat the error of being drawn into another armed conflict based on faulty analysis.
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