Debate on the Address

I hope the House will forgive me if I depart from the focus on one or two geographical regions of the world, important though the debate has been in relation to those areas. It has been a privilege to take part in the debate and to enjoy the extremely informative speeches of what I would call the three high towers of the Conservative Back Benches—my right hon. and learned Friends the Members for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). In my brief contribution I shall concentrate on the general principles of democracy building, and make the case for Britain being at the forefront of building democratic capacity around the world in the way that I shall define it, and certainly not trying to impose it. First, however, I shall flag up two situations that concern me. We have not yet had any reference to Belarus. It is a disgrace that there, on the edge of the European Union, in the heart of geographic old Europe, there is still a dictatorship. The UK and particularly the EU could be doing more to focus our efforts to underpin the forces of opposition in Belarus, and to broadcast to that country truth and media reflections of what is going on in the real world. There has also been much debate about North Korea, where the situation is desperately grave. I am probably one of the few Opposition Members who has been there—it was three years ago—and it was the grimmest, bleakest experience of my life. Not only does the country have nuclear plans, but 25 million people are cold, hungry and starving, so I hope that those on the Opposition Front Bench and the Government will, in the run-up to the six-party talks, use the European Union and other world forums to urge the North Korean Government to allow non-governmental organisations and international charities into the country to help to meet the needs of their starving, cold and oppressed people. Any contact is good and we certainly want more support for that country and its people. I want to develop the theme that democracy building should be a major plank of British foreign policy. Let me first briefly explain what I mean by democracy. I am certainly not talking about simply promoting the Westminster model or saying that we are perfect even though we have been at it a long time. I could produce a long list of things that we could change in our democracy, not least the status of the second Chamber, the role of the Whips in Parliament—I hope that is written down in the Government Whip’s little blue folder—party funding and voter turnout. Many things should be changed in our democracy and the constant evolution of the way we do things is entirely healthy. We have been at it a long time and, as my right hon. Friend the leader of the Conservative party has suggested recently, we have experiences that we can, with humility and patience, share with many willing participants in the developing world. Although democracy will always look different wherever it is to be found, I believe that four pillars must be present in every healthy democracy. The first is the ability to elect and get rid of people we call politicians—those who are brave or perhaps stupid enough to put themselves forward for election—and to elect the Government we want and then to remove them when they do things that we do not like.