European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement) (Republic of Indonesia) Order 2010

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and my noble friend Lady Falkner, for their comments on this issue. We are dealing very briefly with a vast range of issues connected to a vast country. I shall first address the acute points made by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, about the detail. We have the agreements; where is the detail; if I may use the colloquial, where is the beef? Let me describe to the noble Lord four policy areas for closer co-operation—one, in particular, on which he concentrated—which have been agreed already but which the PCA will boost, reinforce and create a new forum in which we can carry them forward. First, on trade and investment, we will, under the PCA, explore new areas of co-operation, including research and development, and a series of sectoral committees will help to identify opportunities and more rapidly defuse irritants in key sectors of commercial interests, which is always a very valuable asset, because small irritants can turn into great barriers if one is not careful and does not handle them very positively indeed. Secondly, on environment issues, the climate change question is a shared political priority. As I said earlier, Indonesia is the world's third largest carbon emitter, and we will use the PCA to boost co-operation in key environmentally sensitive areas, such as fisheries and afforestation—which the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, rightly raised. A partnership agreement with Norway earlier this year, which the UK supports, should put in place a framework with Indonesia to reduce deafforestation and degradation rates. I fully accept that a lot more work is needed to make the framework robust. The UK committed in December last year—a year ago—to support the achievement of Indonesia's climate change objectives through a five-year, £50 million programme. That is particularly relevant when it comes to deafforestation. It is likely to include significant partnership with the province and district governments of Papua, where the potential for emission reductions, development gains and the checking of deafforestation is very important. In answer to the general question about the detail, the third area that is very important for us is education. Indonesia and the EU will seek to boost a co-operation agreement in the education field through existing programmes, such as the Erasmus Mundus scholarship programme, which funds Indonesian students to study in the EU; and through a new initiative, such as educational fairs, co-operation on research and other programmes. That will all be reinforced within the PCA forum. Fourthly, on the area on which my noble friend Lady Falkner rightly concentrated—although when I say that it is fourth, one could say that it is first, because there is no priority of numbers here—the EU-Indonesian human rights dialogue was launched on 29 June last year. My noble friend rightly observes—she is tireless in her accuracy and her work on this front—that rhetoric and saying where we have got to is not enough, and that a lot more work is required. The dialogues are under way already. The PCA is reinforcement for what has been raised in the dialogues. The aim is regularly to discuss issues of mutual interest and concern related to human rights, including through annual meetings of senior officials. It is an avenue to discuss issues such as that which we discussed in the Chamber of your Lordships' House only the other day—the situation in West Papua, in which there is a great deal of proper and understandable interest. The next dialogue will be in June next year. Beyond that, the existence of the partnership agreement will provide opportunities for pressing further. My noble friend is quite right that one can aspire, for example, to greater access for journalists to the situation in West Papua, or that human rights issues are investigated. We can aspire to see that appropriate dialogue toward some settlement of the West Papuan scene is progressed. Those are aspirations, but carrying them forward requires the most constant, intimate exchanges based on trust and respect. We fully support the territorial integrity of Indonesia as a great nation, but obviously, like everyone else, we want to see the West Papua situation resolved and human rights respected wherever possible. We will carry on with the procedures that I described to your Lordships last week of raising the issues. But more than that, once the PCA comes into force—of course, it has yet to be approved in the other place—we will have an additional forum in which we can reinforce these views, press them, turn them into real actions and carry them forward. I thank my noble friend and the noble Lord for their comments. I believe that further engagement of every kind with Indonesia will help us to achieve in our country greater prosperity because of the huge opportunities of a vast, new consumer market, with an estimated 35 million to 40 million people with incomes in the range of the European Union’s average level of income. This is an enormous, ready-made consumer market, which will grow bigger because the total population is many times that. It is important to strengthen our ties with Indonesia on the security agenda, about which we have not talked much, but which is very important. It is important to do that while supporting all the ongoing work and reforms to further improve the human rights situation and to entrench democracy and the rule of law. I thank noble Lords for their support and ask that they approve this order. Motion agreed.