Crispin Blunt

Conservative Party | Reigate

Debate on the future of the United Nations

Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman), who speaks with such authority about the UN and his contribution to the UN association. I agree with him about Fiona Watson's contribution. I hope that the House finds a way of recognising it permanently, as we should recognise the contribution of other servants and, indeed, Members of the House who have gone on to do other things and have lost their lives in the service of this country - or, as in this instance, the service of the international community.

I am sure that Sir Brian Urquhart will be delighted by the hon. Gentleman's endorsement of his book, and will regret only that he had to borrow it from the library rather than buying it.

I am not certain that I can logically go as far as the hon. Gentleman and agree that the UN is the only hope for the world, but I do not think anyone could dispute its enormous importance. After all, in September 2002 the President of the United States - a president leading a Republican Administration - found it necessary, amid all the fears about the isolation of the US, to go to the UN and justify his appeal for global support for what it wanted to do in Iraq in terms of Security Council resolutions that already existed. To sweeten the pill, he announced that the US would rejoin UNESCO. That demonstrated that even the United States, the hyperpower referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter), needs the support of the entire international community. The UN is the only body that exists for that purpose, and if it did not exist we would have to invent it.

I do not agree with critics who have tried to make parallels with the League of Nations and have said how ineffective the UN is. Almost every nation in the world - if not every nation - belongs to the UN: even Switzerland, having sat on the sidelines for so long, has now decided to join. It is easy to list the UN's failures, and I shall list some of them shortly, but it is the best - probably the only - body to deal with not just security issues but all the issues of world governance arising from the 12 UN agencies. I am thinking of the World Health Organisation, the international aerospace agreements mentioned by the hon. Member for Putney, and all the other subsidiary bodies.

I agree with the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) about the importance of the aspiration and inspiration that the UN must provide. The UN did not give explicit approval for the military operations involved in the recent conflicts in Iraq and Kosovo, but the international community and the powers that had taken action had to return to it to secure authority for the subsequent operations and political developments in those places. It is, however, seriously undermined by its administrative and practical failures as an organisation.

A week ago, the Financial Times published a report of a serious corruption inquiry involving the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. There is the extraordinary business of charges being made by a senior official in the United Nations office that tackles drugs and crime. That body is involved in a fight to deal with corruption within its own organisation. The report went on to highlight the complaint of Samuel Gonzalez-Ruiz, whom it described as

"a former head of Mexico's anti-Mafia unit who advises governments on fighting corruption".

It said that he

"quit his post last week in protest at what he called 'corruption and mismanagement' in the agency, including 'misappropriation of funds', 'nepotism' and 'traffic of influence ... In his resignation letter" -

he said that

"management ignored repeated reports of wrongdoing by officials, despite having detailed evidence. He charged that whistleblowers were routinely punished and that perpetrators were sheltered by senior management."

He went on to say:

"I do not have the stomach to be promoting a fight against organised crime and corruption around the world when I am working in an office that tolerates administrative and in some cases criminal violations".

That is too often the experience of people on the ground with the United Nations. It is not typical, but it happens much too often for any of us to be comfortable with how the United Nations works.

My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) referred to his experience of a senior UN official in northern Bosnia being unable to carry out simple functions. While working for Sir Malcolm Rifkind when he was Secretary of State for Defence and then Foreign Secretary, I visited United Nations operations in Bosnia and elsewhere. As a British soldier, I visited fellow British troops wearing blue berets in Cyprus and saw the administration there. We sometimes see brilliant United Nations officials of all nationalities carrying out their work but there appears to be the most astonishing inconsistency in performance. People are put into post simply because they come from a particular nation that has to have bums on seats - jobs have to be distributed to people from those nations. Frankly, they are a serious let down to the whole organisation.

To be fair, I want particularly to commend the efforts of the current Secretary-General to tackle that problem. He is the one who appointed Martti Ahtisaari to report on the consequences of 19 August: the bombing in Baghdad and the wider consequences for the United Nations. If an organisation is prepared to paint as deeply unflattering a picture of the way it works as he does, there is hope that that organisation is becoming significantly more self-critical and will improve. However, we cannot be complacent when Martti Ahtisaari identifies unclear chains of command, flouted guidelines, a lack of accountability and naivety about the security environment. That naivety led to the tragedy on 19 August. Frankly, it is totally unacceptable that an international organisation of the stature of the United Nations working in Baghdad in August 2003 displayed that naivety. It led to that tragedy, with all the consequences for the work of United Nations organisations in Iraq.

The scale of that disaster, combined with what has happened to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, is a serious setback to everything that the international community is seeking to achieve in Iraq and a serious setback for the people of Iraq, even if they are hostile to what the occupying powers are doing. One can hardly think of a greater own goal than the combination of those two attacks, not least in the case of the Red Cross, part of whose responsibility is to check on prisoners whom the occupying forces have taken to ensure that they are properly looked after.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), the Liberal Democrat spokesman, drew our attention to the United Nations Congo operation. I intervened on him. He made the point about the European Union's contribution to those operations. He said that the EU contributed to the operation at the request of the UN. The trouble is our lack of commitment to the UN, as demonstrated by the fact that that request had to be negotiated between the EU and the UN. The EU was not prepared, in effect, to support unconditionally the ongoing operation in the Congo, probably for sound military reasons. No responsible Defence Minister answerable to a Parliament in the EU would have been prepared to commit troops to the UN force as constituted in the Congo.

We must ask ourselves why we were prepared to allow a UN force to go to the Congo under chapter 6 authority if it was ill-equipped to command and control the troops under its command and to deal with them safely to the standards on which we would have insisted had our troops been part of the original operation. We must ask ourselves searching questions. We were asked to contribute to the operation, but we were not prepared to do so. Are we saying that because the force was under the command of an Indian general under chapter 6, and because the troops were from developing countries, it did not matter if the force could not do things properly as it was never going to have the military weight to make a sensible military contribution to addressing the appalling conflict in the Congo? If so, the idea of first and second-class UN operations must be addressed.

I want to refer to reform and to make some constructive suggestions. We are not talking now about the immediate future, but a debate such as this allows us to do a bit of medium to long-term thinking. The UN has been in existence for 50 years and plainly it will develop in strength and importance because there is no alternative. It will be the vehicle, reformed as it will be, that will give us the authority of international law and the international deployment of troops.

I want to concentrate on security, not least because I know something about it. The three Back-Bench speakers from the Conservative party are all former servicemen and I hope that the House will forgive us for focusing on the security dimension of the UN, which is the most important element. All the relief work is important, but one cannot do that if one does not have a secure environment.

On the Secretariat and the reform that is taking place to it, Kofi Annan deserves commendation and support and the Government have made it clear in their Command Paper that Kofi Annan has their support. However, I want to contrast what the Government say about the Secretariat with what they later say about the reform of the Security Council. It is right that the UN Secretariat's abilities and energies need to be harnessed to ensure that all appointments are made on merit. That would appear to be blindingly obvious.

Until the United Kingdom and every other contributor to the UN is prepared to surrender Buggins's turn when it comes to handing out jobs, we will never have appointment on merit. It is a huge problem, because every single contributor to the UN within every international forum competes for their men and women to have posts within the organisations. Somehow we have to break the cycle, and the UK, as a sizeable nation, should be uniquely placed to take an internationalist outlook on the reform of the UN. We should no longer look at things through the prism of what would appear to be a short-term national interest. Our long-term interests are absolutely bound up with making this organisation as efficient and effective as possible.

Angus Robertson: On the question of Buggins's turn, does the hon. Gentleman concede that following that logic, it would make sense to reform the Security Council so that there would be no need for the UK and the other four permanent members to have a permanent seat and a veto? Does he foresee that as being part of his analysis against Buggins's turn?

Mr. Blunt: In a sense, the hon. Gentleman is extending the point too far, beyond the reality of today's world of international relations and security. It is undoubtedly true that the nations with the largest economies make the greatest contribution to world security, and historically those are the countries that have had the veto. There is now a debate about extending permanent membership and whether the nations that will become permanent members will come with a veto. But I am jumping ahead, so if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me I shall deal with the Secretariat before considering the Security Council itself.

I commend what the Government said about initiatives such as targeted training, funding internship programmes, support for graduates - particularly from developing countries - and addressing appraisal systems. One would hope that, if the UN is prepared to be self-critical in the manner of Martti Ahtisaari's report, such self-criticism could be extended to the personnel management of the entire UN. On term limits for senior posts, two four-year terms is usually the sensible limit, but the Government appear to be suggesting that that should be reviewed and the terms made longer. It is plainly in everybody's interests that the UN, even in respect of its most senior posts, should begin to acquire people whose only loyalty is to the UN, so that they do not then return to whichever country they came from. The UN career path should attract the best and brightest of the world's graduates. The UK's best and brightest used to join our own diplomatic service, and the best and brightest of the globe should be attracted to the UN.

There is a horrifying contrast between the language that the Government used about the Secretariat, and that used about reform of the Security Council. The Command Paper states:

"The United Kingdom remains committed to a Security Council that is representative of the modern world, efficient and transparent."

I doubt whether we wanted to be committed to one that is representative of the ancient world - inefficient and opaque. On examining the rest of that paragraph, we realise that it actually says very little. That is in rather sad contrast with what is said about the reforms of the Secretariat; in that regard, lots of specific proposals are made and supported.

We know that, like the previous Government, this Government want the Security Council to expand. The Prime Minister has put on the record - as have other Ministers and the previous Administration - the difficulties in achieving that, but it is self-evident that the nations that make the greatest contribution to security ought to be permanent members of the Security Council. That plainly means India in the first instance, which not only has a huge population but has made a very significant contribution to UN security operations around the world. It almost certainly means Japan and Germany, given their economic weight, and Brazil. People are wondering whether, if an African country is to join, it will be South Africa or Nigeria, and in some senses that is a difficult call. South Africa has a global reputation and appears to have a rather more accountable and satisfactory Government, yet Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and is a regional power in its own right. Here, we hit the difficulty of making qualitative judgments between different candidates for permanent membership of the Security Council.

Are we really proposing to give all those nations a veto? We need to reflect much more on the whole question of the veto. It is worth looking ahead 40 or 50 years, by which time the economy of India might be as large as that of the EU as a whole and the economy of China might, on current projections, be even larger. In those circumstances, the British and French veto may come to look a little odd. We shall have to contemplate the enlargement of the Security Council and a rather more internationalist outlook than we have to date. The world is changing and it will take an awfully long time to secure a satisfactory position for the reform of the UN. We must take a much longer-term view.

Plainly, there are British interests - as there are French - to protect, but we must examine how the veto has operated and what value it has to the United Kingdom. The fact that we are prepared to consider that issue, which goes beyond the position that any Government have adopted until now, might begin to open up a debate about the future of the UN and the future structure of the Security Council. If we, as a country committed to international security and one that has made and will continue to make a huge contribution, are prepared to acknowledge that such a debate should take place, that does not amount to an abandonment of the British position. It does not necessarily mean abandonment of the veto if what we secure in return is unsatisfactory. However, if we are not prepared to begin to deal with the issue - including Buggins's turn in relation to posts - and face up to how the world will look 30, 40 or 50 years ahead, it is difficult to see which other nations will lead the debate.

The UK has, because of our history, our heritage and our inheritance of the Commonwealth, a particularly proud record as a contributor to global affairs. We have contributed all around the globe over the past 200 years. We have had special relationships with countries as diverse as New Zealand and Hungary, for example, and we are the second biggest investor in Mexico. The UK has an outlook on the world and has a huge amount to contribute to the debate on reform of the UN. I hope that the Government will be prepared to engage imaginatively in that debate and perhaps go slightly further and consider options other than those that might be viewed as the most politically safe back home.