Contribution
As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on securing this timely debate to mark the International Day of Democracy. On behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition I absolutely endorse her words about Jimmy Lai; her constituent should be released immediately.
It is right that this debate has been brought to the Floor of the House today, and that we all pause and reflect on the centrality of democracy, which in various forms runs right the way through our own national story and to the principles that we the United Kingdom hold dear across the world. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the birthplace of parliamentary democracy. Our history, our institutions and our very identity as a nation are bound up by that great achievement of democracy.
The story of our constitution—the balance between Crown and Parliament, and the empowerment of the individual through common law—was a British innovation that has evolved organically over many centuries. By the good fortune of our history and the wisdom of our forebears, we achieved a parliamentary system that blends monarchy and an upper Chamber, and which includes the state Church, the judiciary, science, the armed forces, academia and business. Of course, we have the vehicle to represent the popular will of the people here in this democratically elected House of Commons. Despite what some would describe as anachronisms of history, I believe that we in this country have a model parliamentary democracy. At the heart of our democracy is the principle of parliamentary sovereignty: our people, through their elected representatives, are the final authority. That is the cornerstone of our freedom.
Britain’s democratic reach extends far beyond these islands. From the very outset of our imperial past, England, then Great Britain, and then the United Kingdom was able to replicate the best of our democratic traditions in the far reaches of the planet. In many of our former colonies, the right to vote was established and extended even more broadly than it was at the same time in the United Kingdom. The Commonwealth of Nations embodies these democratic principles: 56 nations bound together not by force, but by free choice and by the shared democratic values enshrined in the Commonwealth charter. I believe that the Commonwealth of Nations is an undervalued institution. To have its headquarters a mere few minutes’ walk from where we sit today surely makes us the envy of any western democracy.
I read with great interest ahead of this debate the briefing from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy —an organisation that I was proud to serve as a board member for nine years and have worked with for 20 to 30 years. It was established by John Major’s Government following the fall of the Berlin wall and the iron curtain, at the time when Margaret Thatcher was our Prime Minister. We commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth next month, on 13 October. As we all know, Mrs Thatcher was a courageous leader, who was not afraid to oppose communism and stood up for freedom and democracy in Europe, resulting in an end to the communist tyranny that dominated the eastern side of the continent.
In 1993, I established a freedom training programme, with the support of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, through the Conservative party’s international office and the European Young Conservatives, which I chaired at the time, to help to spread the ideas of free people, free nations, free markets, democracy and the rule of law. We were doing all that via sister parties; the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and, indeed, all political parties did the same. I worked with countries ranging from Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia to Belarus—where I launched the Free Belarus campaign in 1997—Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Moldova and Albania, as well as Ukraine and Russia, and even nations as far away as Argentina, a country that regained its democracy after Margaret Thatcher ensured the defeat of the military dictatorship in 1982 by the forces of the Crown in the south Atlantic.