Foreign Affairs Committee Inquiry 3 December 2007
Examination of Witnesses
Councillor Mike Summers, OBE, Legislative Council, Falkland Islands, Leslie Jaques OBE, Commissioner for the Pitcairn Islands, and The Hon Brian W. Isaac MLC, Member of the Executive Council, St. Helena, gave evidence.
Chairman: I ask those members of the public who are leaving to go quickly, and those who are entering the room to take your seats and switch off your mobile phones. For those who have just arrived, I repeat what I said at the beginning. I threw someone out last week whose mobile phone went off. I shall not hesitate to do so again. Please switch them off, or put them on silent. Thank you.
Gentlemen, all three of you were sitting at the back listening to the previous witnesses. I thank you very much for coming to see us today.
Would you begin by introducing yourselves?
Brian W. Isaac: I am Brian Isaac, a member of the Executive Council of St. Helena. Leslie Jaques: I am Leslie Jaques, Commissioner, from the Pitcairn Islands.
Mike Summers: I am Mike Summers, of the Legislative Council of the Falkland Islands Government.
Andrew Mackinlay: That is like being the Governor, is it not?
Chairman: You are the UK representative, I believe.
Mike Summers: Yes.
Q28 Chairman: How would you characterise your relationships with your respective Governors?
That is a difficult question for a man from the Pitcairn Islands, so I put it to the other two.
Brian W. Isaac: We work very closely. As you are aware, the island recently received a new Governor, with whom I have had two meetings. They were most welcome. Working relations with the previous Governor were close and very good.
Mike Summers: You will appreciate that in our circumstances it is essential that the Legislative Council works very closely with the Governor, particularly on foreign affairs issues. By and large, we tend to have good and co-operative relations with Governors. However, you will have noted, from evidence submitted from the Falkland Islands Legislative Council, that there are concerns that that relationship can vary with personalities, which cannot be right. It is essential that Governors coming to the territories have the right brief and training to ensure that they know precisely what they are meant to achieve.
Q29 Chairman: Perhaps we will come on to those issues in greater detail. I have a general question about the Overseas Territories Consultative Council, which you are attending this week. How useful is that organisation to you?
Leslie Jaques: It is very good. Pitcairn Island is small and isolated. It is probably the most remote region of what was the British Empire.
We do not get to London very often. Both through the consultative council and other relationships, there is a huge amount of networking, support and learning, which is to our advantage. Certainly, from our point of view, it is very worth while.
Q30 Chairman: You are in a rather unusual position, because you are a Foreign and Commonwealth Office appointee, but you also represent an overseas territory at the consultative council.
Leslie Jaques: That is right.
Q31 Chairman: How widely known is the relationship between overseas territories and the consultative council among Pitcairners?
Leslie Jaques: Pitcairn Island has always been run almost directly through the Governor’s office. One of my roles is to restructure that in order to create more of a self-governing scenario and to devolve operational responsibility to Pitcairn in the same way that other Governments administer their overseas territories. We consult very widely with the community, as part of that process, and I spend a lot of time on Pitcairn: this year I spent six months there, and I shall spend virtually the whole of next year there as well in order to implement and manage change. The consultation process is a very important part of that. Communication between the Foreign Office, the Governor’s office, our office and the Pitcairn Island Council and community has improved massively-it is probably better than it has ever been.
Q32 Chairman: Could you deal with the wider question, Mr. Summers?
Mike Summers: I have been to the majority of OTCC meetings since the organisation was set up. It has improved over the years. We are all responsible if it does not work as it should do, because we have the opportunity to add items to the agenda and to comment on how it is run. It is a good institution and we would be very much the poorer without it. However, sometimes we wonder whether there is significant resource to follow up all the issues raised at OTCC meetings, which we will probably discuss this year. However, it is an evolving institution and it is a good thing that it exists.
Brian W. Isaac: This will be the first time that I have attended the OTCC. I look forward to working with it. Previous colleagues of mine who have attended those forums found them very beneficial. They have strengthened links between territories and we must retain our relationship with it. I hope that that relationship will continue.
Q33 Sir John Stanley: I have three questions to put to you in relation to the Falkland Islands. The Foreign Office, it must be said, had a pretty appalling track record under the previous Conservative Government-of which I was a member in different Ministries from time to time-in terms of standing up for the sovereignty and independence of the Falkland Islands people. Do you feel that the Foreign Office has learned those lessons, and is it now sufficiently robust in protecting the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands?
Mike Summers: The Falkland Islands Government are happy with UK Government statements on sovereignty over the Falkland Islands going back a number of years now. The current Prime Minister and his predecessor have been very robust in saying that the UK does not doubt the sovereignty and independence of the Falkland Islands, and that there should be no discussion of sovereignty unless the people of the Falklands so wish. That has been a strong, coherent and unwavering message, and in our circumstances the consistency of that message is crucial.
Q34 Sir John Stanley: Thank you. Do you feel that present arrangements for the demarcation of fishing rights between the Falkland Islands and Argentina are stable and satisfactory, and that they properly protect the Falkland Islands’ fishing rights?
Mike Summers: I believe so. The boundaries between the Falklands and Argentina, where they exist, are well known to us. There have been some instances relatively recently where vessels that thought they were fishing legally on the high seas have been arrested by Argentina and caused to make some payment to be released. It is a matter for international debate. How the Argentine Government delimit their outer area is not entirely clear to everybody and seems to be open to some interpretation. That cannot be satisfactory, but we are entirely clear about where the boundaries lie between us and Argentina in areas where they are contiguous.
Q35 Sir John Stanley: Do you feel that the Foreign Office is taking sufficient steps to resolve the grey areas of dispute to which you refer?
Mike Summers: I am not aware that the Foreign Office is very active on that issue.
Q36 Sir John Stanley: Thank you. Can we turn to oil and gas rights? The British Government are taking some interesting initiatives-including in the United Nations, it appears-to claim oil and gas rights in areas around the world where the UK has particular continental shelf rights. Do you feel that the Foreign Office is doing all it reasonably can to protect oil and gas rights in the Falkland Islands and the adjacent South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands?
Mike Summers: In conjunction with the Foreign Office and other UK institutions, we have undertaken study of the continental shelf extending eastwards, in particular, from the Falkland Islands to establish whether continental shelf extension can legitimately be claimed. The results of that investigation seem to suggest that it can, and we are satisfied that the British Government and their institutions are preparing that claim. It goes largely to the east, and not much to the north and west, which deals with some potential difficulties. It is our understanding that that claim, along with those for other British territories, will be made to the United Nations convention on the law of the sea in due course. I regret that I cannot speak on behalf of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, over which we have had no jurisdiction since the 1985 constitution.
Q37 Sir John Stanley: You made it clear that we are concentrating on the westward extension.
Mike Summers: No, eastward. Q38 Sir John Stanley: Okay. If the focus is on the eastward extension and the sensitive issue is westward extension, are there any areas of westward extension likely to produce a clash with Argentina?
