Excellency, today’s Ceremony accrediting you, High Commissioner Brummell, as your country’s Plenipotentiary Representative to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is a notable and important one. You are the second Representative of the United Kingdom to be accredited to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Your predecessor High Commissioner Fraser Wheeler, based as he was in Georgetown, Guyana, had a close and active relationship with the CARICOM Secretariat. You, Excellency the first under the new UK Government, we are advised will be based in Barbados. Excellency, we warmly welcome the Representative of the United Kingdom wherever they may be based in the Community.
We are all familiar with the long, dynamic, diverse and historical relations that have existed between the United Kingdom and most of the countries of the Caribbean Community. To a degree, we continue to be part of each other, not least due to the integral involvement of the UK dependent territories of Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands as Associate Members of the Caribbean Community. Moreover, Montserrat is a full member of our Community.
Our strongest bonds however, are the common values that we all share as part of the Commonwealth. These values include good governance, democracy, respect for the rule of law and for the basic, inalienable rights of all our peoples. High Commissioner, the Caribbean Community and the UK have benefited over the years from frank and open dialogue and have co-operated constructively to ensure the defence of these values. We must strive to remain guardians of these all too fragile and important tenets of modern civilization. It is in all of our interests.
CARICOM and the UK have also always enjoyed meaningful political and technical cooperation in fields such as education, sport, tourism, security and, hopefully now, climate change. It is my expectation that our exchanges in each of these and other fields will not only continue but increase and deepen.
Your Excellency, the issues of good governance, security, as well as trade and commercial opportunities, which have been among the priority areas identified by the new UK Foreign Secretary, have resonated well with the Caribbean Region. The priority of trade and commercial opportunities in particular, is an extremely important one at this critical time. As you are aware, the global economic and financial crisis has seriously adversely affected virtually all Member States of the Community. The Community would therefore welcome and indeed encourage any initiative from the United Kingdom that serves to stimulate investment and foster trade and economic cooperation between the UK and CARICOM.
It is for that reason, Excellency that we are somewhat concerned that one of the major contributors to the economy of most Member States of the Community – Tourism – is being seriously threatened by your government’s taxation policy, in particular the Advance Passenger Duty (APD).
Excellency, we do not by any means challenge the right of your country to determine its tax policy. What we mainly ask is that it should not be discriminatory in its effect against our countries, intentionally or otherwise. It is difficult for Caribbean countries to accept that visitors travelling from London to the Caribbean, just over four thousand miles away must pay an emission duty on their ticket much higher than that paid by visitors travelling to Hawaii, some seven thousand miles, or Vancouver not that much less. Excellency, we are much closer to you as far as distance is concerned as we are in so many other aspects of life. We hope, therefore, that there is still scope for an appropriate adjustment.
Excellency, there are disagreements even in the most closely-knit families. The test of the relationship however, is our ability to remain true to its basic tenets. It is against the background of this firm belief that we see the mechanism of the UK-Caribbean Forum as a most valuable instrument.
The 7th meeting of the Forum due to be held in 2011 in Grenada, which will be the first meeting between CARICOM Foreign Ministers and their counterpart in the UK, Foreign Secretary, William Hague, seems set to be a most fruitful opportunity for the strengthening of UK-Caribbean relations. Apart from the complex global challenges that confront us all from security to climate change to the continuing financial and economic crisis, there are issues such as the Turks and Caicos situation which are unique to us.
Regarding this last matter, as you are aware, the UK’s imposition of indefinite direct rule in that Associate Member of the Community has been of some concern to us. We see it as being, as indicated in documentation sent to your government; “totally at odds with the development of good governance, including improved fiscal and administrative management, in the Turks and Caicos Islands.”
CARICOM contends that those objectives of Her Majesty’s Government cannot be met by the continued effective disenfranchisement of the Turks and Caicos Islanders or by the denial of their inalienable right to shape their own future. High Commissioner, it is for that reason that CARICOM looks forward to the restoration by the UK’s new administration of the islanders’ full franchise.
As we speak Excellency, the current global discussions on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico are nearing their end. We sincerely hope that significant progress would have been made following the less than satisfactory meeting in Copenhagen last December. Indeed Excellency, after listening to the weather reports from Britain over the last few days I know that you would be appreciative of the reality of climate change!
Every year, we in the Caribbean are confronted with this brutal reality. When cities shut down and people lose homes as happened in Barbados, Saint Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines less than a month ago and when entire populations are adversely affected, as in Guyana after the floods of 2005 and in Haiti in 2008; when whole economies are compromised given the decimation of the spice industry and tourism for example in Grenada after Hurricane Ivan, governments and people having to struggle to maintain any quality of life. Our mantra of “1.5 to stay alive” is not merely a slogan or a calypso as some might be inclined to think! It is for us in these small-island states and low-lying coastal states, literally a matter of life and death.
Excellency, security is another area in which CARICOM and the UK must ensure meaningful cooperation. The security arrangements put in place for the Cricket World Cup held in the Caribbean in 2007 testifies to the value of this. (By the way, Excellency, speaking of cricket, please accept our warmest congratulations for what your team has been doing Down Under over the last few days. You will be surprised how many of us are Poms!)
Unfortunately, despite significant advances in security arrangements, we are required to improve even on this fine record as threats multiply, diversify, take on greater and more pernicious dimensions and, very simply, become more complex. This is due in no small measure to the reality of, as your Foreign Secretary puts it ‘a more networked world’.
Your Excellency, your distinguished credentials reassure us that the CARICOM-UK friendship, relationship and partnership has, once more, been entrusted to most capable hands. Your engagement with the Region as the UK’s High Commissioner to Barbados and the countries of the OECS members of the Caribbean Community augurs well for continued productive relations with CARICOM. We look forward to working with you to further consolidate and advance the strong ties between the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the United Kingdom. We therefore bid you a hearty welcome and readily accept your letter of credence.
I thank you.
