International Agreements Committee

15 September 2026

Contents updated on 15 Sept 2026

The Chair opens the session and UNIDO outlines how critical UK assessments drove internal reforms, before peers explore UNIDO’s current role in energy access, African industrialisation and its niche within wider UN ‘UN 2.0’ reforms.

Committee Tue, 15 Sept 2026 House of Lords

00:08 - 01:27

Speaker 3

Well thank you very much. We're extremely pleased to welcome the three of you today to talk about UNIDO and our rejoining of that organisation, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation. And for the benefit of my colleagues, we have presenting evidence today Manuel Mattiat, who is the Director and Chef de Cabinet of the Office of the Chef de Cabinet of UNIDO. So thank you very much indeed for coming and presenting to us. Rana Ghoneim, who's Director, Division of Energy and Climate Action, UNIDO, and Jason Slater, who is Director, Division of Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence at the UNIDO.

Thank you very much indeed for spending some time with us today. We have a variety of different questions. The purpose of this committee is to make effective recommendations and scrutinise all treaties and agreements that the British government, UK government enters into. So this is a very interesting opportunity for us to hear from you the background as to why we are re-entering this organisation, and some of your peripheral comments around that will be very helpful since it will enable us to come to a good conclusion in the report that we will write and potentially a debate we may hold on the matter as well. So if I may ask Lord German to begin and ask the first question.

01:27 - 02:01

Speaker 16

Thank you very much, and really this is a 'what has changed' question, because essentially what I'd like to understand is what have you done since the UK withdrew that makes the UK's withdrawal problems being solved? In other words, what answers have you put in place to the issues which at the time were important to the UK when it, when it withdrew? So it's a fairly open question, but it really spans a period of years which I'm hoping you can tell us what's happened.

02:01 - 02:34

Speaker 7

Thank you very much, Lord Chair, my Lords. It's a great honour for us to be here. It's not the day-to-day business for us to appear in the House of Lords in London, so it's a big honour for us, and bear with us if we are a little bit nervous or intimidated, but we try to answer your questions as faithfully and diligently as possible. Thank you very much for, for this, this possibility as well to appear and clarify. I've seen the organisation for the past ten years roughly, so just around the time of the UK withdrawal I joined, so I have a little bit of history.

The rest of the transcript is for Pro customers

Unlock the full transcript, chat, and every analysis feature with Polyfact Pro.