The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, it is a privilege to open the days of debate ahead on the humble Address. I want to begin with some of my own tributes. My first tribute, echoing that of the Leader of the House yesterday, is to the outgoing Leader of the House, now the acting Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon. I am thinking of my time on the Front Bench opposite, when she led your Lordships’ House through some intensely difficult moments with the greatest skill. We all owe her our thanks. We also extend our deep sympathies to her for her tragic loss.
I also salute the work of my predecessors in the role I am now fulfilling over the past years—it is been about nine years now—including the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, who I am happy to see in her place and who was doing my job before; the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown; and, particularly, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean. They all set very high standards which I shall be hard pressed to follow, but I will do my best.
For the sake of my own career prospects—which, I admit, are extremely limited—I should also pay tribute to the two ex-leaders of the opposition parties, now the Leader and the Deputy Leader of the House, who have come together with such grace and speed, sacrificing the joys of opposition for the chill exposure of government. I acutely realise that from now on I shall have to pick my words with exceptional care, otherwise I may attract some distinctly uncoalition-like rebukes from my noble friend Lord McNally about my general abilities, qualifications and grasp of events, if not more.
I am pleased to be dealing with foreign affairs alongside my new noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire. To claim that we have always seen eye to eye on such matters as the future development of the EU and the Lisbon treaty would be stretching credulity beyond limits, but he is a towering authority on international issues and it is a privilege for me to be working with him. Finally, I am glad that my long-standing colleague, my noble friend Lord Astor, has been appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence and will, of course, be winding up at the end of today’s proceedings.
We are witnessing a huge change in the way states and Governments face and interact with each other, and it is desirable now that Britain should be at its most agile, innovative, ingenious and constructive at operating within this quite new international milieu. First, while the Cold War is obviously decades behind us, with its grim threat of mutual nuclear annihilation, which some of us grew up with, the post-Cold War phase has brought new dangers of nuclear proliferation. That is why my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, Mr Hague, announced this morning, after only a few days in office, a highly significant departure in the UK’s strategic weapons policy—namely, by publishing for the first time the full number of nuclear warheads in the UK stockpile. In future, our stockpile will not exceed 225 warheads.
The Government will also launch a review of the UK’s nuclear posture; that is, its so-called “declaratory policy”. None of this will affect our national security, but it should all help considerably to boost the climate of trust between nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states which has been so signally lacking. All of this further affirms the full commitment of the coalition Government to the current Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review going on in New York while we speak, where we are playing a strong role and which my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State is attending.
A second major factor that we must now recognise is that the axis of international power and influence is shifting, not merely to the so-called “emerging powers” such as the BRICs—that is, Brazil, Russia, India and China—about which I shall say more in a moment, but also to increasingly significant players such as Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and to groupings such as the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. The growing significance of the G20, alongside the G8, also clearly reflects this trend.
Thirdly, when it comes to our military strength—our hard-power capability—the shield of Achilles has today to be raised not only against visible enemies but also against the cowardly viciousness of the roadside bomb and other murderous methods. At the same time, the work of the military is increasingly and inevitably intertwined with reconstruction and civil repair. The Taliban and its Pashtun backers are one vivid and present example of these challenges. The wind-up speech of my noble friend Lord Astor will focus on the many specific questions and issues related to the Afghanistan war which I know are on your Lordships’ minds and on which we intend to give regular and comprehensive reports to Parliament on a quarterly basis.
Successful power deployment today—that is, power to protect and promote our people, national commercial interest and prosperity and yet at the same time uphold our values and maximise our contribution to global peace in a heavily interdependent age—therefore rests overwhelmingly on diplomacy in all its forms. That means operating not just through government-to-government relations but also, increasingly, through every kind of sub-governmental, non-governmental, professional, informational and commercial linkage. It demands a continuous spread of cultural diplomacy and soft-power deployment throughout the globe and the international institutional network. This dense mass of connections is the new global network in which we have to operate. What people call our enlightened self-interest in this new context is no narrow affair. It involves being an effective force for good in the world, fighting poverty, meeting or adjusting environmental and climatic threats as well as seeking the very best for our own nation and society. At government level, it requires an intricate web of diplomatic relations with nations large and small, conducted with the maximum mutual respect and underpinned by a highly active, informal latticework of connections.
Of course, we want a strong, close and frank relationship with the United States of America—to use the words of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State—and, within our own region, with our fellow European Union states. We want to use and strengthen the combined weight of the EU wherever we can. However, in the international landscape, the channels for power and influence will lie also in our bilateral network links with a whole variety of new players and not only with and through the main transatlantic duo.
Lord Clinton-Davis
How does the noble Lord reconcile that with his party’s alliance with extreme right-wing forces in the European Union? Are his views shared by the Liberal Democrats in that respect?
Lord Howell of Guildford
This is a coalition Government and a lot of views are shared. I shall come to European Union matters in a moment. Not every detail is shared, but the majority are. I assure the noble Lord, who has considerable experience of these things, that what I shall say represents the united view of the coalition on how we go forward on the crucial question of the European Union.
The same new pattern goes for our energy security. An entirely new pattern of energy supply is in the making, which invalidates old priorities. Nations such as Poland, with its shale gas, Brazil, with its enormous new oil finds and its sugarcane biofuel, and Canada, with its tar sands, shale, biofuels and Arctic oil and gas, all come to the fore as the key sources in the new era. Norway, too, will be increasingly our lifeline. But Russia, on the other hand, may come to have a less dominant role in Europe’s energy supplies—which is all to the good.
We will need to consider the redirection of diplomatic resource, in all its forms, to countries and networks which seemed scarcely to feature on the global priorities map a decade or so ago. We have to work out how scarce resources can best be deployed towards nations and networks such as the Turkish republic and the republics of Central Asia and the Caspian region, such as Azerbaijan. We must build stronger, reinvigorated and more structured ties with the Gulf states—our close friends in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE, for example—with North Africa and with Japan, still an economic titan, in which the Secretary of State has asked me to take a special interest, with Latin America and especially with the whole vast Commonwealth network of linkages, both governmental and non-governmental, with India and Pakistan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Malaysia in the lead, while fully respecting the interests of smaller Commonwealth countries as well.
I am sure that we all welcome Her Majesty's forthcoming visit to Canada, a leading Commonwealth member, and to the UN in New York, with the Duke of Edinburgh in June. Her Majesty’s own words that the Commonwealth is, in lots of ways,
“the face of the future”,
are worth keeping in mind.
I should add that we also warmly welcome the official papal visit to this country. I understand that there was a pastoral one before, but this is the first official one.
Our links with India, one of the world’s fastest-rising economies, will be of particular importance to us. The gracious Speech confirms that we will seek a truly enhanced partnership with the Indian giant, again a central Commonwealth member.
These will now be the priorities of diplomacy in its new guise. Experts may talk about the shift in wealth and power now taking place globally, but it is time to grasp what this really means, where the new power and influence centres really lie, and how we relate to them to our best possible national advantage.
I come to some specific issues concerning us all, although, obviously, I cannot in the time available—and noble Lords would not want me to—cover every aspect of the scene. I turn to the point raised about the European Union. There will, no doubt, be many debates ahead on the development of our relations with the EU, but I confirm that we will be energetically involved in the EU’s external policy challenges of today and tomorrow, although, of course, these form only a part of our overall global positioning and strategy. Some of us were not overenthusiastic about the new European Union external action service, but now that it exists we want to see it play a really positive role for the EU and its member states.
The EU is clearly facing great strains at the moment, which go well beyond the problems of Greece and the euro, and it is in our interest that it gets on top of these challenges before they drag us all down. But the coalition is agreed that any proposed future treaty that transferred further areas of power or competences from the UK to the EU will be subject to a referendum, and we propose to seek amendment of the European Communities Act 1972, accordingly. In addition, we will ensure that an Act of Parliament will be required before any ratchet clauses within the Lisbon treaty—the so-called passerelle clauses, which veterans of the debates will remember all too well—are put into effect. Any major transfer of powers by this route would also be subject to a referendum.
We also plan to examine further the case for a UK sovereignty Bill, to establish that ultimate authority remains with our Parliament. All that is very much in the spirit of the Laaken declaration, which wished to see the EU less remote from and nearer to the people of Europe. We all want to see parliamentary and democratic scrutiny, control and accountability for the European decision-making process maximised, and I believe that this is the way forward—for us and for the Union as a whole.
Turning to Iran, we support tougher sanctions to deter that country’s dangerous nuclear ambitions, but the question is whether China and Russia will co-operate fully, because they are in a position to undermine them. At present, those two great nations back sanctions, but also encourage deals such as the Turkey and Brazil nuclear fuel deal, which appears to do little to promote a more responsible attitude by Iran. There is also the new Iraq-Iran oil pipeline deal, which could weaken sanctions in the future. All those developments remind us that regional as much as western issues are at stake.
In Iraq, we now have post-election political stalemate. There has been an election, and democracy has worked in that sense, but there is now a stalemate that could be dangerous and bring yet more violence. A positive aspect is that oil investment is set to go ahead in what has been described as one of history’s biggest transfers of oil territory into the oil production and supply chain. Either way, whatever happens—some people have talked about output as big as 12 million barrels a day, which would make Iraq much bigger than Saudi Arabia—commercial opportunities are clearly opening out on a major scale. BP is already leading boldly with its investment in the Rumaila oilfield, although BP is currently facing nightmares elsewhere, as we have all read in the media.
In Sudan, where we have been spending—and this figure surprised me when I read it in my brief— £250 million a year on humanitarian aid and development, our hopes remain resting on the comprehensive peace agreement and, looking ahead, on the south Sudan independence referendum. In view of the heavy Chinese presence in Sudan, perhaps it would also be right to call your Lordships’ attention to the major spread of Chinese investment and trade activity, not only in Africa but worldwide, and to note that the UK is the biggest outside investor in China, while Chinese investment here is also growing rapidly. So while we stand solid on our principles in relation to human rights, we need and intend to maximise our relations with China and are happy to have inherited an already strong showing at the great Shanghai Expo, where by all accounts the British pavilion is a popular marvel.
There are numerous other dangerous and tense situations around the globe that require our attention and which doubtless we will address in the months ahead. Some require continuity of the policy of the Government from whom we have inherited them and some need vigorous new directions. I refer briefly to the many obstacles still blocking the path to a Palestinian state and to the miserable situation in Gaza. We must keep close track of the increased tension as expressed in yesterday’s and today’s papers over North Korea’s latest unprovoked act of aggression, which we deplore. We extend our sympathies over the death of 46 sailors on the torpedoed “Cheonan” vessel.
We will keep a close watch too on the renewed dangers of disintegration in the west Balkans, and we are also addressing the nexus of hazardous issues in the Horn of Africa, including the continuing piracy problem. Burma, too, we have to watch carefully, and the rearming of Hezbollah may raise tensions again in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Thailand is torn by riots and other horrors are reported daily in the media. The list, I fear, goes on and on. This is a dangerous and precarious world.
As for hopes for recovery in long-suffering and misruled Zimbabwe, we will give all the support that we can to the reformers and encourage stronger help from Zimbabwe’s neighbours, particularly South Africa. Our priorities must also include UN reform, on which we back permanent seats for Japan, India, Germany and Brazil, as well as African representation. I add what I hope is obvious to your Lordships: in all our affairs, this Government will never condone torture, complicity in torture or rendition leading to torture.
I have spoken almost long enough. I see on the list of speakers today those who are in the front rank of authority on many of the issues that I have mentioned, such as the noble Lords, Lord Alton, Lord Anderson, Lord Hannay and Lord Owen, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, as well as many others, all of whom offer specialist wisdom by which we should be guided.
Rather than taking more of your Lordships’ time, I conclude by saying that today our distinctive positioning in this world of major and often brutal transition can and will define and unite us here at home. It can give us what we need, which is clear purpose and identity in this nation. Strength without is strength within. Security without is security within. The two cannot be separated.
The Prime Minister has established a National Security Council to bring together strategic decisions about foreign policy, security policy and development. This will be a powerful centre of decision-making. It has already met three times in the two weeks since the coalition Government were formed and will be a major means of involving domestic departments, which have an increasingly international aspect to their work, in the pursuit of our foreign policy objectives.
It is with this underpinning that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is moving vigorously and swiftly to see that he and his department, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—I emphasise “Commonwealth”—work very closely with his colleagues at the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development to ensure the best possible co-ordination and deployment of all our overseas resources, diplomatic, military and developmental, to meet and serve the nation’s international priorities and worldwide interests and purposes effectively and efficiently. That is what this coalition intends and that is clearly what the country wants.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford was so swiftly out of the trap in his eagerness to address the House that he beat me to the Dispatch Box, so I am afraid that I have been unable so far to assist the House in explaining how one might arrive at a happy rising time of 10 o’clock. I promise to take better exercise so that I can beat him to the Dispatch Box in future. Forty-four speakers are signed up for today’s debate. If Back-Bench contributions are kept to seven minutes, the House should be able to rise this evening at around the target time of 10 o’clock.