Chinese Embassy

Baroness Alexander of Cleveden Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I would like to clarify a couple of points. First, unless I missed something, the coalition ended in 2015. It was 2010 to 2015, so that was a matter for the noble Baroness’s party, not for the Liberal Democrats at that point. Secondly, on the number of diplomats, as I said earlier, that is subject to the Vienna convention. The Protocol Minister decides on a case-by-case basis on any additional applications for diplomats.

I have been very clear on the range of threats that China poses, but there are 370,000 British jobs that are dependent on our relationship with China. We need to have a level of pragmatism and a sensible relationship with the second-largest economy in the world and our third-largest trading partner. We just need to remember what we are doing and why we are doing it. The idea that this Government or any British Government are naive in their approach to foreign policy is frankly insulting.

On the specific matter that the noble Baroness raised about our relationship with China and where they have sat, the Prime Minister said, when he met President Xi at the G20 in 2024, that he also wanted to engage honestly and frankly in those areas where we have different perspectives, including on Hong Kong, human rights and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

We have genuine debate, we make our position clear, as we have on the national security law and on a range of issues, including Jimmy Lai’s status and the ongoing trials. You can have those conversations with allies only if you talk to them. While the world is as volatile as it is, I suggest that more words rather than fewer are important, which requires more people to have those conversations

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab)]

My Lords, the events of last week and this week demonstrate to us the difficulties of managing superpowers and the challenges they present, as well as the opportunities. So, while the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, is right to suggest that China presents areas where we must oppose, there must also be areas where we seek to co-operate when we can. Does my noble friend the Minister recognise the need for expert advice to guide embassy location decisions, and is that the way to avoid the sort of ricocheting we have seen from the golden age that has already been referenced tonight to the ice age that we have also been presented with?

Can my noble friend the Minister also just confirm that the heads of MI5 and GCHQ stated that

“this consolidation should bring clear security advantages”?

Did she have the opportunity, exactly a week ago today, to hear this point reinforced by the director-general of MI5, speaking in this place, when he reiterated and dwelled on the fact that the greater threats surrounding espionage come not from within an embassy building but often from activities beyond an embassy that dominate much of the work of our security agencies? Finally, does my noble friend agree that, as we go forward on the question of embassy locations, we should be led by the UK’s most senior intelligence officers in our decision-making?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her questions. One thing that is really clear, given that this Statement is about our national security, is about being led by our national security experts, who, as she rightly said, have been clear in their opinions about the mitigations that are required but also about the nature of this. With regard to the location of embassies, this is a piece of land that was bought in 2018 and was granted the diplomatic permission to move forward as an embassy, subject to planning permission, under the last Government—or, in fact, as I said, under Boris Johnson. But what is clear is that a quasi-judicial process has since followed. There is a 240-page document which outlines why that decision was made and how it was made, and it is all available to all Members of your Lordships’ House online. But she is absolutely right: my honourable friend the Security Minister in the other place and the directors-general of MI5 and GCHQ, have all made it clear that there are also clear security benefits to the amalgamation of seven sites into one.

UK Constitution: Oversight and Responsibility (Report from the Constitution Committee)

Baroness Alexander of Cleveden Excerpts

Friday 4th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Pitkeathley, I rise to speak not as a lawyer, a judge or a senior Whitehall insider—I cannot bring the insider wisdom that we have heard so much of this morning—but as a constitutional reformer whose experience has largely been of operating outside, at least until I entered this place.

Way back in 1997, I worked on the White Paper on devolution and what became the Scotland Act. I subsequently served in Holyrood. In 2010, I chaired a Scotland Bill Committee transferring substantive fiscal powers to the Scottish Parliament. All those years ago, I learned that bold constitutional reform can both embed and endure. My remarks today will be about, in essence, recovering some of that constitutional reform ambition.

I need to declare an interest. My brother is a Minister of State in the Cabinet Office. For the record, everything that follows is mine and mine alone.

As befits a Friday in July debating a cross-party report, I want to range beyond party lines and speak directly to my noble friends on the committee, encouraging them to return to how our constitution needs to evolve. On today’s specifics, I welcome the Government’s commitment to a centre of excellence in the Cabinet Office, to a dedicated Cabinet committee and to strengthening the standards landscape, albeit that, like others, I think that advisory bodies should be put on a statutory footing.

Like many noble Lords and the Government, I share the scepticism about the Prime Minister having one specific support around the constitution vested in the Lord Chancellor—although my objection is on a slightly different basis because, of course, the Lord Chancellor is an English law officer running an English territorial department. Notwithstanding the admirable stewardship of Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the noble and learned Lords, Lord Irvine and Lord Falconer, and the recently ennobled noble Lord, Lord Gove, all of whom instinctively grasped the four-nation character of the UK, we self-evidently cannot rely on the occupant always being a Scot.

I turn to my noble friends on the committee. I appreciate that the context of this report was the strains of the previous Parliament. Yet I also encourage the committee to continue to look forward to tomorrow’s constitutional challenges, to dig deeper, to be bolder and to be braver on how constitutional reform can contribute to national progress. This report comes at a time when the established political order is under attack across the democratic world. Given that precarity, do constitutional niceties matter at a time of so many other challenges? I believe that two major constitutional issues demand our attention because they are holding Britain back. The chief culprits are executive dominance and corrosive centralisation.

I turn first to executive dominance. As the committee recognises, the increasing use of delegated powers, accelerated by Covid, has shifted power from Parliament to the Executive. We need to address the power of the Executive, its control of the parliamentary agenda, the creep of performative legislation and the ordering of the centre of government. All of these things commend themselves for further scrutiny.

Next up is corrosive centralisation. The UK is the most centralised large country in the developed world. Let that sink in. Notwithstanding the welcome development of the Council of the Nations and Regions, the corrosive centralisation is most acute in England, as the most recent English devolution White Paper recognises. Yet I say to all noble Lords that it will take a cross-party consensus to drive power out of this place and back to where it belongs. I firmly believe that tackling these constitutional realities of executive dominance and corrosive centralisation could make a real difference, by unlocking the possibility of better governance and the opportunity to tackle the inequality that scars our nation.

That is a bold claim, so let me, in my time remaining, try to justify it. Decentralisation can deliver better governance, because getting Parliament out of the legislative weeds is a prerequisite for better and more strategic policy-making, of the kind that we have just heard about. Without wishing to lower the tone of the debate, I simply say that it cannot be right that here in the upper House of a nation of 60 million people we are discussing south Cambridge car parking arrangements or highly localised statutory instruments. We are drowning in detail that needs devolving back to town halls, as my noble friend said.

When it comes to inequality, the UK is the world’s most geographically unbalanced developed economy. Our north/south divide has become so normalised that we barely see the depth of its destructive impact. Thankfully, driving decentralisation and tackling the north/south divide are priorities for this Government, yet history suggests that constitutional reform and regional renaissance require cross-party support to secure legitimacy and longevity.

Many of the issues that I have raised today, and that have been echoed across the Chamber, are about improving the functioning of the state—functions in which many of our citizens have lost faith recently. Here, I echo the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Lord Bates. These issues straddle the constitution, the mechanics of government, Civil Service reform, regulation, judicial review and public service reform. Yet our current committee structure typically addresses these issues in isolation, while the public simply see a collective failure of governance. I commend to my noble friends that they consider nominating, for a House special inquiry in the next Session, a more holistic consideration of the crisis of governance that ails our politics. In so doing, this venerable Chamber would be getting ahead of the constitutional agenda and not merely looking in the rearview mirror.