Brexit: UK International Relations

Debate between Baroness Goldie and Lord Balfe

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in sending my good wishes to my noble friend Lord Howell, and thank my noble friend Lord Jopling for the excellent way in which he introduced this debate.

I shall talk about the US, particularly its external relations. President Trump is probably coming to office with the biggest opportunity, and the biggest division between himself and his predecessors, of anyone since FDR in 1932. Unfortunately, unlike FDR, he does not have a vice-president of the calibre of Sam Rayburn to get things though the House. Therefore, I think he will face the difficulty of translating the enormous promises he has made into any sort of action. Much of the action, of course, we would prefer not to see.

We love Roosevelt but it is worth looking at the reality of his time, which we have glossed over. He was also very much an American President. We should remember that he did not declare war on Germany; he declared war on Japan. Germany declared war on him, so he had no option in that regard. Roosevelt was a tough negotiator. If we are expecting favours in Washington, we should read the memoirs of John Maynard Keynes and a few other people, and we will soon see that the United States is not unlike any other country in that it looks after its own national interest. That is what Foreign Offices do. As I am sure my noble friend Lady Anelay will confirm, the job of a Foreign Office is to get the best deal for its country. Therefore, we may get our equivalent of Smoot-Hawley in tariffs but the best way of resisting that is to point out the disastrous effect it had on the world and the world economy last time round. However, the prospect of infrastructure expenditure may well make it easier for the President to rebalance defence expenditure, because, when push comes to shove, it is how much public money goes into your district, not what it is spent on, that gets votes in the US Congress.

My next point will probably not find much favour in this House. I believe that the advent of President Trump gives us the opportunity to reset our relations with Russia. I think that we have fundamentally misunderstood Russia. Russia has not rolled back to communism; it has moved to a nationalist, Christian-based, fairly fundamentalist way of looking at the world. One of the factors about Russia is that it is very keen on getting its equivalent of a Monroe doctrine. It believes that it is as much its right to have at least partially on side the countries round it as the United States does. That, of course, does not stop us having views, opinions and interventions in countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. But after a lifetime of dealing with foreign affairs, I can tell your Lordships that the UK Government always pull their punches slightly further back in some areas than they do in others. Russia regards itself as having interests. That gives us an opportunity to reset our relations with it.

If we are to make NATO work, the countries of NATO have to start paying. You cannot expect the United States to spend 3.3% of its GDP on defence to defend Latvia, which, according to my research on Google, spent 1.1% in 2015. That is not on. There has to be a rebalancing. The United Kingdom’s priority should be to secure the borders of the EU and to relieve the pressure on them. I want to speak particularly about the Baltics, an area I have been to on several occasions. We have to say two separate things to the Baltic states. The first is, “You’ve got to make your Russians want to live here”. There is far too much discrimination against the Russian populations of these states. The second thing is, “If you want us to defend you we’re up for it, but you’ve got to put a reasonable amount of money into the pot. We’ve got to come to an agreement on what you want and you’ve got to pay a good proportion of it”. Otherwise, quite frankly, we are going to make commitments we cannot carry out. The Russians are not fools. They hear us saying, “We’ll defend this. We’re going to do this with Crimea”. They know that we cannot, and will not, deliver that, and that we will not spend the money to do so.

This is an opportunity for us to reset our relations in a way that works. We have to negotiate with our allies to make sure that they are prepared to put up the money and give the commitment we need to make an alliance work. In or out of the EU, I believe that we can offer our help and support, but we should take this opportunity to try to cast our relations in a more realistic way and get rid of some of the “drama queen” stuff that has been around in western European foreign policy for the last few years.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, before the next speaker commences, I invite the co-operation of your Lordships in this very well subscribed debate in observing the time limits. We have a serious bit of slippage, which will impact on other speakers unless we can gather it up. I seek noble Lords’ assistance in looking at the clock. When the clock says “five”, that is the time to reunite the noble posterior with the Red Bench.

Turkey: Judicial Services

Debate between Baroness Goldie and Lord Balfe

Thursday 21st July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made any representations to the Government of Turkey regarding the recent detention and dismissal of personnel working for the judicial services.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, we are aware of reports of the detention and dismissal of personnel working for the judicial services and the suspension of staff working in government departments in the education sector. While the full details remain unclear, the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and international counterparts have urged the need for calm. Due process must be followed and human rights respected. The Minister for Europe and the Americas is in Turkey today engaged in talks with the Turkish Government. We understand that he is the first western Foreign Minister from the international community to visit Turkey this week.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her reply. The position of an opposition when you have a military coup is particularly difficult. The CHP, which is the successor party to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, has drawn attention to the fact that the judges are,

“one of the last remaining independent organs of the state”.

The mass dismissal of judges and of other public servants is extremely worrying because it is stripping away the last defence against authoritarianism. The imposition of emergency rule effectively allows the President to rule by decree. I hope that the Government can assure me that, in conjunction with our European allies—while we are still in the EU—we will make strong representations on the need to keep an independent judiciary. That is the only body to whom those who may well have been unfairly dismissed can at the moment apply to get their rights reinstated.

[Baroness Goldie]

I thank my noble friend. He makes an important point. The backdrop to this, of course, is the state of emergency that has now been declared. But that has been declared under the constitutional provisions of Turkey, in which there are safeguards. On the specific issue of enacting the rule of law, of course retaining an independent and operating judiciary will require judges working to apply the due process of law. That is absolutely essential if we are to see the standards we wish to see upheld in Turkey. These are views that we hold very publicly in the United Kingdom and that we will be reflecting.