Rules-based International Order

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for initiating the debate. Yesterday, I met her in the lift. She said, “I’d like to thank you for your contribution tomorrow”. I said, “Hang on; wait till you’ve heard it and then you can decide”.

I have spent most of my life in some part of foreign policy. I was in the European Parliament for 25 years. I spent five years in the Council of Europe and 15 doing odd jobs for the European Commission. As such, I have seen quite a lot of the world—some 90 countries in all, some of them more times than I would have liked.

I start by giving an example from the Council of Europe. One of the problems with the international order is that it sometimes gets beyond itself. For three years, I was the chair of the Council of Europe committee for the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Of course, everybody says, “Oh, Russia never carried out any decisions”. That is wrong. The worst offender was Italy and the second worst was Turkey. The Russians were not too bad at carrying out decisions of the court that had no real political consequences. Beyond that, they were not very good at all.

I was on that committee when we debated the court’s decision to enforce prisoners’ votes in Britain, which David Cameron—now the noble Lord, Lord Cameron—said made him sick. I did quite a bit of work on this. One of the things I discovered was that most of the judges who had voted that Britain should give votes to prisoners came from countries that gave no rights to prisoners at all. Secondly, many of those judges did not understand the English prison system. In particular, they did not understand the difference between a remanded and a convicted prisoner. Thirdly, when it came down to it, they were open to negotiation. Thanks to the great skill of David Lidington, we managed to solve the case, get the judgment amended and accepted so that, once again, Britain was a country with no outstanding judgments. I mention this because there has been a lot of mission creep in international jurisdiction, which I do not think has done international law a tremendous amount of good.

The Court of Justice of the European Union and the WTO are unique in being courts committed to a very central, tightly drawn range of circumstances, but some of the other courts—including the International Criminal Court—have a tendency to go well beyond where it is sensible for them to go. I see that some noble Lords object to that. To issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu is downright foolish, because it will not be implemented. It undermines the authority of the court. People look at it and say, “What a bunch of jokers. Surely, they don’t expect Netanyahu to get off the plane in London and be banged up by the British coppers”.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord know that, when a warrant was issued for Kenyatta, he got on a plane, went to The Hague, submitted himself to the court and said, “I’m here to answer it. I have a defence to this”? It gave him permission to return to his country and to continue to lead it before there were eventually hearings. Why does Mr Netanyahu not do that? You have to remember that the warrant is in relation not to his conduct of the war but his refusal to allow humanitarian aid into the country to feed the population.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I claim damage for extra time, Mr Whip. I take that point, but I am making the point that the Netanyahu incident did the ICC no good at all.

My second point will also be a bit controversial. I believe that, if we are to redefine the international order, we have to bring the Russians and Chinese on board. It is as simple as that. You cannot do it without having the whole international order represented around the table. The Russians recently had their BRICS conference in Kazan. A number of Commonwealth countries were at that conference instead of in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, because they judged it might be in their better interests. One of the problems we have is that the impact of sanctions has pulled Russian foreign trade in a southern direction. Suddenly, India, Pakistan, China and the countries in between are of far more importance to it than western Europe. We need to take that on board.

We also need to look at the way we construct the international order and give it a serious jolt because, finally, we need to look at the perception of Britain by its own citizens. As my noble friend Lord Howell, a good friend, has said in the past, capitalism has failed the young. There is an increasing distaste for democracy. My children know many people who say, “What the hell does it matter? We need someone who can get things done”. That, frankly, is one of the appeals of Nigel Farage. People look at him and think, “He’d soon sort you lot out, wouldn’t he?”

We are in a very dangerous situation. One of the questions that both major parties need to address is how to bring the younger people of Britain back into communion with them. They have fallen out of love with us. Not one of my children voted Conservative at the election —or Labour. They used to vote for both. A lot of the people in their circle have an attitude towards the two major parties—incidentally, not towards the third party—that they are finished, are past it and have nothing to offer them. They cannot offer them a house or a decent job and have frozen their tax thresholds. I think I have had enough of the extra time I claimed. Thank you all for listening.