Diplomatic Influence Post Brexit

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the change in the United Kingdom’s diplomatic influence since it ceased to be a participant in the political cooperation meetings of the European Union.

[The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)]

My Lords, we continue to work closely with all our allies, including the EU and European states, to build a network of liberty and tackle shared foreign policy challenges and threats. We do not need to attend formal EU meetings in order to do so effectively. Our recent achievements, including our presidencies of the G7 and COP 26, have shown that we retain significant diplomatic influence, supported by the best diplomats in the world.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his reply, in which he did not actually deal with the Question: whether we have lost diplomatic influence since we ceased to be a participant in the political co-operation meetings of the European Union. At lunchtime today, the members are meeting in Paris to talk about migration. This evening, the EU Defence Ministers are meeting in Brest. We will be missing from both those meetings. Are we not losing influence?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, I think the opposite is the case, as we have shown over the last couple of years. The UK has exerted extraordinary influence around the world through various fora. At the G7, which we hosted, the UK led the way in underlining members’ unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, for example. Last year, the Prime Minister and President Biden signed a new UK-US Atlantic Charter. We established the AUKUS defence partnership and agreed new free trade agreements with both Australia and New Zealand. There are many examples from last year alone where the UK performed globally in a way that I think is almost unprecedented.

Russia

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, first of all, I agree with the noble Lord. That statement, which was made at the start of this year by the five countries concerned, was important and welcome and of course in itself represents a step forward.

The underlying purpose of such statements, and the discussions that are currently taking place on de-escalation, is the importance and the central pivot of diplomacy. We cannot at any time stop discussions, even with our greatest foes, if I can put it that way. Discussion is important. Whether it is done through the meetings that are taking place this week or on other challenges and disagreements that we have, including those with Russia, we must continue to engage directly and bilaterally. On the broader point, the UK has of course been at the centre of this. Indeed, on Ukraine specifically, my right honourable is certainly seeking to visit Kiev in the very near future.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might start by pointing out that it is often a good idea to understand what your opponent actually wants. Last week, it was stated in the other place that recently declassified documents from the US made it clear that, in February 1990, Secretary of State James Baker gave President Gorbachev a categoric assurance that NATO would not, and had no plans to, move east. I do not want to disaggregate that statement, but the fact of the matter is that the Russians feel very aggrieved.

The country of Finland has lived next to Russia for many years without needing to join NATO. Recently, just before Christmas, a man called Jack Matlock, who was the US Ambassador to Russia, published a document about Ukraine in which he pointed out that the Minsk agreements have never been ratified by the Verkhovna Rada. So I say to the Minister: please also recognise that, when we are threatening them with sanctions, there are still things that they could ramp up to cause us damage. The net effect is: please try to cool this thing down and negotiate in good faith to try to get an easing of tension rather than following the line of always ramping things up.

International Development Strategy

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall begin with two points that I do not think anyone will disagree with. First, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on obtaining this debate and, secondly, I reaffirm my support, which I think is widely reflected in the House, for 0.7% of GNI to be used as overseas aid. That is probably where I end the consensus.

I know this debate is about the Government announcing a new international development strategy. I hope that the word “new” will be kept to the fore, because I have thought for quite a long time that there are many things in our development strategy that could be bettered. One of them is that, as the brief says, we need a globally focused UK to maintain its commitment to Africa while increasing development efforts in the Indo-Pacific—but I think we have to look at what we spend the money on.

I have made many visits to aid projects. Some aid projects funded and excellently run by British NGOs are doing little more than running perpetual food banks. We should have the Trussell Trust out there. I recall one project I visited in India which was teaching women how to cook. I thought it was a very good thing that a number of mainly English people—I think there was one Scottish person—were teaching Indian women how to cook rice. Of course, they were doing something more serious and were looking at nutrition, babies and the like, but they were only scratching surfaces. They were not really dealing with problems. I often reflect on the statement that we had years ago on aid agency posters: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.” We need to do far more to help people to develop.

If we are to integrate aid and have an international development strategy, it would not be a bad idea to have a closer look at arms sales. Look at the amount of destruction in the world—which aid is often there to try to get around—that is being caused by arms, often from British factories and very often from western factories. We go in, we bomb the place to bits and then we have an aid programme to build it up, presumably to get into shape for the next bombing. Forty years ago, I was involved with Ethiopia. We really thought that we were curing the problems of Ethiopia and that Band Aid, Geldof and all the initiatives that were run, principally in the 1980s and early 1990s, were going to rebuild a new Ethiopia, but it is back to where it was, and that must surely in part be caused by a failure of our aid projects.

I suggest that we should have two principal approaches in our aid projects. First, we need to look very carefully at the Chinese belt and road initiative with a view to us having set initiatives where we put money into projects that are good for the development of the country but that we see through as projects. Forty years ago, I worked for the Crown Agents; it was quite close to here. It used to set up projects in what were then the colonies to help get them ready for independence. Clearly, we are a long way on from there, but the principle of us looking at a project, sending the engineers, costing the project and either finding or lending the money was quite sound, and many of the institutions, such as the Nigerian railway system, which was built by the Crown Agents, have stood the test of time extremely well. We need to look at our own belt and road initiative.

Secondly, there is soft power. I very much take the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the BBC. The BBC World Service is one of the great triumphs of British soft power. I am told that it is listened to by around 456 million people in the world. Its Arabic audience alone is more than 40 million people. This is an area where we can get over our values and get them over in a way that is acceptable, because the World Service is probably one of the finest neutral broadcasters in the world. By neutral, I mean that you do not turn it on and say, “We are going to find out what the Brits want today”. It is a genuine news service. I also say to the Minister: stop cutting the FCO budget. To move the FCO into increasingly grim surroundings is not a good idea. I ask the Minister to look at maintaining and, indeed, increasing the FCO budget. Those are a couple of points to think about.

Ukraine and Russia: Military Developments

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord’s second question is: yes, we are very closely engaged with Ukraine, as we are today, on the issue of its NATO membership and, indeed, our support. The support we have given militarily is very much defensive and based on technical support as well.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, there have been a lot of difficulties in Ukraine, partly with the non-implementation of the agreement made in Minsk, the need for talks about the future of eastern Ukraine, and a follow-up of the initiative of the Finnish President to de-escalate the situation and have a peace conference in Europe to look at the outstanding issues that have arisen following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Should not we put our efforts behind those of the Finnish President to get a discussion going?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we are supportive of all peaceful efforts, and in particular we are focused on the Minsk agreements, which Russia has also signed—and we ask it to uphold that agreement.

Russia: Gas Supplies

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister not remember that part of the problem with the Nord Stream gas pipeline was interference by the Ukrainian authorities with the Russian pipeline that was running through Ukraine? Would it not be best to start by getting an agreement with the German Government on the best approach and way forward?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, obviously the German Government will present their own position. We note the US and German collaboration to mitigate the negative energy impacts of the pipeline, but it is equally important that we stand firm in support of Ukraine, which continues to be challenged, and not just by insecurity when it comes to energy; let us not forget the situation in the Donbass and the continuing pursuance of the annexation of Crimea, which is right on our continent. It is Russian aggression that needs to recede.

Belarus: Elections

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the possibility of joining forces with the governments of (1) France, (2) Germany, and (3) the United States of America to persuade the government of Russia that it is in its interest to push for new elections in Belarus.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to introduce this debate, which is overdue. By way of background, all my political life—in fact, all my life—I have been involved in some aspect or other of foreign affairs. I include in that a short time in a very junior position in the Foreign Office, 25 years in the European Parliament and, since I came into this House, my time as a member of the UK delegation to the Council of Europe, so I have a reasonable amount of experience. During that time, I have visited Belarus on a couple of occasions and Moscow on more than a couple, most recently in December 2019 using the facilities made available by this House to pay for visits to members of the Council of Europe. There, I met a number of members of the Duma and the upper house.

Belarus is, of course, the only country that is not a member of the Council of Europe. This is largely because of its refusal to suspend the death penalty but that also seems to have become rather convenient, because it has placed Belarus in a position where few queries are ever raised as to its policies et cetera. The election that took place some time ago, however, gave rise to a lot of controversy.

Let me say at the beginning that I am indebted to the Chatham House unit, which has supplied me with opinion polls and other data, as well as to Dr Mikalaj Packajeu and Dr Alan Flowers, who provided me with a briefing around the subject of this debate. I am sure everyone will notice that is not condemnatory; I am looking for a way through the woods here.

The first question is: why should we listen to Russia? I like to think I am a pragmatic person, and one good reason to listen to Russia is that it is the next-door power and it, frankly, has its own version of the Monroe doctrine. In the last few days, the United States has been gleefully celebrating its misplaced policy of 60 years in Cuba. It could have achieved what it has now much more quickly, had it been more flexible. Russia similarly regards the countries on its border as those in which they want, at least, to keep powers not hostile to them. That is one of the difficulties with Belarus.

Another factor about Belarus that we must face up to is that no fewer than 79% of the population has either a positive or a very positive attitude towards Russia. Some 58% think that Russia should stay neutral in the present dispute but—according to a poll provided by Chatham House, not an internal poll of Belarus’s people—32% of the population of Belarus support a union with Russia. Some 46% would like to be united to both the EU and Russia. But one sees from this no outright rejection of the big neighbour next door, and we need to bear that in mind when tackling this problem.

The Lukashenko regime is undoubtedly unpopular, and on a very wide basis. One of the results of this will certainly be what has happened in other former Soviet countries—an increasing brain drain. Repressive countries lose the best of their middle class, and this has been demonstrated time and again. I live in Cambridge and it is full of people from other parts of Europe who are the cream of their societies and have chosen to leave to live in what they rightly see is a free society. The first danger for Belarus is that it will lose its population by people just leaving the country.

The election in Belarus was not wholly supported in Russia. The day after, 9 August 2020, Foreign Minister Lavrov said that the election circumstances “were not ideal”. For a Russian, that is a strong statement. When the main leader of the opposition, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, met Macron, she called on Vladimir Putin

“to play a constructive role in the crisis resolution.”

This is the key: if there is to be a resolution there, we need Russia on board. At the moment, for Russia, Belarus is dependable, even if not particularly savoury. It is rather like the old American phrase, “He may be a something, but he’s our something”. We have to make it possible for the people of Belarus to change their Government. Crucial to this is whether the Russians can be persuaded to treat Lukashenko in the same way they treated Yanukovych—in other words, to give him a way out of Belarus, because he is not going to leave voluntarily.

The next thing that I think is important is that if he is replaced at the helm, it has to be with a Government who will be pragmatic in their approach to Russia. This is where the gist of my resolution comes in because the big powers, so to speak, of Europe, which are France and Germany, I hope with the assistance of Britain and the United States, must put their work behind an optimal solution. This must be accompanied by a strong message to go to the Belarusians.

I know that in June the IMF board discussed a proposal for a historic $650 billion general allocation of special drawing rights. Some of that, roughly $1 billion, is due to go to Belarus, and this will be voted on early in August. I think, following a precedent in 2019 when the IMF denied Nicolás Maduro access to $400 million of special drawing rights on the grounds that the international community did not recognise him as the legitimate leader of Venezuela, the IMF should not decline, but should freeze for the time being that allocation of special drawing rights. I have signed, together with a number of other Members, a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer asking him to look at Britain taking that position within the IMF. In other words, in looking to change the regime in Belarus, we have to be firm as well as fair. We cannot be soft, but at the same time we must not indulge ourselves in some sort of hate fest, and we certainly have to realise that, unless we can bring Russia on board, we are very unlikely to succeed.

Lukashenko has become a very toxic ally for Moscow. He is not popular there, and I was told when I was in Moscow that the chemistry between him and Putin is absolutely awful, but at the same time, he is the only leader the Russians have—he is their only dog in this fight—so we, as responsible western nations, have to make it possible to construct a solution where we can get a regime change in Belarus that is acceptable to the Russians. I suggest we ask the Russians to help with an exit strategy for Lukashenko, and I hope the Foreign Office will work with its colleagues in Europe and Washington to form a common position which can lead us to a desired result.

Ethiopia

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

Our UK aid is focused on that very issue, among various priorities, and 5.6 million children under five, women and girls continue to be reached through nutrition-related interventions on the ground in-country.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I see from the UN report that the special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea has been unable to get into the country. What are the Government doing to try to get things sorted out on the ground? Seventy-five years of independence in Ethiopia seems to have left just a tragic mess, and we appear to be on the point of a failed country and continent. What do HMG think they can do to help?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I will not agree with my noble friend on the fact that it is a failed continent. I think there are many successes across Africa but, as I alluded to earlier, we are working with key partners and through UN agencies both on the ground and through political engagement to ensure that we bring about a peaceful resolution of this conflict.

British Council

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I acknowledge the important work that the British Council does on the English language. I assure the noble Baroness that the Government recognise that the British Council is a leading provider of English language training and examinations and reaches more than 100 million learners across 100 countries. We will continue to remain focused, and in countries where we need to take a step back or there are office closures, we will look at how best we can provide such services there.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, the two things about Britain that radiate around the world are the World Service and the British Council. They are the main thrust of our soft power, as was represented in the integrated review. I urge the Minister that, far from cutting back, we should seek to expand the role of the British Council as well as the World Service, particularly into areas such as Russia where we have been forced to withdraw. We should back the British Council by expanding its budget, not cutting it as we are at the moment.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I totally agree with my noble friend inasmuch as the British Council is an important part of the UK’s soft power. Indeed, I would argue with substance that the UK is a soft power superpower. I assure my noble friend that the FCDO is supporting specific programmes with the British Council through the package that I have already outlined, and indeed through the BBC’s World 2020 programme, and there are other examples of our soft power, including the Chevening, Marshall and Commonwealth scholarships, which provide further examples of our continued support, notwithstanding the pandemic.

Integrated Review: Development Aid

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for this debate. Unfortunately, it is in Cross-Bench time; I would have wished it to be in government time because, frankly, there are questions to be answered. One of them is: why have only two and a half speakers supported the Government, when I am speaker No. 36?

I want to pay tribute to my good friend Lord Judd, who I had known for almost 50 years. He was a great man in many ways.

We have had an unprecedented increase in public expenditure in the past year. There has never been more money spent. This is a petty cut, of which we should be deeply ashamed. It is not something we can justify; we are not up against it; we are not cutting everything. It is not something to be proud of; it is a petty decision. I pay tribute to my good and noble friend Lady Sugg for her willingness to make this an issue of principle, because that is what it is.

I feel that we are just playing to the gallery. Yes, it probably is popular to cut overseas aid. It would also be quite popular to bring back hanging. I recall once sitting next to Ted Heath at dinner and talking about hanging. He said, “Look, there’s some questions you just don’t ask.” This is a question we should not have asked. We should not have asked people whether they wanted to cut aid to the poorest, and we should not go along with it.

I want the Government to come clean and tell us what they plan to do to restore this spending. If there was one proud moment in David Cameron’s premiership and leadership, it was this. As someone who worked for David and who, as I have said, is still willing to say a nice word about him, I want to see it back again.

Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, the document read to me as “how to fight the last war” rather than “how to face up to the future”. I have one or two comments about the soft power aspects in particular.

The Council of Europe, of which I am a member, has been looking at the 100th anniversary of the Geneva conventions. Very recently, the European Court of Human Rights brought in a very interesting judgment which people say has thrown everything into confusion, but I think has clarified it. It said that you cannot apply human rights while a conflict is in progress. It throws us back into looking at how the Geneva conventions will be applied at all, but it is common sense. If you have people shooting at each other in the street, you can hardly run out and say, “Excuse me, item 13 says that you must point that this way”. That is one way in which we will have to reclassify how we look at how we wage war.

Secondly, of course, is the long debate over the aid changes. I think the Government are wrong; they should not have cut the aid. But the aid agencies have had too soft a ride for too long a time. I talked to someone in the aid business about the Oxfam debacle and all they could say was, “Well, Oxfam got found out, you know, they are all up to it.” Instead of cutting back the aid budget, the Government should have got to grips with the way in which it was being used and spent, because that was, and remains, the real problem.

But let us not think of it as aid. We think of it as giving pennies to the poor, but it is not. It is investing in common sense. I am one of the few people in this House who are prepared publicly to say nice things about David Cameron, whom I worked for. David always insisted that the reason for increasing the aid budget was to make the countries we were assisting places where people wanted to live in preference to being refugees and trying to come to live in our country. He had quite a clear view. I remember when the proposal came out to increase the budget. Some asked—these were the words—“Why are you adopting a Labour proposal?” He said, “It is not a Labour proposal; it is a common-sense proposal. It is a proposal to make the countries better places for the people already living there, and it is a very wise investment of money.” The Government have been remiss in not carrying on with that.

Finally, we need to look a bit harder at NATO. For a time, I was vice-chair of the European Parliament’s sub-committee on defence. We discovered that NATO had enormous problems. It could not get its tanks over bridges. If it wanted to cross frontiers within NATO member states, it had to get permission, and it was made quite clear to us that, in some instances, that permission would not be granted. We tried, but what is now needed—HMG could well put some effort into this—is to get NATO operable and into a position where it can actually do something. At the moment, the restrictions on it stop it doing anything.