Defence Policy (International Relations and Defence Committee Report)

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Friday 30th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a particular privilege to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, with whom I had the honour of serving on the committee. As I commend this report to the House, I pay tribute to our distinguished former chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. She was an exemplary chairman: she was firm, she had a sense of humour—which always helps in a chairman—and she led us with marked distinction, so I give heartfelt thanks to her on behalf of the committee.

In commending the report to the House, I draw attention in particular to recommendation 162, which acknowledges and praises the deployment of military soft power and makes specific recommendations in relation to it. The integrated review of 2021 sets out the UK’s position and strength with regard to soft power:

“The source of much of the UK’s soft power lies beyond the ownership of government—an independence from state direction that is essential to its influence. The Government can use its own assets, such as the diplomatic network, aid spending and the armed forces, to help create goodwill towards the UK”.


The Defence Committee in the other place had cause recently to draw attention in a report to the deployment of soft power and made this observation:

“Whilst soft power does not instinctively fall within the remit of the Ministry of Defence, it plays a part in ‘defence engagement’, which is the military contribution to soft power. ‘Defence engagement’ itself is defined as ‘the means by which we use our Defence assets and activities, short of combat operations, to achieve influence’”.


I will draw attention to two specific areas of this in relation to the integrated review: implementation and that definition of engagement. Its implementation was reinforced by the mention made of it in the integrated review refresh as recently as March of this year, when the Government pledged to promote the soft and cultural power that the UK possesses and do more to bring soft power into their broader foreign policy approach. That is all well and good, and much needed on the ground when you look at the activities of our “strategic competitors”. That is one phrase the Government have used on occasion; they could also be described in a number of instances as our opponents and, in Ukraine, as our direct enemies, because that is what Russia and its surrogates—the Wagner Group—are. They are the enemies of this country and of the wider world.

Only today, we learned that, despite the events earlier this month, it is business as usual as far as Wagner is concerned. As we speak, Wagner is recruiting in Moscow and St Petersburg. Whether those recruits will be deployed in Ukraine or not remains to be seen, because it may well be that Wagner’s forces are integrated with Russian forces in Ukraine, but we know that they continue to be deployed in Africa. Africa is at the centre of Wagner and Russia’s policy—a policy of enrichment and aggrandisement. It is about both those things: the aggrandisement of Russia and the enrichment of Wagner and the plutocrats that lie behind it.

As we speak, Wagner’s forces are deployed in Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso and the DRC. In all those places, they are seeking to destabilise and, wherever possible, defenestrate the natural resources of those countries, both metaphorically and literally, because the impact on the environment is as grave as the impact on peace, security and development.

We need a response to that, and it must build on our soft power and, importantly, our military engagement and our military defence diplomatic network—the network of military attachés and peacekeepers who do such good on the ground but who, all too often, are forgotten when it comes to deployment and resource. We seek assurances from the Minister on this. I speak from the experience of my time in South Africa here; they are a critical part of what happens in any mission. They are at the heart of our diplomacy and of development. They should not be forgotten, and we seek a clear and categorical assurance that in Africa, at least—but not just in Africa, and I shall come to that in a moment—that network is being enhanced and strengthened. If it is not, we will pay a price.

We are already paying a price and we see that in the deployment of Russian and Chinese naval assets off Simon’s Town. That ought to give us cause for concern. We ought to be concerned that the People’s Liberation Army is the fastest-growing military presence in Africa, as we speak. We ought to be concerned that our impact on the Caribbean is diminished by our failure adequately to provide scholarships at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where Caribbean forces have traditionally been trained. I urge the Minister to assure us that those scholarships will once again be available to Caribbean Governments and that we will use the soft power we possess to the benefit of this nation and the wider world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Boateng (Lab)]

Can I press the Minister a bit on that? Wagner is in Burkina Faso and it threatens Ghana. It threatens the whole of that region. Have we increased our military attaché presence in west Africa in order to counter it? Frankly, if we have not, then we are whistling in the wind in terms of any hope of addressing the threat that it represents.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I do not have an answer to the specific question about the number of defence attachés we have there, but I will make the inquiry and undertake to write to the noble Lord.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming to the House and commending the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister. His speech was particularly welcome in its focus on the importance—while recognising the Indo-Pacific tilt of the integrated review—of being active in Africa. He will find a ready echo of that sentiment on all sides of this House. I declare an interest at the outset as an ambassador for the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunisation and chair of Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor.

Global co-operation and solidarity are vital to effectively responding to and mitigating the health and socioeconomic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The measures in the gracious Speech fall to be delivered at a time in which there is, globally, an increase in inequality, a threat to livelihoods and an increasing threat to peace and security and in which environmental sustainability and a capacity to respond effectively to natural disasters are threatened by the impact of the pandemic.

The challenge the virus presents to global diplomacy, to the work of effective multilateral organisations and to the effectiveness of a developmental response to the global crisis requires us, as a nation, to have an effective response to the pandemic and the health of the developing world, which is absolutely essential to our own continued health, and indeed to our security as a nation. The World Bank has rightly drawn attention to the need to ramp-up vaccine production to overcome current shortages in the world, and to develop partnerships across sectors to that effect. As such, it supports licensing deals and technology transfers to developing countries to increase supply and local production in different parts of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa.

That raises the question, which I hope the Minister will address when winding up, of what position the United Kingdom will take in response to the United States’s very welcome acceptance of the need to address the issue of intellectual property and to bring about the changes in the WTO that will permit the manufacture and license of vaccines in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and Senegal, which have the capacity, with some support, to manufacture vaccines. What will be the United Kingdom’s response to the US’s welcome initiative? We know that the EU has been lukewarm, to put it mildly, in its response. This is an opportunity for us to exercise our much-vaunted new post-Brexit freedoms outside the European Union, and come behind the United States to adopt a position in the WTO—with its welcome new, and very effective, leadership—to enable Africa and the developing world to develop their own pharmaceutical industries, and indeed to manufacture vaccines.

In the short term, there will clearly be a need for greater distribution of vaccines in the world. I have something to say briefly in response to the Minister’s quite correct assertion that we are now living much more in a time of competition in this regard. China has already provided vaccine assistance to 53 developing countries and has exported vaccines to 22 countries. China has exported 115 million doses of Chinese vaccines and India has exported 63 million. How many million doses have we exported? The answer is none. What are we doing, not just to support COVAX but to address this very real need, which exists throughout the developing world but particularly acutely where there are conflicts? What are we doing in Tigray and Cameroon to ensure that vaccines are distributed more effectively and provided in those war-torn areas? What are we doing to help bring those conflicts to an end?

Likewise—and I end my remarks on this—what are we doing in response to natural disasters, such as in St Vincent and the Grenadines? Will we deploy our ship in the region to help with the clear-up? How will we assist the country to respond to the very real need that exists there, at the moment, as we speak, for vaccines, because Covid has a hold in that country? These are questions that the Minister needs to answer, and answer in a spirit that we all understand and appreciate that we need a response—

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords of the advisory five-minute limit.

[Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]]

Indeed. I end on this note, with this challenge to the Minister. We are rightly thinking about the Middle East at this time. There was a great teacher by the name of Hillel in the Middle East, who lived at the time of our Lord. He said:

“If I am not for me, who will be for me?”


Yes, it is important to recognise our national self-interest, but he added:

“If I am only for me, what am I?”


We share a common humanity. He also asked: “If not now, when?” We need focus, we need resources and we need to act now.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I call next the very patient noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

UN Mission in Mali: Armed Forces Deployment

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord raises a very important point. We very much hope our Armed Forces remain safe and that they will not come under threat of loss of life or of injury. He is right to inquire why they are there, what we expect them to do and how we expect them to do it. As I said earlier, this is part of our contribution to the security response. We recognise that security interventions alone will not address the instability in the Sahel and continue to advocate for state-led progress in the peace process in Mali. As I said earlier, that involves political and institutional reform in the wider region.

We believe it is very important the United Kingdom supports the United Nations in attempting to deal with this area of instability. It matters because if that instability is not addressed then it has an effect of contagion. Instability is a threat that can spread. It can allow hostile operators to flourish and can encourage them to take their unwelcome activities to other countries. That could include the United Kingdom. There is an underlying purpose and we believe it is important that the United Kingdom supports the United Nations in this important mission.

I said earlier that the mission, being a United Nations mission, is led by a civilian—a special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General. The peace- keeping force element involves our own military and highly trained soldiers. Because it is a peacekeeping mission, and our forces are principally concerned with reconnaissance, this is clearly slightly different from an operation such as Operation Barkhane. But our force will provide critical capabilities at a vital time. MINUSMA was selected as a mission on the basis that it was where the UK could provide maximum benefit based on the expertise the UK Armed Forces have to offer. I reassure the noble and gallant Lord that this is a carefully constructed contribution from the UK; it is for a specific period; it involves an identified, set number of personnel; and it is a contained contribution.

[Lord Boateng (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the struggle against poverty and for development in the Sahel requires peace and security in that increasingly troubled region. No country has invested more in development in ECOWAS than the United Kingdom. So, will the Minister recognise that, in addition to enjoying the support and appreciation of these brave men and women this House offers, the whole of the ECOWAS region, anglophone and francophone, welcomes their deployment? Will the Minister also take the opportunity of the review of ODA and the newly created FCDO to strengthen our military diplomacy in our missions in Africa as part of our development offer?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for alluding to an important point. He is right; I outlined earlier the principal objectives identified by the Foreign Secretary for ODA. In respect of our military activity, it is important we align these two so that there is a complementary effect. He is correct that these are not problems that one solution will address; there has to be a multifaceted approach.