NATO

Lord Flight Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the officers of the House for their great courtesy and assistance to new boys such as me. Secondly, I thank Members on all sides for their very warm welcome. It strikes me that this is indeed the better, more civilised House, where climbing the slippery pole is pleasantly behind us all. I am honoured to have friends on all sides of the House. This is one of the few places in our country where there is sensible respect for age, experience and knowledge, even though everyone looks incredibly young for their years. I am very honoured to be a Member of the House; it is a great institution.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for his kind comments and, with your Lordship’s indulgence, will say a little about India today; I call it the second love of my life after my wife. In discussing defence, one needs to think out of the box. As India becomes a major power and economy in the world, I hope that it will become a key ally of this country, for reasons that I will speak about. India has 1 million well trained men at arms. In thinking about future defence needs, one should think about her role as she takes her place in the world. Surely there is at least a potential peacekeeping role that would be appropriate. I am naughtily using defence as an excuse to talk about India, but it is quite a big angle.

I was very pleased when the Prime Minister made his first visit to India. My associations with India go back to my days as a student, when I studied British India history and had the good fortune to work there in the second part of the 1970s. I made a group of friends who have remained close throughout my life and acted as guardian to some of their children when they came here to go to university. I am powerfully struck by the close affinity between our two countries; we are very much the eastern and western version of extraordinarily similar cultures. The previous debate, and that on the family last week, showed that India has a great deal to teach us. I also observe that through history, most British people who spent their careers in India grew to love the country and its people. Many noble Lords may have read the wonderful books by Dalrymple, particularly on the relationship between Britain and the Mughals in the 18th century. I asked Garter at my introduction ceremony where his magnificent new jacket had been made and was amused to be told that it was in India, and that it was significantly cheaper to have made there than in this country.

Some years ago, I was involved in establishing a medical facility in one of the major Indian slums. I observed, first, that inside what looked like a grim place were wonderful family units and little houses that were clean as a whistle. The upward mobility among that community was greater than I have witnessed anywhere in the world; it was a wonderful thing to experience.

On another occasion I took my daughter around Agra with a very nice young Indian as a guide. He asked me what I did and when I told him he said, “We have a democratic system over here in India. What system do you have in England?”. It was evidence of the extent to which India has, above all, completely absorbed the concept of democracy. It has not been particularly well absorbed in many other parts of the world but Indians regard democracy as just as much their own as we regard it as our own.

There are very close economic factors. We have similar institutions of commerce and the same laws. There are very close cultural factors. As time goes by and India takes its place in the world as one of the main powers and economies, I look forward to closer relations between us and India. That would be natural and, I repeat, based on affinities that go back an extremely long way. Reverting to the start, it would be strange if that did not involve some military element.

I crave your Lordships’ indulgence for my straying slightly from the direct subject of NATO. I conclude with a point that I have not made yet. If we look at this country, my goodness, what a contribution the Indian community makes. It is the most successful community in this country. It is a very hard-working community with good family values. You have only to look around this House when it is fully attended to see, happily, that India is very well represented here. It has been of great advantage to this country and is one of the rather happier fruits of a relationship that goes back a very long way.