Foreign Policy

Lord Garel-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garel-Jones]

My Lords, one inevitably follows the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, with a certain amount of trepidation. Noble Lords who listened to his magisterial speech today will understand exactly what I mean. That feeling of trepidation has been further compounded in my case by a number of very distinguished interventions from noble Lords. I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Maples on his maiden speech. He and I share what I think I might call a criminal past in another place and I know that the House will anxiously look forward to many distinguished contributions from him.

Today’s debate poses a fundamental, underlying question: what are the objectives of British foreign policy as we face the challenges and hazards of the 21st century? I believe that we stand at a crossroads where we have to ask ourselves a basic question. Do we believe that Britain’s interests and the values that she seeks to uphold warrant a global diplomacy? My answer is yes.

However, I fear that over recent years we have failed to give our foreign service the tools for the job. Punching above our weight, to quote my noble friend Lord Hurd of Westwell, who certainly did just that, is fine, but you need, at the very least, some boxing gloves to do it and not a cricket bat, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr.

The cost of the Diplomatic Service in 2010-11 will be £865 million, which is 0.1 per cent of the national budget. In today’s straitened times one hesitates to describe that or any other sum as paltry but, just to put it in context—I intend no criticism of the programmes concerned with these comparisons—that figure is less than one-third of what the Department for Work and Pensions spends in a week, it is almost identical to the £823 million spent by the Government on the National Lottery and it is well below, almost half, the £1.6 billion that is estimated to be spent by devolved Administrations to underpin the Marine and Coastal Access Act. I sometimes ask myself whether it is worth the Treasury’s time spending even a morning negotiating with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Can Britain or should Britain have a global diplomacy? There are three possible answers to that question. The first is no. Let us face the fact that we are a second- division power. Let us stop dancing around the world kidding ourselves that Britannia rules the waves. Let us try to manage our decline into the second division with as much propriety as we can. We may even gain a few brownie points as we go: we could offer up our seat on the Security Council to the European Union.

The second answer, and perhaps the most cynical, is what I suppose one might call the middle way. We could say nothing and keep trimming. The man on the Clapham omnibus will not notice. It has been going on for the past few years. I focus on Latin America, but this scenario is replicated in other parts of the world. Between 2003 and 2005, we closed our embassies in Paraguay, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. I have a horrible nightmare that somewhere down the road, in 50 years’ time, we will end up with two embassies in the whole of Latin America—in Mexico and Brazil—and, in any other country, British citizens and companies with problems or interests will be invited to go to the EU representative, who by then, no doubt, will be described as an “ambassador plenipotentiary”.

I bow to no one in my support for the European Union. I am an unashamed Europhile. I strongly support the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, and the new European Foreign Policy Unit. However—I am confident that this view is widely shared in your Lordships’ House—I do not see the European Union as a substitute for the nation state. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who will reply to this debate, may, along with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, share my view that we need a global diplomacy and that Britain’s interests and values warrant such a foreign service.

An increase of 2.5 per cent in the diplomatic budget year on year for the life of this Parliament would cost £21,625,000 this first year. Again, just to put that figure in context, the Department for Work and Pensions spends more than 20 times that every day and it is less than we spend on combating infectious diseases of livestock for international development.

My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is as ingenious as he is clever. He will not, I am confident, want to announce that he is leading Britain down into the second division, nor will he wish to opt for a continuation of the surreptitious decline that we have witnessed over recent years. I am afraid that it is Hobson’s choice for the coalition Government, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor. It is: find the money, William, and pay up, George. In the previous century, Britain moved, I think with a certain dignity, from “Rule Britannia” to “Cool Britannia”. Failure to act now in strengthening our Diplomatic Service could well mean that the 21st century will earn us the noble title of “Fool Britannia”.