UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order (International Relations Committee Report)

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in saying that this is a terrific report, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and everyone else involved in producing it. The noble Lord has received lots of plaudits in the debate tonight, and they are well deserved.

The report offers an acute account of the huge dilemmas facing the UK in foreign policy, and it analyses very well the seismic upheavals in world politics, but for me it breaks new ground because it recognises how fundamental the digital revolution is to current dilemmas of global power. There are three respects, however, in which I think what is offered on the impact of the digital age—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that this is the age in which we live—could be expanded and further built on.

First, the report is written as though the interconnections between the digital world and geopolitics are something relatively new. That is not the case at all. The digital revolution had its origins in geopolitics and war, both hot and cold. This is true as far back as the breakthroughs of Alan Turing in the Second World War. More or less everyone now uses GPS on their devices to find their way around in everyday life. It is part of the very core of the internet. GPS, however, derives from the “Sputnik moment” that was such a shock to the American psyche in the 1960s. That moment sparked the setting up of NASA itself. Research by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was the very basis of the emergence of the digital world. Without DARPA there would be no internet—and DARPA, too, was created specifically in response to Sputnik. The background to the later emergence of Silicon Valley was also geopolitical. It was an artefact of 1989 and the “end of history” The American author Franklin Foer spelled this out very well. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the first time there seemed no alternative to the reign of free markets on a global level. The huge digital corporations that today dominate the world economy sprang up—with unprecedented speed—on the back of research carried out largely by the US Government, but at a time of the release of free-wheeling global markets. We are all today struggling with the consequences, good and bad.

Secondly, the report tends to identify the digital revolution with social media. Social media have indeed had an immense global impact, all the way from the stresses and strains of democracy, which other noble Lords have spoken about, through to the intimacies of our personal lives. There is nothing in the report, however, about the deeply structural impact of the digital revolution or the huge influence that it has had and is having on global politics and hence foreign policy. The prosperity of western countries for over half a century after World War II was driven by technology that favoured the making of things. The dominant form of production today is driven by intangibles, created in turn by information processing. It has made possible offshoring and the globalised division of labour of the global corporations. This is the backdrop to the struggles between the US and China over free trade, which, as we know, could destabilise the world economy and even lead to war.

Thirdly, while AI and quantum computing get a mention, there is not sufficient recognition of the likely impact of deep learning. This too has a profoundly geopolitical backdrop. One of the biggest ever breakthroughs in deep learning was made right here in London, as I am sure noble Lords will know, by a company appropriately called DeepMind. It created the algorithmic program called AlphaGo, which beat the world champion at go, an ancient Chinese game vastly more complex than chess. As I have mentioned before in your Lordships’ House, the impact of this achievement in Asia was huge and is documented—since I am an academic I feel I can mention a book—in Kai-Fu Lee’s book AI Superpowers. His opening chapter is in fact called “China’s Sputnik Moment”. The five games played between machine and human were watched by only a small proportion of people in the West but by nearly 300 million people on Chinese TV and millions more in other parts of Asia. The Chinese Government responded almost instantaneously, pouring huge sums into the further development of AI. Lee’s main theme is that China can act much faster, and on a far more gigantic scale, than anything in the West.

Huawei has caught the public attention at the moment and is currently sparking an escalation of already existing tensions between the US and China. However, the underlying problems and issues bite much more deeply. Belt and road, as other noble Lords have said, already spans large areas of the world and has now extended into Europe. A core point, however, is that almost all infrastructure projects these days involve a strong digital component. President Xi has in fact said that China wishes to create:

“a digital silk road of the 21st century”,

incorporating 5G and then 6G. This may have many positives, but it does not take much imagination to grasp the geopolitical tensions that could arise around it. What was originally spawned through geopolitics has in the 21st century come back to be the very core of it.

Populism and Nationalism

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I happily confess to being an expert on nothing. I guess that gives me the right to speak today.

We live in an age of unanticipated shocks. No leading economist foresaw the coming of the world financial crisis; Alan Greenspan famously went from hero to zero overnight. Few commentators gave Donald Trump much chance of getting the Republican nomination, let alone becoming President of the United States. Everyone suddenly becomes wise after the event, and then there is a kind of media-driven rush to judgment. Thus the surge of populism has been widely explained in terms of a divide between the winners and losers of globalisation. However, things are much more complex than that. I shall argue that populism in our age, of both the left and the right, is as much a creature of globalisation as it is a reaction to it.

It is a great mistake to equate globalisation, as so many do, solely with economic ties and free trade. The Prime Minister, in a speech given moments ago, used “globalisation” in precisely that way, as indeed everyone seems to, but it is not correct. Globalisation is about accelerating interdependence in all its forms. The world today is massively more interconnected than in any other era, and in a host of different ways. This is new territory for us all. The opportunities are huge but so are the risks. Climate change and the ravaging of the world’s ecosystems, for example, are just as much features of globalisation as is the spread of free markets.

The origins of the “populist explosion”, as one book calls it, are several. I will be academic about it and mention four of them here. The first, as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, mentioned, is the continuing dislocation produced by the financial crisis, a crisis that remains unresolved in the industrial countries. Ordinary citizens have had to pick up the costs of the miscreant behaviour of financial speculators who have largely escaped unscathed. The result has been cutbacks in health services, welfare and many other areas in virtually all the industrial countries.

The second is a revolt of the dispossessed, or those who feel themselves to be so. However, this is not only about a white working class left behind by deindustrialisation, and its roots are not only economic. It includes a disproportionately large number of older people, for example. Worries about immigration are to some extent a code for wider feelings of cultural alienation in a time of endless change. I recommend to all noble Lords a book by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild called Strangers in Their Own Land, which applies to many people in this country who feel left behind, not economically but by the pace of change all around them, and who look for a national identity as a result. She also talks of “stay-at-home migrants”, people who are stuck but still feel outdistanced by change.

Thirdly, and crucial to it all, is the impact of the digital revolution. Its imprint is everywhere. Most populist parties are heavily organised online, yet the list goes on: “post-truth politics”, echo chambers, President Putin’s cyberwars, Mrs Clinton’s emails and Mr Trump’s tweets. The return to tradition that drives many forms of populism is certainly not tradition in its traditional form.

The fourth is sheer contingency—what you might call, “Events, dear boy, events”—which is so important both in everyday life and world history. Some 300,000 out of 139 million voters in a couple of key states settled the result of the presidential election in the US. However, once such an outcome is achieved, the world looks, and is, very different. President-elect Trump is, if I can put it this way, a complex personality whose political views have, one could say, evolved over the years. He used to be a Democrat, for example. His proposed rolling back of the US from the world stage would seem to be a lot more than purely economic. It looks like a wholesale retreat—this touches on what the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, said—from cosmopolitan values, rights of equality and protection for the poor. Not least important, Mr Trump will promote the fossil fuel companies and says that he will scupper the Paris accords. President Xi comes to Davos and gives a speech that Hillary Clinton might have given if she had won. Can one superpower replace another, so far as global government is concerned; or, as the new Administration seem to want, can they run the world in collusion with Russia? I doubt that very much. Global governance risks being undermined at the very time we need it most and in ways stretching far beyond free trade.

EU: UK Membership

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, on her excellent maiden speech. She will be a formidable addition to your Lordships’ House. It is a double pleasure to welcome another academic into this House—it is a triple pleasure to welcome another Cambridge academic —and not another deranged politician, as I think the noble Lord put it.

I speak as a strong and committed pro-European. The European Union has helped to bring peace and reconciliation to a continent with a history of devastation. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I believe that peace project is certainly not finished, and here I also diverge from the noble Lord, Lord King. One hundred thousand people died in the conflict that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia. The incorporation of Serbia into the EU is an absolutely crucial task for the near future. Russia might already be working to destabilise that process. Will the Minister confirm that the British Government absolutely would not consider blocking further EU enlargement as a way of advancing their agenda in Europe, as some papers have reported?

I am also a committed pro-European so far as Britain’s continuing membership of the EU is concerned. The world today is massively more interdependent than ever before. Britain can have far more real control—in other words, real sovereignty—over its affairs acting in concert with other EU states than it ever could acting alone, as 60 million people confronting a world of 7 billion.

The rise of UKIP is not without its benefits for those of us who hold quite opposing views. Its success will force a public debate on Britain’s future in Europe, which is a debate that we absolutely need to have. Those of us who believe that the UK’s future necessarily lies in Europe should, as my noble friend Lord Liddle said, mobilise and put our case forcefully. He also said that we should do it with passion, and I support that. The rise of UKIP has coincided with a surge of support among Britons for staying in the Union and helping to reshape it; indeed, there may be some kind of causal connection there.

The recent Ipsos MORI poll that my noble friend Lord Liddle quoted actually had stronger results than he mentioned. It showed support for Britain’s membership at its highest level for almost a quarter of a century. If you look at those who actually expressed opinions rather than those who said “don’t know”, 61% of respondents who expressed a view endorsed continued British membership, compared to 26% who wanted to leave. That is an interesting and remarkable result.

A detailed and proper public debate will oblige Eurosceptics to say what they are for, not just what they are against. The risks are enormous. Were the UK to leave, this time it would almost certainly lose Scotland. The US would bypass this country and deal directly with the EU. Some say small is beautiful, especially in the age of the internet, or else they argue that we should turn to the Commonwealth. If that is so easy, why have we not done it already? Germany, which of course is in the European Union, has twice the level of trade with India that the UK does. Power and size do matter and the influence of geopolitics is still all too real. Without the European Union, we would live in a G2 world dominated by the United States and China. The UK should play its full part in providing that necessary counterbalance.

In conclusion, I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said—what he says is always interesting. As I took it, he was suggesting that there should be a more bipartisan approach at this point to the debate in this country. I think that could be really important for the national interest, and if that is what the noble Lord meant, I heartily endorse it.

Russia

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow that excellent speech. I join the queue of noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, on having secured this debate. I apologise to her profusely for having arrived late and thank her—or the noble Baroness opposite—for not sending me packing as a consequence.

“Rise Like a Phoenix” was the title of the song with which Conchita won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The Eurovision Song Contest was set up in 1956 as a contribution to uniting a war-torn Europe. Europe in this context is not just the EU but stretches well into central Asia. Russia first entered the contest in 1994 and Ukraine several years later. For those of you in the know, Conchita was a lady in a slinky dress with full make-up, except that she was not a lady at all and she sported a beard. She is the alter ego of Tom Neuwirth, an Austrian who lives as a gay man in everyday life, who said that he created her as,

“a statement for tolerance and acceptance”.

In his winner’s speech he said:

“This night is dedicated to everyone who believes in a future of peace and freedom”.

The Russian entry in the contest was booed by much of the audience. Ukraine gave a substantial proportion of its vote to Conchita. This included telephone votes from Crimea, which Russia had already seized by then. Widespread disapproval of Conchita was expressed in Russian official circles, including by Mr Putin. Dmitry Rogozin, his Deputy Prime Minister, remarked:

“Eurovision showed the eurointegrators, their europerspective—a bearded lady”.

In response, Russia is contemplating reinstating Intervision, which was set up in the 1970s as a Soviet alternative to Eurovision. It is likely to comprise participants from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, established as a counterweight to NATO, and will be held in Sochi.

In the context of Russia’s military adventurism, is this trivial stuff or just a bit of fluff? I do not think so, and I offer two reasons for this belief. First, the turn towards moral conservatism in Russia by Mr Putin is a key part of his geopolitical strategy and the effort to reposition the country as a regional superpower. The anti-gay legislation in Russia is linked to an onslaught on multiculturalism, which is seen to be decadent. Russia had the right to annex Crimea, so Mr Putin says, because it was the place,

“where Prince Vladimir was baptised”,

and Vladimir’s embrace of Orthodoxy determined,

“the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the people of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus”.

What is going on here is, to some extent, going on across the world—a battle in a cosmopolitan, open society, where principles of democracy and freedom are not just registered in the political sphere but also intrude deeply into everyday life. It is not only in Europe where we see that struggle occurring. On the other side, there is, as we see around the world, the emergence of sectional authoritarianism. Again, it is not only in Europe that this is happening, but it is important that this battle is won.

Secondly, there is also a struggle between two organising principles of power—military force versus economic interdependence in a globalising world. The economic sanctions deployed by the EU and the US have widely been seen as ineffective. After all, as has been said, Mr Putin is riding high in the polls in Russia. I do not think it is true at all that they have been ineffective. Russia is on the edge of recession and the economy is in dire trouble—even more so as oil prices start to slide, as other noble Lords have remarked. There is real trouble there.

Conchita received a lot of support from Russian bloggers and on social media. Mr Putin’s attempt to regulate the internet will fail. The democratising forces he has for the moment suppressed are still there and will return at some point, perhaps in an overwhelming way.

ISIL: Iraq and Syria

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, if I were to give such an undertaking, I would be undermining the work of our Armed Forces, the Peshmerga and the moderates who are fighting against the evil there because I would be making an assumption that further intervention of that nature was necessary, and necessary in a particular timescale, so I shall be overcautious and not do that. But I can say to the noble Baroness that my right honourable friends the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Secretary for International Development, together with the Prime Minister and those who meet in COBRA, are considering these matters almost daily. The noble Baroness has had a distinguished career herself as a Minister at the Ministry of Defence, and she will know that COBRA will look at every single nuance every time it meets, which appears to be almost every day. So we will be watching to see how this develops. However, it is not a matter of saying what we can do in one week, one month or even one year; it is going to be a very long haul, and the difficulty for all of us here in Parliament will be to ensure that we continue to engage the support of the British people in this long haul.

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

Would the Minister like to comment on whether anything can be done externally to alleviate the sufferings of women in the ISIL-dominated areas? They are all too real, although they are all too rarely discussed in the newspapers. This is a sickening aspect of everyday life under the regime.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, for raising this important issue. I have discussed this very matter with civil society groups, both in Geneva and here in London. I bear in mind the moving speeches made when we had the recall of Parliament by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and one or two others on this very point. I bear in mind that when women are attacked in war, it is rape, death, seeing your child beheaded or your partner or husband crucified. This is a weapon of war. Sexual violence is a weapon of war being used by ISIL. It signifies what barbarians they are. When people start to wane in their support when the tabloids perhaps start to take some of these stories off the front page, we need to remind them what life is really like for families and for women in these crisis-hit areas.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (EUC Report)

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Liddle, I speak not as a member of the committee that produced this report but as an interested and motivated outsider. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, on his excellent introduction, and also congratulate the committee on its report, which is detailed and thorough and brings some fresh insights to the issues. That is not an easy task because the European Commission has already produced a large amount of documentation on TTIP, its prospects and problems. I should know, because I have waded through most of it.

Probably the most famous thing that has ever been said about TTIP is the observation that it should be achieved on “one tank of gas”—a now celebrated statement but something that, as other noble Lords have quite plainly shown, is not destined to come about. The reasons were given by my noble friend Lord Liddle and others: this is a far-reaching enterprise, and we have to be in it for the long haul. A range of problems and issues, including those mentioned by my noble friend, have been identified by other noble Lords, too.

There can be no doubt, however, about the potential benefits of a developed version of TTIP if it could be realised. The facts and figures that are bandied about are, as has been said by other noble Lords, estimates at best, although this is another area where the Commission has done a good deal of valuable and detailed work. Yet we all know that the potential positive effect on the EU and US economies is huge. We all know it is not a zero-sum game and that it will transfer to other countries in the world. I strongly support what the report says and other speakers have said about involving third countries in the enterprise. As the report quite properly points out, such an agreement could be a vanguard model for trade agreements elsewhere.

Just as important, as other noble Lords have already observed—I think noble Lords have said most, but not quite all, of the things I am going to say—it could breathe new life into the transatlantic relationship. Therefore this goes well beyond the purely economic level. We all know what is happening on the edge of Europe, in Ukraine. We can all see that we need, in some sense, to re-establish the West, and this could be a mechanism that will help us to do so.

For these reasons, it is worth keeping option C.2 in the Commission’s recent assessment report at the forefront. It is the most ambitious in the range of options analysed therein, but it provides an overall framework. We should certainly try for the low-hanging fruit but, at the same time, sustain an overall framework which supplies an overall approach. The Commission emphasises—and the report says this, too—that such an agreement would have to be of a “living” nature. Regulatory issues that could not be resolved early on should form part of a continuous dialogue that would evolve and deepen over time.

Other noble Lords raised issues of environmentalism and environmental protection. This is the nub of many of the objections that my noble friend Lord Liddle mentioned, some of them coming from Germany. I am an environmentalist. I have written extensively on climate change, but I am strongly positive towards TTIP precisely because it centres on regulatory issues. It enforces a dialogue that can be of value in Europe and the United States. I will give an example—an illustration—of the precautionary principle. This principle is very important in some contexts in Europe and is enshrined in European documentation, but it is a questionable idea. To me, the precautionary principle simply vocalises, when put in this way, one simple everyday saying: “Look before you leap”. Yet there is always an opposite to every saying, which in this case is: “He who hesitates is lost”.

What we need in Europe is a discussion of the scientific balance of risk and opportunity—and for me the balance always has to be assessed in a specific context. That is the reason why the kind of dialogue that is partly enforced by the progress of TTIP, if it is seen and brought to public attention in the right way, could be enormously fruitful rather than a barrier.

I will briefly follow up what noble Lords have said and ask the Minister three sets of questions to which he might consider responding. As other noble Lords have said, there has been a lot of discussion across Europe—again, some of it pretty hostile—about the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. The problems, to my mind, are very well analysed in the report. Will the Government be reconsidering their position on this issue? If so, in what way? Does the Minister agree that this question especially needs to be given a full and open public hearing? If you look at it in some detail, it exemplifies just the issues that I was talking about. It is not, I think, purely a negative set of arrangements once it is unpicked, but it needs to be unpicked.

Secondly—other noble Lords have asked this—what is the Government’s view of the state of play on the key question of the inclusion of financial services in a trade deal? Can the Minister comment on newspaper reports that a “draft offer”, as it is has been put, of the EU’s proposals to the US has already been decided on that will omit reference to financial services? Is there any evidence that this is the case—because, as other noble Lords have quite properly remarked, the issues here are obviously huge? We all know about what the European view describes as American intransigence. I think it is more complex and interesting than that, although I recognise all the problems on Capitol Hill and the devolved nature of the United States that is crucial to all of this.

Thirdly, and finally, what further efforts should be made both in the UK and across the rest of Europe to bring TTIP to public attention? It was quite appropriate that the Chamber just emptied when the issue was mentioned. This is a gigantic scheme, after all. This is world historical. It is a very odd conjunction. This is one area where the Lords report is especially good. What it says, as everyone here who was on the committee will know, is that,

“insofar as a public debate on TTIP exists, EU member states are losing it”.

One of the main impulses, as has been said, of some of the populist parties in Europe is precisely a return to protectionism. A proper and detailed discussion in public of the benefits of TTIP could surely contribute positively to countering these isolationist tendencies and the resentments that fuel them—but how would such a debate get off the ground? How would it be organised, what role should the Government play and what role should civil society groups play? It would clearly have to go well beyond the purview of Governments themselves.

Businesses: Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, let me congratulate not only the noble Lord, Lord Cope, but all noble Lords involved in the production of this report. I speak as someone who was not on the committee. The report is wide-ranging, authoritative and packed with interesting ideas and proposals. As a social scientist, I particularly like the comparative parts of the report, including the well documented section on Bavaria. The Bavarian successes with small business start-ups are relevant not only to the UK but to other parts of Germany, some of which lag well behind that area. I also echo what the noble Lord, Lord Green, said about the importance of Europe to our export markets and the single market. I welcome his sort of “hmm, hmm” comments on Germany because I do not think that the way to go for Britain is just to copy Germany. That country was the sick man of Europe only about 10 years ago, it still has structural weaknesses alongside its strengths, and we should therefore be a bit careful about that and develop our own model.

I shall concentrate here on only a few issues among the many powerful points made in the report. One is the core question of finance. It is disturbing to see in the report that:

“Lending had dried up even to SMEs with full order books and strong collateral and strong cash flow”.

What interventionist measures would the Minister suggest for breaking through this somewhat disastrous situation over and above those contained in the response already made? Would he not agree that it reflects structural factors, not just the hesitancies of the banks in the aftermath of the financial crisis? The economy has become dominated by finance-to-finance lending, often on the large scale, and lending to small productive enterprises comes very low down on the list. Microfactors are very important too. Does the Minister not agree that the demise of relationship banking, to which the report quite rightly draws attention, needs to be put into reverse? Speaking as someone who has studied the German economy quite intensively, the comparison with Germany, or at least the avant-garde sectors of the German economy, is quite telling here. What policies would the Minister propose to revive relationship-based banking in a speedy way? It seems to me that what one needs here is a new combination of high tech and low tech: on the one hand burgeoning processes of automation and, on the other, a distance between the banking system, the finance system and customers, including productive enterprises. I think that some structural reorganisation is needed here.

The report mentions that many SMEs are “born globals” in the internet age but I am not sure that this thought is followed up in the detail needed. To me, the advent of the internet, the coming of the internet of things and the transformations in manufacture linked to this are absolutely extraordinary. I do not think that there has ever before in human history been a period of transformative change of such an intense kind, and it is very important that we surf the wave of these changes. Even tiny start-up firms, through using internet-based collaboration, can produce and sell around the world, and indeed they are doing so. They come into existence one day and, almost the next, sell on a global level.

Tiny companies can now make use of facilities once available only to very large enterprises. McKinsey estimates that in the United States one-third of all SMEs now make extensive use of cloud technologies. That is a quite remarkable statistic. Whole departments were once needed to harness facilities that are now available either for free or at very low cost. Some cloud computing services cost only 10 cents an hour to utilise gigantic computing capacity. We have quite a range of microstudies which indicate that SMEs in this country are on average well behind those in the US and in some of the leading European countries in making use of these facilities. I ask the Minister what more can be done to get this country more into the forefront of these extraordinary transformations. Of course, many small businesses are local but we are seeing the fusion of local and global in a way that has never been seen before, and this is where enormous productive and export capacity will lie in the future.

The report does not discuss import substitution. I understand why but I think it is a pity. I do not think, as has been conventional wisdom up till now, that we should accept the inevitability of offshoring and deindustrialisation. A feature of history is that it does not move in a unilinear way—it quite often goes into reverse. I think that active policy should be engaged to try to push some of these trends into reverse, no matter how dominant they have been over the past 20 or so years. In this country we should actively seek to reverse these trends, both in manufacture and in the service industries. 3D printing is just the cutting edge part of what looks to be a thoroughgoing revolution in manufacture—perhaps even bigger than the original Industrial Revolution because of its global scope. Not just 3D printing but digital production more generally will be an enormous boon to SMEs, even tiny enterprises, and at the same time will serve to relocalise production.

Does the Minister agree that we should seek to reverse some of these trends that have previously been so dominant? It is not stupid to talk about the possibility of a partial reindustrialisation of the British economy. It is not stupid to suppose that the service industries will become massively more productive as a result of these emergent trends, and that policy should therefore follow and support them. What are the Government doing to help accelerate these trends of such potentially massive significance?

Ukraine

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, on having secured this debate. The situation in Ukraine remains extremely dangerous. The prime risk in my estimation is probably not further Russian invasion, although no one can write that off, of course, but a scenario in which events get out of control in ways that no one intended.

For the people of Ukraine, this is a time of hope, yet the problems to be coped with are just awesome. “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst” is the motto adopted by Ukraine’s new Minister for the Economy. It will not be political reform alone but the interaction of political and economic change that will determine which of these outcomes is most likely.

Simon Tilford from the Centre for European Reform has made a telling comparison of the diverging economic fortunes of Poland and Ukraine during the past 20 years. The Polish economy in 1990 was only 20% larger than the Ukrainian economy, but by 2001-02 it was fully three times as big—a quite extraordinary statistic.

I want to argue that three basic structural dilemmas will have to be resolved during the next two or three years in Ukraine if there is to be political and economic stability. First, how will the economic shock effects of the IMF’s reform package be managed politically? That package involves radical public sector reforms, higher oil and gas prices and a swathe of job losses. There will be an awful lot of pain before there is any discernible gain, and somehow that will have to be managed. Secondly, the presidential election is in late May, as the noble Baroness has indicated. How can progress towards democracy be reconciled with technocratic control imposed externally, because that is how it is going to have to be? We have seen from the example of Greece how such a process fosters extremism even in established democratic states, and Ukraine is not, of course, an established democratic state—far from it. Thirdly, devolution from Kiev is certainly necessary, but how will it be achieved without stoking up the forces of separation in areas with a high proportion of Russian speakers?

As noble Lords know, the Russian version of federalism for Ukraine is intended to dismember the country. What role will the UK Government seek to play in helping to resolve these core dilemmas, without which substantial progress in Ukraine is impossible? Does the Minister accept that a more integrated EU foreign policy will be needed in future, going beyond that established in the Lisbon treaty? One of the main things that has changed is that there is now an arc of instability going all the way round from the top of the eastern border of Europe, through the Middle East and north Africa and going below north Africa. That situation was quite unanticipated and is going to involve quite a reorganisation of political leadership on the part of the EU and the US to cope with it. I welcome the Minister’s views on that.

International Roma Day

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Whitaker on initiating this debate. What a shame it is that so few noble Lords have seen fit to contribute to it. It is perhaps sad testimony to the marginal nature of Roma in our society and in Europe more generally that that should be the case.

International Roma Day was set up for two purposes: to publicise the suffering and hardship that has marked the history of the Roma in Europe; and at the same time to celebrate Romany culture, the origins of which—as my noble friend said—seem to go back some 1,000 years. When one considers the enormous progress that has been made in overcoming persecution and discrimination against stigmatised groups in Europe, such as the Jews, the unhappy situation of the Roma almost everywhere is utterly scandalous.

There are 10 million to 12 million Roma living in Europe, plus several million more living in adjoining countries. For example, Turkey has a very substantial minority Roma population. According to most estimates, there are some 200,000 Roma living in the UK. Contrary to popular imagery, the majority of these are not recent immigrants but are long-standing citizens whose forebears have been resident here for several generations back or more. They have long been subject to the same scare stories as in other countries, but these have recently resurfaced, sometimes in virulent form here, as part of the climate of hostility to immigration fostered, if I may say so, in some sectors of the press.

A survey sponsored by the World Bank, UNDP and the European Commission carried out in 2011 gives statistical flesh to the reality of social exclusion affecting the Romany populations across Europe. It covered 11 EU member states and the findings are quite shocking. Levels of unemployment among the Romany people are on average three times those of the indigenous populations of the countries of which they are a part. Some 90% of the Roma across Europe live below national poverty lines. About a quarter of the Roma have no formal access to healthcare.

How can we stop International Roma Day being simply a nominal event, forgotten about the next day —Sunday’s speeches not followed up on Monday; or, in this case, Wednesday’s speeches not followed up on Thursday? I suggest three strategies, because we are dealing with deeply embedded problems and superficial policies will make no impact. I have three main points to make and I would be pleased if the noble Baroness would comment on whether she endorses them.

First, speaking as a sociologist, it seems important to have a comparative perspective. There is one very interesting comparison, although it is barely known in this country: the comparison that one could make between the Roma in Europe and the Burakumin in Japan. The Burakumin have faced ostracism and persecution, just like the Roma, lasting over many centuries. The Burakumin are physically indistinguishable from other Japanese. They are clustered in occupations which used to be considered impure or degrading. There have been many years of official denial of exploitation and exclusion within Japan, but that is now changing dramatically. There is a new generation of Buraku activists, such as the Buraku Liberation League. Interestingly, it has had close contacts recently with Roma activist groups in Europe.

The lesson, if you look sociologically at the Burakumin, is one that applies directly to the Roma in Europe and explains their long history. There is a causal spiral whereby forms of ostracism and prejudice help to create and reinforce the very traits which the wider public then condemn. The two cases are amazingly similar. For example, recklessness and criminality become real. They are produced by ostracism and then reinforce ostracism. That produces a deep historical cycle, which must be broken through.

Secondly, to see how we might do that in the case of the Roma in Europe and such other historical examples, we need more anthropological studies of how those mechanisms of exclusion work and how they are translated into those somewhat oppressive characteristics. In the case of the Roma, by and large, we simply do not have those studies. However, some are starting to appear. For example, there is a very interesting study sponsored by the World Bank, which has become involved in the Roma situation, which is concentrated on poverty, social exclusion and ethnicity in Serbia and Montenegro. That study is based on in-depth research, and it shows clearly how specific the cycle of exclusion is.

The implication which is correctly drawn by the World Bank is that we will never get anywhere in improving the situation of the Roma by concentrating on isolated policy interventions, no matter how attractive they might be on the surface. For example, there is a lot of material on trying to address the poverty of Roma children through education, but the research shows that that is subverted. We will not get very far simply by introducing well intentioned single-plank policies. We must address structural problems within the Roma communities.

Thirdly, in Europe, an investment-driven approach is the way forward, not one based simply on improved access to welfare. Modelling carried out by the World Bank indicates that full Roma integration in Europe, if set up as in its model, would produce a net economic gain of €0.5 billion a year to the EU economies. Breaking through the centuries of prejudice would therefore represent a major social investment, not just an additional cost to be foisted on an already overburdened system of welfare states. Interestingly, the World Bank has outlined how such an investment-driven strategy might be instituted. Its advantage is that it has electoral appeal as well as being directly relevant to the mechanisms of exclusion which have kept the Roma on the outside for so long. I hope the Minister will agree with these points and that she might build on them in her reply.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I entirely acknowledge what the noble and learned Baroness says but, of course, if noble Lords vote to amend the Bill they should recognise that they are denying the British people their say in a referendum.

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I follow up on the comment that the noble and learned Baroness has just made. I speak in this debate as an academic more than as a Labour Party member. If the UK were to leave the European Union, it would be a really wrenching process of readjustment. When a country is contemplating such a profound and consequential decision, it is crucial that the question chosen in the referendum should be as clear and impartial as possible. For that reason I think we should have some academic discussion of it, because, as has been said, questions are crucial in a referendum.

The report of the Electoral Commission is sound, sensible and well researched. For maximum clarity it makes absolute sense to have the formula proposed in this amendment, which is endorsed by the commission. Contrary to all kinds of political babble, I would hope that most Members of the House will support the amendment because it is in the interests of the country. It is not a party-political issue. It is in the interests of the country, if we have a referendum on a decision crucial to the future of the country, that the question asked is impartial and proper.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong. I have a dog point—but the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, made it himself. I would put it in a slightly different form. I would say, “Why have a watchdog and ignore its barking?”.

I also have a tartan point—but the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, made it himself. When Mr Salmond put forward his question for the Scottish referendum, loud were our complaints and strong were our strictures, particularly from the former Secretaries of State for Scotland. Their wizened locks shook. In the case of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, his head shook. Loud was our condemnation of Mr Salmond for ignoring the advice of the Electoral Commission. What happened? He listened to us, or he listened to the Electoral Commission, and he changed his question. He did as the House of Lords encouraged him to do. That seems to be quite a relevant precedent.

My third point you could call cui bono. I disagree with the noble Lords, Lord Grenfell and Lord Lipsey. They say that the question in the Bill—the slanted question—was written by Conservative Central Office. However, we know from the Second Reading debate that that is not true, because we were told then that the form of the question that the Tea Party in the other place has chosen to put in the Bill was not the one it was given by the Conservative Party hierarchy. The Conservative Party hierarchy provided a question very like the one proposed by my noble friend Lord Armstrong of Ilminster in the amendment before the House.

You have to say, “cui bono”. There will be people in this House who think that it is a very good idea to have a slanted question because they are not seeking a referendum; they are seeking a referendum that says we leave the European Union. Those on the other side who are thinking of opposing the amendment of my noble friend Lord Armstrong—and I hope they are very few—should reflect that this is not what the Conservative Party sought. This is a question that is not accidentally defective but deliberately defective. I support my noble friend’s amendment.

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[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, your Lordships will not be surprised that I am extremely concerned about this Bill, its implications and the time at which it has reached your Lordships’ House.

As I understand the Bill, it does nothing more than confer on the electorate of this country the right to an “in or out” referendum on our membership of the European Union—nothing more and nothing less. Further action is required from the Government and both Houses of Parliament before a referendum can take place under the Bill. It is clear from the present situation that no referendum is likely to take place before the next general election, the date of which we know—or at least at the moment we know—because of the excellent system of fixed Parliaments that has now been put in place.

It is clear that action by the incoming Government will certainly be required. I have reached the conclusion that any incoming Government holding a referendum during their term of office will wish to be in charge of all the details of that referendum and will put them in place through a public general statute. This will be put in place by the Government and run by the Government, with both Houses of Parliament—I hope more or less in their present forms—having a full opportunity to consider the details.

I am not a prophet—I do not know how many of us are—and I do not know exactly what the conditions will be in 2016-17. For all I know, the eurozone may be a distinct body from the European Union and a change of name may occur—as, for example, happened in connection with Maastricht when the name changed from the European Economic Community to the European Union. So the question will have to be decided ultimately in the light of the circumstances prevailing at the time of the referendum. That is absolutely essential.

[Lord Giddens]

Would not that also apply to the date of the referendum? Should not that be decided in the light of what is happening in the European Union at a particular point because it is becoming so transformed?

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

Exactly. Every part of this Bill can be altered by general legislation after the general election, including the date. However, the need for the date now is to give an entitlement to a referendum. If you do not put in a date, it will be in never-never land so it has to have a date now, but that date, like every other detail in this Bill, is subject to alteration.

Therefore, the extent to which we need to trouble about the detail is a substantial question. We do not know the circumstances of the referendum—at least I do not know—and therefore it will need to be adjusted in the light of the circumstances at the time. That will have to happen through a Bill authorised, put forward and promoted by the Government of the day. This Bill is not promoted by the Government of the day but by, essentially, the Member of the House of Commons who put it forward. He is a member of the Conservative Party and I know that the Bill is substantially supported by a good number of its members, but not all.

I am a strong believer in the European Union and our membership of it and have been for many years. I survived in government during the Maastricht debate, which would have been an experience for anyone, and there were demands then for a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. I have always found referenda difficult, but it is particularly difficult to have a referendum on a treaty because the chance that those people who vote have even read it—indeed, this may sometimes even apply to the legislators—is rather small. A referendum on a treaty is therefore difficult. At one time it was proposed to hold a referendum on the constitution of the EU, but that was equally difficult.

However, the question of whether, either now or in the future, you should be in or out is relatively simple. Just as it is in the Scottish referendum, it is a suitable question for a referendum. What this Bill does is give the British electorate the entitlement to have a referendum. As I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, the date has to be put in, as otherwise there is no enforceable entitlement, but the actual date for the referendum needs to be fixed by Government action along with action by both Houses of Parliament.

I am anxious about this because of what has been said by the Constitution Committee. I shall read out what the committee said because it is important:

“Three further private members’ Fridays are scheduled in the House of Commons this session: on Fridays 17 January, 24 January and 28 February 2014. So if the Lords were to pass any amendments to the bill, in order for it to become law in this session it would have to return to the Commons in time for the Lords amendments to be considered on Friday 28 February 2014. The requirement in the House of Lords for minimum intervals between stages of a bill may make it unlikely that the bill would finish the Lords in time for any amendments passed by the Lords to be considered by the Commons on Friday 28 February 2014”.

I would like to know what the proposers of this amendment have to say in relation to that.

The danger I see is that by exercising our undoubted responsibility for scrutiny, and given that scrutiny is supposed to improve a Bill, we will improve it in such a way as to kill it. This troubles me a great deal, not so much from the point of this House and its position in relation to the Commons, but I consider it to be important in terms of the position of the country in relation to the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Giddens]

Is not the inference from what the noble and learned Lord says that anything could be in the Bill and it would not matter as long as it goes through? That, surely, is an absurd position. It is up to us in the House of Lords to make sure that the Bill is sensible and well reasoned and, especially, that the question asked is fair and impartial. That is absolutely central to any referendum, as any country anywhere around the world with experience of this shows. The question has to be clear, fair and impartial and it has to be the core of what determines the future of the country. It does not make any sense to say that it does not matter and we will come back to it later.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I do not say that the question does not matter—not at all. I perfectly understand that the question at the time the referendum is taken has to be fair, excellent and take full account of the circumstances. In response to the second question asked by the noble Baroness, there is quite a lot of work to be done, but I know of no way other than this Bill that gives an assurance to the British people, going into the next election, that they will have an “in or out” referendum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

We are not going to redebate the Second Reading. I agree with much of what my noble friend Lord Deben has just said. At Second Reading I believed there was a case for giving this Bill, imperfect as it—I made it plain that I would not have started from here and that I did not like the Bill very much—a fair wind. I tried to make that case as effectively as I could but it was not accepted. I was merely pointing out that we are now in a different position. Amendments have been passed. It is indeed, as he and I have just said, up to the other place. The principle of the referendum remains. In spite of what my noble friend Lord Spicer said, these are not wrecking amendments. If the other place will give itself sufficient time on the last day of February, it will be perfectly possible for this Bill to become an Act of Parliament, suitably improved.

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, I have the aim of supporting the amendment with the briefest speech ever given in the House of Lords. There has to be flexibility in the date because, for the Prime Minister’s position to be feasible, there almost certainly has to be treaty change. Treaty change cannot be achieved within two years, and therefore there must be flexibility.