Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (European Affairs Committee Sub-Committee Report)

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Friday 20th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Weir, whom I first encountered some 30 years ago when he was running the Young Unionists. His was a strong and true voice for County Down at the Stormont Assembly, and it will be again in our councils. I add my praise to everyone else’s in favour of the chairman of our Select Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, whose temperate, measured and judicious approach has brought, out of a very disparate Select Committee and with the assistance of our staff, a very useful report. Everything that people said about the House of Lords before I became a Member—how disinterested it could be and how people could raise their eyes above the partisan scrum to try to discern some kind of consensus—has turned out to be true, at least in my Select Committee. For that, I thank all my fellow members.

I associate myself very strongly with the balance of the report. There is a sense, which is very widespread across the channel and in chunks of our media here, that it has always been the UK which is unreasonable, that we created the whole problem, and that any compromise will largely involve movement from our side. However, such a view does not survive first contact with the reality on the ground. The UK could have been extremely unreasonable; we could have stood on the letter of the law and said, “Look, we are a sovereign country, we are doing our own thing, and we are not going to raise so much as a matchstick of infrastructure on our side of the border; what you do on your side of the border is up to you”. That would have been legal under international law.

The Republic of Ireland opted out of our customs union in 1921, to the horror of Lloyd George, who thought that that was the final thing that could have symbolised some kind of continuing relationship between the two states. There would have been no comeback from that, if you like, but we did not do that. We did not do that because, first, we wanted to be good neighbours to the European Union, and, secondly, we recognised an obligation to both traditions in Northern Ireland—so we went out of our way to help the EU deliver on that aim. Let us remember that it is the EU that says it needs the border; there has never been any suggestion of that on our side.

All the provisions in the protocol Bill, which stalled but will come back in your Lordships’ House, are to that end: the red and green channel; Northern Ireland having the same right of taxation with representation that the rest of the world has; the freedom for companies in Northern Ireland that do not export to be able to follow UK regulation; and arbitration in accordance with every other international treaty. Those have been put together precisely so that they do not cause any inconvenience or damage to the EU, yet I do not think that that is acknowledged at all.

I sit on the Joint Parliamentary Assembly between this Parliament and the EU, and there is a very widespread sense there that the UK, as it were, is not moving an inch to try to accommodate its neighbours. In fact, at the last meeting, I made an intervention, saying that I am very pleased that we, on this side, do not require tests or checks on EU imports, and that I hope we will carry on doing that, because these are our friends, neighbours and allies and we should trust their standards. A large number of members were so preconditioned to expect me to have said something else that they all raged at me—“How dare you say that we should not have tests or checks on UK imports”—because people hear what they are expecting. There is an imbalance in the readiness to resolve the issue.

I very much hope that we will use Northern Ireland as a bridge between the UK and the EU, and that it will become a symbol of our friendship, but that requires both sides to recognise that the other side has legitimate concerns. It is a legitimate concern for any sovereign country not to have an internal border or a chunk of its territory governed from overseas without democratic representation. I am sure that all noble Lords in this House wishes the EU prosperity and success—I certainly do; I want it to be rich so that it is a better customer. As David Hume observed in 1777, the increase in the commerce of any one nation, far from hurting its neighbours, must serve to augment the commerce and riches of its neighbours. I just hope that that sense is reciprocated.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I am truly grateful for the opportunity to participate, and would have done so earlier had I stood up more quickly. I will address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge.

First, the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, touched on the reasons behind Clause 12 and why it is necessary, and I think it is worth reminding noble Lords of the current position following the approval of the Subsidy Control Act. Under the provisions of that Act, Northern Ireland is specifically excluded from the UK subsidy scheme. Therefore, we are subject, as per Article 10 of the Northern Ireland protocol, to EU state aid laws, and all the laws listed in Annexe 5 to the protocol shall apply to the UK

“in respect of measures which affect that trade between Northern Ireland and the Union which is subject to this Protocol.”

I have spoken to Invest Northern Ireland—the body that looks after foreign direct investment into Northern Ireland—about these matters. In effect, while the UK is setting up a new, more flexible state aid regime, under Article 10 of the protocol the UK subsidy control regime would apply only to about 50% of the financial support that will be provided to Northern Ireland, with the remainder continuing to fall within the scope of EU state aid rules, applying mainly to the manufacturing of goods.

So, Northern Ireland will be forced to adhere to the strict rules and conditions of EU law on things such as no expansions, maximum grant rates, only new establishments and so on, and when the projects are large or outside the scope of the exemption regulations, Northern Ireland will have to seek European Commission approval. Effectively, we have two regimes which are very different in policy terms and practical effect. Under the UK scheme, things effectively will be automatically approved unless specifically prohibited, and in Northern Ireland, under EU rules, everything will be prohibited unless approved—very different policies, and two very different systems operating in one country.

The reasons behind Clause 12 are sound; otherwise, there will be no level playing field across the United Kingdom for state aid. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, talked about uncertainty, but Invest NI has expressed concerns about the application of this dual regime. We will be at a disadvantage compared to other parts of the UK competing for inward investment. Other parts could be much more attractive as a location for investment as a result of not having to wait for European Commission approvals, for instance. Northern Ireland approvals will take significantly longer than the new timescales envisaged in the Subsidy Control Act for the rest of the United Kingdom. Other areas could have far fewer conditions or restrictions and might well receive greater levels of funding and subsidy than will be possible under the EU regime in Northern Ireland, which prohibits subsidies greater than 50%, whereas under the Act subsidies should be “proportionate”, but no maximum is specified.

Indeed, your Lordships’ Select Committee on the protocol in Northern Ireland, on which I am honoured to sit, wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on this matter. He responded by letter on 22 March 2022, saying that he recognised that

“in some cases a more flexible approach will be available in Great Britain than in Northern Ireland and that this could affect all subsidies relating to trade in goods.”

There are real concerns about the application of EU state aid to Northern Ireland when it is not applicable to the rest of the United Kingdom.

On the issue of what replaces the EU regime for Northern Ireland, I have heard what has been said. That is why I am on record in this House as agreeing with the Opposition Front Bench that we need to see the regulations, and they should be published in good time for your Lordships to consider in detail. It is not enough simply to have broad outlines of policy or indications of where it might go; we need to see the regulations at the same time as the legislation. I fully accept that this should be done, and I said so in a previous debate.

I understand also the very strong opinions, many of which I share, on the idea of giving the Executive more and more power at the expense of the legislature. However, I ask noble Lords to bear in mind the situation we are faced with in Northern Ireland as a result of the protocol. Powers have been taken away in 300 areas of law affecting the economy in Northern Ireland. Powers have been taken away from this House, this Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont, and handed over to the European Commission in Brussels, which initiates law in all those areas.

Noble Lords have expressed great dissatisfaction with the idea, which is regrettable in many cases, that one of His Majesty’s Ministers may be able to sit down with a pen and paper or an iPad and write what comes to mind; but we have a situation where somebody in the European Commission building in Brussels—I do not know who or where they will be, or their name; they are certainly not accountable to anyone here or in Northern Ireland—will write laws for Northern Ireland. It will not be a question of putting them down in statutory instruments, which this House may reject—although we have heard that it hardly ever rejects them. There will be no system of approval or disapproval at all. There will be dynamic alignment of the laws of the European Union with Northern Ireland. Legislators and the people of Northern Ireland will be handed those laws by the European Commission and told: “That’s the law you’re now operating.” Those laws are not necessarily going to be made in the interests of Northern Ireland. They are made by people who have their own interests.

I understand why noble Lords may rail against the delegated powers in this Bill, but why is not the much greater problem of the powers that have been given to Brussels to impose laws directly on part of the United Kingdom in the 21st century a subject for even more outrage? People may say that the Government signed up to this. I agree—they did, against our advice. We voted against it, as did other noble Lords in this House and Members of the other place. But we have this problem and we need to fix it. If it cannot be fixed, we are in serious trouble. I hope that negotiations and the negotiating mandate of the European Union will change to allow these things to be negotiated, but there is no sign of that thus far. If they do not change, this sovereign Parliament must take action to protect the people of Northern Ireland against laws imposed on them. Surely that should have the support of all true democrats in this mother of Parliaments.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, just then, my mind drifted back a decade or so to a debate in the domed hemicycle in Strasbourg on the issue of state aid in a neighbouring jurisdiction, one that was partially under single market regulation; namely, Switzerland. One after another the MEPs from different groups got up and fulminated against the unfair competition and unfair subsidies that were being carried out in particular Swiss cantons. It became clear as they spoke that what they regarded as unfair subsidies were lower taxes—lower corporation and business taxes, and a lower VAT rate. My point is that what we regard as an objective measure will not necessarily be seen that way in Brussels when it has full control of these things.

I did not make the wise life choices that my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley did, so I have no idea how efficacious these vehicles are, but surely that is an issue that ought to be determined through our own national democratic mechanisms and procedures, rather than handed to us by people over whom we have no control. It is this point of trade-offs that I think is being missed.

Of course, how could one not be persuaded by the customary wry, terse brilliance of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in the way he phrases the problem of executive overreach? I think that all of us on all sides recognise the problem. But we are dealing with a world of imperfections, and the alternative is an also unconstrained, and to some degree arbitrary, power where decisions are made, often by middle-ranking European Commissioners who are not accountable to anyone. Inadequate as the statutory instrument is, there is some mechanism of control here. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, just explained, we will have a situation where the state aid regime in Northern Ireland is being imposed by people who are completely outside the democratic process.

Now, I very much hope that this Bill goes through without these amendments. I realise that I am a very lonely supporter of it in these debates, but I hope that once it has gone through, Northern Ireland can become a bridge between the United Kingdom and the European Union, and a forum for co-operation. But that will be possible only if we live up not only to the Belfast Agreement but to the wider principles on which it rests: above all, representative government and a proper link between taxation, representation and expenditure.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been much discussion today, and it goes back to the issue of democratic deficit and how we deal with what Northern Ireland’s public representatives cannot deal with. There is a very simple solution. Under the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Act 1998, amended by the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006, provision was made for the institutions according to a three-stranded approach: the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, the North/South Ministerial Council, and the British-Irish Council, with east-west, north-south, and internal to Northern Ireland being addressed.

At the moment, we have no Northern Ireland Assembly, no Northern Ireland Executive and no North/South Ministerial Council that would hold these matters to account and address that democratic deficit. I would say to the DUP: there is a duty and an obligation to ensure, working with all the parties in Northern Ireland and both Governments, that those institutions are up and running. That will allow all of these issues to be adequately addressed by the MLAs who were duly elected in May.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

I did not plan on speaking in this debate, but I think it is only right that somebody should thank the noble Lord, Lord Frost, for explaining to us how bad things have become in Northern Ireland as a result of the treaty he negotiated. I am very happy to do that. I will, however, keep my speech brief and not make a Second Reading speech.

Of course, I support these two amendments but hope very much that we will not get to vote on them. To echo the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, we have been asked to put lipstick on a pig again. We have been asked to do that many times in the last couple of years, but to my knowledge, this is first time that the pig is not only ugly but illegal. On that basis, we should not get to vote on it. What we should do now, as others have said, is invoke Article 16. If negotiations are not working, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, there is a route open to us but passing an illegal Bill is certainly not it.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I had been planning to speak on the detail of the amendments. It seems to me to be quite unreasonable, as the noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Bew, have already said, that the whole essence of the Belfast agreement, which was that important decisions would be made on a cross-community basis—a difficult principle for unionists to accept at the time—is now being abandoned the moment it becomes inconvenient. I say that as someone who was rather opposed, at the time, to the Belfast agreement—not on orange or green grounds but because I thought it was unhealthy to have all the parties in power all the time. I thought it would be healthier for democracy to have a more genuine competition. I lost that argument and we went down this road. It seems a little inconsistent that we should move to majoritarianism only when it suits people pushing one agenda.

Food Insecurity in Developing Countries due to Blockade of Ukrainian Ports

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, what a pleasure and privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, the breadth of whose interests matches the depth of his humanity, and how sobering that he should have begun by reminding this House of the Holodomor, and the horrors and monstrosities experienced by Ukrainians. I recently read an eyewitness account of a hideous scene that unfolded in the spring of 1933 in the market in Kherson. It is almost unbearable to read, even after the passage of nearly a century. It concerned a dead mother with a still living infant, trying to suckle the last few drops. What was most shocking to the observers was that they had seen that exact scene many times before—it was no longer shocking to them. I think we can all agree in this House about what is happening in Ukraine and where the blame lies. This is a territory twice targeted by hunger, first by Stalin and then by Hitler. As the Yale historian Tim Snyder points out, it was the most dangerous place to live in the world between 1933 and 1945.

I should like to talk about how we respond. What do we do to lessen the effects of this disaster and, as importantly, what do we not do? First, do no harm, because something that alarms me is the way in which in every continent, on every archipelago, we hear people responding in a way that is emotionally understandable but intellectually very dangerous, by retreating into the illusion of self-sufficiency and protectionism. People will say that because world food supplies are being disrupted and prices are spiking, we need to be more self-sufficient—we need to grow more of our own food and be secure in our own supplies. That, it seems to me, is this worst possible response. If countries around the world begin to do this, they will exacerbate the problem and, indeed, tip the problem into a spiral of unmitigated calamity.

It is happening. Xi Jinping recently summoned a meeting of the rubber-stamp Parliament in Beijing and said, “We need to be self-sufficient in food. The lesson we must draw from this is that we cannot rely on the West”. He proposed setting aside 300 million acres of Chinese land purely for agrarian use, not to have to depend on international trade. Ukraine has, perhaps understandably, imposed a grain export limit, but it is being followed by other countries across Asia and Africa. If this carries on, we really do risk turning a problem into a calamity.

It seems to me that we are responding, as people do, in a very natural, instinctive way. We want to have food supplies close at hand because we are still thinking with our palaeolithic brains. We want to have a hoard of food nearby to survive the winter, and we struggle with the reality of the modern globalised economy, which depends on this rather counterintuitive—in the literal sense—notion of depending for our key supplies on strangers whom we cannot see. That, however, is what has eliminated famine from the world. It was at the end of the 1960s, when countries, particularly in Asia and South America—and, to a degree, in Africa—began to understand that there was a difference between food security and self-sufficiency, that famine began to disappear as a regular feature of our lives.

The reality is that food security depends on having the broadest range of suppliers—the most diverse group of suppliers possible—so that you are immune to a local shock or disruption which might as easily take place in your own territory as anywhere else. But that idea goes to a mental blind spot. It offends our inner caveman, and runs up against these inherited instincts. I am afraid that I see the world devolving into more and more barriers, which means more and more hunger.

The tragedy is that this war has come just after a pandemic which primed those caveman instincts even more. I was shocked repeatedly during the lockdown by how many people who I had down as reliable free marketeers were suddenly saying to me, “Surely, Hannan, even you must now accept the need to grow more of our own food—even you must see that it’s very dangerous to be importing 40% of our food into this country”. Is that really what people got from the lockdown? Let us recall that it happened at the end of March 2020, at the beginning of what our farmers call the hungry gap: the time of year when we do not really produce much food in this country; when we have reached the end of the winter harvest and are not producing any more turnips, potatoes and cabbages, but have not reached the start of the main summer harvest. Between the end of March and the beginning of May, other than rhubarb, asparagus and maybe a little bit of purple sprouting broccoli, we basically do not produce food in this country—but fortunately it did not matter, because we were able to rely on global markets.

That same lesson applies in spades to countries which are poorer than us. They need access to cheap, accessible global food supplies rather than the illusion of self-sufficiency. To illustrate this, you might say in an extreme way, I give your Lordships the countries at the furthest ends of that spectrum. First, consider North Korea, the country that has turned self-sufficiency into its ruling principle. “Juche” is the idea that there should be import substitution and that you should grow and produce everything possible at home. It is the last place on the planet that still experiences manmade famines. At the other end of the scale is Singapore, which does not produce one edible ounce. Singapore is wholly reliant on imports for its drinking water, food and electricity. Where would you rather live? Singapore has the cheapest and most secure food supplies in the world because food security and self-sufficiency are not the same thing. It was understanding that difference that brought our planet to a level of prosperity that previous generations could not have imagined. The worst possible thing we could do would be to turn back the clock decades, or even centuries, and thereby return to the poverty that our ancestors took for granted.

I am proud to have played some role in persuading our Government to lift all tariffs on Ukrainian exports, setting a precedent for others to follow; I was very pleased that the European Union followed suit five or six weeks later. That is of great value to Ukraine at the moment, because it has no sea access and therefore all of its exports must pass through EU territory. Can we not extend the principle? At a time when the world is dealing with a cost of living crisis, and when every country and every continent is touched by the scourge of inflation, could we not extend that principle and remove trade and other non-tariff barriers to the free flow of basic commodities such as food? Tariffs and non-tariff barriers on food fall hardest on the people who are poorest, because they have to spend a higher proportion of their income on the basics.

The United Kingdom raised itself above the run of nations in Victorian times by being the first place to have unilateral tariff removal and to invite the traffic and commerce of the world without hindrance. Let us live up to what our ancestors did, and let us lead the world a second time.

Ukraine: Defence Relationships

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, what a pleasure to follow the thoughtful and comprehensive Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I would like to associate myself with the paean of praise to those level-headed, responsible Labour leaders down the decades who were prepared to deploy proportionate force in defence of western values, starting with that flinty patriot and still underrated politician Ernest Bevin.

I do not think many of us expected to be here after nearly three and a half months. If we cast our minds back to the dark days—figuratively and literally—of late February, I think we were expecting something very different. The talk then was about a Ukrainian Government in exile and counterinsurgency operations behind the lines and possibly some Ukrainian forces operating across the border from NATO territory. Why did that not happen? Why were the expectations, not only from the Kremlin but from most international observers, so misplaced? Obviously, there is not a single or simple answer, but I thought an interesting light was shone on it by a story that emerged towards the end of March, which suggested that the entire leadership of the Fifth Service of Russia’s FSB had been arrested.

These are, necessarily, murky waters and we cannot say for sure what happened in the world of espionage, but what seems to have happened—if the sources are believed—is that, as early as the 2014 intervention, Putin was planning a second intervention. He realised after the annexation of Crimea and part of Donbass that he had upset what had been an equilibrium between —to borrow 19th-century Russian terminology—westernisers and Slavophiles in Ukraine. He had taken several million Russophile voters out of the equation and given the pro-NATO forces a majority. He seems to have decided then on a further and decisive intervention.

If reports are to be believed, Putin set aside a substantial budget of billions of roubles to suborn key Ukrainians when the moment came, to bring regional governors, army generals, policy chiefs, mayors et cetera on to the payroll so that, at the key moment, they would open the gates. They would switch sides, denounce the Zelensky regime or whichever one was in power and accept the jurisdiction of whatever puppet regime was put in by the Kremlin. The problem was that the FSB did not believe the invasion would ever happen, and so the money that was set aside to prepare Ukraine instead disappeared into yachts in Cyprus and into Swiss bank accounts. We can imagine the scenes towards the end of last year when the President of the Russian Federation called in his spy chiefs and said, “Are we ready to go?” We can imagine a lot of nervous fingering of collars: “Absolutely, Vladimir Vladimirovich. No problem at all.” What were they going to do? They cannot even come here because, as we know from the Skripal and Litvinenko affairs, there is nowhere safe for an ex-spy. So they did the only thing you can logically do in that position. They tried to stop the invasion happening so that their embezzlement should not come to light, and they did so by telling us exactly what was planned, which was why our intelligence was so accurate.

I cannot, of course, confirm that story, but it does seem pretty plausible, especially when we look at what happened following the invasion. We saw the same pattern again and again, of failures of equipment and failures of procurement, because the fundamental weakness of any autocratic system is that people tell their superiors what they want to hear. Therefore, what was expected in the Kremlin, even now, was very far from what was happening on the ground. This, it seems to me, is the real strength of democracies. It is why we tend to have a surprisingly good record at winning wars. It is not that our people are braver or more virtuous; it is that we have better mechanisms in place to identify and correct errors. That, among other things, is a system worth defending.

We can argue about what exact military and strategic response we should take. One could take the line the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, just took. One could equally argue that in fact, since NATO was put together largely to contain a Soviet menace, and since the Russian menace has shown to be much weaker than we thought as recently as February, the time to be strengthening NATO was five years ago, and so the argument for it is now weaker than it was. There is a debate to be had, and it should be had in a judicious and thoughtful manner. You can at least make the case for a more global and dispersed approach to security and that the peculiar interest in western Europe’s security that dominated our post-war thinking is no longer quite as pressing.

Whatever view we take on that, the one thing we have learned is that it is worth defending our values even if that means going out-of-area. The invasion of Ukraine was no threat to the United Kingdom. There was no realistic scenario in which Russian troops were going to be marching through Kent. But as in 1914, as in 1939, we took a decision to defend our values in the defence of allied European democracies. Sure, it is an imperfect democracy in the case of Ukraine—I do not think anyone denies that—but, none the less, it had an aspiration to become a more pluralistic and liberal society. When we endorse that process in other countries, we make the world safer and more prosperous for ourselves. It is for that reason that I hope noble Lords on all sides will add their voices to those of the patriotic Ukrainian soldiers as they fire their British-made missiles at Russian armour and join them in saying, “God save the Queen.”

Queen’s Speech

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Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, what a pleasure it is to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, and his extraordinary combination of passion and knowledge.

I have so far not raised the subject of the European Union in this place. You know how it is: we get typecast, do we not, and pigeonholed? You make 12 speeches on something else and then the one time you mention the B word, everyone says, “Oh, he’s on his hobby-horse; he only ever talks about one thing.” This is my 81st spoken contribution and I have not yet mentioned the B word. I say “the B word”—I think that I have spoken about broadcasting, Botox and the BBC, but I am, for the first time this evening, going to mention Brexit, in the context of how the debate was introduced by my noble friend Lord Grimstone and then picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, and others; that context being the necessity of unity in the face of international aggression.

I agree very much that we need a united West at the moment, but perhaps not in the way that several dozen other noble Lords who have raised this point intend. It is certainly the case that we need a united front. The West has shown itself to be very geographically limited. The Governments who have imposed any kind of sanctions on Putin’s regime represent perhaps 20%, if that, of the world’s population. A lot of countries that you would have thought would have self-identified as democracies and taken that seriously—India, Israel, Indonesia—have tended rather to sit this out.

However, I have to say that, when we come to the issue that is supposedly dividing the West—the response to unilateral action over the Northern Ireland protocol—I detect a real asymmetry and imbalance in how British Ministers speak and how their counterparts in the European Union address the issue. Wherever you stand on the protocol—and I accept that there are lots of noble Lords on all sides who think pacta sunt servanda, we have given our word and all the rest of it—one thing on which I hope we can all agree is that the proposed reforms are not animated by bellicosity. They are not intended to be harmful. Even the European Union and all the parties in Northern Ireland acknowledge that there are genuine grievances that need remedying. I do not think that anyone is denying that. Therefore, whether it is the proposal for the green channel or the proposal for local democratic control over taxation, it is plainly intended to remedy an identified harm rather than to do harm to a neighbour.

The same is not true of the rhetoric that we get in the other direction. European Union officials speak quite openly about punitive measures and retaliation. It is not just their words; if we look at other aspects of the UK-EU relationship that have been held up because they have been tied to this issue, we see time and again that the European Union is prepared to act in a way that is costly to all sides and that inflicts damage on itself, because the essential spirit is vindictive.

We discussed at great length the other day the UK’s exclusion from the Horizon programme; I am not particularly fussed one way or another about the Horizon programme, but nobody could argue that this is just the EU advancing its own interests. It was deliberately intended, and sold internally, as being about hurting Britain. It was the same with the energy trading schemes in the North Sea, which were supposed to have been ratified last month. Their non-ratification retards the development of renewables and increases our dependence on Russian hydrocarbons. It was the same for equivalence in financial services and so on. These are all examples of where all sides are being damaged to make a point.

I put it to noble Lords that the real threat to western unity is not a proportionate attempt to remedy these grievances in Northern Ireland in a way that is expressly designed not to do any harm to our neighbour and would ensure no more leakage than now. Even if we take seriously the idea that a pork pie crossing into County Donegal would wreck the single market, there is nothing in the Government’s proposals that would make that a more likely scenario than it is today. The real threat is rather this lamentable tendency in Brussels still to think of the United Kingdom as a renegade province that needs to be brought to heel rather than as a strategic ally.

I am very proud of this country’s contribution to the defence of Ukraine. We started earlier and have been at it longer than others. We did so, let us remember, not because we were directly threatened—there was no scenario in which Russian troops were about to cross into Kent—but because, as in 1914 and 1939, we wanted to come to the aid of a friendly country because we believe in European freedom and security. We are good Europeans. I wonder whether the same is true of the European Commission.

Falkland Islands

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Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I cannot provide a date, but I can say that the MoD conducts routine and regular assessments of any threats to the Falklands and it is our policy that we must retain appropriate levels of defensive capabilities at all times. To my knowledge, that is the case: that is certainly the position of the Government.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Minister’s confirmation that the wishes of local people should be paramount in determining the future of the Falkland Islands. Is this a principle that we should extend more widely so that, in territorial disputes across Africa, Asia and elsewhere, we try and give paramountcy to what local people want? That is not to say other claims are meaningless—that geography and history have no force—but that the world would be a better place if people lived in units where they felt enough in common one with another to accept government from each other’s hands?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I strongly agree with the noble Lord. I think that the position of the UK Government, and our historic position, in relation to countries that are part of our family is a model for the world to follow. Where those arrangements are based on genuine consent, I think the relationship will always be a happier one. It is a model that many other countries would do well to learn from.

Autocrats, Kleptocrats and Populists

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Thursday 3rd February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, which keeps us awake at night—the prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine? Consider the disquieting possibility that both may happen on the same day by prearrangement. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, in introducing this excellent debate, spoke about the coming together of the two great illiberal powers. It is a very real coming together: the largest military exercise that the Chinese have been involved in with another country was conducted last year with Russian troops in north-western China, where J-20 stealth bombers were used. A signal went out that the two countries that have the most to gain from overturning the current world order and from a revanchist and autocratic alternative are working together. That same message has been heard on every continent and in every archipelago.

I spent part of last month in Pakistan. It was my first visit—it is a very beautiful country—but everywhere you see the spore of China, of the Chinese military and of Chinese society. Of course, Pakistan is a special case: its alliance with China goes back a long way, and it has always seen it as a counterweight to India. None the less, I was struck when I heard the Prime Minister of Pakistan, a man of very British sensibilities and education, saying that perhaps multiparty western democracy, which had been held out as the only alternative, was inferior to the more meritocratic Chinese alternative. I do not think we would have heard that 10 years ago, and certainly not 20 years ago. We would not have seen ambitious politicians learning Mandarin rather than English, or ambitious young army cadets studying at the People’s Liberation Army university rather than aspiring to come to Sandhurst.

Around the world, people hear the melancholy long withdrawing roar of western influence. We can sanction Lukashenko—it does not stop him kidnapping and murdering opponents or massing troops on the Ukrainian border. We can sanction Ortega—it does not stop him stealing the election in Nicaragua. The same has happened in Nigeria, in Burma and all over. The only part of the otherwise excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that I would question is when he said that the jury was still out on whether Tunisia is a democracy. When I see troops in the streets and Parliament dissolved, I do not think that the jury is still out. The last country that could still have been held to be a success 10 years after the Arab spring has joined the rush to autocracy.

We should all guard against the availability heuristic—it is always possible to pick examples of what is going wrong—but it was interesting how the noble Lord, Lord Browne, began by giving an empirical assessment of how democracy is in retreat. In addition to the source that he gave, almost everyone who studies this says the same thing, including the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House and the democracy index. Seven years of solid advance at some point in the past decade have stalled and gone into reverse. I want to explore why that has happened.

Of course, part of it is simply that people no longer care as much about what the western powers think; there has been a change in the balance geostrategically. Part of it, frankly, is due to the pandemic and the associated lockdowns—not just in the obvious sense that we gave up liberties, could not travel and were interned and so on, but in the more dangerous and insidious sense that a common threat of that kind tends to make people more authoritarian. It is a well-observed psychological phenomenon, whether it is a war, a plague or a natural disaster. People coming out of it become more intolerant of dissent and more demanding of the smack of firm government and strongman rule.

Perhaps the most disquieting thought of all is whether, in the scheme of things, it is not the last couple of hundred years of democratic and liberal advance that are the exception. All the things that various noble Lords spoke about—the kleptocracy, the institutionalised looting of state resources, the seizure of power by small elites—was pretty much how every civilisation was run for most of the last 10,000 years. The lot of almost every human being was servitude of one kind or another: back-breaking labour in the fields from dawn until dusk, while small elites systematically looted the state. We are exceptionally lucky to be here in a place and at a time when we have found mechanisms to keep the Government under control and when a measure of law and liberty can flourish, whereby we have elevated the rules above the rulers—but that is not the normal state of play.

I wonder whether we might be coming towards the end of a brief interglacial period between the long ice ages. That is why it is so important to keep educating and elevating the idea that process matters more than outcome, the rules matter more than the rulers and the individual matters more than the collective. That is why we should keep a sense of perspective in attacking different parties within a democratic system. If we lose sight of those precepts, the bleak landscapes stretch ahead of us, dark, cold and grim.

Middle East: Human Rights

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, to my knowledge, this issue was raised in discussions in Saudi Arabia, particularly in relation to ease of access and transport for delivering much-needed provisions in Yemen. I will encourage my colleague to follow up with a more detailed answer.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, there is barely a country in the world with which we will not have some differences on domestic policy, but with Saudi Arabia this has spilled over into international affairs—in Yemen, with the kidnap of the former Lebanese leader and in the Khashoggi murder. Will my noble friend the Minister confirm that, in our relations with all GCC countries, we will stress the vital importance of the principles of national sovereignty, territorial jurisdiction and order among nations?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My noble friend is exactly right, and that is very much the view of the British Government. There is no single formula for success or single model of government, particularly in a region with such distinct cultures and differing political systems. It is not for the UK or indeed other Governments outside the region to dictate how each country meets the aspirations of its people, but there are certain principles that we must—and do—continue to stand up for.

Food Waste

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

On food waste, with our counterparts in the DAs, we learn from each other. Much of our work with WRAP, including citizen campaigns, is supported by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In the resources and waste strategy, we have committed to seek powers in our Environment Bill to impose responsibilities on producers to reduce their waste, should progress from all the current measures be insufficient to get us towards that sustainable development goal. We continue to look closely at the issue.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that apps and charities are more effective in the redistribution of surplus food than any government policy, however well intentioned, can be? May I take him a little bit upstream and talk about the production phase? For years, British agriculture was locked into a system where there was necessary overproduction and where intensive farming, the use of chemical fertilisers and the felling of hedgerows were encouraged by an output-based system. Will my noble friend confirm that we will now have a farming policy in this country tailored to suit the needs of the countryside, which is the sublime inheritance of all of us in these islands?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

I agree with the noble Lord about the value, the benefit and the effectiveness of the private sector in dealing with these issues, particularly through new technology and apps. I can also absolutely confirm that one of the biggest opportunities that we have in relation to farming, land use, conservation and the environment is the ability now, post Brexit, to ditch the old common agricultural policy and replace it with a new system that, instead of incentivising land use destruction, which CAP undoubtedly did throughout the continent, is moving to make all payments conditional on delivery of a public good. Of course, one public good, among many, is environmental stewardship.