Queen's Speech

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the new Government, and particularly the element of continuity represented by the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, as their principal spokesman in this House for international relations. He may have crossed the Floor literally if not in party political terms, but his views and experience are already well known to all in this House and, I believe, are greatly respected.

The world into which this new Government have been born is pretty troubled. A lot more problems than solutions are in sight. The multipolarity which succeeded that brief and unhappy period of US unipolarity has yet to take proper shape, with some of the main emerging powers seemingly uncertain as to whether to assert their increasing influence in efforts to work for the collective common good, or whether to push ahead in a mercantilist way and frustrate attempts to strengthen the multilateral institutions on whose effectiveness so much of our and their future prosperity and security depend.

At the same time we and other European countries have been punching a good deal below our weight in recent months; and the Obama Administration, who set their course so hopefully 18 months ago, and whose main international objectives still seem to be admirable ones which we largely share, remain heavily preoccupied by domestic issues and are only too likely to be weakened by the mid-term elections in November. No wonder if there is a sense of drift, cynicism and disillusionment about the international community’s joint capacity to face up to the global challenges before us—whether they are from trade protectionism, terrorism, climate change, nuclear proliferation or the shortfall in meeting the millennium development goals.

Making a serious contribution to dispelling that sense of drift must surely be a priority for the Government. I hope that the Minister will, before too long, say a bit more than he has been able to say this afternoon about how the Government intend to set about this task—what their aims are for the two G20 summit meetings already scheduled for later this year; how they plan to extract the Doha round of trade negotiations from the doldrums in which it is becalmed; and how they intend to move the climate change negotiations beyond the inadequate and fragile deal struck at Copenhagen on to the firmer ground of a legally binding set of commitments, properly monitored and verified on an international basis. I have to say that the coalition agreement on the climate change point was singularly fuzzy and vague. How do the Government intend to pursue the twin aims of nuclear disarmament and proliferation and deal with the threats to the non-proliferation treaty from the policies of North Korea and Iran? In that context, I warmly welcome the statement by the Foreign Secretary, which the noble Lord referred to, about our warhead assets and our nuclear posture. In fact, I wrote to the previous Foreign Secretary before the two big nuclear conferences this spring and suggested that we should do just that. He did not do it and he did not reply.

No one reading those parts of the two parties’ election manifestos which dealt with the European Union can fail to be struck by the sharp contrast between them, as several others have said before me. The Conservative document was a long litany of negatives—a list of things that the European Union must not be allowed to do or, perhaps even less realistically, must desist from doing. The Liberal Democrat document set out many objectives which any supporter of our membership would applaud. Producing one policy out of those contradictions will not be an easy task, but the coalition agreement seems to represent a first hesitant step down that road. What this country cannot afford is to zig-zag between two unreconciled sets of European Union policies. But nor can it afford to have no EU policy objectives at all, which is what a cursory reading of the gracious Speech might lead one to suppose was the situation.

I hope that the Government will not head back down the long dark tunnel of institutional wrangling from which the EU has only just emerged with the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty. Surely it is better to concentrate on the substantive policy areas where our objectives and those of the EU broadly coincide—on trade, climate change, energy security, completing the single market, resuming growth and increasing productivity—so that we are not left far behind by the emerging countries that are coming out of recession much faster than we are.

Pursuing further enlargement, against the views of the doubters, is another policy that we should support, along with preparing carefully for the next major budgetary negotiations, which will be upon us before long, and building up common policies towards Russia and in support of US efforts to achieve progress in the Middle East. All these are surely far more urgent requirements than tilting at the windmills of further and unspecified treaty changes.

Any foreign policy worthy of respect requires a minimum of resources if it is to be effective. The outgoing Government have left the Foreign and Commonwealth Office well short of that minimum, and with the prospect of falling even further short as the wider pressure builds for drastic cuts in spending. What seems not to have been appreciated is that, by removing the protection for the foreign and Commonwealth budget from exchange-rate fluctuations, and as a consequence of rising, legally binding international obligations such as UN-assessed contributions for peacekeeping, the FCO has been facing proportionately far greater cuts than any domestic department, at a time when Britain's relative decline in economic weight increases the need for a nimble, effective diplomatic effort. When a country is rising up the international league tables, everyone beats a path to its door; but alas, the contrary is also true. Surely now is not the time to starve our diplomacy of resources. I hope that the Minister will assure us, when he winds up the debate, that the extremely welcome strategic defence and security review that the new Government have set in hand will cover the issue of resources for our diplomacy, and that meanwhile no irretrievable damage to our resource base will be allowed.

The Government have set themselves the laudable objective of finishing a five-year term. That must be welcome from the foreign policy point of view, because short-termism is inimical to an effective foreign policy. I welcome it also from a wider constitutional point of view. However, we cannot afford a period of introspection, of turning our backs on the world's problems. Glib remarks about Britain not being a global policeman sound pretty odd at a time when we are providing 200 to 300 peacekeepers to a United Nations that has deployed roughly 100,000 worldwide. We need to set out now, with realism but also a degree of ambition, to make the most of our partnerships and alliances in Europe, across the Atlantic and in the Commonwealth. We must remember that, hard-pressed financially though we feel and undoubtedly are, we are still a country that, working with others, can make a difference; and that we have a responsibility so to do.