Foreign Policy

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, from time to time it is necessary to stand back from the rush of international developments, get away from a purely reactive response to events that are often outside our control, and try to take an overall look at this country’s foreign policy objectives and at the methods and resources at our disposal to articulate them.

Having had the benefit of reading the Foreign Secretary’s speech this morning, I welcome the fact that he seemed to take the point that we should get away from a purely reactive diplomacy. It is surely the time for this, with the new coalition Government conducting a wide-ranging review of national security issues. I agree with my noble friend Lord Butler: we cannot afford a narrow, defence-oriented approach to that review, as has often been the case in the past. Nor, with the Cold War far behind us and a multipolar world gradually emerging, does it make any sense to allow defence issues to be decoupled from the wider foreign policy framework. The two must be matched, as they have often not been hitherto. If this debate can make a parliamentary contribution to that review, it will surely be of real value—and there is no one better to lead it than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, whose opening remarks reminded us why he remains one of the most admired and respected Foreign Secretaries of modern times, and whom I had the honour to serve throughout his tenure in office.

Any foreign policy worthy of the name must be anchored firmly in the national interest. As a great statesman of the 19th century observed, “interest never lies”. However, defining our national interest in any particular matter is no simple question: it requires intellectual rigour and the avoidance of jingoistic hype. There are two sharply contrasting approaches. The first defines the national interest very narrowly and in a reductive manner—the sacro egoismo of an Italian Minister in the First World War. That was the approach that led us to the protectionism and appeasement policies of the 1930s, and the abandonment of the first attempt at collective security, the League of Nations. It is a template to be avoided now, as it should have been then. The other approach is to define the national interest in broader terms, recognising that many threats and challenges that we now face come from outside our immediate neighbourhood, and that all of them require some kind of co-ordinated, collective global action if they are to be effectively mastered. The broader approach surely is the one that Britain should take.

We are currently deeply preoccupied by our own fiscal and economic predicament. Foreign policy practitioners cannot simply dismiss that as if it did not exist and had no implications for our foreign policy, but we need to retain a sense of proportion. Even in our financially weakened state, we remain in single figures in any global league table of capacity, whether we are talking about trade, investment or the ability to project power and influence. We must not go into a pre-emptive cringe. That is why I greatly welcome the Government standing by their commitment to 0.7 per cent of our gross national income going to our aid programme by 2013. We could improve the way in which the money is spent, particularly by better fitting together the foreign policy and developmental objectives to which it is devoted, and by strengthening collective international efforts to deal with failing states and to stop states failing in the first place.

One key conclusion that we must draw is that to achieve our foreign policy objectives in the future, we will need to act even more in concert with other countries than we have done up to now, and that we are now even less able than we have been in the past to defend our interests around the world by acting alone. That implies an active diplomacy and the strengthening of rules-based international organisations. When we look at the instruments for collective action, two stand out: the European Union and the United Nations. The new Government seem to have got off on the right foot in responding to developments in the EU—far better, dare one say, than was predicted only a few weeks ago. However, there is still too much unnecessarily negative language in the Government's presentation of EU discussions—long lists of things that we are not going to allow to happen—and so far an almost complete absence of any overall positive picture of what the Government want the EU to achieve.

There is, after all, no lack of material for painting that picture: free trade, energy policy and security, further enlargement, climate change and the rollback of state subsidies. There are real opportunities to be seized, given the considerable tension between France and Germany over economic policy, a political vacuum in the leadership of European institutions and the new phase in the development of a common foreign and security policy that is being shaped. This is no time to settle for a purely reactive and defensive EU policy just because some parts of one of the coalition partners do not want anything more constructive and positive.

At the UN, too, and in other universal or near-universal organisations such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, there are opportunities to be taken, and risks if we fail to take them. I refer to the climate change negotiations in the run-up to the Cancun meeting at the end of the year; to the complex of multilateral nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation talks, where the relative success of last month’s NPT review conference set a new direction of travel, but where there remains a long way to go that is strewn with many obstacles; and to the Doha round of trade negotiations, successful completion of which should be an integral part of any exit strategy from the recent financial and economic crisis. All these policy areas are crying out for determined, well focused action—and all are ones where Britain could make a real contribution.

I conclude with a quick word on resources. One cannot have an active diplomacy, which we need, without a world-class, well resourced Diplomatic Service. If we subject our overseas efforts to the double whammy of a 25 per cent loss of funds following the drop in the sterling exchange rate last year, and then to the same top-slicing that other non-ring-fenced domestic departments face, one will not have that—it is as simple as that.