Environment Bill

Lord Horam Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I merely wish to say that I am very worried about this proposal. It seems not to deal with the real issue and to ask Defra to do what it cannot do. What we really need—we know we need it—is a department of land use that takes over the planning, housing and other responsibilities of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. There is no way forward until we begin to realise that this is what we need. To ask Defra, which has only a bit of all this, to do this seems to be a mistake. I fear it will end up with a document, if that is what it is, that will have little influence and will not be able to do the job. It will mean that Defra will not be doing the detailed work it is capable of doing.

I know why the noble Baroness has put this forward and have sympathy with what she is trying to do. It just seems to me that this is not a suitable answer. We have to go for a much bigger issue, which is that in this country we do not have an integrated way of looking at land. The noble Baroness referred to the Climate Change Committee. In our view, that was the way we had to look: in a much more general way than this amendment provides. I am unhappy about it and will not find it possible to support it.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend Lord Deben and will just extend what he says. Essentially, his point is that we cannot ask Defra, which has a narrow remit, to take the integrated and across-the-board view that is necessary.

We also need to take into account the pressures on land—population, for example. As the noble Baroness said in her opening remarks, the population projections over the next few years from the Office for National Statistics are very considerable; we are talking about an extra 7 million people over the next 10 or 15 years. These are the sort of pressures we have to take into account when we look at land use. Although I am sympathetic with her point, we have to consider this properly, systematically and rationally.

No one wants the land to be ill-used or underused. None the less, the practicalities of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and my noble friend Lord Deben’s view about the wider nature of this issue mean that this amendment is deficient.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to say that we support the intent of this amendment. Given the competing demands on land in our country, we believe it is time for a national framework. If it works in other parts of the continent and in other parts of the United Kingdom, the time has come and we would support it.

I fear the Minister will say that, for a number of reasons, he is not able to accept it. I therefore applaud the noble Baroness for her campaigning on this over many years and the fact that she has put together a proposal for an ad hoc House of Lords Select Committee on this. I certainly support that. I think it is an incredibly important initiative, and I hope other Peers will support that proposal so that this issue can be taken forward in a broader way.

Brexit: Sanctions Policy (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Horam Excerpts

Thursday 3rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister will now be aware from the long list of questions that my noble friend Lady Verma listed that she did a sterling job as chair of the committee, of which I was a member. As she did, I first thank the clerks and advisers to the committee. We are sadly losing Eva George, who was the clerk to the committee. She is going to the International Affairs Committee. She was a model of clerkly conduct—I hope that is noted at the clerk level.

One of the knacks of the committee, for which I am grateful to my colleagues, is its habit of coming out with extremely timely reports. This knack was also evident when the chairman was my noble friend Lord Tugendhat, who I am glad to see in his place. We did a report on Operation Sophia, which addressed the problem of refugees coming across the Mediterranean when it was at its very height, which received quite a lot of publicity. Very early in the discussions about Brexit, we issued two reports on the options for trade which were very well received, and we are at the moment on a third leg of that, looking at customs arrangements—discussed yesterday in the Cabinet, as Members will be aware. In particular, we took evidence from the Freight Transport Association on the issue of a customs partnership, which is one option that the Cabinet discussed yesterday. The House will be interested to know the evidence that we had from James Hookham, the deputy chief executive of the Freight Transport Association. I quote from the press interview he gave, for the sake of clarity, where he said that the customs partnership was “sound”, showed “positive forward thinking” and was a good outcome for everyone concerned. That is rather different from the view taken by one of my colleagues along the Corridor who said that it was “cretinous”. That was the view of exactly the same thing as people operating these things on the ground think of as “sound”. The adjective cretinous can be rather applied to those who wish to apply customs barriers where there are none today. However, that is another debate for another time. Let me come on to the subject of this report, which is, of course, sanctions.

As my noble friend Lady Verma said, we made three significant suggestions. The first was that sanctions should clearly be a subset of foreign policy. There should be an overall strategic view that sanctions fit into successfully. They must also be co-ordinated properly. As one of the Russians in London said the other day, “If they push us out of London, we’ll just go to Paris”. If it is not co-ordinated, that is the sort of thing that could well happen.

It was made clear to us by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, who has had a distinguished career in the European Union, that post Brexit we will not be at the table. We therefore proposed that we should form some kind of political forum in which we could have influence. That positive suggestion was raised again in her remarks by my noble friend. I hope the Minister will respond to that very clearly.

The fact is that we will continue to have influence in the European Union, whatever the arrangements, because we are a significant financial centre and sanctions are at their most effective when they are applied to the individual and make it difficult for them to conduct their normal business, whatever it may be. We should also remember in that context that the British economy is, above all, a services economy. Some 78% of our GDP is in services of one kind or another and that will have influence in this area.

Finally, I will comment on the three areas where sanctions at the moment are having an influence. First, on Russia, the move by the United States on sanctions last month was quite a game-changer because the sanctions relate not merely to human rights but to corruption and how money was originally obtained. Anyone who has read the book by Bill Browder, the American entrepreneur who worked extensively in Russia, will be aware of the problems that led to the Magnitsky Act in the United States, which has had considerable bearing on the behaviour of Russian oligarchs of that kind. In this country, anyone who saw the television series “McMafia” and read the book by Misha Glenny will know the effect in London. The Government have to decide how far we will follow up the game-changing sanctions put on by the United States. It is certainly the case that while Ukraine and Crimea are issues between us and Russia, we cannot in any way afford to relax sanctions, they must remain in place. I do not think there can be any going back on that. It is a matter of international concern.

In addition, we should try to understand Russia perhaps more comprehensively and fundamentally than we have in the past. Russia is coming out of a period when it has felt itself to be a great world power. It had an empire—the Soviet Union—around it. We, as a country which has also come out of a period of empire, should have some sympathy for the psychological effect of that diminution of influence in the world. I always remember reading Jan Morris’s great trilogy of the British Empire, which finished with Farewell the Trumpets. There is a sense in which a country feels diminished and therefore has to exert its power and sense of power in the world, and we should understand the psychology of that, as I said.

Therefore, we should be careful what we do in relation to sanctions, as well as about the implications for the City of London of the amount of Russian money there. But I think that we are now pursuing the right attitude, and I am very pleased with what happened at the other end of Parliament this week on a question of transparency in relation to overseas territories. I think that we all welcomed that, because the fundamental issue here is transparency—and we need more transparency, not only for the overseas territories but in the London financial and property markets. It is outrageous that we simply do not know who owns properties in the middle of London, when they are pushing up prices and having a really damaging effect on the lives of ordinary Londoners and ordinary citizens of this country. We should know who owns those properties; we do not know at the moment. It is one area in which the Government can do things unilaterally without too much co-ordination but with a beneficial effect. That is a step that the Government should take.

Secondly, on Iran, sanctions have clearly had an effect and been very successful in winding down its nuclear ambitions. It seems to me that, far from wanting to do as President Trump wants to do and scrapping the arrangements that we have, what is happening reinforces the importance of those arrangements. If Iran feels that the international community and the Americans in particular have turned against it, it will become a more dangerous operator in the Middle East, not less dangerous. In that respect, the Europeans should keep their act together and not go along the path that President Trump appears to be walking down.

On North Korea, we do not really know what is agitating the North Korean leader or what has brought him to the negotiating table. It may well be more Chinese actions and sanctions than anything that President Trump has done—we will have to wait and see. But it is clearly ongoing and is of significance to all of us.

Finally, on Brexit as a whole and the UK influence in the sanctions area after Brexit, the Minister, Alan Duncan, in the Government’s response to our report, put it well when he said:

“The UK is a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council and an active member of other international fora. We have a substantial global reach, with a diplomatic network of 270 posts, world-class security services and extensive military capabilities. The UK is the only major country to meet both the 2% defence spending target and the UN 0.7% target for Official Development Assistance”.


I would add to that that we are also a significant financial centre and will continue to be. All of that is soft power, and hard power, of a significant kind, and I believe that we can wield it well post Brexit, just as much as we have pre-Brexit, provided that we have a strategic view, co-operate in the way that the committee concluded and can put the right amount of resources into our foreign policy and military and defence capability.

EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report)

Lord Horam Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, who has just concluded his remarks, mentioned a previous report from the sub-committee on the European Union and Russia. He was on the committee at the time and I was not, so I can honestly say that it was a superb report and a great credit to the chairman, my noble friend Lord Tugendhat. I pay tribute to him, too, for his work during that period. It is such a pity that he has to resign from the chairmanship under our rather brutal rules in the House of Lords.

Having said that, I want to say more about Russia, following up from what the noble Earls, Lord Sandwich and Lord Oxford and Asquith, said. In our report, we say:

“The High Representative should devote particular attention to the issue of EU policy on Russia”.

As has been said, we are advocating a dual-track policy—being tough when necessary but being prepared to talk and have a dialogue when we can find space for that. I shall confine my remarks to Russia, although confining is rather an odd word to use in that context, given that Russia is such a huge issue and a huge country.

I have always been a huge admirer of the Russian people and Russia. One should always remember the Great Patriotic War, as they call it, when no fewer than 28 million Soviet citizens died during the course of that struggle, which was so fundamental to the defeat of Hitler. That leaves aside the great Russian cultural history—their opera, ballet and literature. I have recently seen “Boris Godunov” at the Royal Opera House and, like others, watched “War and Peace” on TV. One thrills at what Russia has contributed to the world; it is a country that has been, and always will be, in the front rank of nations.

However, Russia appears to be run today by the lineal descendants of the KGB. President Putin is a former KGB man, and many of the people at the top of the Government have a security background. Their interest appears to be in power politics and, most of all, in remaining in power themselves. As a consequence of that, they have taken to bullying their immediate neighbours fairly outrageously. In her excellent book Beyond Crimea, which has just been published, Agnia Grigas points out the sophistication and thought that has gone into many of the battery of weapons that they have used on their immediate neighbours. For example, they have exploited the 30 million Russians who were left outside Russia itself when the Soviet Union collapsed and are now all over Ukraine, Kazakhstan and so on. In the second city of Estonia, Narva, which is on the border of Russia, 80% of people are Russian speakers. Equally, they have conducted information warfare through their control of television—they control all four major TV channels in Russia—and put a message across that is deeply hostile to the West and portrays us as weak and ineffectual. The contradiction between those two points of view does not seem to have struck them; it is what they consistently say. All that appeals to Russia’s sense of itself as a continuing empire, under the tsars and in the Soviet Union, and its sense of insecurity and what has happened since the end of the Cold War. I can quite understand why that has left President Putin with a great deal of popularity. As has been said, that is unlikely to change in the immediate future.

How do we respond? First, we have had sanctions. The effect is unclear. In addition, we need a big information effort. In January last year, Britain, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania called on the European Union to create an information alternative to Russian propaganda. That is tremendously important in the views of people in eastern Europe and should be put into action forthwith.

Outside the European Union, we have to recognise that the Baltic countries are the Achilles heel of NATO. They need to be reinforced militarily. At the moment the Anaconda wargames are going on in Poland. I welcome that. The Poles point out that there is constant activity on the other side of the border. We occasionally do it, but we should be alive to the situation there. We should support Ukraine, which is not part of NATO, with training and equipment as far as it possible to do so in its rather desperate situation. We have to hope and expect that many of these countries—Ukraine, Estonia and so forth—will reform themselves, encourage the inclusiveness of Russian speakers as well as native speakers and become less corrupt and more like a truly western country.

If we respond in this co-ordinated and coherent way, I am not pessimistic about the future—although I agree that the future may be a long time off. Russia must wonder whether it can sustain all the foreign and military policies which it has embarked on. I noticed what the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, said about the possible effects of sanctions, but other estimates suggest that Russia has lost out to the tune of $140 billion a year as a result of the combination of the reduction in the oil price and economic sanctions. I noticed an article in the Times the other day which suggested that ordinary people in Russia were suffering from economic sanctions, whatever the elite may be doing. Dmitry Medvedev, the Prime Minister, was heckled by a pensioner who had not had her pension increased for two years in a row. He said: “There’s no money”—a familiar cry to Conservatives:

“‘When we find the money, we’ll make the adjustment’, a ruffled Mr Medvedev added, before shouting over the woman’s protests: ‘You hang on in there. Best wishes! Cheers! Take care!’

A pizza restaurant in St Petersburg swiftly put a poster in its window advertising: ‘Sale! Margarita pizza for members for parliament and government officials—price €100 … If you don’t have the money, just hang on in there! Be well and good luck!!’ … internet wags soon followed, with images including an empty toilet roll holder above a sign reading: ‘No paper. But hang on in there. Best wishes, cheers, take care’”.

They have not lost their sense of humour in Russia, but I wonder whether ordinary people are suffering rather more than we know.

Secondly, Russian tactics do not always work as well as it hopes. Russia may have gained, temporarily, Luhansk and Donetsk, and the Crimea possibly even permanently, but it has lost Ukraine. There is nationalist sentiment there of an order that was not apparent in previous years. The 30 million Russian speakers outside the borders of Russia are, according to the evidence, clearly becoming cynical about how they are used by Russia rather than feeling that it has their true interests at heart. If we look at the true interests of the Russian people and of Russia itself, surely they are better served by Russia being the ally of the West rather than being for ever palpably hostile and accusing us of being hostile when clearly we are not. Russia would be better off economically if it was an ally of the West and would be more able to deal with the real problems which we all face, such as Islamic extremism and, particularly in Russia’s case, Chinese expansion. Surely that common interest that underlies it must become apparent in our globalised world, where knowledge and information eventually can get through, but I stress that we need to make an effort to ensure that it does.

Finally, I refer my noble friend Lady Anelay, who will wind up this debate, to the remarks made recently by Mr Sikorski, a former Polish Foreign Secretary, that if Britain wants to play to its strengths—foreign policy and defence policy—it has a role to play in these matters on the eastern borders of the European Union. I hope that it will be able to play that role—obviously, we await the result of the referendum—and that it will do so.

Ukraine

Lord Horam Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Horam]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to enhance international support for the government of Ukraine.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, we are working closely with partners and allies to exert maximum pressure on Russia to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine. In parallel, we are pushing hard for an additional IMF-led financial package to help stabilise the Ukrainian economy. We have also provided £19 million to strengthen the OSCE special monitoring mission, support the international humanitarian response and provide technical assistance to support economic and governance reforms in Ukraine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for her Answer. Does she not agree that, whatever does or does not happen in Minsk tomorrow, we still need a formidable economic package, given the financial state of Ukraine? That must be given priority and I am glad to hear that it is being worked on. Does she also not agree—again, whatever does or does not happen in Minsk—that we need to keep firmly on the table an option to supply Ukraine with defensive military equipment?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, first, with regard to aid, the IMF has indeed been carrying out investigations as to the measure of the gap between what Ukraine has, what it needs and what may need to be provided for it. In fact, the next IMF review reports in the middle of this month and will identify the need for further macroeconomic support. At that stage we will be able to judge what our contribution should continue to be. With regard to defensive materiel, my right honourable friend has made it clear in another place that that is something that every NATO country has the right to consider. At this stage, we are not considering supplying or selling defensive materiel to the Ukrainians, who are defending themselves against Russian-supported assault. It is important that pressure is kept up on Mr Putin to do the right thing.