Queen’s Speech

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, with a similar approach to the problems we are all trying to face. He started off by saying that there was no agenda. I would add something that is almost more serious, where, for our society and for our economy in particular, there is no forum or framework and where we have a double shambles. I have a particular emphasis on the absence of any coherent, comprehensive system of weights and measures.

British weights and measures are in a universal mess: litres for petrol and fizzy drinks; pints for beer and milk. We use metres and kilometres for athletics and miles per gallon for cars. The metric system is used in schools, yet all too often pounds and ounces are still used in the market. It is impossible to argue that this chaos does not matter. The fact is that it increases costs, confuses shoppers and managers, leads to serious misunderstandings, causes accidents, wastes our children’s education and, quite bluntly, puts us all to shame.

Almost 800 years ago, Britain’s first charter of human rights, Magna Carta, proclaimed that there should be,

“one measure of wine throughout our whole realm … one measure of corn … and one width of cloth”.

Before then, and ever since, every civilised society has recognised the need for one set, and only one set, of standard measures. How did we get into this curious mess? We have been dithering for almost 150 years. As long ago as 1862, a Commons Select Committee unanimously recommended the adoption of the metric system. A century later, in 1965, the decision was finally taken to go metric over the next 10 years. However, it is still shambling along beside the old system. Alas, the Government then, of whom I was a member, foolishly accepted the recommendation to go that way. We are still stuck half way, while the rest of the world sensibly and quickly moved on. Australia, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Jamaica—members of what we used to call the British Commonwealth—have long completed the entire change, and Ireland, our neighbour, completed the process as quickly as those countries did.

Quite frankly, the proposition that I wish to emphasise to the House is that plainly we cannot stay where we are, with two confused, competing systems. It would be madness to go backwards. The only solution is to complete the changeover to metric as swiftly and cleanly as possible. It is long past time for us to summon up the will to get ourselves out of the present wasteful, untidy mess.

Ukraine

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Howe!

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, I acknowledge some commitment in this area, having had the privilege of spending some seven years during the last decade of the previous century as a member of the Advisory Council to the Presidium of the Supreme Rada of Ukraine. In that context, I am able to acknowledge what is certainly true: it is not a wholly qualified organisation, judged by some standards. My own assessment is that it is equipped with economic resources—although not as significant as we might like—and real political skill. They are far from being communistic, and there is real deference to the Holy Pope. The Ukrainians deserve a sympathetic and practical partnership with us, so far as we can provide it.

[Baroness Warsi]

I will consider my noble and learned friend’s comments.

European Union: Turkish Accession

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I agree with my noble friend. She referred to Chapter 23. Chapter 24 covers justice, freedom and security. In the light of what is happening in Turkey now, it is vital that progress is made on these chapters. We are a strong advocate for progress—momentum is a priority—to deal with, if nothing else, the immediate challenges within Turkey.

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords, there is one substantial piece of history which I think the House would like to hear: that is, the simple fact that Turkey has been for a long time a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the British Foreign Secretary, not just for alphabetical reasons, finds himself sitting for the United Kingdom alongside Turkey’s equivalent at all the regular meetings of that kind. I can give very strong evidence of the value of Turkey’s presence in that structure. It would certainly be beneficial to find Turkey acceding to the European Union as well. For the benefit of foreign, security and defence policy, it would be right to support the accession of Turkey into the EU.

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point. Of course I agree with him that Turkey plays an influential role in NATO. It contributes peacekeeping troops to KFOR in Kosovo, in addition to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan. Turkey played a significant role in NATO’s mission in Libya. That shows how in many ways our interests are aligned with Turkey’s security interests.

Gibraltar

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

In terms of contact, the Spanish ambassador was summoned back in August, the Minister for Europe spoke to the Spanish Minister for Europe, the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Spanish Foreign Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister spoke to the Spanish Deputy Prime Minister. In September, the Prime Minister spoke to the Spanish Prime Minister at the G20 summit. In November, the Spanish ambassador was resummoned to the FCO. The Prime Minister also spoke to President Barroso in the margins of the December European Council.

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords, the Question put by the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, is entirely the most important in this context. Is the Minister aware of the observations by the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum—a body with which I have not been very familiar—which has come to the conclusion that policy issues relating to Gibraltar are relevant, but not strongly relevant, to numerous UK Government ministries and departments, ranging from two sections of the Foreign Office to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs? The forum’s conclusion is that,

“it seems likely that it is Gibraltar’s misfortune to”,

run the risk of falling “between the slats”.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, there are a number of issues that are of course competences for the Government of Gibraltar; it is important that the United Kingdom Government ensures that they become involved only in those issues that are competences as far as the United Kingdom Government are concerned. I was not entirely clear as to the specific question that my noble and learned friend asked, but it may well be that I can go back through Hansard and then write to him in detail. However, our strategy at this stage is very clear: to de-escalate the situation and to try to resolve these matters through diplomatic and political routes.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords, I contemplated making a comment on what the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, raised just now but on further reflection I think my comment would be a diversion. I had better restrain myself and allow the House to proceed without any further ado.

China: Exports

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

The Chinese refer to us as partners for growth. Particularly since the third plenum, the Chinese see a real opportunity to partner the UK in key areas, as China expands its cities and needs to make its environment greener—there are a lot of environmental issues in China. UK products are loved in China. The cultural sector was mentioned earlier. Yes, we can mention whisky. We have even been selling tea to China, which is remarkable. Going forward, the UK’s products and services are ideal for what China needs as a result of the change in its economy. We look forward to continuing to increase our exports to China, because we have a lot of ground to make up.

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

No doubt my noble friend is aware that during the past year, the China Investment Corporation—a sovereign wealth fund—has taken a 9% stake in Thames Water and a 10% stake in Heathrow. This year, another Chinese corporation, Advanced Business Park, has said that it will undertake a £1 billion redevelopment of the Royal Albert Dock. Is it not clear that we are looking not at a single arrangement but at a joint, substantial, two-way partnership between the two countries?

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

I thank my noble and learned friend for that comment. We are certainly seeing substantial investment from China into the UK—and, indeed, vice versa. We visited a city where Diageo has made a large acquisition. WPP is a very strong firm in China. It certainly is a partnership. China, as one of the most powerful nations in the world, having a stake in the success and growth of the UK economy is certainly no bad thing either.

Gibraltar and Spain

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point. That is why I said that we were not surprised that when the Commission visited things were much better than normal. It was not just a question of delays and inconvenience; it was concerning in terms of delays to ambulances, for example. It was therefore a real threat to individuals’ lives.

We are heartened to hear that the Commission intends to return. It may well be that a return without a lot of notice may be the right way forward.

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords, it is good to be reminded that Britain played a significant part some years ago in helping to secure for Spain membership of both NATO and the European Community. When that was taking place, I was able, with the assistance of my opposite Spanish number, Fernando Moran, to secure a foundational solution to the long-existing Gibraltar dispute. There was a signature on agreement for the reopening of Spain’s land border with the colony, which had been closed as long ago as 1969 by General Franco.

Those agreements laid the way for a proper solution of the sovereignty of the colony. At that time, Anglo-Spanish relations were greatly enhanced by that understanding. By 1988, each of the two monarchs was able to make a state visit to each other’s country, and Margaret Thatcher herself paid a successful visit to Madrid. With all of that sensible conduct of removing the historic obstacle, is it not now time for the Spaniards to be reminded of their undertaking?

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble and learned friend makes an incredibly important point. He is right—there have been long periods of good co-operation and real progress on this issue. Indeed, until 2011 the trilateral process—the forum for dialogue between the UK and Spain, with Gibraltar as an equal partner—worked incredibly well. It is sad that, after the election of the Spanish Government in December 2011, Spain withdrew from that process. We have offered ad hoc talks as a way of moving this matter forward but eventually we would like to see a return to that trilateral process.

United Kingdom and China

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)]

My Lords, although my name does not appear on the speakers list, I hope that I may be allowed to intervene briefly as almost the last speaker in this debate.

I do so because China has been an institution in my life for a very long time. I go back to 1949 when, together with my academic friend, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, I sold Conservatism in the Labour valleys of south Wales. The two of us, along with another, were the “brains trust” in the Constitutional Club of Ebbw Vale. The first question asked of us when we put our act over arose from the fact that, on that very evening, a socialist called Ernest Bevin, then Foreign Secretary, had recognised the People’s Republic of China. We were asked whether we thought that this was at all a proper thing for the British Government to do. Mercifully, we had both been subject to academic instruction at Cambridge from Professor Eli Lauterpacht, the international lawyer, and we were very quickly able to define what was necessary for China to be regarded as respectable, which was what we told the socialist miners at the Constitutional Club. That has left China planted firmly in my interests. Of course, it became overwhelmingly so when I found myself as Foreign Secretary, but it was so before that.

The other thing that I would like to emphasise, beyond the huge importance of China, is the outstanding importance of this debate. It is the kind of debate, with much expertise and diversity of judgment, which you would not be able to find in any institution of this kind, save the House of Lords. I am not drawing a lesson from that except to hope that the many arguments put forward by noble Lords here today will be regarded and worked on.

One of the most striking things was to understand the huge leaps that the Chinese leadership had to make as a socialist-dominated and communist-dominated organisation—as it did do eventually under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership. China had been through a period at the beginning of the 20th century when it did have democratically elected and departmental Governments, but that broke down—it did not work.

Deng Xiaoping was able to see not so much the need for political change as the importance of economic change. I talked to him, when I went out there to try to save the future of Hong Kong, and he said by way of encouragement that the American and Japanese Governments had given him assurances that their companies would go on investing in Hong Kong even when it was taken over.

He appeared to understand, when I gave him an alternative view, that Hong Kong was a magnet, and that Americans and Japanese would invest there only because of that magnetism. And that magnetism would not be durable if they found their investments being dealt with unkindly. They needed to have the guarantee of a market foundation in Hong Kong, for the future. Of course, that was not the only lesson that Deng Xiaoping learnt on the matter. But, certainly, the Chinese approach did thereafter recognise the importance of the magnetism of Hong Kong.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, mentioned Chinese artistic objects, Ming culture and china of the porcelain kind, in the context of Hong Kong. It reminded me of another discussion that took place during the Los Angeles Olympics, and the baton races there. I stressed to Deng Xiaoping that he should think of us not as though racing against each other but as fellow members of a relay team: we are handing over Hong Kong and must make quite sure that the baton does not get dropped. We had to behave as if we were running together in the Los Angeles Olympics.

I do not take credit for having persuaded him in that one address. It was the picture that we were trying to get across, and it was that picture which has laid the foundation for market economics, rather than communist economics, that started in Hong Kong, but began spreading through China as well. The extent to which that is now understood and has been clarified by today’s debate is important. It has been an accurate, encouraging and optimistic debate, and I think the right one to make sure that our Government understand the importance of a liberal trading relationship with China. We recognise the importance of our political relationship. Those arguments have been underwritten in every way in today’s debate, including in the episcopal contributions and excellent speeches by two maiden speakers.

The importance of our maintaining the right attitude towards China, giving encouragement and recognising its importance, will be increasingly acknowledged and, I hope, will follow from this debate to which I have contributed—not, I am afraid, very eloquently but in simple terms. The noble Lord, Lord Wilson, has shown the right approach towards the Hong Kong Chinese, the extent to which democracy was able to found itself there and how the economic bridge with China was strengthened and better understood. I hope that the Government will take note of this debate in deciding how to proceed in our relationship with China.

EU: UK Isolation

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

For pretty well all of our 40-year membership of the Union, successive British Governments have sought to maintain a position of strength for this country at the top table of the European Union politics. Whatever opportunities may have been missed and whatever mistakes might have been made, a common thread throughout the period has been that consistently Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries attempted to avoid the development of anything approaching a two-speed Europe. We have accepted opt-outs and derogations in specific cases, but we have never allowed Britain to lose its place at the heart of EU decision-making, although we have been sliding away from the centre.

One of David Cameron’s first acts as Prime Minister was to decline to attend eurozone summits, whereas his predecessor, Gordon Brown, not exactly a noted euro-enthusiast, fought tenaciously to ensure that he was always invited. Our absence has made it more difficult to articulate Britain’s voice on some of the key decisions in the eurozone debt crisis. I do not need to spell out at great length my anxiety about the imminent shift in responsibility for banking supervision, for example, from the traditional EU institutions in Brussels to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, based on a new banking union from which we seem determined to exclude ourselves. It is worth recalling that when the EU Bill was debated here at Westminster, two years ago, we were assured that it would have no operational effect in this Parliament, yet we now know that fear of the need for the passage of an Act of Parliament helps to explain why the Prime Minister vetoed the EU treaty change that Mrs Merkel wanted in December 2011.

The net effect is not just that we are throwing up unnecessary political obstacles in the way of our own involvement; we are beginning to stand in the way of others moving ahead. In fact, the real terms of British membership of the Union have sadly already been redefined; instead of seeking to continue leading in Europe, the Government are in danger of gradually locking us all into the defensive mentality of a country reconciled to life on the margins, as support for European membership declines and Euroscepticism becomes increasingly dominant.

If the Prime Minister is serious about obtaining what he calls “fresh consent” for our membership of the Union in a referendum that he presumably hopes to win, he must begin now to set out a more realistic account and a more positive vision of why the European Union should feature as part of the future of this country, and how and why we can play an important role in helping to shape the future of our continent, as well.

EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Howe of Aberavon Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howe of Aberavon]

My Lords, there seems to be an irony at the heart of the Prime Minister’s speech on the issue of sovereignty. He asserts that it is,

“national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU”.

At the same time, he does not appear to trust our own national Parliament at Westminster to judge what kind of relationship we should have with the Union. The decisions of this Parliament to approve each of the treaties that govern our membership, from the European Communities Act of 1972, which I helped steer through the House of Commons, to the Lisbon treaty in 2009, are perceived as illegitimate.

The Prime Minister says that,

“democratic consent for the EU is now wafer-thin”,

in Britain, and that the people have had “little choice” over the endorsement of successive treaties. Is it really of no consequence that, at each stage, a majority of parliamentarians supported our membership on the basis of treaties negotiated by democratically elected Governments? Is it irrelevant today that a clear majority of MPs elected to the House of Commons wish Britain to stay in the Union and do not support his proposed renegotiation of our membership?

I would like to think that I am wrong in suspecting that the Prime Minister’s sudden conversion to the merits of a referendum is less about occupying the moral high ground of democratic consent than a search for a means to overcome the problems of internal party management. At the risk of appearing discourteous, I and some of my colleagues who are old enough to remember the complicated Wilson European era between 1967 and 1975, will recognise a distinct pattern of Wilsonian behaviour which I fear may be beginning to infect our Prime Minister in this context.

There is another irony on this particular subject. If it is,

“national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU”,

one wonders why the Prime Minister did not give his Bloomberg speech in the House of Commons rather than in a high-tech conference room in the City. One wonders whether it is because, as he said in his speech, it is national parliaments,

“which instil proper respect—even fear—into national leaders”.

In justifying his promise of a referendum in the next Parliament if the Conservative Party gains an absolute majority at the next general election, the Prime Minister said:

“A vote today between the status quo and leaving would be an entirely false choice”.

I disagree. Although I am no enthusiast for referenda and do not advocate one, it seems to me that at any time the choice between the status quo and a clearly defined alternative in the here and now—in this case whether to stay in or to leave the European Union as it actually exists and operates—is a straightforward proposition. I do not, however, believe that a referendum is the best way to address that question. As the Prime Minister said in his speech, our own national Parliament, not a widely consulted referendum, is the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the European Union. It was so in 1972 and is so today, and to introduce, in this particular context, the concept of a referendum does not serve the purpose of the Prime Minister, the Government or anybody else.