Queen’s Speech

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, it is always an honour to speak after the most reverend Primate, whom we have really come to regard as almost invariably speaking silver-pure common sense. He has given us some vision in what are undoubtedly sombre times, and perhaps we could do with a few more quotes from the Bible to guide us through the difficulties we face.

I am a bit puzzled that we in this House are in effect debating the changing world order beyond Brexit, the consequences of Brexit and how we adjust to them, but will not be coming to the issue of Brexit itself until later next week. It should really be the other way around, since Brexit is of course part of the much wider global transformation taking place. How we handle Brexit will lead to how we meet and cope with the entirely new world ahead.

If I had been drafting the gracious Speech, which no one asked me to do, I would certainly have added at the end of paragraph 1, after the bit about,

“our future outside the European Union”,

the words, “and stepping into entirely new and volatile international conditions which present our nation with great opportunities as well as great dangers”. This is indeed a time of fast-rising world tensions, as the noble Earl set out very clearly in his opening speech. Russia and America seem to be drifting into an unnecessary war in the hell on earth that is Syria today; there are major tensions in the Far East and the Pacific Rim that could easily escalate into some kind of nuclear exchange; there is renewed instability in the Balkans; the Gulf states are splitting apart; the USA is turning inward to protection and proving an unreliable guide in Middle Eastern affairs; Ukraine is festering; and the rules-based international order, which since World War II has brought prosperity through trade to billions, is now under direct threat. These are all tinderbox material. Any one of them could get out of hand in ways that could do more damage to the lives, safety and welfare of the British people than any Brexit outcome, hard, soft or middling, any election or even Mr Corbyn and his plans for economic reform. If we want to stay secure and prosperous and to check the horrors of terrorism, which tragically we have experienced recently in London and Manchester, then we must contribute and deploy all our influence, our soft power and, where necessary and effective, an agile hard power, to the limits of our considerable skills, in all these smouldering situations.

As the most recent report from the International Relations Committee, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, tried to explain, we need a new strategy in the volatile Middle East. We can no longer always rely on American policy to underpin and maintain balance in the region.

There is indeed a new world order, or disorder. Technology and the digital age are unravelling the past global system and the old pillars of international stability: open markets, democracy and the rule of law are all under attack. Fake news and cyberattacks are proliferating, as the noble Earl mentioned, while yawning inequality, or at least the perception of it, is growing all round the world.

The Prime Minister has urged that in these new circumstances we must focus on finding, in her words,

“old friends and new partners”,

to adjust to the new conditions. It may be slightly conceited to see that as a gratifying echo of the book I wrote four years ago, Old Links & New Ties.

This is a time when whole industries are being destroyed by shifting world power and new technology, with jobs vanishing and incomes being squeezed or lost altogether. How we conduct ourselves with Europe and how we manage and adapt to the national repositioning demanded by these great outside forces is all of a piece. I greatly welcome the words of the new lead Brexit negotiator, Mr Crawford Falconer—no relation, I assume, to our dear friend in this House, the noble and learned former Lord Chancellor—who sees the Brexit step that we are now taking as opening up a “huge strategic opportunity” and a pathway to major reform of the near-moribund World Trade Organization to meet all the new threats and conditions. He is right.

The same applies, in fact, to most of the 20th century institutions, from the UN and Bretton Woods bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank down to and including NATO itself. They have all served us well—but all are now struggling to change. We have to build and join the new networks that are emerging in this age of total connectivity, with the centre of world power and the world economy having shifted. I refer to non-western entities such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is going ahead without America, the BRICs and IBSA working groups, and many more: it is a new pattern.

China is creating what looks like a new order of organisations and structures to parallel the western or Atlantic model. We have to work with this new partner. I am glad that we are taking a lead in working with China’s new international development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. But we shall have to be more energetic still in involving ourselves in China’s gigantic plans for new Silk Roads and trade routes right across Kazakhstan and other central Asian countries and into the heart of Europe—always taking care not to weaken our links with our other great ally in Asia, Japan, which is the third-largest industrial power in the world, with China being the second.

This is where the main growth, the main technological advance and the main markets are going to be. In nearly all these areas, one finds that the prospect of fresh and expanded direct bilateral links with Britain is regarded as most welcome—better in some cases than trying to deal with the cumbersome collective bureaucracy of the EU’s other 27 members, with their widely varied interests.

Of course, we now need as well to develop what has been described as the “deep and special relationship” with our European neighbours in innovative and constructive ways. I hope that we are getting on fast with that. I see major scope for far closer links, particularly with France, which is the one truly experienced world power in Europe and in the Middle East. It seems to me to be a no-brainer that we should do this step by step over the coming years.

Obviously, the first stage would be an EEA-type arrangement, to which we are already a contracting party, which allows wide national intervention in border controls. Free movement is being watered down throughout the EU anyway as millions more refugees threaten to come north into Europe from the Maghreb and the Middle East. The EEA allows us to open trade negotiations and deal with many other countries. It is not within the locus of the ECJ and does not cover agriculture and fisheries, which should please our Scottish friends, and is the perfect place to settle for a while before moving on to new relations—by which time the whole pattern of European and world trade will have gone through further revolutions.

In particular, we are going to see the domination of international trade by services of all kinds, in data of all kinds and in information flows—all areas where the single market has not been much good. As an 80%-services economy, this suits us mightily.

That will be especially so with the Commonwealth network of nations, big and small, which use English as the working language. That is certainly one of the old/new networks that we have to strengthen in every way. It is very good news that my noble friend Lord Ahmad is the new Commonwealth Minister, although my noble friend Lady Anelay was excellent, too—and even more that the whole Commonwealth cause is now at last a serious government strategic endeavour, being run from the Cabinet Office, with a team that was formerly a mere six to eight in the FCO and is now expanded to 60 to 80 personnel, at the highest government level. That is real post Brexit repositioning in action, in preparation for the Commonwealth summit and beyond. In all this, we need to prepare and streamline our government organisations, as well as our business sector, to pack far more punch in new trading conditions. DfID should certainly combine more closely with the Foreign Office—and I am extremely glad to see we now have a Minister, the excellent Alistair Burt, who covers both.

In addition, the business visa policy needs changing, and students should be taken out of the immigration figures. It is madness that we have halved our student intake from the dynamic India, to the benefit of America and Germany. Our universities are our spearhead of influence across the world; weaken them and we weaken our whole trading and commercial future.

We have talked of strong and stable government. That is not quite what we have at this precise moment—but we need to remember Charles Darwin. He was the one who said that we need not so much the strongest to survive as those who adapted successfully to changing conditions. So we need to be strong and stable and ready to adapt at every level of government and society to survive and prosper.

The Brexit process is a part of that adaptation but, frankly, only a small part. Our new priorities have to be much wider. As I have said and written, we need to rebuild old links, the Commonwealth network included, and establish new ties, here in Europe and right across the globe. How we set about this is something on which I hope your Lordships’ House, for all our faults and problems, can make a really useful contribution. We will try.