King’s Speech

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the world is indeed, if not actually on fire, in a very dangerous state, as we have been reminded. Here, we have been told recently by those in authority that we must prepare for war in a few years’ time. Preparing for war is of course a vastly expensive business; it involves not more wages, higher pensions and all the rest but hardship and cutting back to finance the dreadful demands and dreadful expense of war.

We are going to have our strategic review. I say straightaway that I am a strong fan of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who I see is sitting here. I am also a fan of Fiona Hill. I just wonder, though, whether we are right to air in public all the problems and weaknesses, if we have them, in our defence structure against modern technology, which is changing by the hour. I am obviously a supporter, increasingly over the years, of parliamentary accountability, publicity and so on, yet the nature of war is full of surprises and secrets. Those secrets themselves are weapons, and if we go too far in discussing everything in public and debating it in our splendid Parliament, we tell our enemies a lot about how they should react. Let us go with caution into this review and realise that a basic message is all that is necessary: that if any nation stings us, we will sting back with 10 times the ferocity. That is the basic stance that we want to prevail.

Let me spend my last three minutes on outlining some themes that, in opposition, we can usefully and constructively help with in creating the kind of national unity and togetherness of society that the most reverend Primate has just spoken about. I make the following points.

First, does our capitalism really work for everybody? It is asserted that it does, but the vast majority of young people think that it does not. It is not a sufficient system, in its modern digital form, to deliver what billions of people throughout the planet really want. The younger generation is deeply disappointed and critical of it. We need much wider capital ownership—as well as strong incomes and wages, obviously—to give households and families the dignity and security that capital gives in a very dangerous age. People may say: what about levelling up? That is one of the aspects of levelling up that we should promote much more strongly, whatever party is in power. A wider capital-owning democracy has certainly been a theme in my party for 50 or 60 years. That is one theme that we on our side must work on to support the Labour Government and, I hope, carry them with us.

Secondly, we must take back control of our foreign policy. This is an age of looser alliances and of networks, which I do not think every policymaker, certainly in America, fully understands. In this country, we are crazy not to bring our own network—the biggest in the world, the Commonwealth network of 56 countries—far closer to the centre of our strategy and linkages. There may not always be a pattern of Governments agreeing with each other, but the point about the Commonwealth that makes it a 21st-century organisation is that it links at every level: from primary school and university to every profession, every level of training and every kind of friendship. We are very lucky to have that kind of linkage and should work much more on it.

Thirdly, we need to work with Japan, our great friend in Asia. If there is any question of revising some of these big defence contracts, I hope it will be done not by rumour and hint but in an open, friendly way.

Finally, our energy policy is a mess and remains far from achieving the objectives of the net zero that we want. We have vast expenditure ahead, and delusions that somehow renewables are carrying us along. They are not at all. We will have to multiply our renewables by at least four times, we have to multiply our nuclear by five or six times, and we need an entirely new national transmission grid, with a thousand miles of pylons. On carbon capture and storage, we have barely begun.

Where the Government are moving on all these issues, I hope we will help, and constructively. But where they are failing to move or simply do not understand what is happening, we will step in and put all our brainpower and effort into preparing for the day when what goes down comes up. Perhaps the Conservatives will step back into government again. Either way, both parties should work together.