Queen’s Speech

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, who drew on his 44 years of experience in NATO for the benefit of the House. I have great sympathy with the comment by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, about trying to open for an opposition party on the Queen’s Speech at this time with the unbelievable range of subjects that might be covered. In my brief five minutes I shall talk about just one. I do so against as grave a situation globally at the present time as I can remember.

It is incredible that, with the new events that have taken place, we have almost forgotten the global pandemic that threatens everybody. With global warming, the explosion of methane in the Arctic is accelerating the rate of climate change—another great drama that is coming for us. I agreed with the Governor of the Bank of England when he used the word “apocalyptic”. He used it about the scale of inflation; I shall use it about the question of food supply. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about global malnutrition. There is no question that, however many people Vladimir Putin kills in his efforts in Ukraine, it is nothing compared to the millions he may kill because of the blockage of Odessa and the prevention of proper circulation of food around the world. The number of countries now desperately worried is enormous. I understand that at the moment 25 million tonnes of grain is sitting blocked in Odessa and neighbouring areas.

Previously, grain was being shipped out at the rate of 5 million tonnes per month, so think of those countries and regions expecting to get it. I have a list: Egypt—which will now be hard-hit—Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Sahel, sub-Saharan Africa, Somalia and Syrian refugees in Iraq. There are riots in Iran, where food prices have gone up by 300%. You can now list the number of places that face the most serious problems. We had been worried about the threat but thought we could get supplies to them. It is now not a question of money but of whether the supplies even exist.

Against that background, who can help? One of the countries people turn to, the second-largest exporter of corn, is India. India has had very bad weather for its harvest and is now blocking all exports. Indonesia, a great source of palm oil, is now worried about supplies. Now it is blocking any exports as well. It is against that background that one sees the really serious situation. The question then is: how can we sort it out? This is where I had hoped the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, would give us an immediate answer with all his experience.

At the moment, we have to stick to the road we are on and try every way we can to get the message through to all the decent people in Russia—of whom there are millions, as I know from my experience and pleasure in visiting there in my official capacity—who are absolutely horrified. If I take one bit of recent encouragement, it is from the comments on Russian official television by Colonel Khodarenok, in which he spelled out exactly why one can admire Ukraine. The story we hear is that Putin thinks Ukraine is a fake country with no right to exist. Colonel Khodarenok said that it showed very clearly that the people of Ukraine see themselves as defending their motherland. Their commitment to that shows why they are doing so much better against many Russians who do not have the slightest idea why they are there and meant to be fighting.

The other serious consequence is that with starvation comes migration. Many countries have been worried about the amount of migration—and mass migration—in the world. That may be as nothing compared to what is about to happen, because there are simply not the supplies. Food supplies are blocked and countries that were already on the edge will go over it; if you do not get out of those countries, you have not got a hope for your lives and futures.

I am sorry to give rather a sombre speech, but I believe that the lead the United Kingdom Government have given with other allies shows that we have to face Ukraine; we have to give it all the support we can. We have to reopen Odessa and make Russia sufficiently ashamed of what it is doing—murdering millions of people in the rest of the world. We must get some real impact out of that as well.