Rules-based International Order

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lady Northover for securing this excellent debate, and for her comprehensive and sensitive tour d’horizon in her opening speech.

Only rarely in British politics do we consider international concerns in broad terms—largely, I suspect, because our media are overwhelmingly reactive and concerned with domestic issues. In July’s election, for example, international issues, with the possible exception of Gaza, hardly featured. In particular—and sadly—climate change, the number one issue for millions of young people, was largely ignored.

Turning to some of the threats we face, discussed by many noble Lords, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, preceded by the annexation of Crimea, violated an independent nation’s sovereignty and territory. Yet many seem to believe that the West should somehow pressure Ukraine into a peace, however unjust. But that is not for us; it is for Ukraine to decide on any peace agreement and its terms. Furthermore, if Putin is rewarded with success for Russia’s invasion, the threat to peace will be increased and the Baltic states in particular will face existential threats, beset by nervous uncertainty that Article 5 of the NATO treaty will prove effective.

The uncertain US approach to NATO is a serious threat. Financially, Trump clearly has a point. We have relied for years on America to fund the bulk of our defence, but, if Europeans are to bear the primary costs of our defence, 2.5% of GDP simply will not cut it. A detailed paper by Intereconomics in November floated far higher figures, possibly 5% or more in the face of Russian expansionist militarism, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, pointed out. The shock of such an increase to the European economies and our spending priorities would be savage.

On the Middle East, despite the strength of feeling on both sides, there is in the mainstream a unity of view. We uniformly condemn Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel on 7 October 2023—the murder, the rape and the kidnap of innocent hostages—and we have also been shocked by the unrestrained conduct of the war in Gaza since then, with massive civilian casualties, untold destruction and the unacceptable failure to ensure the flow of humanitarian aid and the availability of healthcare.

We have now to hope that the fragile ceasefire holds and that the second phase succeeds, but that is far from assured. The region and the world will then have to navigate the massive costs of reconstruction in Gaza and the political difficulties of reaching agreement on a two-state solution that both secures Palestinian agreement and guarantees Israel’s security. That will be difficult.

Turning to trade, Trump’s proposed widespread tariffs threaten the entire structure of world trade, and geography means that protectionism is a far more attractive concept for America than it is for us.

Then there is the ever-present threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and other threats from China, and the American response.

I turn to climate change, a matter close to me this week as my daughter has had to return from the wildfires in Los Angeles to work from home in the UK. She is lucky: her flat is just outside the evacuation area. But, while it is standing, it is without any power and her office is closed. Nevertheless, we now have to accept that “Drill, baby, drill” will dominate Trump’s energy policy, and that the US is almost bound to leave the Paris Agreement once again, undermining, for the next four years at least, much of our already stuttering progress on climate change.

What I have said so far has been marked by a profound sense of pessimism. This flows from the widespread flouting of international law and the rules-based order, which depends on rules, conventions and treaties between nations, as emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and my noble friends Lady Northover and Lord Thomas.

My pessimism is tempered only by the belief that we now have a Government with a serious commitment to our treaty obligations—as has the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad. Many of us were profoundly shocked by the casual approach of the last Administration to international law. The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill introduced in 2022—ultimately, thankfully, withdrawn—was plainly a wilful breach of the recently agreed UK-EU withdrawal agreement. With the Safety of Rwanda Act, the British Government, in a Kafkaesque approach to legislation, forced through a Bill that inexcusably deemed what was plainly untrue to be unchallengeable truth.

The Illegal Migration Act clearly flouted the Refugee Convention of 1951. The failure to comply with our legal commitment to 0.7% overseas aid needs urgent reversal. The support of many Conservatives for the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the ECHR, which I should say is a major triumph of a previous Labour Administration, did little to improve this country’s reputation for a commitment to the rules-based world order and did much to undermine it.

So I ask the Minister once again to reaffirm this Government’s commitment never again to legislate to legalise a breach of the UK’s treaty obligations, and to underline our national commitment to upholding, while we can, the rules-based world order.