King’s Speech

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is sometimes educative to look back at other contributions there have been in debates on the gracious Speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, and my noble friend Lady Ludford made me think about some of the opportunities that could lie ahead for future European co-operation. I stumbled across this contribution, which I will quote from Hansard:

“for five years the last Government tried the patience of our partners by the suspicious way they approached even the simplest and most constructive proposals for common Community action … By contrast, the Government today are determined to engage actively with our partners in developing the Community in the interests of all its members. We believe that it is in this co-operative framework that we can best construct a Europe in which future generations can live and prosper.”—[Official Report, 22/5/79; col. 237.]

That dangerous liberal progressive rhetoric was from the last time that we had a Foreign Secretary in the House of Lords, because it was Lord Carrington’s first speech as Foreign Secretary in reply to the gracious Speech in 1979. As I am of that generation, I hope that the new Foreign Secretary might repeat some of that sentiment when he comes among us.

I also commend the maiden speeches we heard today and the genuine sentiment, which I fully endorse, with regards to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and her work. As a fellow Borderer, I particularly welcome the noble Earl, Lord Minto, to his new role. I am sure that his ancestors as lawless Border reivers will be rather amused that he is now in charge of the British Army, but I welcome him to his post and wish him well for it.

This year, 2023, is proving to be a terribly bloody year for civilian casualties in political conflict, with children bearing the brunt. My noble friend Lady Smith referenced Ukraine, and in Sudan—I was very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, referenced Sudan very early on in his contribution, and the Minister knows I have an active engagement there—three times the population of Gaza are currently displaced. Half of them are children. This is the highest number of displaced children anywhere in the world. Some 14 million children in Sudan are in urgent need of life-saving humanitarian assistance. This is the gravest humanitarian crisis on the planet. Many are living in fear of being killed, injured, recruited or used by armed actors, and conflict-related sexual violence, including rape and child rights violations, will likely continue to rise.

We have also heard of the continuing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Reportedly, over 11,000 people have been killed. Two-thirds of them are reportedly children and women. Of course, we know that Hamas also targeted children and young people in its brutal murders and taking of hostages. Children are most at risk now, especially girls, when water and sanitary health services are reduced. The United Nations warned this morning that wash facilities are starting to shut down; that includes within the shelters for the UN which are currently hosting over 290,000 IDPs. The urgency is clear.

Children bearing the brunt of conflicts means that the next generation may also bear witness to how Governments have responded. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, and my noble friend Lord Campbell of Pittenweem powerfully said that our actions now are not just about ameliorating the humanitarian crisis but about ensuring that the next generation does not live with a great level of resentment. I fear greatly this will be the case.

I also wish to pay tribute to the United Nations. UNRWA has been bereaved; over 100 UN aid workers have been killed in this conflict, the highest in the United Nations’ history.

Our Benches believe that a bilateral ceasefire is now necessary, and it should be the basis, as my noble friend Lord Palmer indicated, not only for creating space for humanitarian assistance but also to try and provide some form of political mechanism that may offer some hope, despite how difficult that would be. There are those Israeli leaders such as the former Prime Minister Yair Lapid who addressed the United Nations General Assembly last year, so we know that there are figures who can be peacemakers.

The Prime Minister said in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet on Monday that the UK would provide the

“serious, practical and enduring support needed to bolster the Palestinian Authority”.

I agree with him on the need for that, but, as the Minister knows, I have called out the cuts of 90% from the UK to the OPT over the last two years. Also, the UK support for UNRWA has been cut by half.

Some have referenced the new Foreign Secretary, and we will welcome him to his new position. I think the whole House will join me in feeling a deep sympathy with the Prime Minister, who was unable to find anyone from among his 349 colleagues capable enough to hold the post. He will have a warm welcome here. I reflected on the fact that the last time a Conservative Prime Minister was brought back to be Foreign Secretary, it was to help us to get into Europe. As my noble friend indicated, this one helped us get out.

The context that we now have going forward is not just humanitarian crises but the growth of autocracies and the fragmentation of the rule of law. This morning, I had the great privilege of speaking in a ceremony in which Liberal International, the organisation that our Benches are part of, presented the prize for freedom to Evgenia Kara-Murza, the wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is currently serving a 25-year sentence in isolation in Siberia because he speaks out against the Putin regime. That is one indication. I welcome the fact that the Minister and the Government have sanctioned those who prosecuted him. As well as my discussions yesterday and last week with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Richard Ratcliffe, that was an indication that had highlighted in my mind that, if there could be one area in this King’s Speech where there would have been legislation for foreign affairs and defence, it would be putting on a statutory basis access to consular services for those joint nationals who, unfortunately, are being politically detained but have difficulty securing long-term UK support for consular access. In their names, I hope that the Government will act on that.

As well as calling for the rule of law to be respected around the world, we must respect it here. As has been referenced with regards to the Rwanda judgment, we have yet again relied on the Supreme Court to uphold British values. I have visited the reception centre in Kigali, as many colleagues know. The warnings that I and others have made repeatedly, which were brushed aside by repeated Ministers, have now been upheld by the Supreme Court. If the Government are insisting on bringing a treaty forward, we will do our job here and scrutinise it very carefully indeed. Of course, this will not just be scrutiny with regards to how effective it will be. It is, simply, a morally wrong policy.

Regrettably, I feel that the United Kingdom has now become an unreliable partner, with six Foreign Secretaries in eight years, often with screeching U-turns in policy. We have had the flawed abolition of DfID with the global reputation that it had. We now know from WhatsApp exchanges at the time from the Cabinet Secretary that this was done to a timeframe for political diversion purposes. We did not have a development strategy for six years, and now we will have two in two years. We have been told that the new White Paper will be transformative, but it was not even referenced in the Minister’s opening speech. With regards to how seriously we are taking emerging economies and countries, we have had Africa Ministers with an average lifespan of 11 months in office over the last seven years.

There is unreliability and a lack of dependability, with callous development cuts, often mid-programme. For the first time ever, we are spending more on overseas assistance here in the UK, on failed policies, than on humanitarian bilateral programmes abroad. We are an unpredictable player on strategic issues. Now we are apparently still tilting to the Indo-Pacific to thwart China, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, indicated, we have a Foreign Secretary who says that he wants to see

“the UK as the partner of choice for China in the West”,

and a Government who have deliberately ballooned our trade deficit in goods with China to £40 billion, the biggest ever deficit to a single country in the history of our trading. No wonder the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee described this as a “strategic void”.

We heard also from the Prime Minister in his speech at Banqueting House that

“vital humanitarian aid is reaching civilians in Gaza, and across the Horn of Africa – funded by the British people. This is who we are”.

However, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact in its most recent report highlighted:

“UK bilateral humanitarian aid fell by half between 2020 and 2021”.


ICAI said in its report, as a riposte to the Prime Minister, that this

“has meant that UK support for global relief and recovery efforts … in response to the August 2022 floods in Pakistan and the worsening drought in the Horn of Africa … was significantly smaller and pledged later than in previous years. This has diminished the UK’s ability to play a leading role in the international response to crises”.

Regrettably, we have a situation where we are not dependable, reliable or predicable.

At the same time as we are slashing by half UK contributions to the World Bank development programme, there are 30% cuts to the African Development Bank and 30% cuts to the Global Fund, which fights HIV and AIDS. Further to the references in the debate to women and girls, we have cut our support to UN Women by 77%.

In our view, this all means that we need an immediate restoration of the legal requirement to meet 0.7%—not for the Labour Party or the Conservative Party simply to trot out the Treasury language of “when fiscal circumstances allow”—as well as an independent development department that can again restore British leadership around the world. The Prime Minister said to his party conference:

“You either think this country needs to change or you don’t”.


I love my country, as everyone in this Chamber does, and I am aggrieved by how its international standing has been systematically undermined by the Government. For the sake of my country’s standing in the world, it is the Government who need to change, not my country.