Foreign Affairs: Global Role, Emerging Powers and New Markets

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I have always had great respect for my noble friend Lord Howell because he was head boy at my prep school, where he exercised a certain amount of soft power when we stepped out of line, as the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, whom I see in his seat, may well remember. Apart from that, as I have listened to him, he has taught me many things over time. He has a quiet approach, behind which lies greater knowledge than I could ever wish to have.

In preparation for speaking to your Lordships today, I have taken advantage of my position as a member of the Information Committee by asking the Library to produce a really good note on this debate, and it has done so. If your Lordships are going home for the weekend and cannot find a suitable newspaper, the report that it has provided is quite remarkable, although I shall not quote from it today.

I was always in trade and I sat below the salt, as I have pointed out. I love the Pink Book and I love the balance of payments. I look at the £100 billion deficit that we have on visibles and at the fact that with every country of the EU we have a deficit that grows and grows. We have a surplus of £6 billion or so with the United States and a surplus with Ireland, much of which is in trans-shipments. Therefore, in visible trade we are failing dismally, whereas in invisible trade or services there is a balance of about £200 billion on each side. However, it is our role in the world that we need to think about.

I was brought up in the Navy as a navigator. I was very junior and therefore I always had the middle watch. I would look at the stars and try to study and learn. I found that as you look at the world, you ask, “What is it?”. I think of it geographically. One of my heroes is Harrison, with his connection to chronometers, Greenwich, 0 degrees and the centre of the Earth. With a globe, it is quite difficult to look laterally, so you need Mr Mercator, who produced the Mercator projection and the flat chart, so wherever I have been in all my time dealing with trade, I have put the United Kingdom right in the middle and looked to the left or the right.

Some 70% of the earth is water. Is that blue-water policy? The remaining 30% is land. What has this got to do with trade? Well, our trade was always maritime and 20% of all vessels floating on the surface of the earth have a Commonwealth flag. Everyone these days is nervous about piracy but the Navy will say that 80% of all our trade comes by sea. These statistics may not seem relevant but they have a relevance to me. It is all about the water. Take the economic exclusion zones, where each territory has a 200-mile limit around it. That makes the UK pretty big. In fact, with the Commonwealth it is enormous—36 million square kilometres. That constitutes more of the sea than the area round the whole of the United States, the rest of our NATO allies and the next biggest zone, France.

Does that matter, though? Looking over land and sea, we see natural, or God-given, resources and we forget that most of our own development involved the exploitation, if that is not an unacceptable word, of those natural resources through fishing, mining and agriculture. The Sudan was to be the bread basket of the Middle East and still could be. It is in this field of soft power and knowledge that the United Kingdom can play a great role. I think of the term “common wealth” not so much politically but as describing the combined natural resources of these countries and any skills that they may have which can be applied elsewhere—for example, the mining skills of Australia and the fishing skills of some of the smaller territories. Look at how the world has begun to become global in thought and concerned about energy, power and natural resources.

I have always been a great friend of the Commonwealth. One of the things that I was made to do in earlier days was to be able to recognise the flags of the world. The only value that has given me is as secretary and treasurer of the House of Lords Yacht Club, which of course carries a certain influence. Your Lordships will be aware that every vessel floating on the face of this earth that has a British flag has the right to the protection of Her Majesty’s plenipotentiaries—ambassadors’ ships or whatever they may be. We are a maritime nation; we are also British.

I have a feeling that the debate today will have done a bit of good, but I now turn to the noble Lord, Lord Green. After the last debate I wrote him a nice letter and gave him the history of the Board of Trade, which I had rewritten. He did not reply because he was busy on his travels and his footfall was extending everywhere from Everest down to the Antarctic, but his officials swiftly rang me up and said, “What about the other three volumes?”. I said, “Could we get rid of this word ‘BIS’, which is what my dog does?”—although I must not mention dogs’ business. Anyway, I got no reply. Then I thought I would go on in the same vein and say, “Let us look at the priorities”. I thought I would see if I could have soft power.

I was not going to mention this but I am obliged to because I have to declare an interest. I have pointed out before to your Lordships rather light-heartedly that if no one else would do it, I would launch my own satellites for surveillance. I have done that twice and declared it in the House. The company has now been formed. It is a limited company and I am told that I have to point out that I am the sole director. It is called Evening Star; it has the greatest satellite technology the world has ever seen; and it was all started by the university of the city where my noble friend Lord Howell was a Member of Parliament.