Hong Kong

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I totally agree with the noble Lord. That principle applies not just in China, but anywhere around the world. On the specific issue of the identity of those people committing the attacks, we welcomed Carrie Lam’s statement that she has asked the commissioner of police to fully investigate and to pursue lawbreakers, but I assure the noble Lord that we will stay focused on raising the issue of the suppression of minorities within China. As I said in response to the noble Baroness, I will certainly take back what has been said on the international agreement. Although we are in a small transition, it is certainly something I would seek to pursue as Minister for the UN.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Have the Chinese Government, in any discussions, ever indicated whether they would support or oppose an independent element in any investigation of the recent attacks that the Minister referred to?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

We have been dealing directly with the Chinese Government, and I have already commented on the statements made by Carrie Lam. While we welcome the inquiry, we continue to stress that it has to be independent. We do not believe that a review carried out only by the police fulfils that criteria, and we will continue to make that case.

UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order (International Relations Committee Report)

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in congratulating the committee and the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on this excellent report, which has opened new thinking at a critical time in international relations. I know that the noble Lord must step down but I hope that we will not lose his comments in the House because they are always very valuable.

I particularly liked the report’s emphasis on the rules-based order. I have heard some criticism of that, which I understand. There is no doubt in my mind that we have often been hypocritical on that issue. That is not a reason to throw it out the window, however: the rules-based order is vital if we are not to return to a much worse time. I wish to put this in context alongside the idea of a liberal international order, which has been a prop of western thinking since the Westphalia agreement in 1648, followed by the British attempts in the 19th century to emphasise it. Above all, in 1945 and the period afterwards, the Labour Government had a lot to do with this in creating international organisations such as the United Nations, Bretton Woods, the Atlantic Charter, NATO and so on, which have been such an important part of the western idea of not only a rules-based order but a liberal one.

There has been criticism, and rightly so, of the way in which we have lost that order recently. Although it is necessary for the world to maintain a rules-based and liberal order, it is true that, at times, we have been the authors of our failures on not just the political but the economic front. The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis that followed did enormous damage to the image of western effectiveness in running economies, and made a number of countries begin to challenge and question it. The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and others have mentioned our failure on some other interventions, but it is profoundly important to say that intervention has not always failed. This is not recent, given that interventions go back at least to the time of the British intervention to stop the west African slave trade. In fact, they can be traced back to Grecian times. We have to be careful about that and it is worth remembering, in view of the criticisms that have been made, that recently we apologised to the Rwandan Government for our failure to intervene and stop what happened in that country. Interventions do not always fail, but they have at certain times, which I accept has made them a problem for us.

Two additional factors are not covered in the report to the degree that I would like, and given that the report is so extensive, perhaps it is a bit mean to mention them. One is population increase. Between 1990 and 2015—25 years—the population of the planet went up by 2 billion. Those 2 billion people have an enormous impact on the political relationship between nation states that have either stable populations or, as in the case of Russia, are actually declining and other states that are increasing their populations dramatically. This means that power relationships will change. It also has a dramatic effect on policy issues such as climate change.

The other factor that troubles me is one that we do not give enough thought to, although it was touched on by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, and others: the importance of religion. It fascinates me that over the past 20-odd years, or really since the collapse of the Soviet Union, political ideologies have declined, but just as they have done so religious ideologies have increased. I have said before in this Chamber that for me God is an idea: there either is one or there is not one. However, religion is actually an ideology which assumes a belief in God. The reason it is important is because for literally a couple of thousand years, religion has played an incredibly important part in government, either in the form of being the Government or, as in recent years, having great influence on government. Iran is the classic example. There is a religious approach to government with a limit to what the political power can do and within that, because of the ideological differences, there is a clash. That clash is important and if people underestimate it they are making a serious mistake, because it is profoundly important in the Middle East through the Sunni and Shia divide. I remember talking to a Sunni man in Egypt. When I challenged him by talking about the problem with religion, be it Christian, Hindu or Islam, being that people often end up fighting each other, he replied, “Give me an example”. I said, “Iran and Iraq”. He said, “Ah, yes, but the Shia are not really Muslims”. In a way that says it all. We do not have to look back that far in our own history to find similar problems. When I was dealing with the Northern Ireland question in the 1970s and 1980s as the chairman of the Select Committee, one of the big struggles was to get Catholics to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary, as it then was. That was because, if they did, they were often killed.

The religious question is always there. One of the changes which is coming about is that the growth of religion as an ideology is changing the way that politics works. It means that we have to look at it. Religion can be a great stabiliser and help in government, but it can also be a real cause of conflict. If you are looking for the conflict in the Middle East, you cannot ignore the Sunni/Shia divide. That vital point is replicated on the political side by Sunni Saudi Arabia challenging Shia Iran as the dominant power in the Middle East.

I welcome the emphases in the report, and the only other point I want to raise is the danger of nationalism. Living in Scotland as I do now, I listen to Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP and I think, “If she thinks that the answer to the world’s problems is nationalism, she is asking the wrong question”. The same applies to Donald Trump, it applies to some but not all of the Brexiteers, and it applies, when we look at how some people are voting in European elections, to the increasing tendency towards nationalism.

I particularly like the approach taken by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, to the Commonwealth because, like him, I am a strong supporter of it. Although it will not be easy, also like him I believe that there is a very real possibility of a much closer and better relationship between India and the UK. That for me would be a great step forward. But I would emphasise that somehow or other, as the report makes so clear, we have to adjust to a dramatically changing world and make sure that we think through the strategies that are necessary to understand it. That will help us to get our own policies right in many of these individual areas.

Brexit: Foreign Policy

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the foreign policy implications of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union post-Brexit.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has said on a number of occasions, we remain committed to European security and values. Having reached sufficient progress on phase 1 of the negotiations, we will now begin work on the new, deep and special partnership. We will work with European partners to develop the details of an ambitious relationship, including on foreign policy, and alongside the negotiations we will be seeking even stronger bilateral relationships with member states.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Currently, the high representative represents the European Union in its increasingly global activities, which are very important to this country. I have yet to hear any coherent plan from the Government on how we are going to relate to her work—at the moment there is an Italian high representative—and how we are going to balance that with our increasing representation in individual EU countries without stripping our assets from the rest of the world.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, as I have already said, the UK, after we leave the European Union, will remain committed to strengthening ties with the remaining members of the European Union. The noble Lord may well have seen the common foreign and security policy document that we published in September, which laid out some of the key areas of discussion. On his point about European partners, I am sure that he followed very closely the UK-French summit only last week. The issue of security on a bilateral basis, for example, among other areas, was discussed in a very deep way. That underlines the continuing sense of respect and importance that is given by European partners to the UK’s role after we leave the European Union.

United States: Foreign Policy

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I always look forward to these debates because I learn so much from the contributions made, from experience, across the House—particularly today from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton, who made an interesting speech containing some interesting concepts, which will bear rereading.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, for introducing this debate in the way he did. I do not share his slightly doom-and-gloom approach. I recognise his attempt to use the historical perspective of the 1930s, but I would have thought that pre-1914 is more relevant. One great power, the United Kingdom, was in relative decline, and now another, the United States, is in relative decline—the emphasis being on relative not absolute decline, which are two very different concepts. But I accept that the position is changing. Of course, there is also our own decision to leave the European Union.

None of these things will necessarily mean that there will not be great collaboration between the key western democracies and countries. Following the Brexit referendum, we must stay close to Europe and get closer on defence and foreign policy. In my judgment—indeed, this is said within the European Union at the moment—there will be greater co-ordination of defence and foreign policy in the EU. The United Kingdom ought to support that. We have to work in tandem with that, and our relationship with both the EU and the US will be—to use that hackneyed term—a special relationship: it has to be really close. We must acknowledge that the United States will, in due course, have to relate more directly to the European Union and less via the United Kingdom. That is one of the political consequences of leaving the EU. It is not necessarily totally disastrous. Although we should have stayed, and I voted to stay, I do not take the view that we cannot make this work, as long as we see our relationship with the European Union as being a close one.

I also emphasise what has been my view for some time: that the European Union is at best two-speed and maybe even three-speed in its approach to emerging economic and political integration. Some countries in Europe will head ever closer towards economic union and the political union that necessarily goes with that—if you have closer economic union, you inevitably develop a political union—and we will be slightly outside that, in the second or third tier of that process. That is not necessarily a disaster. It is not the best place to be in, but we can make that work if we recognise that we have to be very close and have a good working relationship politically and on the economy, defence and foreign policy. That is why I share my noble friend Lord Robertson’s view that we have to put the Foreign Office at the forefront of our activities. We must also consider our soft power in all its aspects, including our help to developing countries, which my noble friend Lord Judd mentioned. All those things will continue to be part of Britain’s influence. But our language, culture and history make it clear that relationships with the EU and the US will not necessarily diminish. The relationship between the UK and the US is not all about the President and the Prime Minister; it is about the incredible, multilayered British and American contacts—family, business, politics, academia, science and technology—that keep us close. That has to be a key part of this.

The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, on Iran was important and good. We need to focus more on the role of Islam. In my lifetime we got used to a political ideology dominating the world—communism, capitalism, Nazism, fascism, and so on. That has gone and is being replaced by a religious ideology, and, frankly, that has been the history of the world for several thousand years.

The disputes in Iran and the riots in the streets are in part about the problem Iran has in marrying political control—President Rouhani is struggling but he is trying to do a good job—with religion: according to both Shia and Sunni interpretations, there is no law above God’s law. Time precludes any further examination of that issue but we have to focus on it in the coming decades.

Finally, we also have to be aware of the role of nationalism, which I am afraid is growing in many countries in the world. That, combined with the growth of ideology, is a danger we have to face.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Ministerial Guidance

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance is given to Ministers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office concerning the diplomatic skills required for the performance of their duties.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, all Ministers are bound by the Ministerial Code, which sets out the standards of conduct expected of Ministers in how they discharge their duties. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office does not provide any specific additional guidance. The Permanent Secretary is responsible for discussions with Ministers about what is expected under the umbrella of the Ministerial Code, and for advising them on routine day-to-day issues as they arise.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware of the immense damage being done to Britain’s reputation abroad, and to the rights of British citizens abroad, by the tendency of the present Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, to speak first and think afterwards? Can he and his colleagues in government please convey to him that he needs to reverse that process, because he has a bad reputation for it both in this country and overseas, and it is damaging Britain’s relationships and damaging individuals?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, as I am sure that many in this House acknowledge, represents our country and the Foreign Office in exemplary fashion, and this weekend’s example is testimony to that. Over the past week, he has raised some important issues of counterterrorism and countering violent extremism. This again demonstrates the importance that he attaches to representing the Government abroad, as do I in my responsibilities as a Minister of State who serves with him on that team. I have seen him in operation directly as a Minister within his team; he operates with a strategic outlook and in a very positive fashion.

Visit to Oman, UAE and Iran

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, the conflict in Yemen is essentially conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. I know that the Government are aware of that. One of the problems is that the countries in the region are unable to operate effectively against either party to get some sort of agreement. Also, many of their friends outside the region, including the UK and the US, are in a difficult position because they are not seen as wholly independent. Sadly, the UN is unable to be very effective here. I wonder whether the Government have thought a bit outside the box. One of the countries on the edge of the region which has great influence in the UN, and also in peacekeeping operations, is India. Does it have any interest in adding to the pressure on Iran and Saudi to basically back off because the dangers of the spread of conflict are very great?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

On the issue of Yemen specifically, the noble Lord is quite correct that the UK continues to make representations. I am sure he will appreciate that our focus—indeed, that of the Foreign Secretary—has been working with countries in the immediate vicinity. For example, the noble Lord may be aware that the Foreign Secretary hosted a meeting of the quint—that is, the United Kingdom, the US, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman—as well as the UN special envoy, which took place a couple of weeks ago on 28 November. The noble Lord mentioned the role of India. That is very much a question for India to answer, but I note his constructive suggestion in that regard.

Because of the nature of how the conflict is evolving and how we have seen the different parties who may be involved in supporting the rival factions in Yemen, it is important to bring in all international players to ensure security and stability there. As I have already said in answer to a previous question, that is more vital now than perhaps it has been for a very long time.

Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 6th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Government ensure that educational exchanges at all levels are given a high priority?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Indeed, my Lords. That is the reason the Commonwealth team is cross-departmental, which ensures that we can take all the issues into account.

Brexit: UK-EU Relationship

Lord Soley Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My noble friend Lord Liddle, in his very powerful speech, made the all-important point that our aim now must be to have a very good and close relationship with the European Union, albeit a different one. I start from that point. There is no point, in my view, in trying to negotiate the situation here or decide whether we go back in or stay out. We have simply got to create a relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union that works for both of us.

The first thing I would like to happen is for Ministers to stop talking slightly negatively about Europe. We should be saying that we want the European Union to succeed and we want the United Kingdom to succeed, and that we want to have a close relationship with it because it is in both our interests to do that—partly because, as the noble Baroness has just said, the relationship with Russia matters here and the future of defence and foreign policy matters. A splintered European Union would be bad news for the United Kingdom. Similarly, if the United Kingdom goes into some sort of economic crisis, that is not in the interests of the European Union—they know that and we know that.

I have a word of caution for some of my honourable friends and other people who think that we can get back into the European Union easily or quickly. That is cloud-cuckoo-land. Those who voted for Brexit did so for many reasons. Migration was a big one, but it was not the only one, as my noble friend Lord Judd said. The feeling of being excluded as a result not just of the global economy but a distancing from political institutions and politicians was also a critical part of that. My fear would be that, if we were to try to go back in any time soon, either by a parliamentary vote or another referendum, we would get a big thumbs down from the British people. It is far better to have a successful economic and political link growing with the European Union because that leaves open the door, as we should do, to going back in if we so wish at some future date. It also enables us to make a success of the present position.

I say again to some people who think that we can easily come out that, by and large, if things go wrong, as many people have been saying, people tend to vote negatively. That would not induce people to say, “We’ve made a mistake; we’ll go back in”. It would induce them to say, “Typical—the foreigners and politicians are all a problem and we do not want it”. By and large, people will vote for a positive change like going back into the European Union if they have a positive relationship and are getting wealthier and stronger. People vote positively when things are going well for them and negatively when they are not. We have had enough lessons of that. We in the Labour Party need to remember that a very large number, possibly a majority of the people who used to vote Labour, voted Brexit. If we do not understand and talk to those people, we will not solve any of the problems that confront us.

I have one final point in this very short debate. I was in Brussels on Monday as a member of the EU sub-committee dealing with Europol, policing and security. The work that we are doing there is immensely important. The majority of people running that outfit are British. If you look at aviation, the majority are British. The fascinating thing is that the British have been incredibly successful at managing aspects of the European Union, but the British public have felt totally disconnected from that experience. We need to get the security issue right, which the Minister knows. But we can do that. It is possible to negotiate agreements that are in the European Union’s interest and ours. No one has an interest in making life easier for terrorists, criminals or others. The same applies with the rules and regulations in aviation, where Britain also dominates, and in other areas too.

The big difficulty is trade. I have not commented on that because we do not have time, but it is important that we work positively with Europe. It is in Britain’s interests and in the European Union’s interest for us to have a close and positive relationship. We must start from there and continue. Please can Ministers stop saying negative things about Europe because we should be positive about it? We want them to succeed because we also want to succeed.

European Union

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what role they see for the United Kingdom in relation to the European Union.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

Following the decision by the British people to leave the European Union, the Prime Minister has been clear that the nature of the relationship we secure with the EU will be determined by the next Government, but we must not turn our back on Europe nor on the rest of the world. While we are still a member of the EU, we will continue to engage with EU business and decision-making in the usual way.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Can we now focus on process? We will presumably have to start talks with individual countries, but also with the European Union centrally. First, how will that be structured, and what is the European Union going to do in response? Secondly, and very importantly, how will we ensure that our well-known diplomatic skills are still engaged with the European Union to deal with the wider world in the interests of both the European Union and Britain? At the end of the day, both of us must end up being winners in this process, not losers.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Indeed, my Lords, the fact that there is a formal process does not exclude the possibility of informal talks. One talks to colleagues around Europe: it has already happened and it will continue to happen. The European Council has appointed a Belgian diplomat, Didier Seeuws, to lead a Brexit taskforce, which will negotiate the terms and conditions of withdrawal with UK Government officials. That has been announced by the European Council, but Seeuws’s appointment is reported to have created what I might call some tension between the Council and the Commission over who should lead the withdrawal negotiations.

The noble Lord draws attention to the importance of diplomatic skills. I can assure him that on the Friday the result was known, our Permanent Under-Secretary called an all-staff meeting to impress on them exactly that point, and to reinforce the undertaking that we would continue to develop diplomatic skills and the strength of the Diplomatic Academy to take account of the decision by the British people.

EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report)

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, not for the first time, I find myself hoping that the committee report chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, receives wide circulation, because it deserves detailed reading.

I want to focus my brief comments today on Russia and the EU, as a number of other Members have—to some extent, my comments will follow those made by the noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith. It is a crucial relationship. It is very easy in view of current headlines and fears of terrorism to see the Middle East and Libya as the real danger spots. They are, they will remain so for a while and are a big challenge for the European Union, but if I was asked to identify a threat to the longer-term peace of Europe, I would look at the relationship between Russia and the European Union.

I do not think that President Putin wants the old Soviet Union back again—a number of things that he has said reinforce my view—but he has a clear view about spheres of interest which we no longer share. We in the western world do not follow the spheres-of-influence argument in the way that we used to, but Russia does. It is also important to remember at this time that, much as we are rightly concerned about President Putin and his Government, President Putin is not the Russian people. The Russian people are in a way much more divided than we realise. I make a lot of use of Russia Today—RT, as it is called. It is a very effective propaganda channel—in fact, the letters RT are what it is headlined as; it does not have the word Russia anywhere in it. If you know the background, you will realise that it is a sophisticated propaganda operation, but you would not recognise that unless you knew it, which I think is one reason why it is very successful at communicating with people worldwide. It has a very large following and has been running for only a few years, so we should not underestimate it.

As I have said previously in this House, we must recognise Russian history: an appalling 20th century, two world wars, millions dead, famines under a particularly brutal dictatorship with many more millions dead and then ending in the catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union, bringing Russia a feeling of loss and disrespect—as one other Member recently recognised. We have to deal with that now. I hope that President Putin is the bridge that the Russian people need to walk over to travel from the old Stalinist/communist system to a more democratic-rule-of-law approach, but I may be being overly optimistic

I was struck and slightly worried by paragraph 140, I think, where the committee quotes General Sir Richard Sherriff, who raised the concern—it was just a thought—that British and German troops would not necessarily fight for the freedom of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. If he thought that, people in the Kremlin will have thought it too. As the Minister will know, I have expressed concern over a number of years that we often misread President Putin and underestimate his skill at manipulating situations to his advantage. He has got a frozen conflict in the Ukraine and we cannot rule out the possibility that there will be frozen conflicts in other countries of the former Soviet Union where there is a large Russian population. That is why I have concern about the peace prospects between the European Union and Russia.

I thought the most hopeful sign since the report is the reference made by the Foreign Affairs Committee to the report of Federica Mogherini, the high representative, on how we deal with Russia. In that report I felt we might be moving from a position where we impose sanctions. We had to impose sanctions—there was no other sensible alternative, frankly—but the report makes it clear, and I agree, that sanctions cannot be a strategy. They must be short term—which might mean many years—but you do not talk about getting rid of them. You talk about an exchange mechanism in any negotiation with Russia.

There was discussion in the report about the Helsinki accord. There have been signals from the Russians that if we move on the accord and into discussions with them, some progress may be made. However, in my view, for what it is worth, we should not lift sanctions without clear moves by President Putin, particularly on the Ukraine and his activities in east Europe. That is important.

On the five recommendations listed by Federica Mogherini and endorsed by the Foreign Affairs Council, recommendation V concerns the need to engage in people-to-people contact and to support Russian civil society. As I have suggested already, the Russian people are not President Putin. They are much more divergent in their views and many of them feel a strong identity with Europe. Many, particularly the younger professional people linked into the global network of communications, are more inclined to identify with west European attitudes and values. We should encourage that.

I wrote to Federica Mogherini recently saying that I hoped that recommendation V would ride up the agenda. Although we have to have a strong response to the Ukraine through sanctions and the military exercises that are rightly being conducted in Poland at the moment, at the same time we have to reach out to Russian society. We should not underestimate the possibilities there.

There are number of areas where Russia needs our contribution and co-operation. For example, I was recently on a committee on the Arctic and there is clear evidence that the Russians do not want a military confrontation there. Also, there is clear evidence that Russian science on Arctic matters generally is very good and that it is anxious to work with us. There are areas in science and education where we might be able to do more in exchanges which help the people of Russia to understand that we are not against Russia but against certain policies of its current Government. Given that that is recognised on some Russian websites which seek a link to us, we ought to be upfront in trying to work with them. I hope that through the European Union we can put some resources into recommendation V of the high representative into creating a greater form of dialogue. It is not as if things have not been happening because they have, and a number of operations are in place already. However, we could do much more. One thing I would have liked to see in the report is a couple of paragraphs looking at what more we could do in addition to what is already being done.

I know that the current Russian Government would not necessarily encourage it, but if we could start having more exchanges of Russian people that would be immensely valuable in building up person-to-person links, as suggested by the high representative. It would underpin a more peaceful process. If we do not have a more sophisticated strategy, sooner or later the sanctions issue will fail and Russia will maintain the frozen conflict in Ukraine, which it might then move on into other areas. If Russia did that, I would be deeply worried. That is why it is so important that the European Union should push this right to the top of its foreign policy objectives.