King’s Speech

Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the three new Members to the House who have spoken today, but also, importantly, I welcome a new Government. I welcome them in the broad sense of a refreshing change, but also welcome Ministers to their seats and wish them luck in their task. Clearly, the Liberal Democrat Benches will look to hold them to account but will blow wind in their sails to go further and faster than they might otherwise on many issues on which we broadly agree.

I want to touch on two fundamental existential issues facing not just the Government of the United Kingdom but Governments more broadly, particularly western Governments and those of developed countries around the world. The first affects all of us: the threat of catastrophic climate change, which is accelerating fast. This week we have seen not one but two successive days on which the world has been hotter than ever before since humans have been able to record the temperatures of this planet. The context in which I flag that is that a lot has been said recently about migration, asylum seekers and how we deal with the flow of people into this country. I associate myself with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti: these are not “illegals” but desperate people—hopeful people who are trying to change their lives.

However, in the context of catastrophic climate change, we are seeing record numbers of people moving already. A decade ago, it was measured in tens of millions as people had to move because the places in which they lived and farmed became untenable. By 2022, we broke through the 100 million mark in a single year of movement. The projections are that this will accelerate further and faster as we move from, broadly speaking, 1% of the planet being too hot to live in comfortably to about 20% being too hot to live in comfortably by about 2050. The precise figures and timings are argued about, but the truth is that, as people are unable to survive, particularly in Middle Eastern countries and sub-Saharan Africa—there are other parts of the world as well, but these are the areas most affected and the largest numbers and relatively near to us—people in desperation will seek to move. Some will move to cities, but that will just exacerbate the problems. Others will seek a better life—on the whole, the wealthier ones, leaving behind the poorest.

The issues we see today, as people flee conflict and regimes’ intolerant and inhuman treatment of individuals, will get much worse when it is the climate that is becoming intolerable and unliveable. I do not think that people are recognising the impacts that there will be on all of us from these movements and how we will deal with them. These people will be starving, unable to live, unable to drink. As well as the threat of famine there will be the threat of war over diminishing resources and water. That means all power to the Government in moving as fast and as far as they can on climate change, but we must start thinking really seriously about how we will deal with issues that we have not seen since the Second World War, when we saw people fleeing Germany as the Nazis advanced across Europe. Historically, we have been a welcoming and understanding country. I fear that the debates in recent times have not been of that tenor and it will become harder, not easier, as the numbers grow.

There is a second existential threat that we face. I do not have long to talk about it but we need to touch on it. I believe that we are reliving the 1930s in terms of what Putin is aiming to do. It is not just in Ukraine. Read what he says. It goes far beyond that, with attitudes that are entirely parallel to those of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in terms of seeing the people in the surrounding areas to Russia as sub-Russians who should be reincorporated into a Russian empire and treated not as equals but as secondary and there to meet Russian needs. We have seen people in large numbers flee Ukraine. All we have done so far is give enough to hold off Putin but not defeat him. If we do not take a more robust approach to stopping him quickly, he will learn lessons and so will Xi in China. They will go into more countries and nations and more people will flee. We need to rearm. The head of the British Army has said it. It has been echoed by military leaders in western democracies across the world. It is urgent that we take this seriously. We are in danger of isolationist America and we need to deal with it.