Queen’s Speech

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I will reflect briefly on the great office of state of Foreign Secretary and will try to see whether there is an opportunity in what is happening now for that office to regain the limelight that I believe it deserves.

One thing that is certain is that change takes place all the time, and the biggest change will be our departure from the European Union. If you put that together with the weakening of the special relationship, I think that we have the opportunity to develop a voice of our own. In fact, I am not sure that we have any choice but to develop a voice of our own, and I hope that we are not too unsure of our ability to do that. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, pointed to one way in which we could develop a stronger position in the world. After all, we are one of the largest economies, even if the great shift of power to both sides of the Pacific has changed the status of Europe dramatically.

That takes me to the 16th paragraph of the gracious Speech, which has been referred to many times. I am not sure why it was right to make it the last paragraph. It is very uneven. It starts:

“My Government will work to promote and expand the United Kingdom’s influence in the world.”


Motherhood and apple pie come to mind. I am sure that Lord Salisbury, who was four times Foreign Secretary, would have said, “I don’t quite know why you would want to put that in.” The last sentence of the paragraph is a bit curious. It refers to

“working to ensure that all girls have access to twelve years of quality education.”

Quite clearly, that is a very good idea, and indeed why stop at 12? I thought that university was also open to the girls of the world, or it certainly should be. However, I wonder why that is tagged on to that paragraph. There are lots of other options for a single objective to be included. I was left thinking, “I wonder what Ernie Bevin would have thought about that sentence?”

That takes me back to the middle of the paragraph and the reference to the integrated review. I have two comments to make. First, I would prefer to have a Prime Minister and a Cabinet who told us what they thought our position in the world was. I am rather worried that they feel that they need somebody else to tell them. I seem to remember that Harold Macmillan was pretty good at telling us where we were, and I would have thought that that was something that should land on the Prime Minister’s desk.

My other comment is on the reference to development, which is tagged on to the end of that sentence. I understand why noble Lords have a certain hesitation about what it means. I used to work in development—for the Commonwealth Development Corporation—so I am committed to economic development, but there is a huge place for a conventional aid programme as well. The question is not whether we should have them both but how to balance the expenditure of the 0.7% between the two. When I was involved, I was the responsibility of a Minister of State at the Foreign Office—Chris Patten, for example—and I do not remember that being any great barrier to the way in which what was then called ODA worked. Therefore, I do not quite share the apprehensions of some of your Lordships about the realignment between DfID and the Foreign Office. Whatever that realignment may be, I hope that it will give more leverage and power to the Foreign Office, because that is our lead department. I look forward to a real recrudescence of influence in the world—of imagination and policymaking—coming from our Foreign Office.