War in Ukraine

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right to indicate that there is nothing that Mr Putin would like better than to imagine that everybody is distracted by another dangerous conflict and that somehow or other he is off the radar screen. For the United Kingdom and our allies, the tragic situation with Israel and the Gaza Strip and the situation in Ukraine continue to be deeply worrying conflicts. We will do our level best, as we have indicated, to provide support where we can. The noble Baroness designated the support that we have indicated we can make available in the eastern Mediterranean. I can confirm to her that that is not impugning our resilience on other fronts. As she will understand, the support that we are offering to Ukraine is somewhat different in character, but we are able and absolutely committed to continue doing that. I hope that there will be opportunities to update the House in forthcoming months as to exactly how that support will continue.

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

My Lords, we witnessed Putin in China last weekend, a guest of honour at the Chinese celebrations to mark the 10th anniversary of the belt and road initiative. He noted that they had common threads bringing together Russia and China and, as we know, China has offered economic and diplomatic support to Russia the whole way through. Neither state has condemned the atrocities that we have seen by Hamas on Israel. Are we witnessing a growing coalition of authoritarian states, including Iran and North Korea? What is His Majesty’s Government’s response, especially with regard to the future of Ukraine?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As my noble friend will be aware, the combination of the two integrated reviews, not least the integrated review refresh of this year, demonstrated His Majesty’s Government’s analysis of what we consider the challenge position to be globally. That reaffirmed that our primary objective is Euro-Atlantic security but of course Euro-Atlantic security is, frankly, indivisible from Indo-Pacific security. Therefore, we are active on all fronts to use all the measures available to us to support friends and allies who believe in the same values that we believe in. That includes calling out activity that we find unacceptable. For example, we have called out China’s activity in the South China seas and called out the deeply concerning situation in Xinjiang with regard to the treatment of Uighurs. In the United Nations, we regularly call out the activities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

I reassure my noble friend that, across a whole range of fronts, we are very clear about what we need to do to stand up for rights, values and democratic freedoms. Encouragingly, we do not do that alone—we do it in concert with very important friends and allies.

France: AUKUS

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I seek to assure the noble Lord that we recognise the significance of the French Government’s reaction to AUKUS and the strength of the feeling it has generated. We have a long-standing relationship with France in global security and defence; that is founded on firm lines, not least the Lancaster House agreements. We are both committed to the same things, whether that is NATO, Euro-Atlantic security or broader global security in the Indo-Pacific and south-east Asia. A lot binds us together. We value France’s presence as a defence partner and look forward to continuing to work with it closely.

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on what is a very innovative new alliance, even if it was executed with maybe slightly less diplomacy for our near neighbours than it might have been. This new alliance is supportive of Australia. It reinforces the idea that China does not have free rein in the Indo-Pacific, and it reinforces the work of the Quad. With the Quad in mind, does the Minister think there will be new members of AUKUS, such as Japan?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for affirming the strategic importance of AUKUS, echoing what the noble Lord, Lord West, said. The tripartite collaboration has been formed for a specific purpose and change in that respect is not envisaged. But my noble friend is absolutely right to recognise that AUKUS complements and enhances other relationships in the region, such as the Quad, Five Eyes or the FPDA, and that reflects both NATO’s approach and the EU Indo-Pacific strategy.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Fall Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fall (Con) [V]]

My Lord, I welcome the many learned speeches from noble Lords this afternoon, many of whom have vast experience and knowledge of this very important topic.

As the daughter of a diplomat, I was brought up on a diet of British foreign policy and its mantra to protect and advance British interests. The battle of my father’s time was the Cold War, but we have inherited a more complex landscape and our enemies are more diverse and agile. Alongside this are the big geopolitical challenges of our time, of which the deterioration of relations between China and the West is dominant. We see this played out like the proxy wars of old, for example, in tech and trade. But we should be wary of calling this a second Cold War. China is not the Soviet Union; its economic power is far greater and more sustainable and, whether we like it or not, we must co-operate with China to find solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, such as climate change.

I commend the Government for the integrated review, which attempts to set out to answer the question: what is Britain’s role in the world today? I will focus on three issues in my brief remarks. The first goes back to China. In the integrated review, China is described as a “systemic competitor”. If we look across the board, to the economy, security, human rights and the need to address global problems, our approach looks pragmatic, though at times a bit inconsistent. We welcome inward investment and have rightly put in place legislation to properly scrutinise it. We rightly call out human rights abuses, yet we have been careful not to use the label “genocide”. We send our ships to the South China Sea and, at the same time, we invite China to the COP 26 meeting, recognising, again rightly, that co-operation is needed if any progress can be made on climate change.

Who are our allies in this approach? While it is clear that China has become a convening issue for many Western democracies, it is also notable that we are not are all aligned—take Germany and New Zealand, for example. Seeing Australia getting blown around by its unilateral approach suggests that we might do well to take a multilateral one ourselves, possibly tucking in behind the Biden Administration.

If we consider China a systemic competitor, this warrants a systemic response by us. By that, I mean one which brings together the security, economic, human rights and climate change responses under one umbrella. I wonder whether the Government should consider an NSC sub-group, for example, on China, to strengthen and co-ordinate our response across Whitehall.

I turn to nuclear. To me, the commitment to increase our nuclear arsenal sets a dismal example to other powers who support non-proliferation. It is also a strange priority for taxpayers’ money, at a time when the economic outlook is difficult. There seems to be little attempt to set out a rationale for the policy, which to my mind also sits uneasily with our decision to make drastic cuts to our aid budget, which I will turn to next.

The cut from 0.7% to 0.5% acts as a double whammy, alongside a shrinking economy that would already have led to substantial reductions. If you want to see global action on climate change, insure against mass migration, combat terrorism, eradicate poverty and counter world pandemics, as well as compete with China’s growing influence, the provision of 0.7% is a good way to go about it. It is in our national interests and it blatantly promotes them at the same time.

All this comes at such a critical moment for Britain, as we relaunch ourselves on the world stage post Brexit and host COP 26 and the G7. This is a G7 that puts women and girls at the centre of its agenda, and yet we witness devastating cuts to many programmes that are designed to support them. Taken together, I believe that the spending decision around our nuclear arsenal and aid does not represent the best strategy for the promotion of British national interests at this critical juncture.

I now turn to Afghanistan. I, like many others, have wholeheartedly welcomed President Biden’s return to a more multilateral approach on the global stage, but, sadly, I cannot support the decision to press ahead with American withdrawal from Afghanistan before the peace talks are finalised. This is not a peace plan but an exit plan, and I fear that it is likely to lead to instability and future conflict; it already has. So much that we and our brave service men and women have fought for over the decades—to build lasting peace in the region and within society to help women and girls—will have been in vain. No one wants for ever wars, but we are more likely to sow the seeds of a future security problem if we leave in a hurry.

Now that we have left the EU, we need to be more, not less, focused on how we maximise our influence in the world. We need to leverage a systemic approach to geopolitical issues at home and build a multilateral approach to like-minded powers abroad to promote British interests at this crucial time.