Brexit: UK International Relations

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in sending my good wishes to my noble friend Lord Howell, and thank my noble friend Lord Jopling for the excellent way in which he introduced this debate.

I shall talk about the US, particularly its external relations. President Trump is probably coming to office with the biggest opportunity, and the biggest division between himself and his predecessors, of anyone since FDR in 1932. Unfortunately, unlike FDR, he does not have a vice-president of the calibre of Sam Rayburn to get things though the House. Therefore, I think he will face the difficulty of translating the enormous promises he has made into any sort of action. Much of the action, of course, we would prefer not to see.

We love Roosevelt but it is worth looking at the reality of his time, which we have glossed over. He was also very much an American President. We should remember that he did not declare war on Germany; he declared war on Japan. Germany declared war on him, so he had no option in that regard. Roosevelt was a tough negotiator. If we are expecting favours in Washington, we should read the memoirs of John Maynard Keynes and a few other people, and we will soon see that the United States is not unlike any other country in that it looks after its own national interest. That is what Foreign Offices do. As I am sure my noble friend Lady Anelay will confirm, the job of a Foreign Office is to get the best deal for its country. Therefore, we may get our equivalent of Smoot-Hawley in tariffs but the best way of resisting that is to point out the disastrous effect it had on the world and the world economy last time round. However, the prospect of infrastructure expenditure may well make it easier for the President to rebalance defence expenditure, because, when push comes to shove, it is how much public money goes into your district, not what it is spent on, that gets votes in the US Congress.

My next point will probably not find much favour in this House. I believe that the advent of President Trump gives us the opportunity to reset our relations with Russia. I think that we have fundamentally misunderstood Russia. Russia has not rolled back to communism; it has moved to a nationalist, Christian-based, fairly fundamentalist way of looking at the world. One of the factors about Russia is that it is very keen on getting its equivalent of a Monroe doctrine. It believes that it is as much its right to have at least partially on side the countries round it as the United States does. That, of course, does not stop us having views, opinions and interventions in countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. But after a lifetime of dealing with foreign affairs, I can tell your Lordships that the UK Government always pull their punches slightly further back in some areas than they do in others. Russia regards itself as having interests. That gives us an opportunity to reset our relations with it.

If we are to make NATO work, the countries of NATO have to start paying. You cannot expect the United States to spend 3.3% of its GDP on defence to defend Latvia, which, according to my research on Google, spent 1.1% in 2015. That is not on. There has to be a rebalancing. The United Kingdom’s priority should be to secure the borders of the EU and to relieve the pressure on them. I want to speak particularly about the Baltics, an area I have been to on several occasions. We have to say two separate things to the Baltic states. The first is, “You’ve got to make your Russians want to live here”. There is far too much discrimination against the Russian populations of these states. The second thing is, “If you want us to defend you we’re up for it, but you’ve got to put a reasonable amount of money into the pot. We’ve got to come to an agreement on what you want and you’ve got to pay a good proportion of it”. Otherwise, quite frankly, we are going to make commitments we cannot carry out. The Russians are not fools. They hear us saying, “We’ll defend this. We’re going to do this with Crimea”. They know that we cannot, and will not, deliver that, and that we will not spend the money to do so.

This is an opportunity for us to reset our relations in a way that works. We have to negotiate with our allies to make sure that they are prepared to put up the money and give the commitment we need to make an alliance work. In or out of the EU, I believe that we can offer our help and support, but we should take this opportunity to try to cast our relations in a more realistic way and get rid of some of the “drama queen” stuff that has been around in western European foreign policy for the last few years.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, before the next speaker commences, I invite the co-operation of your Lordships in this very well subscribed debate in observing the time limits. We have a serious bit of slippage, which will impact on other speakers unless we can gather it up. I seek noble Lords’ assistance in looking at the clock. When the clock says “five”, that is the time to reunite the noble posterior with the Red Bench.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl. It is very helpful that this debate immediately follows the excellent debate that focused on the need for greater development support for women and girls in the world. It highlighted the context of where we are in the developing world. The need for an increased focus on that area is part of the changing global environment in which the new Secretary-General will be taking up his role.

With regard to the previous debate, I reflected that it was UK leadership within the European Union, at the financing for development conference in Addis Ababa, that led to an increase in EU support for aid. I was considering what the European Union’s position on the 0.7% target will be, given that it was UK leadership that increased EU aid year on year. Not taking part in future such conferences will be one of the consequences of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. However, it highlights that the global pressures are materially different from when the UN family and its agencies were established two generations ago, so I was very pleased that the committee chose as its first subject what the priorities of the new Secretary-General should be.

As a member of the committee, I wish to add to the best wishes expressed by colleagues to our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, for stepping into the breach. It is a real privilege for me to serve on the committee with far more experienced colleagues in this House and to learn a great deal from it.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, indicated, the material difference in the world community is the great pressures on the youngest generation. Unprecedentedly, the Middle East and north Africa have their youngest generation experiencing the highest employment pressures—especially those with an education. Globalisation is not only here and is having an imbalanced impact but it is irreversible. The fact that we have also an unprecedented number of internally displaced people within countries around the world puts huge pressures on individual UN member states, and we have unseen levels of movement of people, whether caused by those seeking refuge, those seeking employment or those affected by climate change.

A strong part of the committee’s report is where we highlight that one of the absolute priorities for the new Secretary-General will be to take forward the 2015 and 2016 global conferences, which offered solutions in these areas. I was very pleased to see the Government’s response to say that they agreed with paragraphs 161 and 162 of the report—there is overall consensus. I wish Amina Mohammed, the new deputy Secretary-General, well in the role that will be played in that position.

It is fair to say that there were questions in the committee about whether Brexit would provide the UK with a greater ability to play an increased role in meeting those challenges. The Government somewhat asserted that it would—it is fair to say that the Minister said it with a higher degree of enthusiasm than the officials did. Nevertheless, we need more evidence as to how that assertion will be backed up. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, when in her evidence to the committee she said that another element of Brexit would be that the UK would lose its role to,

“interpret to the rest of the world what is happening in the EU, and the rest of the world expects us to have a huge, positive influence on that”.

That is of concern. It is also the case that we will not necessarily be able to turn to the Commonwealth, nor does the Commonwealth necessarily wish us to, and be a leader in that community, which is so well established and has its own networks.

Finally, I turn to the UK’s relationship with the United States, which is pertinent. I cannot see, yet, how the position of the UK Government, with their “global Britain” approach, will sit comfortably alongside the “America first” approach. The fact is that on all the issues—international development, women’s rights and climate change—President Trump has a different view not only from the United Kingdom but from the consensus around the world. As he has said overnight, his preferred approach is based on how he feels about issues rather than the evidence presented to him. That is a very deep concern. I look to our Prime Minister to send clear signals that the UK is prepared to separate itself from US foreign policy, rather than simply adhere to it.

[Baroness Goldie]

My Lords, I am sorry to be tiresome, but time is tight and there is still slippage. I invite noble Lords’ co-operation in trying to trim their contributions as much as possible in deference to the winding-up speeches. I thank noble Lords for their co-operation.