Queen's Speech

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on his appointment as Minster of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has a long personal and political record of commitment to international understanding and security and, while we might strongly diverge about aspects of policy, I am certain that he is decently and patriotically motivated. I wish him well in his new duties.

We are now confronted by a national coalition Government, a condition that our British gift for understatement compels us to call “interesting”. Nowhere is the contrivance more intriguing than in foreign, international development and defence policy. Time forbids detailed examination on this occasion, but some points irresistibly invite a little prying. To establish a general disposition, for instance, does the Minister retain the opinion that he expressed in this House just last November that the Liberal party’s policies are “boring and frankly incomprehensible”, or has the elixir of coalition now made them fascinating and perhaps pellucid?

More specifically, last week’s coalition agreement to,

“create new mechanisms to give British people a direct say in how an element of the aid budget is spent”,

patently sustains the Conservative policy of distributing aid programmes,

“in proportion to how many votes they receive”.

The Save the Children Fund describes that as development policy run like “The X Factor”. Since it is the coalition’s approach, what is to be the size and qualification of the electorate? What will be the method and duration of the voting? Will the balloting be financed, perhaps, from the aid budget? Indeed, will the returning officer by any chance be Mr Simon Cowell?

There are also concerns about the coalition’s commitment to introduce a new stabilisation and reconstruction force. The purposes of such a force in post-conflict conditions might appear worthy but development aid should not and must not be diverted to subsidising military operations. Security, development and humanitarian objectives must not be muddled. The proposal therefore begs the vital question: how would the force be financed—by new money, money from the MoD, or from DfID funds, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, announced last January? We need to hear the essential detail and now would be a good time to give it.

Similar questions arise about financing adaptation and mitigation efforts in poor countries to combat climate change: the Liberal party commitment to new additional money was clear, the Conservative Party was evasive, but no undertaking not to siphon off development assistance funds has come from this coalition. Can we therefore now have an undertaking that the coalition Government will not raid the DfID budget to fund climate change measures? May we also be assured by the Minister that FCO responsibilities will not be shuffled in a way which enables gaps in that ring-fencing around the DfID budget to be created? Since that budget must be sustained if Liberals and Tories are to fulfil their solemn promises of 0.7 per cent of GNI for development, will the Minister confirm now that the commitment will be enacted in legislation and not relegated to a parliamentary resolution?

I am very proud of the Labour Government’s sustained commitment to development, particularly to efforts to foster security and justice for women and girls. In too many parts of the world it is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier. That tragic reality is the reason why Gordon Brown gave me the cross-departmental role of special representative on violence against women. I hope the new Government will also now give priority to tackling all gender-based violence. That would, I believe, have the strength of consensus in this House.

Time is short and I will have to leave Sudan, Congo, the Middle East and many other matters—including Afghanistan, where we all strongly support our forces and their mission—for future discussions in this House.

I therefore move briefly to the coalition’s perspective on the European Union. Overall, it seems to have more smoke than an Icelandic volcano and more mirrors than Versailles. First, I strongly agree with the call to fix the sole seat of the European Parliament in Brussels. In 15 years as a Member of the European Parliament, I repeatedly voted to end the Parliament’s costly and time-consuming odysseys to Strasbourg. However, that city was specified as a city of the Parliament in the Maastricht treaty agreed by Prime Minister John Major. Changing that would require unanimous agreement. France will never vote for it; neither will Germany. The coalition Government know full well—as anyone else in Europe knows—that it is not a possible objective.

Secondly, the referendum lock adopted by the coalition was described by Liberal Democrat leaders—when there were such people—as “nonsense, ludicrous and bizarre”. When all the member states have agreed that there will be no treaty change in the foreseeable future, we should also now call it redundant.

Thirdly, the coalition policy of introducing primary legislation to control any UK use of the European Council passerelle procedure, to which the Minister referred, is equally superfluous: apart from the veto, which would prevent the use of the passerelle, we have the 2008 Act which requires majorities in both Houses of this Parliament to permit UK support for a passerelle. In short, strict passerelle control already exists and everyone but the most obsessive of what Sir John Major would call “Euro illegitimates” recognises that.

On all grounds, assessment of the coalition's “consensus” on the EU shows it to be a series of tokenistic gestures made by the leaders of the coalition to mollify Europhobes in the Tory Party. The election debate description of those people and their new group in the European Parliament by the Deputy Prime Minister enjoys justified fame. Before that, the new Energy Secretary, Mr Huhne, had called them “wackos and weirdos” and perceptively added:

“You can tell a lot about a party by the company it keeps”.

Charity prevents me making the same observation about the company currently being kept by the Liberal Democrat party.

Ours is a world riven by economic and social division and menaced by crime, climate change, religious antagonisms, political hatreds and terrorising violence. It is a world overarmed with large and small weapons, rapaciously exploited, plagued by oppression in countless places and poisoned by distrust. That is why our foreign, development and defence policies must respond to these imperatives and must continue to focus on securing global equity, freedom and justice—the essential components of global stability and prosperity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, it is always a melancholy occasion to be a member of a party which has been defeated in a general election, but it is an experience I have had several times over the past 60 years. Therefore, I am slightly inured to it and there are always compensations, one of which is to see some of one’s old friends appointed to ministerial positions. Although I am not allowed to call them my noble friends in your Lordships' House, I hope that the noble Lords, Lord Astor of Hever and Lord Howell, will acquit me of impertinence if I say that I like to think of them as great personal friends. I have always admired their patriotism, competence and courtesy. I wish also to extend that to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who is not in his place. It may surprise your Lordships that he was the man who frightened me most when I was at the Dispatch Box a few years ago, for reasons that I have no intention of disclosing.

I have to say that I am rather pleased with some of the ministerial appointments. I was delighted that our new Foreign Secretary made it absolutely clear that he thought that the special relationship was extremely important and that our best friends and closest allies were in Washington DC, which has always been my view and I have no hesitation in saying so. I know that in your Lordships’ House the mention of the special relationship can produce toe-curling embarrassment on the part of some of our euro-fanatics, particularly those who are closest to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I am glad to say that it is alive and well.

I shall give an illustration. I have always said that the most important parts of the special relationship were invisible, and I still think that. They repose mainly in the relationships between our sets of intelligence services and our technical people and engineers—I am glad to see that the former Minister, my noble friend Lady Taylor, is nodding her head in agreement—which are of frightful importance to this country.

I will refer, if I may, to the quite quixotic remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, who, if I heard him correctly, was saying that we should get much closer to the French. I am glad to get his acknowledgment. I wonder if the noble Lord noticed what happened to a certain Admiral Blair in Washington last week. No? That is a pity. Admiral Blair was director of national intelligence in the United States until very recently, but he has just been fired. It is sad; he is a very able man. Why was he fired? There were a few reasons—there have been certain mistakes and imperfections in the intelligence services of the United States—but the thing that apparently provoked the final breakdown was that Admiral Blair wanted to introduce between the United States and France a system of agreement by treaty that neither would spy on the other, a system that the United States has with this country. The person who prohibited Admiral Blair from doing that was President Obama himself.

There are lots of people who like to say that our special relationship is a fragile thing, built on superstitious little icons. They love to jeer at the fact that Winston Churchill’s bust is no longer in the central office in the White House that the President uses. I do not know what the room is called—

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

The Oval Office.

[Lord Gilbert]

The Oval Office, is it? Thank you. Actually, the relationship between our intelligence services is rather more important than where Churchill’s bust is. The reason why Admiral Blair was not allowed to proceed is perfectly simple: the United States does not trust the French but it trusts us. There, I said it. That is the fact of the matter, and that is wherein reposes a considerable part of the special relationship. I am delighted that it continues to be in the forefront of Her Majesty’s Government.

I was pleased with the appointment as Defence Secretary of Dr Fox, whose Atlanticism is beyond question. I was also pleased with what the Prime Minister had to say on his visit to Europe.

Unfortunately, two of the three people who made the best speeches in today’s debate are not in their places, but I am glad to say that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, is. It always worries me when I agree so much with the noble Lord. I hope that I do not embarrass him when I say so, but on reflection I think I agree with everything that he said today, particularly his commentary on the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell.

The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, makes brilliant speeches here of immaculate, impenetrable logic—I should say “irrefutable” rather than “impenetrable”—and I could not agree with him more. There is no place for British schadenfreude in what is going wrong in the Eurozone; on the other hand, that should not lead us in any sense to be prepared to give any more of the sovereignty of this House to European institutions. We should help them but we should remain fiercely independent. Thank God—this is one of the few things for which I am grateful to the previous Prime Minister—he kept us out of the euro.

I hope that there will be one change in this Government from what was the practice in the Government that I supported. When people went to see Mr Blair about defence expenditure, he would say, “You have persuaded me, now you have to go and persuade Gordon”—I see that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has come in; I have been saying some nice things about him, but he can read about them tomorrow—to which the answer should have been, “No, Prime Minister, it’s your job to go and persuade Gordon”, but I am afraid that none of them ever had the guts to say that.

I shall say one or two things about the noble Lord, Lord Burnett. He gave a very good speech. I disagreed with only one thing in it: he seems to want to live in a nuclear-free world. I have no desire whatever to live in a nuclear-free world. I am very grateful that nuclear weapons were invented, that they were invented when they were invented and that they were invented by the Americans and not by the Germans. I have got that off my chest. If you like to think of a world without any nuclear weapons whatever—where no one has cheated—try living in Israel and see how comfortable you feel. I could think of one or two other places. As Jim Schlesinger says, nuclear weapons are in use every day of every year and they are keeping the peace. I, for one, was extremely glad when India and Pakistan both acquired a nuclear capability. The result we have seen: for the first time the Pakistani Army has been prepared to pull back considerable sections of its troops from the Indian frontier to go and deal with the Taliban threat in the north. You cannot ask for more convincing evidence of the stabilising effect of a nuclear bounce.