Queen’s Speech

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, two things struck me about the gracious Speech. The first was the sense of stability and reassurance offered to the nation by Her Majesty the Queen. The second was the ambition of the programme she announced.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the integrated review. For the first time in decades—perhaps ever—the Government have pulled together all the threads of foreign and security policy. Ministers are to be congratulated. It is the work of a Government determined to seize the opportunities presented by Brexit.

Some have expressed surprise at the Government’s success in the May elections. Usually, a governing party will lose seats after so many years in power, but the 2019 general election was as much a break with the past as any change of ruling party. The people brought to power the first Brexit Government—and with a stonking majority. The May elections reinforced their decision. Some say that this is no more than a passing “vaccine bounce”, yet no less an authority than Michel Barnier has said that Brexit gave the UK the means to vaccinate its population long before our neighbours in the EU. That same confidence and boldness has given us the integrated review, which in turn has given us a coherent framework in which to realise global Britain.

Global Britain should not be hard to understand. It is deeply embedded in our DNA: a sovereign nation with allies and partners around the globe—some new, some old—tied together by free trade, common security and common interests; a nation of firm principles, tempered by pragmatism. This year, 2021, is the year of the summits. It will give us many opportunities to apply these principles. We will be at the centre of international negotiation.

Take these three examples. First, we hold the presidency of the G7; the summit will take place in Cornwall next month. The Prime Minister will lead the debate on issues of the highest importance to our world. We will create nothing less than a 21st-century version of the rules-based system of international order, which has served us so well. Secondly, we will host COP 26, in November, in Glasgow. For some, this is the issue of our time. Once again, it will be our task to lead discussions and seek agreements.

Thirdly, this month, HMS “Queen Elizabeth” will sail east, at the head of an international naval force. It will be a clear demonstration of Britain’s tilt to the Indo-Pacific region, where we have growing commercial and security interests. We have already applied for membership of the CPTPP. Our impressive Secretary of State for International Trade has already signed a co-operation agreement with Japan, along with 66 other countries. Now, it is the turn of the Royal Navy, with allied ships, to uphold freedom of navigation in international waters.

The notion that, after Brexit, the UK would shrivel into a lonely, inward-looking island was always a fool’s delusion—the denial of centuries of history that long pre-date the European Union. It was the great 19th-century Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who showed us the way ahead when he said:

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”—[Official Report, Commons, 1/3/1848; col. 122.]


Finally, I welcome my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister and congratulate him on his excellent speech. I also want to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, on her introduction to this debate.