Reconciliation: Role of British Foreign, Defence and International Development Policy

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the most reverend Primate most warmly for giving us the opportunity to discuss a subject of the utmost importance today: reconciliation in conflict. I speak purely as a politician; I make no sermons and have no moral prominence in any shape or form. But I have had the opportunity of serving our nation in many places and I have grown particularly to admire and respect the work of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I therefore speak purely on our foreign policy goals within the context of reconciliation, which the most reverend Primate has identified as the core topic of his debate.

The road ahead now is clear, and reconciliation skills will be needed more than ever before; certainly more than ever in the last 50 years. For particular reasons, the exceptional reconciliation skills of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be needed; we must support it as much as we can, from this House and in every way we know.

I serve as a trade envoy to four nations. I see our delegations in those countries striving their best to uphold our nation’s values and managing wonderfully well. I have served in observation roles in 34 nations— through the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the UN, the European Union and the Council of Europe—and have led a few of the teams myself. In all those nations, who has been prominent in promoting ethics, values and standards for free and fair elections in whatever context they happen to be? The answer is our Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I had the honour of serving as the first vice-president of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy. I thank my colleagues on the Opposition Benches for allowing that to happen. I also served in the Council of Europe—again, on foreign policy.

All through my time as a Member of Parliament, a Member of the European Parliament and a member of the British delegation of the Council of Europe, and through my work with the various United Nations agencies, I have been more impressed by our Foreign and Commonwealth Office than one can imagine. I suggest that we are now giving it the biggest post-war task that it has ever had.

The establishment of the European Union and its extension to the south and east of Europe is surely the greatest achievement of stabilisation and peacebuilding in the 20th century. For all the EU’s flaws and weaknesses, it is a unique grouping that has kept the peace within its ever-growing borders since its formation in the early 1950s. I ask noble Lords to remember that the British contribution to this organisation, both as a member and earlier as a non-member, has been most significant. Indeed, I do not think that the European Union would be as strong as it is today had Britain not become a member and not involved herself. We originally established the treaty of Brussels, and from that moment on, as well as making a major contribution to the formation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and helping to form the Council of Europe, where we still maintain a very high position, we have been tremendous contributors to the peace of this continent and beyond.

Now that the United Kingdom is bound to leave the European Union, it will be essential to establish ways of supporting the EU’s integration and extension. I refer to the remaining Balkan states but not now to Turkey. Indeed, without the enlargement of the European Union, where would we be today? Somehow Russia has become an enemy, Turkey is stepping away from the human rights agenda of the Council of Europe that she originally adopted, and we have difficulties with other perimeter zones of the continent of Europe, but the wider borders and deeper integration of the European Union are the strength that gives the continent the possibility of not lurching back into major war. That comes from the human rights of a wider Europe—from the Council of Europe, of which the UK is, as I said, a founder member.

I suggest that Britain’s departure from the EU could in fact become an essential part of the European Union’s finding of its proper self and of its true capabilities by finishing her partly achieved integration process. It is not finished yet by any means. As we have said in recent debates on our departure from the EU, and as I noted myself in my only comment on this topic in your Lordships’ House, the collapse of the potential constitution that led to the highly faulty Lisbon treaty has not provided the stable base on which the European Union can genuinely expand. Indeed, as a rapporteur in the European Parliament—my country was Romania—I found, as did my colleagues on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy, that there was no rulebook when members entered. We worked very hard to get them to adopt the acquis communautaire and implement the common human rights agenda, which was outlined in the acquis communautaire and fell from the Copenhagen criteria, which gave the parameters. We worked hard to get the nations that we were nursing to follow that agenda, but when they entered the European Union they were able to tear it up and throw it away as they stepped over the threshold of the front door. The lack of a constitutional settlement is currently one big gap in the EU’s armoury.

Why do we mind about the European Union? Why carry on? Why not just do what some of our colleagues in the other place have said, which is to throw the whole thing aside, run completely independently and forget about it totally? I remind myself that the European Union is far stronger than the United Kingdom and far more vital and powerful in its statements on the fight against corruption. It is much stronger in its statements on the foundation stones of democracy, the fundamental freedoms and the rule of law. Those are our goals, but we have allowed ourselves to fight for them as a team with and under the leadership of the European Union in the last two decades. Now we will have to do that alone. I believe that as well as independently and on our own, we should do it in partnership with the European Union, with those there who have been our real partners in this growth for so many years now. In other words, we will have a change of step, but I do not believe we should step outside the circle. We should support the European Union while pushing forward our own very similar views.

The Council of Europe is a wonderful place and a useful forum, but is too often the pawn of powerful undemocratic members, such as Turkey and Russia, to play that role. Indeed, the current Turkish Foreign Minister was president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. This is quite shocking, given the state of human rights in Turkey today and that the Council of Europe’s whole agenda is the formation and promotion of human rights across the continent. But it is still unlikely that Mr Orban, for example, could bring forward one of his lieutenants as a candidate who would be elected president of the European Parliament. We should note that distinction.

Similarly, European observation missions, of which I have tremendous experience, can be powerful tools to spread democratic values throughout the world. While similar organisations in the United Nations, in which I have also served, are much the same on the surface, they are in fact toothless given the nature of their membership. They buckle; they give way; they collapse. They do not put forward the reality of whether an election is free and fair or otherwise. We can offer our huge experience—with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, for example. Once the natural acrimony of separating from the European Union has settled, our nation should be open to and proactively encourage co-operation with all EU bodies in whatever way possible.

Defence, foreign affairs and foreign aid are obvious sectors of co-operation, but we should also strive, as a British foreign policy goal, to continue to expand participation in cultural and education projects such as Erasmus. One would hope that public opinion in this country will shift in favour of the European Union once it is not possible to blame all the ills of national politics on distant Brussels. Internal reconciliation should surely be the goal. We politicians have an important task to perform here, as have our mass media, social media, newspapers and television. In that sense, a first priority of British foreign policy has to be reconciliation with the European Union, while our domestic agenda is to find reconciliation within ourselves. We want the European Union to be within the concert of nations—we want to be there as well—so that the European Union can survive and flourish.

The European Union today faces many challenges and is in deep crisis. Leaving the European Union, we in the United Kingdom should put ourselves in a position to do all we can to limit the damage to this still young and fragile organisation. Our forebears and current colleagues have created so many gifts. These include our greatest strengths—our ethics, honesty, and stability. We have high standards in business, industry and the financial sector, and our tertiary education is second to none. We have high employment; in October this year, 75.6% of those between 16 and 64 were in employment, the highest since records have been kept—compare that with some other EU member states. We are the lucky ones. We have a health service, which serves the rich and poor alike, free at the point of delivery. Can anyone point out to me any other nation where that is true? No, they cannot. We have freedom to worship, within the broad arms of the Anglican communion, and a deep commitment to democracy on the common-law model.

These things do not happen by chance, which is why this debate is so important. Continuous reconciliation, internally and externally, makes this possible. I thank the most reverend Primate for giving us this opportunity.