Strategic Defence and Security Review

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, I rise as the fourth noble Baroness to speak in the debate tonight, which is sad when you look at the UNICEF figures which show that women and children suffer disproportionately in conflict and form the highest proportion of casualties. I am sad that so few of the sisterhood are here.

I add my tribute to our Armed Forces as the weekend of remembrance begins. I never cease to be grateful for the great life that I was given as a result of their sacrifice during the Second World War and since. Their worth was also brought home to me when I was spokesperson for international development in the other place and often went into conflict or post-conflict areas. The efficiency of our Armed Forces was praised in places as different as Kosovo and Sierra Leone—both of those places benefiting from our troops’ ability to wage peace after conflict as well as to wage war.

I was therefore instantly attracted, as was my noble friend Lord Chidgey, to sections in the review that discussed diverting development aid to fragile states to try to prevent conflict—a noble aim. I well remember getting into big trouble—not the only time—when after the horror of the attack on the World Trade Centre I called for food and aid, instead of bombs, to be dropped on Afghanistan. I had been receiving reports of the terrible famine raging in that country and could not see how bombing would catch Osama bin Laden or win over the people of Afghanistan.

I still think I was right on that occasion. We were very slow to start to improve the lives of the people of Afghanistan, which is only now just beginning to happen. Poverty causes conflict, which causes more poverty, which leads to more conflict. It is a common pattern that we see all over the world. So I welcome the emphasis on aid to fragile states and the announcement that it will be donated according to the OECD guidelines for aid drawn up in 2005. However, I note that under the previous Government DfID scaled up its aid to fragile states and more than doubled its support over the past five years, spending £1 billion, or 46 per cent, of its bilateral expenditure in 2007-08, and in 2009-10 spending 61 per cent, or £1.6 billion, of country-specific bilateral assistance in the fragile states. So excuse me for asking the Minister why it is now trumpeted that DfID will spend 30 per cent of ODA to support fragile states in conflict areas. We need some clarification; what is new here? What worries me is that DfID’s core mandate of development and poverty reduction will lose out and a large proportion of ODA will be diverted to security and defence.

Poverty, climate change and population growth all combine to cause conflict and migration as land and food resources get less and less. ODA must continue to be used for education, health and especially maternal health and family planning, which will increase the country’s prosperity and reduce the number of people that have to be fed. Assistance must not be used for military purposes, and I hope that we can get assurance on that.

Prevention of conflict also means that we must start being honest about international law and UN resolutions. It is a disgrace to us all that problems such as Kashmir and Palestine are still alienating Muslims all over the world. The treatment of Palestinians by Israel is held up as an example of how the West treats Muslims and is at the root cause of terrorism worldwide. Even Tony Blair has now admitted this publicly. Why do we let it continue? Is it Holocaust guilt? We should be guilty—of course we should. Is it the power of the pro-Israel lobby here and in the USA? I do not know. Or is it the need, maybe, to have an aircraft carrier called Israel in the Middle East from which to launch attacks on countries such as Iran? The cynic might think that that is why HMS “Ark Royal” and the Harriers can be dispensed with—we already have a static “Ark Royal” in a strategic position, armed to the teeth and ready to fight, provided that we do not offend Israel. I feel sorry for the people of Israel sometimes. Their Government’s policies have made that country the cause of a lot of the world’s problems, yet now they are seen in the middle as the remedy and the base for the West to fight back.

If we were serious about conflict prevention as talked about in the review, we must start taking action to stop Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians and to ensure that it and other countries obey international law and the Geneva conventions and respect human rights. That is the only way we shall get world order, and that would be really something—real conflict prevention.