Foreign Policy

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I too, congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe, on securing this debate, but even more on the wise words with which he introduced it. I would like to mention two themes from his speech. The first, which was music to my ears, was the outbreak which he perceived—he is quite right—of a greater degree of realism about our relationship with the European Union and how it can be immensely helpful in pursuing our national interests in a wider sense. The other theme on which he touched, which is also crucial, was picked up by the noble Lords, Lord Butler, Lord Hannay, Lord Kerr, and others. That was the danger of further reduction of the position and resources of the Foreign Office.

I have had my criticisms of the Foreign Office. Sometimes, it has been rather out of touch and tending to look backwards, but it is by any possible standards a class act, and we would be very foolish to reduce it to the point of ineffectiveness, because we perceive it as being part of a past world. It is not; it is very much part of the modern world.

I turn to the speech of the Foreign Secretary, which is welcome. To be honest, I was rather surprised to welcome it as much as I did. In his extension to a new perception of the way in which the world is moving, he reflects what has often been said to us in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. Let me pick quickly on what I mean. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, pointed out that the procedures under which the economic resources of the West are steadily losing relative strength in comparison to those of Asia and, to a lesser extent, to those of Latin America, and so on, are borne out by the rather frightening figures projected by the G20. They are a probable rate of growth of, at best, 2 per cent in the western world over the next three years; of 12 per cent in China; of 10 per cent in Latin America; and of 9 per cent in India.

Let us be honest, that reflects a steady shift of power and influence in the world with which, as the Foreign Secretary said, we have to come to terms. The first way in which we have to come to terms with it is something that we have been very slow to address. That is that almost all the structures of international governance in the world reflect 1945, not 2010. One example is the failure of the six countries that have attempted to become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to get anywhere in 2004, when they made a collective appeal. They included Germany, Japan, India and other great countries. It was extraordinary that they got nowhere.

The voting powers of the International Monetary Fund are based on the financial commitment made by the countries concerned. That means that Britain has greater voting power on the IMF than India. It means that Italy has greater power on the IMF than Indonesia. It is absurd how our governance of the world reflects a time so long ago. One implication of the Foreign Secretary's speech—in fairness to him, he said that he would now strongly support an extension of the Security Council of the United Nations—was to recognise the world in which we live and to create systems of law and order that reflect that world.

Let me come very quickly to three examples of the implications of that speech by the Foreign Secretary. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that one cannot reflect everything he said, but one can reflect, in immediate terms, on some of the implications. The first was the decision by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference only a month ago to compel the whole of the NPT to recognise the importance of an international conference on the Middle East under the chairmanship of the United Nations Secretary-General. That resolution passed virtually unanimously, with strong support from non-nuclear-armed countries—the NAM.

What does that mean for us? We heard an excellent speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, about the growing links between this country and its Arab friends and neighbours, in particular, for example, the new relationship with the United Arab Emirates and the strengthening of some of our links with the Arab world. The implications of that are tremendously serious because they say that when that Middle East conference comes to be, the United Kingdom will need to understand and reflect the genuine concerns and interests of the Arab powers with regard to, for example, the state of Palestine, the future relationship of the Palestinian peoples and even such matters as Israel’s silence on nuclear ownership and nuclear control.

My second example was brought to our attention only recently, and it was a bad example. It is the western dismissal of the attempt by Turkey and Brazil—two of the leading non-nuclear countries—to try to do something about Iranian proposals for refining nuclear materials. Instead of taking it seriously and suggesting that a further negotiation might bring about a real move by Iran towards putting most of her low-enriched uranium into safe situations, the West simply dismissed it, as if it were somehow an inappropriate intervention by those two great countries. That was deeply unwise and, to reflect where we are with the Foreign Secretary’s remarks, not least about Turkey, we must start taking those countries seriously and show that we doing so. That does not mean accepting everything they say, but it means looking with great attention and care at what they propose.

My final example of this sort of situation is common to us all. It is the situation in Kashmir, Afghanistan and so on. I am not an authority, and I will not pretend to be one, but I think that increasingly the implications of the Foreign Secretary’s speech are that we have to bring the neighbours into some of the most difficult conflict situations in the world. I have already talked about the Middle East and about Palestine, and the same implications go for Afghanistan and for other central objects of conflict that are unresolved. We cannot any longer keep interested and concerned neighbours out. We have to start bringing them in, and for that purpose, we need a highly informed Foreign Office.