Global Britain and the International Rules-based Order

Bob Seely Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the Government’s aspiration to ensure the UK retains its influence and status as it prepares for departure from the EU; notes that for Global Britain to be more than a worthy aspiration the slogan must be backed by substance; further notes the threats to the international rules-based order posed, in particular, by the aggressive stance of the Russian Government; and therefore calls on the Government to publish by 31 October 2018 its assessment of the threats posed by Russia and other hostile states to the international rules-based order, and the Government’s strategy and resources for countering those threats.

It is a pleasure to rise to speak on this motion, which stands not only in my name but in the names of every other member of the Committee that I am privileged to chair. I am particularly privileged because we have such a wide range of views and yet such a harmonious existence; that is naturally down to their skill as politicians rather than mine as their convener. I am grateful they have kindly agreed to allow me to speak on this motion today.

We are here to talk about global Britain, and that is because—as the Clerk who will be expertly advising you throughout this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, will be able to tell you, having been such an expert Clerk of my Committee beforehand—the debate is about how Britain resets its relationships as we move away from the structures that have kept us propped up according to some, or stable according to others, for the past 40 or 50 years. The argument for this country is really about how we set ourselves in this new, turbulent world. The Committee has asked the Foreign Office that question and we have, I am afraid, been extremely disappointed by the answer; we have found a headline and a slogan, but that is largely it.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I should like to echo my hon. Friend’s thoughts. With the best will in the world, and despite the fact that the Foreign Office is full of remarkably intelligent people and very good Ministers, there seems to be a great paucity of thought on what global Britain will actually consist of post Brexit. It will be different from now.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am grateful to my fellow Committee member for making that point; he is absolutely right. That is exactly why we have called this debate. We want to explore the depths of this question and to challenge and push the Government. It is no accident that the motion calls on the Government to publish their assessment. We want to ensure that the House has the ability to exercise power over the Executive and call on them to deliver what we ask for. In this case that is an assessment, and I will say more about that in a moment.

Let me touch on a few of the areas where we have found answers to be lacking. The former permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Simon Fraser, told the Committee that there was a lot of “mushy thinking”, and Lord Owen, the former Foreign Secretary, has bemoaned the lack of consistency in what the Government are saying on the subject. He also said, in words that are now somewhat historical but that speak to the truth, that if he listened to the radio and heard the Foreign Secretary saying something that the Prime Minister would then contradict, he wanted to throw something at his radio. I think his radio has been saved by a recent change in appointments, and let us hope that the situation will be improved by some co-ordination. I hope that the Foreign Office will manifest the same change through improvements in its thinking.

The question of a global Britain is a wide one, and we have produced a series of reports to cover it. In our first chapter, we look at what the Government will do differently and how they will change their approach. A lot of that is to do with the reality of bilateralism in Europe and how Britain will work when we are no longer working through the structure of the European Council, Commission and Parliament. For example, we will have to increase the number of our diplomats around Europe who speak Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish and other languages. The bilateral missions will do the range of jobs that bilateral missions would otherwise normally do, but for various reasons have not needed to because the European Union has been our focus. We have looked into that question, but as yet we have not found the detail we would like to see. We have heard talk of money, true, and we have heard talk of languages, which again is good, but we have not heard talk of strategy, co-ordination or delivery.

We need to be clear-eyed here. We need an assessment of our place in the world, and we need to be clear-eyed about what we are going to do to maximise our position in the future. That involves understanding who we are and what we want. We have a real choice: either we choose to shape events or we will be shaped by them. Over many centuries, the people of the United Kingdom have got into the habit of being actors in this world, rather than being acted upon by it. I would like that to continue, but it will require co-ordination.

We have seen what happens without such co-ordination. We have seen the lack of co-ordination in some areas of eastern Europe as well as the expansion of Russian influence and the spread of corruption. We have seen the physical reality of that in the energy markets, with the Russian Government deliberately salami-slicing those markets in order to salami-slice alliances. That is why I have spoken out so strongly against the Nord Stream 2 project. But there is more: we have seen that happening there, but we are also seeing it happening in other parts of the world, as well as in our own alliance of NATO. In NATO, however, it is different. The truth is that NATO has not spent nearly enough on its own defence. Indeed, if every nation were to achieve the 2% target, rather than just a few, we would be talking about another $100 billion or so being made available for the defence of Europe. The fact that some nations are not willing to carry the burden of their own responsibility shames us all, because it weakens us all, so when we talk about global Britain we must be clear that we are actually talking about Britain in a network of alliances.

If I may, I would like to mention the late Senator John McCain. He was a friend to many in this House, and I see one of his good friends sitting here, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon). Senator McCain spoke out passionately for the transatlantic relationship because he fundamentally understood that the sovereignty of nations is not diminished by alliance but enhanced by it and that the freedoms of individuals are not hampered by co-operation but increased by it. That is the message that we must carry forward, and that is why I have been urging NATO to name its new headquarters after the late Senator. There would be no greater tribute to a great friend of the United Kingdom and Europe. I hope that we will see that change.

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[Mike Gapes]

But I do want to say a few words about Russia. Given the challenges to the global international order that we face and the direct challenges to our country as a result of the criminal murder in our country by the Russian state, this is the worst possible time for our country to be leaving the European Union. We need partners, allies and international co-operation. I asked the Prime Minister about this yesterday and she confirmed how important it is that we continue to have security and defence co-operation with our EU neighbours and friends. That is not guaranteed if we get the no-deal situation and we have no agreement—I will leave that there.

What is also clear is that we need to be serious about not only the crimes in Salisbury, but the 14 other suspicious deaths linked to Russia that have occurred in recent years. There has been a remarkable development this week, with the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs being written to by the Home Secretary in a letter that said:

“I can now formally confirm that the Government’s assurance work around the 14 cases is complete. The Police have confirmed that there is no basis on which to re-open any of the investigations. Clearly, should any new information become available, then the relevant police force will continue to monitor this position and take additional action as necessary”

That letter was written on 23 August. In the light of what we now know and the Prime Minister’s comprehensive and detailed statement yesterday, I call on the Government to revisit this issue, because there have been other murders and other deaths of Russian exiles in this country, over several years. I am not convinced and satisfied that they are not linked to the way the Russian state carried out an attack in our country in Salisbury this year. I therefore ask the Home Office to look again at that issue.

While we are talking about Russia, I wish to say something to my party and to my Front-Bench colleagues. In March, the spokesman for the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Seumas Milne, was quoted as saying to journalists that

“the government has access to information and intelligence on this matter which others don’t; however, also there’s a history in relation to WMD and intelligence which is problematic to put it mildly.”

When pressed on whether he thought that Russia was being framed for the events in Salisbury, he then said that

“if the material was from the Soviet period, the break-up of the Soviet state led to all sorts of military material ending up in random hands.”

Frankly, he was implying that the Russian state was not responsible. In the light of what we now know, we need an unequivocal, unambiguous, clear statement.

In my opinion, Mr Seumas Milne has been dissembling and attempting to divert attention from the real cause and the real culprits: the Putin regime in Moscow. Perhaps that should not come as any surprise, because this is the man who hosted President Putin at the Valdai forum in Sochi. This is the man who said in The Guardian on 4 March 2015, under the headline “The demonisation of Russia risks paving the way for war”, that the events in Ukraine were justifiable from the Russian perspective. He wrote:

“Russian covert military support for the rebels, on the other hand, is denounced as aggression and ‘hybrid warfare’”.

He criticised the fact that Putin was portrayed in the west as a “reckless land-grabber”, and he criticised attempts to challenge this as “interventionism and even neoconservatism”.

Frankly, all that goes against the whole basis of the historic Labour tradition of standing up to the aggression that came from the Soviet Union in the cold war period, our establishment of NATO under Clem Attlee’s Government, and the consistent support for our values and for the defence of our society by successive Labour Governments. I believe very strongly that the Labour party would be in a much better place, and that we would have much greater clarity on foreign affairs matters, if we had people working for our party leadership who actually believed in those Labour values.

[Mr Seely]

I am interested in the fact that the hon. Gentleman quoted from that 2015 article. Is he aware that Seumas Milne wrote at least four articles in 2014 and 2015 that are highly instrumental and manipulative in their device? They all have a very similar message: “You may not like Russia, we all hate the United States, Ukraine is Nazi, but one thing we can all agree on is this central argument about the need for autonomy and federalisation.” That was exactly Russia’s political aim at the time. At best, he is a useful idiot, and at worst, he is something much worse.

[Mike Gapes]

I do not wish to go any further down that route, because I am getting signals from Mr Deputy Speaker about time. The hon. Gentleman can no doubt make his own speech when the time comes.

I want to conclude by focusing on one other area, which is what the United States Administration are doing to the global order. The Chairman of the Select Committee made reference to Senator John McCain. The suggestion has been made that the new NATO headquarters should be named after the senator. I met him when I was previously on the Foreign Affairs Committee and we were always given the greatest courtesy. He took us on a tour to the Statuary Hall to have an informal chat with him as well as a formal meeting. He was an outstanding internationalist—one did not have to agree with him on everything, but he was always polite, friendly, warm, interesting and engaged. What a tragedy it is today that the President of the United States and some of those around him are the opposite of that. They are challenging the international order, which the United States and the Labour Government established in 1945, with Eleanor Roosevelt playing an important role in the United Nations system and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In those days, we had co-operation to build a new peaceful world. Unfortunately, the demagogues, the populists, and the extremists—on the far left and the far right—are undermining that order. It is under serious threat and serious challenge and we in this country and we in my party must fight to defend it.

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[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is a genuine privilege to follow the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), who spoke very eloquently; it was a pleasure to listen to him. I thank the Minister for being here to listen to us. Not every Minister is impressive, but this one undoubtedly is.

It is a privilege to be here with representatives of the two Canadian units and the Australian unit in the Gallery. My great-great-uncle was the last member of my family to represent my seat, the Isle of Wight, which I have the huge privilege to represent. He served in world war one with the Canadian Cavalry. In fact, he led the Canadian Cavalry Brigade in world war one, and at Vimy Ridge, which was remembered in France earlier this year, it was the Canadian Cavalry charge that halted the German advance and saved the splitting of the allied forces and possibly the war in March 1918. He was very proud of his service with the Canadian Cavalry. He was a Brit from the Isle of Wight, but he was associated with the brigade. It is a pleasure for me to be here with them.

I would like to talk briefly about two things. First, I shall ask, what is global Britain? Secondly, I shall make some points about the international order that relate to China, Iran and Russia. I do not wish to be too critical of the Minister, for whom I have high regard. Global Britain is a great phrase, but we really need to fill it out. I have some questions about it. What are we prioritising? Every time our Foreign Affairs Committee says, “What are you prioritising?” the answer is, “Everything.” Correct me if I am wrong, but the FCO does not have unlimited resources. Global Britain is about more than just opening half a dozen extra posts in Papua New Guinea. It has to amount to something. Is the priority trade? Is it aid? Is it security?

For the past 15 years, we have had a foreign policy that has been somewhat gesture politics, and much more in the world besides. In the past five years, foreign affairs, threats to Britain and our role in the world have become much more serious, urgent and pressing questions. There is a strong argument that our priority has to be trade and then security and aid. That is not to underestimate the importance of aid, but it is to say that we have vital national interests that we have to try to meet.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on trade out of poverty. Does my hon. Friend agree that trade, aid and global security are three legs of the same stool and that success in those three can be mutually reinforcing?

[Mr Seely]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. My answer is that they can be, but not necessarily; it is dependent on how the money is spent. I will come to that a bit later. They are not separate—that is certainly true—but it is how we deal with them as a whole that is the issue.

The next question is, what role is there for the Anglosphere? We talk about deepening relationships with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. What does that mean in practice? Is there a role for a global NATO and a NATO that looks at not only physical force but threats to democracy from cyber-attacks and other organisations and criminal and state actors?

What should the structure of the FCO be after Brexit? I am quite a fan of the argument that the FCO should be a super-Ministry, with oversight and a stronger role in leading—[Interruption.] I am glad that the Minister has just signed up to that. With the Department for International Trade, the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s office, there are so many bits of government that are now involved in foreign affairs. We want coherence.

Above all, the critical thing we need to learn is how we integrate government better, not only here but at home, to deliver efficiently. I do not like Russia’s hybrid war, but it is an incredibly efficient use of power. I am not saying that that is our model, but efficiency and integration are important.

We need to rebalance our overseas spending. I do not believe that how the 0.7% is spent should be dictated by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We should dictate how we spend that money. There is an argument to suggest that the BBC, which is part of the broader aid budget, should be entirely funded through DFID, as should all peacekeeping operations, which are fundamental elements of aid.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for intruding just for a moment. Does he agree that the establishment of truth and facts is one of the fundamentals in building fair societies and therefore that the BBC’s role is not simply informative, but fundamental to the democratic survival of our partners and allies?

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[Mr Seely]

Yes. One of the points I am coming to later—I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning it—is that we are at the moment in a global struggle with authoritarian states that wish to use cyber but also open societies to undermine those open societies and the freedoms that we have. Therefore, to see the BBC—the World Service, radio and TV—endlessly begging for money is, again, a luxury that we cannot afford. I believe that we should rebalance overseas spending, respecting aid, but redefining how that is done.

Do we have a grand strategy, or is grand strategy a thing of the past? It very much feels that we are simply muddling through with a foreign policy. We have stumbled into Brexit. I voted for Brexit, but we have stumbled into it. The European Union has treated this like the mother of all vicious divorces, while we have treated it as a flat-share partnership in which we are going our separate ways. I think that if we stumble into a global Brexit, it will not be particularly helpful to our future.

Those are just some of the questions. I will also be thinking about these themes, and writing about them, as I have today on ConservativeHome. I know that the Foreign Office and other parts of our Government are very focused on Brexit—in fact, politically, our political classes are obsessed by it to the diminishment of the domestic agenda, which I think is extremely serious in its own right—but more thinking on global Britain would not go amiss.

To come on to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the international order is under threat.

[The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)]

rose—

[Mr Seely]

Does the Minister want me to give way, or is he getting a glass of water?

[Alistair Burt]

I am getting a glass of water.

[Mr Seely]

I am so sorry, but one never knows.

[Alistair Burt]

Don’t worry, you’ll know when I want you to give way. [Laughter.]

[Mr Seely]

The Minister was waving earlier, and I thought he was just being friendly and agreeing with me, as ever.

The international order is not being helped by President Trump, whose actions are deeply rash and foolish. However, the main structural threat to the international order comes from authoritarian states that are trying to break down the current system. As I have said, one of the key battles we face is how we will protect the future of open and free societies against states that want to undermine them. China is doing it gently, while Russia and Iran are doing so much more aggressively.

Although China is being more subtle, its aims are somewhat the same. It does not have Russia’s little green men, but it has little blue men pushing the maritime boundaries. It has claims in the South China sea, it has tried to change the law of the seas and it is building artificial islands. It is offering loans to Vanuatu and other Pacific states, and it is building up an unhealthy degree of influence in New Zealand and Australian politics, some of it corrupt. Against that, we need global as well as Atlantic and European alliances. That leads me to raise this question: NATO—the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation—has been a force for good in our area, but does it need to be extended to have a global front?

The international order is not perfect, but it is worth defending, but one of the things that is changing and making it more difficult for the international order to work is the nature of warfare. Conventional warfare is becoming rare and forms of non-conventional warfare are becoming much more common. Indeed, one of my roles when I was serving in the military was to understand these new forms of unconventional war. This has put significant pressure on the norms of war. For example, in Syria, the Syrian war—now in its seventh year—is arguably the first in history in which hospitals and medical facilities are the primary and, indeed, the priority targets for the Syrian regime backed by the Russians. Yesterday, we talked a great deal in this House about bringing to justice people in Myanmar, but there is an embarrassing degree of silence in the western world about naming Russian regiments and Russian planes that are dropping bombs on hospitals.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Does my hon. Friend hope, as I do, that the International Criminal Court will eventually indict those responsible for what are, in effect, war crimes happening in Syria?

[Mr Seely]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, but there is no “in effect” about it. The words “war crime” are bandied about quite often, but dropping a bomb on a hospital—is it in chapter 35 of book 4 of the Geneva conventions?—is absolutely specifically forbidden. There can be no other interpretation, yet for the past year and a half it has become one of the key de facto means of war in Syria.

Let me now turn briefly to Russia because I want to suggest some ideas to the Minister. Since March, the Government have been sensible and robust in the measures they have taken, but I believe it might be useful for them to consider some additional ideas, which I have outlined in an article today, when dealing primarily with the Russian threat but also more generally with the subversive threat to the United Kingdom. First, we need to systematically expose what the Kremlin is doing, not on an ad hoc basis through the Foreign Affairs Committee or other Committees, but by setting up a small, permanent, multi-agency group whose role is to understand and expose those subversive activities.

In the 1970s and ’80s the United States had such a group. It was called the Active Measures Working Group and was reckoned to be extremely successful in investigating and exposing Russian—then Soviet—subversive activities. Such subversive activities were called “active measures” in those days, but they meant assassinations, propaganda, smears, blackmail and all those other forms of spy warfare, with occasional support for terrorist groups and so on. I believe we need such a group now. It does not have to be big, and it could be seconded from other Departments, but I believe we need something more than what is done on an ad hoc basis.

Secondly, we need to introduce a list of PR agents, reputation management firms and others who work as agents for Russian influence in the UK, either directly or via proxies or third parties. Thirdly, we must consider laws that introduce a health warning on broadcasters. A counter-propaganda Bill is currently going through Congress to do just that, and we should consider the same thing. Fourthly, as I have mentioned, we need properly to fund World Service TV and radio, and specifically the Russian service.

Fifthly, we need to look at our visa regime, which I know my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee are extremely concerned about. For Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other states from the former Soviet bloc, we make it very easy for oligarchs—basically kleptocrats—to come here, but very difficult for ordinary people. I believe we should make it much easier for ordinary Ruskies, and ordinary Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis and Kazakhstanis to come here if we judge them to be decent to do so, and much more difficult for the people who have stolen their money in the first place. We need to flip the system around.

Sixthly, the FCO needs to be more active in seeing Russian influence in the round. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) made, expertly as ever, a point about Nord Stream 2, which is not just a commercial venture; it is a critical piece of geopolitics that will affect Europe for years to come. We should have been much more active.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is making a key point about that pipeline, but it is not just about that. When we see one of our important European partners invite a dictator to the wedding of the Foreign Minister, and we see them dancing together as though that dictator were some sort of champion of freedom and a partner of choice, and then at the end of the dance we see the Foreign Minister—the Foreign Minister of a NATO power and a European partner—curtsey to a murderous dictator, we must ask ourselves what is happening in our neighbourhood under our watch.

[Mr Seely]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Our glorious Prime Minister might not be as good a dancer as Putin, but I would rather have her as our leader.

Seventhly, we should give Ofcom greater powers. The Latvian Government regularly highlight the negative content of Russian broadcasters based in London that spew propaganda into the Baltics. I do not believe that we should close such people down, or Russia Today or Sputnik, which churn out a regular diet of anti-western nonsense. However, we need to strengthen fines and rights of reply and ensure that Ofcom investigates those potential offences more quickly. Eighthly, we need to use financial and legal powers to hurt those people around Putin. I have talked to the Minister for Security, and I am aware that things are in the pipeline and happening, so watch this space.

Ninthly, we need to look at conventional deterrence. Russia’s political and financial dealings with the west are part of a multi-faceted strategy. We need to relearn the art of deterrence for both conventional weaponry and non-conventional conflict. It is better to be robust now than to encourage the sort of adventurism that we are now seeing—perhaps we should have been robust 10 years ago.

Tenthly, we need to understand the threat to our electoral system posed by cyber-infiltration and fake news. We have seen how divisive disputed elections can be in the United States. There is little doubt that the Russians had an extremely sophisticated operation, going back to 2014, to begin the process of manipulation, by using cyber-means to break into state boards of election, by backing people around Trump, by attacking Hillary Clinton and by understanding the Democrats’ strategy by stealing the information from their servers. That was not just a case of embarrassing the Clinton campaign; it was more sophisticated and far more malign.

Indeed, we have cyber-attacks and cyber-problems here. I should declare that I wrote a definition of Russian warfare for the Henry Jackson Society, which has about 440 brute force attacks on its website per month, many of them coming from Russian IP addresses. There are regular Russian attacks on Dr Andrew Foxall, its excellent Russia expert. We are seeing these attacks, probably from Russia, perhaps from other more sophisticated state actors, on think-tanks in the United Kingdom. As well as myself, the Henry Jackson Society has hosted, rather more importantly for Mr Putin, Bill Browder and the wonderful Marina Litvinenko. We should be wary of what the Russians and others are doing here and elsewhere. It is a global problem. In the new kind of political conflict we are facing from authoritarian states, hackers, assassins and trolls, as well as market manipulators and criminals, are perhaps more useful than conventional forms of warfare.

I will leave it there, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise if I have spoken for too long, but I would appreciate the Minister’s thoughts on both global Britain and some of those suggestions.

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[Julia Lopez]

Yes. I do not want this to descend into a Brexit debate. I was a floating voter during the referendum. I very much hope that having voted to leave the European Union, we are not seen as having an isolationist instinct, because my hon. Friend is right—we share a great number of values, and those relationships will be extremely important as we go forward in an increasingly uncertain world.

[Mr Seely]

As well as being European values, does my hon. Friend not agree that they are global values?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point. The point I was making is that although we might assume that these are universal global values, we have seen in recent years that we cannot assume their universality. That is why we, as a nation, need to stand for something in the world. There is a debate to be had about those values, and it is important that the UK has a strong independent voice in that debate.

The challenge for us as politicians is to give those whom we represent both a sense of security and priority and a clear understanding that our engagement with the rest of the world has practical relevance to their lives. To echo what others have said today, though, if we do not act in the world, we will be acted upon. With that challenge in mind, I want briefly to share some thoughts on how we might begin this new journey.

First, I echo the view that my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling has expressed on a number of occasions: we want to see a much more prominent role given to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as we leave the EU. If we are to make the most of this period of momentous change, we require intense, sustained relationship building at all levels, and a strong narrative about our direction of travel.

The Department for International Development became an independent Department in 1997, as a key component of new Labour’s self-proclaimed ethical foreign policy. Overseas aid moneys previously distributed from the Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office budgets were centralised, leaving less financial autonomy for both those major Departments of State.

With the aid budget now ring-fenced by law, in recent years we have seen DFID rushing to spend its budget before year-end on projects that have undermined the otherwise strong case for its broader work on disease prevention, disaster relief and security. Meanwhile, the FCO has struggled to sustain its existing network of operations, so while the FCO may have the grand trappings and the historical clout, it can at times feel rather hollow when it is DFID that has the cash. Brexit should provide us with the perfect opportunity to refocus our outward-facing Departments and infuse our international work with strategic intent.

[Julia Lopez]

Certainly. The problem with the debate on aid is that it is so often perceived as a DFID-bashing exercise, and that is not what I intend my comments to be. They are a statement that, actually, the Foreign Office needs to take a strong leadership role so that DFID money is not frittered away on projects that have no strategic value to what we are trying to achieve in the world.

[Mr Seely]

I am sorry to intervene again, but there is an important point here. We all complain about DFID, but the fact is that, as far as aid agencies go, DFID spends its money about as well as it can. There is a stronger argument to suggest that the £2 billion of public money spent by other Departments—including, sadly, the FCO and the Home Office—is potentially not as well spent. That is a separate argument about the overall balance in overseas spending.

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[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Affairs Committee for initiating this vital and timely debate, and I thank all Members who have contributed to it this afternoon. I will say more about those contributions in a moment, but at the outset, I believe that this is an apt debate in which to pay tribute to the great Kofi Annan, who sadly passed away three weeks ago. I was looking back at a speech that he made to this Parliament in 2007 to mark 200 years since the abolition of the British slave trade. What he said that day resonates just as strongly now. He talked about the men and women who fought to abolish the slave trade, saying that they

“represented a moral truth…a moral passion that must at first have seemed utterly impracticable. Yet by persistence, by resolve, by eloquence, and by imagination, they changed history. They showed that moral suasion could prevail over narrow self-interest.”

For me, this entire debate today boils down to that same basic challenge. When we talk about global Britain, do we just mean aggressively pursuing our economic self-interest around the world in the shape of trade deals? Or do we believe in a Britain that acts as a global force for moral truth, moral passion and moral suasion and that seeks to change the world in which we live? We only have one planet.

When we talk of a rules-based international order, do we mean that those rules should be applied equally, consistently and with the same moral force to all countries, whether friend or foe, or do we decide in practice that there is one set of rules that we rightly apply with great vigour when it comes to countries such as Russia, Syria, Libya, Venezuela or Iran but another that we apply to America, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel or China? That is the crux of today’s debate and why I have been so interested to hear speeches from both sides of the House. I applaud the many excellent contributions about Russia and the crimes committed by agents of the Russian state on our soil.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) rightly challenged the Government about suspicious deaths of Russians that have happened in the UK over the past few years, and he called again for those investigations to be reconsidered. He is right that the evidence is clear that there is no doubt of the culpability of the Russian state in the Salisbury poisonings. We also heard a condemnation of Russia from the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and he was quite right to do so. I was particularly interested to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely), who is creative and used lateral thinking in his contribution, which was of great value. I did not necessarily agree with all of it, but it is important to have people with an independence of thought who can help to inform not just the Government’s thinking but, frankly, that of the Opposition.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) is right to say that, given that we continue to recklessly warm up our planet, it only has any chance if we work together with internationally recognised rules. At a time when the very rules that we have been abiding by until now seem to be being undermined, we must also face the challenge of having to develop new rules in order to maintain the planet on which we all live. I was very impressed by the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez)—I hope that this is not a blight on her career—and her extremely thoughtful speech. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) said many things that we agree with, particularly about the importance of a change of policy on Yemen and the importance of us having a proactive role with regard to the Rohingya.

All the speeches were timely, not just because of yesterday’s revelations, but due to several other factors that we must discuss today. We are living through a period in which the world order and the international rules that are supposed to underpin it are under greater threat than at any time since the 1930s. In every instance, the problems that we face come down to countries simply ignoring the rules that should govern our world. From Venezuela and the Philippines to Turkey and Egypt, we see the rule of law ignored. What were once democratically elected Governments have turned into autocratic regimes. From Yemen and Myanmar to Cameroon and South Sudan, we see the indiscriminate killing of civilians in flagrant breach of international humanitarian law. From the battlefields of Syria to the streets of Wiltshire, we see the convention on chemical weapons brazenly ignored and innocent victims injured and killed.

In North Korea, despite Donald Trump’s efforts, and in Iran, because of Donald Trump’s efforts, we see the threat of hostile states becoming nuclear states in breach of the non-proliferation treaties. In Russia, Israel and the United States, we see three leaders behaving as if none of the normal laws applies to them and actively trying to undermine the institutions that uphold them. Faced with such challenges, it is incumbent on us all to stand up for the world order, to stand up for human rights and international treaties, and to insist on working for peace through the United Nations. We cannot do that if the concept of global Britain, if our entire foreign policy approach, is not driven by values, ethics, rules and principles but is a simple case of what works best for our balance sheet.

For example, on 7 June 2018 The Guardian ran a special feature on the brutal campaign of violence by the regime of Cameroon’s President Biya against English-speaking communities in the west of the country, which was formerly known as British Cameroon. We owe those communities a historical responsibility. The Guardian quoted the ordinary men and women who saw their villages attacked by Biya’s military, who saw their neighbours and family members killed and who were forced to flee for their lives. It quoted the charity workers who are looking after thousands of displaced women and children, for whom they warned that going home would be suicide.

By any normal moral standard, the UK Government would be expected to be appalled by those reports, but not this Government. The very next day after that report was published the British Secretary of State for International Trade announced a £1.5 billion deal with a British natural gas company and President Biya’s regime, a deal which, in the words of the Department for International Trade’s press release, will generate a “huge revenue stream” for Cameroon’s public treasury. Cameroon’s regime is ranked as the 25th most corrupt in the world. Its ruler, in his 43rd year of autocratic power and with personal wealth of more than $200 million, is engaged in a systematic campaign of brutality and killings against the English-speaking community in his country, and all the UK Government can do is boast of doing trade deals that will only enrich him further. That is what this Government mean by global Britain.

Under the previous Foreign Secretary we saw the same approach over and again, where the sole consideration on every foreign policy issue was how to help British businesses make a quick buck. We saw that in Libya with his horrific talk of British developers turning the country into a paradise of beach resorts just as soon as they could clear away the dead bodies of the Libyans who died fighting Daesh. We saw it again in Yemen, where there was literally nothing Saudi Arabia could do—not using starvation as a weapon of war; not cutting off supplies of food, clean water and medicine; not bombing farms, schools and hospitals; and not killing thousands of innocent men, women and children—that would persuade the former Foreign Secretary even to suspend the supply of arms for use in that conflict, pending a proper war crimes investigation.

We saw it in Myanmar with the Rohingya, where the former Foreign Secretary toured the killing fields of Rakhine state and called out what he saw as industrial ethnic cleansing, but he refused to take the next logical step of asking the UN Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court. The Government were afraid of upsetting China and jeopardising future trade deals.

[Mr Seely]

The shadow Minister makes an interesting and valid point about moral equality. I accept that, but it is slightly concerning that your side of the House tends to focus on Yemen a great deal.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The right hon. Lady’s side.

[Mr Seely]

I apologise. The right hon. Lady’s side of the House focuses on Yemen a great deal. Does she understand the difference between the Saudis doing something badly and the Syrians, with their Russian support, bombing hospitals as a deliberate policy? There is a moral intent, which is different. One may criticise the Saudis for being sloppy and not valuing human life enough, but there is a difference.

[Emily Thornberry]

Dead is dead. Whether a person has been killed because those with the bombs have been behaving recklessly or doing it intentionally, they are still dead, and it is still in breach of international humanitarian law to do either. I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but we should strive to apply international law to countries equally. The idea of balancing one above the other is a slippery road.

In the end, the rule of law is one whereby we treat everyone equally before the law. If people have breached international law, they have breached international law and they should be held to account for that. That is my view and indeed it is our policy.

I was talking about Myanmar and the Rohingya, but then I wanted to move on to talk about Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Honduras and Sudan. The list goes on and on, and always with the same common factor: under the former Foreign Secretary, if there was a trade deal to be done, any concern for human rights and international rules would go out of the window. Above all, we saw it in his consistent policy, and that of the Prime Minister, towards Donald Trump: every abuse of human rights has been tolerated; every effort to destroy international treaties has been indulged; every attack on the UN has been pampered; and every mild criticism of him by this Government has had to be forced out of them, usually after 48 hours. Whatever Trump has done, this Government’s hand has remained outstretched, all in the hope of some mythical free trade deal to solve the almighty mess they are making of Brexit.

Even though the new Foreign Secretary has not taken part in today’s debate, I genuinely hope he will usher in a change of approach from that of his predecessor. The test will be whether he can show, through his actions rather than his words, that “global Britain” is about more than trade and that it is also about morality, values and principles. If we want to have a world order based on international rules, we must apply the same rules not just to Russia, but equally to every country, whether or not we have military alliances with them, whether or not we trade with them and whether or not Donald Trump wants us to. That is the only way we can restore what Kofi Annan called for, which was “moral truth”, “moral passion” and “moral persuasion”, to our country’s foreign policy. If this Government cannot do that, it is about time they made way for a Government who will.