Britain in the World

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I will address each of those challenges in turn, but before I do so I will take an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron).

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for giving way; he is being very generous. Given the extent of the refugee crisis that has been unfolding in Lebanon and Jordan since Parliament last met, does he accept that we need to continue as a country, together with others, to properly support those countries when dealing with refugees, because under-resourced and ill-run refugee camps can become a breeding ground for extremists?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I entirely agree with him. The Department for International Development has a very large programme. In fact, it is our largest ever single programme of support in a humanitarian crisis. We are the second largest donor to the Syria-Jordan-Lebanon area, and we will continue to support refugees and displaced persons, and the Governments in the region, as they struggle with the consequences of what is going on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I love you too, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) on her excellent maiden speech, and other hon. Members on the excellent speeches we have heard in the House today. It is a real pleasure to participate in this debate. Many subjects have been covered, but to meet the three-and-a-half minute deadline I have been set, I wish to raise an issue that so far has not been covered—the loss of expertise within our foreign policy-making process because of successive budget cuts under different Governments.

That issue is perhaps best illustrated by our recent military interventions. There can be no doubt that we went to war in Iraq on a false premise, and that in Afghanistan post-2006 we allowed ourselves to lose sight of the bigger picture and let the mission morph from one initially of combating al-Qaeda, which we did successfully, to one of nation building, which caused problems and which we under-resourced. Then there was Libya, which has turned into absolute chaos and civil war.

Such interventions have ushered in a host of unintended consequences with which we are still contending, but I suggest that they have also distracted us from the greater threat to Britain’s security both at home and abroad—potentially hostile nation states that are not just rearming, but reasserting force. Russia and China particularly come to mind. As an ex-soldier, I am not saying that military interventions are never warranted. There have been successful and appropriate interventions—the first Gulf war, Afghanistan in 2001, Sierra Leone and the Falklands—but our most recent interventions seem to suggest we are incorrectly assessing when and how best to use the military instrument. To counter this, we need greater investment in our policy-making process. It is important that our policy makers have the resources.

[Mr Baker]

Does my hon. Friend agree that even when our armed forces perform superbly, as in Libya, the politics can still fail afterwards?

[Mr Baron]

I agree. This is not the fault of soldiers on the front line; it is, in many respects, the fault of the military, diplomatic and political leadership.

We need to fund better our Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the policy-making process generally. Continual budget cuts have resulted in a hollowing out of staff with specialist regional knowledge, specialist expertise and language capability. That has eroded our ability to understand what is happening on the ground, and it must be put right. Our unconvincing response to recent Russian aggression and the Arab spring is not unconnected to the fact that we had no Crimea experts in the FCO at the time and we had too few Arabists in place, to such an extent that we had to recall retired diplomats into service. It is therefore no surprise that Parliament has raised the bar before consenting to intervention.

However, I suggest to the House that being better informed is of little use if policy options are restricted. Britain is not spending enough on defence and is cutting back on key defence capabilities. I suggest that strong armed forces are an essential component of foreign policy and often underpin a successful diplomatic strategy. In addition to spending more on defence, I believe we should increase our spending on our soft power capabilities. In this information age, winning the story will be just as important as winning the battle. Our soft power assets, such as the British Council and the BBC World Service, tend to be excellent value, out of all proportion to their positive effect; yet, they are under-resourced.

In conclusion, cutting the FCO and soft-power budgets is a false economy. Diplomacy and soft power can pay for themselves many times over, especially when we are trying to increase our understanding of what is happening on the ground and to avoid conflict. Without strong and capable armed forces, diplomacy and soft power can achieve only so much in the face of potentially hostile and powerful countries, and a step change in defence spending is required, as is the political will to sustain it. However, we also need to better understand the forces at work on the international stage: more than ever, we need a well-resourced foreign policy apparatus so that we can face the challenges in this increasingly uncertain world.