Queen's Speech

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, at my age I am encouraged by the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. He has great experience and I am confident that he has a great future before him. I congratulate him and my noble friend Lady Kinnock on two very good speeches.

My question is simple. After 13 years, there has been a change of Government. What new things can we expect in foreign policy or in defence and international development policy from the new Government? Clearly, on the domestic side, there have been radical changes, most notably seen in respect of education. Are foreign affairs different? Much of the context of foreign affairs is outside our control. However, there is continuity and traditionally there has been a bipartisan approach, so what might we expect? We at least have the advantage of the coalition document, but I should give a disclaimer: documents will tell us only part of the story. Had we read the speeches made by members of the Labour Government in 1997, we would have known nothing of the Iraq war or Afghanistan. Foreign policy is very much a response—a principled response, one hopes—to the problems that we face as a country.

The foreign affairs section of the document lists a series of problems, beginning with Afghanistan. Afghanistan was not a particularly good start for this Government. I suspect that the mandarins at the Foreign Office gave the advice, “You will not influence people or make friends on the eve of a visit to Afghanistan by describing it as a ‘broken 13th-century country’”. They would have said that, if three Ministers were to visit, they should at least sing from the same hymn sheet to ensure a degree of harmony.

The introductory paragraph of the section on foreign affairs talks of,

“working as a constructive member of the United Nations, NATO and other multilateral organisations including the Commonwealth”.

That is rather puzzling, as normally the European Union would be included in such a list. There is nothing exceptional on defence or international development, but there is no mention of the political consequences of what might happen to the Foreign Office budget and the importance of foreign policy, particularly in relation to conflict prevention. I look forward to hearing the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on that.

The document also contains the heading “Europe”. A phrase from the introductory paragraph shines out. The document talks of striking,

“the right balance between constructive engagement with the EU … and protecting our national sovereignty”.

When I read the phrase “constructive engagement”, I thought, “Where have I heard that before?”. I recalled that it was the phrase used by the Government of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, in the 1980s in respect of apartheid South Africa. The phrase is also now used by France and the United States in respect of Syria. It gives the impression of a bilateral relationship between us and an external organisation—worse, if one thinks of South Africa and Syria, a rather dubious organisation—called the European Union. Who would think that we have been a member of the European Union for well nigh 40 years? One cannot have a bilateral relationship with an organisation of which one is a full and influential member. Perhaps this is not a puzzle after all, but something that leads from the Government’s view of the Union.

The rest of the section on Europe is essentially negative. The context is the decision of the Conservative Party to leave the EPP for what the Deputy Prime Minister called “a bunch of nutters” and the failure of the Conservative Party to realise that, in our national interest, we have to work with appropriate political families. That is how the European Union works. It does no service to the party or, more important, to our national interest to leave a grouping that includes Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy.

The truth is that our external influence is much enhanced by our working together through the European Union. We are no longer capable of acting alone; the Falklands was perhaps the last such unilateral initiative. The document also mentions the Middle East, but we are a member of the quartet not as Britain but as a member of the European Union. It mentions Iran, but in relation to Iran we are not there as the UK but as a member of the EU3. It mentions the western Balkans as a priority but in the western Balkans we work through the European Union’s special representatives. There seem to be a coyness and reluctance to recognise those realities.

In defence there is no mention of co-operation with France and certainly no mention of the CSDP. We know about this because it is a British admiral at Northwood who is heading Operation Atalanta. On international development there is no mention that much of our aid is channelled through the European Union. Are we, then, going to have a rerun of 1994-97, when we were pretty well marginalised in Brussels? Probably not, of course, because the Liberal Democrats will, I hope, moderate the anti-EUism of much of the Conservative Party and at least prevent major sprats being thrown to the Europhobes. That is why there was some relief in Brussels at the general election result. I hope the breathing space will be used constructively by the Government to learn some of the realities.

Yes, let us campaign against Euro-waste. Let us campaign against the excessive directives and aim for democracy in respect of, for example, parliamentary accountability on defence. As the former French ambassador to the UK wrote in a recent article in the Financial Times, there are choices to be made. There are,

“two options. Either we can return to the past … or we can take another route and see what the UK and France, together with other partners in Europe, can propose to make the European Union more relevant to our citizens’ needs at home and more respected in the world”.

That is the challenge; that is the choice—to work, as far as we can, in harmony with partners, and not constructive engagement with an external entity.