Queen’s Speech

Lord Archbishop of Canterbury Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Archbishop of Canterbury [V]]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in this debate on the gracious Speech after the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, with his vast experience and knowledge. I have learned much from his speech and agree with what he said.

The integrated review, Global Britain in a Competitive Age, has much to welcome, including especially its thoughtfulness about the security implications of climate change, the strong commitment to freedom of religion and belief, and the commitment to restoring the 0.7%. However, to speak of security, defence, development and foreign policy without a developed section on peacebuilding and peacemaking, especially with competitors, is like speaking of the pandemic without mentioning vaccination.

The integrated review mentions security through improving conflict management in 10 or so places, but the Stabilisation Unit is not mentioned at all. How much of a priority is it, with its new name of the office for conflict stabilisation and mediation? Put another way, the integrated review presents a world in which we control events, as though that is normally the case in foreign policy. Last Thursday, Ascension Day, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark represented me at the installation of the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, whose cathedral is in Sheikh Jarrah. He writes: “There is a growing recognition that lasting peace with justice can only be achieved if the rights of all the peoples of these lands are upheld and underlying grievances are addressed”—in other words, reconciliation. The situation in the Holy Lands illustrates perfectly how little we can anticipate events.

Now, more than ever, we need investment in new and visionary reconciliation capabilities and capacities which enable us to reduce the threat, and the human and financial costs, of war. Much has been said, rightly, by all speakers, about the extraordinary quality of our Armed Forces, but their best protection is peace. Noble and gallant Lords, and those serving today, know this especially well. In the beatitudes, Jesus says that peacemakers are blessed and will be called the children of God. The repeated biblical visions of swords into ploughshares are not only the call of God but a blessing to those who fight—and, I might comment, a blessing to the Treasury. To misquote a former Liverpool manager who taught his lads to get their retaliation in first, the best and by far the cheapest form of improved security comes from pre-emptive reconciliation—getting our reconciliation in first. Reconciliation usually does not mean agreement, but it does mean transforming violent conflict, or its possibility, into peaceful co-existence and competition.

Secondly, it is very welcome that the 0.7% target is reaffirmed. However, the reaffirmation—the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, commented on this—feels a bit like Augustine’s desire for chastity: welcome, but not yet. People who are poorest must be dealt with generously—first, for reasons of humanity from one of the richest and most powerful nations on earth; secondly, for our own long-term security; and, thirdly, so that the world can be a place of flourishing for our trade and development, here at home and for the poorest.

Thirdly, there has been much talk about the increase in the number of nuclear warheads. That is a very serious and concerning step, but not nearly as serious as the commitment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, also referred, to increase deliberate ambiguity in the condition of the use of nuclear weapons and the absence of a stated commitment not to use them first. It is widely accepted that, even for those who argue the moral case for having these weapons—a very contested point indeed—clarity of purpose is essential to deterrence. Ambiguity increases the risk of disastrous miscalculation.

Finally, with all its many strengths, this review needs to integrate a vision of peace as an alternative to destructive conflict, which can only ever be a tragic last resort. The warnings in the review are not accompanied by an integrated moral basis for actions that, where at all possible, will reduce violent conflict and control it. Values are twinned in the text with words such as “democratic”, “rule of law”, “open societies”, “prosperity”, “soft power” and “culture”. There is even an aspiration to universal values, combined with a realistic appreciation of the conflict of values—values that are not anchored in any way in our history in the document and that are stated as manifest truth, without any moral foundations. It is in this moral argument of the document that peacemaking and peacebuilding are an afterthought. That seems a profound weakness of moral imagination, when we as a nation are able to do so much, in a document that argues so persuasively for our soft power and our values-based interest.