Queen’s Speech

Lord Bowness Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bowness]

My Lords, on 29 March this year, addressing the lord mayor’s Easter banquet, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary said, in a speech that ranged over most of the world:

“Britain is a transatlantic nation and a European nation. But our … interests go beyond that to be global. We have to forge new partnerships beyond our traditional alliances … This in no way means we are moving away from our indispensable alliance with the United States and our deep partnership”,

with Europe. He continued:

“Our ties within Europe are also vitally important. Despite Europe’s current economic”,

problems,

“the extension of … democracy is a success few dared to hope for thirty years ago”.

This is a message we hear frequently; we heard it from my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford in opening today. We should indeed cultivate the wider and developing countries. We should embrace the Commonwealth as an important forum and network but, at the same time, remember that its members—which now include some who do not share the common history—have diverse interests in different parts of the world. It is not, nor is it likely to be, a substitute for the European Union as a political, trading or defence organisation.

The Foreign Secretary could have added, as a European Union success, the peace that Europe has enjoyed and which cannot be attributed solely to NATO—peace not only among historic enemies but in the peaceful changes from dictatorships and communism, inspired by the prospects of membership of the European Union. When critics count the cost of the European Union, perhaps we should count what it has saved the continent in other ways. My fear is not that our wider interests are being neglected by too great a concentration on the European Union but rather that we are taking the relationship with the European Union and its achievements for granted.

The gracious Speech, at a time of economic and political turmoil, contained only two references to Europe: namely, Bills to deal with the accession of Croatia and legislation to deal with the European financial stability mechanism, which we have already approved but now have to do again because of the European Union Act of last year. Despite being delivered in the middle of a deepening and widening crisis, there is no statement of intent to work constructively with our partners in the union to find a way through. We need to give leadership, as my noble friend Lord Taverne said, not merely lecture others to give leadership because their problems are hurting us. What other solutions do we offer, since the EU solutions and those of Chancellor Merkel, to date, are based very much on our own economic policies?

What leadership is the United Kingdom prepared to give over the crisis in Greece? The problem is not just for the eurozone. Truly, in this instance at least, we are “all in it together”, and the calls by the popular press to let our European partners stew in their own juice or lie on the bed they made will not change that. It is no good saying that we will not be involved in any solution because, in the past, we told you that the euro would not work and that the structures to make it work were lacking or flawed. Maybe if we had not been so hands-off in the beginning, some of the mistakes would not have been made but we are where we are, however wise we may now be after the event. The stability that we have taken for granted is now threatened, and we see the rise of nationalism and worse in Greece and elsewhere. Some states, specifically Greece, will undoubtedly need help to come through their present problems. Yes, they have lessons to learn, reforms to make and deficits to reduce but, without some investment and help to earn and grow, the downward spiral will not end and the consequences will be felt by us all.

We have made commitments in the past to help people in other parts of the world when their problems were not necessarily of our making. Does the resistance to being seen to help flow from antipathy to the European Union and the euro? I hope not. What is our attitude to help through the IMF, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development or the European Investment Bank? What do we propose to help stave off not just financial meltdown but a social breakdown that could have consequences as yet unforeseen? Britain has never been able to stand aside from the problems of Europe and we must ensure that we do not leave it too late on this occasion.

Leadership is also required in other areas. We were willing to lead some of our EU partners in Libya, but what of other areas of great concern in our own backyard that are in serious need of attention and need to be brought up the political agenda? It is a long list: Serbia and Kosovo; Ukraine, which has been mentioned already today; Moldova; Transdniestria; Bosnia-Herzegovina; and Macedonia, where Greece alone is holding up progress on that country’s candidature for the EU. Membership of the EU for the states of the western Balkans is supposed to be a key element of our foreign policy.

What about the problem of Cyprus, where we are not only a partner EU state and a fellow Commonwealth state but one of the guarantor powers? Unresolved, that problem creates problems within NATO and between NATO and the EU, and with claims about the entitlement to possible oil rights off the coast of Cyprus there is the potential for even more tension in a region where, without help, one state faces a possibly disastrous future.

Governments of all persuasions like high-profile world-stage foreign policies. It is eye-catching to be photographed with victorious forces or powerful, iconic figures in foreign parts. I accept that there are not too many front-page photo opportunities in the problem areas in Europe that I have just mentioned. We disregard our own immediate neighbourhood at our peril, but unfortunately successive Governments have failed to give a lead to the British people, and have not explained that the EU is more important than just a trading bloc but has achieved a great deal as a unique institution created voluntarily by its individual member nation states. They have failed to advise people of the EU’s advantages for fear of upsetting the Eurosceptic minority. That policy has totally failed—the real Eurosceptics will never be appeased—and, as a consequence of the failure of leadership and the generally lukewarm enthusiasm for the EU, we see the rise of UKIP.

The Chancellor famously has said of the Labour Party on a number of occasions that it failed to fix the roof while the sun was shining. To pursue that analogy, I fear that the desire to have a magnificent front door on the wider world and a large doorstep on which to pose, secured by state-of-the-art locks and security devices, is leading to leaving our own back door to Europe dependent on a rather badly maintained rim lock. We should get it fixed before it is too late.