Reconciliation: Role of British Foreign, Defence and International Development Policy

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Friday 14th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to and thank the most reverend Primate for initiating today’s debate. None of us can fail to have been moved by many of the personal testaments and testimonies to the efforts to find reconciliation. Like the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, I was particularly moved by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble. It is important that we reflect on and listen to those contributions. That prompts me to quote someone else who has been mentioned today, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who said:

“Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s actually remembering—remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened”.


The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, is true testament to that.

If we are to have the international security and stability that we seek, development, defence and diplomacy have to go together. We have seen it in the national security strategy, which pledges,

“to address the causes of conflict and instability”,

by,

“tackling corruption, promoting good governance, developing security and justice, and creating jobs and economic opportunity”.

None of us has a crystal ball to predict the future with certainty. As we have heard, significant challenges to peace and stability lie ahead. As the noble Baroness said, the strategy placed great stress on the UK’s commitment to a rules-based international order. The dangers of seeing that international order unravel are of course multi-fold, not least because we have a United States President—President Trump—who has a fondness for unpredictability. He started this year with a flurry of tweets that sparked protests across the world and caught his allies off guard. His tweeting has continued throughout the year with increasingly inflammatory rhetoric—rhetoric that has a huge impact far beyond his own borders, hitting particularly the ability of the world to reconcile itself with its different communities.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, suggested today, as he did 18 months ago, that the response so far of countries such as ours, which has regarded the maintenance of a rules-based international order as its national interest, has been quite inadequate in the face of those challenges. I totally agree with that argument: we need to do a better job in making the case than we have in the past. That case means covering the whole range of our international commitments and obligations. It means supporting the United Nations, NATO and the World Trade Organization. It means making common cause with like-minded countries, particularly our partners—or former partners, as they will potentially be—in the European Union.

The Labour Party would commit to a renewed internationalism and strengthen institutions: by supporting better use of the United Nations Security Council to build a renewed commitment to multilateralism; by respecting the primacy of human rights and international treaties, insisting on the use of the UN as a means of conflict resolution; and by developing the use of sanctions and soft power as a response to non-compliance. We would create a Minister for Peace and Disarmament. We are seeing disarmament challenged for the first time in many years, with Chinese, US and Russian politics dictating or potentially leading to another arms race. We certainly want increased funding for earmarked investment in peacekeeping.

I also want to say something about the need to work with the Commonwealth. It is a very important institution because of the values that it represents. I have had the opportunity to speak to my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland about her agenda for promoting change. The Commonwealth charter represents shared values on human rights and democracy. Think about how the Commonwealth still has a majority of countries which criminalise people like me, simply because of the person I love. It is about challenging those countries, not to “Do as I say” but to understand the nature of our past colonial influence. That is what we need to address as our shared values.

The conditions which overseas development assistance aims to address, if left alone, can create a melting pot of conflict. That is what the sustainable development goals and the agenda for 2030 are all about. That is why I disagree so much with the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, about our commitment to invest. We need to focus on stopping instability, not leave it until it is too late. That is why our development agenda is so important. Labour would focus on crisis prevention rather than reaction. We have committed to publishing a strategy for protecting civilians in conflict that sets out detailed plans for work on conflict prevention and resolution, along with post-conflict peacebuilding, and of course justice for the victims of war.

We want—and I recognise that the Government are committed to this as well—expanding cross-departmental capacity to respond rapidly to sexual and gender-based violence. We want to transform the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund to move to a more transparent, human rights-focused peace fund. The ICAI review, which looked at it in 70 countries, including Syria, gave it an amber/red warning. Will the Minister remind us of the response to that review and also say whether he is satisfied that proper human rights assessments and safeguards are operating to ensure that ODA does not undermine human rights?

As the most reverend Primate said, we must demonstrate a joined-up, whole-government approach with a properly funded strategy. My noble friend Lord Boateng reminded us of the importance of our Diplomatic Service and corps. I reflect that the UK spends less per head on diplomacy than the US, Germany, France, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. That should be something of a wake-up call for us.

The UK must always put the security of our country first and ensure proper investment in defence, but in doing so it must consider the ethical implications of the arms trade. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry made this point. The UK cannot defend and offer development on the one hand and fuel the tools of war on the other. That is a contradiction that we cannot sustain, and it does not lead to stability. We also want to introduce an ethical procurement policy to rebuild our country’s defences, support our home industries and give our Armed Forces the resources that they need. We need to use our voice within NATO as a stabilising and resolute force for the values of democracy and freedom.

The United Nations has renewed its commitment to peacebuilding through the sustaining peace agenda and placing greater emphasis on conflict prevention and addressing the drivers of conflict as well as highlighting the need for international partnership and co-operation. At the most recent UN General Assembly, Theresa May urged UN member states to,

“do more collectively to prevent atrocities in the first place, and address the causes of instability that can give rise to them”.

I recently attended a British Council seminar, and I join my noble friend Lady Andrews in paying tribute to the British Council for its work. We call it soft power, but it is a way of introducing things that lead to a better understanding of our differences, which is an important element of the work of the British Council. It is not simply saying, “Here we are, we are good”. It is understanding value in all cultural aspects of the word. At that seminar, at which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was also present, the discussion focused on positive peacebuilding through rebuilding trust and institutions through a whole-society approach. Most importantly, that includes civil society. This debate has not been about governance; it is actually about people and the organisations that represent them, and of course, as the most reverend Primate said, that includes faith groups—some 80% of the world’s population are in faith groups—but it also means that trade unions, workers’ organisations and women’s groups have a critical role to play.

We can do so much more if we each respect each other’s roles, not just ensuring that our own voice is heard. We can do so much more if we amplify each other’s voices so that we have a better understanding of our respective roles. We have to recall that it is not that long ago that trade unions were the enemy within in this country. We saw on the front pages—although in the last few months the Daily Mail has changed its position—Supreme Court judges being called “Enemies of the people”; when we talk about the rule of law, we have to remember the impact that those sorts of statements have.

I was particularly impressed by the evidence from the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, who talked about a bottom-up approach—not something that Governments can legislate for but actually understanding how organisations work. Certainly my experience of the trade union movement in Northern Ireland taught me a lot about that, and the fact that when you talked about peace you also talked about jobs and progress. That brought a lot of people together.

I have also been part of the Tracks of Peace campaign in the Middle East, which my noble friend Lord Anderson mentioned, where Palestinians and Israeli people are coming together to build viable economic communities. That is people coming together; it is organisation at the bottom.

That is something that has always struck me about Cyprus, which the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, talked about. For years we have had a green line drawn in Cyprus. Well, I live in London, and in Green Lanes the two communities have been living and working together for years. Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots live together because they respect each other, and that is what we have to fight to support more.

When we talk about ensuring the engagement of women, which the most reverend Primate talked about, it is also more important than just offering women a seat at the negotiating table, although of course that is important. It means dealing with the cultural and structural barriers that bar women from participating. We have to tackle the root causes of conflict rather than simply the symptoms.

My noble friend Lord Boateng highlighted the situation in Cameroon. My noble friend Lord Judd, who would have been here today but unfortunately was not able to participate, also mentioned that situation to me, and it is important that we highlight it. It underlines that reconciliation is not easy—it is tough—and it is certainly not something that can change overnight. Words cannot be our only response. I hope the Minister will be able to respond to my noble friend’s questions on that issue.

The UK’s call for global support for prevention-based approaches has not translated into funding. Only 1% is spent globally on peacebuilding. We know that, for societies in transition, positive peacebuilding is a long-term effort and it can be difficult to show immediate outcomes. With the UN currently eager for member states to take the helm of its sustaining peace agenda, this is an opportunity for the United Kingdom to exert positive influence, demonstrating a values-based foreign policy and reaffirming our commitment to engaging with the rest of the world.

We have heard in the debate—how could we not talk about it when we are talking about peace and reconciliation?—about the Middle East and, particularly, Syria. We have had seven years of bloodshed. The war in Syria has claimed half a million lives and driven 11 million people from their homes, causing a humanitarian tragedy on a scale unknown anywhere else. My noble friend Lord Boateng mentioned that an important element of reconciliation is not just truth but justice. Whatever lessons are to be learned from the conflict in Syria, we need to consider the institutions that have the job of investigating and gathering evidence of such horrendous crimes against humanity. Individuals who commit crimes against humanity should know that they cannot act with impunity and will be held to account.

In conclusion, my noble friend Lord Griffiths spoke movingly of the situation in Haiti, where external forces denied the opportunity for the country to govern itself and use its wealth for the benefit of its people. That reminded me of another quote from Bishop Tutu, who said: “When missionaries came to our land with their Bible, we shut our eyes and prayed. When we opened our eyes, we had the Bible but they had our land”.