Foreign Policy

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Grand Committee

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for tabling this debate. Without sounding too clichéd, I strongly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that it has been a fascinating debate, and probably the most illuminating debate that I have taken part in, at least as a Minister. I have so enjoyed many of the speakers that we have heard today. Like everyone, I do not agree with everything that I have heard, but I agree with much of it and have enjoyed the passion with which the speeches have been delivered, and the depth of knowledge and wisdom.

As your Lordships will be aware, since publishing the IR in 2021, we have seen a huge escalation in geopolitical competition, with an intensification of threats to our democracy and security. The global turbulence forecast in the review has moved at a quicker pace than anyone had imagined just two years ago. In recent months, we have seen an emerging trend, a transition to a multi-polar and contested world, from Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine to China’s growing economic coercion. The world is a most dangerous place, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said very convincingly, with far-reaching consequences for the security and prosperity of the British people.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for delivering his speech so compellingly and covering a lot of the points that I wanted to cover. He made the point that the current situation in Sudan, the most recent of this tumult, amply demonstrates the heightened volatility that is likely to last beyond the 2030s. That is why we published the IR refresh earlier this year, setting out how the UK will meet this reality head on.

The refresh describes how the UK will protect our core interests—the sovereignty, security and prosperity of the British people—and pursue a stable international order, with enhanced co-operation and well-managed competition, based on respect for the UN charter and for international law. Rightly, our approach is an evolution as opposed to a revolution. Our strategic ambition is on track, positioning the UK as a responsible, reliable and effective international actor and partner, investing in the global relationships that we know we need to thrive in an era of international uncertainty. We meet our obligations as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and as the leading European ally within an expanding NATO.

We do have strong relations with our neighbours in Europe. I say that in response to a number of points made by the noble Lords, Lord Browne and Lord Bilimoria, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. We have strong relationships, notwithstanding Brexit. I see that in my own work almost every day, much of which would not be possible without co-operation with our friends and allies in Europe, but, yes, we must build on the Windsor Framework to invigorate those partnerships even more. We are deeply engaged in the Indo-Pacific, we are active in Africa and we enjoy thriving relationships with countries across the Middle East and the Gulf.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the Commonwealth. Although I will not focus on it too much in this speech, because I have so many points to cover, I want to amplify the point made so well by my noble friend Lord Howell, the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. It is not just a unique club but an extraordinary club of nations. As one speaker pointed out, it encompasses 2.5 billion people. It is a club unrivalled in its diversity—geographic, economic, cultural and in every conceivable way. There is an incredible strength in it, with these countries—in some ways unlikely countries—bound together by something very strong and with the UK playing a critical role, not least through the role of His Majesty the King. Like others, I believe that there is much more to be extracted from that club. There is much more to be done to strengthen it and give it purpose. That has moved higher up the political agenda, even in the last few months here in the UK.

Today’s debate has touched on issues right across the spectrum of our international interests. There is no way that I will be able to answer all the points made, but I will do my best. My noble friend Lord Frost made a point, followed up by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, about the importance of our relationship with the US. The US is clearly our closest ally. It remains so and I hope it always will. There has been tremendous political volatility recently, with the election of President Trump followed by a shift towards the Administration of President Biden. That has made the status quo trickier and we have had to navigate uncharted waters in that relationship.

I know this is absolutely not central to our debate, but the noble Lord and my noble friend Lady Meyer raised the current obsession within the US, which is unfortunately catching on here as well, with what are often termed culture wars. I can only imagine what our competitors in China and combatants in Russia think when they see western politicians unable even to answer the question, “What is a woman?” It just makes no sense at all. We can laugh at it, but there is something more serious there. The implications go further; my noble friend Lady Meyer made the point, so I will not repeat it, other than to say that we are seeing a creeping intolerance, through every aspect of society, which is antithetical to our values as a country and to any kind of advancement and progress in relation to intellectual discourse, politics or anything else. It cannot just be dismissed as trivia. It is a fundamental issue and I very much share the point that she made.

The UK has provided nearly £6.5 billion in military, humanitarian and economic support to Ukraine since the start of the invasion. This goes to the point a number of noble Lords made about the position that the UK holds in the world. We led the G7 response, co-ordinating diplomatic activity and imposing our toughest ever sanctions, and we have trained thousands of brave Ukrainian troops.

As a Foreign Office Minister, I have the privilege of travelling the world and, like my noble friend Lady Meyer, I do not hear people outside this country talking down the UK. I hear people talking up the UK and the role that we have played, in relation not just to Ukraine but to other issues such as climate change, which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, mentioned and I will come to later. We are seen as a world leader, and I have seen no sign whatever that this has been diminished by the decision we took to leave the European Union—on the contrary. We often hear that we no longer have a seat at the table, but the opposite is true: we have a seat at many more tables than we had before and are able to make decisions often in partnership with the European Union, which we are routinely able to push into much stronger positions.

As we update our Russia strategy, our objective is to contain Russia’s ability to disrupt the security of the UK, the Euro-Atlantic and the wider international order. As we face the most significant conflict in Europe since the end of World War II, we need to know that our Armed Forces are ready for the battles to come—a point that has been well made—and that the wider threat that Russia, Iran and North Korea pose to the international order is contained.

We have already announced that we will bolster the nation’s defences, investing £5 billion over the next two years. This will replenish our ammunition stocks, modernise our nuclear enterprise and fund the next phase of the AUKUS partnership. This investment represents significant progress in meeting our long-term minimum defence spending target of 2.5% of GDP and comes on top of the £560 million of new investments last year and the record £20 billion uplift announced in 2020.

Secondly, we know that the prosperity and security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions are inextricably linked. It is critical to our economy, security and values that we build on those partnerships. The review makes our long-term commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific a permanent pillar of our international policy. In answer to questions raised by a number of noble Lords, in particular the right reverend Prelate, that long-term commitment is already bearing fruit across defence, diplomacy and trade, evidenced by our recent accession to the CPTPP, which my noble friend Lord Frost talked about. We are its first European member.

The PM announced in March that the AUKUS partnership will deliver a state-of-the-art nuclear-powered submarine platform to Australia, setting the highest nuclear non-proliferation standard. This capability will help uphold the conditions for a secure and stable Indo-Pacific. I do not pretend to be an expert in Australian politics but, again, I see nothing to suggest that politics in Australia is moving against this new arrangement. On the contrary: it seems to be embraced cross party—or mostly. The Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to the Pacific nations demonstrated that commitment to partner with our friends there for the long haul, listening to their priorities and working together on issues that are existential for us all but especially for those small island developing states that are absolutely on the front line when it comes to tackling climate change.

As the Foreign Secretary set out last week, and as someone here also said, China continues to present an “epoch-defining challenge” for an open, stable international order. This is our third key area, which I will focus on briefly. As noble Lords will know, China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the second-largest economy in the world, with an impact on almost everything of global significance to the UK. Therefore, it is firmly in our national interest to engage with China bilaterally and multilaterally, and to ensure that we have the skills and knowledge to do so.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for raising, on so many occasions in the short time that I have been a Minister, issues of injustice that flow from the current Chinese Government—I say current, but it has been the same Government all my life. We are not blind to the increasingly aggressive military and economic behaviour of the Chinese Communist Party, stoking tensions right across the Taiwan Strait. The evidence of human rights violations in Xinjiang is truly harrowing.

In response to a couple of the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, asked, I do not know what the Vice-President and the Foreign Secretary will talk about but I hope it will be Hong Kong and the situation in relation to the Uighurs and Jimmy Lai, the noble Lord’s friend, who is clearly being pursued as a mechanism to silence a critic and as part of a broader attack on media freedom—there is no doubt about that. I hope these issues are raised and that the Foreign Secretary is able to lay out the UK’s position on them. I will write to the noble Lord about the commission of inquiry in relation to North Korea, as I am afraid that I cannot give him an answer. On the Iranian national guard, we have responded to Iran’s completely unacceptable behaviour by sanctioning the IRGC in its entirety as well as certain of its leaders specifically. That was announced last week.

Going back to China, our approach must combine these two currents. We will strengthen our national security protections wherever Beijing’s actions pose a threat to our people or our prosperity. We will ensure alignment with our core allies and a wider set of international partners, and we will engage directly with China to create a space for constructive and stable relations.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, made the point that there are many problems globally that we cannot solve without China. This international co-operation occasionally works; I saw that myself in Montreal, where China held the pen of the CBD COP 15, working with Canada as the host and delivering something which exceeded anyone’s expectations. I was about to use a word that I would come to regret—I am enthusiastic about efforts to protect the environment—but I certainly did not expect that the outcome would be what it was. To be fair about it, we must acknowledge that China played a very unexpected but positive role. A lot of that was a consequence of engagement. There was a real sense of expectation in China, with the pressure of a risk of being seen to fail, which I think led to them taking a stronger position than they would have otherwise.

To support all these efforts, we have confirmed that we will double our funding for China capability, to continue to build expertise and language skills here in government. I acknowledge the point made by my noble friend Lord Frost about the behaviour of the World Health Organization during the Covid crisis. He is right. While on one level it is also right that we should be critical of the efforts that China made to capture that organisation, I am far more upset with the World Health Organization for allowing itself to be so obviously captured.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

Would my noble friend the Minister consider how this country can lessen its economic dependence on China? There is a great deal of research now about not having dependency for more than 25% of imports on any one country, and—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

With no disrespect to my noble friend, the noble Baroness was not here at the beginning. It may be a rule that she is not familiar with.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness does make a very important point. I will be touching on it in the remaining stages of my speech but yes, absolutely that must be a focus. That is at the heart of our critical minerals strategy but it goes way beyond that, for precisely the reasons that she has said.

Responding to this ever faster-moving global context means stepping up to protect the UK’s economic resilience, not least by acknowledging the point made by the noble Baroness. We have established a new directorate in the FCDO, incorporating the government information cell, to increase our capacity to assess and counter hostile information manipulation where it affects UK interests overseas. A new economic deterrence initiative will build our diplomatic and economic toolkit. With initial funding of up to £50 million over two years, the initiative is designed to strengthen our sanctions implementation and enforcement, and to give us new tools to respond to hostile acts and crack down on sanctions evasion. A new national protective services authority, located within MI5, will provide UK businesses and other organisations with immediate access to expert security advice. We will be publishing the UK’s first semiconductor strategy, which will grow our domestic industry for that vital technology, as well as the updated critical minerals strategy that I mentioned a few moments ago.

On science and technology, I want to acknowledge a point made by the right reverend Prelate on the importance of investment in science and technology. In a world of technological change, we are investing more in the UK’s science and tech ecosystem than ever before. Through our international tech strategy, we have laid out how we will cement the UK’s place as a science and tech superpower, working with partners to secure strategic advantage and ensure that technology promotes our shared values of freedom. We have already reorganised government to focus better on this area and are increasing our resilience for the long term, spending around £20 billion a year across government on research and development by the next financial year.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, raised the issue of AI. I cannot go into detail but AI technology is a step forward, which offers potential answers to questions that we have never been able to answer. It is an incredibly powerful tool and there is a question of whether we have demonstrated that we have sufficient wisdom to control such a powerful tool. Rather than rushing in as we are, we should be discussing, debating and figuring out what we want from AI and how we can prevent that incredibly powerful new thing from falling into the hands of people who will not be approaching issues in the benign manner that noble Lords have in this debate today.

I want to talk about Horizon very briefly. A number of speakers, including the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, mentioned it. Yes, we are discussing association. We want negotiations to be successful. Clearly the outcome needs to be in our interests, but that is very much a government policy and will continue to be.

On soft power, I will talk on international development, because that is probably one of the best examples of where we deploy soft power. Sustainable international development clearly is and remains central to our foreign policy. It is fundamental to the goals of the integrated review. I apologise to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds for having left the Committee to answer the call of nature half way through his speech. I very much share his views on Lord Mitchell—or rather Andrew Mitchell; he is not a lord, although he may become one—who is one of this country’s great experts when it comes to development, as you could see by the reception he received when he was given that appointment. We spent £11 billion on international development assistance last year, including on climate, girls’ education, global health and so on, and we remain absolutely committed to that broader agenda.

To support our commitment to development earlier this year, we launched the women and girls strategy to tackle threats which have been debated and discussed—three minutes to go; halfway through. This year we will go further and faster to deliver that strategy, the IDS. The IDS was not given the prominence that it merited, and I encourage noble Lords to really have a look at it to see what is driving our approach to international development.

I will have to use the last few minutes to talk about climate change. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, described it as an existential threat, and the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, praised the King for his history of involvement long before others, at a time when it was almost crank-like to worry about these issues, which have become mainstream, and I totally agree. I also just emphasise the UK’s leadership on this issue. COP 26 was the first COP where nature was brought in from the outside and put at the centre, with 90% of the world’s forests covered in commitments to end deforestation this decade, and 90% of the global economy signed up to net zero—it was only 30% when we took on the presidency. Real leadership through the UK resulted in a COP which again surprised the world in its effectiveness and how far-reaching it was. Our job now is to make those commitments real. We saw some of that at COP 27, where the UK had, other than the hosts, probably the most impactful interventions. We saw that in Montreal, which I mentioned earlier, where the UK did more heavy lifting to get that agreement over the line than any other country, including the presidents and the hosts of that conference. Many countries would agree that we would not have succeeded had it not been for the UK’s involvement.

I see I have only 30 seconds left, which is awful, and I have not even begun to address the comments from my noble friend Lord Popat on Africa, but I agree with him very strongly that there is huge promise there. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, made an interesting point about why investing in and supporting Africa is in our interest. One example of that is that the Congo Basin produces nearly two-thirds of Africa’s rainfall, yet it has been cut down at a rate of half a million hectares a year. If that were to continue—it will if we do not intervene—we will see a humanitarian crisis on a scale that exceeds anything even in the Bible. We would be looking at something off the scale. That is not a question for debate. We know that the forests generate rainfall and that cutting down the forests will stop rainfall, and we know that rainfall is necessary for the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and those to whom that food is exported.

I apologise that I have to conclude. I was going to address the 0.7% question, but I will simply say that I agree very much with the comments made. I urge the Government to move as quickly as possible to restore that 0.7%. It is an incredibly valuable thing the UK has in its armoury, not only doing good but benefiting us as well.

The UK has committed to work with our allies to shape an open, stable, international order with co-operation and partnership at its heart. Today, in a climate-threatened and geopolitically contested world, we are taking steps to adapt. We commit to taking the long-term view, acting with agility and, as always, being a champion for the values that we hold dear. I thank noble Lords again for their insightful comments and I apologise for not answering every question.