G20 Summit

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, on the face of it, meetings of the G20 represent quite an unlikely and unusual event. When you strip them to their bare bones, it is a meeting of 20 Presidents and Prime Ministers, in this case, although the rank of the people attending varies. They have two days talking among themselves about a huge range of issues ranging from healthcare to migration to international trade. I should say that this is two days for 20 Presidents; even if it were the other way around—two Presidents over 20 days —they would still be hard-pressed to come to any useful conclusions on such a range of issues. When we held our short inquiry into the upcoming G20, as it then was, we had three excellent witnesses, Alan Wheatley of Chatham House, Dr Linda Yueh of the University of Oxford and the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, of this House, who is in his place and will be speaking later.

I shall address not this specific G20 especially but the structure, scope and effectiveness of these meetings. First, what are the comments worthy of note under the heading of “structure”? One is the negative endorsement of the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, who said that at least it was an improvement on the G7, which he described as,

“serving little other purpose than to keep its member states’ civil servants busy”,

and,

“an artefact of a bygone era”.

Twenty is better than seven and I suppose the G20 has the credential of representing 80% of the world’s GDP but, maybe negatively, it also represents 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Its membership consists of five from Europe, four from western Europe, four from Asia, five from the Americas and one from Africa. On any reasonable observation of that membership, that is pretty unbalanced. I wonder whether there would be a more sensible observation on the world’s economy if one or two more countries were included, perhaps developing countries or countries facing the sort of challenges that one finds particularly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

So much for the structure, what about the scope of the G20? Our letter, drafted by our chairman, said that,

“while the initial focus of the G20 was international economics and finance”,

the scope,

“has broadened in recent years, with the forthcoming Summit including issues from healthcare to environmental sustainability, protectionist tendencies, migration movements, energy vulnerabilities and other factors affecting the health of world commerce”.

They had to do that in two days. I know there were Sherpas, but that is still pushing it, I would have thought.

The communiqué published after the summit—I feel sorry for the people who have to write these—again sums up the absurd breadth of scope of these summits. It said that,

“we will strive to create a virtuous cycle of growth by addressing inequalities and realize a society where all individuals can make use of their full potential. We are resolved to build a society capable of seizing opportunities, and tackling economic, social and environmental challenges”.

Who is not? That does not advance human knowledge and understanding very much. These observations about scope perhaps explain the most important difficulty for the G20, which is implementation and how it delivers on the decisions it makes. One of our witnesses—I forget who—said that the summit is,

“like going to a Cabinet meeting with no Prime Minister”.

I will not comment on current circumstances, but that does not seem a very promising start to an international meeting. To quote the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, with whom I agree entirely, again:

“They put something on the agenda, and as long as there are a couple of nice statements about what is on the agenda, they think they have delivered”.


I shall give an example, taken from the leaders’ declaration published at the conclusion of the last summit. There were two or three paragraphs in the communiqué on displacement and migration, which I would have thought was quite a big subject, the main one saying:

“Large movements of refugees are a global concern with humanitarian, political, social and economic consequences. We emphasize the importance of shared actions to address the root causes of displacement and to respond to growing humanitarian needs”.


Presumably they then say to the Sherpas, “Get on with that, mate”. How on earth you deliver on anything as general as that is beyond me.

In our letter, we say that,

“there is no effective mechanism to follow up the implementation of agreements reached at G20 summits”,

which take place in a different location every year with a different chair. Alan Wheatley, another of our expert witnesses, said:

“The G20 has no permanent secretariat. Seen through that prism, there is no permanent officialdom to act as a counterweight to any whims or fancies that the current chairman of the G20 may have”.


We need some objective assessment of these gatherings, which I am sure are hugely expensive and which I suggest have limited value. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, may give us a hint in this quote, which I very much agree with—perhaps more than he intended. He said,

“I think the UK, if handled correctly post-Brexit … should want to be more on the front foot about suggesting better ways of having a more effective global system. I think that it is really important that we do it”.

I certainly agree with that and I hope the Minister does too.