Queen’s Speech

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, one thing which we can all agree upon, I think, is that not for decades has there been such an acute period of political and constitutional uncertainty as that which we are experiencing at present. We do not know whether there will be a general election, whether there will be a vote of no confidence or whether we will leave the EU. Our constitutional conventions are threatened, our courts are increasingly involved, our political parties are divided, Parliament is paralysed, and public confidence in and respect for Parliament is diminishing by the day.

Inevitably, as a result of all this, political debate is course and bitter. I would even go so far as to say that our political culture, the accepted norms of our national debate and decision-making processes are seriously threatened.

The symptoms are complex, but the cause of all our present difficulties is not complex at all. It is incredibly simple. In 2016, both Houses of Parliament voted, virtually without dissent, that the issue of whether we should remain in the European Union was something that should be decided not by the House of Commons but by the British people in a referendum. We, the parliamentarians, also decided the precise rules under which the referendum would be conducted and the precise question that would be on the ballot paper.

We all know what happened next. Leave won, and ever since, a significant number of parliamentarians, though by no means all remainers—I certainly do not put everyone in the same category—have used every possible procedure to obstruct, delay or even try to reverse the result of a referendum which, I repeat, almost all of us voted for.

There is no point whatsoever in holding referendums if those responsible for implementing them—the parliamentarians—will only do so if they agree with the result. That also applies to any suggested second referendum. Why on earth would I, who voted leave, agree to a second referendum, when I know from bitter experience that even if I win, it may not make any difference?

We have all heard the excuses for not implementing the referendum result. We are told it was not clear what leave meant. Well, it is crystal clear to everyone outside “Confused of Westminster”. If you leave any organisation, at the very minimum you do not have to obey the rules of the organisation and you certainly do not have to pay the subscription.

In any case, two can play at the “What does it mean?” game. What does remain mean? Does remain mean continuing to pay our current subscription? Does remain mean joining a European army? Does it mean ever closer union, with more laws to obey over which we have no control? Does it mean losing our rebate? Does it mean ever greater dominance and control from those members of the EU who are members of the eurozone? The truth is that the future is uncertain, whether we remain or leave. It is always uncertain. Life is uncertain.

The tactics of the unreconcilable remainers have at least evolved over time. First, we were told that the referendum did not really mean anything, that it was purely advisory and that it would be fine for the Government to ignore it. Then it was said that the real choice was not between remain and leave, but between a hard Brexit—or even the hardest of hard Brexits—and a soft Brexit. However, when Mrs May offered the softest of soft Brexits, they said: “No, thank you very much”, by a large majority. Their next tactic was saying: “What we want is a People’s Vote”. In the finest Orwellian tradition, the purpose of the people’s vote would be to reverse the 2016 vote of the people, but there was no agreement as to what question should be put to the vote, or even how many questions there should be, except, of course, that remain must be on the ballot paper.

The latest tactic is the so-called Benn Act, in which a majority of the Commons were united in the view that our departure from the EU should be delayed for a further three months. The problem is, of course, that that was all they were united on. Ask them what the three months’ delay is actually for and they are all over the place.

The most bizarre suggestion, from some, is that they want what they call a Government of national unity. It would of course be a Government of national unity with a passionate remainer as Prime Minister and a Cabinet full of remainers, so the losers in the 2016 referendum would achieve national unity for us all by excluding the leavers and reversing the referendum result. The mind boggles at the logistics of it all. Who would be the Prime Minister? Who would be the leader of the Opposition? Would Her Majesty be required to make another Queen’s Speech? What about the Chamber in which we sit? Presumably, for a Government of national unity we would all have to sit on the same side.

There are yet more severe remainers who want to go even further. They want to revoke Article 50 by a simple vote in Parliament, so that the votes of 17.4 million people in a referendum could be overturned by 326 votes in the House of Commons. It may be democracy, Jim, but not as we know it. These people who want to revoke Article 50 seem to believe that we can all pretend that the last three years, including the referendum, never really happened.

I can just imagine the letter that a revoking Prime Minister would have to send to the EU. “Dear Monsieur Barnier”, it would say, “First, let me apologise unreservedly for all the inconvenience to which we have put you during the past three years. It was all the result of a dreadful mistake that we made when we asked the British public whether we should remain in or leave the European Union. I can assure you that, in the future, there will be no more nonsense about consulting the people”.

This Parliament is enveloped in a political and constitutional quagmire. The cause, as I have said, is very simple: the failure of Parliament to honour the referendum. All the parliamentary and constitutional shenanigans are a direct result of this. Unpalatable as it may be to many in this House there is only one solution to this problem, and that is to leave the European Union. I voted leave but, in a spirit of national unity, I would like to end my remarks with the words of a remainer. This is Sir Anthony Meyer, writing in this week’s Sunday Times. He said:

“I voted to remain but believe that it is a moral and political imperative to honour the referendum result”.


Well, so do I, and I know that millions of our fellow citizens, leavers and remainers, think exactly the same.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

If I may correct my noble friend on one thing, Sir Anthony Meyer was my former boss in the Foreign Office and a former Conservative MP for Eton and Slough. My noble friend means Sir Christopher Meyer.

[Lord Grocott]

Yes, I did.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

It would not be wise, on either side, or feasible to depart on the basis of an understanding that was being turned into a legal agreement but without that legal agreement existing. Legally, we would move into a very strange status. It is perfectly possible to envisage a deal that can be turned into a legal agreement during an extension period but it is impossible to do that by 31 October and it is unwise—I do not think that either side would want to do so—to go on the basis of a political understanding with no validity in law. I am afraid that I do not agree with the noble Lord.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, the idea that a 2016 vote, three Prime Ministers ago, can be permanently determinate does not seem to be the will of the people today. You can ask, “Do you want to be consulted or do you want to leave it to Parliament?” If you assume that there is a deal and you ask, “Do you want to be consulted?”, they say by a margin of almost two to one, “Yes, we want to be consulted”. If you assume that there is no deal and ask, “Do you want to be consulted or should it be left to Parliament?”, they say, “Yes, we want to be consulted”, by a margin of more than two to one. Moreover, it is a fact that since September 2017, the opinion polls have consistently shown that the country is now of the view that it would prefer to remain. This year more than 70 polls have been taken of which one gave a victory for leaving. I do not think that a second referendum is just the least worst way out of this fix; it is now the will of the people.

[Lord Grocott]

If the noble Lord is justifying a second referendum on the basis that public opinion has changed, of course while it can change, I think his bona fides would be absolutely crystal clear to everyone if he said that three years after the second referendum, public opinion could change again and we should then have a further referendum. You cannot hold referendums every five minutes. Even general elections are now legislated for every five years. We had 41 years between what the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, rightly referred to as the first referendum and the second referendum. People were asking for a second referendum after the 2016 vote in 2016.

UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order (International Relations Committee Report)

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I must admit that, when we started our report, I had doubts about the huge scope of UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order. The fact that we kept within bounds, to a degree, was down to the skill of our chairman—to whom I pay tribute, as others have—and also our secretariat, especially Eva George and Joe Dobbs, who had the monumental task of putting all the material together.

I would like to discuss a couple of the assumptions about the nature of the changing world order and the extent to which we are, or are not, in a period of fundamental change or watershed. While it is always tempting for all generations to think that we live in uniquely interesting times, and while acknowledging that many of the tools of international relations were changing dramatically—new technologies, social media, mass communications—much of our evidence suggested that many fundamental challenges remain the same. One of our witnesses, Dr Ulrike Franke of the European Council on Foreign Relations put this graphically in a section on increased automation on the battlefield. She said:

“it is important to understand that we may be adding more layers to the battle space but, in the end, to put it bluntly, it will probably come down to 18 year old soldiers dying somewhere in the mud”.

So how much is new and how much is more of the same? What about the assumption, for example, that a special challenge of our times is the threat to the so-called rules-based international order? Implicit in that assumption is that there must have been a time—a golden age, maybe—when this international order was understood and enforced to our universal benefit. That begs at least two questions. First, what precisely is the rules-based international order? Secondly, when precisely was it operating as intended?

We made an attempt in our report to address the definition question. On page 7, we say that the rules-based international order involves,

“a shared commitment by all countries to conduct their activities in accordance with agreed rules that evolve over time. … It also involves … the acceptance of restraints by states”.

That sounds wonderful, but I ask myself: when exactly was this golden age, when the rules-based international order was functioning?

One of our witnesses, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, former National Security Adviser, gave an answer, saying that it was a 20-year period between 1989 and 2009 when,

“we suddenly saw the UN Security Council unblocked … a whole series of new institutions and new normative developments, particularly at the United Nations”.

Surely what is most noticeable about this argument is, first, how short this period was—just 20 years—and, secondly, that it coincided with the single most dramatic development in international relations since the end of the Second World War, namely the collapse of the Soviet Union. If it was indeed the period when the rules-based international order was working well, and if we agree that the system developed 74 years ago, after the Second World War, then perhaps the period we are living in today is not quite so exceptional. One might even say that the relatively successful operation of the rules-based international order was the exception rather than the rule, and that what is happening today is that normal service has been resumed. By normal service, we surely mean that what we most need are the traditional skills of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy.

In this context, I very much support our report’s recommendation in paragraph 331, that we must invest more in our global diplomatic presence and that to fulfil the UK’s responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the UK should have a presence in every country.

This brings me to what is surely a hugely important observation about international relations today, which is all too easily overlooked, and that is the resilience of the nation state. It has become fashionable to make assumptions about globalisation, not just as a description of the modern era, but almost as a policy objective. As a consequence, the nation state is seen to be an increasingly outdated organisation. So many pressures seem to challenge it—the growth of modern technologies, citizens communicating with each other across national boundaries, the growth of non-state actors and the power of multinationals. As Sir Mark Lyall put it so clearly,

“The only question in my mind is whether these pressures will exert such asymmetrical pressure on the nation state that the system will collapse”.


Yet surely the evidence about the enduring importance of the state, both as the basis for people’s loyalties and identities and as the basic building block of international relations, is overwhelming. Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, put it well when he said in a speech last May:

“At the end of the Cold War, there were some who said that the nation state would soon be consigned to the dustbin of history … the state is back. It is the primary vehicle of global influence and power. It comes before multilateralism. And it’s time we acknowledged it”.


Since the Second World War ended, there has been an inexorable growth in the number of states, much of it the result of decolonisation. Since then, we have had many more new states and old ones re-established following the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have seen multinational states such as Yugoslavia break into their constituent parts and Czechoslovakia dividing. We have seen many nationalist movements calling for the creation of new states—and surely it is only a matter of time before Palestine is recognised as a new state. Statehood, as measured by membership of the United Nations, has increased from 51 when the UN was established in 1945 to 193 today—an increase of almost 400%. To me, the evidence is clear: while globalisation and multilateralism may be the fashionable words of our time, do not underestimate the enduring appeal of the nation state; reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.

This argument about the abiding appeal of the nation state is directly relevant to the future direction of the European Union. There are those who think that national loyalties are dying and that they will gradually transfer to a wider loyalty embracing the whole of Europe. Others—I am one of them—see the EU essentially as an organisation built by treaty from the top down and not by consent from the bottom up. No wonder its leaders are so fearful of referendums.

So my conclusion is that, yes, there is indeed a shifting world order, as we say in the title of our report, but despite all this change, what is needed most is a nurturing and strengthening of the traditional requirements of our foreign policy—namely, worldwide representation, the skills of diplomacy with whatever new tools are available and the bilateral relationships between sovereign nation states.

Wilton Park

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, let me assure the noble Baroness and indeed all noble Lords that anyone who takes part in this process is expected to adhere to a code of conduct. The chair continues to do that and she has the confidence of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office behind her. Any person holding public office is also required to adhere to the Nolan principles for public servants and to remain mindful of the potential for such statements—

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I think we have exhausted time.

[Lord Grocott]

I hope that I am not the only one who is troubled by the nature of the series of personal attacks on a former excellent Member of Parliament and excellent Minister. I also hope that we can be given an absolute assurance from the Minister that whichever side anyone took in the referendum campaign, leave or remain, in neither case should it ever be a disqualification from appointment to a government office.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord has summed up the sentiments of many across your Lordships’ House very well.

Palestinian Territories

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, in introducing the debate was quite outstanding. It is not the first time that I have heard him speak here and in the other House on both this issue and apartheid. If only people had listened to some of the things that he has said on these issues over the years.

One thing struck me in particular, which I think is worth repeating. My memory in Parliament does not go back as far as the noble Lord’s—although I speak from 40 years of experience—but he mentioned how the mood has changed and how it was dramatically different when such debates took place. Overwhelmingly, debates 40 years ago did not recognise the rights of the Palestinian people. Most of them were described as terrorists for wanting a Palestinian state. This time, the position has been dramatically reversed. I have noted that as the speeches have gone along. By my reckoning, 17 of the 25 speeches so far have been massively understanding of the unremitting plight of the Palestinians. I hope that that, if nothing else, might occasionally make people on the other side of the argument think. I have to put it in those terms to acknowledge that opinion is moving—and not, either here or internationally, to the side of the position that has been adopted by the Israelis.

For all that, the debate, although important, has been profoundly depressing. I do not think that anyone seriously expects anything to change. In the four minutes I have, my message is this: something has to change. With great respect, I am afraid that I know what the Minister will say: that he supports the two-state solution, condemns violence on both sides and wants to support the Middle East peace process. I have read those words from where he is sitting from time to time over the years, but something must change. What can the British Government do? Things are not static; they are getting inexorably worse. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, the International Relations Committee in the Lords—which I am very pleased to be a member of—said this a year ago about the two-state solution:

“On its current trajectory, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is on the verge of moving into a phase where the two-state solution becomes an impossibility and is considered no longer viable by either side”.


Will anyone in this Chamber say that its assessment was not accurate? No.

Nor can anyone say that things are not now substantially worse than they were 12 months ago when that statement was made, apart from the almost predictable number of Palestinians killed in the 12 months following that statement, the US declaration on Jerusalem and the continuing growth of settlements. Occupation and settlements are somehow treated differently when Israel is doing it. Israelis ask why the world picks on them, but when states occupy neighbouring states, the international community takes action, by and large—it certainly did when Russia was occupying neighbouring states—but 50 years down the track I can see no such action here, other than people saying, “Please don’t build these settlements”. Well, the Israelis have long since not bothered to take much notice of that.

We can do one thing, which the International Relations Committee recommended. We could be just one country, among the 136 states of the United Nations, or 70% of its membership—although we are not among them at the moment—that recognises a state of Palestine. We will take as read the Minister’s commitment to the two-state solution and the condemnation of the settlements, but I ask him—I know that he cannot do this on his own authority, but perhaps he can with the rest of the Front Bench—to listen to the many voices in this House asking him to give the Palestinians, amidst all the suffering and bloodshed, the dignity of hearing that we recognise their right to a state and will join forces with the vast majority, and increasing number, of UN states that know that this is the right and proper thing to do.

Middle East (IRC Report)

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, it was a privilege for me to be a member of the committee. The report that we compiled has been pretty well received by most of its contributors. A special thanks, of course, to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who did a great job as chairman, and a very special thanks to the staff of the committee. It may not be apparent from the text of the report, but it was compiled in great haste because of the advent of a completely unexpected—certainly on my part and, I think, on that of most other people—general election, which put a heavy burden on our staff, particularly our policy analyst, who was outstanding in putting it together.

It has to be said that the evidence that we received and many of our findings about the Middle East today do not make happy reading. To describe much of the region as troubled and unstable is a huge understatement. As we put it:

“The region is violent; disfigured by inter- and intrastate conflict and by sectarian divisions”.


There is also the involvement of foreign powers in the region. One witness said to us in terms that there have been massacres and brutal episodes of sectarian violence intermittently for 1,400 years in the region but, he added, in the broad sweep of history, it is noticeable that tensions have been at their most bloody when external powers have been involved.

This inevitably raises the question of Britain’s involvement in the region. Our activities have been intense, over a very long period and often in dramatic ways. There is the drawing of international boundaries in the colonial period, the involvement in the region during two world wars, the Balfour Declaration, the overthrow of Mosadeq in Iran, the Suez crisis, wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, the oil trade and arms sales—on and on, not all triumphs.

It is not unreasonable to ask: might it not be better for Great Britain and everyone else if we disentangled ourselves and left well alone? The committee’s view was that this would be neither realistic nor desirable, if for no other reason—in truth, there are many reasons—than, as one of the witnesses pointed out,

“what happens in the Middle East does not stay in the Middle East”.

It seems impossible to discuss any aspect of British foreign policy these days without mentioning Brexit, and our committee does not disappoint. Nearly all the witnesses were questioned on the subject, and I can report—wait for it—that our conclusions are essentially benign. As we report:

“The significance of Brexit on the Middle East is, on balance, less than elsewhere. Policy in the region relies on bilateral relationships and security commitments”.


Sir Derek Plumbly, former British ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, told us that Arab Governments,

“tend instinctively to look beyond the EU to national governments”,

and we received evidence that a number of states in the region would welcome the development of bilateral trade and other relationships with Britain post Brexit.

On overseas aid, where much of our budget is channelled through the European Union, and while there can be economies of scale in doing so, in the words of Neil Crompton, director of the Middle East and north Africa department at the Foreign Office, Brexit might be “slightly liberating”, in that UK diplomats spent,

“an awful lot of time negotiating EU positions that we do not always agree with”.

Surely anything which eases the pressure on diplomats cannot be all that bad.

However, while our membership of the EU may not be pivotal to our trade, aid or defence policies in the Middle East, there is no doubt that our key allies in Europe remain, and will continue to remain post Brexit, enormously important. As Jack Straw, who gave evidence to the committee, said, the reality has always been that foreign policy at EU level requires France, Germany and the United Kingdom to agree to it, and that is how it will be in future.

That is particularly true in the case of Iran. As we write in paragraph 205:

“It is in the UK’s interests to pursue a better relationship with Iran, and we recommend that this should be a key priority for the UK”.


A pivotal part of that relationship is the joint comprehensive plan of action involving Britain, France, Germany, the US, China and Russia. The signing of an agreement on a subject as sensitive as Iran’s nuclear programme, while undoubtedly a considerable achievement, was unsurprisingly viewed with a mixture of anxiety and hostility by the Saudis, the Gulf states and Israel. And yet—and this is one of those things that often comes out when you are taking evidence—despite all the national rhetoric, frequently, and in many important ways, relationships between the Gulf states and Iran, and even between Saudi and Iran, in trading terms if nothing else, are developing all the time, whatever the comments by national Governments. But of course the Trump Administration are hostile to the deal and, as Jack Straw again said in his evidence, there is a feeling among the Iranians that their country was humiliated by the deal and has received nothing in return. Our committee said that it was in our country’s interests to continue to support the deal, irrespective of any opposition from the US, and that it is in our economic as well as our strategic interests to open up new sources of finance and investment in Iran.

While at least we could identify a strategy that, albeit slowly, might improve the Iranian situation, there was nothing positive whatever to report about Israel/Palestine. While virtually every international actor and, indeed, the principal parties to the dispute themselves pay lip service to a two-state solution, the prospects of it being achieved according to our witnesses are at best on hold or at worst diminishing by the hour. The central problem—and there is no way of evading this—is the continued growth of illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian land, which makes the possibility of a viable Palestinian state ever less credible. Since 2009 alone, more than 80,000 settlers have moved into Palestinian land, bringing the grand total to well over half a million. Our witnesses ranged from Jack Straw, who said that the settlement activity made the establishment of a two-state solution incredibly difficult, to the then Minister, Tobias Ellwood, who said,

“the growth of settlements is coming perilously close to making that”—

a two-state solution—“an impossibility”.

Yet I am sorry to say that our Government have been sending mixed messages, as we report, on this crucial issue. We supported UNSC Resolution 2334, which said that,

“the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory … constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution”.

Yet on 29 December, we distanced ourselves from then US Secretary of State John Kerry, when he said that the,

“status quo is leading towards one state and perpetual occupation”.

In January this year, we again distanced ourselves, this time from the Paris conference, which included 70 countries that reaffirmed their commitment to the two-state solution.

It was absolutely clear from our witnesses that the two-state solution itself is perilously close to moving from being a difficult though feasible strategy to a meaningless, unattainable mantra. The Israeli Government’s public position is to support the two-state solution but, in practice, their policies are not even benign ones of inactivity; they are active ones of settlement-building, which inexorably makes their declared strategy unachievable. Our committee was clear that the consequences of the two-state solution becoming impossible would be a grave development for the region, and that playing our part in resolving the conflict must be a high priority for British foreign policy. Irrespective of any contrary view coming from Washington, we should give our clear support to the French-led international initiative. If the Israelis with their settlement activity further imperil the prospect of a solution, we should be ready to support appropriate United Nations resolutions. As a demonstration of our commitment to two states, we should give serious consideration, as the Commons did in the last Session of Parliament, to recognising a Palestinian state. There is a logical gulf somewhere between supporting a two-state solution and only recognising one state.

It would be easy to be overwhelmed by any inquiry into the scale of the problems faced by a region as vast and challenging as the Middle East. We concentrated our recommendations on those areas where we could make practical suggestions that we felt were important for British foreign policy while being realistic about our country’s capacity to change things for the better. But doing nothing, as we are frequently reminded, is in itself a policy option, and by no means always the best one. I have focused on just a couple of areas, Iran and Israel/Palestine, where our extensive involvement goes back decades and where I believe we still have the capacity to make a difference—and I believe that we should.