Queen’s Speech

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Government have rightly considered the preservation and strengthening of the rules-based international order to be in the vital national interest of the UK. This is the thrust of the recent integrated review. Britain outside the EU needs these rules even more than before, when we could rely on the solidarity of our European neighbours as of right.

This rules-based order has just had a pretty narrow squeak. Another four years of President Trump’s disruptive policies towards it could have inflicted irreparable damage. Although it is welcome that the US is back, the Biden Administration have no magic wand. Britain, too, and other like-minded states around the world will need to play their role in repairing the damage, filling the gaps and reforming international institutions. This is not so much about drawing up some new overall grand design as about acting collectively where the needs are greatest—on health, trade, climate change, and on reducing the risks of nuclear war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

On health, as the world gradually emerges from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it will be important to put the Clark-Johnson Sirleaf review of the World Health Organization to good use to ensure that the WHO and its members get more prompt and guaranteed access to new outbreaks of disease. The WHO must be provided with a higher proportion of the resources it needs by assured, assessed—not just voluntary—contributions to bring about a much closer working relationship between the global organisations which deal respectively with human and animal diseases. Global schemes such as Gavi and COVAX must be in better working order and better resourced for when the next pandemic comes along, as it surely will. The provision of vaccines to poorer countries must be achieved more effectively when the need arises.

The World Trade Organization, under its new, impressive director-general, is also in need of urgent repair. Its dispute settlement procedures should be brought back into full working order. A waiver on the system of trade-related patents for Covid vaccines should be agreed promptly. Its decision-making processes need to be less ponderous and less easy to block—perhaps by making more use of plurilateral agreements in areas such as digital trade and trade in services. The balance between bilateral and multilateral trade agreements needs careful watching, avoiding too much emphasis on the former at the expense of the latter.

Climate change is a short, medium and long-term challenge which requires both national and collective responses, as the two are closely linked. Paris was an achievement, but it has not stopped the world slipping in the wrong direction. Glasgow will need to do better. It will need to reverse the rise in the use of fossil fuels —coal in particular. If we are to persuade big coal users, such as China and India, to do this, we cannot do the opposite ourselves. Many developing countries will need help to fulfil the commitments they enter into. This will require substantial amounts of public and private finance.

The postponed nuclear non-proliferation review conference is now scheduled for later this year. It comes after a period of steady erosion of arms control measures between the nuclear weapon states. If that erosion is to be reversed and dialogue about strategic stability between the five recognised weapon states is to get under way—as it needs to do—we cannot simply set off in the opposite direction, increasing our stockpile of warheads and refusing even to discuss concepts such as sole purpose and no first use. We cannot do that without it having negative consequences and inhibiting our ability to reduce the risks of nuclear war.

The Government’s decision to reduce our aid spending from 0.7% of our GNI, as laid down in law, to 0.5% is inconsistent with our taking effective action to address any of the four sectors of the rules-based international order to which I have referred. I urge the Minister in replying to this debate to give a clear commitment that the Government will return to full compliance with 0.7% in the fiscal year following the resumption of growth in our economy. This would do something to repair the damage already done and to restore our ability to play a positive role in strengthening the rules- based international order.