Gibraltar

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 3rd April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, it is because we take it so seriously that we did not mention simply one aspect in that letter, which, as the noble Lord will be aware—I am sure he has read it in detail—set out general principles, all of which apply to Gibraltar. We are taking our negotiations very seriously and taking every step along the way the opportunity to consult and reflect with Gibraltar on how the discussions will go ahead. Border issues are of course key to our negotiations.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister not feel that the last people to give advice on this matter should be the people who caused the problem: those who incited the electorate of this country to leave the European Union, without which Gibraltar’s situation would be perfectly and totally secure? Could they perhaps encourage their supporters to give them some ideas on how to persuade Spain, which is in a strong position now, unfortunately, to reach an agreed position with us that will preserve the situation of Gibraltar and its prosperity?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, Gibraltar’s position is as secure today—and will be in two years’ time, or whenever the negotiations are concluded thereafter—as it was on 23 June.

West Papua

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we should recognise that overall the human rights situation in Indonesia has improved significantly since the late 1990s. Of course, we have some specific concerns, including about respect for some communities, and the noble and right reverend Lord has raised specific issues about West Papua. Throughout all these issues of concern on human rights it is important to note that the President has made it clear that he pays more attention than his predecessors to the importance of the future prosperity of West Papua—and it is the case that prosperity tends to follow proper respect for human rights, which we uphold through the UN.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I declare a past interest as an adviser to BP on its big gas investment in Papua. Will the Minister express a view on whether it is correct to feel that these human rights abuses and the cases that are brought forward of such abuses are completely counterproductive to the Indonesian Government’s policy of trying to reconcile the indigenous inhabitants of Papua to being part of Indonesia? If she says that that is the Government’s view, do we convey that view to the Indonesian Government?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, we convey the view to the Indonesian Government that we wish to work with them in their stated objective of improving the condition of people in West Papua. With regard to abuses, it is the case that the Indonesian President is committed to addressing the problems in the region. The previous co-ordinating ministry for legal, political and security affairs established an investigative team to resolve past cases of human rights abuse. However, we remain concerned by the slow progress that has been made and we are encouraging the Indonesian Government to prioritise a swift resolution. The fact is that where human rights are recognised and protected, prosperity tends to follow.

Recent Changes to US Immigration Policy

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I have never known my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to scramble or be undignified, and I have known her for some long while. She demonstrated her dignity and statesmanship when she was in the United States, and she will continue to do so as she fights for British interests. It is the case that the United States, as the noble Lord is well aware, is our oldest and strongest ally—historically, as I was always reminded by one noble Lord, Portugal beats them in time, of course—and certainly it is our strongest ally. For the sake of world peace, it is right that that alliance should remain so. However, as the Prime Minister said, she will make clear her views; when we disagree, we will make it clear.

Yes, indeed, Her Majesty the Queen has issued an invitation to President Trump. Details of the date and arrangements have not been announced, but I would judge that the people of this country will act with dignity as well at the time.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister say very clearly—I think she is about half way there—whether or not we regard the action taken by the US Administration, in particular the action on refugees, as consistent with their having signed and ratified the 1967 protocol to the 1951 convention? Secondly, would she say whether the British Government consider that the action that has been taken by the US Administration is likely to reduce the threat from terrorism or, possibly, make it worse?

Brexit: UK International Relations

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the first report of your Lordships’ relatively new International Relations Committee has been most ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. I regret only that the indisposition of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has prevented him from taking credit for the way he has guided the fledgling committee, and I wish him a very speedy recovery.

The arrival of a new UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, in that office on the 38th floor of UN headquarters which I know so well, is, as changes of Secretary-General always are, something of a watershed moment. It is not getting the same attention as President Trump’s inauguration or the triggering of Article 50, but it is nevertheless an important moment for a country such as the UK, whose permanent membership of the UN Security Council is even more salient in its foreign policy than it was before the referendum.

The Government’s response to our report shows that there is a lot of common ground between us when it comes to identifying the priorities of the new Secretary-General. It is particularly welcome that the Government share the committee’s view that the UN, for all its weaknesses and failings, remains an essential global institution and the linchpin of a rules-based international order which it is in Britain’s interest to support.

That might sound a little bit like motherhood and apple pie, but with the arrival in the White House of a new President who did not have a single good word to say about the UN in his campaign, it is nothing of the sort. President Trump has now expressed his disregard for a number of the US’s international obligations—specifically, on torture, on refugees and on paying the UN’s assessed contributions for regular and peacekeeping budgets—which puts him at variance with our Government’s policy. If followed up with deeds, it will bring us into sharp disagreement with our principal ally. That is in addition to the other disagreements over NATO and free trade. It will inevitably affect efforts to establish a good relationship with the new Administration, but I shall not go further into that matter today, with the Prime Minister in the United States.

On what points, then, does the committee not agree with the Government? I shall identify a few. The Government seem to be underestimating the number of threats to international peace and security expressed in no-go areas for the UN. There is Syria, of course, which they recognise as such. Who could not feel a sense of collective shame and despair after the agony of Aleppo? But there are also Ukraine and Crimea and the tensions in the South and East China Seas. It is surely important that those no-go areas be reduced, not allowed to expand and spread like ink blots to cover the whole globe, as they did during the Cold War.

Secondly, there is the process of choosing a new Secretary-General. The Government deserve a lot of credit for the major contribution they made to reforming and improving the process that led to the unanimous choice of António Guterres. That this was achieved with greater transparency than before, without any pre-emption of a regional or gender kind—desirable though it undoubtedly is that a woman Secretary-General should emerge before too long—was a major achievement. But why do the Government feel the need to dismiss the idea of moving to a single, seven-year, non-renewable term for Secretary-Generals, and with such weak arguments? In a rather dismissive way, they suggest that that idea has been circulating for many years. Well, so was the reform of the franchise; so was giving women the vote; so was abolishing slavery. It did not make them bad ideas. They also say that re-election after five years makes the Secretary-General more accountable. That is a polite way of saying that it makes him more subject to a veto from permanent members—not necessarily a good thing. I hope that the Government will think again about a seven-year term.

Thirdly, although the Government appear to agree that the UN’s capacity for conflict prevention needs to be boosted, they qualify that by saying that,

“spending more is not the only way to achieve this”.

The committee did not say it was, actually, but it is rather difficult to see the UN becoming more effective at conflict prevention at nil cost.

Fourthly, there is accountability for sexual abuse by peacekeepers. The Government first rejected the recommendation of the Committee on Sexual Violence in Conflict that an international jurisdiction be set up to help root this out. Now, they have rejected even the less ambitious idea of convening a group of experts to consider its feasibility. The primary responsibility for dealing with such matters lies, they say, with the troop-contributing countries. Precisely so, but perhaps the Minister can say when she winds up which countries exercise that duty. I think the answer is zero.

Lastly, on the implications of Brexit for our work at the UN, the habitual paralysis that seems to afflict every government department when it is asked to think beyond the mantra of “Brexit means Brexit”, seems to have afflicted the FCO. It seems to accept that we share values and interests with the other members of the EU, but it says nothing about drawing the natural conclusion that we need to go on working closely with EU members at the UN.

I apologise if I have sounded a bit grumpy, but it really would not do if we always pretended to agree with the Government when we do not, and the points that I have mentioned are ones on which the committee came to a considered view. What matters is that the UN counts more for the UK than it has ever done before.

Populism and Nationalism

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, it is hard to credit that anyone who follows international affairs can now be in doubt that the rules-based international order, so painstakingly built up over the 70 years since the disasters of two world wars, is currently under greater challenge than it has ever been; or that the response so far of countries such as ours, which has done so much to contribute to that rules-based order, and which still regarded its maintenance as a national interest—look at last year’s security review—has been quite inadequate in the face of those challenges. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, has done us a favour by bringing this matter forward for debate today, although effective collective action to those challenges is needed, not just debate.

Why is this situation so serious? I suggest it is because the challenges reach across such a wide area, encompassing peace and security, human rights, trade policy and climate change, to mention a few. Because the political will to face up to these challenges still seems to be ebbing rather than strengthening. The horrors of the siege of Aleppo, which is merely the most recent event in the abject failure of the international community to exercise its responsibility to protect the Syrian people, is fresh in all our minds, but the actions of President Putin to overturn the post-Cold War European order by seizing Crimea and destabilising Ukraine, are still open wounds. The trampling by Islamic State of every one of the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an appalling reminder that those rights are not secure. Add to that the challenge of trade protectionism, which did so much in the 1930s to create the conditions for a global disaster, and the threat from nuclear proliferation, only temporarily held in check by the P5 plus one’s agreement with Iran.

That is a daunting yet incomplete list. What can be done to reverse those damaging trends? I suggest that there are four traps that we need to avoid. The first is to attribute all the damage being done to the rules-based international system to the surge in support for protest movements. That surge certainly makes finding solutions more difficult and could, if left to grow unchecked, make our predicament even worse. But we must not dismiss these large protest votes in this country and in the US last year, and perhaps elsewhere in Europe within months, as simply aberrant reactions that can be ignored. As the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, said, populism is as much a symptom as it is a cause. Where we can find some policy responses to the root causes of those negative protest reactions, we will really need to deploy them.

The second trap is to believe that we are engaged in some titanic struggle between nation states and multilateral organisations. The nation state is not under threat, nor is it the root of all evil, nor is it about to disappear. It is in fact an essential building block for that international co-operation which is required if we are to handle successfully all those policy areas where action by individual states is no longer adequate to the task.

The third trap is to do nothing apart from wringing our hands. Intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan may have been the misguided or inadequate but non-intervention is a policy choice too, fraught with consequences, as we have seen in Syria. Allowing world trade liberalisation, which has brought so many millions of people out of poverty in recent years, to founder in tit-for-tat retaliation would simply lead to impoverishment and destabilisation, as it did in the 1930s.

The fourth trap is to believe in all that loose talk about living in a post-truth world. We may indeed live in a world where it is easier than before to plant plain lies on the public consciousness, but we do not live in a post-reality world, so sooner rather than later we will find current trends, if unchecked, leading to real, serious damage to our prosperity and security.

If we are to avoid these traps, we will certainly need to make a better job than we have done in the past of setting out a compelling case for the benefits of a rules-based international order. That case will need to cover the whole range of our international commitments and obligations in the UN, NATO and the World Trade Organization. It will require making common cause with other like-minded countries—often our former partners in the European Union. Where will the United States stand in all this? That is not a question that can or should be answered with confidence one day before President Trump is inaugurated. But neither systematic compliance with US policies nor systematic opposition to them would seem a sensible approach. That means we—and, above all, our Government—will face some difficult choices in the months and years ahead.

Cyprus

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My noble friend raises an important point, naturally. The UK is willing to consider whatever arrangements the sides can agree upon to meet the security needs of a reunited Cyprus. Indeed, both sides recognise that future security arrangements will need to enable both communities to feel safe.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that in the run-up to what could be a very important meeting it is necessary that countries such as Britain, which is a permanent member of the Security Council, pursue an active diplomacy in support of the United Nations, which needs support at moments like this? Further to what she said in reply to the noble Lord, will she confirm that, were issues relating to the guarantee treaty—to which we are a party—to arise, we would be prepared to show flexibility towards any solution that had the agreement of Turkey, Greece and the two parties in Cyprus?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, this is, of course, a Cypriot-led process. I assure the noble Lord, as he wished me to, that we are willing to consider whatever arrangements the two sides leading this process can agree on to meet the security needs of a reunited Cyprus. We do not take a particular role for ourselves, except the one the noble Lord rightly stresses, which is our relationship with the United Nations and others involved in this process to bring it to a successful conclusion.

Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, because she mentioned something that has hardly been mentioned in this debate, which is NATO. I, too, want to say something about that at a later point.

Post-mortems are grim occasions at the best of times, but this post-mortem on the overturning by a relatively small majority of the policies which have guided 10 successive Governments during the past 55 years is about as grim as it could get. It is all the more so when one considers that the campaign which preceded the 23 June vote plumbed depths which public life in this country has not seen before, with the leave campaign relying on half-truths, untruths and straightforward bare-faced lies, the most notable being the claim that £350 million a week was sent to Brussels. Faced as they were with conclusive evidence not from the remain campaign but bodies such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies that their claim was simply untrue, with it being illustrated carefully how untrue it was, the leave campaigners demonstrated that they had picked up a lesson in the Middle East, where it is always said: “If you’re going to tell a lie, you’d better tell a big one, because then more people believe it”.

That we are now required to respect the outcome of that vote is a fact of life, but it in no way discredits the view that the vote represents a major strategic error of judgment. It merely illustrates the folly of submitting an issue of this complexity to a binary choice and the folly, too, I fear, of the Prime Minister playing Russian roulette with the basic foundations of Britain’s foreign policy.

The question we now face is what can be saved from this shipwreck. How best can we mitigate the negative consequences of this decision to withdraw from the European Union, negative consequences which have already, in the space of one week, moved from being that airily dismissed Project Fear to being a daily reality? In considering our options, I hope that we can discard the relatively trivial issue of when to trigger the provisions of Article 50 of the treaty, which is the only legal way of leaving the European Union and the only way that is consistent with our international obligations. It is reasonable enough to delay for the period necessary for a new Prime Minister to take office and a new Government to be formed and then to have the ability to look carefully into the policy choices before them, but to delay artificially beyond that could be, and probably would be, to turn that issue into a completely unnecessary bone of contention with our EU partners, who after all we will require to respond positively to the ideas we put to them when we get round to deciding what they are.

When the new Prime Minister and the new Government take office, probably in September, let us hope that they will then be put through a crash course by their Civil Service advisers on the fundamental differences between, on the one hand, continuing in the single market and, on the other, leaving it and either seeking to negotiate a free trade agreement or relying on the WTO. I hate to disillusion the noble Lord, Lord Desai, but if he thinks that rejoining the WTO is a negotiation-free option, he does not know that much about the WTO.

The superficiality in this distinction between the single market and a free trade arrangement is, frankly, pretty startling. We have heard so far some very slippery concepts, such as “access” to the single market, bandied around. The leave campaigners do not seem to understand what that means or does not mean. For example, they say that the Americans have access to the single market. Sure, they export to the single market, but why on earth are all those American banks stacked up in the City of London? They are there because they need to get a passport to operate and they need to be within the European Union to do that. They do not have access for their banks if they are sitting in New York. That is a simple fact. Let us take the Japanese car industry. The Japanese do not send very many cars to Europe; they make a lot of cars in Europe, and thank heavens they make a lot of them in Britain. They do that because it is a gateway for barrier-free, tariff-free, no-inspection-required access to this huge market of 500 million. That is why they have all the factories here. So please do not let us confuse these slippery phrases like “access” with the real thing, which is what you get if you are in the single market. The Government’s White Paper in February setting out the alternatives, which was given scant attention, explained fairly carefully how these different alternatives played out on our trade, and, clearly, remaining in the single market was the best of the bad lot—the best lot, of course, being to remain in the EU.

However, I suggest also that any external relationship that we may fashion with the EU must surely cover one or two other key areas of policy, in which I would identify foreign and security policy and our protection against international crime. The advantages of continuing to work as far as possible in lockstep with the EU in handling the major foreign policy challenges ahead of us—Islamic State, instability in the Middle East, the new assertiveness of Russia’s foreign policy, climate change or the pressures from migration—are obvious. However, securing that will require much dexterity and will need underpinning with new procedures and new institutional links which would be greatly helped if this weekend’s meeting in Warsaw leads to a much closer relationship between NATO and the EU, which I believe it is the intention that it should.

As for justice and home affairs, the whole network comprising Europol, Eurojust and the essential instruments such as the European arrest warrant, the European criminal information record system, the Schengen information system and the Prüm agreements—all that, and much more besides—is really important for us. As recently as 2014, only 18 months ago, huge majorities in both Houses confirmed that it was in our national interest to remain in all those areas. So this too would require to be built into any new relationship with the EU as an integral and properly smoothly functioning part of it.

I wish to say one word about the vexed issue of EU citizens in the UK. So far the Government’s response to that has caused more alarm and despondency than it has allayed. That is really sad because in so doing the Government have betrayed the main values that I think we all hold very dear. I ask the Minister simply to state clearly in winding up that the object the Government will pursue in this matter is to protect the acquired rights of EU citizens in this country. It would not take much to say that, and if she did then a lot of people would go away on holiday without the concerns that they have now.

Are the objectives that I have set out negotiable? That is impossible to say at this moment. Would their achievement reduce the gap between the benefits—

[Noble Lords]

Time!

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am drawing to a close. Would their achievement reduce the gap between the benefits that we get from membership and those that we could get from them? We cannot tell that now. It is fruitless to try to answer those questions before negotiations have even started, or to speculate on what should be done if positive answers cannot be given to them. Suffice to say, if given the choice, I would not start this journey from here.

EU: British Nationals Resident Overseas

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I entirely agree with the noble lord and that will be the thrust of the work to be done by the unit being set up. I feel sure it will be at the forefront of the minds of those who carry out the negotiations later this autumn.

With regard to Gibraltar, my colleagues in the Foreign Office have of course been in contact throughout with the Gibraltarian Administration, and we have given every indication of full support for their sovereignty and that we will not let them down.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister not recognise that the assurances given by the Prime Minister are a bit of a wasting asset, not because he will no longer be Prime Minister but because, as the negotiations go ahead, the people we are talking about will become increasingly anxious about the outcome? Will the Minister try to ensure, first, that these people are consulted when the Government are making up their position—it is not too difficult to have consultations and it will help—and secondly, that they are kept informed at each stage of the negotiations so that the rather complex arrangements they may have to make to take care of their interests are done in full knowledge of what is happening?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble lord makes an important point and anybody who carries out the negotiations will have in mind that, in bringing the country together, it will be vital to take account of the interests of those so directly affected. In the interim, as soon as the decision was known on Friday, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ensured that there was a system whereby anybody who phoned in with concerns about these matters was able to get an answer and a reassurance at that stage.

Turkey

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, my noble friend is right to draw attention to the issue of lifting parliamentary immunity for MPs. I understand that President Erdogan signed that measure into law last week, and it is a matter of concern: after all, in any modern democracy a candidate for EU accession should be expected to undertake legal processes transparently and to fully respect the law. I hope they do so in these cases. Regarding leaks, in this particular case, of course, it was a selective leak. The fact is that if the rest of the material had been published—I do not encourage that because these are confidential matters—it would have shown that the Government’s policy is and will remain to maintain current visa requirements for all Turkish nationals wishing to visit the UK, regardless of what arrangements other member states in the Schengen area may make for Turkey. Diplomatic telegrams, by their very nature, are a way in which our experts overseas advise the Government here of what is happening in the Governments there—it is not about UK policy.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge that many of us who still support Turkish accession believe that the policies of the present Government in Turkey—particularly on press freedom, the treatment of their critics and the immunity of opposition Members of Parliament—have set the process back a long way and that that setback makes complete nonsense of this idea that Turkey might join in 2020?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. It is a matter of concern when one sees that Turkey is 151st out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index. That is not the sign of a country that is serious about wanting accession.

Syria: Air Drops

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I agree entirely with the way in which the noble Lord has outlined the risks involved in the delivery of humanitarian aid which is so desperately needed. There are areas, for example, in the middle of Damascus that have been besieged and starved for three years. Getting access there, if Assad agreed to it, is a simple matter—he is standing in the way—but the risks internationally are great. Assad is computing those risks too. What we say to him is: the world will not stand idly by and allow you to continue bombing, starving and using chemical weapons against your people. We are six years into the conflict, and it must stop.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister not recognise that it may be necessary to move matters rather more forcefully at the United Nations and that a resolution authorising air drops and requiring the Assad regime to permit those air drops would compel the Russians to take a position on that, which they can probably avoid doing so long as merely diplomatic channels are being used? If they veto it, they will be vetoing the provision of supplies to starving people, and that will have a cost to them. If they do not veto it, they are supporting the use of air drops, and that has implications for their own military involvement. Would it not be better, fairly soon, to move matters in a more purposeful way in the Security Council?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

The noble Lord, with his experience of being our representative in the United Nations in New York, has hit on one of the options that are available. Meetings are going ahead today, and I hope that advances can be made through the ISSG and that Russia will use its undoubted influence over the Assad regime to achieve the right objective. However, clearly all countries will be considering the variety of options available.