Rules-based International Order

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on getting this subject before your Lordships yet again. As she said at the end of her speech, absolutely correctly, this is just a small matter of the future of the world, and it is certainly the future of liberal democracy and capitalism, or the socialised versions of capitalism that we need to be working to develop and preserve. This is not the first time we have looked at this subject; we have returned to it many times in your Lordships’ House over the years, and rightly so. There are two reports in particular that I think are worth scrolling back to as we try to breathe some momentum into the whole subject.

The first was the December 2017 report from the International Relations and Defence Select Committee, UK Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order. Going back further, the second was the March 2014 ad hoc Select Committee report, Persuasion and Power in the Modern World. I had the honour and privilege of chairing both committees and I think both reports had some influence in encouraging the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as it was then called, to start taking the whole issue of the soft and smart power dimensions of our world interests and influence much more seriously, and, I hope, led up to and connected with yesterday’s soft power initiative taken by the present Government at Lancaster House. I am glad that the idea is alive, but it needs to be connected with the other great issues we are discussing today.

The more recent report went much deeper still into what was happening in the world, which is widely disputed, and why. That “why” is the most important aspect of all because, unless we really understand the real and root causes of this now very troubled world, where we have the highest and most dangerous number of conflicts since the Second World War and where trust is undermining democracy on all sides, will never be effective in our focused efforts to halt the downward spiral of democracy going on at the present time. It is a sad contrast to our high hopes at the end of the Soviet Union.

Not all that many experts and commentators seem to quite grasp what is happening. Of the ones who certainly have—there are some very authoritative and excellent voices—several gave evidence to our 2018 enquiry. The best one of all was a very senior and good public servant of the nation, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, former National Security Adviser and our man at the United Nations, who held all sorts of other high offices as well. Certainly, speaking personally, he always gave me superb support when I visited the United Nations in New York as a Minister.

He is rightly quoted in the Library briefing that has been supplied on this debate—although unfortunately the briefing gets his name wrong. It is not just “Lyall”, it is Sir Mark Lyall Grant. He said:

“The most visible features”


of the world we are now living in

“are new centres of world power and influence”.

A vast shift has taken place in world power. He added that there was increasing populism, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, and others, and

“nationalist pressures, far-reaching networks of crime and terror, new and empowered networks of political dissent and assertions of identity”

of tribes, cells, groups, communities, localities and mini-nations,

“the rise of non-state actors and movements, the disruption, and in some cases”

total

“destruction of established industries, the distortion and corruption of news and views on a worldwide scale”,

which the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, rightly emphasised and which is of course growing by the hour, particularly with AI, which can bring great good to our lives but can also do great damage, and is doing so already,

“and mass movements of migrants and refugees”,

which we do not really know what to do about. Sir Mark went on in our report that it was very clear

“that the influence of the ongoing digital revolution and the accompanying global connectivity on an unprecedented scale”

affects

“every sphere of modern existence”

and

“plays a central role in this turbulent scene”

that we now face.

I think Sir Mark has really got it. He really shows how deep we must go in seeking to contain the onward march of technology, which is disrupting human relations on a global scale and threatening not only international stability but the safety and security of every family, man, woman, and child, and every nation’s integrity and unity, including ours.

I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, again, because he has been such a good Commonwealth Minister over the years. He asked where we should start to rebuild. Obviously, right now we would like to solve the horrors of Gaza and Ukraine. We may even get some good news tonight on Gaza—although I fear it will only be temporary, whatever comes. They are the worst running sores.

They are not necessarily the deepest sores, because the real problems may lie in the Pacific and around China, but all this has yet to unfold. We certainly have to build on new collective international organisations. There are those who say, “Start again”, but I do not think you can do that; you have to build on the United Nations. We must take the Security Council issue really seriously day by day. The trouble is, of course, that it has been wrecked by Russia and China sitting in the middle of it like cuckoos in the nest. We have to move, we have to go for new alliances, we have to think of our neighbours in Europe. If the European Union is not going to move in the directions we want, we have to think about new European structures, perhaps through the European Political Community. Now that the spine of the old EU has broken, with France and Germany no longer co-operating, clearly, new structures are required and we should take a lead there.

Finally, we have to re-energise the Commonwealth, again as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, remarked. It is a safe harbour for the neo non-aligned nations of the world which do not want to be under either American or Chinese hegemony. Oddly enough, mention of the Commonwealth still seems to be very difficult for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office today to come to terms with. It is in fact the network of the future that is going to help more than possibly any other.

I divide the world between those who have grasped the enormity of what is now happening—the biggest shift since the Gutenberg printing press, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution—and those who have not grasped it and remain glued like errant insects to the surface of events. Events now will not wait for interminable reviews, commissions and councils. Whether in politics, business and investment or social development, events, technology and innovation will pass them all by, and are already doing so.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Cryer) (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting. I just point out that, apart from the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, every speaker so far has gone well over the seven-minute limit. If we carry on like this, it will eat into the wind-up speeches, so could we observe the seven-minute limit, please?