Global Challenges

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate. I would like to make a few points about the UK’s role in meeting these great challenges via collaboration and, in some respects, via advances in science and technology. Governments and Parliaments need to explain more clearly the benefits of working through national and regional organisations, which have been mentioned already in the previous speech. We can be more effective in dealing with these problems through improved and broader training of civil servants in government. I had some experience as head of the Met Office, dealing with many UK agencies.

By comparison with France, Germany and some other countries, the broader training that their officials had gave them some advantage. We have very technical ones and this partly goes back to our university and school system where we teach people in a very narrow way. There are, of course, few who can quote great lumps of poetry, but they probably had military training and military experience, which is rather remarkable in the training world. The idea that people should have broad training is positively Napoleonic.

Sadly, in recent years, Governments have been reducing funding for civil servants’ training. One of the reasons for having a much broader training in understanding Governments around the world is that the role of civil servants is to represent the UK in many of these important agencies and international bodies. Sometimes we see the difference between them and representatives from our European partners. One of the interesting points about the Ministry of Defence, which I worked with because the Met Office was then part of the MoD, was that substantial numbers of officials and officers had considerable knowledge of foreign countries and foreign languages, not least Russian.

My second point is that the UK Government and Parliament need to realise that we can tackle global issues only through collaboration, and that UK politicians should desist from the “anti” phraseology all the time of “taking the lead”. It seems almost like a mantra for civil servants and politicians, in addressing an issue, to say, “We have to take the lead”. I am afraid that other countries rather snigger at this posturing in our country. If we are doing good work, the good work will be apparent. Indeed, as I saw in the world in which I worked, if you do make substantial contributions, or very important leadership is provided in committees, it is not a good idea to keep saying, “The UK made a lead on this or that or the other”. For example, I saw this where great improvements were made in improving forecasts of natural disasters. The person dealing with the effects of climate change and disasters is an extremely effective official from Public Health England—but it is not a good idea to boast too much about that.

My third point concerns how the UK should collaborate more effectively with other countries through international agencies. This has been touched on already. This is the vital element in dealing with climate change and other civil challenges. I have spoken before about the need for the UK to make more use of our membership of the UN agencies—as the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, commented. It is an essential role in reducing carbon emissions. So these are very technical issues.

Shipping is responsible for 15% of carbon emissions and the figure is rising, while aircraft are responsible for 7%. This was discussed yesterday. These are dealt with by the International Maritime Organization and international aviation bodies. We have to deal with road transport and the heating and cooling of buildings. All of these are areas where progressively, if we focus on them, we will be able to deal with these huge challenges. The co-ordination and publicising of our role needs to be much greater. I think that the Foreign Office has a department for dealing with this and it does not do this as strongly as it might do.

Recently, the Select Committee on the Arctic—of which I was a member—commented on the difficulties for the FCO to participate in some of these international bodies, particularly those dealing with the Arctic. This is not the fault of the officials, but of the fact that the budgets are very weak. One possibility is that there are many NGOs who can participate—I am president of an NGO that does participate in the Arctic discussions. Maybe this is one way forward. It will no longer be possible for a paid official to attend these relevant meetings.

Finally, I will go from the Arctic to the Equator, where most people live and where there is a huge and increasing population. Through the Newton programme, the Government are funding research groups, universities and SMEs to participate. This is one way in which we are dealing with perhaps one of the most critical challenges in the world.