Queen’s Speech

Lord Jay of Ewelme Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jay of Ewelme]

My Lords, I start by congratulating the Prime Minister on his appointment by the UN Secretary-General to chair, along with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and President Yudhoyono of Indonesia, the high-level panel on what should follow the millennium development goals. I hope that he will find the time among many commitments and occasional distractions to focus on that task because it matters, as does meeting the present millennium development goals. In that context I, like my noble friend Lord Sandwich and the noble Lords, Lord Sheikh and Lord German, am glad that in the Queen’s Speech the Government reiterated their intention to meet the target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance. I am less concerned that that target may not be enshrined in legislation. I regard it as a policy rather than a legal issue, and I share the view expressed in the House a couple of days ago by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, that we have a bit too much legislation before us.

Meeting the 0.7% target matters, just as meeting the millennium development goals matters. To take one example, a recent article in the Lancet showed that in 2010 over 5 million children died before the age of five from infections and largely preventable diseases, with pneumonia the leading cause of death. Half of those deaths were in Africa. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, there has been huge progress in Africa, but there is also huge need. Reducing that toll of childhood death requires consistent and concentrated action and consistent and concentrated funding. Britain under both recent Governments has built up a justifiably strong international reputation for its commitment to aid. Despite the understandable pressures to renege on that commitment, I sincerely urge the Government to stick to it.

Having praised the Prime Minister and the Government, perhaps I may, as is perhaps proper for a Cross-Bencher, balance that by coming a little closer to home and saying that it was surely a mistake for the Prime Minister not to see soon-to-be-President Hollande when he was in London before the recent French election. Whatever one thinks will happen to the eurozone or about the future of the European Union, the position of France will be crucial. In foreign policy and defence, relations between France and Britain, within the EU and NATO and bilaterally, will be crucial. It is therefore wholly in Britain’s interest to get to know and to talk to serious French presidential candidates. For some months before the election, it was pretty clear to French policy watchers that it was at least possible—to many of us, probable—that Monsieur Hollande would become President of France.

If I may for one moment sink into my anecdotage, I remember that when I was ambassador in France, Tony Blair, as leader of the Opposition, came to see President Chirac and Prime Minister Juppé, both leaders of the French right, just before the 1997 election. At the end of the meeting with Prime Minister Juppé, at which Mr Blair had expounded British prospective economic policy, Prime Minister Juppé replied, I thought rather wistfully, that he feared that such a policy would be far too right wing for France. I do not for a moment suggest that if Monsieur Hollande had expounded his economic policy to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister would have responded in the same way; none the less meetings of that kind are important and useful. I hope that in future the Prime Minister will see his way to meeting prospective French Presidents or, indeed, prospective German Chancellors if, as may often be the case, they are passing through London.

Finally, on our own embassies around the world, when I look back to the run-up to the war in Iraq and its aftermath, I find it hard to avoid the conclusion that we suffered from having no embassy in Baghdad between 1991 and 2003. We did not have that feeling and understanding for the country, its rulers and its people which comes from day-to-day contact with even the most detestable of regimes. We were, as a consequence, less well able than we might have been to judge the likely consequences of our actions. I therefore find it worrying that we currently have no diplomatic staff in either Tehran or Damascus, in two countries at the very heart of our foreign policy, or in Bamako in Mali, a country which, as the noble Lord, Lord King, said earlier in the debate, is at the heart of instability following the conflict in Libya.

I entirely understand and support the need to put the safety of our staff first. Particularly in Tehran, after the invasion of the embassy compounds, evacuation was the only course open to us. The question now is how we can get our staff back securely to Tehran, Damascus and Bamako in order to report, influence, protect and promote our interests. There are ways in which that can be done, step by step. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us at the end of the debate that it is indeed the intention that our staff should return. I hope also that it will be the aim of the Government to preserve our staff securely in other difficult and sometimes dangerous places such as Kabul, Khartoum and Juba. Their presence will continue to be essential to protect and promote our interests and, in particular, to meet the objectives set out by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, in his speech at the beginning of this debate of responding to crises, focusing on poverty reduction and increasing our interests in Africa.