Queen’s Speech

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, what I found so powerful about the valedictory speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, was its sense of humanity. That will be missed. We need much more of it.

The first reality of life in the world in which we live, whether we like it or not, is that we are all totally interdependent, and that stretches right across the globe. We can see that that is true of the refugee crisis, which is only an indication of what is going to come with climatic changes that will, again, affect us all. It is true economically and in terms of health; one only has to think of special crises such as Ebola, but it is there all the time. It is true of international crime, terrorism and security. We have to work together with others.

What troubles me is how, into the middle of this reality, comes this re-emphasis of the word “sovereignty”. I frankly do not know whether people who talk about sovereignty really realise what they are saying. They are using the word emotionally but I am afraid that, unintentionally of course, they will betray future generations. The challenge to all of us is to come to terms with interdependence, and so Governments and political leadership across the board will be judged by the success we are making of meeting that challenge and the contribution we are making to finding the solutions. Of course, co-operation is a word that needs to be reaffirmed in our dialogue about international affairs.

I was very reassured by the opening speech on this side of the House by my noble friend Lord Collins of Highbury. I do not always find myself in total agreement with what is being said, but today I did. I also thought that the speech by my noble friend Lady Jowell was outstanding—a feeling which I am sure is shared by many. It raised me up in the midst of the kind of debate to which we have been subjected recently.

How are we effective in making a success of meeting the challenges of interdependence? It is of course by the spirit in which we join in and are seen to be part of the driving force towards solutions being found on a common basis. If we are always hanging back, if we are always saying, “We’ve got to see how this affects the immediate community of the British Isles”, we betray our young and we betray the future, because our young will find their well-being, security and prosperity in the context of a wider global well-being and security. That is what we should be seen to be second to none in driving towards.

We too often manifest all the indications of a crisis of self-confidence—“Let us get away on a secure little island all of our own”. That is nonsense; it is fatal. We have to join in. Vision and leadership in all this are what are necessary. We can argue about the detail, but we should have confidence in that vision and leadership. Where have the vision and leadership been in this debate?

My noble friend Lord Dubs referred to the UN, which is another area in which we have to play a crucial part. He was quite right to refer to the importance of the Secretary-General appointment, and I join him in thanking the Government for having opened up the process in a way that has never been done before. But it is also true of, for example, the Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I take immense pride in the fact that Britain played a leading part in that declaration; it had people there helping to draft it. We were seen as leaders because Churchill had realised and Roosevelt had realised—particularly Mrs Roosevelt—that human rights were not a nice way of having a nicer society but a fundamental cornerstone of security and stability in society, and if you were not protecting human rights you would see difficulties, tensions and disputes arising.

I leave the House with this thought, because it troubles me all the time and I would like to share it. If any of the language we use or any of the steps we contemplate send a message to the world that somehow we are going cool on human rights and see them as a kind of constraining difficulty which we have to deal with in our administration and legislation, instead of seeing them as positive and central to the well-being of humanity, how will this be interpreted by Putin? How will it be interpreted in other parts of the world? “Ha, the Brits have now come to terms with reality”. I beg the House to recognise that we have got to defend human rights as second to none.