Queen's Speech

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I have listened to this debate from the very beginning to this predetermined hour. It has demonstrated the great strength of this House in bringing to the discussions a wealth of opinion and knowledge from sometimes unexpected quarters. It has not been a partisan debate. We have heard a number of people agreeing with those sitting on different Benches. It is entirely appropriate that a coalition Government should be backed by that kind of a Chamber, which brings constructive recommendations and does not react in a purely dogmatic way to the great and troubling issues of the present.

In one sense, I welcome the coalition’s ending of what might have been seen as an increasingly presidential system, with policy too much dictated from the top—from No. 10. We are not seeing that replaced by a duumvirate, but rather by a recognition that the voices of those elected to Parliament and those with the responsibility of participating in these debates should be heard and taken fully into account.

I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, who has on a number of occasions thought it right to focus on the negative about the European Union, giving a rather positive suggestion that we should cast our eyes more widely and not simply focus on the European Union. As someone who, shortly after I entered political life at the age of 29, became the PPS to the last Commonwealth Secretary, the late Lord Thomson of Monifieth, who went on to become our first Minister for Europe, I have never thought that these things were inconsistent.

In opening the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, whose appointment has been widely welcomed, given his great experience of many aspects of foreign policy, recognised the extensiveness of the dangers that we face in the world today. We heard from him a long list of interests and concerns, which have been echoed and magnified throughout the debate. We heard about natural disasters, poverty, malnutrition, the exploitation of the less well off, the threats of disease, uncontrolled population growth, the settlement of disputes by force rather than according to the edicts or prescriptions of public international law and the lack of certainty about what the rules of public international law are or ought to be on the use of force in humanitarian crises. We also heard about the violation of human rights and many other matters. All these things require us to focus as a nation on what our priorities must be.

Never has that been truer than at the moment, when our economic weaknesses have been displayed in a humiliating fashion. We must intervene effectively in the global issues that have been discussed. We should not underestimate our capacity, but we have to be realistic about our capabilities and not exaggerate what we can effect beneficently.

I hope that the words of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, on the Strategic Defence Review will be listened to. He has always been concerned about that aspect of our national interest. He made the important recommendation that the review should be far-reaching. He said that we should not accept any limitation on the commitments that we can afford and those that we cannot afford and that we should consider what makes most sense.

I want to speak in particular about the European Union, because I do not entirely accept what the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said about the danger of being locked into the EU strategically. I argue that our capacity for influencing the issues that have been raised in this debate will be immensely strengthened if the European Union speaks with one voice. As the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, pointed out, we should not differentiate ourselves from and hold at arm’s length the economic problems of the eurozone. We must recognise that those problems impact directly on this country. The fact that we did not join the euro has, if anything, diminished our capacity to avoid the crisis and has to some extent weakened our voice in coming to grips with it. We must not for a moment stand back in a vain—in both senses of the word—attempt to proclaim a superiority that we certainly do not merit.

If the European Union is not embroiling and entangling us, but making a serious contribution to such matters as climate change, on which it conspicuously failed to make any significant impact in the outcome of the Copenhagen conference, there is a lesson for us. Our voice and interests—what has been referred to as our international network of historic contacts in the Commonwealth and other alliances—will be amplified immensely if we can come together with the European Union. If we recognise the limitations of our diplomatic capacity, which are reflected to some extent in the cuts that have been made in the departmental spending of our Foreign and Commonwealth Office, let us welcome the setting up of the External Action Service. Let us back that, where we can, with a political attempt to bring together the understanding of the member countries of the European Union, and utilise our connections and theirs—many of them also have colonial and imperial links—so that we can play a part in settling international disputes and holding risks and terrors at bay by exercising the weight that the European Union’s state of development really does require of us.