King’s Speech

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, on his appointment, and the team that he will be working with. He is someone I listened to when we were on the Government Benches, and I will listen with even more interest now that he has some ability to change things.

I will start off with the foreign affairs aspects, of which I would like to raise three. First, many years ago I wrote a pamphlet, Helping the Exporter, and my goodness, our exporters today in relation to the EU do need help. I have one concrete example about which I will write in detail to the Minister. Basically, I am talking about international transportation of goods and the 90-day rule that there is at the moment, which, as it stands, will just about make all those international companies unable to undertake the work they do today.

Secondly, Chile. We very rarely debate South America in this Chamber, but I have taken an interest in Chile for some 15 years now. I believe that it is a country of great opportunity. Our trade with them has been at around 5% for the last 10 to 15 years. Now, there is a new Government. Let us treat Chile as an opportunity and look at the minerals that are available—copper, lithium—which are all part of net zero. Let us also look at products such as wine. I declare an interest as the chairman of the Cofradia del Vino Chileno. There are enormous opportunities there.

Lastly, Sri Lanka. Most colleagues in the House know that I have been deeply involved in Sri Lanka for the last 60 years. I started the all-party group in 1975 when I first arrived in the other place. They have been through a huge number of difficulties: internal incursions, tsunamis and Covid, alongside everything else, virtually bankrupting them. But we should remember that they were a founder member of the Commonwealth. They came to our help in the Second World War and they were the only country from the non-aligned movement that supported us over the Falklands—quite brave decision-taking.

There is a report out now, it is on the president’s table, about a truth and reconciliation commission. There are elections for the presidency in September. I hope His Majesty’s Government will read that report carefully—I am afraid there are 600 pages of it—and recognise that this is the equivalent of South Africa and Colombia.

On defence, I have the privilege to be, I think, the only person in either House who was a national service jet pilot; I trained under NATO. I believe that national service is a fundamental need today, and I am prepared to put a lot of effort behind it to get it moving. We forget just how many countries kept on their national service. I am not going to list them here on a busy afternoon, but some of the key countries, perhaps slightly unexpectedly, are Greece, Turkey—I trained with the Turks under NATO—Austria, Switzerland and Denmark, which has a brilliant scheme. They are there. Now, we need to think very seriously about it in the face of the threats that we know so well.

Personally, I think that it should be for men and women. I have two granddaughters in the CCF at Bedford Girls’ School: one is second-in-command and the other is in the naval section. They want to be considered alongside the boys. It is timely, because sadly, 12.4% of our 16 to 21 year-olds are unemployed. That in itself suggests that there is an opportunity.

His Majesty’s Government need to remind themselves that it was a Labour Government under Attlee who passed the first National Service Act on 17 July 1947—77 years ago, almost to the day. On top of that, we have a defence review, for which I say thank you. We should have had a defence review rather earlier than we got it, but we have got one now and I am pleased that our dear colleague is able to run it. He was sitting there all day, but I see that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is understandably elsewhere now. I say to the Minister that I shall take part and help in any way possible in reviving national service.