Defence, Diplomacy and Development Policy

Lord Ricketts Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ricketts (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, gave us an admirable review of a complex and interlinked series of issues that we face as we leave the EU. He has got us off to a very good start and offered us a tempting menu of dishes to choose from. I will focus particularly on the “safer world” part of the menu.

I am very much looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn; she is almost there. She brings expertise on development in Africa and recent, up-to-date experience from the very heart of government, which will be a real asset to us. Although we may be a slightly select group in the House today, I promise the noble Baroness that we will be appreciative and attentive to all she has to say.

Since the start of this year, we have begun to see the outlines of what a post-Brexit foreign policy will be like for this country. I offer three pointers that I think are already clear. First, we will find ourselves aligning with our European friends more often than with the US on international foreign policy issues. In many ways this is not surprising, because we are in the same geography and are the same size as our European partners. That was very clear in the Johnson Government’s first international security crisis, the killing of Soleimani by the Americans just after Christmas. The strongest and clearest statement made by the British Government in that crisis was the joint declaration by the Prime Minister, Chancellor Merkel and President Macron. That rightly emphasised the importance of preserving the Iran nuclear deal and a dialogue with Iran and signally failed to make any reference at all to the US strike, still less condone it.

On the so-called US peace plan for the Middle East, I studied in Hansard what the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, had to say earlier today. He tiptoed around the minefield with admirable dexterity, but the message was clear: we have always supported the European position that there needs to be a genuinely negotiated two-state solution. The US plan is light-years away from that.

Our proposed digital services tax is along the same lines as France’s and has run into the same sort of criticism from Washington.

As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, says, as the year advances the Glasgow climate summit will loom larger and larger on our international agenda. There, again, we will work closely with European countries to build a consensus, and I fear the US may be one of the obstacles to achieving that.

Secondly, while it is true that we will often make common cause with European partners, we need to make sure that the tensions with Washington do not cut across the absolutely fundamental defence and security partnership with it. That will be a real challenge when we come to a free trade agreement, because it will be far more difficult than Ministers have already told us to find ways of achieving an agreement with the Americans that is at the same time acceptable to British public opinion in sensitive areas such as food security. We will have to ensure that that does not sour the wider relationship.

One area in which we should work closely with the Americans is the future of NATO, to give a clear and convincing answer to President Macron’s challenge that the organisation is brain dead. I do not believe it is, but we need to do some serious thinking about its role, purpose and narrative in the world, which are moving on rapidly from their post-war origins, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said. A NATO reflection process is under way, and the British and Americans ought to be providing real thought leadership on that.

My third pointer to the shape of foreign policy to come is that we will constantly be caught up in the wider US-China competition for global influence, particularly in the high-tech area. That was the real story behind the sharp disagreements over the last few days on Huawei. I do not believe it was ever really about national security. We have all now seen the painstaking work done by the world-class National Cyber Security Centre. From what I understand, the technical communities on the two sides of the Atlantic were never far apart on how we could manage the risks. The problem was that the British issue of how to find a British solution to our own circumstances became a political football between the China hawks in Washington and the Chinese technology industry.

The weakness of the American position struck me all along: it did not have an American solution to the 5G problem to offer. Its increasingly strident efforts to influence the British Government’s own decision went too far and became counterproductive. I pay tribute to Britain’s National Security Council for taking a calm and measured decision despite the noises off. This is not the last time we will find ourselves caught up in this competition. Outside the EU, I am afraid we will be all the more vulnerable to the kind of lobbying and arm-twisting that is bound to go on, as we have to reconcile our interest in trade and investment with our wider values and security objectives.

Those are the three pointers I offer your Lordships. Plotting a way through these minefields would be easier if we knew where we were going. The old narratives—of a bridge between Europe and America, or of Tony Blair-style liberal internationalism—are more or less played out, as Dean Acheson might have said. We need a new vision for Britain in the world. It has to take account of the fact that this country is international by instincts and interests, but we also need a real honesty about where our influence can best be deployed. We do not need declinism, if there is such a word, but we do need honesty.

Of course, as noble Lords have already said, we have huge assets to deploy. Our Armed Forces are world-renowned, as are our soft power assets. I have argued before in this House for full resourcing of the Foreign Office. I will not make that case again, but I will touch briefly on three other important vectors of influence in the world.

I agree with other noble Lords about the value of maintaining DfID as a fully fledged department of state. It is having a good afternoon here, actually. I have worked very closely with DfID, including as Permanent Secretary. I have great respect for its professionalism. I know that it is held in high regard around the world. Co-ordination between DfID, the MoD and the FCO should happen in the National Security Council, but I would not tinker with DfID’s position in Whitehall.

If we were the French and we had a cultural promotion arm as effective as the British Council, we would double its budget. If we had an instrument for the promotion of our culture and language half as powerful as the BBC, we certainly would not be squeezing its funding and obliging it to shed jobs.

We need to look to where we have assets and make the most of them. It is a moment for hard strategic thinking about Britain’s role in the world and where we are trying to go. That should be the starting point for this integrated defence and security review, which I welcome. As the Minister knows, I had a modest role in the 2010 review. It is time to refresh it. We have in our National Security Council the right forum to produce the kind of global comprehensive view that the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, offered us in opening the debate.