Queen’s Speech

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, my contribution to this debate on the Queen’s Speech is on foreign affairs and defence. I declare an interest as chair of Christian Aid. Why am I speaking about foreign affairs to begin with? Given Her Majesty’s Government’s policy paper, published on Monday, on their strategy and new approach to international development, which I welcome, I could not but comment on what is close to my heart.

The House of Commons International Development Select Committee published a report earlier this year on Pakistan which showed that:

“Between 2015 and 2019 Pakistan was the largest single recipient of direct UK government-to-government bilateral aid. However, since then, overall UK aid has been cut … and aid to Pakistan has been reduced dramatically. After experiencing the largest cut in UK aid of any single country, Pakistan fell to seventh in the table of UK recipients, with an annual budget of just less than £200 million.”


The committee’s report presses the Government to focus their spending in Pakistan on supporting

“marginalised groups, including women & girls”—

one of the priority areas of the new international development strategy—

“and religious minorities”,

and to

“prioritise delivering programmes with local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) … because aid programmes are more effective when they are ‘owned’ by the local population”.

This is the experience of Christian Aid.

On the broader foreign policy agenda, I ask whether the conflicts in Ukraine will see the Government revisit the integrated defence and security review that came out last year, which signalled a pivot to the Indo-Pacific? The absence in that strategy of any framework for defence and security co-operation with Europe now looks short-sighted given the actual developments in Ukraine.

On the wider defence agenda, I welcome the moves the Government are taking to reassure Baltic countries, but this begs the question of whether, long-term, the Government will be looking to station large numbers of troops on eastern fronts or whether they intend to have a token presence they can strengthen at short notice. This decision could have long-term implications for members of the Armed Forces and their families.

Another thorny reality which Her Majesty’s Government must take seriously is the UK campaign Stop Killer Robots, which is a technology-concerned working group. The life cycle of lethal autonomous weapon systems raises outstanding technological concerns. Nearly 70 nations have joined a call for a combination of both prohibition and regulation in the form of a legally binding instrument. Will Her Majesty’s Government engage in working towards the establishment of a legally binding international treaty which could ensure that meaningful human control is retained over the use of such systems and prohibit the development, production, transfer and use of lethal autonomous weapon systems—LAWS—or, as they are also called, “killer robots”? The call for regulation is meant to safeguard the use of scientific knowledge, rather than limit scientific advancement in this area. The Government, in a 2020 paper, UK Commentary on the Operationalisation of the Laws Guiding Principles, reiterated their earlier 2018 submission in which the life cycle of lethal weapon systems was set out, concluding that human control is paramount.

Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflicts to be fought at a scale greater than ever and, at times, faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists can use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to be harnessed in undesirable ways. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close.

I found the article by Yusef of the Stop Killer Robots Coalition illuminatingly disturbing. Will the UK Government please engage with that coalition and, for all our sakes, and for the children yet unborn, come to Parliament and restore what the locusts have devoured from the international aid budget? To err is human, to forgive divine.