King’s Speech

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for giving the list of European issues. To me, it was actually a list of why we should still be there and why we should not have opted out of our continental responsibilities, so I thank the Baroness for that commentary and for that list.

To a degree, this debate has been quite downbeat in many ways, quite understandably, given the current situation we are in internationally. Who can blame us? We have democracy on the retreat globally; a European war here, not so far away from us; the United States is moving towards an isolationist position, probably whatever the outcome of the election; and we have a China under President Xi that has become assertive—unnecessarily, because we all realise that China is going to be, and is a great power, and that assertiveness is the wrong way to do it. His predecessors did it in a far more subtle way. However, I want to be upbeat, because if there is one thing I learned from my climate change brief, it is that it is no good being totally pessimistic all the time. The only way that we can move forward is to be optimistic and look at the upsides of issues.

On that basis, I first welcome very much, as other noble Members have, the fact that the Government’s attitude towards Ukraine and their policy there will remain equally robust. To me, one of the obscenities of that war, apart from the clear breach of international rule of law by that illegal invasion, is the fact that Putin has put some half a million of his citizens through the meat grinder, in terms of casualties, and it is estimated that something like 150,000 of his own citizens are fatalities as a result of that war. To me, that is the ultimate obscenity. I welcome not only the continuity of policy there; I was going to congratulate the Government on the fact that the rules around use of weapons can extend over the border, but I understand that that is not necessarily the case now and I would very much welcome the Government’s clarification on where we are on that.

In her very good speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, talked about how Russia should “prevail”. That is a strange word to use. I am sorry, I was doing my Biden thing there for a moment: she said that Ukraine should “prevail”. Does that mean that Ukraine should actually win? I would be interested to know that. The King’s Speech talked about

“a clear path to NATO membership”.

Clearly, I cannot see how Ukraine can become a member of NATO while the war continues in the way that it is at the minute, obviously because of Article 5, but what is the criteria by which Ukraine will become a member of NATO? I would be interested to hear that.

I also congratulate the Government, although it was rather pre-cooked, on their chairmanship of the European Political Community. Strangely enough, that was thanks to Liz Truss: perhaps the only good thing that she did was to agree to be a part of that community and that system. That is part of increasing our relationships with the European Union. I have a question on that. We want a stronger security relationship with Europe, and I think Europe will want to do that but will worry about the cherry-picking side. Will the Government be willing to re-enter some of the common security and defence missions? Chile has in fact contributed to some, as have Turkey, Canada and other non-EU nations, and I think ours would be an excellent entry into that.

The last thing I want to talk about has been mentioned occasionally: Sudan. It was not exactly a UK colony previously. Up to 1956, we shared it as a condominium with Egypt, but we have responsibilities there. I understand that we have been working with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the Americans to find a way through on this. There are 8 million displaced people, and hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. We need to solve this conflict. Can the Government let us know how they see that they can move that collaboration forward to heal one of the biggest blemishes on our global stage at the moment?