My Lords, following the last debate on Iran, I think it is wise to take a step back from the detail, to which we shall shortly return, to consider culture and principle.
Twenty-twenty vision is something that, if claimed, proves only that the claimant is deluded. However, leaving fantasists to one side for a moment, we might take some wisdom from the late former Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Helmut Schmidt. At the age of 91, he wrote a book called Ausser Dienst, or “out of office”, in which he advises young Germans considering a career in politics not to do so unless they speak at least two foreign languages to a competent degree. His reason? You can only understand your own culture if you look at it through the eyes of another culture, and to do that you need language; some things cannot be translated.
On the anniversary this week of Anthony Eden’s resignation in the wake of Suez, and as the UK plans to leave the European Union and unleash its potential on a waiting world, Schmidt’s advice is both prescient and apposite. The British Government should never take it for granted that living on an island generates a very particular, if not peculiar, psychology and that this has an impact not only on how we understand ourselves but on how we perceive the way we are perceived by other nations. This is why the first couple of years of the post-referendum Brexit debate led to incredulity and bewilderment among many of those looking at us from the outside.
Behind all the politics and trading technicalities of Brexit lies the ineluctable fact that, on this hyperconnected, small planet, no policy on anything can ignore its implications for the wider picture. Foreign policy is not primarily about “us” directed at “them”, but rather “us” behaving as part of “them”. Integral to this is the first rule of negotiation: to look through the eyes of the interlocutor in order to see ourselves as we are seen. In other words, we need our Government to go beyond easy slogans such as “Get Brexit done”, or even “Global Britain”, and consider how actual policy is to be worked out with real people and how the implications and consequences of that policy are to be understood and responded to by those with whom we claim to be interconnected partners. I am seeking here not to avoid the pragmatics of policy-making—no doubt other noble Lords will attend to that—but to argue that there is an urgent need for this Government to look beneath the political game-playing to the deeper, long-term dynamics of both ethical substance and communication.
I will not be alone in noting that the language of insulting other European Union countries, as if they were not listening or could not understand English, has now changed to the language of “our friends and partners” in Europe. That is good, but our friends and partners will not have forgotten and they are not stupid.
The UK’s response to the assassination of General Soleimani in Baghdad last week, as we have just discussed, further exposes both the interconnectedness of foreign policies and the particular impact of trade dependency on the United States of Donald Trump—something that will not be lost on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe or her family.
Daily reading of the Bible, which is in my job description, reinforces a sense of the transience of power in history. The Old Testament shows that quick and obvious defence alliances often led to terrible longer-term enslavements. Empires came and went, their hubris dribbling away into deserts of exiled misery, and powers and rulers never learned, even when they seduced their people into what turned out to be false securities.
Ethics is, first and foremost, an exercise in sympathy, looking through the eyes of others. The ethics of our foreign policy priorities must begin with an understanding of what drives other countries in their domestic and foreign policies, and a cultivated willingness to shape ours in the light of how we are seen by others.
I hope that the Government, with some humility and deeper cultural thinking, might just listen to those who wish to see global justice and peace worked out in this complex world by people who are not driven by claims to power but by the imperatives of mutual human flourishing.
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to make my maiden speech on the gracious Speech. Allow me to introduce myself. I am from Downpatrick in Northern Ireland. I have been steeped in politics and have represented the Downpatrick area for decades: as MP for South Down, as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and before that as a local councillor. I have also had the privilege of being the SDLP party leader and of representing my party in government as Minister for Social Development in the power-sharing Executive.
I have been delighted to be able to include Downpatrick in my title in this House. It captures the place where I live and where I have dedicated my political service to date. Downpatrick is also well known as the last resting place of our national saint, Patrick, and the place most closely associated with him. Patrick was a fifth-century pluralist who championed the Christian message in Ireland and whose heritage today belongs to everyone. His unifying message, which long predates any of our historical quarrels or divisions, can bring people together in our divided land. It also informs how I go about the business of politics. I believe that we have to transcend political, ethnic, religious and other differences to compromise and co-operate so as to bring about the essential healing that is required in our fractious world today. So that is Downpatrick—my origins and my title.
I am also an Irish nationalist of the social democratic tradition and a firm believer in pluralism, inclusion and building reconciliation. I am a firm supporter of the principles of the Good Friday agreement, and sit next to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, one of the negotiators of that agreement. Indeed, the Good Friday agreement is the embodiment of my political philosophy—respect for difference, partnership, unity in diversity.
The Queen’s Speech deals with so many issues that it is impossible to address them in a short contribution. Today’s selected topics are all, shall we say, impacted upon by Brexit. Of course I want to deal with that and Northern Ireland. Brexit has now become one of the greatest political issues in, and between, Britain and Ireland. It has consumed all aspects of our lives in Northern Ireland since the referendum of June 2016, where in the majority people voted to remain. It has impacted on and reawakened controversy around issues of identity, nationality and sovereignty. It has also undermined the very principles of the Good Friday agreement in relation to reconciliation and building a shared society. It has deepened political divisions at a time when our political institutions were already unstable and has allowed some parties to characterise proposed trading arrangements as “life or death” constitutional determinations.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. We have listened with great interest and admiration, and in much agreement with what she says. She brings a unique experience to this House in all the fields that she has served, and she comes from a part of the United Kingdom which deserves her voice in its affairs. She was quoted recently in the Irish Times as saying:
“Politics… is about serving, it is about reflecting, it is about representing. And I believe the House of Lords offers that opportunity”.
In that, and in many other things, she is absolutely right. We look forward to hearing more from her in the future.
This Government came to power last month with a mandate and a majority gifted by, let it be said, the incompetence and stupidity of the Labour leadership. But even if the Prime Minister has power, he has serious dilemmas to face as well. Leaving aside the claim of “getting Brexit done”, which cannot be done in the promised timescale, he also has on his plate a series of promises and spending commitments that will require serious and very difficult choices to be made, and made very soon. He has promised inside a finite budget more money for education, health, the police and more for the north of England, and then Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will also make demands to keep the union together. He is also committed to at least 2% of GDP for defence and he has to live within the legal straitjacket of 0.7% for overseas aid.
What the Prime Minister does not have is any kind of national consensus on what the country thinks should be the priority on these often competing and occasionally contradictory ambitions. Without some form of consensus, someone, some group, some region, some special interest, some needy area or some raised expectation is bound to be disappointed and let down, and thereafter any popularity will vaporise.
My Lords, I rise to speak about the climate emergency and declare an interest as a member of the advisory board of the Environmental Change Institute in the University of Oxford. It is a privilege to share in this debate and particularly to welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. Her commitment to her local community and depth of wisdom are very clear.
The Minister said in his opening address that climate change will test us all, and it will. David Wallace-Wells’s book, The Uninhabitable Earth, should be required reading for every Member of this House as we move forward. Wallace-Wells begins his graphic description of the future of the earth with the unforgettable words:
“It is much, much worse than you think.”
He goes on to describe the effects and the economic costs of bushfires, drought, mass migration, sea and air pollution, flooding and extreme weather. I read Wallace-Wells early last year and have now watched his words become the lived reality of people in California, Australia—as we noted earlier this afternoon—across South Africa and Indonesia and, closer to home, in the floods in South Yorkshire.
We are living through an environmental catastrophe and that catastrophe will increasingly shape our foreign and domestic policy, economic life and politics over the next decade. The science is clear. The needs are urgent. How will we respond? I welcome all that the Minister said. The Government are to be congratulated on embracing the target of net zero by 2050 and their ambition to lead the COP talks in November. The talks have the potential to change the world in the next generation. I welcome all that the Minister said about the priority of climate change and the range of measures we can expect.
The challenge now is to realise this vision with specific, planned action. First, we need a detailed, accountable plan of how our economy will reach net zero by 2050 or earlier. If we are serious, we must have a year-by-year accountable strategy. Secondly, Governments and responsible investors, including the churches, need to stop investing in and subsidising fossil fuels and invest in renewables here and across the world, as Mark Carney has recently argued very powerfully. Thirdly, let us have some further bold initiatives to show the world that the United Kingdom means business, that we can reach these targets and that we have the courage to bring forward the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles to 2030, to fund an ambitious new home energy programme and to give more detail on the projected investment in mitigation and flood defences here and overseas.
My Lords, after those wise words, I begin by declaring my interests as listed in the register: as president of the Royal Commonwealth Society and as an adviser to major Japanese companies and to the Kuwait Investment Office.
There are some very good and not-so-good aspects of the gracious Speech to be noted this time—of course, it is the second in the past year. To start with the best bits, it is obviously good to see the end of the Brexit deadlock in clear sight. The previously paralysed Parliament, which some of us had been pointing out for a long time could be cured only by a fresh election, has now duly been replaced and is a thing of the past. I agree that there are problems with our immediate neighbours to be resolved and arrangements to be harmonised after 31 January, but we plainly do not want to be tied to, or held back by, any kind of so-called dynamic alignment with an EU, which is so obviously stuck in the past and going through its own severe contortions, and which everyone recognises is in serious need of reform.
There is, of course, the usual crowd saying that the time made available to settle relations with the rest of the EU is impossible—that is the latest moan—but in many cases they are the same people who said that it was impossible for Mr Johnson to strike another deal, that the Irish border problem could never be resolved and that there would be another hung Parliament and that an election would solve nothing. So is there any reason to give their opinions now much weight? The answer is no.
The other sort-of-good-news bit of the Speech is that there is to be an integrated—I like that word—review of Britain’s place in the world and foreign policy. Frankly, this is long overdue. It should have been held at least a decade or more ago, as the digital age and the new networked world took hold and changed the entire pattern of international relations and power. Had we done that, we would long ago, and much sooner, have discovered, first, that we need to engage far more purposefully in Asia, where power now lies and where vast new markets, in which we must succeed to survive and prosper, have already arisen.
My Lords, I want to make a few comments on the integrated security, defence and foreign policy review, which is a welcome development in the Government’s plans for the next five years.
I note that the Government will consider the,
“freedom of speech, human rights and the rule of law”
of foreign nations and how this interacts with our own interests. I hope that the Minister will agree with these Benches that any such review should also include religious persecution, drawing on the work and recent report of the Foreign Office, assisted by the Bishop of Truro, on the persecution of Christians.
Of course, this is not just about Christians being persecuted. Many Members of this House share my concern at the persecution by the Myanmar Government of Rohingya Muslims and the increasingly desperate situation facing Uighurs in Xinjiang province. The use of alleged detainment camps, the attempts by the People’s Republic of China to distract attention from the destruction of historic places of worship, and the suppression of Uighur culture is shocking.
I hope that any strategic review will be able to explain to this House and indeed the wider world, which looks to our democracy as a beacon of hope, how issues of religious persecution will be treated by any future UK Government. The nation’s withdrawal from the EU must not be a cause of pursuing “strategic interests” and commerce at the expense of challenging nations concerning issues of persecution. Can the Minister confirm that this will be considered and emphasised in the review?
Many in this House have shared my concerns about the Ebola crisis in the DRC. I have been pleased to meet with Ministers to discuss the matter and I was heartened by the comment of the Minister about Her Majesty’s commitment to tackling this dreadful epidemic. The situation is complicated due to the brutal massacres carried out by ADF and the subsequent breakdown of trust between local communities and the UN, leading to the latter’s withdrawal from some Ebola treatment centres. My most reverend friend the Archbishop of Canterbury—who was here earlier but sadly could not be here for the whole debate and was unable to speak—has had calls with the UN Secretary-General and the Vatican to explore ways to rebuild community relationships.
My Lords, we are in a highly volatile and dangerous world, but despite that I am afraid that Her Majesty’s most gracious Speech is rather light on defence. I have become used to what successive Prime Ministers have described as the most important responsibility for any Government, the defence and security of our nation and people—and of course it is—being consigned to the end of the speech, and on this occasion only 26 words nod towards the funding necessary to ensure our nation has the requisite Armed Forces.
The statement that:
“My Government will continue to invest in our gallant Armed Forces”
is meaningless. There are presumably idealists who would not wish to invest in our Armed Forces, but in this very dangerous world, while we may try to avoid conflict, the same, I am afraid, is not true of everyone whom we confront in this world. Hilaire Belloc captured the reality with his little rhyme:
“Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.”
I do not want my nation to be killed.
The Government quite correctly plan to undertake an integrated security, defence and foreign policy review to reassess the nation’s place in the world. That is absolutely right and I am delighted that it is going ahead. We need clarity over our foreign policy now that so many of the old certainties have disappeared and been replaced by confusion. However, I am concerned about the basis on which the review is being conducted. Downing Street has started setting out parameters, one of which is that
“the new strategy will seek to modernise defence”—
My Lords, initially I want to note how little reference there is in the gracious Speech to the needs of children, except in the realm of education. There is nothing about children’s first 1,000 days, nor any firm commitment to tackle the iniquity of child poverty. How we treat children speaks volumes for where our priorities lie. Could the Minister please comment on this omission?
Before proceeding further, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, on her passionate and insightful maiden speech.
I welcome the focus of the gracious Speech on the United Kingdom’s international engagement. However, some of the language used concerns me. All people, in all nations, are loved by God. The commitment to uphold human rights globally recognises this and, as we leave the EU, we must look outwards to avoid isolation. I worry, though, that our international focus is on how the UK stands on the international stage after Brexit, rather than on how we use that position, particularly how we use it to alleviate crippling poverty in developing countries. We must not have a solely self-centred approach to our international affairs. If DfID is merged with the FCO, there is a worry that UK aid will be used to advance UK foreign policy as opposed to being invested in alleviating poverty. Can the Minister allay our fears on this?
I welcome the Government’s continuing commitment to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on overseas aid, but will the Government confirm that this will be used not for our own gain but solely for the relief of poverty, tackling climate change and development?
In July, 1,142 bishops and spouses of the Anglican Communion across the globe will gather at the Lambeth Conference, many of them from nations tackling deep poverty and facing the direct impacts of climate change. They demonstrate that local church communities are excellent deliverers of sustainable development. Will the Government commit to continue to work with development agencies, such as Christian Aid and Tearfund, to deliver, through faith communities, the best use of development aid?
My Lords, wishing to reflect those sensible calls for post-general election result renewal and reconciliation, I set about ransacking our party manifestos for any evidence that there might be a consensus between the parties. To my surprise but delight, the most striking evidence of consensus is on the need to plant more trees. Whatever the numbers, I believe we should plant trees early, plant well and plant native, by planting lots of broadleaf trees where possible and resisting the needless cutting down of trees and hedges in town and country alike. That is why I welcome so much what my noble friend Lord Gardiner of Kimble had to say about the importance of trees when he introduced this debate.
The UK is certainly not well wooded by international standards. At one end of my Westminster and home commuting life, we live in one of the very least well wooded districts in England, South Somerset. We certainly need new housing but, alas, just as they simply do not make new land any more on which to build new housing, it is important that sites must be carefully chosen, with trees which are needed for health and wildlife. Trees are an integral part of not just a new place but creating a sense of place, giving people something to share and something to breathe. There should be at least two new trees planted for every new house or apartment built in this country, in addition to which every street should have some fruit trees—and not just those landscape architects’ street trees.
This should be paralleled by a national consensus that we need a complete moratorium on the needless cutting down of trees and hedges: no more chainsaw massacres, as alas we saw in Sheffield. I hope that the relatively new Sheffield city region, which I wish well, will now undertake to make recompense by replanting at least one tree for every one that was needlessly cut down. Replanting in cities is just like rewilding in the countryside, and greatly needed. In saying this, I know that I point a finger at one particular political party but I can also point it at the Liberal Democrats. For example, I live in a Liberal Democrat-run area in South Somerset. I am pretty unusual in this, just as their control is pretty unusual in the rest of the country, and I regret the way in which they permitted past developments to happen without adequate tree cover, and sometimes with such loose planning provisions that developers have been able to ignore those glamorous drawings which they put before councils. We have not seen those trees.
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Like the majority in Northern Ireland, I prefer and want to remain in the EU but acknowledge that with the Government’s majority in this Parliament we will soon leave. But we will be leaving the one institution that has helped provide so much political, social and economic stability on the island of Ireland. Membership of the EU has contributed significantly to reconciliation and to the development of our economy and infra- structure.
I hope that in their forthcoming EU negotiations, the Government ensure that this international underpinning can be sustained in any new working arrangements. I come from an area that includes our two most important fishing ports in County Down. I have heard and understood the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, referring to the fishing industry and the fisheries Bill. However, the fishing industry has a great deal of insistence that our current unfettered access to the British market must continue. Put simply, we do not want borders in Ireland or the Irish Sea, or any increase in bureaucracy. I hope this can be addressed and resolved.
In my final few minutes, I want to address the pressing issue of the need to reinstall political institutions in Northern Ireland and the principal institutions of the Good Friday agreement. People abdicated the responsibility some three years ago. That led to the collapse of those institutions. At the door, the one thing that people said that they wanted was those institutions up and running, delivering for our people in health and education and dealing with the impact of Brexit. They also wanted people to take their seats in the other place, because they wanted all these issues to be urgently addressed.
Along with other noble Lords, my priority will be to work towards building reconciliation, fairness, equality and a shared society in Northern Ireland. This must include a plan to end division and to bring down the physical and mental walls of division. I hope that we can work across this House to support a process of moderation and peaceful politics in Northern Ireland, a comprehensive trading deal with the EU to assist our economy and a plan to end austerity and poverty, particularly the ongoing punitive nature of welfare reform.
Above all, I hope to contribute to a recovering politics in this Parliament, a politics that must recover from the battering it has taken from the intolerance, dishonesty and revisionism that have surrounded the Brexit discourse. Many of us are horrified at the state of politics today. We now live in a world of lies and exaggeration, of voter distrust and of fake news. We must pass on better politics to the next generation and get beyond slogans and spin. In this context, I am reminded of a quotation from a famous Irish thinker and poet, George Russell, who said:
“No blazoned banner we unfold—
One charge alone we give to youth,
Against the sceptred myth to hold
The golden heresy of truth.”
Along with your Lordships, I want to make my contribution to ensuring that we can make that plan towards reconciliation, within Britain and between Britain and Northern Ireland.
A few weeks ago, I chaired a group of 20 distinguished experts, some from this House, appropriately held in the Cabinet War Rooms to discuss, under the auspices of the new Bletchley initiative, what should be our country’s role in a world of Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi. Each of our experts had to bring with them three specific ideas for the table, and the resulting discussion and report was fascinating and revealing. I am happy to supply a copy to anybody who wants it. But the main and unanimous conclusion was that there is an urgent need for a bottom-up national conversation on where our country is heading and its future place in the world. Brexit amplifies that particular need, but it is not its only driver.
If we want, as many in this debate will rightly demand, more money for defence, security and diplomacy, especially in what is an unpredictable, volatile and increasingly dangerous world, as we have seen even in the last seven days, the question is: what gives way in the shopping list of budget items to pay for it? If we genuinely need to spend, for example, more on education, the NHS and long-term care, crime and punishment, because all those items impact directly on every citizen, but we simultaneously need to spend more on defending and making safe those citizens, what do we give up to make it happen?
Some will say that the election fixed the priority orderings, but it certainly did not. Boris Johnson has an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons but based on only 44% of those voting. Indeed, given that turnout was 67%, he obtained only 29% support from the British electorate. So that, in our perverse way, provides a healthy Commons majority but not by any stretch of the imagination is there any consensus on national priorities.
Can a national conversation with unprecedented public consultation actually be had? The answer is “not easily”, but I believe that it should and can be done. In 1997 and 1998, I conducted with the late Robin Cook a strategic defence review based on building from first principles Britain’s defence on an agreed foreign policy baseline. We involved the public, Parliament, pressure groups, civic society and every level in the Armed Forces. The outcome was to be ambitious. It was trail-blazing and, most importantly, it was accepted. It lasted for an unprecedented 11 years.
Similarly, the Scottish Constitutional Convention was established in the early 1990s to build a consensus plan for a devolved Scottish legislature. It involved politicians—even from the two parties that boycotted the process—and a wide stratum of the public. At the end it provided a blueprint for the 74% endorsement in the 1997 referendum and 20 years of the Holyrood Parliament.
Then we can take President Macron’s radical consultation and conversation which followed the yellow vest protests last year. He and his Ministers went out to the country and engaged his citizens, putting the choices and listening to the answers. Notwithstanding some of the recent protests on pension reform, the yellow vests and their protests have now been marginalised, so it can be done, and in our divided country we desperately need to reach out with the dilemmas, the hard choices and the possible solutions which face us all and then to listen to what the people tell us.
There is a moral imperative to act for the sake of the earth and for the sake of the poorest—those who have contributed least to climate change are suffering the most and will suffer most in the future—but this is one of those very rare moments when to do the right thing ethically is also doing the right thing for the economic prosperity of the country and our place in the world. The cost of acting slowly is increasing. The 2018 forest fires in California have so far cost $400 billion—the equivalent of the entire US defence budget.
Every year now counts. Your Lordships will remember the story in the Book of Genesis of Pharaoh’s dream, interpreted by Joseph: seven fat cows consumed by seven thin cows; seven years of plenty devoured by seven years of famine. We have no need of Joseph to interpret the impending disaster—we have the IPCC and the global scientific community—but we need a Government with the wisdom of Joseph to use these next seven years well and to put us on a pathway to recovery with a new agenda for the next decade for the world. We must not fail.
Secondly, we would have discovered that the United States of America stays a good friend but that the relationship has changed from the old pattern of 70 years past, and that even before Trump appeared it was clear that our world views no longer coincided. A new relationship should have been built up long ago. Meanwhile, we are subjected to dim-witted columnists who write about an alleged choice between Europe and America that does not exist. Have these people forgotten about China’s growing role in the Middle East and world affairs and that we now live in a network world, or that in any case we already have reasonably good trade relations with America? I fully share the view that Iran is a great nation that has been dragged down by the mullahs, from whose narrow, bigoted rule Iranians must be freed, but I do not believe that assassinations of their blood-soaked generals is the right way to go about it. The nuclear agreement with Iran finally having been finished off certainly makes the whole world a very much more dangerous place.
Thirdly, we should have realised much sooner that relations with China were becoming crucial, although they needed to be carefully balanced with our relations with the third richest nation on earth—measured by GDP if that means anything—namely Japan, which always saw us as its best friend in the West but which we keep overlooking. We might also have managed the Hong Kong situation better had we had better dialogue with Beijing.
Fourthly, we should have seen earlier that defence and security have come to change their meaning in the age of cyber warfare, drones, street terrorism and nuclear weapons development. We might then have avoided the disastrous decisions which have been made by those in charge of our defence procurement in recent years, which must now be corrected. We might have perceived earlier that NATO’s purposes and structures needed radical overhaul in this utterly changed digital age.
We might have realised sooner that, while we must continue to contribute heavily to the welfare of humankind, the idea of our enormous DfID budget being completely separate from our overseas power deployment and foreign policy is absurd and wasteful. Finally, we might have grasped quicker that all kinds of new networks have grown up across the planet, not necessarily between Governments but between professions, interests, young people, business and trade in services and knowledge products in which Britain should be seeking the closest possible involvement, not least with the Commonwealth, the biggest network of all, in which we are fortunate, although barely deserve, to be members.
That brings me to my final comment. Although the Commonwealth was rightly mentioned by my noble friend Lord Gardiner, there was, alas, no mention of it at all in the gracious Speech—either this one or the last one. That, I think, was a discourtesy to Her Majesty who, after all, is head of the Commonwealth to which she has devoted most of her reign. It may sound a minor omission, but it tells us clearly one thing: that the strategists and mandarins deep in Whitehall have simply not yet grasped the nature of Britain’s modern exceptionalism, new world role or potentialities in a shifting international order.
The UK Government’s support is needed to help MONUSCO’s reform, ensuring that it works more effectively with communities and the Congolese army, and to prepare for a post-Ebola period. As churches are often the only organisations left on the ground in these war zones, we are uniquely placed to deliver assistance, with the aid of the UK Government, and to use our networks to provide health education programmes. These are being rolled out at present through the churches in areas where some of the aid agencies are no longer able to operate.
I turn to the peace process in South Sudan. It has been encouraging to see some signs of progress in the last month, but sustained pressure from the UK Government is required to ensure that the transition maintains the ceasefire and benefits all the people. Pressure on the deadline alone without tackling outstanding divisive issues—particularly the number of states and boundaries, and unified security—risks a return to conflict and oppressive rule by the incumbent Government. Recently the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with the Pope and the former Moderator of the Church of Scotland, sent an unprecedented joint letter to the political leaders, four of whom participated in the Vatican retreat in April 2019, encouraging a
“renewed commitment to the path of reconciliation and fraternity”.
It is important that political pressure is added to this initiative. Can the Minister assure us that this will be followed up and that peacebuilding in the region will be part of this urgently needed review, to which we look forward in the coming months?
The 2010 and 2015 SDSRs were incoherent cost-cutting exercises with little regard to strategy or strategic thought. It seems that our political culture recognises only as much threat as it is willing to spend money on, rather than the realities of the world. One of our many strategic delusions is to undertake reviews that set objectives based on an analysis of the strategic environment and then simply refuse to fund the consequent strategy.
Since the last SDSR in 2015, a growing number of defence experts, many of them in this House, have pointed out that there is not sufficient money in the defence budget for the planned defence force 2025. I personally have raised that issue on numerous occasions. Time and again we have been told that we are wrong and everything is fine. Lo and behold, on 20 December the Defence Secretary said that there was a shortfall in funding in the Ministry of Defence budget—what a surprise—and the military will have to
“cut its cloth to meet its ambitions.”
That is an insult. These are not the military’s ambitions but, rather, the requirement identified by the Government in SDSR 2015 to ensure the security of our nation and people, which has not been properly funded.
I am afraid that there is a large lobby, including senior officials in Whitehall. who are willing to take ever greater risks with the defence of our nation. As for spads’ advice, well, defence spending is not a vote winner, so we get no joy from them at all.
We have taken risk on risk, and I fear that trying to use cyber and the impact of the fourth industrial revolution as a way of saving money and pretending that our forces have the same effect is naive in the extreme. Yes of course there have been these huge changes. I was the first Cyber Minister in 2009; I am aware of these changes. But that does not mean you can save money on defence by using these other ways of fighting. Kinetic effect is still very important.
In the gracious Speech, the Government say they will promote and expand the UK’s interests and influence in the world, stand firm against those who threaten the UK’s values and try to encourage peace and security globally. All of this demands hard, as well as soft, power, and I am afraid that the Government are not investing in hard power. They will not achieve any of these things unless we have hard, as well as soft, power.
I do, however, share Mr Cummings’s concerns about defence procurement, which needs a shake-up, but let us be clear: politicians have been guilty over the years of repeatedly seeking cost savings during build that reduce capability and push up cost; delaying main-gate decisions, again boosting costs; changing their minds about what they want an asset to do; and repeatedly changing their minds about the number of assets to be procured, then pushing up development and construction costs per unit. They have done this again and again, so it is not clear-cut. The aircraft carrier programme suffered all of these, but, despite that, Britain has now paid for and has in service two world-beating aircraft carriers—thank goodness —even though successive British Governments have done all they could to destroy our shipbuilding industry.
The Prime Minister recently stated that our nation requires
“a shipbuilding industry and Royal Navy that reflect the importance of the seas to our security and prosperity.”
Hurrah for that. The recent order of five frigates to replace those going out of service does not achieve this aim. Our shipyards and SMEs are collapsing. They need commitment and a large rolling programme, and the Navy is desperate for more ships. The shortage has already been felt in the Gulf. Should—God forfend—there be military action in the Gulf, we may find that we are wanting. Expansion of the fleet and enhanced defence spending are an urgent requirement.
Aid alone, however, cannot tackle the task of lifting the poorest out of poverty. Trade will always be more significant than aid. So, with a fresh vision for trade, could we not seize the opportunity to lead the way in helping to improve trading for and with the poorest nations? We can surely offer a better model than the investment and support provided by nations such as China and Russia to nations such as Burundi and Rwanda, which often exploit natural resources and do not build the local economy, skills and knowledge in the long term. Let us look justly for trade deals with poorer nations which help them to develop, recognising that mutual benefit is better than exploitative practices.
I therefore note with pleasure the commitment in the gracious Speech to stop the export of polluting waste to countries outside the OECD. According to Tearfund, every 30 seconds someone dies because of diseases caused by plastic pollution. Many communities cannot adequately dispose of their plastic waste. Countries are themselves aware of the problem of multinational consumer goods companies selling single-use plastics, so the Rwandan Government were the very first to ban plastic carrier bags—way ahead of us. How will the Government ensure that life-saving aid money which is given to subsidise private sector investment in continents such as Africa is not used to commit environmental violations?
It was a shame that the gracious Speech did not commit to stop investing in fossil fuels. Our international development must be sustainable, investing in initiatives that focus on developing small community projects that create innovative off-grid access to energy.
Agriculture is vital in international development; it is also vital here. Along with hospitality, social care and other so-called lower-skill industries, agriculture requires good migrant labour. Any points-based immigration system must ensure these needs are met and uphold our value of treating all well. This includes refugees and asylum seekers. Here is one idea: if vulnerable refugees have skills we require, could we add points to assist them as migrants? This leads me back to where I began, on vulnerable children. The provisions dealt with in Clause 37 of the EU withdrawal Bill need to be retained to protect the most exposed children in our world.
In the same way, I am quite prepared to criticise my own party—the Tory party—in Somerset. Over the years there, the highway authority has needlessly and grossly overlit the streets with ugly sodium and yellow lights, which has done no end of damage to nightlife and people’s sleeping. It has always been put forward as good for road safety but, as shown by the Department for Transport, there is no indication that there is any automatic link between reducing street lighting and an increase in road accidents. It is quite clear that the dumping into the night sky of unnecessary light pollution is just the same as the dumping on street corners, roadsides and highways of litter. All local councils should give this considerable thought. If it is good for children to see some fruit trees in the streets of new housing developments, it is very good for them to be able to see the stars as well. Local authorities have a major contribution to make in this respect.
I end as I began. It is good to see compromise, if it can be found, but of course I recognise that political parties come into existence to reflect and nurture different points of view, so compromise is never easy. But in seeking compromise, at least the body politic in this country can look at the Conservative Party and know what the nature of our conversation with the nation is to be over the next decade. Many commentators now say that with the lengthy elections we are to have for the leadership of the Liberal Democrat and Labour parties, and the possibility of more than one Labour or Liberal Democrat leader in the 2020s—we are only just in the foothills of the 2020s—we urgently need to know what sort of conversation the opposition parties want to have with the nation. For good or bad, we are entirely transparent as to what we wish to do. We have no idea at all—it is a bit of a magical mystery tour—what kind of national conversation Labour and Liberal Democrats wish to have. That is bad for democracy.