Queen’s Speech

Debate (6th Day)

Moved on Tuesday 10 May by

That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:

“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which was addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.

My Lords, it is a great honour to open this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech on the important issues of foreign affairs, defence and trade. I am also delighted to be joined by my noble friend Lord Ahmad, who I know will employ his trademark expertise and erudition to good effect.

When my noble friends Lady Goldie and Lord Ahmad stood at this Dispatch Box a year ago to open and close the same debate, they spoke of a changing global dynamic: a world recovering from a pandemic that changed everything; a world of rapidly advancing technology; and a new era of systemic competition. They warned that with this changing dynamic has come an increasingly divided and unstable world. They warned of an increasingly assertive Russia, in a world where hostile states sought to destabilise the international order. They warned of a world with increased militarisation, and a world facing the ever-growing impacts of climate change. This is the world we see around us today.

We are witnessing the illegal, and utterly brutal, invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime. Day after day, we hear of Russian forces’ war crimes: family homes turned to rubble; murdered civilians in mass graves; and despicable testimonies of rape and torture. These acts reverberate far beyond Ukraine—they threaten the security of Europe and the world. The aggressors must fail, and that is why we have been resolute in our response. The Government are using all their diplomatic, defence, humanitarian and trade levers to support Ukraine, and we will keep going until they prevail.

When it comes to defence, our personnel have been delivering across the world. Last year, Royal Navy sailors travelled 40,000 nautical miles to the Indo-Pacific on our carrier strike group’s maiden mission, projecting influence and engaging with allies. In May, UK troops on the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali seized crucial weapons from suspected Daesh terrorists, and in August, our aviators undertook the largest airlift since Berlin to help evacuate thousands of people from Afghanistan. But those events now seem to belong to a different era, confronted as we are by Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine.

The integrated review identified Russia as a primary threat, and that has proved true. In response, we have donated more defensive weapons to Ukraine than any other European country, as well as providing logistics support for international aid. More broadly, we are reinforcing NATO allies understandably alarmed at the savagery occurring mere miles from their border. We have doubled our troops in Estonia to 1,700, sent personnel to support Lithuanian intelligence and reconnaissance efforts, deployed 350 Royal Marines in Poland, increased our presence in the skies over south-eastern Europe and sent offshore patrol vessels and destroyers to the eastern Mediterranean. Closer to home, the Navy is now leading the operational response to small boats in the channel, ensuring control of our borders and cracking down on people smugglers.

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity we have today to debate the many issues confronting the world, but I cannot hide my disappointment that I will be spending more time talking about what is missing from the gracious Speech than what is present. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents an unprecedented geopolitical situation, yet this Government’s Queen’s Speech barely addressed it and the MoD is not even mentioned.

Last year’s integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy highlighted the need for the UK to play an active role in ensuring that open societies and economies can flourish across the world by championing free trade and global co-operation, tackling conflict and instability and standing up for democracy and human rights, yet the international development strategy promised in that review and published this week makes no explicit prioritisation to do this. All we got was a vague reference. I hope that when he responds, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, can confirm whether the Government have reneged on this commitment and, if they have not, how they will address the issues driving conflict and defending human rights in line with the integrated review?

Turning to Ukraine and defence first, there are no plans to reboot defence plans in response to Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine or rethink Army cuts. Despite promising to

“invest in our gallant Armed Forces”,

Ministers are pushing ahead with a £1.7 billion cut to day-to-day MoD spending, which means less money for forces’ pay, recruitment and families. More than a dozen European countries are now rebooting security plans and looking again at defence spending, so why are our Government not doing so?

The Procurement Bill fails to ensure greater protection of jobs in the defence sector by adopting a British-built-by-default approach intended to boost manufacturing within the UK supply chain. When we reach the appropriate stage in the Bill’s passage, I hope the Government will support an opposition amendment to deliver this boost to our economy. There is no commitment to bring forward the national resilience strategy to boost homeland defences. We have been waiting for this strategy for 14 months. When will we get it? We need a new security White Paper to revise our defence plans to deal with the new threats to UK and European security, and to halt cuts to the Army. Are the Government considering this?

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has pointed out, the gracious Speech was in many ways rather lacking in the themes of today’s debate. That is very common. There is very little in the legislative sphere that your Lordships’ House is requested to opine upon in the course of the annual year or parliamentary Session. However, I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, thinks that he spends more time in your Lordships’ House answering questions than many other Ministers. That is precisely because there are so many issues of vital importance to this country, and globally, linked to his portfolio—which every time we hear from him seems to have expanded to another part of the world and another set of issues. Today, he has the undoubted pleasure of responding to the debate on foreign affairs, international development—which is still part of FCDO —defence, trade and Europe. Europe is of course the dog that does not bark at the moment, and received very few words in the gracious Speech.

However, if today’s debate has very little to do with legislation, that might come as a relief. As the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury, put it in his witty moving of the humble Address, an earlier Lord Mancroft had bemoaned that we have been overlegislated in this country. That was 70 years ago, at the start of Her Majesty’s reign. The noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, seemed to think that this would be of particular interest to the Opposition Benches; that for some reason we would think that there was too much legislation in the world. I have the advantage, in sitting on the Liberal Democrat Benches, of seeing the faces of the government party, and in particular the Conservative Privy Council Bench. I assure your Lordships that nobody looked more delighted at the idea that there was too much legislation than the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean.

We are all very happy to have a debate and discuss policy that does not necessarily link to legislation but, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, pointed out, some areas of the gracious Speech were perhaps lacking. In his opening remarks, the Minister began to flesh out some of these areas and there are others that we will need to probe during this Session that link to defence expenditure. The rhetoric is one thing, but the reality might be different. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, pointed out that some people ask whether we can afford to spend so much on defence; his response, as is that of these Benches in many ways, given the crisis in Ukraine, is whether we can afford not to make that expenditure.

My Lords, wars simplify and clarify. They oblige every country involved to make choices about what its essential interests are and how to protect them. Speaking of clarity, it must be increasingly clear, even to President Putin, that he has made a massive strategic error in launching the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. The myth of Russian military prowess has exploded. Putin’s only hope now is to avoid total humiliation and find some outcome that his propaganda machine can present as justifying his gamble. The President and people of the other combatant, Ukraine, have been magnificent. However this ends, renewed, pro-western Ukrainian nationalism will be a big factor in European politics from this time on.

I want to concentrate on the choices that western countries face as they step up to this Russian barbarism. President Biden has made an important policy shift by putting America back into leadership in deterring Russia and supporting democracy in Europe. Finland and Sweden formally applied today to join NATO. I have known that organisation since joining the UK delegation to NATO in 1978 and it has never felt more united or more purposeful. When I was the permanent representative to NATO in the early 2000s, Sweden and Finland were by far the most effective partner nations—serious defence nations but proud of their neutrality and non-alignment. However, faced with Putin’s war, each has made a profound decision based on an impressive national debate and decided to join.

Germany too has made an amazing shift in its security policy, greater than anything I can remember in the last 40 years. It will take that country time to change its pacifist culture and to re-equip the Bundeswehr, but its recognition of the need to shoulder hard-power responsibilities shows a real capacity to adapt and is a major change in the European security landscape.

Germany and other EU countries are also facing up to the disastrous policy of dependence on Russian oil and gas. Weaning themselves off that will be a long and expensive operation, but it will remove Russia’s biggest leverage over its western neighbours. The EU too has moved a long way in the last three months in stepping up to the security responsibilities to go with its economic power.

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, who drew on his 44 years of experience in NATO for the benefit of the House. I have great sympathy with the comment by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, about trying to open for an opposition party on the Queen’s Speech at this time with the unbelievable range of subjects that might be covered. In my brief five minutes I shall talk about just one. I do so against as grave a situation globally at the present time as I can remember.

It is incredible that, with the new events that have taken place, we have almost forgotten the global pandemic that threatens everybody. With global warming, the explosion of methane in the Arctic is accelerating the rate of climate change—another great drama that is coming for us. I agreed with the Governor of the Bank of England when he used the word “apocalyptic”. He used it about the scale of inflation; I shall use it about the question of food supply. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about global malnutrition. There is no question that, however many people Vladimir Putin kills in his efforts in Ukraine, it is nothing compared to the millions he may kill because of the blockage of Odessa and the prevention of proper circulation of food around the world. The number of countries now desperately worried is enormous. I understand that at the moment 25 million tonnes of grain is sitting blocked in Odessa and neighbouring areas.

Previously, grain was being shipped out at the rate of 5 million tonnes per month, so think of those countries and regions expecting to get it. I have a list: Egypt—which will now be hard-hit—Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Sahel, sub-Saharan Africa, Somalia and Syrian refugees in Iraq. There are riots in Iran, where food prices have gone up by 300%. You can now list the number of places that face the most serious problems. We had been worried about the threat but thought we could get supplies to them. It is now not a question of money but of whether the supplies even exist.

My Lords, in less than three months of fighting Russia has lost one-third of the ground combat force it committed to the invasion of Ukraine. Every wrecked Russian tank—taken out by light anti-tank weapons deployed with minimum training, unslung in seconds from the shoulder and deadly accurate—is further evidence that traditional armies can no longer expect to dominate simply because they have more troops, weapons and money. As weapons have become smaller, more effective and widely dispersed, it has become harder and harder for traditional militaries effectively to achieve their aims through brute force, as they meet resistance at every turn. Resistance in this case includes information warfare, hacking and cyber- attacks, as well as social media, which President Zelensky excels at, casting the conflict in terms of good and evil and projecting an aura of invincibility.

Our own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan underscores the reality of contemporary warfare: that invasion and occupation is more expensive and temporary than it is quick and permanent. As always, the future belongs to those who embrace it and, in this context, who empower the decentralisation of weapons technology, information currency and individual ingenuity and courage.

Less has been said about the use of artificial intelligence in the Ukraine war than about anti-tank missiles but in April, a senior Defense Department official said that the Pentagon—quietly—is using AI and machine-learning tools to analyse vast amounts of data, generate useful battlefield intelligence and learn about Russian tactics and strategy. Just how much the US is passing to Ukraine is a matter for conjecture and I shall not do that. A powerful Russian drone with AI capabilities has been spotted in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine has itself employed the use of a controversial facial recognition technology. Prime Minister Fedorov told Reuters that it had been using Clearview AI—software that uses facial recognition—to discover the social media profiles of deceased Russian soldiers, which authorities then use to notify their relatives and offer arrangements for their bodies to be recovered.

My Lords, I will discuss trade and our relations with the European Union, matters which are integral to our domestic, economic and political health, as well as the wider international picture.

Some Labour voices urge us to stop talking about Brexit. Why on earth would we do that? Brexit is not done; it was a profound mistake, the dire consequences of which are becoming more evident every day. According to the polls, the public now increasingly recognises this. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s assessment is that UK-EU imports and exports have suffered a 15% cut since Brexit—as one would expect after leaving our biggest and most profitable market. Other authoritative forecasts are even more pessimistic. The effect of this will be to further increase inflation—already forecast to rise to a disastrous 10%—weaken the pound, force an increase in interest rates, lower investment and likely worsen our depressingly low productivity. Any valuable opportunities of international co-operation have been, or will be, lost, such as the Erasmus programme. Brexit has not only severely weakened our economy and influence in the world, but, to a lesser extent, that of the EU as a whole. At a time of Russian aggression, the growing influence of China and uncertainties about the future leadership of the United States, a strong EU is needed to play a vital part in supporting freedom and justice in the world.

Macron has made an imaginative proposal to build a stronger Europe based on a political community, and we should show that we share this aim. What, then, should our policy be? Applying to re-join the European Union tomorrow is clearly unrealistic, but we should start to rebuild the closest possible relationships with it. As part of this, I believe that we should propose a bold move: to re-join the European single market. This would have profound and important political implications. The biggest immediate advantage of re-joining the European single market is that it would solve the apparently insoluble problem of the Northern Ireland protocol. It is not surprising that there is such a strong reaction to a border in the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland, as well as among British businesses. Johnson vowed that no British Prime Minister would ever impose a border; then he did so and boasted that the protocol was a great deal. Re-joining the European single market would avoid borders between any part of the UK and the Republic of Ireland because we would all be members of the European single market. Furthermore, it would save the Good Friday agreement.

My Lords, I imagine that, a few months ago, many people would have expected the debate on this year’s gracious Speech to be conducted in air of optimism as we emerged from the shadow of Covid and looked forward to continuing economic recovery. Instead, we find ourselves confronted by a war in Europe and its consequences for our own security. However, I fear that at the moment we are not paying sufficient attention to those consequences. We are rightly focused on providing all possible assistance to Ukraine as it resists Russian aggression, but we cannot postpone a consideration of the wider lessons of the invasion. The implications for our future security are far too profound for us to delay such an analysis.

To my mind, there are three strategic conclusions that we should draw from the events of recent months. The first is, alas, an old lesson—the unbounded capacity of the future to surprise us, usually in very unpleasant ways. International crises, and the armed conflicts that sometimes flow from them, have seldom been anticipated, nor have we been well prepared to meet them. Since no one has a functioning crystal ball, we will no doubt continue to make wrong judgments about the future, so we must expect to be surprised by it and develop military structures and capabilities that will provide us with sufficient agility, adaptability and sustainability to cope with the unforeseen. But we can do that only if we are prepared to make the necessary level of investment—something we are currently failing to do. Despite recent increases, our defence expenditure as a percentage of GDP has not even recovered to its 2010 level, and current rates of inflation will rapidly erode its effectiveness. In such a dangerous world, we simply have to do better.

The second issue that I want to touch on is the security impact of globalisation. The drive for commercial advantage that led to lean manufacturing, just-in-time logistics, outsourcing and offshoring and many other such developments has brought significant benefits to western consumers. But we are seeing now how such dependence can constrain our actions in a crisis. In an interconnected world, security cannot be about just military power and economic strength. It must also be about our ability to sustain our economic and social structures in the face of severe disruption to global connections. We have to strike a much better balance between short-term economic advantage and sustained national resilience. As a starting point, perhaps we should consider introducing a national equivalent to the kinds of stress tests that were mandated for banks in the wake of the global financial crisis.