---

Foreign Policy

My Lords, it was almost exactly60 years ago that I first came across my noble friend Lord Howell, or perhaps he came across me. He was highly intelligent and intellectual, with some authority at my prep school, when I was unfortunately caught raiding the headmaster’s strawberry garden with a gang. Life moves on. Ten years later, I was also involved in raiding ships in the Mediterranean during the Cyprus patrols not long after Suez. The Navy has been always usefulin boarding operations. The boarding rules and regulations were constant: you always left a man at the tiller on the boarding boat; you always left a man in the bow; and you always left a lookout in case other people came to pass. I wonder, as I think back, whether I have had the disadvantage of seeing ourselves as others see us. In the Navy, the most polite thing someone could say when you did something wrong was ““Cock-up!””. You could not have a collective cock-up; there was always a responsibility on the part of those who cocked it up. ““Cocked up”” is a military term, a friendly term; I checked that in the Library so that I should not insult your Lordships. The foreign policy of this country over perhaps 20 years has been one constant cock-up. It has been directed by the wrong policies. Historically we had a worldwide interest in trade and raw materials, and therefore protected our trade with military forces. We developed our trade and maintained stability in those countries that had their own substantial economic development. Here, I naturally turn to the Commonwealth and the lovely maps I have of the past that mark the natural resources and capabilities of each of those countries. Your Lordships will recall, as my noble friend Lady Hooper has pointed out, that the Commonwealth is quite an amazing institution in that it has no teeth or power but approximately 20 per cent of the world’s population is within it. If you take an ancient map and talk to Mr Sarkozy, show him the French map of Africa and other parts of the world, and then talk to the Danes and the Dutch, you have covered almost all the more difficult parts of the world. My worry is over what has directed foreign policy. I do not go for this business of aid directing it. I believe in aid and trade. I do not believe that you can do without an adequate military force in order to maintain stability. Here we have a situation where our foreign resources and military forces are under-resourced. It was not so long ago that a Government said that we would never be east of Suez; but nobody would have dreamt that we would have a single frigate covering the whole east coast of Latin America and the Caribbean, yet getting credit for a helicopter being able to shoot out the engines of drug smugglers. Nor would they dream that at the same time we were stopping drugs in that part of the world, we would be encouraging them in Afghanistan—not intentionally, but reluctantly. I find a situation of considerable instability in my own mind. I have worked in most of these countries, and have usually been forced to move by my employer to where the action was to be. In 1974 the increase in oil prices suddenly made people think about energy. We have the North Sea, but somehow we did not even make that work. The warnings came year after year, when people said, ““One-third of all energy supplies come from the Middle East””. But they had forgotten about the ““-tan”” countries—any country ending in ““-tan”” is automatically Islamic. Few of us knew the names of those countries. The oil, energy and mineral resources of the former countries of the Soviet Union were well known; that was why they extended their interests: it was not due to the dogma of communism but a realisation that centralised control of natural resources could provide great power. Although our country was once the greatest trading nation on Earth, we are not really traders any more. For many years I was president of the British Exporters’ Association, whose annual event last year, held downstairs here, was attended by more people than ever. Although 270 turned up, I could not find an exporter, but I could find every financial institution the world had ever created. I was told that the only exports we now do are in the military sector. We import people, but we have created a great economy by being the best place for anybody who is not British to live and work. The tax regime is very favourable, and every internationalist would regard this as possibly the safest haven in the world. It is on that basis that our reputation can be built. Our foreign policy, I am afraid, has been incorrect. We must remember that there was a period when we supplied military equipment to Iran very willingly. Suddenly, we switched to Iraq. The Soviet Union was supplying India, and we suddenly switched to India from Pakistan. What were our objectives during that period? Did we have a strategy? One thing we knew: the Middle East would be unstable. I almost quote the noble Lord, Lord Desai; there were things I always call the three ““T””s. First, there was territorialism: land grabbing. Then, there would be tribalism: which particular group of people should have the right to that land. Then there would be—you could call it revolution or insurrection—terrorism. When the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, was on the Front Bench, I used to watch her body language with great pleasure when she was defending government policy; you could see that she was not quite in favour of the policy but she was a very good spokesman on foreign affairs. A friend abroad once sent me an e-mail with a photograph attached saying ““Is this really your Minister abseiling down some ice wall in the Antarctic? Gosh, the Labour Party really is looking up these days””. I am trying to say that we have the ability but not the policy. We have to know that the rest of the world is more necessary to us than it is to the United States of America. We have to know, because of our too close association with the United States in the wrong way, that we have now joined it and that our reputation around the world is falling. That is simply because the United States is now regarded as an enemy of the world. It does not wish to be. Often, in order to unite a country in trouble, you must first create fear of your regime. Secondly, you must create a common enemy whom you can hate. It is regrettable that the United States has become an enemy. On our international policy, I do not believe in multilateralism; I believe in a collection of bilateralisms. We should make and build relationships directly with everybody, and not indirectly through third or fourth organisations. The point was made a little earlier by noble Lords opposite. They were great Europeans, but I remember that when I was treasurer of the Conservative Group for Europe I had to raise money to pay for the British delegation to have support in Strasbourg and the EU because the Labour Party did not want to go into the EU. It does not matter how things may change. We are, in a way, in a strong position at the moment in this country. We have to think that our foreign policy should not repeat the past. The greatest cock-up has been our foreign policy over the past10 years.