---

Foreign Policy

My Lords, others will answer for their statements. We say that the common European position has to be observed. It is a unanimous position of the European Community. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, asked what we are doing in other regards. We work bilaterally with every SADC Government on this question. The African journey is not easy; there are no quick fixes, but there has been progress. We need renewed efforts, for example, on the long British tradition of liberal trade policies, and with good reason, because open markets help lift peoples out of poverty. Globalisation has to be understood and has to be compatible with social justice, because not everyone has benefited from trade and investment liberalisation. Multinational negotiations can be difficult, but we must continue to do them. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, that I am not disturbed that trade has moved into financial sectors and other leading sectors in the world economy. That is the nature of the world economy. The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, expressed her dismay, if I can put it that way, at the cuts in our network, and the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, also mentioned that. It is true that in the current financial circumstances we do not have embassies everywhere, but our network is effective and is in the front rank worldwide. As the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, mentioned, underpinning everything must be the proper focus on human rights. People must expect their Governments to be accountable, to protect them and to respect the rule of law. That is fundamental, as is the work on corruption. I want to say a few words about some of the global aims that perhaps do not strike people as immediate. Our military interventions in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq have been motivated by the need to protect populations. We have to explain that and describe why we think it is important, and those issues will still be with us over some time. Some issues, such as energy supply, on which we are making progress, will be with us for a very long time. That is helped by the completion of the Langeled gas pipeline, which is a great benefit to all of us for the reasons stated by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. In the midst of all that, the FCO is well and thriving. Like many foreign ministries around the world, it has had to adapt to new realities. In 1997, most British embassies still had no desktop internet access, no e-mail and certainly no BlackBerries. Prime Minister Pitt would have been utterly confounded by the technologies of this age. We live now in an open society, where there are few secrets and where wehave to have a vital and dynamic relationship with everyone. As my noble friend Lord Giddens said, foreign affairs do not simply happen somewhere else. All the impacts are with us all the time. We adapt to these realities, and we have not compromised the FCO’s quality. We have brought our policy and research departments closer together, as the noble Lord, Lord Luce, was calling for, to give more intellectual depth to our arguments and maintain an historical perspective. We are more efficient while maintaining a greater commitment overseas. I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, that we are trying to build up areas such as trade in a more coherent and joined-up way. We have pioneered a number of innovations which have been important in the past 10 years, such as those in consular and visa work and trying to respond to the vast number of people who travel overseas. We are using our new expertise to deal with subjects such as forced marriage, which were not so much on the agenda or at least not so visible 10 years ago. We are learning all the time. We are not awkward isolationists. I do not think that anything in the past 10 years represents a worsening from the 10 years before, and, as many noble Lords have said, things are very much better. We have changed because the world has changed. Foreign policy lives in our ministries but also sweeps through the stock exchanges, science labs and NGOs. It is also in everything domestically. Tony Blair has created a platform for progress and dignity for our country. I applaud that achievement over the past10 years, and if anyone weighs it honestly and dispassionately they will feel that the gains have been significant.