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Queen's Speech

My Lords, it gives me pleasure to be able to follow the noble Baroness in two respects immediately: first, by seconding the motion of gratitude to the right reverend Prelate that she proposed, as he is entitled to not just a proposer but a seconder; and, on her last point, she put powerfully and eloquently a view shared, I am sure, by many in this House that the once uniquely dominant quality of our Diplomatic Service is no longer what it was. That is an area of our overseas expenditure that we neglect, and have neglected, at our peril. That needs to be reversed as a matter of high priority. Having made those simple points, I feel slightly diffident, speaking as an ex-Foreign Secretary, when I realise just how much I have been cut off from the area. It is almost 20 years since I had the privilege of working with those people and being fed, briefed, instructed and informed. Happily, many of my links remain, giving me some contexts in a striking curiosity of places. One, for example, is Ukraine, because for a long time, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, I was on the advisory council for that country, trying to put it together again. I am still chairman of the all-party group. Another, more recently and more coincidentally, is Georgia, a country that, I confess, I have not visited since 1988 but over which I became an enthusiastic partner with my opposite number, Eduard Shevardnadze, when he became president of that country. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is China—I am president of the Great Britain-China Centre—a country whose performance and transformation I have been able to follow since my first visit there 30 years ago. That is a subject to which I shall return in a moment. I echo absolutely what my noble friend Lord Howell said about the extent to which we have discounted and disregarded the Commonwealth. That is an immensely important network. I know that my noble friend is fond of talking about a networked world; I am a little more organised than that, but this particular network is one that we can certainly share together. One matter where I tend to move in a different direction from my noble friend is the setting in which we should be presenting Britain's foreign policy. Of course British foreign policy on its own has a distinctive impact because of our history and experience and our continuing position, but it is crucial to recognise that the impact of this country alone needs to be amplified, intensified and broadened if it is to be effective. I take as my text on that point a remark made by Prime Minister Kaifu of Japan many years ago, when he said to me that, from the Japanese point of view, and that of many others, their relations with Britain are the keystone of their relations with Europe But that is not because of our independent separateness but because of our position as one of the four or five major powers in the European Union. It is increasingly obvious that it is in that larger setting that we can be most effective; and it is increasingly important to recognise that, for the reasons given by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and others. There is the emergence of a new American Administration, whose future direction we need to be able to influence, which we can do more in European partnership than on our own. The gracious Speech and previous speakers have identified areas where European partnership is important and must be achieved: on economic conditions, on climate change, on energy but, above all, on the issues at the heart of foreign policy itself, the wider questions. I must express, as I have done privately, a certain dismay that the understandable frustration—expressed by the noble Baroness as much as by my noble friend—at the failure and reluctance of our European partners to get their act together as they should tends to spill over, in my noble friend's emotional approach, to an almost dismissive sidelining of Europe because it is so frustrating. It is a sad thing that, year after year, in Government after Government, there is a fluctuation in our commitment to the European Union. All too often, when we are addressing the hard tasks, we tend to withdraw from them and do not succeed in promoting our national interests and policy. I remember being struck by that—I shall reminisce at great antiquity now—in the debate that I wound up in 1972 at Second Reading of the European Communities Bill. A striking example of this on-off pattern of British political behaviour is that, when in office, Governments learn that they have to co-operate with Europe. When they slip into opposition, they luxuriate, and heavy doses of Euro-scepticaemia set in. I hope that I may be forgiven for quoting from my speech in that debate many years ago. The debate had been opened for the Opposition by Harold Wilson, and I was rounding up my remarks at the end of it. I said: "““There is a Napoleonic aspect in the posture of the right hon. Gentleman. The truth is that accession to the Communities—which he set in train on behalf of his Government in 1967 and which, as he has made clear in his speech this afternoon, he would again set in train on behalf of any future Government he might lead—is unacceptable to him only at the present time. The right hon. Gentleman himself acts on a classic Bonapartian text: ‘Not tonight. Josephine’””.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/2/72; col. 662.]" That is how Oppositions and incoming Governments, or even outgoing ones, address this issue. It is disastrous, and I hope very much that the next incoming Government will be in no doubt about the necessity of maintaining all the time a positive, energetic, frustrating commitment to the European institutions with which we must work. There is no doubt that only in that framework can we hope to influence the shape of the world in which we want to live. This is clear in relation to the United States and to Russia—I will say more about that later—and in the wider world in relation to Latin America, to Asia and, above all, to China. I have no hesitation in saying that I very much admire the success with which the Chinese Government and the institutions responsible for the Government of one-fifth of the world’s population are emerging, based on their own culture and history and, on many occasions, not exactly as we, with our own quite different but younger cultural history, would wish. They are, in fact, moulding a most impressive, determined and thoughtful government approach to the rest of the world. I am, however, disappointed that the apparent willingness to conduct discussions with the Dalai Lama of Tibet appears to have faded following an apparent change in the stated position of Her Majesty’s Government. I very much hope that that position will not be maintained, as a country that has been capable of tackling even the modest problem of Hong Kong as imaginatively as China did may surely yet be able to tackle the very difficult but important question of Tibet. China is, of course, important because of the extent to which it is engaging in world politics, and not only economically. The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, which China founded about four years ago and which consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan and the other three ““stans””—with Pakistan, India, Mongolia and Iran as observers—is only one aspect of the important way in which China is developing her foreign policy, but it illustrates the importance of our having a setting in which our own influence can if not match China’s impact then at least have as much of an impact as it should have within this European framework. Perhaps most important of all, as the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, mentioned, are the relationships between Russia and the West. They must be regarded as relationships between Russia, the European Union and the United States. Each of us in Europe and the United States will have different inputs to make into them, but we must keep in step with each other so far as we can. I have lived, again some time ago, through two quite different eras of co-operation with the Russians. The first was the Cold War. Even at the height of the Cold War and a week before my first meeting with that charming man Andrei Gromyko, the Russians shot a Korean airliner out of the sky over the Sea of Japan—a shocking thing to have happened. The West, under the leadership of George Shultz in the United States, reacted robustly, critically and fiercely against that action. The United States, led by President Reagan, insisted that, notwithstanding that tension, the arms control talks that were taking place should continue. In other words, vigorous strength had to be accompanied by continuing diplomacy. In the second stage, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were in command and we were reacting to the new hymn tune of Mikhail Gorbachev, when he talked about ““our common European home””. In that atmosphere, the Cold War melted away. So, too, did the Warsaw Pact, and indeed the Soviet Union. In retrospect, we did not immediately recognise what Dean Acheson once said about us: that Russia, "““has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role””." That, to some extent, is her shortcoming at present. I am glad, therefore, that Sub-Committee C of this House, which reported on this in May this year, said quite specifically that it was for the European Union, "““to continue to build on its long term relationship with Russia and to pursue a policy of engagement at all levels and across all policy areas to develop the necessary bilateral co-operation using a hard-headed and unsentimental approach””." That is absolutely right. I am even more glad about the extent to which that approach was endorsed only a few weeks ago in an article by two formidable characters, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, in the Washington Post on 8 October. They said: "““What they””—" that is, Russia— "““have sought, sometimes clumsily, is acceptance as equals in a new international system rather than as losers of a Cold War to whom terms could be dictated. Their methods have occasionally been truculent … But fairness requires some acknowledgement that the West has not always been sensitive to how the world looks from Moscow … Moving the East-West security line in a historically short period, 1,000 miles to the east while changing the mission of NATO and deploying advanced weapons technology on the territory of former Soviet satellites was not likely to be met with Russian acquiescence””." Those are all very realistic observations that should condition the way in which we go from here. It is the right approach to recognise that. George Shultz and Henry Kissinger also suggested positive conclusions: "““We do believe that the security of Ukraine and Georgia should be placed in a larger context than mechanically advancing an integrated NATO command to a few hundred miles from Moscow … we favor a rapid evolution toward E.U. membership””." That is how we should handle this situation. It is manifest that our input can be fully effective only within the framework of a European Union, which we are free to criticise and which we should seek to energise with a well energised Diplomatic Service of our own. Lastly, I support an even more ambitious objective of George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, supported by Senator Nunn and former Defence Secretary William Perry: the bigger, more important historic opportunity to reverse the reliance on nuclear weapons and ultimately to end their threat to the world. It is important that statesmen of that distinction are committing themselves to an objective that is longer term and more ambitious—with the changed position of nuclear weapons as they proliferate around the world—than the one that I have just sketched in relation to relations with Russia.