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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the strength of the Government’s commitment to multilateral action, in particular on climate change. We also welcome very strongly the Queen’s Speech inclusion of the Bill on cluster bombs, to which we will give our full support, as we have supported the work of the noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Elton, and others in pushing for that measure. We all recognise that Britain needs a radical shift in the assumptions that underpin its foreign and security policies. I share some of the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on the changes in the global situation around us but not, of course, the conclusions that he draws. Whatever shape of government emerges out of the coming election, under whatever party, we know that we will have to conduct a security review, put off until then. That security review will have to start by redefining Britain’s role in the world. The world that we are in, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, is one in which the European region is no longer at the centre of global politics, and in which Britain cannot pretend to exercise the global influence on its own that it aspired to a generation or two ago. The United States now looks to China, not to Britain or its other European allies, as its most important partner, in a difficult but unavoidably close relationship. Any new Government will have to work with partners to protect their interests and pursue their aims; we cannot hope to achieve much by standing alone. My noble friends Lord Lee, Lord Addington and Lady Falkner spoke passionately on British defence and Afghanistan in the defence debate the other week. I do not intend to repeat the points they made. I am very sorry that my noble friends Lord Dykes and Lord Ashdown are unfortunately unable to stay with us through today’s debate, but I look forward immensely to the speeches of my noble friends Lady Williams, on Afghanistan and nuclear weapons, Lord Chidgey, on Africa—on which I hope that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Winchester will also inform us—and Lady Northover on development and on Middle East. I was amused this morning when the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, phoned me to apologise that he would be late in arriving because I had guessed several of the themes of his speech before he had begun to make it. I look forward with some trepidation to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, since he once was my boss and I have always regarded him with immense awe since then. I shall concentrate on the strategic direction of British foreign policy and the resources that we need to commit to them. Most of all, I shall focus on the European core of British foreign policy, because no foreign policy is credible that is not rooted in close relations with our neighbours. British interests on most global issues are closer to those of our European neighbours than to any other potential partners on climate change, on the Middle East conflict, on economic and political development in Africa, and on relations with the Muslim world. We cannot claim to be deeply committed to international co-operation if we are unwilling or unable to work closely with our neighbours. There is no alternative—to use Mrs Thatcher’s phrase—to a coherent European policy as the foundation of British foreign policy. Liberal Democrats have understood that since the treaty of Rome was signed 50 years ago, and have argued the case for European co-operation as Labour and the Conservatives have wavered back and forth between realism and Europhobia. We do not believe that the EU is a wonderful creation, or that our European partners are paragons of political virtue; like all political systems, the European regional system is an uncomfortable compromise between incompatible objectives. We do not pretend that the Lisbon treaty is an ideal agreement, but it is the framework within which any British Government will have to work for the foreseeable future if they want to achieve key national objectives. Our party was not particularly enamoured of the proposal for a president or chairman of the European Council. We recall that it was accepted by other Governments as a concession to Britain and France. Our Labour Government saw it as a useful intergovernmental check on the influence of small Governments and the European Commission. This Government are drifting, exhausted like the Major Government before them, to the end of their term. As Prime Minister, Tony Blair—following John Major, when he first became Prime Minister—began by declaring that he would take Britain, ""to the heart of Europe"," but he was rapidly seduced by the glamour of Washington and the illusions of the special relationship. He redefined British foreign policy as providing a bridge between Europe and the United States, and ended up going to war in Iraq to demonstrate how loyal an ally we were to whatever Administration was in charge in Washington. He hoped that Britain would gain influence over American foreign policy in return, but sadly it is clear now that he failed to influence it to any significant degree. In the process, his Government drifted to the margins of European co-operation, and the settled Euroscepticism of the British media and of so much of the British public was left to fester. The failure to reshape the foreign policy debate within Britain was one of the greatest failures of Prime Minister Blair’s time in office—but then, it was part of his pact with Rupert Murdoch, with foreign policy principles sacrificed for the favour of a right-wing magnate. I welcomed David Miliband’s speech to the IISS two weeks ago as the most intelligent and positive exposition of the case for European co-operation which any Labour Minister has made for several years. What a pity he left it so late in his term of office, and spoke to so small an audience. In 1996-97, our neighbours and allies were waiting hopefully for a change of Government, freed from what they saw as the Europhobic nightmare that gripped the declining Conservative Government. This time, they have no such hopes; they see the Europhobes returning, obsessed with protecting British sovereignty from the continental threat. David Cameron’s response to the completion of the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, two weeks ago, was remarkably sensible and practical. He recognised the realities that any new Government will face, and kicked the demands for renegotiation and referendums as far into the future as he could. It is evident that, like Tony Blair before 1997, Mr Cameron is not much interested in foreign policy, or at all prepared to negotiate with foreign leaders if he comes into office. He has certainly made no effort to build good personal relations with Chancellor Merkel or President Sarkozy, with whom he would have to work closely and immediately in NATO and G20 meetings, as well as in European Councils, from the day that he became Prime Minister. Yet behind him stand the passionate Europe-deniers, as irrational as the climate-change-deniers and UN-haters in the American Republican Party. A new generation of Europhobe parliamentary candidates, hoping to join us at Westminster, has been brought up to believe the Euromyths they read in the Daily Telegraph—a newspaper whose passionate patriotism stops short only of its owners paying tax within the United Kingdom. Cameron as Prime Minister would thus find himself a latter-day Harold Wilson, trapped by his party into pretending to renegotiate our relationship with the European Union, knowing that this will be a charade: a wasted year of irritating our neighbours to win some symbolic concessions to satisfy the Benches behind him. I heard him on the "Today" programme this morning, resurrecting the issue of opt-out from the Social Chapter—I assume because that was the symbolic issue that the Europhobes used against Mr Major in the Maastricht negotiations 20 years ago. He hinted that he wants to take us out of the European arrest warrant and other agreements on the pursuit of criminals across national borders, defending our sovereignty at the cost of our security. I am very sorry that we do not have the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, here today to tell us what she thinks of that. Will we really have to cope with a sovereignty Bill in a world where multinational banks and companies have locked the UK into tight interdependence? The only really sovereign states in the world today are Burma and North Korea. The Republican right in the United States rejects the application of all international treaties and conventions as binding on American law, as right-wingers like Justice Scalia have argued in the US Supreme Court. Are the Conservatives really going to slip down the same anti-international law, nationalist road? Meanwhile, Mr Cameron has left the formulation of Conservative foreign policy largely to William Hague. In the days of William Pitt, the shadow Foreign Secretary's political hero, British foreign policy was fundamentally about France, the German states—Prussia and Austria—Spain, the Netherlands and Russia. Yet, in his last major foreign policy speech, Mr Hague managed to mention France only in passing and Germany and other European states not at all. No mention of Germany? I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, recognises that, as regards relations with China, Germany has much greater trade with, and much greater foreign investment in, China than Britain does. As regards Brazil, Germany has greater trade with, and greater foreign investment in, Brazil than Great Britain does. The idea that Britain is somehow more global than Germany and France, and the European Union is closed in on itself and protectionist, and not caring about the rest of the world, is one of those old Euro-myths recycled in the Mail and the Telegraph to which too many Conservatives cling. The other William declared, in 1795, that Britain, ""must anew commence the salvation of Europe"." This William appears to prefer to seek the damnation of Europe, with the No Turning Back group of Conservative MPs strongly represented in the shadow Cabinet, cheering him on. President Roosevelt, in his first inaugural speech, promised that he would pursue a "good neighbour" policy. The Conservatives wish to pursue a "bad neighbour" policy. Hague speaks with real enthusiasm about closer relations with China, and about a "special relationship" with India; but there is a hole at the heart of his speeches in his silence about the countries closer to home. He waxes lyrical about working more actively through the Commonwealth—as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has done today—urging in a speech last February that we should encourage Rwanda, Japan, Algeria and Yemen to join. I do not think that he is following developments in Yemen very closely. The great attraction of the Commonwealth to the Conservatives is that it is not the EU. We all understand that the Conservative Party’s foreign policy, like Tony Blair’s, was to follow the Bush Administration wherever it took us. Well, now the Bush Administration has gone and President Obama has made it clear that he is interested in partnership with a collective Europe, not in competitive efforts at special relations by allies with pretensions to wisdom and glorious memories of their past. I understand that this message has made uncomfortably clear to recent Conservative visitors to Washington. Liberal Democrats accept the logic of the IPPR report on UK security strategy, jointly chaired by my noble friend Lord Ashdown and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. They argued that the United Kingdom must work to build closer European co-operation within NATO as the only way to maintain American commitment to NATO, which, the new Administration have again made clear, the US sees as a regional alliance of limited relevance to other global priorities. Last week's Spectator assured us, in contrast, that Liam Fox will take Britain out of the European Defence Agency, a body set up under a British initiative after St Malo and led by a British official for its first five years, but still too contaminated by continental co-operation to overcome Conservative suspicion. The security and defence review which the Labour Government have put off until after the election will have to take some hard decisions about what defence and diplomatic efforts we need and can afford. The Gray report has made severe criticisms of the current Government's drift into an unsustainable overhang in their future defence procurement budget, now estimated at a massive £35 billion. In a speech at the end of July, William Hague referred to earlier, ""major, conscious acts of strategic shrinkage, such as the withdrawal from East of Suez in 1968"," only then to deny that we are now in a similar situation and, specifically, to reject any strategic shrinkage in Britain’s role. He did not go on to explain how a Conservative Government would pay for the sharp increase in defence spending that this would require, nor for the expansion in FCO staffing and diplomatic effort, for which he also called. I hope that these will all be costed in the Conservative manifesto. Our post-imperial Conservatives, with their nostalgic vision of Britain as a world power in its own right, would do well to remember what Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations in 1776 of an earlier Tory Government who fostered illusions about the strength of their position in North America: ""It is surely time that Great Britain should … endeavour to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances"." Liberal Democrats reject the nostalgia and Europhobia which infects the national debate on Britain’s international role. Sixty years after the Second World War we have to move on from Churchillian rhetoric and images of Britain embattled against the occupied continent. It is absurd and contrary to Britain’s national interest that it is acceptable in the British media and at Conservative gatherings to crack jokes about the French and Germans that would be considered racist if they were cracked about Jamaicans or Somalis. The weekend before last we marked again our national Remembrance Day, with Britain standing alone. There were no contingents from countries that fought with us in either world war or since. The Conservative commitment to the Commonwealth might encourage them, for example, to support the inclusion of Indian contingents. India was the second largest contributor to British imperial forces then and the largest contributor to UN peacekeeping forces now. I have met many British Indians whose parents fought in those forces in the Second World War. We could invite Dutch and Danish contingents, since they are fighting and dying with us in Helmand. The French welcomed British units to their 14 July parade five years ago, but I regret that our Labour Government have not yet reciprocated. President Sarkozy welcomed Chancellor Merkel to the French commemoration 10 days ago—an act of statesmanlike reconciliation, of which British politicians of both other parties still seem incapable. My party stands for closer international co-operation, not the embittered defence of national sovereignty. We stand for shared action on climate change, on the threat of overpopulation and on the shift to a more sustainable world economy; and in meeting the complex issues of population displacement, food shortages, cross-border criminal networks and international terrorist groups. That commitment to global co-operation in the face of global threats has to start with our own neighbours across the channel. I repeat, as Margaret Thatcher was very fond of doing: there is no alternative.