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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I would like to cover three topics: cluster munitions, Afghanistan and relations between this country and the European Union. I enthusiastically welcome the Government’s policies on cluster munitions and the legislation that is to follow. Many people have been involved in the campaign, which I think has proved that lobbying works. The Government listened to many voices, when at the time there were clearly doubts inside the Ministry of Defence. In the end, the Government came to the right conclusion. It was very exciting being at the Dublin convention when we got news that the Prime Minister had finally said that Britain would sign up and many other countries followed. We can discuss these issues more fully in the debates on the Bill. I say to my noble friend Lady Kinnock that I hope that she has a very long ministerial career but that, if she is in office for many years, she will never find such unanimous support for a measure as she will find on that for cluster munitions. I hope that she makes the most of it. The ban will save lives and limbs and it will make the world a better place for many people. There is still the need to influence those countries that did not sign up to the agreement: the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel, just to name the main ones. I hope that the Government will see as one of its foreign policy objectives the need to persuade those countries to follow the example set by 119 countries in Dublin. I turn to Afghanistan. Along with many other Members of both Houses, I had the chance to visit Helmand earlier this year for three days at the invitation of the Ministry of Defence. Although I said to the military there, "I hope we will not be getting in your way", I was told, "No, we welcome the fact that you are coming to see what the conditions are and to experience, in a limited way, what is happening here". The visit was confined to Kandahar and Camp Bastion. At that time, the Royal Marines were the main British troops. I thought that morale was excellent and I was impressed by the bonding, the positive views of the Army and the other military personnel there at all levels. When we asked the troops about equipment, they did not criticise. They welcomed some of the new vehicles, although they pointed out that to go into some of the villages where the streets were narrow they needed smaller vehicles, which could not, by definition, be as well armoured as some of the vehicles that did not have to go into the villages. They had to accept that, if they were to patrol the villages in vehicles, they needed vehicles that were more vulnerable to the explosive devices. The only comments that we received about equipment—we tested the Army quite a bit on this—was that the helmets and the body armour that the Special Forces had were somewhat better designed than theirs and they looked forward to that equipment being introduced, as I believe it is. There may be equipment difficulties, but we did not pick up such criticisms. The noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, who was there, is nodding. I was left with a very enthusiastic feeling about how well the Army is doing. My noble friend Lady Taylor organises such visits and my thanks go to her for making it possible. We discussed the difficulties that the troops have in such a vast area. One of the big military difficulties is that, if they take a village from the Taliban, they do not always have the resources to stay there. The villagers say, "Please stay with us because we are vulnerable to the Taliban once the troops have gone". Although we were told about forward positions that were intended to hold the ground better, they are clearly quite vulnerable. I could see the difficulties that the troops had in those circumstances. We looked at the medical facilities in Camp Bastion and the way in which injured troops are medevaced out to Britain. I thought that the facilities were excellent. We saw the hospital at Camp Bastion, which has intensive care units, operating theatres and so on, and we saw two injured Afghans brought in. I do not believe that one could improve on the medical facilities provided for our injured troops and for injured Afghans. We went out of the camp to watch the Afghan army training, which was good. I am not a military person but the training was somewhat desultory—perhaps that is all one should expect or perhaps not. We need to step up the training both in terms of the number of Afghans being trained and the effort put into it. Sending more troops to train the Afghan army would be a sensible investment. The only way out of this will be if the Afghan army is large enough, effective enough and well trained enough to play its part. Of course, this is an impossibly difficult problem for us, the Americans and all the other countries involved but, as has been said, if we pull out, there will be risks. First, we would certainly destabilise Pakistan, which would have dire consequences, and, secondly, if al-Qaeda were to be allowed to return to Afghanistan, it would have a secure base from which to resume attacks on us, on America and indeed on many other countries. Apart from building up the Afghan army, we need to use our maximum influence with President Karzai to ensure that corruption is tackled so that the people of Afghanistan have more confidence in their regime. No, we cannot impose western-style democracy on the country, but we can demand that the levels of corruption are significantly reduced. I believe that someone has to talk with the Taliban. President Karzai said that he would do that—maybe it is already being done—but the lesson learnt from other conflicts is that one has to talk to people to see whether there is some way forward or whether at least some of the people opposed to us can be persuaded that there is a better future on our side than there is with continuing the hostilities. I turn to a point on NATO and Europe. I am a bit nervous that, in the enthusiasm to expand NATO, we may be encouraging the Ukraine and Georgia and other such countries to join. I would urge caution. In the recent conflict in Georgia, I am not sure that it would have been helpful if Georgia had been a member of NATO, as we would have been dragged into a conflict that should not have started. I do not know who was responsible—perhaps both sides were—but it is not sensible for us to say that NATO should expand into those areas unless we are prepared to live with the consequences of saying that we back those countries in a conflict, which clearly we would not have done in Georgia. We also ought to be careful about other countries in the region. I wish that the EU and our membership of it would stop being the political football of British politics. It has been like that for too long. Frankly, unless we have the self-confidence as a country to treat the European countries equally and to be prepared to say that we are part of this—not a part of a federal Europe but a part of a Europe in which we are willing to co-operate—I fear that there will be more damage to this country and to Britain’s reputation. The Conservative Party has got itself into an enormous tangle about this, although I do not say that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has. I am not sure what sort of referendum is being considered for the future. Will we have a referendum to agree on Croatia’s accession to the EU or even Macedonia’s or Turkey’s accession? Is that the kind of thing that the leader of the Conservatives is talking about? I hope that, without a referendum, we can welcome Croatia and Macedonia into the EU before too long, provided that they meet the requirements of the various chapters, which I think they are well on the way to doing. I would welcome Turkey’s membership provided that it meets the standards on human rights, market economy and so on. It is quite a long way off that as yet—it will have to change articles of its constitution and so on—but I believe that the Turkish Government recognise that. Surely, from our point of view, the worst outcome would be to drive Turkey towards seeing its friends as those countries further east rather than those in the west. I believe that, in the fullness of time, Europe with Turkey as a member will be a stronger Europe and safer for it.