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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, we are at a watershed moment in international affairs. Less dramatic, admittedly, than the last such moment when the Berlin wall came down 20 years ago, but nevertheless a watershed moment for Britain’s foreign policy, for that of the European Union and for the wider world. That brief unilateral moment when the US was the sole world power left standing has ended, its end hastened by the misconceived and clumsily executed policies of President George W Bush. Many of the threats and challenges we face can be mastered only by concerted action at the global level, and yet the multilateral institutions we possess have so far proved inadequate to the task. Europe has yet to find its voice and to pull its weight but, with the imminent entry into force of the Lisbon treaty, it has an opportunity to further and safeguard more effectively those common interests which individual member states can no longer protect. Britain, bruised by the international financial crisis, by the toll of casualties in Afghanistan and uncertain of its sense of direction, risks turning in on itself and underperforming, as we last did in the 1970s. A lot is at stake in the period ahead and, by the time we next debate a loyal Address, a new Government will have taken office. The first global challenge will come very soon; less than a month from now the Copenhagen conference on climate change will begin. The auguries for a successful outcome are far from brilliant. Preparations have lagged, cards have been held too close to negotiating chests and excessive time has been spent on rhetorical jousting between developed and developing countries. The European Union, at its meeting last month, may have been tactically astute in declining to put a figure on its potential contribution to developing countries, but it may also have made a strategic error because European leadership in all sectors of the negotiating package for Copenhagen is essential if success is to be achieved. If the Copenhagen conference fails, the problem of climate change will not, of course, go away; it will simply get worse and more costly in the long run to handle. If the Copenhagen conference comes up with inadequate or quasi agreements; if it fails to establish a framework for legally binding, even if differentiated, constraints on future emissions by all; if it fails to provide the support in finance and technology which developing countries need if they are to accept such constraints; and if there is no adequate institutional machinery in place to address the implementation of the commitments entered into at Copenhagen, then we shall soon enough see the evidence of this shortfall and the damaging consequences that will flow from it. The Government’s record so far in these negotiations has been pretty good, but the hardest part remains and they will need to use all their determination and influence within the EU and more widely in the period ahead. Not far behind that challenge lies a possibly even more daunting and complex one: that of putting flesh on the bones of the aspiration, endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council on 24 September, of working towards a world free of nuclear weapons. It will require much skill and political effort at the top level of government over many years. Assuming that a first, essential bilateral step towards nuclear disarmament is successfully achieved by the US and Russia next month, at some point further down the road, nuclear disarmament will need to become multilateral. It is welcome that the Government have expressed their readiness for that. Now they will need to prepare for it and to act in the meanwhile—for example, over Trident replacement—in a way consistent with the overall objective. There will be a need, too, to move into serious negotiation on a fissile material cut-off treaty, if necessary not allowing procedural obstacles at the conference on disarmament to prevent that. We shall need to give all the help and encouragement we can to the completion of the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Here, I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, who pointed out the real obstacles that President Obama and his Administration face on the Hill and why countries such as ours, which have felt that it is in our national interest to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, should go across and tell our colleagues on the Hill why we think it would strengthen our own and the world’s position if they were to do likewise. If we were able to make some progress in the next few months, it should create the necessary conditions for a successful Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference which will take place in May 2010—somewhat awkwardly, I suspect, for this country. It will be a crucial stage in the process that I have described of moving towards a world free of nuclear weapons, but by no means its destination. That conference will need to endorse the International Atomic Energy Agency’s additional protocol as a universal standard, made mandatory if necessary. It needs, too, to open the way to internationally guaranteed supplies of enrichment and reprocessing services so that the expansion of civil nuclear energy, highly desirable on environmental grounds, can take place without increasing the proliferation risk. It needs to make withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty, as provided for in that treaty, a costly, and not a cost-free, option. In parallel, some strengthening of the negative security assurances given by the recognised nuclear-weapon states to the non-nuclear-weapon states is highly desirable. All this will need to proceed against the threatening backdrop of attempts by North Korea and Iran to move in the opposite direction to the rest of the world. The diplomatic route to heading off such a breakout must not be abandoned, but it may need to be strengthened by further sanctions if either of those countries rejects the negotiating table or uses it purely as an instrument for gaining time. Should such sanctions not be endorsed by the Security Council, which I would greatly regret, the European Union should be ready to act in concert with others such as Japan and the United States, which are likely to be pressing for them. The third global challenge ahead of us is trade. So far, despite some backsliding, the economic crisis has not been accompanied by the disastrous slide into protectionism which characterised the 1930s. Unemployment is still rising, however, and protectionist pressures are there. To put them definitively behind us, successful completion of the Doha development round of trade negotiations needs to become a central feature of any exit strategy from the crisis. Our Government, along with their G20 partners, have been liberal with words to that effect but, so far, remarkably short on action. Surely, 2010 needs to be the year when those becalmed negotiations are brought safely into harbour. Every one of these global challenges will require the European Union and its member states to pull together and in two out of three, environment and trade, to give a lead. Now that the Lisbon treaty, properly ratified by all 27 countries, is about to enter into force, it is surely in this country’s best interest to put the party-political quarrels of recent years behind us and set about using the strengthened institutions to good effect so as to secure the objectives that we share with the other member states. Any attempt to rake over the ashes of recent years and head back into the institutional morass is all too likely not only to infuriate our EU partners and the United States and to isolate us from them but actually to handicap our own pursuit of those substantive policy objectives that it is in our national interests to achieve. We will certainly not be able to achieve them on our own, nor will we do so by pursuing false alternatives such as the Commonwealth, which is an extremely valuable global network but in no sense a bridge strong enough or indeed ready to bear the weight of negotiations on subjects such as trade or nuclear disarmament. That brings me to Britain’s own contribution to this complex agenda. Here the signs are distinctly alarming. No one doubts the need for a sensibly rigorous approach to public expenditure at the present juncture, but to spearhead that approach by squeezing the Government’s contribution to peace-keeping, conflict prevention and the support of multilateral institutions on whose effectiveness we crucially depend is surely an example of false economies. That point was made extremely forcefully by my noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme in his earlier statement. It may save a few candle ends, but at what a cost. Having fought long, hard and unsuccessfully against an increase in the IAEA’s budget, we now appear to be in the vanguard of resistance to a tiny increase in the UN’s regular budget. There may be good reasons for parsimony in handling some of these budgets, but the fall in the value of sterling, which, thanks to the perverse accounting practices imposed by the Treasury, has become the driver of our diplomacy, is certainly not one of them. The same problem arises on the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Luce, to which he referred—and I would add to the Commonwealth scholarships the shortfall in our financing of Marshall scholarships. It is surely high time, therefore, for the Government to try to find a way out of the self-defeating trap that they have created, and I ask the Minister to respond on this point. Britain is still a leading player in the international community, even if our influence, to be effective, now needs often, or perhaps almost invariably, to be exerted in concert with others. We need to avoid losing our nerve at this difficult, watershed moment, and resist the siren songs of those who would wish us to turn our backs on the world and who hanker rather absurdly after our becoming another Switzerland or Norway. Let us hope that whichever party, or parties, is in government this time next year will find a way in which to master the challenges that we face, not run away from them.