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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I thought yesterday that the gracious Speech, although graciously delivered, was rather drab. That feeling of drabness was compounded when I found myself sitting behind the Clerk of the Parliaments looking at the diplomatic Benches. It was as though someone had said, "Dress down". It was a full ceremonial occasion, and they looked extraordinarily drab, so I went into Black Rod’s office just before 3 and asked whether the diplomatic community was there in force. "Yes", he said; it was there in the Royal Gallery and upstairs. I think that he might have agreed that it was drab, although he would not have said so, and I wondered whether instructions had been given by the Government to downplay this thing and to dress down. I was also a bit concerned by the Supreme Court uniforms sitting in front of me; they were new, and I suddenly found myself a bit confused by the whole role of the House of Lords, until I listened to the speeches that have been made today. I have a number of weaknesses; one is that I hate mirrors. I sometimes shave in the morning without looking in the mirror, because a mirror confuses me. It is either dyslexia, or because I get the left and right eye mucked up. I have a feeling that yesterday the Government were not looking into the outside world, but looking at a mirror and trying to preen themselves, to make themselves look a bit better. Over the past 18 months, I have looked into the outside world. I love the sea; it is in my blood. My family were traders right the way around the world, and we are all mixed up. Generally, with the Scots, when one female line dies out you take the name and make it triple-barrelled. Mine is Malcolm McEacharn Mitchell-Thomson. McEacharn was the first provost or lord mayor of Melbourne; my grandfather on the other side was a Scot, and provost of Edinburgh. The other ones were the Mitchells, who fled from England and did coal in Canada. I was brought up in that sort of international world, and hence I love those parts of the world that are still linked to us. So, over the past 18 months I went back, got my maps and charts out, and had a word with the hydrographer and a few other people. I said, "Let’s look at what happens". As your Lordships will know, we will be having a great event when the Armada tapestries are returned, repainted, and put up on the wall in the Royal Gallery. They will be here for a while; I talked to the Archives, and Malcolm Hay in particular suddenly thought that one theme might be the defence of the realm, because that is not just the military defence but the defence of our trade, of the wealth that we can create and of the added value that we can give. I then thought that, after the Armada tapestries and 1588, something was bothering me. I had always liked the idea of the Board of Trade, which I thought still existed, but I found that in the Government now there is no mention of trade. The department of trade has changed its name gradually, and every three months it has a big makeover and spends £300,000 on rebranding. It was called BURP or something until recently, and now it is called BISSOFF or something—I do not know—but there is no mention of trade anywhere. So I thought that, with your Lordships’ approval, I would read a simple quotation, as when you have major wars like the Spanish wars you usually have a recession or a problem, and you need to do something about it. After the Armada, King James suddenly found that things were quite difficult, so he formed a body to get together the first and original Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations. The brief was: ""To take into their consideration the true causes of the decay of trade and scarcity of coyne and to consult the means for … removing … these inconveniences"." Things went on, and every 40 years there was another situation. Later on, Daniel Defoe suddenly realised the importance of other things, and said, ""Next to the purity of religion we are the most considerable Nation in the World for the Vastness and Extensiveness of Trade"." I got the map up, then, and as your Lordships will know the world is nearly but really not quite round. There are 360 degrees, and in each degree a nautical mile is one minute, so if you want to know how far it is around the world, you effectively multiply 60 by 360 degrees. Now, ""George III said with a smile, ‘Seventeen-sixty yards in a mile’"," so I looked at it and said, "Well, if two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by the sea, what is the value of the sea?" I thought that it might be in global warming, or in fishery protection, or in access—or it might be in the oil underneath the sea. Maybe, I thought, we should take an initiative, so I got the map out again, and with a bit of help from the hydrographer worked out that the coastline of the Commonwealth is 44,000 km. I cannot translate those kilometres back into nautical miles, but that is quite a long distance. It is actually longer than that of the Soviet Union or of the United States, where it is about 20,000 km. And then I thought, "Well, what are these coastlines for?". I thought again, and had a look. The former British territory is about 44,000 miles. I thought, "I’ll tell you what we’ll do. The Commonwealth conference is next week. Let’s get the Commonwealth to declare a 500-mile limit and claim the rights on the seabed from all of its territories". I am working that out at the moment. You can then look at fishery protection and all the other things, because most of the Commonwealth countries are based on the sea; five are inland. If you deal with the sea, what can you get out of the Commonwealth countries, a subject to which the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, referred just now? Historically, we went there because they had raw material that we needed, for which we could create added value. Not least, and perhaps most important of all, was food. In order to produce food in difficult countries these days, you need stability. You need to defend the villages, the individual tribes and populations from harassment. You then look at piracy. I thought, "What are we good at here in England?". We have a balance of payments deficit on visibles—manufactured things—of £100 billion. We have a vast deficit with the EU and an enormous deficit with Germany. The biggest surpluses we have are with Ireland and the United States, but there are no more than 10 countries with which we have a surplus on visibles. Services, perhaps, yes, but visibles create more jobs throughout an economy. We perhaps need to think a little more on this sector. Some of our high-tech areas are quite interesting. I have declared so many interests over a period of time. I think that this is my 47th contribution to a debate on an humble Address; I cannot really remember. However, I am secretary of the Parliamentary Space Committee so, instead of looking at the globe and the maps, I thought that we should look down from space. So, before this debate, I said, "Let’s look at piracy". Piracy, as your Lordships will know, has historically been in the Malacca straits. It was always in the Horn of Africa and certain parts of the Caribbean. By chance, this range runs from 0 degrees—the equator—to 24 degrees north. I would like your Lordships to know, and I am sure that the Minister would be willing to agree with this, that I have put in hand a preliminary order for six surveillance satellites from the United Kingdom, possibly in co-operation with Nigeria and India which are also in that business, and possibly also the Russians. They can pick up and deal with any form of piracy. I have been told that I can get six for £100 million, which is not a lot today. I thought that we might consider who we could name them after. However, £100 million for space surveillance to pick up any form of piracy is an extraordinarily good deal. Yes, of course we are linked to Europe geographically. However, if you look at defence, we are not going to put aircraft carriers in the Channel. If there were a major problem, we reckon that most of Europe might be cut off. However if we look at the historical distances, all the European countries were in China at the time of the Boxer rebellion. Maybe they will be back there now, but the trade routes are going to change. Now, within the Commonwealth, there is something else quite interesting: 29 per cent of the world fleet by tonnage—which is apparently more important than length—is effectively sailing under a British flag in one way or another. On trade, the Navy always says that 90 per cent of our imports come in by sea, but that is, oddly, thinking historically. We are a maritime nation, and we have that flag business where, if you have a British flag, you have the right of protection of Her Majesty’s plenipotentiaries, consuls, proconsuls, ambassadors and the Royal Navy. I think that we should charge a bit more for that protection. On the future, the noble Lord, Lord Luce, is absolutely right. The Commonwealth is not just a group of friends, it is a collection of countries with which we have a historic relationship. They have the ability, with our help and with stability, to create added value. I got involved with the Sudan, which was to be the breadbasket of the Middle East. In Ghana at that time, my great-uncle was Stafford Cripps, who did the groundnut scheme that did not actually work. However, we could say that one of the roles of the United Kingdom, with the support of the Commonwealth and the EU, is to go to these countries with which we have a relationship, and give a forward order for so many tonnes, cubits or whatnot of production per year and sell it on the open market. Without stability, a country cannot produce. I worry as I look at the devaluation of our pound. Our trade is getting worse. Eighty per cent of everything that is sold in the shops is imported with devalued currency. There are stars in the sky. If the Minister will agree, I will write to her. If the Ministry of Defence would give me an order for the use of these satellites, I would be willing to order them tomorrow. As a separate favour to our Armed Forces, could the Minister ask the powers that be if our troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere could have a little more time on the telephone by doubling the bandwidth of Paradigm?