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National Security Strategy

My Lords, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, that part of the problem that we have suffered under the current Government has been the style of government, the constant churning of Ministers, Prime Ministerial dominance over the Cabinet, the downgrading of the Cabinet, and the Government’s dominance over Parliament. I remind him, however, that his party is making a strong request that after the next election there should be single-party government, clear Executive dominance of Parliament, and a Prime Minister who will have all the power that Tony Blair had. Perhaps, when the Constitutional Reform Bill hits this House and the Conservative Party wants to strike as much as possible out of it, the noble Lord will remind his party leader of what he has just said. In yesterday’s Statement, it was announced that the Defence Green Paper would pave the way for a strategic defence review which would be, ""set in the context of the National Security Strategy"." We were missing a further stage which, in turn, depends upon our view of Britain’s place in the world. That is what is lacking in much of our discussions. It is particularly lacking in the Conservatives’ national security strategy. We have a consensus among the parties about the need for a wider definition of national security and for that to be reflected in the way in which Whitehall is organised. However, of the three papers mentioned by the noble Lord, the IPPR paper is by far the most substantial and is the most critical of what one has to call the outdated consensus of British foreign policy. The Conservative paper states that the party is committed to, ""a liberal Conservative attitude to foreign policy which champions an enlightened vision of the national interest,"" which will be, ""a distinctive British foreign policy"." The paper does not tell us what any of this means or what such a policy would be. What does one do when the definition of objectives is difficult? One proposes a reorganisation of structures. The document does not say anything more about costs. When David Cameron launched it, I asked him how the party would manage it all in the context of sharply reducing costs. He seemed unable to answer. Last summer, William Hague remarked in a speech that this is not an east-of-Suez moment. This is an east-of-Suez moment which should make us think very hard about what that means for British foreign policy. The old-style image, which we heard about from the noble Baroness, Lady Park, of the UK as a great trading nation standing alone and defending itself properly in a dangerous world—Britain as an exceptional country—is part of what we must re-examine. We must also re-examine what I call the "white man’s burden" view of the world, in which the United States and Europe, through NATO, maintain international order on their own. I rarely agree with anything that I read in the Daily Mail, but Correlli Barnett’s article this morning was spot on. We are stuck with the old 1950s myths of British exceptionality, determined to go on overspending to maintain our ability to protect Chinese goods on Korean-built ships going through the Straits of Aden because that is what Britain has always done—just as we went on defending the route to India for 20 years after we gave India independence. The Liberal Democrat approach is to accept that we are now in a G20 world, not an Atlantic one. A global shift is under way and it is in our interests to co-opt other actors into sharing the ability to cope with the various threats that we face. The Indian army is the largest single contributor to UN forces. The Indians and the Chinese must accept that they, too, must share the responsibility for dealing with failing states and with the problem of climate change. The drivers of insecurity must also be addressed. One fundamental problem of insecurity for this country and others is that we have, across the Middle East, an unresolved conflict between Israel and the Arab world. We are also supporting a number of regimes, including in Yemen, which are not providing the political, economic and social development that their populations need. Unless we address that, we will face further insecurity following our failure. That is why my party is so much more critical of the US approach to the Middle East conflict than either Labour or the Conservatives. We want to see closer European co-operation with France, the Netherlands, the Nordics, the Balts, the Poles and others: structured co-operation of the sort that the IPPR report suggested. We accept the necessity of international engagement, which means close co-operation within Europol and Eurojust, and all the other things that the noble Lord, Lord West, did not mention when taking through the Borders Bill, but which I am sure he recognises are extremely important. Lastly, we recognise—my noble friend Lady Hamwee will say more about this—that when we talk about resilience, the trend towards the centralisation and professionalisation of government in this country has been taking us in the wrong direction. Resilience in a crisis means local resilience, with local people being engaged as volunteers, taking responsibility back from the centralised police and government that took it away from local communities. There are many issues here that I will leave my noble friend to cover in more detail.