General Elections: Peers’ Exclusion from Voting

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have spent considerable time over recent weekends and when visiting universities and colleges doing exactly that, and I hope all other Members of this House do the same.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord West of Spithead]

I give way to my noble friend.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Thank you. Does the Minister recall that the coalition agreement says that membership of this place should reflect of the share of the vote at the last general election? If the Liberal Democrats poll the 8% that they currently have in the polls, there will be only two ways to resolve the position after the next election—either by creating 450 new political Peers or by half the current Liberal Democrat membership seeking retirement. Which would he recommend and, if the latter, would he lead by example?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there is a very strong case for substantial constitutional reform. I fear—as I hope others may fear—that there may be a low turnout and an indecisive result at the election. That may at last push us towards a larger scheme of constitutional reform.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that sometimes it is better not to change things? One hundred and five years ago today, their Lordships of the Admiralty decided to issue a second typewriter to each battleship. Then we had 38 battleships; today we have hardly any ships and thousands of word processors.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the first reference I have to Peers not voting comes from an Act of the reign of King Henry VI, but I regret to say that I have not been up the Tower to check that it is there.

Defence: Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the 2010 SDSR was undertaken at speed, in the context of a very wide gap between defence spending commitments and the Treasury’s ability to fund them. We may hope that after the next election we shall have a little more time—perhaps a matter of six to nine months—before the conclusion of the SDSR. I remind noble Lords that in 1997-98 Labour’s defence review took well over a year. That will allow more time for the sort of debate about our role in the world, the threats we face and how much we devote to meeting these different threats than we had in 2010.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is deluding himself there, because the driver will be the CSR, which will have to gallop down the track very fast. I was disappointed with the Minister’s response to my noble friend on the Front Bench, in terms of the ability to go out and talk to various other people. Does he not believe that we need something like the National Security Forum, and an ability to talk to academe and experts on military affairs, so as to get an input from all parties, moving very fast? The CSR will hit us and we will have to make decisions about spending that will have a huge impact on the military.

Boko Haram

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, in support of my noble friend Lady Kinnock, is it not clear that the Government in Nigeria have focused much more on the coming election and the wealth down in southern Nigeria and have ignored northern Nigeria; and, further, that local government and the police are corrupt and on occasions, as we know, have been helping Boko Haram? Are we putting pressure on the Nigerian Government to correct those faults? Without doing that we cannot really gain any momentum in the other areas the Minister has talked about.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, of course we are working closely with the Nigerian Government on a whole range of issues such as this. The north-east of Nigeria has been neglected compared to the north-west—not only to the south—and the noble Lord knows well the extent to which the oil wealth is now in the south but the northern elite that used to think it ran Nigeria feels excluded. There are many levels of different tensions that are reflected in this.

Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the most reverend Primate for instigating this debate on the role of soft power and non-military options in conflict prevention. The debate is indeed timely and relevant. We are in an extremely chaotic and highly dangerous world that is likely to become increasingly unstable over the next decades, not least within the context of possibly irreversible climate change and ever-increasing competition for resources of all kinds among a very rapidly expanding world population. There are of course many other transnational issues, including changing demographic patterns, imbalance in wealth, disease, the aggressive international growth in terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, drugs and criminalised activity, which also have considerable potential to affect both the international system and our own national security and interests. With these issues comes the potential for big shocks, in an increasingly interconnected world, to overturn or radically modify existing assumptions about partners, vital interests and safeguards. The Arab spring is a manifestation of this unpredictability.

As we have seen over the past 15 years or so, even well established alliances and partnerships have looked decidedly discretionary when the pressure has come on from either internal or external sources. We cannot assume that the idea of a multilateral, rules-based world for diplomacy and economics will necessarily survive the population and resource pressures of the early decades of this century. Sadly, we are entering an age in which illiberal power is growing and liberal power is declining. I believe that it is a world made more dangerous by Europe’s refusal to invest in hard power.

It may well be that collaborative structures and co-operative processes will allow constructive international engagement on many, if not all, of the issues that I have mentioned. However, our human record, in circumstances of intense competition across all dimensions, has not been good and it might be imprudent to be lulled into a false sense of security. Indeed, our historic experience indicates that the transition from a US-dominated world to a more multilateral world could be distinctly uneven and contain some unpleasant surprises. So keeping our armour bright, particularly those elements which provide assurance of our ultimate survival, may prevent, contain or mitigate the consequences of a uniquely threatening combination of global and strategic risks—particularly in relation to such unquantifiable, unforeseen shocks as the imbalance of population and resources and the actions of opportunistic and possibly desperate regimes, some of which we have heard mentioned.

I agree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, that we have cut spending on hard power too far. But while hard power is vital so, too, is that of influence, fairness, integrity, ideas, aid, culture, behaviour, persuasion and law. Indeed, without them hard power is actually an evil. The things that I have mentioned gather under the banner of “soft power”, although I prefer “influence and persuasion”, as mentioned by the committee that looked at this. We in the UK are actually very good at this.

I believe in our values, as I am sure all in this House do. Indeed, I have fought for those values, which are exemplified by the BBC World Service, which a number of people have touched on. It is an exemplar of British values, yet editorially and operationally independent of the UK Government. This independence is understood and highly valued by audiences around the world. As was said, its global news services are the most trusted in the world, reaching over a quarter of a billion people every week—more than any other international broadcaster. It is hard to overestimate its worth in both conflict prevention and promoting our values. We as a nation should be very proud and must ensure that it is adequately funded and supported, which I am afraid that it is not. Another source of pride, already spoken of by a number of speakers, is the British Council, which creates international opportunities for the people of the United Kingdom and other countries and builds trust between them worldwide, which is so important.

“Influence and persuasion” includes many other things. We have heard talk of religion; the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church have of course done an immense amount within this area. It also includes diplomacy and aid; our legal system, which is admired worldwide; and education within this country, with our excellent universities and the need to educate foreign people within them. That is so important and has been touched on by others. The visa issue is so crucial but I will not go into that, as it has been covered.

The training of other nations’ military is very important, as we can imbue them with standards which we believe are important. That needs to be done. There is also the maximum leverage from the universality of the English language; again, that has been touched on by many people and it gives us a crucial thing that we can use globally. There is the Football League, which I think someone touched on. Amazingly, I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day who was in the badlands of northern Somalia, doing very good work to try to make the place better. He felt very worried at one stage but got into a talk with a local bad guy and this chap knew all about the Football League—more than he did. They got talking about that league, which touches parts we never thought it would. There is the whole issue of the arts, popular culture, fashion, music and films. These things must be doing good because they terrify autocratic regimes. Clearly, what they do is wonderful and we are good at these things.

There is also the use of bilateral and alliance relationships, not least the Commonwealth, which was so well and clearly mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. I agree entirely that we do not get the maximum leverage out of it that we really should. All these things are crucial and can make a real difference, furthering the interests of our nation, enhancing our wealth and, by fostering world stability, helping to ensure our security but also the safety and security of those poor people globally who are in nations wracked with conflict. However, this soft power is weakened, if not powerless, if there is no hard power—and the will to use it—to back it up.

Influence and persuasion invariably have one thing in common: they take time to have an effect. In many situations, though, time is sadly lacking. More often than not, the military are required to buy time for other forms of influence and reason to work. Without sufficient hard power in many shattered strife-ridden states, there is no opportunity for aid and dialogue to even start until stability has been enforced, and for that you normally need the military. So I agree with the most reverend Primate about the significance of the work being undertaken by the church, members of civil society, many individuals and all aspects of influence and persuasion working on issues of conflict prevention and conciliation. Without hard power to back them up, though, as he recognised in his opening remarks, I am not convinced that they can achieve much.

Times have changed since Nelson said that the best negotiators in Europe were a squadron of British battleships, but often a strong military presence—particularly maritime power, I have to say—can forestall conflict and prevent war. We must look at hard and soft power as complementary. I like the term “smart power”, coined by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. They need to be looked at as a spectrum. In next year’s national security strategy and strategic defence review we must do that. However, both need sufficient funding if we are to remain safe and secure, which is the prime aim of any Government, as has been said by this Prime Minister, the Prime Minister before him and the Prime Minister before that. To enjoy our education, health service and welfare systems, we have to ensure that they are sufficiently funded.

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[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the most reverend Primate for his introduction, and for mentioning nightmare scenarios and the power of diplomacy, because I want to talk about the essential use of that power to prevent the ultimate nightmare scenario.

I am talking of an issue on which the UK has a particular moral responsibility to engage because we are a nuclear weapons state. As such, we need to engage all our energies in diplomacy to resolve extremely pressing issues. It was back in 2009 that the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament said in its report:

“So long as any state has nuclear weapons, others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain it defies credibility that they will not one day be used, by accident, miscalculation or design. And any such use would be catastrophic”.

We had another illustration last week, for those in your Lordships’ House who went, of the likelihood of just accidents, not even by design, when Heather Williams from Chatham House came to present its report, Too Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy. Eric Schlosser, who undertook a study in the United States on similar issues, shared a platform with her.

Just how close we are to the brink of that catastrophe is something that the 15 people who wrote the international commission’s report were very aware of. They were absolute realists and included senior figures of wide experience such as William Perry, former US Secretary of State for Defense; General Karamat, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Pakistan; General Naumann, former chairman of the NATO Military Committee; and, from this House, my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby. The year in which they published their report, 2009, was a year of optimism, because President Obama made his speech in Prague. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, mentioned, unanimously passed its resolution on nuclear non-proliferation. I must declare an interest as a co-president of the international grouping of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. However, during this time of optimism there were some moments of pessimism. In 2010, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference did not succeed nearly as well as it should have. Most unfortunately for the UK, it fell exactly at election time, so the political lead was lost. One of the unseen fallouts—if I may use that ghastly pun in this context—is that the UK will not be able to take a strong lead in the 2015 conference either, because it will fall at election time. All focus will be on elections and the subsequent forming of a Government. As we are a nuclear weapon power, that is particularly unfortunate.

I appreciate that for this Government, and no doubt the next, disarmament and non-proliferation remain, theoretically and rhetorically, high priorities. However, having had many conversations with my fellow parliamentarians on PNND, I do not think that that is how the rest of the world sees us. I suspect that they do appreciate all those aspects of soft power that I, too, appreciate, which noble Lords have spoken about, such as the World Service, the British Council, and economic and trade issues. However, that is a paradox. We are talking about this while still holding a very big stick behind our backs.

The rest of the world, fed up with the fact that the UN conference on disarmament is widely recognised as moribund because the P5 will not engage and solve that paradox, commenced two initiatives post-2010. First was a UN open-ended working group to try to get a work programme agreed for the conference on disarmament. Sadly, the UK refused to take part. The second initiative was a new fact-finding series of conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. The first was held in Norway in 2013, which, again, the UK, along with the USA and France, did not attend. I had hoped that the UK might attend the second one in Mexico. However, my hopes were dashed when, in reply to my Question in this House in November last year, my noble friend, who is replying today, said:

“We continue to have concerns that the initiative would divert attention from the 2010 action plan agreed by states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”.—[Official Report, 6/11/13; col. 218.]

Next week, starting on Monday, we have the third conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, held in Vienna. I especially welcome the US’s very recent decision to attend the third conference. I hope that my noble friend will have better news for me today and that the UK has decided to finally attend these conferences.

There are many things we could do at a diplomatic level to move the agenda on and move to a safer place. On the second of this month, at the UN General Assembly, there was a draft on achieving a nuclear weapon-free world and accelerating the implementation of nuclear disarmament commitments, which the assembly had called for. A recorded vote was held. Unfortunately, although 169 countries voted in favour, the seven usual suspects voted against. They were: North Korea; Israel, which still refuses to acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons; India, which has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty; France; Russia; the US; and, of course, the UK.

If we continue not to put our diplomatic force behind efforts to make the world a safer place at least in terms of de-alerting, we will have a lot to answer for. Unfortunately, the article that talked about de-alerting was one on which we abstained. It is difficult to understand why we should want to abstain on something like reducing the hair-trigger quality of our nuclear weapons, allowing them to be launched at any moment, when the threats against us—

[Lord West of Spithead]

I am sure that the noble Baroness is aware that our missiles are no longer on that hair trigger. We have set an example, which has not been followed by anybody else. We have gone down to one system only and have reduced the number of warheads dramatically. We have been honest about how many warheads there are. If the rest of the world had followed suit, things would be a lot better, but we certainly do not have missiles either targeted or on a hair trigger.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

I thank the noble Lord very much for that, but it is particularly curious that we could not then vote in favour of the paragraph in the General Assembly’s resolution. I hope that he will join me in encouraging the Government to change that vote the next time it comes round.

In conclusion, however good our soft power is, we will come back to the fact that the rest of the countries in the world will see the P5 as those who, as I said, hold a big stick behind their backs but talk in very different terms when face to face.

Iran: Ghoncheh Ghavami

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, talking of returning home, 92 years ago yesterday, the cruiser “Calypso” steamed into Phaleron Bay and picked up a family going into exile. The youngest child was 18 months old and was in an orange box for his cot. He became an Admiral of the Fleet 30 years later. Would the Minister like to thank the Duke of Edinburgh for the huge amount he has done for our nation over that period?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

When the noble Lord mentioned an orange box, I thought we were getting into Mosaic dimensions. Of course, we thank him for his contribution.

Chilcot Inquiry

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think one of the lessons we will have learnt from this inquiry is that time limits are highly desirable. I stress again that the review of thousands of documents, which were at high levels of classification, was unprecedented and did unavoidably take a great deal of time.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, how much has the Chilcot inquiry cost so far? Is it rather like building work in one’s own house that “as soon as possible” ends up costing an awful lot more?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the inquiry has cost £9 million so far. We estimate that by the time it is completed it will have cost £10 million. By comparison, the Savile inquiry cost £100 million.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I feel that in the past 24 hours some sanity has returned to our actions. I came back to the United Kingdom from holiday on Tuesday and, like many in this House who been involved in the sorts of events that are happening now, it was clear to me that we were seemingly on an irresistible move towards taking military action as early as this Sunday coming. It seemed that we were doing that in the most extreme and hurried way, and I could not understand why on earth that was happening.

There is no doubt that these things gain a momentum of their own and that the military starts focusing on what it needs to do to achieve this. I am afraid that often Governments get caught up in that rush. But we were moving much too quickly. Thank goodness, now, we have thought about this. We have pulled back from the brink and we are looking at the things that need to be in place.

For example, how on earth could we have done something before the UN inspectors, whom we had made the Russians accept going into Syria, had made their report? What an extraordinary situation to be in. Thank goodness we are now saying that we will accept that report.

I have looked at the JIC paper. Having seen JIC-speak many times, having been deputy chairman of the JIC for three years and Chief of Defence Intelligence, I accept that it looks almost certain that the regime there did carry out these actions, but our public now have no faith in this. We need to prove to them that we have solid evidence. I would like to think that there is more critical evidence. It might mean things being talked about that we do not normally like to release. As a former Chief of Defence Intelligence, I can say that I would never have liked to have given out those pieces of intelligence, but this is really important. Maybe we have to say, actually, that we will extract that one to prove that we know for sure. Our public need to know.

Perhaps with that information we say to the Russians, “Look, this is how we know this. Why are you saying that the opposition are doing it?”. If we can have that open dialogue with the Russians, we can prove that they are doing what they are doing to support a vassal state for geopolitical reasons, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, mentioned, rather than for other reasons. If they have to admit that this proves it, there might be an opportunity at the UN Security Council to get Russia to abstain and maybe even get a resolution. I really believe that we at least have to try to get that resolution. I am not saying that there is no justification for taking action without a UN Security Council resolution at times, but we should try to get it on this occasion.

We should also look at the possibility of other resolutions. Is there something else we can do to put pressure on this regime? I know that people say we have now tried everything to stop this conflict, which is dreadful and appalling—things that have been done are loathsome—but I wonder whether there is not more that we can do. We should do anything to avoid taking military action.

There must be some other way to skin a cat. What if what we hear about this sig int about a military commander firing weapons without authority is true? Let us suppose that we have that evidence. That would be exactly the sort of thing that we can say to Assad. We could say, “Look, we know this and this is how we know it. You didn’t like that happening. We expect to leave the level of any release of chemical weapons up to you alone, and we expect you to punish this man”. Something like that would be a good move forward. There must be other ways of doing things.

There is no doubt that Prime Ministers and Presidents think that they can have clinical little military strikes and keep control of things, but you cannot. Once you start doing these things there is the law of unintended consequences. I know that as a military man. It is extremely difficult. Therefore you go down a route that you did not want to go down, and when you get a little beyond that you go to war and have no control over where it is going. That is the horror of war. Sometimes it is in our greatest national interest, but I do not think that this is in our greatest national interest, and I am very worried about it.

If we take any military action at all, we need absolute clarity about what we are trying to achieve. What are we trying to achieve? What exactly do we want to do? There was talk by the Prime Minister of degrading weapons use by attacking their command and control. As a military man, if I attack someone’s command and control and those weapons were allowed to be used at a lower level, they are more likely to be used. We need to be really careful.

What is the ultimate importance for our nation? The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, mentioned that there are great moral imperatives, and there are, but ultimately in realpolitik there are things that are crucial to our nation. It is horrible to have to face that, but it is true. That is what we need to be clear about when we take any military action, because it does have unintended consequences. Air attacks, we know, do not make people do what you want them to do. We found that with Desert Storm and Saddam Hussein, and we found it with Milosevic. If the people are nasty enough and do not care what happens to their own people, it makes no difference. If we have a man, Assad, who is deranged enough to use loathsome weapons like this on his people, knowing that he will cross a red line, what might he do when we attack? This area is a powder keg. It would take something to go only slightly wrong—let us say he decides to pull in Israel by attacking it or he fires ballistic missiles at Cyprus—that would come under Article 5 and therefore be a declaration of war on us. What happens then? We have to think this through. I am very concerned about it.

The US and Obama were not that keen on actually going forward with this. It seems to me that at one stage we were almost driving it forward with the French. Why? I am not clear why we were doing that. Obama is now in this and I hope that the US does not take action before we do. I do not think that Obama will want to, because I think he is going to Russia next week. That could be an interesting situation.

I am out of time, so all I will say is that August and September have very bad track records for us if we look back to 1914 and 1939. In 1914, who would have believed that the murder of a minor prince would end with a million British dead? We are dealing with a powder keg here and we need to be very careful.

Defence: Trident Review

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have no doubt that when the Trident alternatives review is published, it will stimulate a good deal of, I hope, informed and rational debate about the future of our nuclear weapons programme and of nuclear weapons as a whole. That was part of the intention of commissioning this review.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, unsurprisingly, the alternatives review that the Minister refers to seems to show that are no real alternatives to replacing the Vanguard class submarines if we wish to maintain our best-value and most capable deterrent. The only thing that will be looked at further is continuous sea deterrent and, even in that, the worst probability is that we will have to order two Vanguard replacements. With that in mind, will the Minister not agree that we should order those two replacements now, to remove the uncertainty hanging over many hundreds—indeed, over 1,000—skilled workers and their families about their future, and to save £300 million?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not sure that major defence decisions should be driven either by the need to employ a large number of people to build aircraft carriers in Scotland or by the need to maintain employment in Barrow-in-Furness. There are larger issues at stake.

Government Communications Headquarters

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I can confirm most of the questions asked by the noble Lord, but I had better not go into too much detail. An enormous amount of information is flowing into the United Kingdom on any day of the week from a range of other intelligence services. Naturally, we trust the Americans far more than we trust some other countries. But one has to listen to countries that may in many ways be hostile to the United Kingdom but with which we may share some real security interests. That is all part of the very delicate world in which we live and have to operate. None of this is easy, but maintaining British security and, at the same time, maintaining an open society is our underlying intention.

[Lord West of Spithead]

Would the Minister agree that it is somewhat ironic that the so-called whistleblower chose Hong Kong, which is close to and alongside China, as the place to make this statement, bearing in mind its systematic control of the internet within its own country, the way in which it looks intrusively at its own population, and the fact that it has probably been in among the computers of a large number of us here, let alone organisations in this country?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I confirm that, and congratulate the noble Lord on asking a question that did not mention the Royal Navy for the first time in some considerable period.

Order of the Companions of Honour

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Order of the Companions of Honour is only one of the orders of honour in the British honours system. Service to the state is, after all, one of the central principles under which the various orders have been created. Politicians who belong to the Order of the Companions of Honour have all provided considerable service to the state. Indeed, 16 of them are Members of this House. However, as the noble Lord has also noted, there are a number of people who have made considerable contributions in the fields of music, theatre, fiction writing, history, science and elsewhere. I am happy to say that David Hockney, with his very close connection with Saltaire, is also a member.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, talking of honour and recognition, I am sure the Minister is aware that, 69 years ago today, some 6,800 warships, auxiliaries and merchant ships landed British, American and Canadian forces in Normandy, and that 5,500 of those ships were British. I have to say we are not quite in that position today. Four years before—some 73 years ago this week—Operation Dynamo finished, in which we had expected to manage to withdraw some 80,000 troops of the beaten British Army from Europe, but ended up taking out more than a third of a million. In the context of honour and recognition, I am sure that the noble Lord would like to give the thanks of the House for all those people who were involved in those two operations.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a little wide of the mark. It is appropriate to pull the subject back towards the Question by saying that the Order of the Bath has a particularly strong military connection, as the noble Lord well knows. Every time I give a tour of the Abbey, which I do from time to time as a former chorister, I remark that one sees the military banners up in Henry VII’s chapel.