Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2025 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the challenges presented to the international order by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation following the recent summit held in Tianjin.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, there are moments which stick in your mind because they tell you that “something has changed”. Sometimes it is obvious, such as when the Brandenburg Gate was opened and the Berlin Wall fell, but at other times it takes a bit longer before it becomes clear just what has happened. I had one of those “Is this history being made?” feelings when I watched the footage of the 2025 China Victory Day parade in the first week in September. It was not just the parade but the parade combined with the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, hosted by China in Tianjin between 31 August and 1 September, which made me reflect.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation which brings together 10 countries, including China, Russia and India. Its members represent 42% of the world’s population and account for 23% of global GDP, and the official languages are Russian and Chinese. A feature of this particular summit was the attendance of the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. This was his first visit to China in seven years. Two days later, on 3 September, in Tiananmen Square, the 2025 China Victory Day Parade in Beijing celebrated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War. Over 12,000 troops of the People’s Liberation Army participated in the parade. For anybody who saw this, it was absolutely awesome, strategic and precise. It almost made me think, “Is this real?” President Xi showcased China’s new weapons and demonstrated the modernisation of the PLA, with hypersonic missiles, stealth drones, underwater drones and long-range, nuclear-capable missiles. He was joined by 25 foreign Heads of State and Government. They came from Asia, Africa, Latin America and eastern Europe. Western nations were hardly represented.

However, there were two high-profile guests. President Xi was flanked by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the leader of North Korea. Traditionally, there is little brotherly love lost between Russia, China and North Korea, and the three leaders had not appeared together in public before they did so in Beijing. Bilateral meetings between China and Korea and North Korea had not been uncommon. Similarly, Russia and China have regular contact. But Putin’s first foreign trip in his new presidential term was a state visit to Beijing, and they had met in the margins of the SCO at the 2024 summit in Astana in Kazakhstan. What made this different was that it was the first time that the three leaders had appeared together in public. In less than a week, China, Russia, North Korea and India had come together. Arguably this was the moment which demonstrated that Russia had accepted China’s dominance and a challenge to the hegemony of the United States of America. In Xi Jinping’s words, his country’s rise is “unstoppable”, or, to quote the Chinese Foreign Minister’s words after the summit,

“the monopoly of global governance by a few countries must not continue”.

We are used to talking about threats and how we will meet them, but I want to take a completely different stance and to reflect on how the world is changing, how western democracies have to respond, and how the multilateral institutions which we have created and developed since 1945 are out of step with what is happening around the globe. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989; in 1991, the Soviet Union formally dissolved; in 1992, Francis Fukuyama predicted the “end of history” and the “last man”. Going back to the deep European traditions of Hegel, he reasoned that history is linear and that, ultimately, it will culminate in a rational free society—if we only allow things to develop, everywhere will become a liberal democracy.

There was a period when it looked a bit like this. In 1997, the British Government set up DfID. We no longer used international or overseas aid as a national policy tool; it was for poverty relief. In 1999, Tony Blair’s speech to the Economic Club of Chicago talked about “the international community”. The Canadian Government published their report The Responsibility to Protect following the failure of the international community to intervene in Rwanda. There was an extraordinary period of idealism, and we were not alone in this. The German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, foresaw in 2007 that Russia would be so intertwined with the EU’s exceptional role model of international co-operation that it would inevitably get like us. It was Steinmeier who helped the Russians join the WTO in 2011. The German phrase was “Wandel durch Handel”. The world would change because we would trade with them and, because we would be so intertwined through trade, they would all become like us—liberal democracies. I know some noble Lords are starting to wonder where I am going with this little history lesson. Even centralised states such as China were beginning to think that only by becoming a liberal democracy could they be economically successful.

The global financial crisis of 2008 changed all that—then, even the capitalist liberal democracies were seen not to be in control of capital flows. The World Trade Organization is now in the position that virtually everyone is either a member or has observer status. I think the only three countries that are not are Eritrea, Kosovo and North Korea. Its institutions are completely dysfunctional and the dispute-resolution process is not working. Curiously, while Russia completely ignores the WTO, China takes a very different approach. It has a twin track of co-operating and being quite rule-compliant, in some ways.

I wanted this debate so that we would reflect on two things. First, the world around us is changing, whether we like it or not. If all we do is simply continue to identify what we think are threats, without defining what we think the world should look like, we will only ever be responsive to other people’s actions and, I suggest, will be losing. Secondly, given that it is close to Trafalgar Day—I declare my interest, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, on the other side, as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy—I will take the liberty of quoting Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, who said:

“I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour before my time”.


In other words, you look ahead. That does not mean some strange blue-sky thinking, but looking a step ahead to see what is coming. I suggest that there is a big battle coming that will determine the most dominant global power. That battle will be between America and China.

It is no good talking about enemies. This is about democracies, and democracies have to stick together. Economically, quite frankly, we cannot live for six months without China, but China can quite happily live for six months without us. I urge the Minister to consider whether we should define what “good” looks like and start moving away from economic indicators and have coalitions of democracies that work together, fighting for what they stand for and making it much clearer why it is worth fighting for.

Civil Service: Interns

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will not be at all surprised that I believe this to be appropriate, fair and open. She raises a crucial point at the heart of this issue: it is not about permanent positions in the Civil Service. All the statutes that she referred to continue to apply. This is about how we ensure that those people from all classes who have talent and ability have access. We are talking about 200 people a year getting access to an internship programme, one of several that are run by the Civil Service —never mind others that are run by the wider public service—to make sure that we do have a meritocracy. The noble Baroness will be aware that the previous Government operated a similar scheme, which increased the number of disabled people and those from minority ethnic backgrounds but failed those people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. In fact, the numbers fell, which is why we are trying to increase them now.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the First Civil Service Commissioner. It is the Civil Service Commission’s statutory duty to ensure that entry is based on merit and is open and fair. However, as the Minister has outlined, this is an internship that leads to a process of being able to proceed to the Fast Stream Assessment Centre. I therefore ask the Minister what plans she has to assess the percentage of those who are successful and how that compares with other measures to ensure that this exercise serves the purpose that it is intended to.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question and for her work in this area. She will be aware that the fast-track internship programme started in 2000 and has had many different iterations, and therefore there are well-established assessment processes in place to make sure that changes work effectively. With regard to how we are doing it, we are adopting this scheme through our test-and-learn approach within the Cabinet Office to make sure that if we do not believe it is working then we will change it. We will be using the criteria that have previously been used, which is why we are using the definition I cited. That is how I can tell your Lordships that in 2022 the internship scheme had people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds at a level of 33% of applications, but that fell to 19.7% and now has fallen even further at this point. We have the data to demonstrate why we need to do this.