Queen’s Speech
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, what a pleasure it is to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, and his extraordinary combination of passion and knowledge.
I have so far not raised the subject of the European Union in this place. You know how it is: we get typecast, do we not, and pigeonholed? You make 12 speeches on something else and then the one time you mention the B word, everyone says, “Oh, he’s on his hobby-horse; he only ever talks about one thing.” This is my 81st spoken contribution and I have not yet mentioned the B word. I say “the B word”—I think that I have spoken about broadcasting, Botox and the BBC, but I am, for the first time this evening, going to mention Brexit, in the context of how the debate was introduced by my noble friend Lord Grimstone and then picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, and others; that context being the necessity of unity in the face of international aggression.
I agree very much that we need a united West at the moment, but perhaps not in the way that several dozen other noble Lords who have raised this point intend. It is certainly the case that we need a united front. The West has shown itself to be very geographically limited. The Governments who have imposed any kind of sanctions on Putin’s regime represent perhaps 20%, if that, of the world’s population. A lot of countries that you would have thought would have self-identified as democracies and taken that seriously—India, Israel, Indonesia—have tended rather to sit this out.
However, I have to say that, when we come to the issue that is supposedly dividing the West—the response to unilateral action over the Northern Ireland protocol—I detect a real asymmetry and imbalance in how British Ministers speak and how their counterparts in the European Union address the issue. Wherever you stand on the protocol—and I accept that there are lots of noble Lords on all sides who think pacta sunt servanda, we have given our word and all the rest of it—one thing on which I hope we can all agree is that the proposed reforms are not animated by bellicosity. They are not intended to be harmful. Even the European Union and all the parties in Northern Ireland acknowledge that there are genuine grievances that need remedying. I do not think that anyone is denying that. Therefore, whether it is the proposal for the green channel or the proposal for local democratic control over taxation, it is plainly intended to remedy an identified harm rather than to do harm to a neighbour.
The same is not true of the rhetoric that we get in the other direction. European Union officials speak quite openly about punitive measures and retaliation. It is not just their words; if we look at other aspects of the UK-EU relationship that have been held up because they have been tied to this issue, we see time and again that the European Union is prepared to act in a way that is costly to all sides and that inflicts damage on itself, because the essential spirit is vindictive.
We discussed at great length the other day the UK’s exclusion from the Horizon programme; I am not particularly fussed one way or another about the Horizon programme, but nobody could argue that this is just the EU advancing its own interests. It was deliberately intended, and sold internally, as being about hurting Britain. It was the same with the energy trading schemes in the North Sea, which were supposed to have been ratified last month. Their non-ratification retards the development of renewables and increases our dependence on Russian hydrocarbons. It was the same for equivalence in financial services and so on. These are all examples of where all sides are being damaged to make a point.
I put it to noble Lords that the real threat to western unity is not a proportionate attempt to remedy these grievances in Northern Ireland in a way that is expressly designed not to do any harm to our neighbour and would ensure no more leakage than now. Even if we take seriously the idea that a pork pie crossing into County Donegal would wreck the single market, there is nothing in the Government’s proposals that would make that a more likely scenario than it is today. The real threat is rather this lamentable tendency in Brussels still to think of the United Kingdom as a renegade province that needs to be brought to heel rather than as a strategic ally.
I am very proud of this country’s contribution to the defence of Ukraine. We started earlier and have been at it longer than others. We did so, let us remember, not because we were directly threatened—there was no scenario in which Russian troops were about to cross into Kent—but because, as in 1914 and 1939, we wanted to come to the aid of a friendly country because we believe in European freedom and security. We are good Europeans. I wonder whether the same is true of the European Commission.
Falkland Islands
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I cannot provide a date, but I can say that the MoD conducts routine and regular assessments of any threats to the Falklands and it is our policy that we must retain appropriate levels of defensive capabilities at all times. To my knowledge, that is the case: that is certainly the position of the Government.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I very much welcome the Minister’s confirmation that the wishes of local people should be paramount in determining the future of the Falkland Islands. Is this a principle that we should extend more widely so that, in territorial disputes across Africa, Asia and elsewhere, we try and give paramountcy to what local people want? That is not to say other claims are meaningless—that geography and history have no force—but that the world would be a better place if people lived in units where they felt enough in common one with another to accept government from each other’s hands?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I strongly agree with the noble Lord. I think that the position of the UK Government, and our historic position, in relation to countries that are part of our family is a model for the world to follow. Where those arrangements are based on genuine consent, I think the relationship will always be a happier one. It is a model that many other countries would do well to learn from.
Autocrats, Kleptocrats and Populists
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, which keeps us awake at night—the prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine? Consider the disquieting possibility that both may happen on the same day by prearrangement. The noble Lord, Lord Browne, in introducing this excellent debate, spoke about the coming together of the two great illiberal powers. It is a very real coming together: the largest military exercise that the Chinese have been involved in with another country was conducted last year with Russian troops in north-western China, where J-20 stealth bombers were used. A signal went out that the two countries that have the most to gain from overturning the current world order and from a revanchist and autocratic alternative are working together. That same message has been heard on every continent and in every archipelago.
I spent part of last month in Pakistan. It was my first visit—it is a very beautiful country—but everywhere you see the spore of China, of the Chinese military and of Chinese society. Of course, Pakistan is a special case: its alliance with China goes back a long way, and it has always seen it as a counterweight to India. None the less, I was struck when I heard the Prime Minister of Pakistan, a man of very British sensibilities and education, saying that perhaps multiparty western democracy, which had been held out as the only alternative, was inferior to the more meritocratic Chinese alternative. I do not think we would have heard that 10 years ago, and certainly not 20 years ago. We would not have seen ambitious politicians learning Mandarin rather than English, or ambitious young army cadets studying at the People’s Liberation Army university rather than aspiring to come to Sandhurst.
Around the world, people hear the melancholy long withdrawing roar of western influence. We can sanction Lukashenko—it does not stop him kidnapping and murdering opponents or massing troops on the Ukrainian border. We can sanction Ortega—it does not stop him stealing the election in Nicaragua. The same has happened in Nigeria, in Burma and all over. The only part of the otherwise excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that I would question is when he said that the jury was still out on whether Tunisia is a democracy. When I see troops in the streets and Parliament dissolved, I do not think that the jury is still out. The last country that could still have been held to be a success 10 years after the Arab spring has joined the rush to autocracy.
We should all guard against the availability heuristic—it is always possible to pick examples of what is going wrong—but it was interesting how the noble Lord, Lord Browne, began by giving an empirical assessment of how democracy is in retreat. In addition to the source that he gave, almost everyone who studies this says the same thing, including the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House and the democracy index. Seven years of solid advance at some point in the past decade have stalled and gone into reverse. I want to explore why that has happened.
Of course, part of it is simply that people no longer care as much about what the western powers think; there has been a change in the balance geostrategically. Part of it, frankly, is due to the pandemic and the associated lockdowns—not just in the obvious sense that we gave up liberties, could not travel and were interned and so on, but in the more dangerous and insidious sense that a common threat of that kind tends to make people more authoritarian. It is a well-observed psychological phenomenon, whether it is a war, a plague or a natural disaster. People coming out of it become more intolerant of dissent and more demanding of the smack of firm government and strongman rule.
Perhaps the most disquieting thought of all is whether, in the scheme of things, it is not the last couple of hundred years of democratic and liberal advance that are the exception. All the things that various noble Lords spoke about—the kleptocracy, the institutionalised looting of state resources, the seizure of power by small elites—was pretty much how every civilisation was run for most of the last 10,000 years. The lot of almost every human being was servitude of one kind or another: back-breaking labour in the fields from dawn until dusk, while small elites systematically looted the state. We are exceptionally lucky to be here in a place and at a time when we have found mechanisms to keep the Government under control and when a measure of law and liberty can flourish, whereby we have elevated the rules above the rulers—but that is not the normal state of play.
I wonder whether we might be coming towards the end of a brief interglacial period between the long ice ages. That is why it is so important to keep educating and elevating the idea that process matters more than outcome, the rules matter more than the rulers and the individual matters more than the collective. That is why we should keep a sense of perspective in attacking different parties within a democratic system. If we lose sight of those precepts, the bleak landscapes stretch ahead of us, dark, cold and grim.
Middle East: Human Rights
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, to my knowledge, this issue was raised in discussions in Saudi Arabia, particularly in relation to ease of access and transport for delivering much-needed provisions in Yemen. I will encourage my colleague to follow up with a more detailed answer.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, there is barely a country in the world with which we will not have some differences on domestic policy, but with Saudi Arabia this has spilled over into international affairs—in Yemen, with the kidnap of the former Lebanese leader and in the Khashoggi murder. Will my noble friend the Minister confirm that, in our relations with all GCC countries, we will stress the vital importance of the principles of national sovereignty, territorial jurisdiction and order among nations?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My noble friend is exactly right, and that is very much the view of the British Government. There is no single formula for success or single model of government, particularly in a region with such distinct cultures and differing political systems. It is not for the UK or indeed other Governments outside the region to dictate how each country meets the aspirations of its people, but there are certain principles that we must—and do—continue to stand up for.
Food Waste
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
On food waste, with our counterparts in the DAs, we learn from each other. Much of our work with WRAP, including citizen campaigns, is supported by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In the resources and waste strategy, we have committed to seek powers in our Environment Bill to impose responsibilities on producers to reduce their waste, should progress from all the current measures be insufficient to get us towards that sustainable development goal. We continue to look closely at the issue.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that apps and charities are more effective in the redistribution of surplus food than any government policy, however well intentioned, can be? May I take him a little bit upstream and talk about the production phase? For years, British agriculture was locked into a system where there was necessary overproduction and where intensive farming, the use of chemical fertilisers and the felling of hedgerows were encouraged by an output-based system. Will my noble friend confirm that we will now have a farming policy in this country tailored to suit the needs of the countryside, which is the sublime inheritance of all of us in these islands?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]
I agree with the noble Lord about the value, the benefit and the effectiveness of the private sector in dealing with these issues, particularly through new technology and apps. I can also absolutely confirm that one of the biggest opportunities that we have in relation to farming, land use, conservation and the environment is the ability now, post Brexit, to ditch the old common agricultural policy and replace it with a new system that, instead of incentivising land use destruction, which CAP undoubtedly did throughout the continent, is moving to make all payments conditional on delivery of a public good. Of course, one public good, among many, is environmental stewardship.