Queen’s Speech

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I must admit to finding myself a little emotionally confused. I have suddenly realised that this is my 50th Queen’s Speech. I have spoken on most of them. One year, I was minding my own business when the Leader of the House asked if I would see him. He asked, “Would you be kind enough to agree to reply to the Queen’s Speech?”. So I put my name down to vote, but I did not know that I would be grabbed and taken off to a dinner where the Chief Whip guarded the door. They then read the speech and I was meant to sit on a Bench and say something.

I was also told that I should wear naval uniform. Having been a sub-lieutenant, I had grown a bit. It was quite difficult to find one to fit, so we had to borrow an admiral’s and take a couple of stripes off it. Then I was given a sword, but I had never had a sword before and did not know what to do. I was seconding the reply to Lady Macleod, who was Iain Macleod’s widow. She was slightly disabled and had a walking stick, and as I stood up to speak I picked up her walking stick by mistake. I remember I was given a wonderful brief by bright young people in the Foreign Office who were twice my age. Everything was provided for me. I was told what to say and that I should possibly deliver some historic joke, so I looked something up and said that I remembered the words of that great admiral Jacky Fisher that the role of Army should be that of a projectile to be fired by the British Navy.

I shall try to work out why all the bits that used to be in the Queen’s Speech are not there. I shall treat the Speech like a Bill. There are 37 clauses. The first states that,

“my Government’s legislative programme will continue to focus on building a stronger economy so that the United Kingdom can compete and succeed in the world”.

As my noble friend Lord Howell mentioned, there is hardly anything in it about defence or anything at all.

We come to foreign affairs. Is the EU a foreign affair? Are members of the continent of Europe foreigners? Of course they are foreigners in the eyes of British subjects. They are not Europeans, and nor are we. I was told that I would be treasurer of the Conservative group for Europe to raise a lot of money and go around the country to persuade people to vote yes in the referendum. In that House, we had a great debate on entering the EU—the EEC as it was then called—and had the biggest majority, other than for the abolition of hanging. There was an enormous majority in the House of Commons, but suddenly people became anti something. I was asked and it was my job. I would go around the country, speak and raise money. I drove all around the country, not realising that the party was sufficiently intelligent to believe that I was young enough to be able to take the strain.

I was told that I was going at the last moment to Manchester and that it was a dinner jacket do. I did not really have a dinner jacket that fitted, but I put it on on the train and when I got there, a dinner-jacket chap came up to me and said, “Oh, thank goodness you’ve arrived. We thought you’d forgotten or you couldn’t get back in time”. I went to the dinner and sat there waiting to make the standard speech I had, slightly nervous, I am afraid, as I am now. The head man turned to me and said, “Well, Professor, if you’re ready, please deliver your address”. I said, “Excuse me?”. He said, “You are Professor McCluskey? You’ve just come back from Antarctica haven’t you?”, and I suddenly realised that I was at the wrong dinner.

People like me became known as the Snopake speakers. If the Minister was too tired to go, they would send a young blade who could hang himself. You would go and scratch the menu and the Snopake would come off and you would try to see what was underneath. It might say “law”, and you knew it was probably Willie Whitelaw.

I went round this great country of ours and realised to my surprise that there was a great opportunity. At that time, we coined the phrase: “Britain in Europe; it’s our business to be there”. It was business related, not politics related. I believe that is one of the problems at the moment: how do we divide it into two? How does the Labour Party, which flatly refused to send a delegation to the European Parliament in the beginning and we then had to fund Peter Kirk going, change around? If we look to moving towards a referendum, is there suddenly going to be a switch of attitude?

The world is a wonderfully large place. I have been privileged in recent months to have some remarkable briefs by bright people in the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office and genuinely believe that we have a worldwide role. My noble friend Lord Howell pointed out that the Commonwealth has not been quite so widely mentioned, but if you look at the opportunities that exist, you must go back to why we went to places in the beginning. We went because they had raw materials and the ability to produce things.

I was put on to go to the francophone territories. I did not know what “phone” meant. I knew gramophone. When I was on the Council of Europe, I was in Paris and I was asked whether I would go and meet the Foreign Minister of Mauritania. I thought Mauritania was a ship; I did not know it was a country or that it was one of the biggest iron producers in the world. Until I went round all the French territories, I did not know that the sole reason why people had gone to them was to create added value for the natural resources, whether they were labour, water, agriculture or sun.

I really believe in the potential that we have with the Commonwealth these days, if we just get out our historical atlases and look at what we used to go there for. Then we look at the sea. Naturally, and I have raised this before, we look at the economic exclusion zones. You find the United Kingdom, her overseas territories and the Commonwealth occupy the biggest slot of the sea in the whole world. If you then, by chance, look at some other countries, such as France and its territories, you realise that the maritime world is the most important of all and you have a great opportunity.

I have spoken before on all aspects of trade, but I get quite excited now as I look at the potential that exists for alliances that we can pool. I really believe that foreign policy is one of the most important issues that we can address today, and who is going to decide with whom we are going to do what and when.

Foreign Affairs: Global Role, Emerging Powers and New Markets

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I have always had great respect for my noble friend Lord Howell because he was head boy at my prep school, where he exercised a certain amount of soft power when we stepped out of line, as the noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, whom I see in his seat, may well remember. Apart from that, as I have listened to him, he has taught me many things over time. He has a quiet approach, behind which lies greater knowledge than I could ever wish to have.

In preparation for speaking to your Lordships today, I have taken advantage of my position as a member of the Information Committee by asking the Library to produce a really good note on this debate, and it has done so. If your Lordships are going home for the weekend and cannot find a suitable newspaper, the report that it has provided is quite remarkable, although I shall not quote from it today.

I was always in trade and I sat below the salt, as I have pointed out. I love the Pink Book and I love the balance of payments. I look at the £100 billion deficit that we have on visibles and at the fact that with every country of the EU we have a deficit that grows and grows. We have a surplus of £6 billion or so with the United States and a surplus with Ireland, much of which is in trans-shipments. Therefore, in visible trade we are failing dismally, whereas in invisible trade or services there is a balance of about £200 billion on each side. However, it is our role in the world that we need to think about.

I was brought up in the Navy as a navigator. I was very junior and therefore I always had the middle watch. I would look at the stars and try to study and learn. I found that as you look at the world, you ask, “What is it?”. I think of it geographically. One of my heroes is Harrison, with his connection to chronometers, Greenwich, 0 degrees and the centre of the Earth. With a globe, it is quite difficult to look laterally, so you need Mr Mercator, who produced the Mercator projection and the flat chart, so wherever I have been in all my time dealing with trade, I have put the United Kingdom right in the middle and looked to the left or the right.

Some 70% of the earth is water. Is that blue-water policy? The remaining 30% is land. What has this got to do with trade? Well, our trade was always maritime and 20% of all vessels floating on the surface of the earth have a Commonwealth flag. Everyone these days is nervous about piracy but the Navy will say that 80% of all our trade comes by sea. These statistics may not seem relevant but they have a relevance to me. It is all about the water. Take the economic exclusion zones, where each territory has a 200-mile limit around it. That makes the UK pretty big. In fact, with the Commonwealth it is enormous—36 million square kilometres. That constitutes more of the sea than the area round the whole of the United States, the rest of our NATO allies and the next biggest zone, France.

Does that matter, though? Looking over land and sea, we see natural, or God-given, resources and we forget that most of our own development involved the exploitation, if that is not an unacceptable word, of those natural resources through fishing, mining and agriculture. The Sudan was to be the bread basket of the Middle East and still could be. It is in this field of soft power and knowledge that the United Kingdom can play a great role. I think of the term “common wealth” not so much politically but as describing the combined natural resources of these countries and any skills that they may have which can be applied elsewhere—for example, the mining skills of Australia and the fishing skills of some of the smaller territories. Look at how the world has begun to become global in thought and concerned about energy, power and natural resources.

I have always been a great friend of the Commonwealth. One of the things that I was made to do in earlier days was to be able to recognise the flags of the world. The only value that has given me is as secretary and treasurer of the House of Lords Yacht Club, which of course carries a certain influence. Your Lordships will be aware that every vessel floating on the face of this earth that has a British flag has the right to the protection of Her Majesty’s plenipotentiaries—ambassadors’ ships or whatever they may be. We are a maritime nation; we are also British.

I have a feeling that the debate today will have done a bit of good, but I now turn to the noble Lord, Lord Green. After the last debate I wrote him a nice letter and gave him the history of the Board of Trade, which I had rewritten. He did not reply because he was busy on his travels and his footfall was extending everywhere from Everest down to the Antarctic, but his officials swiftly rang me up and said, “What about the other three volumes?”. I said, “Could we get rid of this word ‘BIS’, which is what my dog does?”—although I must not mention dogs’ business. Anyway, I got no reply. Then I thought I would go on in the same vein and say, “Let us look at the priorities”. I thought I would see if I could have soft power.

I was not going to mention this but I am obliged to because I have to declare an interest. I have pointed out before to your Lordships rather light-heartedly that if no one else would do it, I would launch my own satellites for surveillance. I have done that twice and declared it in the House. The company has now been formed. It is a limited company and I am told that I have to point out that I am the sole director. It is called Evening Star; it has the greatest satellite technology the world has ever seen; and it was all started by the university of the city where my noble friend Lord Howell was a Member of Parliament.

Population Growth

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I rather like these short debates, particularly when the charming mother hen on the Front Bench tells me not to crow for too long. I was always told to do everything in threes: Tripos, Church, law and Parliament and Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In this case, it is land, air and sea.

I will adopt a slightly different approach. I regard human beings as an asset, not a liability, and I regard a population as an opportunity, not something to fear. For example, as was mentioned just now, we have two great economies in fast growth in the world: India and China, who, together, have 37 per cent of the world's population and large amounts of high productivity. How and why? It is a question of what you get people to do and how you turn them into a benefit.

I turn to my favourite subject: the Commonwealth, which, as your Lordships know, accounts for 25 per cent of the world population. If we look at our bailiwicks, our overseas and dependent territories, we cover a large part of the globe. We have to ask: why did we ever develop a Commonwealth or an empire? It was because of the added value that we could create in various countries. Most of that added value was, surprisingly enough, related to the resources of the land—its minerals and raw materials. As we look at that development, we find to our amazement that, suddenly, the world is saying that we are overpopulated. We may look back at large chunks of Africa, where I have worked—in particular, somewhere such as the Sudan, which was to be the bread basket of the Middle East, where any amount of grain could be grown to feed the populations. As you look at a map from space, or whatever, you will find that the productivity of all those countries is roughly the same. The weather pattern may have changed, but the opportunity to produce food, which people need, is very significant.

I have even thought that in the past, when people were short of labour, the slave trade took place; now, when they are short of labour, migration takes place. That is what has been happening in this country. We need to look at the opportunities that can be created in those Commonwealth countries for the regeneration of food and products that we have long forgotten about.