Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the decision to produce an integrated review of foreign policy, defence, security and international development was brave, and it is to be welcomed. The UK’s role in the world must encompass all these areas, along with trade and international economic policies. They require a strategic framework under which they can operate in a seamless way without inconsistencies and clashes of objectives.

Unfortunately, the report does not match up to its ambitions and, therefore, should not be seen as more than a work in progress. It requires more refinement as well as more detail about how it can be resourced, particularly in areas such as cybersecurity in a context of rapid technological change. To implement its aim, it will also require sophisticated cross-departmental collaboration. Before it can be deemed to be a proper strategy, a rigorous review about what its priorities are is needed. There is a long list of aims, without assessment of how much importance should be attached to them. The danger of the something-for-everyone approach is that it can lead to a nothing-for-anyone outcome. Further detailed is also needed on the means as well as the ends, and I hope that this will include working with European countries that share our values and are our near neighbours.

Let me move from these general points to two areas where the report either disappoints or is misguided. They are development aid and the ratcheting up of our nuclear capability.

The decision to make a binding commitment in law to spend 0.7% of GNI on development aid reflected our values in wishing to help millions of people around the world out of poverty, as well as our interests to promote economic growth and technological advances in developing countries. This commitment should be seen as a defining element in what it means to be a global leader. It does not come through in the integrated review. Development gets short shrift. Will the Minister tell the House how the Government can drop the legal commitment to 0.7% without parliamentary agreement to amend the law? It simply will not do to reply that it all depends on the fiscal situation and what that allows. The Government will be breaking a law enacted quite recently.

There are many examples of aid programmes that will be decimated by deprioritising development as in the review. Let me just mention a couple. First, over the years, Voluntary Service Overseas has built for the UK a worldwide reputation on the use of volunteers in development aid. If the cuts the Government are threatening are imposed, VSO will have to withdraw from many countries in which it operates.

Secondly, in Yemen, the war has led to a humanitarian disaster in which millions of children are suffering from malnutrition and hundreds of thousands of people face famine. There is the strongest possible need to increase substantially our aid to Yemen, not to cut it by half. Can the Minister indicate why the Government are doing this? Can she at the same time explain how they are integrating continuing support for the Saudi-led coalition in this war with a diplomatic role in the UN in brokering peace and providing aid to the civilian population? That does not look like integration to me.

My final questions relate to the proposal to increase greatly the number of warheads in our nuclear stockpile. Since our financial position is being cited as reason for cutting our aid, how can it allow massive expenditure to increase our nuclear capability? Does the Minister also agree that the timing could hardly be more unfortunate? Later this year, the review conference on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty will take place. What will other countries participating make of the UK’s policies on disarmament—which presumably we are still pressing for—when we are rearming and not disarming? It makes a mockery of any claim to political or global leadership in this area.