Queen’s Speech

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, it is a genuine pleasure to see the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, continuing in her place in the Foreign Office and on the Front Bench, and a positive delight to see the noble Earl, Lord Howe, taking his place as Deputy Leader of the House and in defence and, in that sense, foreign affairs. I have got to know him very well in dealing with health matters over the years, and I can only assume that the Prime Minister looked at the situation and decided that if there was one area that was complicated, difficult, contentious and in need of the attention of the noble Earl, it was defence and foreign affairs. I have no doubt that we are going to be glad of the noble Earl’s presence as well as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay.

I shall first pick up defence because I welcome the Government’s commitment to continuing continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrence. It is necessary because we are in an increasingly dangerous world. It will not solve all the problems, but removing it would simply add to instability. I also welcome indications that the upcoming SDSR will be different from the last one, which was dominated by austerity in the Budget with our requirements coming second. This time round, it will look much more at our national requirements and then address the need for funding. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, was right when he said that it may well require more funding than we expect at this point. It is an increasingly dangerous world and one of the primary responsibilities of government is the defence of the people. There are many other things we like to do, but that is an absolute requirement of government. He spoke about conventional forces, but I think we need to move beyond the conventional in terms of the issues we have to address—notably cyber and terrorism, of course—and in the kind of military strategy and doctrine that we espouse. Will the Minister give an assurance, if she can, that in the United Kingdom’s front-line development of NATO policy on what has become known as “understand to protect”—the approach that says that we need to deepen our understanding if we are to be effective in what we do militarily—we are taking the lead and that we will continue to do so with some energy?

When we come to international development, I of course feel that one of the great achievements of the coalition Government and of my right honourable friend Michael Moore was the legislation that embedded 0.7% as our commitment to international development. I hope that the funding available will not simply be used to maintain and build upon the kind of work that DfID has previously done and the kind of NGOs that have been involved with it but that DfID will understand, as I believe the MoD understands in its territory, that there need to be changes in the way we approach these things. It is no longer appropriate simply to have conventional forces, and it is no longer appropriate simply to have conventional economic ways of dealing with community development in the wider world. I hope that the noble Baroness can assure me that DfID will be looking for new ways of addressing things, not merely the conventional ones.

When it comes to the European Union, I have long taken the view that our people need to have a say on this question because otherwise it will continue to niggle away at relationships within these islands and beyond. I want to emphasise something which the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, commented on and which was referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. One hundred years ago in your Lordships’ House, there was a sense that not moving forward on some of the Liberal commitments of the time, notably Gladstone’s approach to what we now call devolution but which was called home rule in those days, would provide stability and unity for our United Kingdom. That was not the result; the result was that 27 counties of Ireland seceded. If we do not find a satisfactory outcome in terms of our relationship with Europe, it will endanger the union. Let us be absolutely clear about it: were we to leave the European Union, the likelihood would be that Scotland would choose to leave the United Kingdom, and I fear there would be instability in my part of the United Kingdom because we would be so distanced from England and Wales, as it would be, and some of the historic loyalties to England are much less than the historic loyalties to Scotland. This question of Europe does not involve just our relationships outside the United Kingdom; it involves the very integrity of the United Kingdom, and I plead that your Lordships’ House takes that into account more than it was taken into account 100 years ago in this House.

I will focus the latter part of what I have to say on foreign affairs. One of the advantages of the debate on the gracious Speech is that each year we can look back at what we said the previous year and decide whether we were pointing in the right direction or understand things differently and better now. As I looked back in preparation for this speech at the things I said last year and in 2013 I was sorry to see that all the warnings that I had given about the worsening international situation have been entirely fulfilled and built up but that the warnings about what we need to do have not been taken forward. I shall comment on three particular areas. First, when the question of Syria arose, I warned very clearly that the United Kingdom and its allies were very foolish to hitch their whole strategy to the notion of getting rid of President Assad. I said it was understandable, but unwise, and would not lead to success. It has not led to success. Among other things, we now find ourselves in the extraordinary position where our stated policy is to get rid of President Assad and to get rid of Daesh—as most Muslim countries prefer to call IS—at the same time. In other words, we are going to fight a war on two fronts and do not have anybody left in the middle. This simply does not make sense.

We have to look again at how we deal with Syria. This is where “understand to protect” comes to the fore because it says that we need to look at what we are doing in these situations before we decide that we are going to react to them. The development of Daesh has been outlined very clearly by my noble friend Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon. It is a very dangerous situation. We may be past the post now, but we have probably seen the development of a war which may well continue for longer than any of your Lordships in this House. It is a hugely dangerous situation, and we must see what we can usefully do.

One of the key difficulties is that our relationship with Russia has continued to deteriorate; therefore, at the level of the Security Council and every level below we do not have any way of working together on some of these key questions. That is true in the Middle East. It is true that those questions are spoken about with regard to Israel/Palestine. The position of the Quartet has never been a united one. Russia has always talked to Hezbollah, Hamas and everybody else, while the Quartet maintained that it was not talking to those people. However, the fact is, as many of us have been warning over the past few years, that the two-state solution is as good as gone, and we now have a Prime Minister elected on a mandate—whatever he said after the election—that says that there will be no two-state solution on his watch. There is no possibility of any simple negotiation of the kind we are used to unless we change the situation, and the only way I can see of changing the situation and permitting the emergence of serious discussions on a two-state solution is if this country—and even more particularly the United States—recognises the state of Palestine, and then we move to implement it. Anything else is only fiddling in the wind and, actually worse than that, creates a situation where people such as Hamas are regarded as wishy-washy liberals by young Muslims in the Middle East, who say, “No—we must turn to IS because the only thing the West understands is the kind of force that is really frightening to them”.

In respect of Russia, we wrung our hands at Crimea and we worried about Ukraine. It is coming closer to home. If we look at the deteriorating situation in Macedonia, the foolishness of the EU about extending too far into Ukraine is mirrored by its foolishness at not accepting Macedonia in at a much earlier stage. Now Russia is getting involved in the destabilisation of Macedonia, a place I have had my eye on since around the late 1990s, because I saw that its problems were so similar to those that I experienced at home. We have to repair our relationship with Russia, however difficult it may be, because some of the difficulties of the region from which the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and her family come will come back to us. Let us not forget that two Balkan wars in the run-up to the First World War were fought in the territory of Macedonia. It remains a key area.

However, lest I simply be the Jeremiah, there are two positive developments, one small and very local to ourselves, and one of geopolitical significance, which could improve things a little. First, I strongly support the initiative taken by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for the establishment of a permanent committee of your Lordships’ House on international affairs. That is absolutely critical. Nothing else is more important than trying to find a peaceful way forward in our world. On that front, there is one bright hope, which is that there will be some kind of reasonable treaty and understanding with Iran. That is the one thing in the short term that could begin to change the geopolitics of that whole region, and I plead for some reassurance from the noble Baroness that our Government are committed to doing all they can to achieve an understanding with Iran and to build relations with that historic community and nation. That is the one positive development for the next few months which could change things for the better.