Wednesday 18th May 2022

(1 year, 10 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Whitty Portrait Lord Whitty (Lab)
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My Lords, at this stage of the debate, I begin to feel a bit sorry for the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, who has to reply to all these points. I have often said that, in these debates, there will be at least a couple of former Foreign Secretaries attacking you and a rather larger number of Members who always thought they should have been Foreign Secretary. The same has been true tonight.

I will try to confine myself to broad points—first, climate change. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has already spelled out the need for an acceleration in the machinery to deliver what was agreed in Glasgow. The Glasgow agreement was a qualified success, but a success for British diplomacy and for the right honourable Alok Sharma. It now needs to be turned into reality. It hardly features in the gracious Speech or the legislative programme.

Instead, we have a situation where, faced with blackmail from one autocratic regime, in the supply of gas and oil, we have taken the option to go to another autocratic regime that has been bombing and devastating its neighbour for seven years—Saudi Arabia—to try to restore that oil and gas. We ought to take this opportunity to move the world and the economics of energy away from fossil fuels. That requires international effort. I hope that we carry forward the progress we made in Glasgow over the next period.

Secondly and more generally, we will need to review the structure of international organisations over the coming years. It is clear, for example, that the United Nations cannot act when a member of its Security Council is a perpetrator of an offence to international order. It is also true that the World Trade Organization does not guarantee effective trade in a way that increases the diversity and equality of income among the countries of the world and, in some cases, allows a restriction of access to key materials, such as those just referred to by my noble friend Lord Stansgate. That can inhibit us from attaining our objectives on climate change and free trade.

Thirdly, on the humanitarian and human rights front, we will need to establish better international mechanisms, arising from Ukraine, for the prosecution of perpetrators, including those in the Russian Government, responsible for the undoubted war crimes taking place in Ukraine, against Ukrainian civilians, with rape being used as a weapon of war and the torture and killings of prisoners. The present structure and process to bring those people to justice does not exist.

While Ukraine and the Ukrainian people are our immediate concern, we need to think ahead. At some point, this conflict will end. It may end unsatisfactorily for the people of Ukraine, but it will end and we believe it will end with, effectively, the defeat of Russia. We will then need a major international project for the reconstruction of Ukraine—the equivalent of a Marshall plan. Once Ukraine attains some sort of victory and peace, the reality is that not only we will need to rebuild that country’s economy and society, there will be a demoralised and impoverished Russia, as a result partly of sanctions and partly of war. Hence it will be an unpredictable Russia, in which some elements of the country will still have access to nuclear and chemical weapons, and to its cyber capability.

This may seem strange to say at this point, but we will need politicians and statesmen who understand Russia, which includes understanding Russian exceptionalism, Russian paranoia about encirclement and Russian defensiveness. These are features not simply of the Putin regime or of the Soviet inheritance; they are deep-wired and, in some cases, understandable. They have to be appreciated by those who deal with Russia, whatever it looks like once this crisis is over. I believe this country can take a lead on that, but it is important that we act together with others and in particular with our colleagues and allies in Europe. The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, will not be surprised to hear that I disagree with him on the Brexit situation. That has made it more difficult but, unless Britain acts with the EU on these issues, we will not again succeed in bringing peace to Europe.

Viscount Trenchard Portrait Viscount Trenchard (Con)
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My Lords—[Interruption.] Oh, I am sorry. It is not my turn.

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Viscount Trenchard Portrait Viscount Trenchard (Con)
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My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for rudely jumping the gun and attempting to speak in front of him. The gracious Speech confirmed that the Government will continue to support Ukraine and play a leading role in defending democracy and freedom across the world. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, may not have noticed, but without Brexit we would not have been able to move so quickly to provide military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. I believe that our early action forced the EU to follow suit and several member states have now reassessed their security and defence policies. I agree with noble Lords who advocate increased defence spending, which is of course necessary if the Government are to work closely with international partners to maintain a united NATO and address the most pressing global security challenges.

Among our most important international partners is Japan, whose Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, visited London earlier this month and, together with my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, signed a reciprocal access agreement, a defence co-operation pact which will enable faster deployment of troops and greater engagement in joint training and operations. This is seen by some as a second Anglo-Japanese alliance, returning the countries’ defence relationship to what it had been during the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 to 1923.

Our relationship with Japan in other fields such as trade and cultural exchange also continues to develop apace. As a former long-term resident of Japan and a former chairman of the Japan Society, I am happy that it is now clear that the hiatus in our good relationship, which lasted for several years in the mid-20th century, is now well behind us and we have resumed the collaborative and close relationship between two ancient island constitutional monarchies. We have recently entered into a new free trade agreement and our accession negotiations to join the CPTPP, in which Japan is the largest economy, are advanced.

The Japanese remember better than we do that this year is also the 150th anniversary of the visit to Britain by the Iwakura Mission, which spent 122 days in this country studying how we arranged our political, economic and education structures. The Japanese Government were well pleased with the work of the mission and, the same year, 1872, granted us a perpetual lease on an extensive estate just across the moat from the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo as a diplomatic mission. It is, in terms of both style and scale, by far the most impressive embassy in Tokyo of any country, including the United States. It is without doubt an act of unbelievable short-sighted folly for the FCDO now to seek to sell for development around three acres of the seven acres that we own today. In terms of the value and support our diplomatic presence gives and can continue to give to every British business operating in Japan, the net proceeds of perhaps as much as £700 million are a drop in the ocean. In the words of one very senior Japanese associate of mine,

“the premises and the buildings are the symbol of the historic bilateral relations; they are the source of the special and unique status that the British Embassy and the British Government have in the Japanese society.”

We have a fantastic asset which defines the positive perception of this country in the minds of the Japanese people. If we proceed with the plan, we will inflict permanent damage on our standing in Japan. If a large apartment building is built, sandwiched between our shrunken embassy estate and the public park which once also formed a part of it, it will be seen as a permanent reminder of our opportunistic sale of what had been a gift and a substantial net disinvestment of our assets in Japan. I ask the Minister to confirm that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary will stand up to the Chancellor and stop the sale. The Treasury has supported business to the tune of some £400 billion during the pandemic but grants the Foreign Office no money at all to invest in its built estate. The proposed sale is completely inconsistent with the Government’s global Britain strategy and would make my noble friend Lord Grimstone’s words in his introductory speech about “deepening our alliances” around the world and

“stepping up on the international stage”

seem hollow indeed to the ears of our Japanese friends.