| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
I have one further quotation from George Schultz, from a book which I had the privilege to write the foreword to. It was published here last week and is entitled The World Crisis: The Way Forward After Iraq. He said that,
- “we in the United States, and in other countries as well, face a radically changed world with rising powers, ungoverned territories, radical Islamists and immensely powerful weapons spreading around. This situation requires a much larger and invigorated commitment to the tasks of diplomacy, conducted on a global scale. We in the United States could be worse off. Colin Powell, in his time as Secretary, saved the Department of State from a downward slide. He reinvigorated the recruitment process, improved the resource base and technological capability, and raised the spirits of the foreign service. But much more needs to be done. The size of the foreign service needs to match global needs”.
Ours need not be that large, but the case for restoring its primacy in the conduct of foreign policy, as spelled out by everyone who has spoken so far, cannot be overstated or repeated too often.
2.48 pm
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for introducing the debate, which is of great importance at present. If I may, I shall take a different approach to the argument, although we have already had a remarkable level of consensus on what has been said in the first four speeches.
The issue that I want to address is what appears to be the ambition of this Government and of the new Foreign Secretary to make some very radical changes, perhaps summed up in the phrase used by Mr Miliband in his first speech after becoming Foreign Secretary, when he referred to the crucial new distribution of power in the world. That speech was followed more recently by a remarkable speech by the Prime Minister in New Delhi, India, when he spoke about the need for a radical shift of power to the major developing countries from those that have traditionally been the
13 Mar 2008 : Column 1627
If one has a major and radical shift in the structures of governance among international institutions in the world, including the United Nations, one first needs to understand those new and more powerful nations even better than one does today. One cannot possibly reduce the level of knowledge of them: one has to increase it and have greater understanding of internal, political and economic forces than is necessary for countries that are still on the margins of power in the world.
Secondly, one can no longer make assumptions about what one might describe as the ruling bloc in those same international institutions. If, for example, one introduced India, Brazil, South Africa and one or two other nations to the United Nations Security Council, it is most unlikely that it would be easier to reach agreement in that council than in the days when it was largely dominated by the power of the United States and her allies. In short, one needs a more complex and nuanced diplomacy than is necessary in the world from which we have emerged. That was reflected in Mr Miliband’s speech, but not in the resources that Mr Miliband has available to him. That is my first point about the need for much greater diplomacy than we have had in the past.
My second point, as I have tried to indicate, is that the likelihood of reaching agreement easily becomes more difficult in an increasingly multilateral world than in one dominated by, first, two great powers and then one. That, too, means that there has to be a higher, more patient and knowledgeable level of diplomacy.
Thirdly, there is the example that was usefully brought to the attention of the House by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, in the point that he made just now about the remarkable changes that are occurring in the attitude in the United States towards such things as nuclear proliferation, for example. That also requires a steady and active level of diplomacy. Anyone who has studied the history of the United States under the two Bush Administrations would have seen very clearly the extent to which the first of those Administrations dismissed diplomacy as synonymous with appeasement: that was frequently advanced by the Administration in their first term. But diplomacy is not synonymous with appeasement: diplomacy is synonymous with trying to deal with conflicts and build peace. One thing that we badly need to do—and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson as Swansea, along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, made this absolutely clear—is to recognise the paramountcy of diplomacy in a multilateral peace-seeking world. One simply cannot do without it.
Although I strongly support the goals of DfID, having travelled quite a lot as many Members of this House have done, it is hard to believe that money is always as effectively used at the margins of DfID as it
13 Mar 2008 : Column 1628
I turn now to the last half of what I have to say—I hope that I can persuade the Whip that she need not worry about my nine minutes because I promise to keep my eye on the time. I want to look at the objectives that were set out by the Foreign Secretary in his speech last weekend to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office leadership conference—an internal setting of priorities that he then made public. I will mention the four that he mentioned as his greatest single priorities.
The first is tackling nuclear proliferation and dealing with the vision of a nuclear weapons-free world—things that are certainly close to my heart. They imply to an extraordinary extent co-operation between civilian and overseas departments. In our own country, with the emergence of more and more civil nuclear power, the responsibility of BERR—I will not attempt to call it by its full name—is closely interrelated with the responsibilities of the Foreign Office in the international sphere. You simply cannot make advances in this field unless you recognise the crucial nature of this interlinking. We in Britain are still a long way away from what used to be called joined-up government, particularly where it is joined up between domestic and overseas departments.
The Foreign Secretary’s second priority was preventing and resolving conflicts. If you make the same assumption as I do that the previous Prime Minister's liberal intervention will make it more difficult in the next decade or so to get support for and seek legitimacy for action, the crucial fact about trying to prevent conflicts is to move as quickly as possible. You need to get in early, as in the end happened in Kenya, thank God. In other countries such as Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, late intervention allowed conflicts to seed and spread and become devastating in their consequences for the retention of the rule of law and of order in the world. His third priority was for a high-growth, low-carbon economy and his final one was to improve multilateralism.
I return to what has already been said so effectively by my noble friend and by other noble Lords in this debate: we have hardly begun to explore the areas where we should work within the structures of the European Union, not outside them—and the low-carbon economy is as good an example as one can find. I still find it quite extraordinary that we spent days in the House debating climate change and are about to spend days discussing the European Union's involvement in climate change, and actually the two could quite readily be incompatible in some areas. That seems a rather foolish form of management.
I conclude by asking the Minister to tell us more about the extent to which Foreign Office plans have subsumed the idea of working more closely in Europe, precisely on issues such as a low-carbon economy, climate change and on joint representation where that is the appropriate way to go. On the whole, the Foreign Office does a remarkable job, but we need to look again at whether it has been squeezed to the point where, with the best will in the world, it can no longer be as effective as we need it to be.
13 Mar 2008 : Column 1629
2.57 pm
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, this debate could not be more timely. The Comprehensive Spending Review announced last year and the current and prospective year’s budgetary provisions have left the Foreign and Commonwealth Office squeezed and starved of resources. The consequences in the form of post closures and the slow haemorrhage of downgrading and thinning out the remaining posts are already visible. The premature departure at a time when they could have given more years of valuable service of many talented and highly professional diplomats is taking place daily. Important scholarship programmes, prominent among them the Marshall scholarships, have been top-sliced and, as a result, fewer such scholarships are now available than in recent years.
I asked a Question about these false and damaging economies in the scholarship schemes last October and was then given a vaguely reassuring reply. I gather that the right honourable gentleman the Foreign Secretary today made a Written Ministerial Statement in another place which does not in fact take matters much further. Meanwhile, the facts belie the reassurance. There are fewer Marshall scholarships. We are waiting to hear whether the Government plan to restore these cuts in future.
All these signs of stress and damage to what our rivals and adversaries have always acknowledged to be one of Britain's outstanding national assets—its world-class Diplomatic Service—are ones that we cannot afford to ignore. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, should be congratulated on bringing this matter to the Floor of the House. As a former member of the Diplomatic Service, I will try to avoid any special pleading and look rather at a number of general issues relating to the national interest.
First, does Britain of the 21st century need a world-class Diplomatic Service or should we accept a process of relative decline and settle for something skimpier and less effective? The answer that we do need a world-class Diplomatic Service and that settling for second best would be damaging to our national interest is not just a response of knee-jerk jingoism; it is surely a matter of rational analysis. Everyone beats a path to the door of a superpower. Just look at the way that countries staff their embassies in Washington or Beijing. But when you are a middle-ranking power with world-wide interests to further and defend, as Britain does, you need sharp eyes and sharp elbows. Some 30 years ago, the Callaghan Government commissioned a report that concluded that Britain could no longer afford a Rolls Royce of a Diplomatic Service. The Government rejected that advice. It is sobering to think of where we might be if they had accepted it. I hope that the Minister will reject it again at the conclusion of this debate and will ensure that his rejection is not just a verbal reflex, but a reality in terms of resources and manpower.
It really is important to look at Britain’s external policies in the round and to consider what is needed to manage them effectively, and not to look at them as a collection of disconnected stovepipes—some development aid here, some diplomacy there, and some military action when all else fails. This Government can take
13 Mar 2008 : Column 1630
The same is even truer for our Armed Forces. If all that requires a bit more of the taxpayers’ money, government and opposition parties should be prepared to say so and defend that as being in the national interest. We will certainly not defend those overseas interests successfully by pretending that more and more can be done with less and less.
It is sometimes suggested that in this era of rapid communication, of summit meetings and of increasingly specialised forms of multilateral diplomacy, we do not need diplomatic missions in the way we used to and that everything can be handled by experts from capitals and by political leaders themselves. In the real world, that is not the way things work. Ill-prepared meetings at political level seldom produce good results and often produce the opposite. Complex multilateral negotiations require a careful meshing of expertise from capitals, professional skills on the ground where the negotiation is taking place—in New York, Geneva, Brussels or wherever—and a world-wide diplomatic network lobbying for our objectives and warning where the obstacles to achieving them lie, and how best to get round them. Getting a good result from the post-Bali negotiations on climate change will require just that sort of multifaceted diplomacy; but we will not achieve it if we simply do not have diplomatic posts in some of the key places or if our posts are inadequately staffed. I remember a feeling of powerlessness and inadequate knowledge when successive crises occurred in three countries that were high on the Security Council’s agenda—Somalia, Rwanda and Haiti—in which Britain had no diplomatic representation at all.
Later this year, assuming that the Lisbon treaty is ratified by all 27 member states, the European Union will establish its external action service, drawing on, among other resources, the serving diplomats of its member states. Personally, I regard that as a great opportunity for Britain, not as a threat or as an issue of low priority. As one of the member states with a Diplomatic Service of the highest reputation, we have an opportunity to ensure the professionalism of the new service and thus further our interests along with those of the European Union as a whole. Are we ensuring that we make a serious contribution in ideas, structures and human resources to the work that is getting under way in Brussels? Are we going to provide some of the best and brightest of our diplomats to work in the new service and not just unload those whom we value least—an old trick of any bureaucracy
13 Mar 2008 : Column 1631
My contribution to this welcome debate may have sounded a little bit critical. It is intended to be constructively so. We are dealing with an important national asset which will not retain its value if it is not properly resourced and led. The Diplomatic Service that I joined in 1959 has changed out of all recognition in the intervening half century. A series of rapid and fundamental transitions have taken place and the overall quality of the service has not declined. If anything, it has improved. That is surely a major national achievement of which we can be proud. But that process of unending transition and change will be successfully sustained only if we provide the necessary resources and political support. Let us just hope that today’s debate will have made some modest contribution to that.
3.05 pm
Lord Sheikh: My Lords, we live in a changing world and the importance of foreign policy becomes greater as time progresses. Britain is a key player in the European context, but our interests are wider and the Government owe a duty to ensure that our national voice is heard across the global community. It is for this reason that this debate is so crucial, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on securing this opportunity.
Inevitably, in a changing world, it will be necessary to make changes to the structure and representation that we wish to have in different countries; but there needs to be an open and honest debate about whether the changes being made are the correct ones—and, if not, what the appropriate level of representation should be. Further, there are economic considerations that need to be borne in mind, particularly considering the costs of maintaining posts in different countries. That is not an easy area of policy.
We currently enjoy 261 posts overseas, of which 43 are staffed exclusively by locally recruited people; 218 are staffed by UK-based civil servants and locally recruited people. In response to a parliamentary Question in another place, the Secretary of State listed those countries which no longer have a resident British ambassador, consul general or high commissioner. There were 52 such countries, of which two were temporarily closed for security reasons.
Since the Government came to power in 1997, we have seen more than 35 embassies, high commissions and sovereign posts closed. Of the 53 African countries, some 23 do not have any British diplomatic representation at all. Considering the increasing strength of the Chinese in that continent, we need to give very careful consideration to the strategic disadvantage in having such a minimal presence there. One approach to improve this situation might be to accredit civil servants from the Department for International Development where no Foreign Office staff are present in the country concerned, particularly
13 Mar 2008 : Column 1632
There is continued suspicion in many quarters that the closures we have witnessed around the globe are rather more to do with financial constraints within the Foreign Office than with the reason provided by the Government that it is a consequence of a changing world. Is it reasonable that the closure of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office language school and the withdrawal of the Foreign Office's contribution to the cost of maintaining defence attachés are connected with shifts in global circumstances? I doubt it. The Foreign Affairs Committee in another place has warned that the Foreign Office budget is likely to be cut by 5 per cent each year, which could jeopardise this important work. Presumably on that basis we shall see a further reduction in British representation around the world. I hope that the Minister can provide clear assurances about that risk.
We need to strengthen our traditional relationships and try to freshen and deepen other multilateral alliances. The extraordinarily rapid changes in the distribution of economic and political power in the world means that we will need to shift more of our weight to the relationships with the Asia Pacific region and other countries. We have a long way to go before we can claim to have been sufficiently successful at promoting trade with China and India, and we have lost out to other European nations as a consequence. The Government need to put that right. It can be argued that Britain has been slow, given its concentration on affairs in Washington and Brussels, to adapt to the rapid changes taking place in newly industrialised countries. As I alluded to earlier, we have seen the end of Chinese passivity in international affairs. Deepening our relationships with countries in Asia, the leading countries in Latin America, the Middle East—including the Gulf States—and Africa will be important to us. This cannot be achieved with a diminishing international presence for our country.
I agree with David Cameron when he speaks of a new emphasis on multilateralism. It is vital to widen the circle of British influence, making more of the underutilised Commonwealth to enhance our co-operation with countries with which we have a historical, cultural, political and economic tie. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has included the question of European co-operation in this debate and this is important. I welcome the role that the United Kingdom plays in Europe, in particular the expansion that we have seen of the European Union towards the countries of eastern Europe. I would like to see that widening continue with potential growth into the Balkans, Turkey, and even perhaps Ukraine. European co-operation on that scale would prove to be a very powerful influence in the world. European countries working together, speaking with one voice should be an aspiration for us all to work towards but the recent experience of the European Union suggests that a single foreign policy is not easy to achieve. A Europe constructed on flexibility and concentrating on practical solutions to the challenges confronting the global community is likely to be more effective than internal squabbling about the creation of institutional structures.
13 Mar 2008 : Column 1633
I hope that the Minister will be able to answer this important debate by reassuring the House that the financial pressures being confronted by his office will not result in a diminishing presence for our nation on the global stage; that the Government recognise the possible difficulties that may emerge from reliance upon the development of a common European policy; and that we need to be more proactive in using our unique position in the world to our national advantage through the establishment of stronger partnerships for the benefit of our citizens and the wider world community.
3.13 pm
Lord Roper: My Lords, I am very grateful, as other noble Lords have been, to my noble friend Lord Wallace for introducing the debate and particularly for his helpful and masterly introduction. I have found the debate particularly interesting because it obliged me to look at the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report on the Foreign Office’s annual report, which indicates the extent to which House of Commons scrutiny of departmental activities has developed. Thirty years ago, I served on the predecessor committee of the Foreign Affairs Committee—the Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee. Our reports were about one-tenth the size of the reports of the Foreign Affairs Committee; they certainly did not go into anything like the depth that is gone into now. The committee’s report, and the reply from the Foreign Office to it, shows the very helpful dialogue that now goes on. The activities of another place are not always recognised in this House, but I have found them to be of particular importance. This is the first debate that I have taken part in for which the Library has produced a specific briefing document. This is an important development, and I find it extremely helpful.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |