3.16 pm
Baroness Goudie: My Lords, I welcome the gracious Speech and the speeches of noble Lords across the House who spoke yesterday. I want to mention a few items today: the Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill, Afghanistan, the international aid Bill and the G20. I declare an interest as patron of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland and a member of the executive committee and board of Vital Voices Global Partnership.
I congratulate all in this House, in the other place and in the NGOs who have been involved in the very important cluster munitions Bill. Cluster bombs are air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapons that eject smaller sub-missions. They have been used extensively in recent conflicts around the world in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Lebanon and are still active in 31 countries. I ask the Government to put pressure on those countries which have not ratified the convention to do so, to stop the killing and maiming of innocent civilians.
I support the Prime Minister and the Government in their commitment to our strategy in Afghanistan, which is vital to Britain’s national security. Along with the international community, the United Nations and the World Bank, we are the third largest donor and have committed a further £510 million over the next four years to enable the people of Afghanistan to develop their government and society.
Today, President Karzai has been sworn in for a second term. As part of his new presidency, I ask the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Douglas Alexander to insist that the president leads the fight against corruption at every level to ensure its eradication, and to ensure that he has regular meetings with Members of both Houses. To date, I am informed—I know—that he has not had positive meetings with elected female Members of either House. Female Members of the House do not have offices in Kabul, their offices are in their constituencies, so it is very difficult for them to form any caucuses among themselves or with male Members of either House. He must also promote education of girls and women’s rights.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to the international development Bill, which will make a binding government commitment to spending of 0.7 per cent of gross national income on international development by 2013. That Bill puts beyond doubt the Government’s determination to deliver on our long-held international development commitments, particularly at this time of global economic downturn, to meet the millennium development goals and to ensure a flow of aid to developing countries.
In June next year, the G20 will be meeting in Canada. The G20 has continued to play a crucial role in tackling the international financial economic crisis that we face. The global economy cannot recover or be rebuilt if half the world is left behind, or if half the world remains at risk of falling even further behind as a result of the global economic crisis. All recommendations emanating from the next G20 summit must be considered and developed, with a particular focus on the inclusion of women at all levels of decision-making and all aspects of economic empowerment.
To ignore women would not be smart economics. Invest in women and improve the world. Further, I ask the Government to request that two further items be on the agenda: maternal health—every woman must have the right to a safe birth—and that rape no longer be a tool of war.
3.20 pm
Lord Tugendhat: My Lords, I have listened with some amazement to the strictures about the Conservative Party’s attitude to Europe from the noble Baroness on the Labour Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, and even my friend the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. I have certainly disapproved of a good deal of the recent history of the Conservative Party’s attitude to Europe. Much of it, I think, has been counterproductive and contrary to Britain’s interests. Indeed, with a number of my noble friends, I found myself forced to defy a three-line Whip earlier this year, but those people who have been speaking about Conservative Party policy in this debate cannot have carefully read the speech that Mr David Cameron made on 4 November. I certainly agree that they can find passages in that with which I would not find myself in full agreement, but the speech has achieved two important objectives.
First, it has enabled an incoming Conservative Government to avoid getting embroiled in the sort of protracted domestic campaign and subsequent referendum—as well as the international negotiations, which created so much difficulty for the Wilson Government in the 1970s, so much difficulty that it put much of the rest of their foreign policy in balk for the period. Had the Conservatives stuck with the principle of a referendum, it would have dominated the first two or even three years of a Government and left little room, time and energy for the other important issues that will confront an incoming Government next year.
The second achievement of the speech is that it sets out a policy on the basis of which a constructive approach to and engagement with Europe can be built. I base that judgment on the section of the speech that comes after Mr Cameron praises the European Union’s contribution to the spread of,
“democracy and the rule of law across our continent”,
in which he sets out the objectives that he wants to achieve.
I welcome his stated intention to be an active member of the European Union. I believe he sets the right priorities when he talks of working with our partners on climate change, fighting global poverty and boosting global growth. I think that he is right, too, when he commits his future Government to keeping open the European Union’s doors to new members and to stand for open markets and a strong transatlantic relationship, as well as open relations with rising powers like China and India.
I agree very much with what my noble friend Lord Howell said in his opening speech about the importance of Asia, and I pay tribute to the fact that he was in many ways ahead of his time some years ago in drawing attention to that. But there is no zero-sum game between engaging with Asia and engaging with the European Union. Indeed, by building a constructive policy within the European Union, we will enhance our ability to engage constructively with the rising powers of Asia, and that should certainly be our objective. Contrary to what some members of my party might feel, I think that Mr Cameron will find a warm welcome for his approach when he enters Downing Street and will find that there will be allies with whom he will be able to work.
I would like to say also a few words about Mr Cameron’s ambition to restore Britain’s opt-out from social and employment legislation and from the charter of fundamental rights. I note that in making those points he says:
“If we want to make changes, we will need to do that through negotiation with our European partners, and we will need the agreement of all 27 member states”.
That is indeed true, and it is very different from the approach that some others have recommended in these matters. I would urge him, in seeking that agreement, to negotiate quietly and temperately and not to turn the negotiation into some sort of totem or virility test, as some will urge upon him. The more he does so, the harder it will be to achieve success.
I also think it is important to weigh the price of success. By that I mean that, once you start unpicking elements of the treaty, you do not quite know where it will lead. Others may be very happy to make concessions to Britain on the areas in which Britain is seeking concessions so long as they themselves can get concessions in other areas. We might find that the price of securing the objectives which I have just been mentioning is that others will want derogations from competition policy or from the internal market policies or from some other area to which Britain itself attaches great importance to the application right across the European Union. So by all means seek to bring about changes, but look at those changes in the context of the overall picture and weigh the price that might have to be paid in achieving them.
I should like to make one final point. All the member states of the European Union have suffered from the financial crisis in material terms, some more than us, some less. Britain, however, has in some ways suffered a double blow. All of us will remember the way in which the Prime Minister would go to Brussels and boast about the British model and our unprecedented record and hold out Britain and his policies as a model that others should follow. All will remember how he worshipped at the shrine of Alan Greenspan and the plaque which is up in the Treasury to record that fact. All will recall how he held up the way in which regulation was conducted in this country as the model that others should follow.
In many ways, Gordon Brown epitomised the zeitgeist of the boom years—a rather improbable association for such a puritanical person, but, none the less, he did in many ways embody the zeitgeist. As the boom years have come to an end and as some of the fallacies and mistakes of the boom years are coming home to roost, so Britain has suffered a reputational loss as well as the material loss. This is the point on which an incoming Government will have to do a good deal of work to rebuild our reputation and to pursue our policies with, I hope, a success but also a humility which the present Prime Minister has so sorely lacked.