queen's speech 2020 parliament
If we want the soft power we hear about, it is being exerted already by that department, a point emphasised earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson. Women’s rights are human rights and a lot has happened to women. Their universal acceptance by UN states was a moment of immense national pride. I believe that the Secretary-General and the UN Security Council have a very real responsibility, and it may be that the only thing they can do is to use the five permanent members and appoint people with weight and experience to tour around the Middle East and start a dialogue. “An Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy Review … covering all aspects of international policy from defence to diplomacy and development”. That massive number is not even the main issue; it is that our capture capacity today is precisely zero. In two of the villages, 116 people were killed. Although it is more restricted than it was, if handled properly, the Government’s currently revised immigration policy could prove to work well in all these necessary respects. Britain was a leading architect of the UN sustainable development goals. Debate (2nd Day) 3.19pm Moved on Thursday 19 December 2019 … Our exports strategy will help the UK to climb the ranks of trading nations by increasing exports as a percentage of GDP. We need to make it possible for individuals to make informed choices for smaller families. I welcome the Government’s commitment to 0.7%. Thousands of people who, until weeks before, had successfully supported themselves and their children, now queue up for rations, handouts and medical help. I find it very difficult to say that we will no longer be in Europe, but, having accepted that decision, I am prepared to work hard with other people to repair whatever damage has been done between ourselves and other communities to ensure that we go forth in a much better way. My Lords, in my brief contribution I will speak about climate change and the environment. It has consumed all aspects of our lives in Northern Ireland since the referendum of June 2016, where in the majority people voted to remain. Achievement of that target would make a critical contribution to the bold ambition, laid out in last year’s Lancet commission report, to eliminate malaria entirely by 2050. The UK is viewed by our other 46 member state colleagues as a key instigator and custodian of such priorities. The sharing of data and intelligence in respect of both criminal activity and our defence and security is critical to our future identity. The first is the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali in June. Identify more clearly British interests, extend British influence and adapt our alliances. Finally, I hope that he can also give an update on the Government’s efforts to set up an international accountability body that would ensure that those who commit this heinous crime bear the consequences. We must not behave in any cavalier fashion, particularly if associated for political gain, which could have the additional detriment of potentially reinforcing the East-West divide, playing into the hands of a China/Iran/Russia/Turkey axis. My visit coincided with Uzbekistan’s parliamentary elections, not so much to view the electoral process itself but to offer support to a country that is clearly in a positive transition mode. The Government deserve credit for piloting to success the NATO summit at Watford, which showed that the military side of the alliance is in good shape. These events underscore an undoubted truth that it is the first duty of any Government to protect the safety and security of the British people both at home and abroad, and that is a duty which this Government take very seriously. My Lords, in the short time available in this wide-ranging debate, I wish to focus on Latin America. Social media can be a huge asset in getting to places that were previously impossible to reach. Threaten no one who does not threaten us. However, we have seen no evidence of comparability of scale or equivalence of atrocities. I will return to that Bill later. Recent events have demonstrated that we need much greater flexible capability that will ensure a rapid response when required. We need rapidly to change this. So I welcome the Minister’s words about the Government’s commitment to malaria. A number of your Lordships commented on the perhaps improved clarity of the political direction of travel. Let us face it, those big players are now very clear. The third is vast scaling-up of the availability of UK-sourced and grown disease-free tree stocks, so that we do not import more tree disease in the way that ash dieback is now decimating our woodlands. It is incredibly important that we give them the resources that they are desperately starved of, as both can provide the expertise and enforcement role that they should be offering. So this is a year when the UK should be leading on highlighting these issues by helping to champion women in the poorest regions across the globe. Such atrocities cannot be attributed just to desertification, climate change or competition for resources, as our Government have claimed. 2020. That must never be forgotten. Like my noble friend on the Front Bench, I live in Scotland and am very aware of the various dimensions of Scottish politics which impinge on our daily lives, but here we have a subject where the responsibilities seem to be shared. In the past, our economy has been less export-oriented than many others, but huge and imaginative efforts have recently been made to promote trade and investment. However, it must be remembered and realised that, since the devastating cuts made in 2010, our Armed Forces are still very seriously hollowed out, despite doing their best to meet the demands of Her Majesty’s Government, increasingly east of Suez. It is my understanding that more than 1,000 military homes in Scotland lie empty, a figure up several hundred from 2013. In the same way, I am quite prepared to criticise my own party—the Tory party—in Somerset. It has always been put forward as good for road safety but, as shown by the Department for Transport, there is no indication that there is any automatic link between reducing street lighting and an increase in road accidents. All people, in all nations, are loved by God. We can surely offer a better model than the investment and support provided by nations such as China and Russia to nations such as Burundi and Rwanda, which often exploit natural resources and do not build the local economy, skills and knowledge in the long term. Given the Nigerian Government’s apparent complicity in the persecution of Christians, there is a strong argument that international aid should be curtailed until Abuja fulfils its duties to protect and provide for its own citizens of any belief who are subjected to such horrendous suffering, and to end the impunity with which the perpetrators of atrocities perpetuate their horrendous crimes. Being an active member of the donor community improves Britain’s standing with other aid donors, such as America, the EU and Japan. In answering, can the Minister say whether that will continue to be the definition of aid that this Government will abide by? As population grows, the challenge of preventing climate change becomes ever more difficult. This is particularly concerning as technical assistance to Bahrain has failed to prevent significant rises in death sentences and executions, the restriction of freedom of expression and increased attacks against human rights defenders and dissidents. The Prime Minister recently stated that our nation requires, “a shipbuilding industry and Royal Navy that reflect the importance of the seas to our security and prosperity.”. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, also raised the issue of Saudi arms sales. Normally I do not encourage the culling of wildlife, but that particular white elephant should be put down humanely before it tramples down more in its terrible path. The statement by the three European leaders on Sunday was remarkable for not making any mention of the US or the attack on General Soleimani. Kinetic effect is still very important. I wholeheartedly welcome the United Kingdom-Uzbekistan partnership and co-operation agreement. So I would like to hear an undertaking not only that DfID will stay but that it will be strengthened and given much more respect from the outside world and the inside of Whitehall. I understand that it is the first time that veterans’ affairs will have been overseen by a dedicated ministerial team in the Cabinet Office. In looking to future trade deals, we must ensure that the high standards I spoke of earlier are applied equally to imported food, and that UK producers can compete on an even basis—a fair deal for both. It captures the place where I live and where I have dedicated my political service to date. British foreign policy since the Second World War has largely been contracted out to the United States as the ultimate security policy, yet at a time when US policy is itself incoherent—witness climate change and the Paris accord; Iran and the Middle East peace process; Syria and the Kurds, which we have recently heard about; world trade and so on—it is time for the UK to start thinking for itself. Will the promised Bills do that or will they fall short? Why are we being so particularly sensitive about this? Some 90% of the land that was used by the military during the war has been given back to the private sector. The good will expressed in those three countries exists throughout Latin America, from Mexico through central America and down to the tip of Patagonia. About 300 soldiers, some trained engineers, have been clearing roads and making aid more accessible, including helping women and children to reach the UN distribution centres. It is easy to say what to do. The underlying drivers of conflict are complex, yet targeted violence and the perpetration of atrocities against predominantly Christian communities suggest that religion and ideology play a key part, as emphasised in the Bishop of Truro’s excellent report. The international situation is, of course, giving us all a great deal of concern. He certainly needs more external distractions at the moment and his position at home is precarious; nevertheless, he has done the rest of us a great favour in challenging Presidents Trump and Erdoğan simultaneously for their outrageous disregard for NATO and international co-operation in Syria. We might also have managed the Hong Kong situation better had we had better dialogue with Beijing. The Global Terrorism Index in 2016 and 2017 named Fulani militia as the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world, with only Boko Haram, ISIS and al-Shabaab being accounted deadlier. There would be a cost implication of any adaptation necessary, which would fall to the Scottish Government to fund, but improvements in the EPC standards of those houses would seem to be an MoD responsibility to address weaknesses in its current Scottish housing stock if it is still on its books. We have a vital, vibrant civil society in Britain of which we should be proud. There is quite a wad of material here and I shall see what I can do to try to get through it. This proves just how cross-party the support is for international development and for the continuing autonomy of DfID. I remind the House that 25% to 30% of DfID’s budget is already being diverted to other government departments and cross-government funds with little accountability. Any points-based immigration system must ensure these needs are met and uphold our value of treating all well. Who pays for this needs to be discussed, but the Government must drive it. As for the electoral process itself, it can best be summarised by one professor of sciences, who explained that he was motivated to vote for the first time as a direct result of the improved environment. I was left thinking, “I wonder what Ernie Bevin would have thought about that sentence?”. That leaves completely untouched and so far without any real examination the question of how we will maintain our services—the bedrock of our economy. The UK is indeed home to world-class healthcare companies that benefit from international trade—from 2016 to 2018, Healthcare UK supported over £1 billion of export wins in the healthcare sector. That we need to address them with seriousness and determination is surely not in doubt. Echoing the noble Lord, Lord Patten, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, I note that the Government have committed to planting 75,000 acres of new trees each year to reforest our islands. What prospects are there for plurilateral agreements on trade in services and on digital exchanges, on which so much of our economy now depends? I also caution the Government against making reckless promises. They should not be left to rot. I will not be alone in noting that the language of insulting other European Union countries, as if they were not listening or could not understand English, has now changed to the language of “our friends and partners” in Europe. In other words, we need our Government to go beyond easy slogans such as “Get Brexit done”, or even “Global Britain”, and consider how actual policy is to be worked out with real people and how the implications and consequences of that policy are to be understood and responded to by those with whom we claim to be interconnected partners. We have an opportunity today in this House to look at the promises that the Government made in the Queen’s Speech. I hope that we can take a look at that court in future, because it does not have a good record at all in terms of prosecutions on PSVI and other human rights. When combined with some of the mega-trends of our dynamic planet—climate change, urbanisation, increasing maldistribution of wealth and opportunity, the pace of technical change, the change in demography —we are left feeling very vulnerable at a personal and even at a collective, national level. The Government plan to invest to a greater extent in every part of this country, yet, while in the first place an internal economic objective to help our own communities, internationally this endeavour also stands to benefit other communities elsewhere. It is a reminder of the importance of civil society in balancing our weak and outdated political structures. Those are important areas and there are lessons that we can learn. As I have said before, key to all the above is the following question, particularly now that we have a strong Government in power: what is our long-term foreign policy? But we will be leaving the one institution that has helped provide so much political, social and economic stability on the island of Ireland. Although the UK is no longer a stand-alone military power, we more than play our part through NATO, and the UK continues to be a world leader of soft power, promoting our values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance. I do not doubt the genuine aspirations, but I am concerned that a certain amount of watering down might occur. I concede, of course, that the scale of these effects will depend in part on the coming negotiations, for example on the proposed free trade area with the European Union. I was struck by the number of thoughtful, telling and important points made by your Lordships in relation to this matter. After all, our security—as well as our economy—depends on it. My right honourable friend Ed Davey as Secretary of State played a key role, acting with and through the EU. Uzbekistan is increasingly seen as the rising star among emerging and frontier markets—a view validated by the Economist ranking it as the most improved nation in 2019. The latter was a far more hubristic affair, linking security to prosperity but, in respect of military capability, without ever closing the gap between ambition and resource reality.My honest view of both reviews is that they were exercises in prioritising the affordability of military platforms, garnished with a veneer of strategic insight.