Tag Archives: House of Lords

18th of March 2025 My Lords, last Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked the House to take note of the UK’s international position. My purpose today is narrower but more urgent; to ask the Government what their Ukraine policy now is. It is urgent because the Trump Administration have torn up the familiar script. I wish the Government had offered a full-length debate to consider the consequences of this. I remind your Lordships of the script. The King’s Speech of 17 July...

6th of March 2025 My Lords, I will not speak directly to the proposals of the report to improve our military capabilities but will consider the framework in which they are set. The report’s underlying assumption is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made Europe a much more dangerous place, against which we have to rearm ourselves if we are not to suffer the fate of Ukraine somewhere down the line. The report was published before Trump’s victory in the US election and therefore...

5th of March 2025 My Lords, like other noble Lords, I commend the efforts of the noble Baroness and her committee to shorten and simplify the code and guide. That they have not altogether freed themselves from the bureaucracy involved in all this is more a sign of the times than of any lack of effort on their part. I welcome the obligation to register non-financial interests and reduce registrable interests from 10 to seven, but I still struggle to understand the purpose of the...

11th of November 2024 My Lords, there are many things to welcome in this Budget, particularly on the spending side. I am less keen on some of the tax proposals, which seem to be mean-minded and counterproductive, such as the tax on knowledge. The spending commitments are important because they reverse the disastrous policy of austerity, which has brought our public services and infrastructure close to collapse. Even the IMF, originally a champion of austerity, admitted that it had...

Below is my speech on Ukraine in the House of Lords on the 25th of October. Unfortunately, time constraints forced me to leave out two bits of my argument which I will put in brackets in the text. “My Lords, I am usually put last on the speakers’ list in any debate on this topic, but I treat that as a badge of honour. I welcome the opportunity we have been given to take note. I have been taking note of the Government’s position on Ukraine for over two years now. It is unchanging: the...

“My Lords, in taking part in this debate, I must declare an interest: recently, I was a victim of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller. Although this is not the kind of interest a Member is normally obliged to declare, I believe that my personal experience has given me a certain insight into the way the system works, which may be of public interest. I welcome the committee’s aim to shorten and clarify the code and guide wherever possible—they require...

My Lords, it is a rare privilege for us to have the Foreign Secretary wind up a debate on foreign policy in this House. Such are the quirks of politics, I suppose. I shall concentrate on one topic, and that is economic sanctions. The sanctions regime has emerged as one of the most important tools of British foreign policy. Despite, or perhaps because of their long and tangled history, their rationale remains deeply mysterious. Are they tools of war avoidance or an extension of war by...

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the remarkable maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo. It was very thoughtful and thought provoking, and I very much appreciated her reference to me—she will have a great future here. The Budget was crafted in the shadow of disruptive world events over which the Chancellor has little or no control, but it is by its effectiveness in tackling or responding to those events that I think this Budget will be judged. The three...

My Lords, I am grateful, as we all are, to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for initiating this debate and for drawing attention to the real danger of nuclear escalation. I am in profound disagreement with the Government’s policy on Ukraine—I have said it before in this House and I shall say it again. This disagreement can be stated in one sentence: the Government’s policy is a war policy; I support a peace policy. I shall try to justify that. The then Foreign...

My Lords, the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement is designed to reassure the markets of the sustainability of the public finances. That is, the Chancellor accepts as binding the views of the City of London, whether they are right or wrong. It is what the markets think that matters, not how matters really are—a nice intrusion of post-modernist thinking in what is supposed to be the hard science of economic policy-making. It is pretty obvious why the Government should pay such attention to...