Britain in the World — House of Commons, 2015-06-01
Topic: International Affairs
Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (Conservative, Centre-right): It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). She is always interesting and original and I entirely agree with her peroration What a delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes). Her personal story and the way in which she promoted her constituency in a remarkable first contribution here make me enormously proud to have her as a colleague on the Conservative Benches I want to disagree gently with my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who said there were problems with making policy in peacetime, and that that has implications for the armed forces. We are facing the most challenging foreign policy environment since the end of the second world war. It is pleasing that so many Members want to take part in the debate today, and it is perhaps unsurprising that in the media the issue did not rate the interest and concern that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston has just asked us to show There was an agreeably standard speech from my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. Accompanied by the Secretaries of State for Defence and for International Development, he laid out the aspirations for our foreign policy. However, it was ever so slightly punctured by my right hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) asking him about the money. In the end, our position in the world depends on three legs. The first is the policy and our aspiration for the role we wish to play in the world. Secondly, there are the instruments of power with which we deliver that position: hard power, in the form of the armed forces and intelligences services; and soft power, in the form of international development, the British Council, the BBC World Service, and all the voluntary and private sector manifestations of British soft power. But thirdly, we must resource those resources, particularly those that come from the Government It is a pity that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not on the Front Bench to hear the Foreign Secretary’s speech. One message that I will give to all right hon. and hon. Members, particularly those on my side of the House, is that if they want to support expenditure on maintaining our position in the world, they must look not to the Ministers now on the Front Bench but to the Treasury Ministers, ensuring that they fully understand how important those of us on this side of the House believe those issues to be If the rest of my remarks sound rather like a proposed programme for the Foreign Affairs Committee that is largely because that is what they are. Let me turn to the European Union. We have a strategic decision to take as a nation, and so profound is that decision that it must be put to the people in a referendum. Enabling that referendum was a key part of the Queen’s Speech. That measure gives us a chance to address a sore that has run through British politics, arguably since the Single European Act. That changed the nature of the then European Community and gave socialists an opportunity to use—some would say abuse—the role of the European Union to pursue both market and social objectives. The nature of the deal and of the Union changed, and it is now necessary for our country to decide either to recommit to the European Union or to come out of it. We therefore have to analyse the costs and benefits of those options. I believe that, as the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) said, that can be done by a Committee of this House that does not agree on what the outcome should be but ought to be able to analyse properly the exact costs and benefits of either option The background to that immensely important decision includes issues such as our relationship with Russia. Russia has gone from being a potential partner that was emerging from the cold war to a strategic competitor. We have to give proper attention to Russia and to the situation in Ukraine, and to what that might mean for the cold war that appears to be enveloping our relationship again, and for our armed forces and the necessity to use them. We will have to look at issues relating to China, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) suggested in his contribution I am delighted, in one sense, that the Foreign Secretary is no longer in his place, because he has gone to Paris for a meeting of the core coalition group on ISIL. Why is an intelligent regional policy towards ISIL not being pursued by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Egypt? They are the key regional powers. What are we doing, as one of the major powers behind them, to ensure that they get their act together and co-ordinate as far as they can, because ISIL is as much their enemy as it is ours We must also address difficult issues concerning values and interests in the United Kingdom. We have had the Jenkins review of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. What do we do when people vote for parties we do not like, and where does that put our values, as against our interests? Finally, we must examine the chaos that Libya has fallen into and the consequences for the European Union.