you are listening to Parliament matters a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph rry charitable trust learn more at Hansard society.org PM welcome to Parliament matters the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy Parliament itself I'm Ruth Fox and I'm Mark Darcy coming up how much leverage do MPS have over the UK stance on International crises like Gaza we speak to Alicia Kerns MP the chair of the Foreign Affairs [Music] committee well here we are in the office of
Alicia Kerns MP the chair of the Foreign Affairs committee and Alicia thanks for joining us on the podcast we come to talk to you about your work on the committee so the global situation provides no shortage of issues at the moment to discuss and challenges for you and your committee to consider Foreign Affairs has obviously risen up the political agenda significantly probably it's as high as it's been since the Iraq War what for you are the top International challenges the UK faces so for me r
eally it comes down to great power competition yes we are seeing in the immediate appalling crisis around the world appalling Bloodshed but actually it's about longterm how do we secure the international framework on which we rely which is the rules-based system because if that breaks down and don't get me wrong I have criticized it failure as many times but its fundamental framework is so key and it is under attack from autocrats who are on the March who want to undermine it but cly they want t
o rewrite it in their own image is there a sense that it's not just the bad guys the putins it's also about other states finding this all constraining and wanting to atomize break away from traditional ties I mean potentially America under Trump I think we're seeing irid dentist opportunism propping up all around the world you know whether you look at the Sahel and you see all these military coups and Military juns taking over incredible backsliding as a result whether you look at Sudan and what
you've seen there again military individuals refusing to let go power whether you look at Russia and its irredentist Ambitions for Ukraine whether you look at so many places really around the world you know we've got only recently transnistria false claims in Russia that transnistria has put up a red flag and said please save us from ethnic cleansing unfortunately irredentism is on the March and obviously China and Taiwan is the long-term threat of which we keep talking thinking about your comm
ittee's role in looking at these issues I mean do you consider yourselves to be influencers or are you commentators providing a sort of running commentary on these challenges so I'm absolutely determined that we are influencers that we are shaping we cannot just be commentators and scrutiny matters scrutiny matters so that we learn the lessons scrutiny matters that we can better protect ourselves in the future but what I've really tried to do as chair is to move from these kind of year-long inqu
iries to really sharp kind of two-month inquiries you know on an issue that matters where we can change things quickly and that we can really focus and dive in on and I think what you've seen with the select committies we do change things sometimes it's as little as having to change the tone of a discussion I think on Gaza so the session with the foreign secretary for example I think is is a good example of where actually our goal was to change tone and to reveal information that was not current
ly known to interrogate but interrogation in order to change behavior of actors not least our own government and what I was told by ambassadors around the world is that our hearing was picked up that people on streets in countries around the world were talking about it because they felt like that was the level of scrutiny the international countries should be put under so yes sometimes it's about tone sometimes it's about revealing information that people aren't aware of again I revealed the bom
bing of medlay for Palestine you know four British doctors were in a building that had been demarcated by the Israeli government a month earlier as a humanitarian site they were in alasi the safe Zone and they were British Nationals with no tunnel under their building at Sand it couldn't be and yet they were bombed so revealing things then of course there's the pure scrutiny and just saying you know did we get it right or did we not and then there's the future forecasting I spent a lot of my tim
e and I think some of it comes down to being a woman who's passionate about public policy but I very rarely stand up in Parliament and just say tell us this I will always say will you consider this have you thought about that put forward a solution and I think as chair that's been a real priority for me in too often in foreign policy you hear this kind of sell indulgent grandis of people's own opinions but not and Reflections but not putting forward proposals and that is why I'm in this because
I want to change things I want to change our approach I want to change the outcome I want to make us safer and I'm fortunate SEC chair you can do that there's a lot of push in Parliament at the moment to try and get the UK to take a much harder stance on Gaza I mean the SNP leader Steven Flynn was calling for a common resolution to tell the government that the next un security council meeting had to back a ceasefire resolution so I think with David Cameron we saw an enormous change in the govern
ment's approach and Tarak Ahmed is an incredibly capable Minister but I think what is difficult is that we have seen International humanitarian law broken and we actually need to hear that Clarity of thought because it matters whether it comes to water being cut off whether it comes to Aid not being allowed to get through whether it comes to the bombing of medlava Palestine which was a war crime because we know that they knew that it was a protected humanitarian site and that matters breach of i
nternational humanitarian law if we are to have confidence in the International System but also it has repercussions in terms of one we need to stop all arms exports immediately it has repercussions in terms of the international court of justice and it has wider repercussions in terms of our responsibility to protect so for me this is a fundamental and I'm very frustrated that we haven't seen the clarity that we needed to see now you mentioned the foreign secretary and of course we've got a fore
ign secretary in the shape of Lord Cameron who's in the House of Lords and can't directly come at least at the moment to be interrogated about his activities in the Full House of comment so your MP's primary way of getting at him have there been discussions about him coming a bit more often than perhaps an MP foreign secretary would have to to be in front of your committee for that purpose to answer questions so we as a committee decided that we wanted him every six weeks which we thought was mo
re than fair enough because that's how often foreign office questions would have been he has yet to respond to our requests as to how long he's how often he's going to come in front of us which is deeply disappointing and as you can imagine we're currently in pretty tough negotiations with him that when I expect to see him next I do expect us to see that additional scrutiny I think having seen our session in January nobody would say that the select committee has been failing in his job to scruti
nize the government but I do want to see him again and that is currently something under active discussion we talked a lot about um you know the issues and challenges you talked about garil what what other sort of inquiries have you got on your agenda that you're prioritizing and how do you go about deciding on the the prioritization of these these short short inquiries so sometimes inquiries fall into your lap because a breaking issue but actually I think as a committee we've been very forward-
looking so we announced our inquiry into middle Easter and North Africa last September possibly earlier and the reason we did was that we were very critical that the integrated review didn't look at the situation in Israel Palestine enough the integrated review is this this review of our refresh review of our foreign policy defense policy International Development policy absolutely so it's the strategy that sets out what our security priorities and foreign policy priorities are for the future an
d we were very critical as committee that Middle East was missing from it as much as it should have been and particularly the fact that the word Palestine Israel peace process didn't feature last June or July we had the liaison Committee hearing which is when the Prime Minister comes before all the heads of select committees and of the three questions I had the time to ask him two of my three were about Israel Gaza and my exact words to him were we are going to see the Gaza crisis of 2023 we are
going to see a third inter father will you do something during our un Security Council presidency to do something so we had foreseen that there was a problem coming so we announced our inquiry Vagner Network we were the first Foreign Affairs Committee in the world to launch an inquiry we launched it before anyone had ever heard of the Vagner Network because it was before pran's big march on Moscow but again as a result of our report the government were able to prescribe them as a terrorist orga
nization and then once the UK did it lots of countries around the world followed it did it my other current inquiry again unfortunately rather fitting is on counterterrorism because I felt the integrated review again was too focused on great state conflict and less on the immediacy of the risk that still exists from counterterrorism we've just completed our hostage inquiry into how State we deal with hostage taking our Central Asia inquiry and we're currently doing a big inquiry on multilaterals
which is actually a followup from an inquiry I asked for when I was first elected which again is about how do we stand up for British interest within multilaterals your committee's first inquire of the session and that was before you were chairing it in fact it was still under Tom tugen Hut then was into the withdrawal which is a rather dignified word for it from Afghanistan it was actually a pretty Savage report it accused the foreign office of being deliberately evasive and then actively misl
eading now that's a pretty Stark thing for a committee to say about the foreign office and have fences been mended since then has the foreign office mended its ways I mean we also called for the resignation of the permanent secretary so I mean that I think shows you how angry we were because we felt the foreign office had let down its own people let alone letting down those in Afghanistan who needed our support fences have been mended to some extent but at the same time I think over the last two
years and I I think particularly under my chairmanship the foreign officers realized that we are not a select committee who are there to indulge our own interests and foreign policy we are there with a very serious mission and that is to make our country safe and we will push until we get to a place where we think we are achieving that and I think we've shown that particularly in the western Balkans um but also in other places around the world you're covering a huge range of issues not just you
know the policy issues but also the sort of the threats to the UK and the sort of the targeting of MPS by malign actors great Powers terrorists and so on what kind of resourcing does your committee have to carry out its inquiries in a practical way I mean for example if you're doing an inquiry on China do you have access on the committee to Mandarin speakers and what kind of sort of security precautions do you have to take well do you take any I guess is that you know without going into the det
ails I know you can't I have an amazing team of Clarks and their job is to help us prepare for our Tuesday afternoon hearings which is when we sit down and they are really phenomenal but on top of that comes the you know we just before I met with you I was sitting down with the Georgian Ambassador for half an hour we were having a discussion you know this week I've probably seen five or six ambassadors for a onetoone meeting to talk about the issues in their country I point out no Minister has t
o look after the whole world but I certainly do but I think in terms of that you know it's difficult in terms of security and I've had a an arrest warrant issued this week against somebody who is only seeking to threaten my life because of my foreign policy positions but we don't have additional security as a foreign affairs committee and I hope that we don't need it and I hope that we can continue to receive the support that we do from the police but it is difficult and I have had to shut down
a hearing so we were going to do a very sensitive hearing on Iran and we'd invited someone to give evidence and the Iranian government and their proxies decided to share the home address of the lady that was going to give evidence in front of us all over the social media and she and her family had to be put into witness protection as a result I decided to do our Hearing in private which is not good it's not what I wanted but first I went public on TV and I made very clear that we were not going
to be shied away from doing it but that I was going to be doing it in private because I was also unhappy with the behavior of one of the the other guests and I kicked them off and I refuse to have them give evidence but I made clear that we will not be bullied into doing what people on social media wants us to do but yes there are threats do you have to take precautions when you travel abroad as a committee representative I mean do you get advice from the foreign office I assume on this kind of
thing we mayly get told by the foreigners office not to go anywhere um because I think they think we're a distraction and deeply unhelpful and challenging um so we've had countries in the past say our British embassies abroad say no we don't want you you're not welcome to which I've said well we will be coming and you can either set up the agenda for us or I'll get the host Ambassador do or I'll do it myself and unfortunately know that I would deliver on doing it myself so there is a frustration
that sometimes civil servants don't recognize how powerful it can be to have a group of politicians come to your country because we're not coming to impose our own ideas we're coming to listen we're coming to engage and to hear what how that country sees the world so that we can challenge our own thinking challenge the relationship we have and often we go away with a list of asks for the government that helps that post and helps that Embassy improves our bilateral relationship so it can be diff
icult sometimes um but we do manage to get to most places we want and of course where we do need security most of the time the foreign office will provide some security but nowhere near what they offer to ministers and I think that is disappointing how our embassies and different countries treat us is completely ad hoc and we have had situations like when we were in Ukraine I think two weeks before the renewed illegal Invasion where the foreign office are probably ringing us every two hours sayi
ng get back on a plane now and I said look we're not going to get back on a plane and they said well we're not going to evacuate you and I said no you're not going to evacuate us if it happens but the ukrainians will so yes it can be a bit of a tough challenge sometimes because our job is not to be there to repeat foreign office lines it's to challenge whether foreign offic is doing their job or not is the root of this at least partly that foreign policy is a kind of prerogative power it's somet
hing ministers do and they rather resent Parliament getting that involved in it well I I don't know if I'd want to kind kind of brand or paint all ministers with the same brush because there are some ministers who really understand that the Foreign Affairs committee can be helpful to them so they can't say things so often when I go to a country I will say to the Ambassador look I'm going to go into these meetings and I'm meeting you I was at the mun security conference a few weeks ago I was seei
ng just because I'm the British chair it's not because I'm me Alysia Cur all my bilaterals were me with presidents Prime Ministers and foreign sectors of other countries the access being British gives you is enormous but I would say to our government and to ambassadors what are the things your struggling to get out of them where do you need to see them really challenged and pushed that perhaps is difficult for you because you need to protect that relationship I don't I can be that bushy difficul
t out of nowhere British MP who really challenges them but also often those world leaders are more willing to be more open with me because they don't have set talking points they haven't been told by their civil servants you must land this point with this person they're genuinely having more open conversation so you can learn a lot more so ministers who are smart would use the select committee more and recognize that were a great soft power tool you know 25 chairs of Foreign Affairs committees w
ent to Ukraine together for their anniversary the other weekend that was a powerful message around Europe that we stand by our allies I had well over I think we got to over a hundred European politicians write a letter with me about why we needed to change the euus approach to Kosovo it has changed the tone across the whole of Europe because I initiated this letter because I brought you know Foreign Affairs committee chairs and interested MPS across Europe together we have been able to change an
d challenge the thinking around this entire process towards what I think is a Tinder Box so it is about whether you use us right or not but I think there's a lot we can achieve and you talked about ministers being able to use your committee more effectively what about MPS you know do you think the parliament as an institution the House of Commons as an institution really sort of handles does scrutiny of foreign policy very effectively in the chamber away from the committee so one of the things I
said when I was standing for chair the Foreign Affairs committee was that I want to improve foreign policy literacy CU it's difficult it is difficult and things come out of nowhere that people didn't expect but I also remember my first few weeks of B&N people people saying to me oh you can do foreign policy you can be distracted by that stuff because you've got a safe seat to which I said one don't ever treat anything as a safe seat and thankfully I stuck to that rule all time I've been an MP b
ut secondly there is no such thing as foreign policy being a distraction what have we learned from Ukraine you cannot have Economic Security if you don't have National Security that is the way round goes many people believe that if you get the economics right everything else Falls in place that is just not the case and with Ukraine you saw real wakening up by Parliament to this but it is true that particularly on breaking issues where it's a new country coming out of nowhere where there's a prob
lem sometimes at the start it can be difficult for MPS to suddenly become an expert in a foreign country I'm not an expert on every country in the world and I meant to be chair the Foreign Affairs committee well I am chair but I'm not an expert in every country in the world so it can be a challenge but I've been really pleased how I've been able to help MPS they've come to me with issues we've been able to hold hearings at the Foreign Affairs committee that backbenches have requested so trying t
o make the committee feel part of the entire parliamentary body rather than this kind of segregated committee sat over here doing what they like people used to say that there were no votes in foreign policy uh it seems to me that you can certainly lose votes in foreign policy these days I don't know if you necessarily win them but you can certainly lose them by a stance on something like Gaza I think the bi elction in may tell us exactly that obviously there are a few issues that I think hit as
emotionally as obviously Israel Gaza does but you know ukra Ukraine mattered you know you don't see any politicians standing up saying let's stop our support to Ukraine I think that's because they recognize the country is behind Ukraine politicians and other countries really struggle when I say that that we don't have MPS standing up saying let's stop supporting Ukraine they really struggle to believe that that's the case but we are so United I don't think foreign policy does Define elections ve
ry often although Margaret that for the Faulkland you know you could argue differently I think it's very rare that it does but it fundamentally matters to how and if a government is able to deliver on its domestic commitments whether or not they are getting the security situation right the House of Commons is only part of parliament the other half the other end of the building is the House of Lords and obviously there's a lot of foreign policy Professionals in in there what kind of relationship
does your committee have with with the Lords I think maybe you're giving me a learning point to take away an action plan we don't really have one if I'm honest um so we often call on members of the House of Lords to give evidence we have baroness Helena Kelly come and give evidence to us on the shin jjang genocide taking place that was really good you know quite often obviously we call on previous senior military leaders to come give evidence to us but we don't really work with the Lords and it
is difficult because they now have their own foreign policy committee um and I think we probably could deconflict a little better there but no it doesn't really cross over in any way a final thought really um if you had one recommendation from your committee that you wanted to take for if you go into to a Minister's office and say this is what you ought to do and get it done what do you think it would be do you know I generally don't think I can answer that because my problem is as soon as you s
tarted saying it four different countries pop up each with about 12 ARS in my head and it it's very difficult you know my current priority is you know obviously Ukraine we need more ammunition we need a special tribunal we need to seize the frozen assets but then I go to Israel Gaza where we need to make sure the Rafa uh attack does not happen but we also need to be planning for the ceasefire if it happens you know where is the planning for how many hospitals you know operating theaters are stil
l standing how quickly can we create field hospitals how quickly can we get in counter ID experts to clear the roots that the a can get in you know then it takes me all the way through to transn at the moment and what are we doing to make sure that we're not seeing you know Russians kick off in the backyard and why haven't we taken stronger steps against Serbia who are trying to kick off in the Balkans you know and then in my head I've got another Teno Jerusalem what's going on there China and T
aiwan it's too difficult because also they're interconnected and if we really want to have deterrence if we really want to prevent autocrats being on the march in the way that we are we need to show meaningful resolve and then again hostages you know I'm seeing Vladimir carer's wife shortly I've met with Morad toaz earli this week you how do we transform it so that our passports aren't weaponized against our own people it's too difficult to pick one thing and maybe that's also a sign of who I am
and how I work I've always got a million things on the Go at once but you will see me continue to push on these things not because I actually enjoy always suggesting that more could be done or done differently but because I desperately search for ways to make a difference and to shape things and to improve our public policy ala K say the sirens Blair in Parliament Square behind us thanks for joining us on the Pod thank you for having me well that's all from us for this week's episode of parliam
ent matters please hit the follow or subscribe button in your podcast app to get the next episode as soon as it lands and help us to make the the podcast better by leaving a rating or review on Apple or Spotify and sharing your feedback our producer tells us it's important for the algorithm to give the show a boost Mar tell us more about the algorithm what do I know about algorithms you know I write my scripts with a quill pen on Vellum and then send it in by carrier piture well before we go a q
uick reminder also that you can send us your questions on all things Parliament by visiting Hansard society.org do/ pmq we'll be discussing them in future episodes including our special urgent questions editions dedicated to what you want to know about Parliament and you can find us across social media at Hansard Society to get more content related to the Show and The Wider work of the Hansard [Music] Society Parliament matters is produced by the Hansard society and supported by the Joseph rry c
haritable trust for more information visit hy. or.pm or find us on social media H Society
Comments