Brexit: Armed Forces and Diplomatic Service

Baroness Deech Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, unlike other noble Lords, I am no expert. I am just a citizen who has felt increasingly anxious over the last 20 years. Brexit must mean that the UK’s influence in international affairs will increase and our reliance on our Armed Forces will be even more vital. We will no longer be one voice among 28 countries with different foreign policy aims. We will have our independent voice in international organisations and pursue our own foreign policy in co-operation with our own choice of bilateral allies.

The importance and vulnerability of NATO have been emphasised since the election of Mr Trump, and now is the time to put all our energy into strengthening that organisation and giving him no excuse to say that we are not pulling our weight. It was embarrassing, especially since it was correct, to have it pointed out that most NATO members have not met the target of spending 2% of their GDP on defence, as agreed in 2006. Only Greece, Poland and Estonia of the other EU members met that target in 2015. Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg spent less than 1%. The US and the UK have consistently met or exceeded the target and are de facto the real contributors. In the face of those figures, how could the European Union maintain an army? We should therefore continue to oppose any such notion and instead encourage it to strengthen NATO.

It is often said that the EU brought and maintained peace in Europe since its establishment. The award of a Nobel Peace Prize to the EU in fact had about as much foundation as the award to President Obama and less credibility than the award to Bob Dylan. It was the EU that stood by while Yugoslavia, on its borders, fell apart with genocide and massacres. According to Sir John Nott, a sceptic,

“The only time the EU actually took charge of security was during the Bosnian War. Its mishandling of that crisis led to more than one million people being displaced and up to half a million being killed or wounded”.

What is the EU’s policy towards Russia and its annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine? One would have to search hard to find out. Apparently, it amounts to cold-shouldering, with little comfort to the people of Ukraine and certainly not amounting to a deterrent to Russia. I see no evidence of UK influence on the EU in this particular episode.

What of security and intelligence gathering? Belgium is a byword for inability to collect and use intelligence even between two states. The barriers to intelligence gathering and sharing between 28 states are complex, and frankly there is reluctance to share details on security with countries that have close ties to Russia or appear to be incompetent. Only the Five Eyes, the intelligence alliance between the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, gives one any confidence.

The four major crises that the EU has faced since 2009—concerning the euro, migration, the rise of right-wing extremism and terrorism—have shown that it is largely ineffective in responding to external challenges and presenting its case to its own people and the wider world. Europe’s open borders, its failure to screen passports and the stolen and fake passports that abound have eased the passage of terrorists across Europe and ultimately into this country. Jews are fleeing France and Belgium in the face of anti-Semitic and terrorist incidents. The EU has been irrelevant to the aftermath of the Arab spring and to the Syrian and other Middle Eastern catastrophes. However, there is now the prospect that an independent UK can take its own decisions in relation to the threats from Russia and the response from the US in the Middle East.