CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his comments, and I pay tribute to the Church and other faith organisations for all the help and support that they provide in a whole array—both in the UK to refugees coming over here but also within the region. We will continue to work very closely with faith groups, but also civil society more broadly, to provide the support that communities around the world need. We are a world leader in development, having spent more than £11 billion on ODA in 2021. In 2021, we were the third-largest ODA donor in the G7 and the fourth-largest overall donor by volume, and we remain very proud of our work in this area.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, as we have had a question from my noble friend Lord Howell, we should allow the noble Lord, Lord Browne, eventually to come in. I withdraw my comments, with the leave of the House.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise too for being late for the beginning of the Statement. I had expected it to be later in the evening and my office is in Millbank House. Anyway, I can assure the noble Baroness—to whom I apologise profusely—that I have read the Statement, because I have a very specific question and wanted to see whether there was any reference to it in the Statement, but there is not. As part of the US increasing its military presence across Europe, two more squadrons of F-35 stealth jets will be stationed at RAF Lakenheath, which is leased to the US air force. Can the noble Baroness reassure me that these will not be the dual-capable variant of the stealth aircraft, and that we will not, some time in the future, face the challenge of the United States wanting to base nuclear weapons in the UK once again?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I think the noble Lord will not be surprised to hear that I do not have that level of detail. I ask him not to take that as any answer; I am afraid I simply do not know. If I could write to him, it would be for the best. I am happy to share the letter, in the Library, with other noble Lords.

Ukraine Update

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

We are working closely with partners to ensure that we can quickly provide emergency humanitarian assistance. We have also announced 1,000 more British troops will be put in readiness in the UK to support the humanitarian response in the region, should it be needed. I cannot go into huge specific details, but we are working with international partners because we recognise that there may be a need in the area.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, we can impose sanctions on the three people who have been identified in the Statement, but we cannot guarantee that we can freeze and seize their assets, because we will not know where they are. They will be hidden behind all sorts of complexities of shell companies and transactions. My right honourable friend Keir Starmer in the other place asked the right questions. He said:

“We need to draw a line under Companies House providing easy cover for shell companies. We need to ensure that our anti-money-laundering laws are enforced … and we have to ensure that money is not pouring into UK politics from abroad.”


When will we be able to say that we have that assurance?

Sue Gray Report

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Monday 31st January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, in paragraph 14 of this update, we learn why this is a minimalist report at the request of the Metropolitan Police so as not to prejudice their investigations. In paragraph 13, we learn that Sue Gray has been instructed and has undertaken to store and safekeep all the information gathered

“until such time as it may be required further”,

and to keep it “in confidence”. In answer to a question in the other place, the Prime Minister, in avoiding giving an undertaking to publish an unredacted version of the full report, clearly referred to—although I do not have the Hansard, so I may not get the words exactly right—legal considerations about one account that had been given to Sue Gray. There were legal considerations about it that prevented him giving that undertaking was the inference to be drawn from his answer. Who has been talking to the Prime Minister about accounts that witnesses have given and how does he know that?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I have said, I cannot comment on the ongoing Met investigation, but what I can say is that the Prime Minister has said—or the Government have now said—that at the end of the process, following the Met investigation, the Prime Minister will ask Sue Gray to update her work in the light of what is found and we will publish that update.

Afghanistan

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, other Ministers and the Chief of the Defence Staff are all very fond of the phrase, “Even the Taliban were surprised at the speed of the Afghan collapse.” They do not use this because we are interested; they use it because it is supposed to support an inference that we therefore should not be surprised that they were caught out by it, and to assert that everyone was surprised by the speed of the collapse. This is not true.

We now know that multiple US intelligence reports in spring and summer warned of the fragility of the Afghan army and the Afghan Government. If that were not sufficient—and it should have been—here in the United Kingdom the visiting professor of war studies at King’s College, a man called Tim Willasey-Wilsey, who spent 27 years in the Foreign Office on these issues, was freely writing blogs on the Cipher Brief, an open-source DC-based website, explaining all the factors in the inept deployment of the Afghan army and the behaviour of the Afghan Government that supported this fragility. The question for the Government is this: why did that information, which was in the public domain and being discussed, not ring alarm bells in the intelligence community and in the UK MoD? If that cannot be answered, why should anyone trust that the Government are being honest about the situation in Afghanistan?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I have to say to the noble Lord that we were working on preparations. The preparations for Operation Pitting, for instance, involved intensive work by many government departments over recent months. It was the huge effort, bravery and commitment of our Armed Forces personnel, diplomats and civil servants in Kabul that enabled us to evacuate more people than any other country, other than the United States. The specific evacuation plan for Afghanistan was revised in January 2021 and kept under review until it was enacted. So we were making preparations as the situation unfolded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

Yes, I can assure my noble friend that that is exactly what we will be doing. We will also want to be pragmatic and through organisations and some form of dialogue see whether we can talk to the Taliban and encourage them to do the things that we are talking about, such as providing safe passage. We have a number of levers at our disposal and will use all of them to try to make sure that we can achieve safe passage for those who want to leave Afghanistan and to make sure that many of the gains in civil society and within the country for women and girls and for minorities are not lost in the coming months.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for engaging with the question that I asked earlier, but she did so without dealing with the germane point of the evidence: did the Government have the ability in any form to come to the conclusions reached by other people who were not in the intelligence community? Why did the fact that they were doing that not ring alarm bells with Ministers who had responsibility, with their officials and with the intelligence community?

The noble Baroness tells us anyway that the Government were planning. Dominic Raab told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that, back in July, the Government were planning for the possibility of an evacuation of British citizens and those who were quite rightly entitled to think that we had a moral obligation to secure their lives. Will the Government share this planning? Did it include the explicit possibility that, unlike with any other evacuation I know of, those conducting it would remove the military before they had removed the civilians? If so, did we discuss this with the United States of America and with our NATO partners and say, “We have to face the possibility that history will look back on us as having removed the source of these people’s security before we could take them out of the place of danger”? Did we do that?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am afraid that all I can do is once again reiterate the point that the specific evacuation plan for Afghanistan was revised in January 2021 and kept under review until it was enacted. Plans within it included options to support and evacuate our diplomatic team, British nationals and their families, the continuation of the evacuation of those eligible under the ARAP scheme and the withdrawing of remaining military personnel.

G7 and NATO Summits

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

The next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinary week of summits. Two questions on the ambitions of the integrated review arise from the concluding statements. First, the US and the EU at their summit committed to co-ordinate policies and actions and to establish a US-EU high-level dialogue on and with Russia. With whom does the UK plan to pursue its interests vis-à-vis Russia? Will it be along with the US-EU framework or bilaterally with Russia? Secondly, Presidents Biden and Putin reaffirmed the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Does the UK support that principle, and will it say so?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I do not think that any of us want a nuclear war—I certainly do not —so I am certainly happy to put that on the record. We will work with partners globally, internationally and through all fora, including NATO, in relation to Russia.

European Council

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

A press release has indeed been put out about the EU completing preparations for a possible no-deal scenario, but it states:

“The EU will be required to immediately apply its rules and tariffs at its borders with the UK. This includes checks and controls”.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has now told us more than once in the context of the Statement that the Government’s priority has been the delivery of a deal. Is it not the case that in yesterday’s Sunday Times the political editor revealed, with the help of one of the noble Baroness’s Cabinet colleagues, the content of a Cabinet minute that showed that the discussion in the Cabinet was about the preservation of the unity of the Conservative Party? This is recorded in a Cabinet minute. Was not something else exercising the mind of the Prime Minister and her Cabinet when they were discussing what to do about Brexit?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

No, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet have been entirely clear: we want to deliver what is best for the country. That is why we have been working so hard to get a deal that does.

EU Council

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Monday 17th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We are working hard to ensure that we do get this deal through. Should the House of Commons choose to reject it, however, there is a process set out in legislation. We will follow that.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, in the seventh sentence of this Statement, the Prime Minister said that her,

“Brexit deal includes the deepest security partnership that has ever been agreed with the EU”.

This seems a very odd choice of words, since no such security partnership exists. The political declaration, in paragraphs 80 and following, sets out an ambition to have a broad, deep and comprehensive partnership with the European Union, but that is for negotiation. These paragraphs also make it clear that it will not be as good a partnership as we presently have with the other members of the European Union. Will the Leader of the House confirm that no such partnership exists; that the one we eventually have will be worse than we presently have; and that nobody who voted for Brexit voted for less security?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. The political declaration is a declaration of our intentions for our future relationship. It certainly sets out the intention to have the strongest and broadest security relationship between the UK and the EU. Our partnership and strength in these matters was shown in particular, for instance, in the strong language of the Council conclusions on Russia and its actions in Ukraine, which was very much led by the Prime Minister. We will continue to work very closely on our security relationship. Both sides are absolutely determined to make sure that it is the deepest relationship that exists between the EU and another country.

NATO Brussels Summit 2018

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Monday 16th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As the Statement made clear, there was and is a sense of urgency and renewed commitment to move towards spending 2% of GDP on defence by 2024. It is only fair to say that our European allies and Canada, for instance, added $41 billion to their defence spending in 2017 alone. That is a commitment and we are confident that countries have a sense of urgency. We will continue to meet our commitment and will encourage our allies to do the same.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. The Brussels declaration makes it clear that NATO’s posture on Russia continues to be defence and deterrence, on the one hand, and dialogue on the other. When the secretary-general was recently in London, he drew heavily on his own experience as Prime Minister of Norway and said something with which many of us agreed: namely, that defence and deterrence are insufficient alone and that dialogue is necessary. Indeed, the more difficult the relationship, the more dialogue there needs to be. So why do our Government seem content with their policy of having no high-level meetings with Russia? This leaves our NATO allies to conduct bilateral relations with Russia that involve, for example, Hungary, Italy, Greece or Turkey, where the Kremlin can count on a sympathetic ear and not, it appears, a robust voice, while the President of the United States said only today, quite clearly, that in his view the deterioration of US-Russia relations is a result of,

“many years of US foolishness and stupidity”.

All this undermines the integrity of the alliance and moves away from unity. Why do we not step up to the plate and engage in robust dialogue?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

As the noble Lord knows, NATO’s practical co-operation with Russia remains suspended but channels such as the NATO-Russia Council are an important means to keep dialogue open. He is right that we have suspended all planned high-level bilateral contacts with Russia, but we continue to engage with it multilaterally when it is in our interests to do so. It is in our mutual interests to reduce the risk of misunderstanding, miscalculation and unintended escalation. The Prime Minister has always been clear that our approach to Russia is “Engage, but beware”.

Exiting the EU

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid not. The UK’s current position implies two models of relationship: a standard free trade agreement for Great Britain with Northern Ireland remaining in the customs union and single market or membership of the EEA and a customs union. The Prime Minister has made clear that neither of these is acceptable or delivers on the referendum result. That is why we have put forward a comprehensive detailed plan, which we are now looking forward to discussing with our EU partners, to ensure that we can move these negotiations on at pace and deliver the best deal for the UK and the EU which all Members of this House, across this House, want to achieve.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government’s first duty is to protect the public, so we should be reassured that this Statement and, indeed, the Chequers agreement, apparently agreed that we would be seeking a far-reaching security partnership with the EU. Indeed, the Prime Minister has been seeking that since the Munich security conference, with a united Cabinet behind her. Since then, we have discovered from Federica Mogherini that we can have such a relationship in security but as a third party not as a partner. Secondly, we have discovered that when the EU is contracting it has put in a break clause that means that it can get out of contracts of the nature we would be seeking if the contractor is not an EU member, which effectively freezes British companies out of contracting for security contracts, and then we have the Galileo row. So we have an example of a Prime Minister with a united Cabinet behind her negotiating. What progress have we made in negotiating a deep and meaningful security agreement with the EU since the Munich security conference?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that we currently enjoy a high level of co-operation with EU member states. There is a challenge in finding a way through and our ability is currently being put at risk because, as he rightly says, the existing legal frameworks for third countries do not allow us to realise the ambitious future security partnership we are seeking. We are making these points with the EU. We are working very constructively with our EU partners. For instance, since the Salisbury incident we have led work with them to propose a package of measures to step up our communications against online disinformation, strengthen our capabilities against cybersecurity threats and further reduce the threat from hostile intelligence agencies. We have an excellent relationship in this area. The noble Lord is right that there are challenges, but we believe it is in both our interests to have a strong security partnership. We will continue to say that, and we believe that our EU partners agree. We will work through these current issues in order to make sure we achieve that end.

G7: Charlevoix, Quebec

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Monday 11th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for the repetition of the Prime Minister’s Statement, which contained a report that the G7 agreed to strengthen the power of the OPCW to attribute chemical attacks. The OPCW does not have such a power—another UN body did, but it was closed when the Russians exercised their veto to stop its mandate being renewed. So how does the G7 without Russia intend to give this power to any body in the United Nations? Is there any explanation? What did the Prime Minister actually agree to?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The communiqué agreed that we must maintain the global norms against the use of chemical weapons and there was agreement among leaders on the need to strengthen the ability—as the noble Lord pointed out, it is not there at the moment—of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to attribute responsibility for chemical weapons attacks. As he will be aware, there is a special conference of state parties later this month, which will be an important moment to demonstrate our determination to reinforce the Chemical Weapons Convention. We will, of course, be an active participant.

Salisbury Incident

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Browne of Ladyton

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to highlight the seriousness of the situation facing us. We obviously comply fully with all our obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and we will be working very closely with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to ensure that we try to prevent this happening again.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. I support entirely the Government’s robust response in these dreadful circumstances. On 29 September last year, President Putin declared that the Russian Federation had destroyed all its chemical stocks and chemical production facilities. It was congratulated by the then director-general of the OPCW on having done so. The logical conclusion that Russia has a production facility in contravention of international law exposes a serious flaw in the inspection and verification system of the international prohibition and nuclear weapons regime. This may not be an immediate priority, but soon will we not need to convene with our allies—at the very least a conference of experts—to look at how this international regime can be improved and, in particular, whether modern technology, of which there is much, can significantly improve our ability to inspect and verify countries that claim to be free of these dreadful weapons, when perhaps they are not?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that the international community, including ourselves, welcomed the OPCW statement in September 2017 on the complete destruction of Russia’s declared chemical weapons stockpile. It is important to clarify that these were declared weapons of the Russian state, which is exactly why the Prime Minister asked for an explanation of how the Novichok nerve agent came to be used in Salisbury last week. The noble Lord is absolutely right, as I said in a previous answer, that we made a national statement to the OPCW executive council and we will be talking to it about further actions we can take in the future.