European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Campbell of Pittenweem and Lord Stirrup

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 12. The issues which it raises are of crucial importance to a post-Brexit UK, but they have only recently begun to achieve any prominence in the Westminster debate and have had very little visibility at all on the wider national stage.

EU Sub-Committee C of your Lordships’ House has recently concluded an inquiry into sanctions policy after Brexit and is currently conducting an inquiry into the UK’s future relationship with the European Union in the fields of security and defence. In both cases, the Government have expressed an intention to act in close concert with our European partners—the Government; not the movers of this amendment—but they have not so far explained how this is to be done.

There are some very clear difficulties. The EU’s policy regarding specific sanctions regimes and its common security and defence policy are agreed at ministerial level within the Foreign Affairs Council. However, the arguments through which final proposals are hammered out take place at lower levels, in the engine rooms of the EU. If one is not present in the engine rooms, one has no influence over the formulation of policy proposals. This means that if the UK wishes, post Brexit, to act in concert with the EU in particular sanctions matters, or if it wishes to participate in common security and defence missions—for both of which it has expressed some enthusiasm—it risks having to do so on the EU’s terms. It would have to do so having had no input to the formulation of policy, and with little or no input to subsequent strategic direction. This is not a position with which I, for one, would feel very comfortable.

The question, therefore, is: what arrangement can the UK reach with the EU that would allow it a suitable degree of influence in these matters? Why should the EU be interested in such an arrangement at all? Perhaps because in those areas in particular, the UK brings capabilities which, in scale and nature, are of an order that few, if any, other European countries possess. However, that does not alter the fact that a non-EU member is unlikely to be given the kind of locus in decision-making that is available to a member. The position of current non-members that align with the EU in these matters is not one that, in my view, would be appropriate for the UK. We need to argue for a separate, tailored arrangement.

Sanctions policy and common security and defence missions are, of course, offshoots of wider foreign policy. If we wish to have a close relationship with the EU in these specific areas, then we will need some mechanism for discussing and agreeing with it in advance the wider international issues and objectives involved. We need an architecture that brings the UK and the EU together to formulate foreign policy in pursuit of shared objectives, and that places UK personnel in those engine rooms of the Union where the specific proposals on individual issues are debated and evolve. We need to agree a modus vivendi for these people that protects the status of EU members while providing for outcomes that are in the best interests of the Union and ourselves. That is a very tall order, and all the more reason, then, for pursuing such an outcome much more vigorously and urgently than has been the case so far.

Amendment 12, and indeed several associated amendments, calls for such arrangements to be not just negotiated but approved by both Houses of Parliament before the provisions of the current Bill are implemented. I do not go so far: I do not believe that the amendments as set out should be agreed. However, I do believe that they provide welcome exposure to issues that are of crucial importance to this nation, that have been largely ignored for far too long and that should at last be accorded the priority they deserve. I hope that the Government will now act accordingly.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, who speaks with great clarity and directness.

It may surprise the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, when I say that I have some sympathy for her in putting forward the notion that the European Union has not really paid up sufficiently for its defence. One of the so-called advantages of President Trump’s arrival and his apparent dismissal of NATO has been to cause a much greater degree of realism. The old arguments about burden sharing now take a very practical effect, and NATO countries have agreed on a minimum of 2% of GDP. As far as I can see, all NATO countries are now moving, as far as they can and as quickly as they are able, towards reaching that level.

I support the amendment moved so ably by my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I have one advantage over him—as indeed does the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. We were both present at the Munich Security Conference and heard how the speech was delivered, as much as understanding the content. It was an interesting speech in this sense. The first half was exemplary. The Prime Minister extolled the virtues of the existing security arrangements in Europe and rightly pointed to her role in continuing to ensure that the United Kingdom remained a participant in the application of the European arrest warrant and an active member of Europol when, on the Back Benches of the other place while she was Home Secretary, quite a lot of people in her own party would have departed from both these positions without a backward thought.

Munich is regarded, perhaps over-grandly, as the Davos of defence, and there is no doubt that the Prime Minister’s speech got pretty substantial billing. That is why I and many others found the second half so disappointing, provoking as it did an American listener—whom I believe to have had Republican sympathies—to say, “Where’s the beef?”. The truth is that the Prime Minister had nothing of substance to say in addition to the paper that was published by the Government last September.

There was no hectoring from the Prime Minister, but there was certainly a degree of lecturing. In a sense, what she said can be summed up as: the security regime of the European Union is extremely good, but we are leaving it, we want you to help us replace it with a treaty, and, if you do not agree to what we want—and here is the lecturing to which I referred—you will bear the responsibility. That is hardly the way to win friends and influence people in a gathering of experts and people with enormous experience in the realms of security and defence.

There was one element of the Prime Minister’s speech that has not, so far, received sufficient consideration. She said that,

“when participating in EU agencies the UK will respect the remit of the European Court of Justice”.

I thought that the whole purpose of Brexit was to have nothing to do with the European Court of Justice. If that is not now the Government’s position, it might be argued that the door of the ECJ has been opened, if only slightly. Perhaps it was too Delphic a sentence to attach much significance to, but it has not been the subject of further explanation.

As has already been hinted at, the consequence of leaving is that the United Kingdom will become, in European Union terms, a third country. That is relevant to the issue of participation in Europol and the European arrest warrant. It raises a number of questions—some of which are being legally disputed—about whether or not the kind of arrangement the Government appear to wish to achieve would necessarily involve the role of the European Court of Justice. There are strong arguments on both sides, but the matter remains uncertain.

Before I move on to the question of defence, perhaps I may make one last point on security. Everything in these debates seems to end up around Ireland in some way or another. Ireland is a foreign policy issue because the treaty is an international treaty lodged with the United Nations—and it is also an issue to which we must have regard in considering the question of security. As I understand it, the Government are considering the creation of a virtual border based on electronic means. At the same time, they are telling us that cybercrime is on the rise and is one of the principal issues which may have an impact on our security. If people can get inside the computer system of the Pentagon, I doubt they will find it too difficult to get inside any electronic border that we may create between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

On defence, it is quite true—unassailable—that NATO is the bedrock of our defence. But it is also true that in NATO and the European Union there is a more considered determination to provide much more co-operation. The two institutions had their head offices at the same time in Brussels and for years they would not speak to each other. Now, at the very centre of the policies of NATO and the European Union is a determination that there should be a higher degree of co-operation.

There has been discussion about the common defence and security policy but, although it now becomes an important element in the consideration of these matters, no one has yet mentioned PESCO. This is not a junior form of a place where you can buy your groceries but—I have reservations about the language—Permanent Structured Cooperation. Essentially, it is the countries of the European Union concentrating on co-operation on defence matters so as to ensure that collectively they might make a more substantial contribution to NATO. We are not members of PESCO—recently formed—and if we leave the European Union we will cease to be present at meetings of EU Defence Ministers and Foreign Ministers. We will no longer be involved in the decision making of the common defence and security policy. As a third party, our participation in operations will be at the discretion of the other member states. I see that as a highly deficient alternative to what we presently enjoy.

The security and defence consequences of our departure, as has been pointed out, were never properly discussed—any more than the political consequences. But this evening we are concerned with security and defence and there needs to be clarity. If the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, had any responsibility for it, I am sure that we would have clarity. The reason there is no clarity is that no decisions have been made. That is why, when the Prime Minister at Munich said that this was an urgent matter and we must get on with it, it did not receive the kind of ready welcome she might have expected.

The amendment is essential if we are to cause—to force, if you like—the Government to come clean on what their proposals are: to go beyond the document published last September and to set them out in detail. It is a matter on which the European Union is anxious to have detail and I see no reason why it should not be public rather than private. That is what the amendment is designed to achieve and why it should be supported.