Lord Davies of Stamford
Main Page: Lord Davies of Stamford (Labour - Life peer)NATO Summit 2018
Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness in a debate of this kind. She is a very distinguished personage in this House. She was a very well appreciated Minister, whose departure was much regretted, and she joins the committee with every possible qualification. I say that as someone who has aspired to get on this committee ever since the committee was set up, or ever since I lobbied for its creation with many other noble colleagues on both sides of the House. It is good to see someone who is so obviously suitable nominated for it.
NATO is the bedrock, and has been for the last 70 years, of our security and therefore of our freedom and our prosperity. Unfortunately that has become a cliché, but it represents the reality, which should never be forgotten. It is sometimes said that the European Union has that role. I think it is very important to distinguish between the two.
The European Union has been immensely helpful in that regard—possibly decisively helpful—in at least three ways. The first is that the European Union has provided an element of dynamism in the economies of western Europe and, after transition, eastern Europe. Without viable economies, any form of any aspiration to security is hopeless by definition, before you start. That has been very important.
Secondly, by bringing together countries into joint organisations and institutions, and through joint decision-making processes, the European Union has defused the traditional nationalistic, often territorial disputes that have bedevilled our continent for centuries: Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig, Alto Adige/Südtirol—we can all name quite a few of them. Indeed, after transition at the end of communism in eastern Europe, there were a whole lot of these disputes which surfaced that could have caused violence but did not, largely because of the existence of the European Union, which those countries were joining or were about to join. One thinks of Transylvania, Vojvodina, Macedonia—there was very good news the other day on Macedonia. Certainly all these things could have caused violence very easily at the time of transition and did not do so. In fact, it was almost a controlled experiment. It was precisely in those areas that were not part of the European Union and were not at that time candidates to be part of the European Union—Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo—where the violence did indeed occur, as has already been referred to. That has been an enormously useful role for the European Union in this respect.
The third point is that the EU forms a bridge, bringing the four neutral countries in Europe—the Republic of Ireland, Finland, Sweden and Austria—into close organic collaboration with NATO members in the same area, and that is terribly important. One example which covers those two latter points is the Republic of Ireland and ourselves. I remember having a very long lunch with that wonderful man Dr Garret FitzGerald, whom many in the House will have known. He was a very great Taoiseach who signed the Anglo-Irish agreement with Margaret Thatcher. He was a man of great wisdom and learning and of great humanity and great civilisation. I remember him telling me that he thought it inconceivable that we could have achieved such a good relationship between Ireland and this country, as we have done over the last 20 or 30 years, if it were not for the fact that we were both members of the European Union and equal in that respect, and that we needed to do business together on a daily basis in that context. That was true of many of the relationships in Europe—they were transformed by the existence of the European Union. So let nobody ever say that the European Union has been irrelevant to security in Europe. It has not; it has been vital.
Nevertheless, the Atlantic alliance is an extraordinary and unprecedented structure. It is completely unique and central in bringing with it the American nuclear deterrent in the defence of Europe, and for that we must remain enormously grateful. As long as that freedom and stability remain, we must be grateful for the American initiative in setting it up. Every man and woman in Europe should feel a sense of reverence and gratitude, and they should bring up their children also to feel a sense of reverence and gratitude, to the statesmen who brought about NATO. In our case, it was Attlee and Bevin. The statesmen on the continent who did the same included Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer, although the Germans were not among the first members. There was also Alcide De Gasperi in Italy. Those are all great names, and we should all feel strongly about them, but we should all be grateful to President Truman and his close collaborators, Dean Acheson and George Marshall. Without them, it would never have happened.
It was, of course, a bipartisan decision, so we should not leave out another name which is often not mentioned. Senator Vandenberg, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, provided vital support to Truman and enabled him to get through the three essential legislative programmes of the Truman doctrine and the Marshall aid that went with it, the creation of NATO, and the signing and ratification of the Washington treaty. That has transformed the history of this part of the world over the last 70 years and we must be ever conscious of it.
A successful alliance like that can work only—this is common sense; it is the lesson of all human history—on the basis of certain shared values, an agreed agenda, good will between the various parties, and a desire not to shock or isolate anybody or to destabilise the organisation which everybody depends upon. Therefore, there is a need for lots of good will, and we have had that over the last 70 years. Of course there have been moments when there have been disagreements and problems have had to be ironed out. One thinks of the offset payments dispute in the 1960s, which happily was eventually resolved, and the great doctrinal controversy between the adherents to massive retaliation doctrine and the supporters of a flexible response. However, we have got through those problems.
We have faced some major challenges. One thinks of Berlin in 1961 and Cuba in 1962. I am old enough to remember that. I was at school at the time and remember it all too well. I remember the tension and the enormous sense of relief, wonder and excitement when it appeared that the Soviet ships were turning back from Cuba. It was a transformation and a wonderful moment for us all. That was due to John F Kennedy and the wonderful people around him. I remember buying as soon as they came out the books by Sorensen and Schlesinger which described the whole crisis. They brought out the great qualities of those involved. Another book by David Halberstam described them as the brightest and the best. We owe them an enormous debt to this day.
We also owe an enormous debt to Reagan. Again, it is a pleasure to mention a Republican. This has been a bipartisan policy on the part of the United States. Reagan was the man who finally won the Cold War—and what a wonderful job he did for humanity in doing that. Now at risk are those qualities on which any successful alliance, such as the Atlantic alliance, depends. For the first time we have a President of the United States who does not appear to want to maintain stability within a friendship with his allies and who does not appear to believe in consultation—within Washington, let alone with his other allies—before he suddenly announces new policies, or reversals of policies. The other day he tore up a very important agreement: the agreement with Iran. It had been jointly negotiated with the European allies, so we had a right to know that the United States was going to turn its back on that agreement, but we did not know. It came as a surprise as much to us as to anybody else. So it was a double shock, if you like, and a double challenge to the civility of the world, America rejecting and tearing up a solemnly negotiated and sincerely signed treaty at the time, and with a complete lack of consultation. Trump has made statements throwing doubt even on Article 5 and suggesting that it is actually a contingent obligation, not an absolute one. That is very frightening and very disturbing to us, but no doubt very encouraging and exciting to Mr Putin, a man whose name has been mentioned, quite rightly, many times in the debate this afternoon.
What are we to do in these circumstances? What is the solution? I did not always agree with Margaret Thatcher, but one thing she said that I admired was never to bring her a problem without a solution. So what are we going to do about all this? There are several things that we should do. First, we should not leave the European Union. This is not the moment to leave the European Union; it is a moment of considerable uncertainty and danger. We should be at the heart of both the EU and NATO. We should be the nexus that joins them together. We should be exerting the greatest possible influence on everybody concerned in those two institutions in trying to hold them all together. We will not be able to do that if we walk out the door. That is a great mistake.
Secondly, as many have said on both sides of the House, we must, of course, respect the 2% spending limit—it would be fatal if we did not—and I hope that we can go well beyond that. There, again, is an issue about the EU, because leaving the EU will cost us a lot of money. The Government have been mendaciously talking about Brexit dividends. In fact, the Office for Budget Responsibility, no less, on which the Government depend for their own statistics, has come back and said clearly that there is not going to be a dividend; there is going to be a penalty, because the loss of potential tax revenues as a result of our leaving the EU is going to be much greater than the net contribution that we currently make. We will find ourselves under greater financial pressure with, of course, the National Health Service, social care and so forth all making their claims—and quite rightly so. So it was completely foolish to do that.
The third thing we need to do is to make it absolutely clear that, if Mr Trump wants to proceed on the basis of bullying, we will not be bullied. It would be a great mistake for the United States to try to bully allies and, for example, as is happening at the present time, demanding all sorts of trade changes by these bullying methods. We must not accept that. If Mr Trump wants a trade war, I am afraid we are going to have to respond in kind. It is a great mistake to give in to bullies because you will encourage them. Instead of having a structure bringing together friends and allies, we will have a structure that contains a bully and the victims of bullying. That is not a nice prospect for the next 70 years.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I am most grateful to the noble Lord. I have to correct him: the Ministry of Defence, in which I then served, did think very long about this. I was very much in favour of adopting the catapult approach to carriers so that we could be interoperable with the Americans and the French. I am sorry to say that I lost that battle, but the argument was certainly had and went on for a very long time.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank the noble Lord. I think that that might strengthen my point.
The Prime Minister has declared the objective of a deep and special partnership in foreign policy and security, as well as in trade, with the European Union after we leave, which is to be formalised in the treaty. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, whether she can tell us a little more about that, since the Prime Minister has given us only the heading and not yet any of the detail of what this rather important—indeed, fundamental —aspect of British foreign and defence policy might be. The Prime Minister was undermined yet again by the Foreign Secretary when he referred to European Governments last week as the enemy, when she is, after all, talking about them as our closest partners.
The debate about whether we are in the top tier or not is, in a sense, yet again about whether we think we are superior to the French and the Germans, out there in the Pacific Ocean going back east of Suez, or whether we accept that we are, as the Duncan Sandys report suggested very nearly 60 years ago, a leading power of the second rank. When the report came out in the 1960s, the Daily Mail attacked all the members of the committee for suggesting that Britain was not a global power. We have not changed since then. I spent last summer looking back at some of the things that Jo Grimond—the leader of the Liberal Party when I joined—had written in the late 1950s about Britain’s place in the world. He said that the whole idea that we had to stay east of Suez, that the Commonwealth was a long-term continuing asset, and that we were separate from Europe and should stay out of European integration was a mistake. That could almost be written again today, because we are still stuck in this endless argument about how special we are. Indeed, the Henry Jackson Society’s briefing for today’s debate suggested that being able to project power to the Indo-Pacific region was key to Britain’s future. One of the reasons why the Wilson Government reluctantly decided to retreat from east of Suez was that the cost of maintaining naval forces east of Singapore, or even east of Aden, was such that it was more than we could bear. The Foreign Secretary has again boasted that we are returning east of Suez. The cost of that and the extent to which it will overstrain our limited capabilities seem enormous.
Lastly, I wish to warn everyone that if we are talking about spending more on defence we have to realise what this means for the British economy. It is now growing more slowly than it has for several years. It is likely, as we leave the European Union, to grow even more slowly, which means that tax revenue will not increase. There are those, such as Liz Truss, who said two days ago that we should not contemplate tax increases. Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Mail today is quoted as saying that he does not think there should be any tax increases to provide more money for health.
If we are going to give a lot more money to defence, we have to raise taxes or cut expenditure elsewhere. We have cut local authority spending by nearly 40% over the past few years. I see when I walk around Bradford how much that has damaged local communities. We have cut spending on prisons and probation by 40%. We have cut spending on the police by a third. If you are saying we should cut into some of those issues more deeply in order to be able to fund defence, then I suspect you are not going to get any more money for defence unless you are prepared to argue for a higher level of taxation. Let us therefore be realistic and recognise that we are now in a hard place as we leave the European Union, and we have to cut our coat and our global aspirations according to the limited cloth we have.