Shipbuilding: Warships

Lord Garel-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I absolutely share the noble Baroness’s ambition for the prosperity of the UK shipbuilding sector. Future warship procurement will be restricted to UK-wide competition for reasons of national security. However, we think it right for other naval ships to be subject to open competition. This is not just because of the rules of the EU treaty. Of course, we hope that UK shipyards will be able to compete for those contracts, but they will win them only if they are internationally competitive. It is that competitiveness that will ultimately secure their prosperity, not only as suppliers in the UK context, but as potential exporters in the global marketplace.

[Lord Garel-Jones (Con)]

Will my noble friend tell the House what effect he thinks the recent announcement in the Budget of an extra £1 billion for the Ministry of Defence will have, not only on the building of complex warships in the United Kingdom, but on the wider operational activities of the Ministry of Defence?

[Earl Howe]

I am grateful to my noble friend. As the House will be aware, the Autumn Budget gave defence a further £1 billion between now and 2020, in addition to the £800 million of in-year support that we received earlier this year from the Treasury. We have not yet allocated precise sums to particular programmes, but there is no doubt that the additional funds represent a substantial boost for defence. It means that we will be able to modernise some key capability areas. Offensive cyber, anti-submarine warfare and protection of the deterrent are some good examples. Importantly, it also means that we do not have to make any cuts to the force structure or changes to our capability plans.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Garel-Jones Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garel-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I will concentrate my remarks on the upcoming referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. In the time available, I will make just two points: first, to try to explain why Britain is—and I think will continue to be—the awkward squad among our European partners; and secondly, why I believe that awkwardness is in not just Britain’s interests but the wider interests of the European Union.

Noble Lords will be well aware that in living memory most of our partners have had to rebuild their democracy, whether it was after the horrors of the Second World War, of Soviet Communist dictatorship or, in the case of Portugal and Spain, of long-standing authoritarian dictators. Part of the result of that is that for many of our European partners the Treaty of Rome enjoys what I would almost describe as a quasi-religious status. That is not the case in Great Britain. The truth is that during those terrible events, our democratic system was strengthened. The Labour Party supported Winston Churchill’s Government during the war and at the end of that war, when the Conservatives lost the election, they became the loyal Opposition to the Labour Government led by Clement Attlee. So we are entitled to look back with pride on the democratic institutions of our country during those difficult times.

But looking back is not necessarily the best way of coping with the future. This brings me to my second point: the challenge that the European Union faces, and always has faced, and why in Britain asking the awkward question is so useful. It must be said that the basic challenge that the European Union has faced from the outset is to find the right balance between those areas where the pooling of our respective sovereignties gives us added leverage and makes the European Union function better and areas where we risk undermining the undoubted benefits of nation states and everything that goes with them—a sense of belonging, a sense of social cohesion, and so on. This has not been met by the central part of Europe. If one looks around one finds that more and more decisions are taken centrally and more and more national Governments and national Parliaments have been sidelined. If there are any doubts about that, we need only look at the rest of Europe, where so-called patriotic parties are springing up all over the place. That is why Prime Minister Major in Maastricht introduced that admirable thing called subsidiarity, which in essence means that the centre should not take on any responsibilities or do anything that cannot be properly managed at nation state level.

Alas, that admirable principle has subsequently been neutered by something called the yellow card system. One of David Cameron’s achievements in his renegotiation has been to upgrade the yellow card to a red card, whereby if a majority of nation states raise the red card, the proposal is dead. I am pretty confident going forward that this will have a significant influence on the way in which national Parliaments and nations have an input into what is going on in the centre.

Time does not allow me to address the case being made by Brexit. It would be an exaggeration to say that I feel sympathy for its case, but it is based on those feelings of confidence and pride in our democracy that we all share. However, it does not follow that brave Blighty can navigate the difficult waters of the 21st century standing alone. I am afraid that Britannia no longer rules the waves and that Rule Britannia no longer applies.

Noble Lords will have followed Boris Johnson’s principled struggle to decide which side of the debate to join, so I will conclude by suggesting what he might have said to the Brexit campaign had he joined the remain campaign. I think he would have looked them straight in the face and said, “Rule Britannia? That’s history. Cool Britannia: that’s today”. Cool Britannia defends Britain’s values and interests in the largest trading bloc in the world and in international fora where decisions are taken every day that affect the daily lives of all of us. So, along with Boris Johnson, I would say, “Cool Britannia”.

Europe: Renegotiation

Lord Garel-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, mentioned the detail of my right honourable friend’s speech earlier today. He said:

“We now know that, at any one time, around 40% of all recent European Economic Area migrants are supported by the UK benefits system … with each family claiming on average around £6,000 a year of in-work benefits alone”.

On the noble Baroness’s other point, relating to the four-year restriction, I will read out the whole paragraph I have here, if the House allows. It says:

“Our objective is to better control migration from within the EU. There are obviously different ways in which we could achieve that. We … can do that by reducing the incentives offered by our welfare system”.

That is why we set out the proposal that you must contribute before you can claim. We understand that others across the European Union also have concerns about this. That is why we say to them: “Put forward alternative proposals that deliver the same results”. We are open to different ways of dealing with this issue, as long as we do just that and agree new measures that will reduce the numbers coming here.

[Lord Garel-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the disappointments of the last 10 or 15 years has been the way the principle of subsidiarity, which was supposed to ensure that nothing was done centrally that could be properly done by member states, has been undermined by a bureaucratic process known as the yellow card system? It is most encouraging to hear that the Prime Minister intends to try to revive this principle and bring it back to what it was supposed to do. I suggest that that could be done without bringing about a treaty change. It is perfectly possible for the Commission itself to extend autonomously the period of eight weeks, which is all that national parliaments are given at the moment to consider new proposals. It is also perfectly possible for it not just to extend the time but to say that it will regard the yellow card as a red card. If those two things could be achieved, it would really enhance the role of national parliaments in the legislative process.

Picking up the point made by the noble Baroness on proportionality, I think it is now the case that qualified majority voting is population-related. Therefore, to a large extent, proportionality has already been introduced into the system.

[The Earl of Courtown]

My noble friend, with his great knowledge of this subject, explained something to me there, for which I am most grateful. If I need to write to him, I will.