Antarctica: Centenary of Scott Expedition

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. I am particularly keen on thanking her because she has brought to their feet a great many women Peers. She will know very well that, for a long time, Antarctica was a territory forbidden to women. This country had a very bad reputation in that respect; it is doing better than it did; but it is not nearly good enough. The Americans have a ratio of about 60 men to 40 women on their bases. Our record is nothing like as good. The leadership of the noble Baroness is much to be welcomed.

I rise with unusual diffidence because I am fully aware that I am talking about a subject which most noble Lords know far more about than I do. When I tell them that there are actually two Antarcticas—an east and a west—they will tell me that I am teaching them to suck eggs, which is perfectly true, but that distinction is very important. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, brought it out when he talked about the ice cores being brought up. The extraordinary fact is that at the bottom of one of them was ice which was formed by snow that had fallen 800,000 years ago. I find one detail even more exciting than that: trapped in that ice was air from about 800,000 years ago, long before any of us was ever thought of.

The whole point is that East Antarctica represents our past; West Antarctica represents our future. If I may burden your Lordships, I recommend to you all reading a marvellous new book written by an Englishwoman called Gabrielle Walker. It is simply entitled Antarctica. It is 350 pages long; I have another 30 pages to read. It is brilliant. Anyone who reads the penultimate chapter alone will take seriously the question of human responsibility for our future as being reflected in the developments in West Antarctica.

I have been very fortunate. I have been down to Antarctica five times. I regret to have to tell your Lordships that that has made me a bit of a snob. I do not regard people who have gone down in a 20,000 tonne cruise ship and got off at the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula as having visited the Antarctic; they have just had an opportunity for a few nice photographs. Just crossing the Antarctic convergence is not enough for me; to do it, you have to cross the Antarctic Circle, which is quite a difficult thing to do, as anyone who knows the map of Antarctica will confirm.

I never got to the pole, I got as far as 78 degrees, 35 minutes and a few seconds south. I am very ambitious—I hope to persuade the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, also to be ambitious—to go again and go further south. All the business about 20,000 people a year visiting Antarctica is in my view complete and absolute rubbish.

I was also fortunate in that I completed a circumnavigation of Antarctica in two halves. I now come to my constructive point. I have been very fortunate to visit several emperor penguin colonies. That is not easy. You have to go on an icebreaker, and there are not any around any more making that trip. I seriously suggest to the Government that they set up a programme for secondary school children of a suitable sort to visit Antarctica and have the opportunity to go on a small icebreaker so that they can get through the outer ice, the lees and then the ice on the fringes of the continent itself. Then they can see for themselves the magic of emperor penguin colonies.

Lastly, I want a firm assurance that the Government will support the Antarctic treaty whenever it comes up for renewal.

Falkland Islands

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend makes a very acute historical point that many of the inhabitants of almost every country on earth are settlers; one thinks, not least, of the United States. I believe that the ancestors of many here were also settlers. Indeed, I often hear divisions between the arriviste Norman settlers who came in in 1066 and those who were here already, so my noble friend makes a very good point. However, I do not intend to pursue it with the Argentine ambassador. I have had the opportunity to meet her and I believe that the view that we should express in this country is not one of tit for tat but a dignified intention that the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands people must be preserved, that we wish Argentina well, and that we would like an end to this distracting quarrel and the restoration of the co-operation and links which we once had with the Argentine.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, it will be within your Lordships’ knowledge that unfortunately down the years we have not always enjoyed the full support of our American friends with respect to matters relating to the Falklands. The situation is slightly different now. If the reports are accurate, the present American Secretary of State is so disturbed at the irrationality of some of the decisions being made by the Argentine President on a whole range of subjects, a lot of which have nothing whatever to do with the Falkland Islands, that there may well be a change in American attitudes to the situation down there. Therefore, I press on the Minister the desirability of inviting our American friends to give their full support to this referendum and say that it demonstrates that democracy works.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

We shall certainly seek to follow that advice. The noble Lord is absolutely right: there are big changes in the region. Not least is that, with the revolution in world gas discoveries and developments, Argentina in due course could be a major beneficiary and have huge reserves of shale gas. This ought to be of benefit to the Argentinian people. That is the path they should follow rather than distracting themselves with complaints and aggression against the Falkland Islands.

Syria

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right that the Christian position is important. All along, we have heard suggestions that while the Christians may find repulsive what the Assad regime is doing, they also fear alternative regimes. Instability might jeopardise their position even further, so they are definitely an important part in the jigsaw of possible pressures in the future. I think that is as much as I can say.

As far as direct contact is concerned, I am not in a position to say exactly what contacts HMG have had with the Christian minorities. We have encouraged all of the Syrian opposition groups to reach out to minority communities and maintain a clear commitment to a peaceful, non-sectarian approach. We have insisted that they reassure all Syrians that they are working towards a Syrian state which is inclusive, representative and respectful of the ethnic and religious minorities. That is the line we have consistently taken but I cannot really promise that it will be an absolutely guaranteed condition in a situation where bloodshed, hatred and violence are prevailing on all sides. However, it is a matter very much in our minds. Another part of the jigsaw, which the right reverend Prelate rightly raises, is that the Christians in turn could have some kind of contact and dialogue with the Russians to persuade them that the situation requires a more unified approach. That is a possibility but I do not think I can put any more flesh on these ideas at the moment.

[Lord Gilbert]

While I agree entirely with the Minister that Iran forms an important part of this problem, I disagree with him entirely that that is a reason for it not to be at a conference. I thought there was every reason for the Iranians to be at a conference to let them hear what other people think of their attitude and behaviour, and to make it clear to them that it is in their best interests to get the situation solved and to stop supplying arms to the Syrian Government if they are doing so. It seems to me that the Government’s logic is upside down on this.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Well, my Lords, I am not sure that I agree with the noble Lord. His views are usually very challenging and make one see things a different way, but in this case he is asking for the inclusion of a power that is actively concerned to delay and screw up—if I may use the vernacular—conferences and talks and to promote violence and is continuing to supply arms direct to the Syrian regime. It does not seem as if that would be a very good voice to have at the table at a time when we are trying to persuade other nations, such as our Russian friends, to realise the vital need for a unified approach to close off the loopholes. I understand the psychology of what he is saying—that perhaps it could work the other way around—but the best guess for the moment must be that to have the Iranians at the table and welcomed at any new conference would be a guarantee that it would produce nothing whatever.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Wood of Anfield on taking up his new responsibilities, on which he made a very distinguished “maiden speech”. I sincerely hope that we will hear more from him in the future, as our debates will be enriched by his contributions.

I wish to tackle only two issues, one of which I have not talked about before in your Lordships’ House. International terrorism constitutes a threat to all of us. It is a threat to Shi’ites, Muslims, Pakistanis, Arabs, Mr Putin and to every civilised country. So far as I know, outside South America it has spread almost everywhere. However, I am concerned that up to now I have seen no concerted attempt on the part of international Governments to take on this threat. We spend a huge amount of money on physical protection at our airports and that sort of thing and on making sure that we can deal with any suicide terrorists—it is the suicide terrorists that I am talking about—before they detonate their weapons, but we do nothing to prevent their being poisoned into believing that suicide terrorist acts are worthy things to do. These terrorists are not just indifferent to death; they actually welcome it because they are taught to do so by some very evil men. I do not for a moment think—I am sure that neither do your Lordships—that all mullahs are tainted in this way but quite a lot of them are. It is high time that we organised the international community to tackle this issue. I hope that this Government will take a lead in letting the world know precisely who are the mullahs responsible for indoctrinating young men and women into the belief that suicide terrorism is an admirable thing that will produce material rewards for them and their families. It is up to us as an international community to try to silence them by whatever means necessary—I would not be too squeamish about that myself—and I do not see any sign of it. We should also make sure that the message they put out is countered by the whole international civilised community.

The other matter that I want briefly to talk about is aeroplanes—the C-17—which should not surprise those noble Lords who have heard me speak before on defence matters. A couple of days ago, the Minister teased me, quite fairly, about the A400M. I am quite happy to be teased by him about that, but he should do so on the right grounds. I have no objection whatever to the A400M in terms of its capability; I am just absolutely convinced that it is not the plane that this country needs and, much worse, if we have it, we will lose the C-130 and our interoperability over a whole range of air transport capabilities, as he knows.

More importantly, I want to draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that the C-17 is a remarkably capable aircraft that is now being run by Australia, Canada, India and this country—to say nothing of the United States. It is a remarkable plane, in that it has an excellent short-field capability and can get into airports that are quite inaccessible in mountain areas. It has a very good turning capability on the ground, and is also good at handling non-tarmac runways. All in all, it is a piece of kit that would go down extremely well in international aid missions.

I have said privately to Ministers in the past—and I am now saying it publicly—that they should talk to our Commonwealth friends to see if we can get a group together, consisting of all the countries I mentioned that fly the C-17, including Australia, India, ourselves and Canada. It is admirably available for dealing with natural catastrophes, and we are shortly about to acquire our eighth C-17. I think the last one is being delivered in response to what the noble Lord, Lord King, talked about earlier, regarding whether or not we would be able to get all the kit that we want out of Afghanistan. I am delighted that we are acquiring the plane for that. If we get the kit out by C-17, there is nothing that the Pakistanis could do about it, even if they wanted to. That is a wholly admirable development.

I suggest that the Minister holds talks with the countries that I have named. Although I have not counted them, they cover many degrees of longitude on this planet and, for that matter—with Australia in the southern hemisphere—many degrees of latitude. That is the footprint of where these planes are based. Not only are they enormously valuable in themselves, they are extremely well placed to run international aid missions after catastrophes. I very much hope that the Minister can tell the House that he would be prepared to talk to his colleagues in other Commonwealth countries to see if we can set up a proper group based on the C-17 to engage in that sort of activity.

EU: Recent Developments

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Thursday 16th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

He is a Dutchman; that is why.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The eurozone has proved that a single currency cannot work without fiscal and political union. A lot of people have pointed that out this afternoon.

This debate is about developments in the European Union. So far we have heard about great issues, but all sorts of things are going on all the time in the European Union, many of which affect ordinary people in this country. For example, the Solvency II capital rules, which I believe are now being agreed, will cost the British financial industry £600 billion, according to JP Morgan. They will cause massive damage to the United Kingdom’s pensions industry and will virtually kill off the last vestiges of final salary schemes. That will hurt ordinary British people. We should take note of that.

Then there is the proposal to make mortgages in default after 90 days in arrears, which conflicts with the Government’s own policy of helping people, quite rightly, to hang on to their homes when they are in financial difficulty. Then there is the demand for another £9 billion to meet the additional commitments in the present financial round, which will cost the United Kingdom £1 billion. That is extra to the £10.3 billion that we have already committed and money that we do not have. We will have to borrow £1 billion more. Only on Tuesday, the EU Commission announced that 12 member states, including the United Kingdom, are suffering from severe economic imbalances leading to economic shocks and that they will be placed under stringent observation so that they do not compromise the stability of the EU.

That dictatorial language and action is now commonplace in the EU. The treatment and humiliation of Greece by the EU is alarming, disgraceful and completely undemocratic. Furthermore, the Greeks have had the right to govern themselves taken away and the leaders of the Government are unelected Prime Ministers. The political parties now have to guarantee that they will put into place measures that will hurt ordinary Greeks in a manner that is totally unacceptable in anything other than a third world country. That is in advance of what will be done.

Some of us predicted that eventually there would be fighting in the streets in the European Union or Common Market. We now have it. We have fighting in the streets not only in Greece but in other countries as well—

Iran

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Afshar]

My Lords—

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, should we not all calm down a little about this? The Iranians think that they have total justification for possessing nuclear weapons. For the life of me, I cannot see any case against their having a nuclear weapon. Who on earth are they going to use it against? If anyone says Israel, you cannot imagine a more suicidal act for a country to perform than to launch a nuclear weapon against Israel. That would mean the total incineration of Iran. We ought to realise that with the Iranians we are dealing with people who deal in braggadocio, who say things they do not mean that sound great on television for local consumption. We should calm down—let them get on with it and waste their money.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Lord is pointing to what one would regard as a certain reality: people should not behave in a suicidal fashion. One hopes that he is right. Similarly, one hopes that what might be called black swan events and catastrophes do not suddenly develop, almost accidentally, out of the situation. The fact remains that it is very dangerous. The proliferation of nuclear weapons would not stop at Iran if it goes full tilt in that direction. There have been indications from a leading Saudi spokesman in the past few days that, should this kind of development occur, Saudi Arabia would have to consider its position on nuclear weapons, and proliferation would proceed. The noble Lord says that proliferation does not matter because somehow mutually assured destruction and mutual deterrents will prevail. He could be right but he could be disastrously wrong.

Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for 2010-11

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, I start by joining everyone else in thanking the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, who not only introduced a very important report but did so in a way that I thought was very valuable in clarifying the critical issues in that report. Like him, I welcome the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, to whom I must apologise. I got locked in as the Vote was being declared in the Chamber and consequently missed what I hope was no more than a few seconds of his informative and important speech.

In thanking the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, I want to say that I was strongly impressed by what he had to say about the reform of the committee and about the proposals that are likely to appear in the Green Paper—an issue to which my noble friend Lord Foulkes also referred. I am quite sure that my noble friend Lord Foulkes is right about political balance, but I accept the argument that the future disposition of the committee and the way in which it works is a matter that still falls to be discussed on another occasion.

I agree with the noble Marquess about the role of redactions—they are plainly necessary, so we might as well be candid in saying that—and I agree strongly that the character of the changing risks that we face may well suggest the need for the recreation of a single account in order to be able to act with the appropriate flexibility.

I agree strongly with the notion of oversight of operational matters and of material of public concern that is in the national interest, and I can completely see that that could be formalised on a statutory footing by the Government. On behalf of the Opposition, I indicate my strong support for those propositions.

The noble Marquess must be right in what he says about the committee’s resources. The committee must have the capacity to generate information and to be able to analyse information on its own account.

Both the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and the noble Lord, Lord Butler, made the point that there is a strong case for the provision, under parliamentary rubric, of a presumption that foreign intelligence should remain closed in court procedures unless there is another reason. Unless we are going to abandon that whole approach, we must surely take that step, which is the only rational step that achieves that outcome.

My noble friend Lord Foulkes, in describing the importance of this overall area, said that he would welcome broader discussions on the Floor of the Chamber. There must be good sense in that.

The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, drew attention to cyberattacks. I will come back to that more substantially in a moment because he made some very important points. However, I was intrigued by his argument, for which there may well be compelling evidence, that as changes take place in Europe more generally—and certainly within the EU—there will need to be careful consideration of whether new kinds of threats are emerging as a result. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see how fast these issues emerge on the agenda of the principal think-tanks over this next period.

The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, made the point, which I think has just been echoed by the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, about the international character of the work of the intelligence agencies. I share that view completely. In the contemporary circumstances, it is almost impossible to imagine working other than with those who have shared interests. There is too big a hill to climb under any other circumstances.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and others, including the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, we strongly support the creation of a parliamentary committee as the natural successor to the committee’s work over a long period.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, provided an exceptional forensic description of the new architecture, and I appreciated that a good deal. In the course of his speech, he made the point about the JIC potentially fading away. Perhaps I can address that point in a little more detail. First, Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s committee has produced an illuminating report that is of great use to all of us. He does not specifically mention the work of the staff of the intelligence agencies, but when you look at the overall substance of the report, you can identify the value of that unsung part of our work permeating throughout it. I share that appreciation and want to record the fact.

The report is couched, like so many that we produce and see, in typically diplomatic language. None the less, it is very sharp on all the main issues. However, I fear that the Government’s response is much less sharp, rather less focused and can be frustrating to read. I say this out of an interest and pride in, and a concern for, our national interest in this. There is no party politics in this point as far as I am concerned. I fear that it is of no use to deal simply with the main observations and proposals by thanking the committee for all its work and saying that you agree with all of it when the following text gives no detail of what that agreement might mean. I do not say this to be disobliging but the Government cannot argue that important parts of their response can be put in those terms without any apparent need to say what they intend to do about some of those key issues. I would have welcomed much more detail within the restrictions of dealing with secret intelligence.

May I just identify a few of the things that fall under that rubric and where I should like to see a more detailed, and perhaps more penetrating, response from the Government? The first is the issue that the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and the noble Lords, Lord Alderdice and Lord Butler, have all mentioned: the provision of a suitable cadre of internet specialists. The noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, rightly mentioned that 18 bodies seemed to be involved in this and that there is at least a risk of a lack of co-ordination among so many of them. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that the attributes of many of the specialists are curious in the general spectrum of government service. I well remember, on one occasion as a Minister, talking to a young guy who collided with me on his skateboard in the office. Neither of us was seriously injured; I am bringing no claims against anybody for injury at work. However, it was certainly unusual. I completely subscribe to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that many of these interesting and obsessive characters do it out of sheer love of diving into the nitty-gritty of all these processes.

The Government’s view of the possible need for a suitable cadre of internet specialists appears in their response to proposal E. It is essentially that we will somehow find a significant number of people who will emerge and train those we need. I will be candid: I do not expect to see it and I do not believe it. Interestingly, in recommendation K, shortly after the Government have made the point that they will produce these people by exposing them to the available suitable trainers, they also say that they will improve value for money from their work. I am keen to know how we will do these things and how many people we think we can recruit to these roles. Will the departments compete, as the Government’s response suggests, or, as under recommendation K, will they not compete because this is a time for non-competitive recruitment? Both proposals appear within two or three recommendations of each other. How on earth will we do these things? I do not ask this to be objectionable. If we all agree that it is that important, I am just eager to know how on earth we will do it. What do we think we need to do to reach any kind of milestone in that area?

I turn to recommendation F, about GCHQ’s accommodation strategy, which is described in the report as having been “haphazard in the past” and inflexible for the future, with no long-term sensible strategy. The Government’s response to that is that the haphazard character of the strategy will broadly be overcome. It is not clear how, because all the means of overcoming it seem to be dependent on others, including SIA. I am not sure that that is a strategy at all. How precisely will the Government overcome the criticism that the report levels and what is their plan for doing so?

I turn to the Government’s response to recommendation I, on the need to respond effectively to increased threats in Northern Ireland—incidentally, I do not for a second think that the Government do not take these threats seriously; quite the contrary, I do not know of any Government who in recent times have not taken the issue completely seriously. The committee states that,

“further sustained effort will be required”.

The Government agree, but how is that to be achieved? What consolidation of effort do the Government have in mind? Will there be additional resources or is it suggested that existing resources will be redirected? What, broadly—and without providing any sensitive information to those who would take unfair or wrong advantage—is the plan for doing that? What is even the shadow of the plan that we might have a look at?

I want to focus above all on the committee’s concern, which the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has also dissected for us with great clarity, to avoid duplication, overlap and the consequent lack of focus, those matters which are covered broadly in section 5, but which come up time and again in the report as a whole. They are dealt with in recommendation N, on prioritisation and allocation of effort; in recommendation O, on the creation of the national security adviser post; in recommendation P, on overlaps in remit and duplication; in recommendation S, on the effective co-ordination of it all; and in recommendation T, on the strategic tasking directive not being satisfactory.

The noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord Hennessy, have both discussed that this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said that we need to address a new reality, which I am sure is quite right. However, the Government’s response is essentially an assertion that there will be prioritisation, that the roles will not overlap, that the national security adviser post will co-ordinate the work of the JIC, and that the requirements and priorities in process and the strategic direction of the National Security Council will all somehow be addressed without confusion in the midst of this quite complicated architecture. All those things are at least implied by the Government’s response to recommendation O.

In response to recommendation P, there is a list of the primary responsibilities of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism. It is said that they are not the responsibilities of the National Security Secretariat, in respect of which no equivalent list is produced by the Government. I think that a number of people, including those on the committee, have described the listings as being details at a high level. It is because they are at a high level that I cannot tell whether the overlaps have been overcome. I simply cannot follow it; I have tried really hard. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I have somehow missed it, but I think that those questions about duplication, overlap and the lack of focus that might result have simply not been dealt with intelligibly in the Government’s response, and they are vital concerns for our national security. I am therefore inclined to the belief, expressed by the committee, that there is more to be done. Can the Minister perhaps list for us today the specific responsibilities of the secretariat so that I can see how they differ from those of other bodies? That would allow us to judge a little more about the overlap question.

My final observation, very briefly if I may, is on the question of the limitation of vital resources to undertake the work successfully. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, also raised this question. In recommendation V, the point is made that cuts to the ISC and the BBC Monitoring service are regarded as dangerous to defence intelligence capability. Defence intelligence relies heavily on these sources to support operations—these are the points that the committee makes. They serve the intelligence community as a whole, in addition, and without good information it is obviously hard to work on the basis that you genuinely have sound enough intelligence to do the job effectively.

The Government's response is not to give a clear undertaking or commitment about those resources—one might perhaps expect that response to what might be a problem for the safety of the people of the United Kingdom—but to say that they will work with the BBC to examine requirements. I want to know how and when that assessment is to take place. Will the levels of investment be sustained in the interim, while everybody is working out what might be the future dispositions? What leads the Government to believe that the defence intelligence and wider intelligence communities have not made a proper assessment so far of what they need, in order to work effectively at present? There may be an adequate response, but what I worry about is that in some areas—for example, on page 13 of the Government's response—it appears that those decisions have already been made in a negative sense. The future cuts will be, it says,

“fully in line with those of the wider Cabinet Office”,

while the task remaining is to,

“identify ways of minimising the impact”.

Whatever happens, it looks as though those cuts have been embedded.

It may be that the answer to a number of these questions will be that there is an operational risk in answering them. If that is said today, I shall accept it because I know from first-hand ministerial experience that I have no desire to see anything said that would be of any use to an enemy of the United Kingdom. However, the background detail in Sir Malcolm’s committee's excellent report suggests that those questions could be answered. That is the reason I urge the Government to do so. I look forward to the Minister’s answers. I feel that he will surely do better than the Government's response to the report and that that would be of huge benefit in making sure that the value of Sir Malcolm Rifkind's work, and the work of his committee, is realised to its fullest extent.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, may I enter a rather eccentric note of dissent? I was listening with great care to my noble friend's speech. I thought it extremely well informed, and I was not surprised at that. My point of dissent is that I do not approve of this committee being translated into a parliamentary committee. I see great virtue in it being the only committee of parliamentarians that reports directly to the Prime Minister. In my experience, when I was on the committee and Sir John Major was the Prime Minister we used to have meetings with him at No. 10 to discuss our reports in detail. I know of no other committee that has that sort of access and I think that the Prime Minister and the committee benefited from it. The other benefit which you have from it being a non-parliamentary committee but a committee of parliamentarians is that you hugely diminish the role of the Whips in who goes on that committee. Both those things are matters of supreme advantage, which we would sacrifice by transforming this into a parliamentary Select Committee—a development which I personally deplore.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, that intervention invites a very brief response. I have no aversion whatever to the committee being available to and able to speak to the Prime Minister. Broadly speaking, I believe that Select Committees in Parliament have had that capability for a long time. In my view, the biggest advantage is that these areas which have been regarded as incredibly obscure and difficult, and usually as a means of veiling from the public and parliamentarians some things which are in their vital interests, and in the vital interests of the country, will at least be dealt with on the same basis that much other sensitive material is.

European Union Bill

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

Forgive me for being impertinent, but could the noble Lord define his pronouns? He said, “If we were to decide”. Who are the “we” he is referring to?

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

The British Government of the day. My point, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, is that when you look at the sort of decisions in Clause 6, they are the kind which the British public are not going to be remotely interested in. The public prosecutor and all that is not referendum stuff. It is therefore particularly difficult to play the Odysseus rationale because everyone knows that you are not going to have that referendum. You are going to block the decision in Brussels in order to postpone sine die the referendum. That will be the effect of what you say.

There is a second possible rationale, which is the one we hear from time to time from the Government Front Bench, usually in the context of the treaty. It is the one that particularly worries me. I think it worries the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and everyone who knows about the way in which opinion in Brussels is moving now. It is the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, comes up with when he says, for example:

“The picture of a dribble of referenda on small issues completely misunderstands the way in which the European process works now or will work in the future, whether this Bill is on our statute book or not. I have obviously explained that insufficiently because the message has not got over, but as we continue our debates I hope to be able to make clear that the pattern will not be dissimilar to the pattern of the big treaty packages in the past”.—[Official Report, 3/5/11; col. 369.]

There is a worrying misunderstanding here. In Brussels, everyone is determined that there should be a discontinuity. Everyone is determined to break with big treaty packages. That has been true for 10 years and it is why the convention invented the passarelle. Why do people want to avoid big treaty packages? If efficiency is your criterion, it is more efficient to make a change when the need arises. It is not very efficient to put the change in a hover and say, “We’ll wait for the next big package”. It is more transparent and democratic to give member states the right to agree or disagree with single specific decisions. It is good to get away from the awful IGC business of trade-offs, where people do a market haggle and things go into treaties which some would say should not be there in order to buy somebody else. The issues should be considered separately and on their merits, and they will be in future. That is why the convention produced the ideas that it did about accelerated methods of treaty reform—and passerelles in relation to decisions that do not require treaty reform.

Libya

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

My Lords, I want first to congratulate the Government and the Prime Minister because they acted rightly and effectively. It is important to put that on the record and have it known. I also take the view that, as always with these situations, military intervention is uncertain; you do not know what is going to follow. Both the Minister and other people have said that we must not put boots on the ground and that we must exit quickly and so on. The problem is that, once you start a military action, knowing how and when it will end is incredibly difficult. It also raises the issue of what we do in the post-conflict situation. The failure in respect of Iraq was not the issues around the United Nations but the absence of a workable post-conflict plan. Colin Powell had such a plan, but when he was replaced by Donald Rumsfeld it went out of the window and we paid a very high price for it.

The temptation in these situations is to compare one intervention with the previous intervention. Making comparisons with Iraq is not particularly helpful. What matters is looking at this intervention as part of a historical process. I have made the point on many previous occasions that it is not just the West that intervenes. I have discussed these arguments with my noble friend Lord Parekh in the past, but I remind the House that India thought that it was absolutely right to intervene and remove the East Pakistan Government and replace it with Bangladesh. What was happening in East Pakistan then was very similar to what is happening in Libya now. In other words, intervention is carried out by others. I have referred in the past to debates in this House in the 19th century on the ending of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which cost us 12,000 military lives and released some 200,000 slaves. Those debates reflected many of the arguments now, particularly about international law. Intervention has a long history.

What fascinates me about this situation is that, with the collapse of the Cold War, the acceleration towards a wish for democracy, freedom and the rule of law has become clear. People in the Maghreb and the Middle East are not going on to the streets crying out for al-Qaeda or another dictator; they are going on to the streets crying out for democracy, the rule of law and human rights—they know what they want. The problem for them is delivering it, and our problem is helping them. Libya has had for 42 years a particularly brutal dictatorship. I sometimes think that we fail to get over the message that there is a very important difference between extreme and efficient dictators such as Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler and others and those Governments, of Saudi Arabia, for example, who may be authoritarian but are capable of being moved. If we see the current events in the context of a historical process of people crying out for democracy and recognising that you cannot have a modern, stable state without democracy and human rights, we begin to understand them a bit better.

It is important to remember that, following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Gaddafi feared the same would happen to him. That is why he came to the British Government and said that he had a weapons of mass destruction programme, that he was—as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said—supporting terrorism and that he was going to stop. The previous Government got a lot of criticism for trying then to engage with him, but they were exactly right. If a dictatorship looks as though it is changing and breaking down, you need to help it happen, but when it fails, as it so dramatically did when Gaddafi turned his guns on his own citizens, you have to intervene.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to the European Union. My frustration with the EU is along the lines of that of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson: it is an economic giant but a political and military pygmy. I do not have time to develop the argument, so I shall use, as always, a rather casual analogy. It is like a family being brutalised and beaten up, with the kids being killed, and the next door neighbours—Europe in this case—sitting down, calling a case conference and discussing whether they should stop the benefits of the guy who is doing it. You have to have a police force and you have to be able to intervene. If we had been able to remove Saddam Hussein in 1993 after the first Gulf War, there would not have been a second Gulf War. Nor would there have been 10 years of sanctions, which all brutal and efficient dictatorships manage to redirect on to their opposition within their own country. That is why sanction regimes can often be inefficient.

We should look at this as a process where our role is to encourage and promote, without being embarrassed about it, democracy, the rule of law and human rights. These are not just western concepts. Many societies throughout history and around the world have shown these attributes; they might not have used the same words or the same structures, but that is what they have done. There is bound to be a natural desire for freedom in people, and we need to stand up and speak for it.

Law has been mentioned often in this debate; it is a very strong issue. Lawyers have failed to grasp the problem, and continue to fail to grasp, that if we do not deal with brutal dictators and give ourselves a power to remove them, however difficult it might be to draw up that law, we enable them to continue—in whatever country, whatever culture and whatever society. It is not easy. I do not pretend for one moment that you can have a law up your sleeve which you can pull out and put into effect, because, at the end of the day, the political reality is that the world is not ready for it. The political aspect tells you that you cannot do it. But let us just imagine if, in late 1944 or early 1945, we had said, “Well, we’ve expelled the Nazis from all the countries they’ve invaded, but we’re going to let Hitler stay in power and we might apply a few sanctions”. We would have been laughed out of court. It would have been politically impossible and morally disgusting. Lawyers fail to face up to that, which is why I get so cross with them when they argue the moral case about removing brutal dictators. Yes, it is difficult, and, no, we do not have a way of doing it at the moment—I acknowledge that—but you cannot just duck the problem.

The key issue for us now is the post-conflict situation. We cannot say, as some have done, that we will simply withdraw. We may get pulled further in. If this battle continues, we may have to have boots on the ground. We have to face that reality. We will not walk away if, suddenly, Gaddafi gets even stronger and refugees start pouring out of the area and coming over to Europe.

I desperately hope that the rebels win, but, as has been indicated, we do not really know very much about them, so, by God, we need to put in an effort to help build the institutions of a state which begins to provide some stability, because 42 years of brutal dictatorship breaks down community relations at all levels. All forms of brutal dictatorships do that and we forget it at our peril. People are not often aware—indeed, I was shocked when I heard it—that, at the end of the Second World War, infighting among the French resistance cost more lives of French resistance fighters than were lost to the Nazis during the whole occupation.

[Lord Gilbert]

Before my noble friend sits down, would he not agree that everything that he has just been saying about lawyers was said by Edmund Burke?

[Lord Soley]

I shall have to go away and read Edmund Burke; I am not 100 per cent sure about that. I am not entirely against lawyers, although I have a long list of names of lawyers whom I would pay not to defend me.

Under evolving international law, we need to think a lot harder about the reality of politics. We need some way of facing up to the fact that leaving extreme dictators in power is not really a morally acceptable position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, when one has at some time in one’s career been exposed to classified papers one recognises how little one knows when the stream of classified papers dries up. I have had that experience twice. I did not enjoy it on either occasion but I feel rather naked talking about these matters at a time like this when so much is changing so fast.

Two issues are being discussed today. One is whether we should or should not arm the very brave young freedom fighters in Libya. It seems to me that if Mr Gaddafi is to be defeated by military means—that is not the only possibility, of course—we have only two choices: either we arm them or we do it ourselves. I do not detect much appetite among your Lordships for doing it ourselves. Therefore, we need to think very carefully about giving the means to do it to other people.

It has been said that we do not know anything about these freedom fighters. I dispute that. I think that we know a great deal about them. First, they are very brave. I am very grateful to the Minister for his remarks about al-Qaeda. He pointed out that through all this turbulence in the Middle East there has been virtually no support for al-Qaeda. People are not shouting in the streets for al-Qaeda, they are shouting for democracy, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech—things they have learnt from us. That is marvellous. From everything I can see, events in the Middle East over the past few weeks have been nothing more than a disaster for al-Qaeda. It has not got very far with its recruiting campaigns among the young men on the streets of Sanaa or Damascus or those battling Gaddafi in Libya. I very much agreed with the comments of my noble friend Lord Soley. I will give him the reference to Edmund Burke later. Burke advised us not to ask what the lawyers tell us we may do but to find out what peace, honour and justice tell us we must do. My noble friend and I, and I am sure a lot of other Members of this House, agree with those sentiments.

I will not spend long talking about the military side of this. We have a marvellous opportunity with the arrival of Mr Moussa Koussa. His name sounds like a very bad Greek dessert. No doubt he will have been talking. If he has not been, I suggest that we tell him that we have a seat in a C-130 waiting to take him back to Tripoli as soon as we can get him on board. He would then start to sing quite quickly. We should make a recording of everything that Mr Moussa Koussa says to our interrogators and play it back to Libya. Given the comments that some of his colleagues in Tripoli have made recently, it would be interesting if this came to the ears of Colonel Gaddafi, and it might encourage quite a few others to follow Mr Moussa Koussa as quickly as possible.

I will make a couple of more general points. It has been said, not least by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, that Libya is not of vital interest to us. I am sorry that I have the temerity to disagree, but Libya at the moment is of absolutely vital interest to us. If things go wrong there, it will have an appalling effect on the rest of the Middle East, with consequences for our interests as well. I am not suggesting that we change the deployment of forces, but we should concentrate our diplomatic efforts on Mr Moussa Koussa and Libya, to the detriment of other diplomatic activities that we have been engaged in recently. I hate to think what will happen if Libya goes wrong.

We have tended to view the situation in Libya too much through the prism of UK interests. We are understandably concerned about the case of policewoman Fletcher and about Lockerbie. However, those issues do not play strongly on the streets of Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. What to them is the loss of one policewoman? What is the loss of 130 people in an aeroplane? It is terrible to us, but they are not as interested because of the number of corpses on their streets every day.

My noble friend Lord Robertson said that what is happening in Libya is a wake-up call for the European Community. I heard my noble friend say the same at the time of Kosovo. I do not think that there is a full recognition in this country of the enormity of the military contribution of the United States to what is going on in the Middle East. Two hundred Tomahawk missiles have been launched, with brilliant accuracy. My noble friend said that the only people who had these were us and the United States. He did not point out that we sent three winging through the air while the United States sent 200. It is rather reminiscent of Kosovo, where 85 per cent of the attack missions were flown by American aircraft. What is happening now is that the Americans are using B-2s—a brilliant piece of kit—all the way from Kansas, not Norfolk. We read that other European NATO nations are supplying hundreds of planes, but I have not seen any sign of them in action.

I am glad to see my noble friend Lady Turner in her seat. She was very distressed by what happened in Kosovo. She spoke of indiscriminate bombing. I was the Minister responsible for approving every target that we attacked in Kosovo and I assure her that the bombing was not indiscriminate. I am sure that I will not persuade her to my point of view as to its utility, but I assure her that it was far from indiscriminate.

I have one question for the Government and I should be very obliged if the Minister would take it on board. With this, we come to political matters. I do not understand why this Government, most of whose activities over Libya I sincerely applaud, are still recognising Gaddafi’s administration. There was an answer to that in another place on 18 March. The Prime Minister said in reply to a question from Mr Chishti, Member for Gillingham and Rainham:

“My hon. Friend asks a good question. As he knows, in this country, we recognise countries rather than Governments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/3/11; col. 632.]

I read that sentence countless times and I still do not understand it. What the devil is the difference between a country and a Government? How do you withdraw recognition from Canada or Nigeria? That sentence is absolute gobbledegook. There is no reason whatever why we cannot withdraw recognition. In this country, as I understand it, we recognise who is in control of a country, whether we like them or not. To say “we recognise countries” is blithering nonsense. Can the Minister define what the Prime Minister meant and say why on earth we cannot follow the French, the Qataris and many others in giving recognition to the interim council based in Benghazi? I think that that would be a major contribution to isolating Gaddafi in Tripoli even further than he is already.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

That is a fair point, which I think the noble Lord recognises is a point of argument rather than of policy, and I accept it.

The noble Lord, Lord Stone, comes forward in these debates with marvellously constructive proposals for really making things hum on the ground. He spoke about opening small businesses, retail shops and so on, which are the lifeblood of almost all the economies that we are talking about and without which they will never prosper again. He said that our powerful supermarket chains in this country could help. These are fascinating proposals; I shall take them away and study them as closely as his earlier proposals in a debate that we had a few weeks ago about Palestine.

The noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, wanted to know what the Prime Minister meant on the recognition issue when he said that we recognise countries, not Governments. I would use almost the same words although perhaps I would say that we recognise states, not Governments. I do not see the difficulty that the noble Lord is having over this. States have Governments that are lawful; if there is not a lawful Government or no clear Government, there is no basis for recognition. At the moment we recognise those countries that have a lawful Government. Even if they are in a state of hostility, we still recognise them. I am not too sure that I see the problem. Perhaps he can explain it.

[Lord Gilbert]

The Minister just talked about lawful Governments but he has agreed, as everyone else has done, that Colonel Gaddafi has lost his legitimacy. Does it not follow from this that Gaddafi is not a lawful Government?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who is a considerable expert on these finer points, tells me that it is a question of being in control of territory. That is the judgment. In many of these areas there is a neat formula and there is real life, and when it comes to real life one has to use a bit of judgment in assessing who to recognise and who is in charge or control of any Government in any country at any one time. The position is that it is states that we recognise, not Governments.

All the speeches today were good so comparisons are odious, but my noble friend Lord Alderdice put the matter with wonderful clarity when he said that the answer to “What are we doing?” is that we are doing our duty as a responsible nation: policing international law. That is a matter that all nations which want to play in the responsible league and not wash their hands and step aside or be freeloaders have to face as well. On that basis, we shall be seeking more and more coalition co-operation from a wider range of nations, all of whose interests, including ours, are affected by having a potential rogue state, or a state promoting illegal violent acts which destroy other states, in our midst. That is what a rogue Libya could do. It is a big oil state near our own continent of Europe which is very influential in being able to damage trade routes and whose influence could even extend down towards the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean area. This affects everyone’s interests increasingly, in this globalised, integrated trading and energy system on which we all depend.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in a characteristically fine speech, asked the big question about Benghazi and what we have done in the past few days. Could we have stood by? Suppose we had done nothing, and just watched while the Gaddafi troops rode into Benghazi, shot down the women and children, piled up their bodies, and said, “This is the way it is”. The world would once again have allowed a crazed dictator to exert his evil will on innocent people. Of course we could not have done that; of course we had to act, and of course other countries had to act with us. I believe that that case will sink in even to those countries that have stood back from the UN resolution or actually opposed it. However, nobody on the Security Council did that—there were abstentions but no opposition.

As for the defectors who have arrived here and made all the headlines in recent days, including Moussa Koussa, I said at the beginning of the debate that he will not be given immunity. Nevertheless, he is in a way a symptom or evidence of a trend which one feels may be helpful—the desertion of Gaddafi by his immediate gang. How he would hang on and whether he would hang on, whether he would seek peace, are all questions that have been raised and will be debated. If all those around him, one by one, or maybe in twos and threes, desert him, that would, in a sense, be one of the most satisfactory ways of moving out of this dark situation, resulting in the total abandonment by all his advisers of this unpredictable and dangerous man.

Those are my comments on the detailed points raised by your Lordships. In the short term, we will continue to take measures to isolate this man and his regime and to secure their departure. We will continue to support the opposition, to prevent attacks on the civilian population and to prevent humanitarian crises. We will see this through—that is our aim. Our long-term objective is a unified Libya under a central Government who represent the will of the people for more openness and democracy, which is not run by Gaddafi and does not pose external threats either in the region or more broadly.

I tried at the beginning of this debate to place events in a wider strategic context. As your Lordships have echoed and recognised, a wind of change is blowing through the Middle East. Every BBC broadcast that one listens to on waking up brings news of more dramatic developments in countries we have not even mentioned in the debate, such as Kuwait, Jordan and, indeed, Iran. It is the responsibility of civilised nations across the world to react to these calls for change and to play our part in taking humanitarian action, safeguarding human rights and promoting democracy. That is why the United Kingdom will continue to be at the forefront of the international efforts to assist the Libyan people and those across the Middle East more generally.

The pace of change across the world is very fast and unpredictable. If the UK is to prosecute a successful foreign policy in future, one that protects and promotes our interests and our nation, our approach must reflect the reconfigured international order that is now emerging. That means working not only bilaterally, to build new links with both established and emerging powers, but also multilaterally, to make our engagement with multilateral institutions much more effective. The way in which we have responded to the Libya crisis and the wider change in the Middle East that we have discussed today is evidence that we are successfully rising to the current challenges in foreign policy.

Queen's Speech

Lord Gilbert Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, it is always a melancholy occasion to be a member of a party which has been defeated in a general election, but it is an experience I have had several times over the past 60 years. Therefore, I am slightly inured to it and there are always compensations, one of which is to see some of one’s old friends appointed to ministerial positions. Although I am not allowed to call them my noble friends in your Lordships' House, I hope that the noble Lords, Lord Astor of Hever and Lord Howell, will acquit me of impertinence if I say that I like to think of them as great personal friends. I have always admired their patriotism, competence and courtesy. I wish also to extend that to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who is not in his place. It may surprise your Lordships that he was the man who frightened me most when I was at the Dispatch Box a few years ago, for reasons that I have no intention of disclosing.

I have to say that I am rather pleased with some of the ministerial appointments. I was delighted that our new Foreign Secretary made it absolutely clear that he thought that the special relationship was extremely important and that our best friends and closest allies were in Washington DC, which has always been my view and I have no hesitation in saying so. I know that in your Lordships’ House the mention of the special relationship can produce toe-curling embarrassment on the part of some of our euro-fanatics, particularly those who are closest to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I am glad to say that it is alive and well.

I shall give an illustration. I have always said that the most important parts of the special relationship were invisible, and I still think that. They repose mainly in the relationships between our sets of intelligence services and our technical people and engineers—I am glad to see that the former Minister, my noble friend Lady Taylor, is nodding her head in agreement—which are of frightful importance to this country.

I will refer, if I may, to the quite quixotic remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, who, if I heard him correctly, was saying that we should get much closer to the French. I am glad to get his acknowledgment. I wonder if the noble Lord noticed what happened to a certain Admiral Blair in Washington last week. No? That is a pity. Admiral Blair was director of national intelligence in the United States until very recently, but he has just been fired. It is sad; he is a very able man. Why was he fired? There were a few reasons—there have been certain mistakes and imperfections in the intelligence services of the United States—but the thing that apparently provoked the final breakdown was that Admiral Blair wanted to introduce between the United States and France a system of agreement by treaty that neither would spy on the other, a system that the United States has with this country. The person who prohibited Admiral Blair from doing that was President Obama himself.

There are lots of people who like to say that our special relationship is a fragile thing, built on superstitious little icons. They love to jeer at the fact that Winston Churchill’s bust is no longer in the central office in the White House that the President uses. I do not know what the room is called—

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

The Oval Office.

[Lord Gilbert]

The Oval Office, is it? Thank you. Actually, the relationship between our intelligence services is rather more important than where Churchill’s bust is. The reason why Admiral Blair was not allowed to proceed is perfectly simple: the United States does not trust the French but it trusts us. There, I said it. That is the fact of the matter, and that is wherein reposes a considerable part of the special relationship. I am delighted that it continues to be in the forefront of Her Majesty’s Government.

I was pleased with the appointment as Defence Secretary of Dr Fox, whose Atlanticism is beyond question. I was also pleased with what the Prime Minister had to say on his visit to Europe.

Unfortunately, two of the three people who made the best speeches in today’s debate are not in their places, but I am glad to say that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, is. It always worries me when I agree so much with the noble Lord. I hope that I do not embarrass him when I say so, but on reflection I think I agree with everything that he said today, particularly his commentary on the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell.

The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, makes brilliant speeches here of immaculate, impenetrable logic—I should say “irrefutable” rather than “impenetrable”—and I could not agree with him more. There is no place for British schadenfreude in what is going wrong in the Eurozone; on the other hand, that should not lead us in any sense to be prepared to give any more of the sovereignty of this House to European institutions. We should help them but we should remain fiercely independent. Thank God—this is one of the few things for which I am grateful to the previous Prime Minister—he kept us out of the euro.

I hope that there will be one change in this Government from what was the practice in the Government that I supported. When people went to see Mr Blair about defence expenditure, he would say, “You have persuaded me, now you have to go and persuade Gordon”—I see that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has come in; I have been saying some nice things about him, but he can read about them tomorrow—to which the answer should have been, “No, Prime Minister, it’s your job to go and persuade Gordon”, but I am afraid that none of them ever had the guts to say that.

I shall say one or two things about the noble Lord, Lord Burnett. He gave a very good speech. I disagreed with only one thing in it: he seems to want to live in a nuclear-free world. I have no desire whatever to live in a nuclear-free world. I am very grateful that nuclear weapons were invented, that they were invented when they were invented and that they were invented by the Americans and not by the Germans. I have got that off my chest. If you like to think of a world without any nuclear weapons whatever—where no one has cheated—try living in Israel and see how comfortable you feel. I could think of one or two other places. As Jim Schlesinger says, nuclear weapons are in use every day of every year and they are keeping the peace. I, for one, was extremely glad when India and Pakistan both acquired a nuclear capability. The result we have seen: for the first time the Pakistani Army has been prepared to pull back considerable sections of its troops from the Indian frontier to go and deal with the Taliban threat in the north. You cannot ask for more convincing evidence of the stabilising effect of a nuclear bounce.

[Baroness Flather]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Gilbert]

No, I do not have time. I am sorry.

I was going to talk about C-17s, C-130s and the A-400M. Your Lordships will know my views on the A-400M and I merely say that this a marvellous opportunity to cancel the damn thing. I also have some views on the last tranche of the Eurofighter but I shall not detain your Lordships on that subject. I hope—this is a question for the Minister—that we can have a guarantee that the contract for the seventh C-17 will go ahead because I consider that to be extremely important. I hope also that, if the Government cannot get out of the A-400M contract, they will at least look very carefully at flogging off the aeroplanes as soon as we get them so as to minimise the penal cost to us.

My complaint about the A-400M is not that it is several years late, not that it is up to 20 tonnes overweight, not that it is millions of pounds more than its original cost, not that its engines are unsatisfactory and not that it does not meet its original specifications; it is quite simply that we do not need the thing. In a Written Question, I asked Her Majesty’s Government,

“whether they have asked the United States Air Force how it performs the roles that Her Majesty’s Government envisages being performed by the A400M aircraft”.

I received a brilliant Answer from the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, which stated:

“The US Air Transport requirement is satisfied by various marks of C-130”—

that is the Hercules—

“C-17, C5”—

the old Galaxy, which is going out of use anyway—

“and the recently introduced C27J”—

which is a very small tactical transport aircraft. It continues:

“While the MoD has not undertaken detailed analysis of the US fleet mix, our understanding is that the capabilities we envisage A400M will provide are largely met through use of C-130s and C-17s, albeit using C-17”.—[Official Report, 25/1/10; col. WA 288.]

I rest my case.