UK-US Co-operation on Using Atomic Energy for Mutual Defence

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, even if I feel compelled to correct slightly some of his history. It is not the case that all this is about English-speaking people. The great meetings that took place on various bits of the Atlantic included the Governments of most of what are now continental European countries. They were of course living in exile in London, but subscribed to the same values and qualities that we applaud today. They were, funnily enough, before the establishment of the United Nations organisation in 1945, called the “united nations”.

I will cast that little blemish aside and address the two amended agreements that we are debating today within what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, correctly described as the CRaG process. They are important and deserve to be considered by Parliament; for that reason, I greatly welcome that the Government have enabled time to be made available to do so. They of course relate to Britain’s nuclear co-operation with the US, dating back to the ending of the lamentable US McMahon Act, which cut us off from any process of nuclear co-operation for a period of years after the end of the Second World War; it was very damaging. We are also debating the strategically important AUKUS agreement, which provides Australia with nuclear-propelled submarines.

Your Lordships’ committee, most ably led by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, whose introductory remarks I totally subscribe to, has found both agreements to be strategically sound and in the UK’s national interest. We also found them to be consistent with our international obligations, including under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But—and there are a couple of quite important buts—some significant new issues have been raised, which we hope the Minister will reply to positively when he responds to the debate. Neither affects the treaty with the US, which, in a welcome way, is due to be ratified on its side before the expiry of the present Administration and present Congress.

The first of the buts relates to the CRaG process itself. The noble and learned Lord mentioned the unsatisfactory time limits within which it operates. These are, to be frank, absurdly short and do not allow your Lordships’ committee to subject treaties and agreements to proper analysis and scrutiny, nor to gather testimony. The UK-US MDA, which we are debating today, exemplifies that problem to perfection. It was triggered during the summer and conference recesses and, even though the recess days were taken into account, there was simply no time to organise evidence sessions before we drafted our report. We therefore had only one session with senior officials, for which I express my gratitude; their testimony was extremely useful. No evidence was taken from a Minister, and we had no time to get outside witnesses to come and give different opinions, perhaps, on the treaties that we were looking at. That is no way to handle the ratification of an important international treaty. I really doubt whether any properly constituted democracy permits such a cursory and inadequate ratification review—although no doubt “people’s democracies”, such as Russia and China, would do so with alacrity.

I hope, therefore, that the Minister in the new Government will consider carefully the operating procedures for CRaG documents and will enable them in future to be scrutinised rather more effectively than they are now. I do not expect a response on that point today because, as the noble and learned Lord said, the committee is proposing to put together its considerations relating to the CRaG process in a report before too long.

My second point also relates to parliamentary scrutiny. As a consequence of the decision to eliminate the 10-year review clause in the UK-US MDA—the committee is not objecting to that and the consequent prolongation of the agreement, sine die—there will now be no occasion at all for further parliamentary scrutiny of the operation of the agreement. That is perhaps inadvertent—I am being generous—but is surely a damaging step backwards. One way in which to resolve it would be if the Minister were to state without equivocation at the end of this debate that the Government of the day would bring before Parliament at 10-year intervals a report on the operation of the UK-US MDA so that it could be considered and debated. Such a report would not—I repeat, not—affect the US side, nor affect the maintenance of the amended treaty itself, sine die. It might be said that 10 years is a long way off, but infinity is a bit longer.

I hope that this debate can end in a meeting of minds between the committee and the new Government. That would surely get matters off on the best possible footing.