Piracy: Operation Atalanta (EUC Report)

Lord Inge Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inge]

My Lords, first, I should say how much I enjoyed being a member of this sub-committee, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I learnt a great deal, although what I learnt rather depressed me.

There is no doubt that the piracy problem in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean remains a significant threat to international shipping. We have to recognise that we are in this for the long haul; there are no quick fixes to the piracy problem in that area. We have to remember that Yemen is becoming more of a threat in the area. Certainly, Operation Atalanta has helped to reduce the level of piracy, but I agree with the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton—and I declare an interest as an adviser to a private security company—that unless some international shipping is prepared to put guards on its boats, the piracy problem will remain a significant threat. Those guards would have to be properly trained and registered.

This will be a long-term problem. Separating the problem of piracy from the problems on land in Somalia is extremely difficult, because the Somalis are a ruthless, successful enemy and well capable of changing their tactics and methods of operation. They have never been used to a strong Government. I am also worried about internal instability in Yemen, which, in my view, will increase the threat and is not going to be defeated easily. With the combination of Yemen, piracy and the problems on land in Somalia, we must recognise that if we in the international community are going to do anything, we are in this for a very long haul and will require considerable forces to do it.

In all this, good intelligence is absolutely vital. We are improving our intelligence co-operation. Collection has improved, but why cannot we get a Gulf country, if need be, or a European nation to provide proper maritime surveillance aircraft, as that is the main intelligence gap? It is rather sad that we are cutting Nimrod from the capability of the future equipment programme of our Armed Forces. If the European Union or NATO cannot provide that capability on a rotation basis, we must recognise that a significant gap will remain in our operational effectiveness. We should talk to our Gulf allies, as some of them have quite sophisticated maritime intelligence-gathering capabilities, and ask whether they would be prepared to help, particularly given the problems increasing in Yemen.

I should be interested to learn from the Minister what other capabilities the Government believe are required to improve the operational effectiveness not only of Operation Atalanta but of the protection of shipping itself. Would the Government be prepared to have guards on board ships, if they were properly trained? That would be a great improvement in the capability.

Furthermore, have we talked to the Governments of Singapore and Malaysia about how they tackled piracy in the Malacca straits? I am told that the problem may be on the increase there, although they clearly dealt with it at one stage. I wondered whether there were any lessons that we could learn from that. Other noble Lords have spoken about the World Food Programme’s use of small ships and the requirement for greater military protection. I hope that we will manage to do something to make them co-operate more clearly with Operation Atalanta.

Finally, much has been said on this by others, but will the Minister say whether we are being realistic in thinking that the Seychelles and Kenya will try these pirates and whether that will have any real impact on their operational effectiveness? I shall not repeat much of what has already been said, but I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for what he did in leading the team. I believe that this is an issue that we need to stay with, because it is not going to go away anytime soon.