EU: UK Membership

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad that my noble friend Lord Liddle has brought this debate before us. It is a debate that will dominate our politics for the next few months and perhaps for the next few years. Apart from the argument that has just taken place in Scotland, this is perhaps the most important debate of our generation.

My position is clear: I believe that leaving the European Union would be disastrous. Some of us have just spent the last two and a half years in the referendum campaign in Scotland, alongside Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, arguing against Scotland leaving the union that is the United Kingdom. We all did so in spite of our totally different politics. We did so with passion, commitment and sincerity against a well funded, well organised and highly emotional separatist campaign. At the end of the day, we won the debate and the referendum. The three parties which believed in the union campaigned—occasionally uncomfortably—together.

What did we all say during that whole campaign? “We are better together”. That was our slogan and our powerful case to the people of Scotland. We spoke of years of successful integration in a union that works for all of us. We all argued about the costs of breaking up and going it alone in a complex, multilayered and interdependent world. We all warned about creating new barriers and borders when our single market was so integrated. During the referendum campaign, we all echoed the statements made by small and large companies across the land attacking the break-up of the union and the effects it would have on jobs in Scotland which depend on the big market of our neighbour. During the campaign we all said that we had the best of both worlds—decision-making in all key areas at home but part of a bigger unit where we had an equal voice. We repeated that separatism would leave our country outside, isolated, when all the big decisions were taken elsewhere. These decisions affect our citizens—their companies, their jobs and their future.

Together, we used all of these arguments relentlessly, though some of us had never really agreed on anything else before. We all of us denounced and derided the nationalists who said that the European Union was essential but that our union should be destroyed. We made all these arguments consistently and constructively, with passion and effect, and every one of them applies to the European Union that we are part of today. Because we took the argument out, despite the fact that we were campaigning for a no vote we avoided the negativism that would automatically come from arguing for no. Very few people who heard Gordon Brown’s speech in the last stages of the referendum, and very few of the millions who watched it on YouTube afterwards, could fail to see the passion for this union.

Maybe there is not the same degree of passion about the European Union and maybe there is a disenchantment creeping in sometimes with something as big as that, yet the arguments remain the same. Those arguments succeeded in Scotland against the nationalist bandwagon and persuaded people to come out in a campaign where 97% of those eligible registered to vote and where the turnout was 84% across Scotland but over 95% in some areas. Those arguments penetrated into people’s minds and, despite the ocean of yes posters and the near hysteria of the yes campaign, people listened carefully to our constructive arguments for the union that we are in and that we benefit from.

If we make the arguments for the European Union cogently enough and face people with the alternatives to what we are in at the moment, I have no doubt that the British people will come to the same conclusion as the Scots.

ISIL: Iraq and Syria

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate. I referred to that very briefly at the end of Questions yesterday; it was too brief, I know, but time was running out. We recognise that life in Syria for Christians and other minorities continues to be deeply distressing. That extends to Iraq as well, where whole communities have had to flee. We have serious concerns about rising sectarian tensions. As for Syria, we believe that President Assad’s actions include a deliberate attempt to stir up such tensions in his efforts to hang on to power. The right reverend Prelate asks a timely question.

We think that the only way to secure the position of Syria’s minority communities is to find a political solution to the crisis. Part of that must involve respect for each religious group. I mentioned the other day that one of the priorities for the Foreign Office is freedom of religion or belief. I am involved in working to deliver some practical examples of how that may be achieved. The task of achieving that freedom of religion and belief in societies which are at peace but divided by religion is difficult enough. It is multiplied perhaps a hundredfold or more when we have the situation in Syria and Iraq. However, I am aware that when Foreign Office Ministers visit a region, they do the best they can in the time available to meet Christian communities to discuss their concerns and learn from them. I know that my honourable friend Mr Ellwood visited Iraq at the end of August and raised the persecution of Christians with the then Foreign Minister and other senior officials, but I assure the right reverend Prelate that that will not be the last time that we do that.

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

All of us here—indeed, all civilised people—recognise the threat that this organisation poses not just in the Middle East but much beyond it as well. I strongly commend what the Government have been doing up to now with all the agencies and individuals concerned. It is very welcome that the Foreign Secretary has visited the region and has spoken to politicians. That has to be a good thing at this time.

I noted that the Statement said:

“We have a wide-ranging and ambitious strategy to confront an evil which is a direct threat to our national security”.

Yet that poses the question as to why, if we have such a strategy, we alone stand outside the coalition that is taking action at the moment in not attacking targets inside Syria. I recognise that there were self-imposed constraints in the resolution from the other place but we are leaving it to the rest of this incredible and welcome coalition to attack the bases from where the brains, the organisation and the control of ISIS actually come. While I welcome what has been done so far, I would still like an answer to this question: how on earth, in a comprehensive strategy, does it fit that we are not taking action against the heart of this organisation that threatens so much?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, echoes some of the anxieties expressed in both Houses over the last month, both at Recall and this week. When the other place was presented with a Motion referring only to Iraq, it was on the basis that we had been invited by the Iraqi Government to be there. It was clear what our role could be: one involving air strikes and not combat troops on the ground, but certainly providing training. We know that that is valuable.

Why do we not do the same for Syria? We would wish to be in a position so that if we were taking premeditated action in Syria—if that ever occurred and we got to the point where we felt that the only way forward was military intervention in Syria—we would carry out our undertaking, to this House and to another place, to return to Parliament before that. That is why there is a next step, if we get to that, in the position. In the mean time, we are doing as much as we can to assist those moderate forces in Syria to withstand the pressure of Assad’s oppression. As I said in the Statement, he is helping ISIL by bombarding the moderates in places such as Aleppo. For the moment, we are carrying out full support in air strikes as part of our coalition. We are one part of it, but a determined part. We will monitor the position but if there were any premeditated change we would certainly fulfil our commitment to come back to Parliament first.

Libya

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen]

My Lords, I also thank the Minister for the up-to-date briefing that he gave the House today. Many points have already been made in a debate that is going to stretch across a lot of talent and experience.

I start by saying that I support the Government in what they are doing, through NATO, in Libya. There is absolutely no doubt that, had timely action not been taken, Benghazi and eastern Libya would have fallen, and the consequences for the civilian population in that area would have been grim indeed. Our forces in the air, at sea and on land are now in action under a UN mandate, and this nation and this Parliament must stand united. If Gaddafi were to prevail, heaven help the Libyans. Indeed, for the wider Maghreb it would have profound implications that would impact on an area much wider than just north Africa.

When I was Secretary-General of NATO, I was occasionally asked to speculate on the circumstances that could provoke a European response where the Americans might be reluctant to come in and bail us out. Dangerous though that speculation was likely to be, I occasionally used north Africa as my example of Europe’s backyard where trouble could easily be precipitated in one of many countries, with real ripple effects hitting a Europe where we would still not have the proper capabilities to handle it on our own. I take no great pride in being proved correct in my forecast.

Europe, despite its relative prosperity and economic muscle, is still not, as we have seen, able to act in its own self-interest without US leadership and military capabilities. Only two nations—America and this country—were able to use precision cruise missiles at the beginning of this crisis and to have a decisive effect on Gaddafi’s military power. No other nation in Europe has that capability. What a mockery it makes of the grand ambitions for Europe to be robust, self-sufficient and independent of US influence and power.

One of the most despairing aspects of events in the past few weeks has been the disunited and pretty undignified squabble among European members of NATO about how to organise a multinational no-fly zone. As all the NATO nations know, there is only one organisation capable of arranging and commanding a complex multinational military operation, and that is NATO, through its military headquarters at SHAPE. One of the most uplifting aspects of the crisis so far has been the fact that everybody eventually came to realise that glaringly obvious point; and now, in the past 48 hours, NATO has, with its Canadian commander, at last taken over the whole operation.

I can empathise like nobody else with Secretary-General Rasmussen in the somewhat confused commentary that he has had to provide over these weeks. I know it only too well. I have seen it, done it and have quite a few T-shirts to show for it. We should realise that NATO is the sum of its parts. Unlike the EU and the UN, NATO is not some monolithic organisation with its own corporate identity and a vast bureaucracy; it is as powerful or as feeble as its member states want it to be. When nations put national interests and primitive rivalries before collective security and collective action, NATO becomes a paper tiger in an increasingly complex and dangerous international jungle.

As we can all now see, things are not over. Defections from the Gaddafi regime there will be, and the more the better—and a bag full of trouble they will bring with them as it happens and the regime unravels. The fighting will continue to ebb and flow along the Mediterranean coast and we will assuredly be faced with new dilemmas in the next few weeks.

If the attrition goes on and civilians cannot be saved just from the air, will we simply stand back if boots on the ground could be decisive? If we took that route, whose boots would be on the ground? Even in the best-case scenario of a stabilisation force on the ground in post-conflict Libya, whose boots would make up that force? The boots assuredly will not be American. The President and his Defence Secretary made it very clear this week that their people are tired of coming to the rescue of a Europe that will not invest in its own security insurance.

It is still an embarrassing and, indeed, scandalous fact that there are almost twice as many people in Europe as in the United States of America, yet we can deploy only about 2 or 3 per cent of them outside national boundaries. Who will supply them in Libya, whether in conflict or in peacekeeping; in Syria, if that odious regime were to disintegrate; in Yemen, if the president clings on to the death; in Bahrain, if the violence abates; or even in Palestine/Israel when common sense and uneasy peace eventually break out? Europe had better wake up to the challenge that it faces at this historic moment. Loud noises and self-congratulation about Arab awakening and Arab “springs” as the masses rise up against dictatorships will simply turn to dust if one uprising leads to a new repressive regime.

I want to make two final brief, important points. First, this country’s coalition Government should be reaching out in Britain to all those who can contribute to thinking on this issue. In the US it is seen as publicly important—essential, even—that the President and the Administration should consult and involve a wide range of experts and political players. I did precisely that when I was Secretary of State for Defence and we were engaged in the conflict over Kosovo. It gave a clear message of national resolve, first to the British people; secondly, to our forces who are in action risking their lives; and, thirdly and very importantly, to those whom we are confronting. My American friends are amazed at how British politics is so unhelpfully government-centric on these serious issues. I do relate that not simply to this Government but to the previous one as well. I exempt the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Astor, who has been a model of reaching out to other elements in society.

Finally, in the midst of this crisis and all that it means and all the attention that it takes, let us not forget that thousands of British troops are engaged in a continuing war in Afghanistan. They are making progress but they are still in danger and still being killed and injured. Our resolve there must not weaken at any point simply because we are focusing our attention for the moment on events closer to home. The stakes there are high. Leaving prematurely would be a mistake, and all the sacrifices would be in vain.