Defence: Treaties with France

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating to this House as a Statement the Answer given in another place. I start by associating myself and those on these Benches with the tribute paid to Sapper William Blanchard of the 101 (City of London) Engineer Regiment. I see once again the words in brackets “explosive ordnance disposal”. The bravery displayed by those who do that job is, frankly, beyond my comprehension, and I greatly admire them.

Turning to the Statement, I protest once again that we in this House and in Parliament in general are the last to hear about this treaty being signed. The media, the French public, our allies and enemies and, I understand, the French Parliament have heard about it first. Everybody has. I will not go on about it, but we must get to a situation where we and the other place are the first to hear these things. Having said that, we welcome the general direction of what we hear so far. Co-operation with the French is the only practical co-operation that can make a significant impact on our defence capability. Taken intelligently and effectively, it has the capacity significantly to increase the ability of us both to make an impact, particularly in co-operating on defence equipment and its research and development.

Having said that, because of its suddenness and brevity this Statement raises an awful lot of questions. First, there is the very ratification process. The processes for ratifying treaties in Parliament—international treaties which have no impact on domestic legislation—are extremely poor. The previous Government brought forward proposals to improve that, as the present Ponsonby convention is extremely weak, and I see some hint that we are going to do something more. I see that although two treaties have been signed, we are to have an opportunity to consider them as part of the process towards ratification. That seems rather fuller than the convention and I invite the Minister to write to me—or, indeed, to produce a Written Statement—setting out exactly how we are going to have the opportunity to debate this extremely important convention or treaty, whatever the right term for it is, because so many important matters are opened up by the very concept.

The words flowing around in the media are of a 50-year “binding agreement”. Now, what does a binding agreement with the French mean? How are we going to adjudicate when we disagree? Is there going to be some supreme court for us? The history of the French nation over the past few centuries shows a chequered record on binding agreements. Indeed, there is a somewhat dark side to some of it. Of course, that will not be the case in future, but any concept of “binding agreement” has to have behind it some meaningful process otherwise, sadly, it will be just words. It is particularly difficult to envisage—I am not saying that it is impossible—how a binding agreement will survive the five-yearly defence reviews that we support. We think they are a good idea, but what will be the mechanism for those reviews?

Finally, can the Minister explain how this will change our relationship with our allies? We have this complex relationship in NATO; we are developing another complex relationship within the EU. We support those, but in among all of that we are going to have some special relationship with the French. How will that be achieved and not weaken those important relationships, particularly the NATO relationship? People—even, I dare say, of our generation—forget just how important that NATO relationship has been over the decades and how important it is that we do nothing to weaken it.

Turning to the nuclear stockpile, I found this somewhat surprising. I do not mean that it is not right but that I was not privy to the extent of this development. My understanding is that the 1958 mutual defence agreement with the US was special and complex, and that the extent of the co-operation between the two countries was extremely different. The French had to work a lot harder on the outside of that agreement. Since we are told that our American allies are content with this agreement, are we to understand that the French, in terms of support for their weapons, are going to receive the same support that we enjoy from the Americans? Are we going to have some sort of trinational bomb?

We are talking about sharing a nuclear facility with the French. I think that I understand what those words mean, but how can we share that facility without sharing nuclear secrets? Do we accept that the French will have effective full access to our nuclear secrets?

The document seems to imply—once again, I am sorry that I have not read it over and over, but I have had very little time to study it—that we are making a financial commitment to the nuclear facility. This is very interesting. Does it mean that the Government, almost as an aside in this Statement, are affirming beyond all reasonable doubt that we are going to have a deterrent? The facility will not open until 2015; if we have a financial commitment to it, we are clearly going to spend substantial money on the nuclear deterrent over and above anything that we understood from the SDSR.

If this is a Statement about the deterrent, does this co-operation in any way reduce the independence of our deterrent? In simple terms, will we continue to be able to target our weapon and fire it unconstrained by any other nation? I should value the Minister’s confirmation of that.

I turn to the more conventional side. To what extent does this weaken our ability to work alone? Mutual co-operation, almost by definition, ends up meaning mutual dependence. Will that dependence mean that we cannot act by ourselves? Will we, in a sense, only ever go to war again—this may be a good or a bad thing; on balance, I think the House would say that it was a bad thing—if we are in agreement with the French? They are lovely people but, over 50 years, will we always have to have their agreement to go to war, and indeed will they have to have ours? Are we in fact going to have a genuine capability for independent operation?

One cannot in these circumstances do other than reflect on the carrier. If I understand the way that the carrier decisions have gone, we are to lose our Harrier capabilities and fixed-wing strike capability, but we are going to build a carrier on which French aircraft can operate until we get our own. That is great if you say it quickly. Does that mean that, when this carrier is in the vicinity of a place where we want to take independent action, the French fixed-wing aircraft on board will go and bomb the targets that we ask them to, or will they have to call Paris first?

I have questions about the whole picture of the interdependence around the carrier. What happens when it is in refit? What happens when we lend the carrier—do we take all our secret bits out or rub all the symbols of Britishness off? It is very complicated.

We feel that the generality of this effort is a good idea, but we will want to hear a lot more about the detail before the treaty is properly ratified.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we have always had excellent relations with the United States and I know that those will continue. We talk to other countries in the European Union and to our NATO allies at all times, but this Statement was about relations with France, which I very much welcome.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, will the noble Lord promise to put copies of all his letters in the Library?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

Yes.