Gibraltar

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

There are a range of detailed practical problems that can and should be arranged and should be discussed. We would like to see a move back to the previous trilateral arrangements, which included the British Government, the Spanish Government and Gibraltar and were a good forum for making progress. At the moment, that is not encouraged and does not seem to be favoured by the Spanish Government, so I have to report that the linkages to deal with these smaller matters are really either informal or in small groups. No general strategy is being successfully carried forward, and we would like to see one developed.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that this escalation in events is quite worrying and that while one understands efforts to defuse the situation, we need to do more to get the message across that this is unacceptable? We might otherwise find ourselves in the position we were in on 15 July 1798, when HMS “Lion” took on four Spanish frigates, capturing one and sending the rest running—a position we would not like to be in again.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that it could develop seriously, but from the point of view of the Spanish fishing community, the Spanish Government, ourselves or the people of Gibraltar there is no interest in escalating this to the point of any kind of physical action. Therefore, we think that dialogue is the best way forward. We have good relations with the Spanish Government. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary met the Spanish Foreign Secretary on 29 May and discussed it, and we think this is the right channel through which to develop a better dialogue and to meet all these detailed issues, including the fishing incursions. Once we have solved them, we would take a broader view about whether Spain is going to co-operate closely with us and Gibraltar on the kind of trilateral regime we had before, but the first thing is to solve the fishing dispute.