UK Diplomacy in Europe

Debate between Alex Norris and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I absolutely welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. Britain’s relationship with eastern Europe, particularly the Visegrad Four, was summed up in my conversation with our Baltic partners only yesterday. Britain’s role in assisting at the liberation of those countries from communism and in defending them at other points in history is one that many of them look at with fondness and affection. We should absolutely recognise and invest in that, and I pay huge tribute to our missions and embassies in those countries and the efforts they are making with the resources they have available. All I would add is: imagine what they could do with more resources. Imagine how many more people they could help to persuade of the benefits of thinking along those lines.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the Committee on the report. Disrupting modern slavery supply chains across Europe requires high-quality diplomatic skill on our part. What assessment has the Foreign Affairs Committee made of our future diplomatic capacity in this area to disrupt this blight?

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman asks a fair question, and this is one area where we need to consider not just bilateral relations but relations with the European Union as an organisation. We must recognise that if that is how 27 member states choose to work, our option for working with them is through the organisation that they choose. That is simply a fact. Seeing how we can plug into that organisation is essential, which is why we call on the Foreign Office to consider very hard the bilateral nature of that relationship, and perhaps to look at it in a different way. When we look at the mission in Washington, for example, and the way that the British embassy there plugs across an entire network, that may be a model for how we look into the European Union. Some of us—I speak personally here, not for the Committee—are attracted by the idea of having a Minister resident in Europe, not only to promote Britain’s interests, but to make sure that our European partners and friends see the importance that we place on that relationship.