Foreign Affairs and International Development

Debate between Angus Robertson and Mark Lazarowicz

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

There have been many passionate contributions to the debate, and the contribution from the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) was one of them. I draw attention in particular to the speech made by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock). Hansard will report all the words of her contribution, but it will not reflect the rapt silence in which it was heard by Members across the House as she raised the horrific situation of young Palestinian boys and girls in military custody.

I listened closely also to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), who stressed the target of 0.7%, to which the United Kingdom Government have signed up for more than 40 years and have not delivered on so far in one single financial year; and to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who pointed out, almost amazingly, that in a Queen’s Speech debate over a series of days, we have no specific focus on the importance of the environment. I should have thought that by now we would have learned that it was one of the most important challenges that we face.

I listened closely to the opening speech from the Foreign Secretary, who touched on many of the key issues of the day. Nobody can doubt the challenge of the crisis of the eurozone or the situation in Syria. Both remain extremely serious, and there is a need for an urgent political solution, as far as that is possible, and the return of international military forces from Afghanistan as a top priority.

I take the opportunity to concentrate on a particular challenge facing northern Europe, a subject not touched on from either Front Bench or by anybody else today. The seas north of Scotland are warming at an alarming rate. Recent studies show that warming in the Arctic is occurring faster than anywhere else on the planet, and the average temperature in the region has surpassed all previous measurements in the first decade of the 21st century. Sea ice has been shrinking, and the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet and other Arctic ice caps will contribute more and more to the rise in global sea levels. The facts are sobering. Sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than at any time in the past four decades, and during last summer the Northwest passage was free of ice, and this trend is set to continue and become the norm.

These changes in Scotland’s backyard are significant and they are accelerating. All our neighbours are at action stations, because they understand that the massive changes impacting on the high north and Arctic will become a significant feature of the years and decades ahead. The environmental concerns are alarming, but significant economic opportunities and geostrategic challenges must be tackled in parallel. Those include oil, gas and mineral extraction and new international shipping routes. Up to 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves and 10% of oil resources are believed to be located in the Arctic. With the opening of northern shipping lanes, vessels sailing between east Asia and western Europe could save more than 40% in time and fuel costs by navigating the sea lanes north of Siberia rather than the southern route through the Suez canal. Rising sea temperatures also mean that there are new fishing grounds.

Given all of those developments, one would imagine that the UK Government would be taking this very seriously. After all, all neighbouring Governments in the north of Europe are doing so. Sadly, they are not. At last November’s International Maritime Organisation assembly, the UK did not even raise the massive challenges of the northern dimension. Among our neighbours, the changing circumstances are, however, being thoroughly considered.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right to criticise the Government, but perhaps I can give him some reassurance as the Environmental Audit Committee, of which I am a member, is looking at this very issue, because we recognise that it does need to be given much higher priority by our Government.

[Angus Robertson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing that to my attention and I look forward to the conclusions of the report with great interest, because, as I said, our neighbouring countries have been considering this problem for a number of years. Given the national priorities at play, they are keen to ensure stability in the region, which necessitates ecological, economic, diplomatic and defence co-operation and understanding. All this explains why the countries adjoining the Arctic are taking the issue very seriously. Norway, Denmark, Russia, Canada and the United States have all developed specific policy priorities for the high north and Arctic. Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands consider this a top priority, as do nations such as Sweden and Finland.

Our neighbours’ multilateral engagement is extremely serious and they are working closely together. This has happened for decades through the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Council, and has recently been widened to include enhanced bilateral and multilateral relations with the independent Baltic republics. Nordic co-operation is broad and embraces areas such as environment, health, energy supply, research, culture, education, information technology, research and business advancement. A specific Arctic co-operation programme works together with countries in the Arctic Council, which was formed in 1998 with the signing of the Ottawa declaration. An additional important consideration relates to regional security, where finely tuned defence priorities provide the capabilities that secure stability and aid the civil power across the massive area that constitutes the high north and Arctic. Our neighbours are scaling up their infrastructural capabilities in the region.

Despite different relations to treaty organisations such as the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the Nordic and Baltic nations are pushing ahead as never before. This includes shared basing, training and procurement arrangements. For nations such as Norway and Denmark in particular, deployability and reach within the high north and Arctic is a key consideration. This is not the case for the UK.

Recently the UK Government mapped out their future priorities in a strategic defence review, a weighty 75-page report that does not mention the northern dimension once, underlining that it is not an important focus for Whitehall. In addition, UK defence cuts to infrastructure and capabilities in Scotland mean that we will have a diminished ability directly to co-operate with our neighbours. Damaging decisions, including the scrapping of fixed-wing Nimrod search and rescue aircraft, are at the top of that list. Air force operations are ending from two out of three of the northern air bases in the UK. No appropriate conventional sea-going vessels are based in Scotland at all. The recent arrival of a Russian carrier group around the Admiral Kuznetsov in the Moray Firth off my constituency necessitated royal naval interdiction craft being sent from the south of England to the north of Scotland, underlining that gap in capability.