Brexit: Peace and Stability

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a rich debate that has covered a great deal of ground. Noble Lords’ collective expertise and deep understanding of the issues, which are manifest in their contributions, are immensely valuable.

The Prime Minister has made it clear that there will be challenges ahead as we make plans to leave the European Union. The UK will be the first member state to leave, so obviously we are in uncharted territory. At the same time, the EU itself is facing other significant economic and political challenges. All this is taking place in the context of a world that is interconnected as never before and where conflict, instability and mistrust of the established order are on the rise. It is right to question whether our withdrawal from the EU could have an impact on peace and stability, not only in Europe but in the wider world, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for making possible the discussion during this debate today. In seeking to answer that question, we must remain objective while recognising that none of us has a crystal ball to predict the future with certainty.

Our assessment is that there are indeed significant challenges to peace and stability ahead, but that they are not ones brought about by the UK’s decision to leave the EU, nor do we assess that they will be exacerbated by our leaving the EU. That is because we remain absolutely committed to promoting and defending global peace and security and the rules-based international order. As a number of noble Lords have indicated, we remain an influential permanent member of the UN Security Council, the second largest contributor to NATO and a leading member of the G7, the G20 and the Commonwealth. My noble friend Lady Helic underlined the importance of that. We remain an outward-facing nation and a force for good, with a diplomatic network that is respected across the world. We will continue to put that network to good use, working with our international partners, including our European neighbours, to find solutions to some of the world’s most complex challenges. I hope that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Collins, who dwelt on these aspects in his contribution.

The challenges include those from state and non-state actors, social and economic tensions, conflict, corruption, climate change, poverty, inequality and intolerance. In Europe, a resurgent and revanchist Russia has defied the established security order through its illegal actions in Crimea and its destabilisation of eastern Ukraine. Russia’s support for President Assad and its deplorable bombing of civilian areas are putting obstacles in the way of peace in Syria.

Further afield, Europe faces an arc of instability stretching from west Africa to the Middle East to eastern Europe. Conflict, fragile states and political vacuums have given rise to new and virulent forms of extremism that threaten everyone’s security. The migration crisis has its roots in these fragile states; instability far from here is causing desperate people to risk the dangerous journey to European shores. In Asia too, we face challenges to the rules-based international order from North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. I assure noble Lords that the UK remains engaged on all these issues and more, and leaving the EU will not change that.

Our global engagement goes beyond foreign policy. Our membership of NATO is at the heart of British defence policy and our commitment to it is absolute. We meet the target of 2% of GDP on defence and spend 20% of our defence budget on major new equipment and research and development. We are a nuclear power. The Prime Minister reaffirmed our commitment to Trident in July and we are a framework nation, both for NATO’s new enhanced forward presence on the eastern flank and for the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. We are the only NATO ally with this profile.

Our defence and security commitments go further. We are the sixth largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping, with British peacekeepers currently deployed in six missions around the world. We know that stability and prosperity go hand in hand, and we remain committed to spending 0.7% of gross national income on overseas development. We remain a passionate advocate for the women, peace and security agenda and the sustainable development goals. We are working hard to increase women’s participation in all areas of life to stamp out corruption, reduce poverty and tackle climate change. Indeed, as my noble friend Lady Anelay so eloquently indicated in the debate last week, we remain an international leader on the women, peace and security agenda. In 2006 we developed a national action plan, one of the first countries to do so, and in particular the Government’s commitment to the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative remains strong. So we have ambitious plans for the future.

In the time available, I shall try to deal with some of the more specific contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, raised the issue of defence in relation to NATO, and I hope I have managed to reassure him with some of the comments that I have already made. He also mentioned Gibraltar. I make it clear that our stance on Gibraltar has not changed, and we will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their wishes.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds, in a reflective contribution, quoted John Donne. If my memory is correct, the rest of the quotation is:

“No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main”.

I agree, because for the UK, the continent and the main, in the global world, includes countries beyond those in the EU, but together with all these countries, we have a mutuality of interest. It is very important that we do not lose sight of that.

My noble friend Lady Helic talked about the national security strategy. As far as I am aware, there is no specific proposal at the moment in relation to that strategy. On Russia and the Balkans, we have set out in our strategy the threats to the UK and our allies, and Brexit will not change our support and co-operation. On enlargement, which she also raised, we continue to support countries committed to the accession process as a way of embedding stability and addressing challenges through reform, particularly in the western Balkans.

There were some interesting contributions on whether leaving the EU in some way creates a severance with our other partners and relationships throughout the rest of the world. Indeed, there were some questions about what happens to our relationships with the countries of the EU and the extent to which we can continue to have bilateral or wider relationships with them. There are already some very interesting examples: the UK has constructive relationships already with all EU states, on a bilateral level as well as through the EU. France is an interesting example: we work together on a wide range of fields, not just foreign and security policy, but defence, energy, migration, transport and trade. When we leave the EU, we will not step back from these relationships. Therefore, I hope your Lordships agree that there are opportunities and potentially new relationships to forge, new relationships to strike with other countries—whether they are within what will be the remaining EU, or countries in the rest of the world.

I conclude by reiterating the words of the Foreign Secretary: that we may be leaving the EU but we are not leaving Europe. That might sound like a platitude, but it is worth while constantly reminding ourselves of that. We may be an island; we may have a stretch of Channel between us and the rest of the continent that comprises the land mass of the EU, but that does not mean that we fracture the relationships or various objectives that we have negotiated over the years on a bilateral level with individual countries in the EU. As a Scot who has lived with and recognised the auld alliance with France over centuries, I hope I can give your Lordships heart in saying that these relationships are possible. They can be forged, and they can be enduring.

I remind the House that Europe’s security challenges are our security challenges. Instability thousands of miles away has its echoes on the streets of our towns and cities. We will not be pulling up the drawbridge or turning our backs on the world. Collective action remains a cornerstone of international order and we will continue to work constructively with our European neighbours—and with our other international partners— to further our shared values and interests.

I thank your Lordships for what has been a very helpful and positive debate. We covered various interesting territory. I realise that for some noble Lords, there have not been sufficiently specific answers to some of the questions posed, and I understand the frustration, but we are at a stage in our journey to leave the EU where specification and more precise information cannot be produced. That is not being evasive: it is just stating a matter of fact, and I ask your Lordships to be patient with the Government in that respect. Finally, I thank all those who contributed to the debate for raising a number of important issues. These are matters that the Government will certainly continue to keep before us, and to which we will pay close attention.