Brexit: Foreign and Security Policy Co-operation

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, in Tuesday’s debate the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, quoted John Donne’s marvellous words:

“No man is an island, entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main”,

in support of her contention that we have a “mutuality of interest” with other countries, including those in the EU. I could not agree more, in common with most speakers today. But I am afraid she did not give any reassurance that those interests could be sufficiently nurtured, supported and organised outside the EU or how that could be done. I hope we get those answers today.

For instance, in relation to enlargement, the Minister said that,

“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”.

How will we do that if we can no longer influence EU policy? She stressed that leaving the EU,

“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”.—[Official Report, 18/10/16; col. 2314.]

That is fine but bilateral relationships cannot substitute fully for a set of multilateral networks and capabilities.

On Tuesday, colleagues, notably the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds, rightly asked what would happen to the 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review, which was predicated on the EU being as central to our country’s security as NATO, with the EU being, as my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire also said,

“the essential partner of NATO in meeting these threats and challenges”.—[Official Report, 18/10/16; col. 2306.]

Indeed, that review said, as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Pittenweem did, that the EU is “complementary” to NATO. One can see that clearly in areas such as cybersecurity and combating terrorism.

We really do need concrete answers today on how UK foreign and defence policy, and the safeguarding of our security, can possibly be as effective in the future on our own as they are now with the multiplying effect of participation in the co-operative structures of the EU to complement NATO. Even if we were, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, suggested, as well placed to contribute to European defence outside the EU as inside—with which I do not agree—we are not well placed to contribute as strongly to EU security in its widest sense if we are outside the EU. Not only is the EU this essential partner and complementary to NATO but in its Review of the Balance of Competences between the United Kingdom and the European Union, the coalition Government—or the Conservative-led Government, as we more often hear it described on the other side these days—noted that action under the CFSP is,

“intertwined with external action under non-CFSP competences”,

such as development assistance and trade; that is, the competences of the EU itself rather than the intergovernmental format of the CFSP. The EU Select Committee of this House made a similar point in its February report, Europe in the World: Towards a More Effective EU Foreign and Security Strategy. Even though the prospective transatlantic trade agreement—TTIP—is controversial, I hope it will succeed, but if the UK is not there, the chance to establish a transatlantic sphere of standards, rather than a Chinese sphere of standards, which is the alternative, will be undermined by our absence. In my opinion, this affects security.

We need to know how the co-operative process on sanctions as well as on a host of other issues will be replaced after Brexit and, crucially, how we will avoid lessening the impact of sanctions on countries such as Russia or Iran and on terrorists, which would weaken the security not only of the UK and the EU but of the entire western world. The Foreign Secretary asserted in his Conservative Party conference speech that in future the UK would be able to,

“speak up more powerfully with our own distinctive voice”,

outside the EU. But as my noble friend Lord Maclennan said, our voice will be diminished. How will that strengthen a common transatlantic and European defence and security effort?

A point made today by the National Crime Agency’s deputy director-general is that the UK’s withdrawal from Europol would damage our other “Five Eyes” allies because they rely on the UK to get information for them from Europol. Are not those, like Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform, who warn that outside the EU the UK would be less able,

“to influence EU foreign policy priorities”,

absolutely right? Is it not also true that our absence from the EU will weaken and undermine its powers as well as our own and thus those of the entire western alliance? This fragmentation does not help anybody.

At present, the UK can veto CFSP decisions, but in future we will have only the choice of supporting them or not. We will have to be a “me, too” country, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, put it. It is not just a question of replacing the CFSP structures, mechanisms and instruments but of replacing the way that those currently mesh with the policies and functions of the EU itself in which we have hitherto played a leading role—not only enlargement and the neighbourhood policy but the whole justice and home affairs field, to which I will return shortly. I am sure that the former Prime Minister was thinking of all of these dimensions when he said last year that the EU was,

“vital to the UK’s security”.

The new Prime Minister, when she was Home Secretary, was cognisant of the importance of EU law enforcement measures to British security needs, which is why she played a major role in supporting the Liberal Democrats in government and the efforts of both Houses of Parliament in our staying a party to the famous 35 justice and home affairs measures, which include: Europol; Eurojust—the club of prosecutors; the European arrest warrant; the Schengen information system database; the Prüm exchanges of criminal data such as DNA and fingerprints; and the ECRIS system of exchange on criminal convictions. We have heard today from the National Crime Agency how it is urging the UK to opt into the updated Europol regulation and stay in the European arrest warrant. This is not some kind of kneejerk Europhilia; this is senior police telling us that, to catch criminals, it is essential that we stay plugged into these instruments.

It is through no random accident that Europol has a British director, in the person of Rob Wainwright or that Eurojust has had several British presidents, any more than it was an accident that the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, was the first High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. These appointments have been in recognition of the strong UK record, on the one hand, in policing and fighting crime and, on the other, on foreign and defence policy. Despite everything, this sort of record also motivated the bestowal on the new British Commissioner, Sir Julian King, of the security portfolio. We also have in Labour MEP Claude Moraes the chairman of the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee, LIBE, which I used to serve on. It does not strengthen any of those positions for the UK to fail to say how we will support European security in future. The Government welcomed Mr Juncker’s decision to confer the security portfolio on Sir Julian. How will they make that welcome more than an empty and meaningless word?

I confess that it is only because of the Library’s briefing that I came across a very useful background paper from May on the co-operation that we enjoy on justice and home affairs, as well as on CFSP. It pointed out—and was making the point positively at the time—that among non-EU countries it is only the Schengen states, such as Norway and Iceland, which are members of the Schengen information system, Prüm and the European arrest warrant. In fact, no non-EU countries are members of ECRIS, the criminal records measure. How are we to plug into those justice and home affairs measures as a non-EU member?

It is not only on law enforcement and anti-terrorism aspects of security that the UK adds value to the EU’s effectiveness. We also do so by our strong reputation for upholding the rule of law. It has been to my eternal regret that the UK has not opted into all the defence measures, such as on fair trials, which go alongside the law enforcement measures because, frankly, we have the gold standard there.

Finally, given that we have been a leader in reinforcing European security through all the mechanisms mentioned today—CFSP, EU measures and justice and home affairs, even if we are not fully engaged on those—it is vital for our own country’s security and that of our friends and partners that we get some answers today as to how we will carry on contributing once we exclude ourselves from the EU. I ask that the noble Baroness really gives us some detail in her reply.