European Council and Afghanistan

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement given earlier today in the other place by the Prime Minister on the recent EU Council meeting. I welcome the Statement.

Let me start with Afghanistan. I pay tribute to our troops for the extraordinary job that they have done over the past decade. I join the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House in remembering all those who have lost their lives as well as their families and their loved ones. It is right that the Government have set a date for the withdrawal of our forces. However, it is also important that the international community, including the UK, continues to make a contribution to Afghanistan’s long-term security post-2014. The advances made in Afghanistan, outlined in the Statement, must be safeguarded.

I have some questions about post-2014 arrangements, political stability in Afghanistan and co-operation with Pakistan. Can the Leader provide more detail on the specific nature of the role of the UK Armed Forces after 2014 and what tasks they will have responsibility for, beyond officer training? What objectives will determine the length of stay of any residual UK force?

On political reconciliation in Afghanistan, I agree with the noble Lord about the importance of a proper political process. Will he tell your Lordships’ House what prospect there is of getting the political talks on track, including with the Taliban, and on what timetable?

Turning to relations with Pakistan, I join the Government in recognising the vital bilateral relationship between Pakistan and the United Kingdom. We join the Government in expressing the belief that the UK will also need to build strong working relations with the newly elected Pakistani Prime Minister, especially in regard to the future of Afghanistan. Across this House there is wide support not just for an inclusive political settlement within Afghanistan but also for a regional settlement involving Afghanistan’s neighbours. At the Chequers summit on Afghanistan and Pakistan five months ago, the communiqué committed to building,

“a peace settlement over the next six months”.

Will the noble Lord inform your Lordships’ House what progress there has been since then and what more can be done to achieve this goal?

I now turn to the European Council. I join the Leader in welcoming Croatia’s entry into the European Union and the start date for EU-Serbia accession negotiations and the association agreement with Kosovo. This is good for the peace and stability not just of the Balkans, but of our continent as a whole.

On the European Union budget, the other place was right to vote for a real-terms cut last October. We on these Benches support the recent agreement on the European Union budget and rebate, including the European Parliament’s agreement.

On the rebate, I quote the Prime Minister when he said:

“In this town you have to be ready for an ambush at any time and that means lock and load and have one up the spout”.

Is not the pattern of events slightly different from what he suggests? The Prime Minister said that he was “ambushed” and that there were attempts to unpick the rebate. Is it not the truth that it was he who put it on the agenda of the European Council and that Britain was in a position to veto a change at any stage? If that is the case, the Prime Minister was hardly “ambushed”.

I now turn to the discussions on youth unemployment. It was supposed to be the main subject of the summit but I notice that it was a very small part of the Statement. It is right that the European Union is now focusing proper attention on the plight of young unemployed people and the need to give them hope and work. I should point out that the catalyst for this initiative was not the centre-right Governments of the European Union but the left, led by President Hollande. There are 26 million young people looking for work in the European Union, and 6 million unemployed young people. Nearly 1 million of those young people are here in the UK. That is, shamefully, one in five young people looking for work. Targeting the extra resources to tackle youth unemployment is welcome. However, do the Government really believe that the response was equal to the scale of the challenge?

The Prime Minister said at the press conference after the summit—and again today in the Statement—that the Council agreed to take action,

“very much along the lines of Britain’s … youth contract”.

That is worrying indeed. Last year, the Prime Minister launched the youth contract, which he said,

“is going to do enormous amounts on youth unemployment”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/5/12; col. 24]

Will the Leader of the House explain why, according to a survey of 200 employers last week, not a single one has used the youth contract to hire a young person? How many people have been helped into work through the youth contract.

Frankly, this summit did not mark the recognition, long overdue, that the current economic approach in the European Union is leaving millions of young people without employment or prospects and fearing for their future. Of course we should look at EU regulation as the Government propose, but does the Leader of the House really believe that this is the solution to youth unemployment, including in Britain? The European economy is struggling and the British economy has not grown as the Government have been promising it would since they came to office. There are nearly 1 million young people still looking for work here in Britain. Long-term youth unemployment is up by 158% since the Government took office and the Government’s youth contract is failing. It is clear that this Government can hardly argue effectively for action in Europe on youth unemployment when they are so transparently failing on the issue here at home.