AUKUS

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I refer to my register of interests: I am an honorary captain in the Royal Navy and chair of Wilton Park.

On 13 February, the Foreign Secretary broadly answered the question that we have put to ourselves today. I will return to two of the areas that he raised to pursue them further. He referred to the gain of about £4 billion-worth of contracts in generating thousands of jobs. I urge the Minister that we talk about AUKUS and job generation in a much wider context. As the noble Lord, Lord Risby, rightly said, this will be over several electoral cycles and some very difficult budget settlements; it therefore must be seen in the context of our national security and the freedom of the high seas, which is important to our prosperity.

The Foreign Secretary also referred to progress made on ITAR. He used an interesting phrase:

“a troubling issue that British Governments have had to deal with for decades with American Governments”.

He acknowledged that

“it is essential that AUKUS partners can trade freely between each other in defence equipment”.

He suggested in his answer that real progress had been made when

“President Biden signed the US National Defense Authorization Act, which enables licence-free trade between the AUKUS countries”,

but he added a note of caution by saying,

“and we are working with the State Department on the technical details to make sure that really happens”.—[Official Report, 13/2/24; col. 143.]

If, at its heart, AUKUS is a technology-accelerator agreement for the purpose of national defence, it is important for current members—and to any discussions about widening it, particularly to Japan and South Korea—that the ITAR question is satisfactorily resolved. Otherwise, we will not be able to trade freely.

I think that it is generally accepted that the current membership of AUKUS pillar 1 is unlikely to have additional partners, but when it comes to pillar 2, on advanced military technology, we might even look at countries such as Canada. I suggest that the Minister should also not forget about the importance of France as a major Indo-Pacific power.

The key issue that I want to leave the Minister with is that Bloomberg recently estimated that if there were to be a blockade on the Taiwan Strait it would cost the economy some $10 trillion. All these debates, whether on AUKUS, additional partners or technology, have to be seen in the context of free world trade, the freedom of the high seas and our collective prosperity.