EU Foreign and Security Strategy (EUC Report)

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, as a relatively new member of the EU Sub-Committee on External Affairs, this is the first inquiry I have been involved with. I have found it an extremely positive experience. As the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, has already said, the report is an excellent example of the role that national Parliaments can play in producing considered and timely reports on matters of key importance to the EU. I am sure that I speak for all members of the sub-committee when I pay tribute to the highly effective chairing of our committee by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat. His excellent and eloquent speech today illustrates why we will miss him so much from our committee.

In exactly three weeks’ time Mrs Mogherini will present her global strategy on foreign and security policy to the European Council in Brussels. This will take place just days after the result of the EU referendum. It will not, as certain elements of our media would have us believe, produce a secret blueprint for a European Army. As this report clearly sets out, foreign and security policy is and should remain the domain of member states.

Since the last EU foreign policy strategy review by Javier Solana in 2003, the world has changed substantially. We now face immense global challenges of population movement, civil wars on our borders and the environmental impact of global warming on a scale that 13 years ago even the most pessimistic would have been unlikely to forecast. During this timeframe we have also faced a financial crisis, economic recession and austerity measures, combined with a growing dislike of and lack of trust in the established elites shown by electorates across the European Union. It is against this backdrop that Mrs Mogherini has been producing her report.

The new global strategy should provide a framework for more effectively prioritising the EU’s foreign policy and security objectives. It should look to areas where EU member states working together can add value. It should acknowledge the great potential that the EU offers through effective trade policy and its offer to third countries of access to a single market of 500 million consumers. It should look at ways to improve its working with other international organisations such as NATO and the United Nations, and with our partners such as the United States.

It should acknowledge that one of the most effective assets is through the combined use of resources, the potential to provide training, capacity building and the effective use of soft power which should complement the hard power and military capacity of NATO. As the Select Committee’s report states, new ways of working more effectively together in ad hoc groups of countries should be encouraged and supported where experience, language and shared history make it sensible to do so. But first and foremost, the new global strategy should produce an effective response to the challenges and threats on our borders which are now having a direct effect on all member states, not just the United Kingdom.

In this excessively polarised EU referendum campaign, where exaggerated views are expressed in the most black and white terms, it is the debate in the area of foreign and security policy where I personally have found myself becoming most irritated. The idea peddled by the leave campaign that somehow, if we remove ourselves from the European Union, we will also be able to remove ourselves from these global crises and challenges on our borders is frankly absurd. It is also wholly dishonest to the British people. Faced with such challenges, it is dishonest to suggest that if we pull up the drawbridge everything will be okay, and that Britain in splendid isolation will somehow be better equipped to deal with these global challenges on our own.

Our geographical position as a European country is an indisputable fact, no matter what the outcome of the referendum. We will continue to be affected by the war in Syria, instability in Africa and the mass movement of people northwards as a result of economic poverty or environmental disaster. Faced with such challenges, it seems only logical to work with our European partners to try to find effective joint responses to the difficult and rapidly changing events which are facing us all. I fear that if we do not work to find effective solutions together, the rise of populism and nationalism across the EU could threaten the very peace that the EU has so successfully helped to achieve on our continent. But producing joint responses will require genuine leadership and an honest debate with our populations about the realities of the scale of the problems that we are facing.

That is not to say that the European foreign and security policy has been without its flaws. As someone who studied and lived in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the time of its collapse, and who used to spend so much time there in the heady and optimistic days of the end of the Cold War, I feel deeply saddened by the missed opportunity of the eastern neighbourhood policy. I believe that we also significantly misread the Arab spring and have witnessed a badly co-ordinated follow-up response. Equally, we are currently in danger of badly mishandling relations with Turkey. We now find ourselves faced with an increasingly autocratic Erdogan and Putin, and a highly complex proxy war in Syria.

But there have been successes, too, as the report clearly sets out, notably in the deal struck with Iran and the united EU-wide approach to sanctions against Russia. However, I believe that it is in the UK’s own interest to learn from past mistakes and to help lead and shape the future CFSP. After the fall of the Berlin Wall it was the UK that led the way towards EU enlargement by providing a process which led to the rule of law and democracy for our central and eastern European partners. Nobody should deny that the path is still quite bumpy in some of these countries, but within the framework of the EU it is much easier to maintain leverage. We sometimes forget now what the enlargement process has achieved: the rule of law, improved environmental standards, and democracy in countries which, when I was at university, were all still closed communist dictatorships.

The referendum debate’s focus has been extremely Brito-centric. Much has been done to play on voters’ fears of an increasingly scary and interdependent world. We have, however, concentrated rather less on the impact that our decision will have on our 27 member state partners. There can be little doubt that an EU foreign and security policy would be significantly diminished if the UK were to vote to leave. Such an outcome would risk destabilising the remaining 27 member states. Instability on the continent of Europe will have a direct impact on our security as well as our economy. The history of the last century shows that just because we are an island we are in no way immune to what happens to our near European neighbours.

In the last 15 years we have lost clout and influence in EU institutions. When I arrived to work in the European Parliament 20 years ago, in 1996, everyone spoke French, but a great many of the senior staff in those institutions were British. Indeed, at times it seemed like we were running the place, from the Secretary-General of the European Parliament to many of the most influential DGs in the Commission. Now everyone communicates in English—but, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has already said, we are significantly underrepresented in the EU institutions, including in the External Action Service. Can the Minister confirm that if we do vote to remain in the European Union, the Government will draw up a strategy to improve the UK’s high-level representation in the EU institutions, including further efforts to improve the teaching of foreign languages, which is undoubtedly, in my view, one of the things that holds us back?

In concluding, I sincerely hope that common sense will prevail and that the Government can go to the European Council summit on 28 June from a position of strength. From that position of strength, I hope that the UK will take a lead in proposing a more effective European foreign and security policy. The scale of the problems facing our neighbours in Syria, Libya and north Africa require ambitious, forward-looking proposals. Building on the very positive lead of the London Donors Conference, I would argue that once peace is eventually negotiated in Syria, the UK should take a lead once more and promote serious investment in the MENA region—perhaps a new Marshall plan for north Africa and the Middle East. It will take courageous leadership that puts country ahead of party. It will require a similar depth of vision to that we successfully showed after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

European Union Referendum Bill

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, we are debating the Second Reading of this Bill after the in campaign and both out campaigns have already been launched. Against the backdrop of campaigning on the referendum having de facto already begun, we owe it to the electorate to work constructively and quickly to ensure that this is the very best Bill possible by improving it where necessary, as so many other noble Lords have said today. The Bill could and should be improved both by extending the franchise and in terms of the information provided so that people can make as educated a choice as possible. In that regard, I am certain that we shall have more detailed discussions on information and reports available to the electorate during the later stages of the Bill. However, I shall today concentrate the majority of my remarks on the other key area where I believe that the Bill needs to be further improved; that is, extending the franchise beyond those currently covered by the Bill.

Last September, when my niece, Emma, was 17 and in her final year at school, she was able to take an active part in the referendum campaign in Scotland. When I spoke to her last Sunday afternoon to ask her about the Scottish referendum, she said that being able to vote was a very positive experience. She said, “We felt valued because we were being consulted on something that would have an impact on our whole future, and our views were being taken seriously. All the discussion and events ensured that we were well informed and that we were clued up on the facts and arguments. Having a vote at 16 and 17 really engaged a lot of people in politics who otherwise wouldn’t have been interested, because it targeted us at the right age and, as a result, I think we’re all more likely to vote in the future and to become more involved in politics”. If the outcome of the Scottish referendum had a major impact on the future of our young people in Scotland, and it was therefore decided to give 16 and 17 year-olds the right to vote on that future, surely that argument applies even more strongly to the referendum on our future membership of the European Union. Indeed, in the Scottish context, not to do so might become a further bone of contention in the already febrile political debate in Scotland.

There are those who argue that we should not give 16 and 17 year-olds the right to vote because “they are just children” or they are not mature enough to vote. But if at the age of 16 you are responsible enough to serve your country, get married and pay taxes, you are surely old enough to vote on an issue that will have such a big impact on the future of your country. We should recall that, 100 years ago, not dissimilar arguments were being used then about extending the franchise. Young people are not just the voice of tomorrow. As the 16 and 17 year-olds demonstrated through their passionate and articulate engagement in the Scottish referendum campaign, they are the voice of today. On the vital question of our membership of the European Union, one of the most significant and long-lasting decisions to be made in this country for years, that voice deserves to be heard and given effect with a vote. Given the strength of feeling expressed today on this issue, I hope that we will receive a positive response from the Minister, even though she is currently absent from the Chamber.

To conclude, I want to make one other broad political point. Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP will fight a separate in campaign, and for many nationalists the dream result would be for Scotland to vote to remain in and for England to vote to leave, thereby triggering a second referendum on Scottish independence. I would love to believe that the First Minister would for once put the wider good of the United Kingdom first, but I fear that narrow nationalist politics will prevail. So I make a plea to the Government, as well as to the political leadership of the in campaign, that they should be exceptionally sensitive to the Scottish dimension in this referendum. It would be tragic if the vote on one union led to the break-up of the other. Deciding on the franchise for this referendum on the EU is hugely important and these decisions should not be taken lightly, but if this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, as has been said by so many other noble Lords today, to decide on our relationship with the European Union, we should extend that franchise as widely as possible to include those whose lives and futures will be directly affected.