Bob Ainsworth
Main Page: Bob Ainsworth (Labour - Coventry North East)Department Debates - View all Bob Ainsworth's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(14 years ago)
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Dr Fox
But it is surely in the interests of the United Kingdom to welcome a trend that we have been calling for for a very long time. When we can draw the French into greater co-operation with NATO, where they are clearly in a much more transatlantic orbit, and are able to supplement and augment what the United Kingdom can do without interfering in our sovereign capability, we should welcome it. It is not a question, as my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) suggests, of the joint ownership of fleets; it is about our willingness to operate them together when it is in our mutual interest to do so.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
I hugely welcome the signing of these two treaties, but, despite the presentational attempts, I am a little amused at a Conservative-led Government announcing what is a huge integration of European capability. This is not a zero-sum game, and we should not present it as one, but will the Secretary of State explain the balance between investment and cost in respect of the facilities in which there will be investment at Aldermaston and in France? Notwithstanding any desire to work together, we ought to be pretty hard-headed in our relationships with France. They most certainly will be on their side.
Dr Fox
The contracts are currently under discussion, and it is a matter of commercial sensitivity exactly what the numbers are. We do, however, believe that it would save very substantial millions for the United Kingdom to go ahead with the facility in France.
On the question of this being an integrationist measure—far from it, because we are able to understand the difference between geographical Europe and political Europe. What we want to see is a partnership with another sovereign nation on the European continent, not supranational control from the European Union.