European Council

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The rights that we have set out and the specified date are about the point at which people are able to qualify for settled status here in the United Kingdom. Of course, as we are members of the European Union, the arrangements that have always existed for us and for those here will continue, but for those who are getting settled status and wish to retain it for the future, the cut-off date is pertinent, and that will be a matter for negotiation.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister chose, exceptionally, to raise this extremely important issue in the Council, but will she confirm that in future all the threads of the negotiations will pass through the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, therefore bringing the negotiation together, in the same way in which the European Council is standing behind Mr Barnier?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union is looking at all those threads, which he is going to pull together. We are very clear that at different stages as we go through the negotiations—in the working groups and so forth—a whole variety of people will be involved, but as we saw last Monday, when my right hon. Friend went to the start of the negotiations opposite Michel Barnier, the status and position that he holds is very clear.

Debate on the Address

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who always speaks a good deal of sense on these occasions. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I should like to thank my constituents for so generously returning me to represent them in this place for a fifth time.

This is clearly going to be an unusual Parliament, as the Gracious Speech demonstrates. In a hung Parliament, political power tends to pass from the Cabinet Room to the Floor of this House, and I hope that there are issues on which we can work together across the House. I hope that we can lift our eyes from the obvious party political domestic preoccupations. We did so over Syria in the last Parliament, when I had the great good fortune to work closely with Jo Cox. We were co-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on Syria. Syria remains the defining catastrophe of our age, with 11 million Syrians—half the population—displaced from their homes. I am glad that the Gracious Speech supports an intensification of Britain’s efforts in the middle east. There is international consensus on the need to defeat and destroy ISIL, and this should be prosecuted with much greater vigour. However, defeating ISIL militarily is just a small part of our task. The much greater part is to defeat a nihilist death cult that has attracted young people to its cause.

We need to address Britain’s role in the world after Brexit. Britain stands for certain values—not so much British values as international values. We are the fourth largest military power, and one of the very few countries that can undertake expeditionary military activity. We have one of only three diplomatic services that span the world, and it is deeply respected, not least at the United Nations. Our international development work is saving millions of lives and transforms the way in which millions of the world’s poorest live. This British leadership is respected throughout the world, if not in certain quarters of the British press. I urge Ministers to stand up for the brilliant work being done by Britain, and not to cower under the table in the face of the onslaught of the Daily Mail. Of course Britain does not give bilateral money to North Korea, but as part of the United Nations we do try to stop North Korean children starving to death.

There is some concern in the development community about the apparent double-hatting of Foreign Office Ministers to cover the Department for International Development. If I may use a swashbuckling analogy that might appeal to the Foreign Secretary, there is some fear that his eye has alighted on a plump galleon loaded with bullion and that he wishes to board that galleon and plunder her cargo. The rules governing the spending of British aid are clearly laid down by the OECD development assistance committee. I think that those rules can be improved, but I do not believe that this House would agree to their being unilaterally abandoned by the United Kingdom.

Similarly, the Government have a duty to address the terrorist acts that horrified us all during the election. The whole House will also condemn the dreadful anti-Muslim hate crime that surged after the appalling atrocities in Manchester and London. Getting the balance right between collective security and individual liberty will not be easy, but many of us in the House are wary of tampering with ancient liberties and of giving additional power to the state unless it is absolutely necessary. If the terrorists alter our way of life, they win.

I am glad that the ill-advised idea of leaving the ECHR has been dropped. It would never have got through the House anyway. It might be possible to improve the Human Rights Act 1998, but we should not seek to repeal it just because it was drafted by Tony Blair. That brings me to the central issue in British politics today: our departure from the EU. I sometimes think that, when it comes to Europe, my party is the victim of a biblical curse. I hear the arguments eloquently put, by friends and colleagues I greatly respect, in favour of both a soft and a hard Brexit, but what virtually all my constituents want is the best possible deal. They care deeply not only about their living standards and quality of life but about those of their children and grandchildren. They want the best possible deal for Britain.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Would my right hon. Friend like to reflect on the utility of the terms “soft Brexit” and “hard Brexit”? I do not consider them to be of very much use in this discussion. They serve to confuse rather than to enlighten.

Article 50

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. We have, as he said, recognised the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland—and its relationship, because of the land border, with the Republic of Ireland—in the letter to President Tusk. I also agree with the right hon. Gentleman when he says that the most important Union for the United Kingdom, economically and in other ways, is the United Kingdom. For its individual constituent parts, trading within the single market of the United Kingdom is far more important than trading with the European Union.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for the constructive, positive and realistic tone she has set today with her statement and the letter to Donald Tusk. I also congratulate her and her Government on the use of the last nine months to prepare us for this point, making up for the lack of preparation for this moment by the last Administration. May I urge on her the preparation that is implicit in this letter, to ensure that if it is impossible to get a deal home—although that will be coped with by the United Kingdom and the European Union, as it must be—we are in a position to cope with that?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. We are trying to approach this in a realistic and pragmatic way, as he says. Of course, the Government will be working across all Departments to ensure that we have preparations in place, whatever the outcome will be. As I made clear in my letter to President Tusk, while both the European Union and the UK could cope if there was no agreement, that would not be the ideal situation. It is not what we will be working for, and we should be actively working to get the right and proper deal for both sides.

European Council

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am optimistic that we are going to get a good deal for the UK on trading with the EU.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

No deal may be a bad deal for both the EU 27 and for the UK, but it is very far from the worst deal for the UK if there were no route to a future free trading arrangement with the EU. The deal is in the gift not of the Prime Minister’s Government, however hard they are trying to deliver it, or of this Parliament, but of the European Parliament and our partners. So no deal remains a real possibility. It seems that her Government and Departments are now preparing for it. Will that preparation include the opportunity for individuals and businesses to make their own dispositions for that possibility?

[The Prime Minister]

I was clear in the Lancaster House speech that no deal was better than a bad deal. I am optimistic that we will be able to negotiate a good deal, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right of course that there are other parties to this, and it is not just about what we say. There will be a negotiation about that trade arrangement, and I can assure him that in coming to an agreement on that arrangement I and others in Parliament—the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—are talking to businesses across the United Kingdom to understand the issues that are most important to them.

Informal European Council

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady is approaching this, as a number of others have done, as a binary issue between customs union membership and having a good trade agreement with the European Union. I do not see it as such. We want to be able to negotiate free trade agreements with other countries around the world, but our membership of parts of the customs union—this is not just a single in or out question—currently prevents us from doing those free trade agreements. I am confident that we can achieve the sort of free trade agreement with the European Union that is in our interest and that of the European Union and that gives us the ability to trade across borders that we want in the future.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

In her statement, my right hon. Friend talked about the new and equal partnership that we wish to build between the EU and an independent, self-governing, global Britain. She also pointed out the importance of co-operation on issues such as migration from Libya. Were there any discussions on, and what contemplation is she giving to, Britain’s continuing de facto involvement in the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy after Brexit?

[The Prime Minister]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that this is one of the issues we are looking at in relation to the negotiations that are coming up. In the speech that I made at Lancaster House two and a half weeks ago, I was very clear that we recognised the importance of the security and defence co-operation that we have with our European partners and that we wanted to continue that co-operation.

European Council 2016

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The majority vote in the referendum was for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. That is what we will be delivering. Once again, the hon. Gentleman raises questions about means rather than ends. What we want is the best possible outcome in the trading relationship between the UK and the European Union, and for operating within the European Union. That is where our focus should be—not on particular processes to get there.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The Council conclusions stressed the Union’s continued resolve to deepen and strengthen its relationship with Ukraine in the face of current challenges. How strongly does the Prime Minister expect her Government to support Ukraine after we have left the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

It is absolutely right that the European Council was concerned and wanted to ensure that we have that continuing relationship with Ukraine. The UK is already supporting Ukraine in a number of ways. When we leave the European Union, we will look at our continuing bilateral relationships with countries across the European continent. We are already providing money to establish the national anti-corruption bureau in Ukraine and we are supporting energy reform to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian gas. We are offering defensive training to Ukrainian armed forces and supporting internal reform with the Ukrainian ministry of defence. We already have a number of areas in which we are supporting Ukraine. I expect that we would continue to want a good bilateral relationship with Ukraine once we have left the European Union.

European Council

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have said on a number of occasions that the vote to leave the European Union was a vote to ensure that we can have control over our budget, control over our laws and control over the rules on immigration that we set out.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Since it is clear from the Prime Minister’s welcome endorsement of free trade that she will seek the closest possible engagement for a sovereign country with the European single market, does she agree that this objective would be better served by lobbying our partners than by throwing dust in the eye of the commentariat in this country?

G20 Summit

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will try to limit my response to the key issues in my statement that the right hon. Gentleman picked up. First, on the issue of immigration, he says that a points-based system has been rejected. What the people of the United Kingdom voted for on 23 June, as part of the vote to leave the European Union, was to have control over people who move from the European Union into the United Kingdom. A points- based system does not give us that control. A points-based system means that anybody who meets a certain set of criteria is automatically allowed to enter the country. It does not give the Government the opportunity to control and make the decisions about who can enter the country. It is that issue of control that we will be looking for as we decide the relationship that we will have with the European Union in future.

The right hon. Gentleman said a lot about trade deals with other countries, about the EU, about opportunities and so forth. What I saw at the G20, in my discussions with a number of other world leaders, was a great willingness to seize the opportunities that come from the UK leaving the European Union and to do exactly the sort of trade deals that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) has just referred to. I think we should, as a United Kingdom, be willing to seize those opportunities. We should be ambitious in the deals that we wish to do around the world. As I have said, we should be the global leader in free trade. We should be taking those opportunities and ensuring that, as we leave the European Union, we are able to have the relationships that will ensure growth and prosperity for the whole of the United Kingdom, including growth and prosperity for Scotland.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

At the G20, with the Saudi deputy crown prince, the Prime Minister met the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, who is now in London. Is she as delighted as I am that he made it clear to parliamentarians this morning that we can now add the Gulf Co-operation Council to the list of those parts of the world seeking an early free trade deal with the United Kingdom?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I echo my hon. Friend’s comments. I am pleased that that has been reiterated. In fact, I discussed the issue with the deputy crown prince, and I am pleased that the GCC is in that position, too.

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Angus Robertson]

My hon. Friend makes her point very well.

Still remaining on the consensual side of this important debate, I want to stress that SNP Members do not confuse those who are in favour of renewing Trident with the thought that they would actually want to kill millions of people. However, as the Prime Minister has confirmed from the Dispatch Box today, the theory of nuclear deterrence is based on the credible potential use of weapons of mass destruction. Those who vote for its renewal need to square the theory with the practice of what that actually means.

Having said all of that, given the boldness of the Prime Minister’s recent personnel decisions, she has clearly been thinking about new ways of taking things forward. In that respect, it is hugely disappointing that she clearly has not taken any time to consider—perhaps to reconsider—the wisdom of spending an absolute fortune on something that can never be used and is not deterring the threats that we face today. I say again that we have not yet had any confirmation of what the Government plan to spend on this; they expect Members on both the Labour Benches and the Government Benches to sign a blank cheque for it.

I am sorry that the Prime Minister has clearly not given any new or detailed consideration to embracing the non-replacement of Trident, which would offer serious strategic and economic benefits, as outlined in the June 2013 report, “The Real Alternative”. Those who have not read the report should do so.

In the previous debate that took place in this House on 20 January 2015—a debate called by the SNP on Trident replacement, with support from Plaid Cymru and the Green party, and I think I am right in saying that it was co-sponsored by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—we outlined the advantages, including

“improved national security—through budgetary flexibility in the Ministry of Defence and a more effective response to emerging security challenges in the 21st century”

as well as

“improved global security—through a strengthening of the non-proliferation regime, deterring of nuclear proliferation and de-escalation of international tensions”.

There are also potential

“vast economic savings—of more than £100 billion over the lifetime of a successor nuclear weapons system, releasing resources for effective security spending, as well as a range of public spending priorities”.—[Official Report, 20 January 2015; Vol. 591, c. 92.]

This seems to be pretty important, given that, when the Ministry of Defence was asked about it in a written question in February 2015, the then Defence Minister, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who is not in his place but was here earlier—I gave him notice that I would be raising this matter—replied that the estimated annual spending on the Trident replacement programme beyond maingate in 2016 was

“being withheld as it relates to the formulation of Government policy and release would prejudice commercial interests.”

Here today we are part and parcel of formulating Government policy, and we are expected to sign a blank cheque. We have absolutely no idea what the final cost will be. The hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has made a calculation—perhaps he will speak about it, if he catches your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. He worked out that the in-service costs of a missile extension—the total cost of the Trident replacement programme—would be £167 billion.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Let me dispose of this part of my speech. The updated figure is now £179 billion —these are the Government’s own figures—based on capital costs of £31 billion, with a £10 billion contingency, and the Government’s assumption of about 6% of the defence budget as running costs, assuming a 32-year in-service life. That comes to a total of £179 billion.

[Angus Robertson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. That is a very helpful intervention. I am not sure whether those numbers take account of the currency fluctuations that have had an impact on sterling—they do not. I see the hon. Gentleman shaking his head, so we should assume that the total cost is even higher than £179 billion. A calculation was made in May this year which suggested that it would be £205 billion. That is a massive sum. The Defence Secretary is shaking his head, but would he like to intervene on me now and tell us the number?

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Because I suspect that I may be the only person on the Conservative Benches to make the arguments that I am going to make, I have taken some care with them. Given the time limit, I will not be able to deploy my full arguments here, but I will publish them on my website, because I know that many people will be following this debate. I agree with the right hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) that it is an extremely important debate.

It is because I care about the security of my country that I will not be joining my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Lobby tonight. Because we have capped defence expenditure at 2% of GDP, the cost of this programme comes at the expense of the rest of the defence programme. Therefore, we need to make a more rational judgment about the balance of expenditure in order to meet the risks that our country faces. This is a colossal investment in a weapons system that will become increasingly vulnerable and at which we will have to throw good money—tens of billions of pounds more than already estimated—in order to try to keep it safe in the years to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I see the Secretary of State for Defence nodding at my remarks.

[Crispin Blunt]

My right hon. Friend is technically right, but it would be a triumph of hope over expectation that we are going to see more than 2% spent on defence any time soon. When that happens, and if this is taken in isolation, to be spent outside the defence budget, then I will accept that my arguments need to be re-evaluated, but as things are set now, the budget for this weapons system comes at the cost of the rest of our defence budget.

Britain’s independent possession of nuclear weapons has turned into a political touchstone for commitment to national defence, but this is an illusion. The truth is that this is a political weapon aimed, rather effectively, at the Labour party. Its justification rests on the defence economics, the politics, and the strategic situation of over three decades ago, but it is of less relevance to the United Kingdom today, and certainly surplus to the needs of NATO. It does not pass any rational cost-effectiveness test. Surely the failures in conventional terms, with the ignominious retreats from Basra and Helmand in the past decade, tell us that something is badly out of balance in our strategic posture.

Let us not forget the risks that this weapons system presents to the United Kingdom. Basing it in Scotland reinforces the nationalist narrative, and ironically, for a system justified on the basis that it protects the United Kingdom, it could prove instrumental in the Union’s undoing.

We were told last November that the capital cost for the replacement of the four Vanguard submarines would be £31 billion, with a contingency fund of £10 billion. We have been told that the running costs of the Successor programme will be 6% of the defence budget. Following the comments of the right hon. Member for Moray, my latest calculation is £179 billion for the whole programme.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman’s figure is now being used widely. I asked the House of Commons Library and various think-tanks whether they could break it down. They have been unable to do so. Could he explain how he gets to that figure?

[Crispin Blunt]

Yes, it is extremely straightforward. It is 6% of 2% of GDP on the basis of the Government’s proposed in-service dates of the system. The defence budget is 2% of GDP, and this is 6% of that share. That presents us with the number. It is not surprising that the number should be 6% of GDP, which is double the share of the defence budget in the 1980s, because the share of GDP spent on defence has halved since the 1980s.

The costs of this project are enormous. I have asked privately a number of my hon. Friends at what point they believe that those costs become prohibitive. I cannot get an answer, short of, “Whatever it takes,” but I do not believe that an answer of infinity is rational. It is not only damaging to our economic security; it also comes at a deeply injurious opportunity cost to conventional defence. At what point do either of those prices cease to be worth paying?

The costs are likely to rise much further. The standard programme risks, which are already apparent with the Astute programme, and the currency risk pale when compared with the technical risk of this project. There is a growing body of evidence that emerging technologies will render the seas increasingly transparent in the foreseeable future. Under development are distributed censors detecting acoustic, magnetic, neutrino and electromagnetic signatures, on board unmanned vehicles in communication with each other, using swarming algorithms and autonomous operations associated with artificial intelligence, able to patrol indefinitely and using the extraordinary processing capabilities now available and improving by the month. The geometric improvement in processing power means that that technology in today’s smartphone is far superior to that of the latest American fighter aircraft. Furthermore, unmanned aircraft will detect the surface weight of deeply submerged submarines communicating with those underwater receiving active sonar. Marine biologists are already able to track shoals of fish in real time from several hundred miles away.

Ballistic submarines depend utterly on their stealth by utilising the sheer size of the oceans, but if we are today able to detect the gravitational waves first created by big bang, how can we be so confident that a capable adversary would not be able to track our submarines 20 to 40 years from now? The system vulnerabilities are not restricted to its increasingly detectable signatures. What about the security of the Trident system against cyber-attack?

Part of the Government’s case is that all the other P5 states are also investing in submarine technology for their nuclear weapon systems. It would not be the first time that states have followed each other down a dreadnought blind alley, but the UK is the only nuclear-armed state to depend entirely on a submarine. If NATO’s technical head of anti-submarine warfare can foresee the end of the era of the submarine, our P5 colleagues will at least have their bets laid off. We won’t.

Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. He rightly said that it is a sombre day—he is absolutely correct. He highlighted a number of the very serious mistakes that were made, not least on planning for the aftermath. He asked specifically why I did not mention the specific Tony Blair note to President Bush. I was trying to be very careful in my statement to accurately summarise what Sir John Chilcot has said. There was a whole section in my statement about the processes, and I said that Sir John had found that at crucial points Mr Blair sent personal notes and made important commitments to Mr Bush that had not been discussed or agreed with Cabinet colleagues. It is worth reading Sir John Chilcot’s statement from this morning about that.

The right hon. Gentleman rightly focused on paragraph 630 of the executive summary. It is a powerful paragraph that says that

“when Mr Blair set out the UK’s vision for the future of Iraq in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, no assessment had been made of whether that vision was achievable, no agreement had been reached with the US on a workable post-conflict plan, UN authorisation had not yet been secured”

and so on. That is one of the most powerful passages in the report, and he is right to draw attention to it.

I do not accept that all the same failures are in some way apparent when it comes to planning in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there was a very clear connection as a Taliban regime was playing host to al-Qaeda. The goal of Government policy, which I supported at the time and indeed put in place when I became Prime Minister, was to make sure that that country could not become a safe haven for al-Qaeda. There was some considerable success in pursuing that aim. There was a huge amount of planning on the post-conflict situation in Afghanistan, and we are still engaged in that. It is not right to say that there was no plan; there is a plan. There is a UK-run officer training academy to strengthen the Afghan army. But as I said earlier, you can have all the plans in the world, but these are still extremely difficult things to get right.

If the right hon. Gentleman is somehow saying that there is no point in ever taking part in any intervention or trying to help any of these countries, that is a different position, and he should be honest and say that. But I would argue that with Afghanistan and Libya—and indeed with Brexit—we have set out the alternatives. That does not mean they are easy.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The Foreign Affairs Committee has stayed its inquiry into our intervention in Libya in order to take into account the conclusions of the Iraq inquiry. Given that it could be claimed that the inquiry’s central conclusions apply to some degree or other to Libya—not least as stabilisation planning for Libya was described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) at the time as “fanciful rot” and has been described to us since in evidence as “an unrealistic desktop exercise”—will the Prime Minister reconsider his understandable decision not to give oral evidence to us during the referendum campaign, so that the reach of the changes to the machinery of Government that he outlined earlier to the right hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) can be properly assessed by the Committee?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. The Foreign Secretary will be giving evidence to his Committee. The Prime Minister is always asked to give evidence to every Select Committee of the House. I try to stick to answering questions here in the Chamber, and at the Liaison Committee and the National Security Committee, which bring together members of a number of different Committees. I do not think what he asks will be possible but I always consider any request.