Select Committee on Defence

Debate between Julian Lewis and Gerald Howarth

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concern. This is why some of us—I speak more personally in this respect—have been worried about the creation of a separate defence identity in Europe outside the NATO arena. What he says is entirely right: NATO is the forum in which our security concerns should be aired with our European friends, neighbours and allies. We should try to arrive at a unified perceptions of the situation and articulate them appropriately.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend and his Committee on producing an excellent and timely report? Does he agree that we have seen recently that President Putin has been able to exploit our weaknesses, that he does so ruthlessly and that he has been able to act with impunity? As chairman of the all-party Ukraine group, I am particularly conscious of his flouting of the Budapest memorandum of 1996, and he has done that with complete impunity. He respects strength, so it is absolutely right that NATO is reinforcing its position in the Baltic states. That is a demonstration of strength and resolve on the part of NATO. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is capabilities, not intentions, that count? Intentions can change overnight; capabilities cannot. Particularly today, given the complexity of modern defence technology, we cannot produce aircraft, tanks and ships overnight. Therefore, NATO’s upcoming meeting should focus on delivering the extra spending to deliver the capabilities.

I strongly applaud my right hon. Friend’s argument about dialogue. I had a meeting with the Russian ambassador here in London, and I said, “We have a common interest. Our common interest is that we are both facing Islamic fundamentalism, and that is where we need to co-operate.” Will my right hon. Friend therefore share with the House how he thinks we can not only show that we have absolute determination and resolve in resisting Putin’s advances but engage with him and his Government? Where else might we do so apart from on the mutual threat that we face from Islamic fundamentalism?

[Dr Lewis]

What a cornucopia of questions, but all of them typically sound and well directed, given my hon. Friend’s distinguished record in the field of defence and security. I believe that there is nothing new about the dilemma of how we gauge our relations with the Russians. I remember in my years as a researcher coming across a paper by the joint intelligence sub-committee—it was then a sub-committee of the chiefs of staff—called “Relations with the Russians”, which was written in 1945, and it said then exactly what we are saying today: “They respect you if you stand up to them, if you show you’re strong, but if you engage with them as well. They do not respect you if you give signs of weakness.”

I believe that there is a shared threat, but there are potential threats that Russia is beginning to show, once again, towards its most immediate neighbours, and that is why it is important that there is a NATO military presence in the most vulnerable front-line states, particularly the Baltic states and Poland. Russia must be left in no doubt that NATO membership means that article 5 applies, and article 5 means that there should be no question of Russia thinking that it can pick off any weaker or more exposed NATO member state and that the other NATO countries will not come to its aid. That is why, conversely, we must be careful not to extend NATO membership or article 5 guarantees to countries where it is simply not realistic to believe that NATO would go to war to defend them.

Europe, Human Rights and Keeping People Safe at Home and Abroad

Debate between Julian Lewis and Gerald Howarth

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) on taking his seat, and to endorse the tribute he paid to his predecessor. Huw Irranca-Davies is living proof of the fact that one can be a genuinely nice guy and still succeed in politics, and we will miss him.

Members of Select Committees are as divided as any other groups on the question of membership of the European Union, and so it should go without saying that in my remarks on this subject today I am speaking solely for myself. My concern is that the fixation of the European Union on creating a single European defence and foreign policy may make future conflict more likely rather than less. So why has NATO proved to be the most successful military alliance in history? The answer is clear: it is the deterrent effect of United States membership. Taken together with article 5 of the NATO charter, according to which an attack on any member country will be considered an attack on them all, this means that any would-be aggressor must face the prospect of war with the world’s most powerful state, the United States, right from the outset. If Germany had faced that prospect in 1914, not 1917, or in 1939, not late 1941, who knows but that those wars might not have begun, and all that suffering might have been avoided?

In order reliably to deter, collective security must combine adequate power with the virtual certainty that it will be brought into action if triggered by an act of aggression. On both grounds, NATO succeeds, and the European Union fails, as a collective security organisation. Since the US does not belong to the EU, the latter can muster only a fraction of NATO’s deterrent military power. Nor can there be any certainty that the US will respond to an attack involving EU member states outside the north Atlantic alliance. By trying to create its own foreign policy and its own military forces—which on typical European levels of defence investment will remain modest indefinitely—the EU risks reverting to the uncertainties of the pre-NATO era. The NATO guarantee is a solemn commitment to be willing to start world war three on behalf of a member country facing attack or invasion. NATO membership must not be proffered lightly nor extended to countries on behalf of which article 5 of its charter is simply not credible. Where security is concerned, it is dangerous folly to give promises and guarantees that we are in no position to fulfil, and the EU needs to be particularly careful in pursuing a foreign policy that gives promises of that sort.

In terms of deterring an external threat, the EU adds nothing to the exemplary role discharged by NATO. As for the threat of EU members attacking each other, there is certainly no risk of their going to war once again with each other as long as they remain free, democratic and constitutional. That is because constitutional democracies do not attack one another; instead, wars break out between dictatorships and other dictatorships, or between dictatorships and democracies.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Is it not absurd to suggest that peace in Europe might be destabilised by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU? The fact is that before we became a member in 1973, Europe had managed for 28 years not to go to war with itself.

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed, and my hon. Friend anticipates a point I was just about to make. Looking at the internal threat, one sees not the slightest chance of members of the EU going to war with each other as long as they remain democratic and constitutional, but if they lose that element of popular democracy in their constitutions, all bets are off.

We heard warnings today about the rise of the far right in some EU member countries. Why is the far right—the extreme anti-immigration right —on the rise? It is on the rise because people feel that they are being disfranchised to some extent and the fate of their country is being decided instead by people whom they did not elect to power and whom they cannot remove. By trying to build a supranational state in Europe in the absence of a democratic mandate, the EU runs the risk of sowing the seeds of precisely the sort of conflict it seeks to abolish.

I know that in this Chamber today more voices have been raised in favour of remain than of leave, but I am not disheartened because I know that all those people campaigning to leave are out there, at the grassroots level, ensuring that when independence day comes on 23 June, the right decision will be taken by the majority of the British people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

The good news is that the Scottish Tories doubled their representation in the Scottish Parliament. The Tories are coming, so the SNP had better watch out—the only non-socialist party in Scotland is on the march.

Some have said that this Queen’s Speech is a bit thin. I personally take the view that it is much better that the Government limit their activities and do less but do it well, rather than trying to rush through a whole load of ill-thought-out measures. I particularly welcome the proposal to give local authorities the power to retain their business rates, and the Investigatory Powers Bill.

I also very much support what my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) said about prisons. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) and I served as prison officers in Dartmoor for three days, as a consequence of which I changed my view. I used to be a “lock ’em up and throw away the key” man, but then I found that we were spending £25,000 per prisoner a year on just locking up people who learn nothing. That is wrong, and this Government are absolutely right to try to bring education into our prisons.

In the short time available to me I will concentrate on four issues: the proposal to speed up the adoption process, the introduction of further measures to prevent radicalisation, defence and, inevitably, Europe. I welcome the adoption measures in principle, and understand that social services are caught between a rock and a hard place. But I have myself witnessed Surrey County Council’s behaviour in respect of two young people in my constituency. The council had made up its mind to remove the children from a couple. Each was represented by a different law firm, whose narrow interest was alleged to be the individual client and not the couple. I was threatened with contempt proceedings for having had the temerity to intervene on behalf of my constituents, and the social worker wrote that for the parents to provide good care was not “good enough”. If half the energy expended by Surrey Council on removing those children from their parents had been invested in helping them, the outcome might have been better all round. I am encouraged by my conversation with the Minister for Children and Families earlier this afternoon. I think he understands the problem.

On radicalisation, the principal threat we face is not generic terrorism. We have to be honest about this; the threat is specifically Islamic fundamentalism. That is what threatens our country. Young people brought up in Britain and taught in our schools are nevertheless being indoctrinated by Islamic fundamentalists and persuaded to engage in acts of medieval barbarity, in the name of Islam, beyond the understanding of the British people. The principal onus to root out that evil must therefore rest on the Muslim community. I will wait to see what the Government produce in the way of legislation before making a final judgment. The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) set out some of the challenges that the Government will face in defining extremism.

Earlier this year, the Government mooted a proposal that any group that met in an out-of-school setting for more than six hours a week should have to register with Ofsted. Although it is vital that the Government take action against those people who wish to do harm to our society, regulating groups such as Sunday schools is clearly absurd. It would place a huge administrative burden on such groups, would severely damage volunteering and would be a serious infringement of personal liberty and freedom of association. Furthermore, any such extremist groups simply would not register, or, given the arbitrary nature of a six-hour figure, would divide their teaching into two three-hour groups a week. This is unworkable and a danger to our freedoms.

On the wider issue, it would be perverse in the extreme if, in order to manage extremist Muslims who are bent on our destruction and whom we have allowed to settle in the country, the Government were to impose severe restrictions on those practising the state religion of Christianity, which espouses turning the other cheek and love for thy neighbour. I believe that Christian society here is under threat. It was reported in the paper today that only 52% of people regard themselves as Christian, and we are in danger of creating a vacuum that will be filled by others.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I have never been able to document this, but I remember my father telling me—coming as we do from a Jewish background—that when Polish émigrés who settled here at the end of the second world war began, in certain enclaves, to bring some of the anti-Semitic traditions from their homeland of the past to our homeland of the present, the Labour Government of the day made a very firm statement about that. There was nothing discriminatory about focusing on that particular problem; we must focus on the problem where the totalitarian doctrine is being applied.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am grateful, as ever, to my right hon. Friend.

I raised with the Foreign Secretary the issue of how the Government calculate defence expenditure, and I entirely accept that that expenditure fits with NATO guidelines. However, we have only met that 2% target by shifting money from other Departments into defence, which I do not think is the way to proceed. I hope that we will see a real increase in defence expenditure in the coming years, so that we can proceed with the Type 26 global combat ship—our new frigates—for which I had some responsibility in the Department. I welcome the renewal of the deterrent, as will my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), but let us get on with it.

On Europe, in their determination to frighten the public, the Government and their “remain” friends stand accused of talking down the British economy. If leaving would produce such dire outcomes, why on earth are we holding a referendum at all? Why did the Prime Minister readily acknowledge that Britain can survive outside the EU? What has changed? We prospered well enough in the glorious 1950s under the Macmillan Conservative Government—“you’ve never had it so good”—and people were able to move around the continent for work, as my father did in the mid-1950s, when he weekly commuted to Hamburg where he established the Johnson Wax company in Germany. These fears are being raised deliberately to frighten the British people. We should have confidence in our ability to exit the EU, and head for the sunlit uplands where we can prosper as an independent nation on our own.

Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Gerald Howarth

Friday 23rd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for independently adding to the case on what we face around the world. Russia is engaged in about the same ramping up of its defence spending and, accordingly, its capability. I am very grateful to her for making that point.

Significantly, the message for those engaged in drawing up defence planning assumptions is that in the space of barely three years the assumptions on which we worked in 2010 were blown apart. None of the events I listed earlier was remotely foreseen. For those of us brought up in the shadow of the iron curtain, over which two massive superpowers pivoted in an uneasy equilibrium—I was brought up in Germany—today’s outlook seems decidedly more complex and more dangerous. It is against that backdrop of a seriously turbulent world that we need to judge the priority we accord to defence of the realm.

There is no doubt that Europe’s security and peace for the past 70 years has been largely delivered by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation—NATO. The north Atlantic treaty was signed on 4 April 1949 as a means of establishing enduring stability and peace in Europe. Under article 5, the new allies agreed

“that an armed attack against one or more of them…shall be considered an attack against them all”

and that were such an attack to take place, each ally would take

“such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”

in response. Understandably, much has been made of article 5 as the foundation stone of north Atlantic peace, and the onus it places on all alliance members, but it is also worth considering article 3, which states that

“the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”

Arguably, this set the precedent for the 2% target long before it was first mooted in 2006, and it has subsequently become the target for alliance members.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I urge my hon. Friend not to use the word “target”? It is in fact a minimum. Those countries that are below the minimum may have it as a target; those that have always been above it should not be ringing the church bells just because we have decided not to go below it.