NATO Summit

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the NATO conference, but before I do so, I am sure the whole House will join me in paying tribute to Jim Dobbin, who died suddenly this weekend. Jim gave his life to public service. He worked hard for his constituents, he loved this House of Commons and he contributed hugely to all its work. With his expertise in microbiology, he also did outstanding work in this House championing vaccines for children in the developing world. Though we may not have agreed on everything, we did agree about the important contribution of faith in politics—although, unlike Jim, I have to say I am not expecting to get a knighthood from the Pope, which Jim received, and much deserved it was, too. He will be missed by us all, and our thoughts are with his family at this time.

We have also heard this morning that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting their second baby. I am sure the House will join me in congratulating them on behalf of the whole country on this fantastic news and wishing them well in the months ahead.

The NATO summit in Wales saw the successful coming together of this vital alliance. Everyone could see its unity, its resolve and its determination to meet and overcome all the threats to our security. I want to thank the local council in Newport, the Welsh Assembly, the First Minister, the Secretary of State, our armed services and police and all those who worked so hard to deliver a safe, secure and successful summit. It was, I think, the biggest gathering of world leaders that has ever taken place in our country. Most of all, I want to thank the Welsh people for their incredibly warm welcome. They did our United Kingdom proud.

The summit reached important conclusions on Ukraine, on defence spending and the reform of NATO, on countering Islamist extremism, on the future of Afghanistan and on supporting our military and their families. I want briefly to take each one in turn.

First, on Ukraine, we welcome the ceasefire that has been in place since Friday. At the NATO summit, I chaired a meeting with President Poroshenko and the leaders of France, Italy, Germany and America to agree that what was needed was the implementation of a proper peace plan that respected Ukraine’s territorial integrity. NATO sent a clear message to Russia that what President Putin was doing was illegal and indefensible. We stand firmly behind Ukraine’s right to make its own decisions and not to have them dictated by Russian soldiers trampling on Ukraine’s sovereign soil.

We will continue our efforts to support Ukraine, including by providing financial assistance to improve its command, control and communication capabilities. Today’s new sanctions from the European Union will further ramp up the economic cost to Russia. They will make it harder for its banks and its energy and defence companies to borrow money. They will widen the ban on selling so-called dual goods, such as machinery and computer equipment, which could be used for military as well as civilian purposes. They will also prohibit the provision of services for the exploration and production of shale, deepwater and Arctic oil.

Secondly, the summit reached an important agreement on defence spending. One of the problems with NATO is that only a small number of countries have achieved the commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defence. As a result, the share of spending by the largest country, the United States of America, continues remorselessly upwards and now accounts for around 70% of the total. That is not sustainable. The summit addressed that by agreeing the responsibility of those countries that have not achieved 2%. The conclusions were very clear about that. Through the Wales pledge, every NATO member spending less than 2% has now agreed to halt any decline in defence spending, to aim to increase it in real terms as GDP grows and to move towards 2% within a decade.

There was also a second target—namely, that a fifth of all defence budgets should be dedicated to major new equipment, because what matters most is having military assets that we can actually deploy. Here in Britain, we have the second largest defence budget in NATO and the biggest in the European Union. We have taken long-term and often difficult decisions to put our defence budget on a sustainable footing, and the fruits of that are now coming through.

We are equipping all three of our services with the best and most modern military hardware that money can buy. This includes a £3.5 billion contract for Scout armoured vehicles, which I announced on Friday—the largest such order in over three decades. [Interruption.] It includes new fleets of joint strike fighter and Voyager refuelling aircraft; 22 new A400M transport aircraft; new Astute hunter-killer submarines; Type 45 destroyers and Type 26 frigates; and HMS Queen Elizabeth, our brand new aircraft carrier—

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Labour.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman keeps saying “Labour”. He might remember that Labour left us a £38 billion defence black hole.

At NATO, I announced that our second new carrier—

[Mr Jones]

We ordered them.

[The Prime Minister]

It is all very well to order them, but they actually have to be paid for. In a nutshell, that is the difference between a socialist and a Conservative. They dream about having money; we actually raise it and spend it.

The hon. Gentleman will be very pleased to hear that I announced at the NATO summit that that our second new carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, will also be brought into service. This will ensure that we always have one carrier available 100% of the time. This investment in our national security, our prosperity and our place in the world will transform our ability to project power globally, whether independently or together with our allies.

Turning to the wider reform of NATO, after the end of the cold war, NATO stood down its highest readiness force. At this summit, we decided to reverse that decision and scale up our readiness to respond to any threat. At the same time, we agreed to do more to build the capacity of other nations outside NATO, to help them with their defence capabilities. A new multinational spearhead force will be formed, and it will be deployable anywhere in the world within two to five days. That is vital in underlining our article 5 obligations to collective defence, and the UK will support that by providing a battle group and a brigade headquarters. We will also contribute 3,500 personnel to exercises in eastern Europe between now and the end of 2015, as part of NATO’s efforts to ensure a persistent presence on our eastern flank.

On capacity building, NATO has a vital role in helping other countries with their capacity to defend themselves against all threats, including terrorist threats. When we consider how many of the threats that NATO countries, including the UK, now face from the middle east, north Africa and elsewhere, we see that this capacity building is becoming ever more important. It was a key priority for the UK at the summit that we made progress. NATO will now undertake capacity-building missions, beginning in Georgia and Jordan, with the offer of a training mission for Iraq as soon as the new Iraqi Government are in place.

Next, the alliance was clear about the scale of the threat from Islamist extremism, and we agreed that we must use all the instruments at our disposal—humanitarian, diplomatic and military—to squeeze this barbaric terrorist organisation out of existence. We should be clear about what needs to happen: we will continue to support the Kurds, including by providing them with arms and training their troops; we will work to support a new and representative Iraqi Government, which we hope to see in place later this week; and the fight against ISIL must be led by the Iraqis themselves, but we will continue to encourage countries in the region to support this effort and to engage allies across the world. We will proceed carefully and methodically, drawing together the partners we need, to implement a comprehensive plan. Earlier today, I spoke to Ban Ki-moon to seek support at the United Nations for a broad-based international effort to confront ISIL, and I will be working on building that international support when I attend the United Nations General Assembly later this month.

Turning to Afghanistan, we called on the two presidential candidates to work together to deliver a peaceful election outcome and a new Government as swiftly as possible. They made a statement during the conference that they would make those endeavours, and it is vital that that comes about. The summit paid tribute to the extraordinary sacrifice made by all our armed forces in driving al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan and training the Afghan security forces to take control of their security. We reaffirmed our long-term commitment to supporting a peaceful, prosperous and stable Afghanistan, including through our development conference in London in November.

Finally, as our troops return home from Afghanistan, it is right that we do all we can to support them and their families. In Britain, we have the military covenant—a pledge of commitment between the Government and our military—and we are the first British Government to write this covenant into the law of the land. We have made it ever more real by taking a series of measures, including doubling the operational allowance; introducing free higher and further education scholarships; investing £200 million in helping our service personnel to buy homes; increasing the rate of council tax relief; signing up every single local council in our country in support of the military; and giving unprecedented support to military charities.

At the summit, we took our military covenant internationally, with every NATO member signing up to a new armed forces declaration, setting out their commitment to support their military and enabling all of us to learn from each other about how we can best do that. We will continue to do everything possible to look after those who serve our country and whose sacrifices keep us safe. This, I believe, was a successful NATO conference. It proved that this organisation is as important to our future security as it has been to the past, and I commend this statement to the House.