NATO: Member State Spending

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Touhig on calling it. I am also delighted to follow my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and my noble friend Lord Murphy because they have shown their deep commitment to issues of defence over the years, as I hope I have as well. Looking back, I realise that it is now 37 years since I was on the Front Bench in the other place responsible for defence, and over that time I have seen many changes. I want to reflect on some of them this evening and perhaps give some indication of the dangers we might face in the immediate future. But I certainly agree with the basic point that since it was formed, NATO has been the cornerstone of our defence spending and activity. Indeed, without NATO it would have been very difficult for us to do many of our defence activities.

As I say, we have seen many changes over the years. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and I remember clearly the Cold War. Being on the NATO PA during those years, I well recall the horror and the difficulties of trying at least to engage with the Russians, although we as parliamentarians were able to achieve some success in ways that were not always easy for Governments. I thought that was very helpful.

The amazing thing is that the cornerstone of NATO is Article 5, which sets out the right of a nation to assistance if its sovereignty is under attack. It is worth reflecting for a moment on the fact that the first time Article 5 was used was in circumstances completely contrary to those for which it had been envisaged. It was used after 9/11. The most powerful country in the world was the recipient of that assurance from the rest of NATO. But the uncanny thing is that NATO was designed to counter enemy action by other states, but it was not a state that forced the invocation of Article 5, it was a terrorist attack. That change means we need another dimension to the way we look at our defence efforts.

I will reflect again on the work of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, who did so much in NATO. With the collapse of communism, the emancipation of the countries of eastern Europe and the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall, things changed and perhaps we relaxed a little too much. Perhaps we ought to have been examining the role and the nature of NATO because the demands being made of it had changed. It is interesting that when these nations gained their independence, the very first thing most of them did was to bear in mind the remit we often mention in this House, which is that the first duty of any state is to protect its citizens. So what did they do? They all ran to NATO. Indeed, before they got into NATO, most were accepted as members of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, and I had a bipartisan approach to that across both Governments and both sets of parliamentarians. We led the way and paved opinion in that respect. That was a very worthwhile job for parliamentarians to do. It is interesting that those nations applied to NATO; they did not initially apply to the European Union. I will come back to that a little later.

I am not going to debate whether the 2% is 2.1% or 2.08%, because that has been raised. I think it is above 2%. I accept that it is within the NATO rules, but the basic point my noble friend Lord Murphy made was that it is not as much as it had been previously. That is the key point to bear in mind.

Having made that point, I will develop one or two things. For five years I was the shadow Secretary of State for Defence. In that time I repositioned the Labour Party, with the help of colleagues. As my noble friends have said, Labour Governments have always been loyal to the defence of this country, because it is our country just as it is every other citizen’s country. Therefore, one of my basic desires was to develop as far as possible—it was not always possible—a bipartisan approach to defence. I do not see anything wrong with that. If we are talking about an issue as fundamental as defence, of course we have to criticise and hold whichever Government to account, but there is no reason why we should not be working together for the common good and safety of the British people.

It is a question not only of the money spent, but often of attitude. I believe that the British Armed Forces are second to none in the world. They are absolutely brilliant. I have seen them in action—I mean in action—all over the world. The one thing that taught me was that this was because of not only the training and skill of the Armed Forces, but the equipment. In some areas of action I felt that not many countries did not have the equipment we had to do the job. The Americans are excluded from that; we did not have the variety they had.

When one then looks at the figures, it is mind-boggling that after Brexit, at current spending, 80% of NATO’s budget will be provided by non-European Union members. Surely the Europeans cannot let that continue. Although we saw times 15 or 20 years ago when there were moves for Europe to develop its own defence, a number of us had to fight quite hard—Governments of both parties were on the same side on this—to argue that we could not forsake NATO. NATO was still the bedrock. The situation I just described reinforces the point made by everyone who has spoken in the debate so far: we must get the European Union countries to increase their contribution to at least 2%.

I end with a point on change. We are talking about not only hardware or armed forces when we talk about security. The lesson of Article 5 and 9/11 is that we have to fight Daesh and terrorist groups wherever they are. That means there is also a challenge for things such as cyberwarfare and intelligence. I approve of the Government’s £1.6 billion joint security fund. That is the right way to do it. It probably has to be integrated more into the defence budget as time goes on, but that might happen. My key point is we need to work together. We have to be prepared for changes, especially after Brexit.