Brexit: Armed Forces and Diplomatic Service

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Cork and Orrery, on his maiden speech. He complains that this place is very difficult to find one’s way around, being something of a rabbit warren. I have very bad news for him: they are going to spend billions of pounds revamping the whole place, but as far as I can gather, it will still be a rabbit warren when we all get back. I do not think that that will include me. I am grateful that, as all rumours have it, we will move to the Westminster conference centre. Maybe it will be rather easier to find one’s way around there. We very much look forward to the noble Earl’s future contributions on defence debates and the expertise that he brings to them.

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Sterling on giving us the opportunity to discuss these important issues. We have just had the presidential elections in America, and there are many similar issues of populism involved in both that vote and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral has already referred to the sweep of populism, which may not be confined to the Anglosphere and which looks as though it could well spread across Europe as well, where a number of elections are being held: a general election may be held in Italy next year, the Dutch will have one in March, the French in April, and of course the Germans in November. Is there not quite a large possibility that one of those elections will produce a populist leader, who may well decide to hold votes on whether their country should remain in the EU? By the time we reach November next year, the EU may be completely unrecognisable from the EU it is today, which puts the question of our negotiations in a rather more interesting light.

Let us look at the promises that President-elect Trump made during his campaign. Some of them struck most of us as being somewhat over the top. However, a very easy one he can fulfil is the question of the defence of Europe. By “easy” I mean that he is pushing at an open door when it comes to Congress—the Senate and the House of Representatives—if he suggests that the Europeans should play a much bigger role in defending their own borders. When the NATO Parliamentary Assembly was in Istanbul, we were addressed by Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary-General of NATO. It is interesting that he pointed out to us that once the United Kingdom is outside the EU, 80% of NATO expenditure will come from countries outside the EU and 20% from those inside the EU. Therefore when the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, goes on about European defence and how important it is, it is 20% of NATO’s expenditure.

What form does European defence take? It means the French and the Germans getting together—naturally, because they are the only two members spending serious money on defence—but do they have similar political objectives? As we know, it is no good getting together as a defence unit unless your political will is aligned as well. The Germans will be keen on confronting Russia—it is the old enemy—but the French are less keen on that. The French are keen on expeditionary forces and taking on ISIL, and they are playing a big role in Mali as we speak. But are the Germans keen on doing that? The answer is that there is very little alignment of political will between the French and the Germans, which is why the whole concept of European defence is distinctly faulty. We must rely on NATO, and European NATO, for our future. However, of course the Americans are pivoting away, looking much more at China as a future enemy, and in those circumstances it is up to the United Kingdom to lead NATO in Europe. That means spending a lot more money than 2% of our gross national product on defence. We have to spend more; this is the future of this country.

I have a confession to make. At one stage, I was rather dodgy about renewing Trident, not because I do not believe that the United Kingdom should have an independent deterrent but because I thought that we could do it much more cheaply. The fact is that I was completely wrong in every conceivable way. My argument was: could there ever be a moment when we would fire a nuclear weapon and the Americans would not? However, with President-elect Trump’s attitude towards Putin, it seems essential that we maintain our nuclear deterrent, because—let us face it—it may come in very useful in the future.