Syria: Peace Initiative

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this has been a joint US-Russian peace initiative, it is not purely a Russian-led one. We welcome the constructive response that the Russian Government are now making on Syria and we hope and expect that the Russians will ensure that President Assad and his regime are represented at the Geneva II peace conference when it meets at the end of November. We hope and expect, but we do not yet know.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

Will the Minister correct the noble Lord who spoke before and remind him that the idea of getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons was raised in this House rather before President Putin raised it? More seriously, will he state that in the event of Syria transgressing the Security Council resolution, the Government would not necessarily be bound by the vote that took place in the other place at the end of August?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have to recognise—and I say this as a Liberal who believes in international order and is very reluctant to condone the use of force—that without the threat of force we might not have reached the position we have so far reached in Syria. Just as with the opening to Iran, without the very extensive sanctions against it we might not be having the discussions that we are now having with the Iranian Government. One has to use diplomacy as far as one can, but the big stick behind it sometimes helps.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, ever since President Obama’s new Secretary of State, John Kerry, began, as his top priority, to reassemble the well-worn components of that oxymoron known as the Middle East peace process, he has been subjected to a deluge of denigration, disparagement and weary cynicism from the serried ranks of pundits, many of whom have broken their teeth on that problem over the years. Now, with the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons and the convening of a Geneva 2 conference aimed at ending the Syrian civil war taking centre stage, that chorus is, if anything, louder. Is that disparagement justified as simple, common-sense realism, or is it a short-sighted unwillingness to recognise an opportunity where one really exists? I unhesitatingly argue the latter, which is why I welcome the noble and gallant Lord’s initiative in initiating this debate.

One reason for thinking that there is an opportunity, oddly, is because the Arab-Israeli dispute is not, for once, the focus of diplomatic preoccupations in the Middle East. That could be an advantage. In the past, excessive public focus on the issue has often led to the rhetorical radicalisation of the respective negotiating positions of the parties. Perhaps all concerned should reflect on whether they can be quite so sure that the outsiders on whom they rely will be ready to pull their chestnuts out of the fire in some future conflagration.

That thought could concentrate the minds of the Israelis, whose US backers seem increasingly dubious about any direct military involvement in the Middle East. It could also concentrate the minds of the Palestinians, whose Arab backers are focusing their efforts on other problems—domestic in the case of Egypt, and international in the case of Saudi Arabia. It could also influence Hamas, which is increasingly bereft of external support. If those trends get the direct parties to the dispute to focus on their own negotiating positions, and on compromises that they will need to strike if a peace deal is to be achieved, the prospects for progress could be improved.

Then there are more classical arguments for giving this renewed effort to reach a negotiated solution a real chance. We should not delude ourselves; the fact that the Arab-Israeli dispute is not currently centre stage does not mean that it has lost any of its explosive potential. Indeed, the fact that we almost certainly face several decades of instability in the Middle East, as the aftershocks of the Arab awakening work themselves out, only increases that potential. Meanwhile the continued Israeli settlement building on the West Bank inevitably pushes the situation towards insolubility and drives Israel towards something that it is no hyperbole to call an apartheid regime. These outcomes must surely be avoided if they possibly can be.

Are there any new elements that could usefully be injected into the process without destabilising it? One such idea might be to give more serious consideration to the guarantees that could be entrenched, both for Jewish minorities in a future Palestinian state, and for Arab minorities in Israel. This aspect has been neglected for far too long. Does it really make sense to think that every single Jewish settler will need to be removed—by force if necessary—from the territory of the Palestinian state, and that the substantial Arab population of Israel should be treated for ever as second-class citizens? I doubt it. That said, the logic of the situation is that outsiders—influential as they inevitably are and will be, and necessary as effective supporters and perhaps guarantors of any negotiated solution—should be less prominent than they have been in the negotiating process. Rather than negotiating, they should be talking with all those who will need to be party to any settlement. I urge—as I have done an awful lot of times—that we should be ready to talk to anyone who is prepared to operate within the scope of the Arab peace initiative. That should include Hamas.

It will be interesting to hear the Government’s views on this, and I hope that we will not remain, as we were in the past, too chained to the axle of American policy. The US is in a different position from us and I hope that we will be able, with our European partners, to play an active role in the months ahead.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are very tight on time. If noble Lords could be very strict in sitting down as soon as they see the four minutes come up, I should be grateful.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, when this House last had a debate on Syria, on 1 July, I urged the Government to try to prevent any further use of chemical weapons by tabling a UN Security Council resolution requiring President Assad to admit UN chemical weapons inspectors and to give them unfettered access to any sites where past or future allegations of use were made. Unfortunately, the Government did not do that; indeed, the Minister, when she replied to the debate, did not even respond to the proposal. I say “unfortunately” not in an attempt to say, “I told you so”, but because if we had pursued that course we might be in a better place than we are now. Such a resolution, if passed, might have deterred all concerned from the use of these appalling weapons, and if Russia and China yet again vetoed any action against Syria we and our allies should at least have been able to make clear at the UN that the further use of these weapons would not pass without there being serious consequences.

Now, however, we are where we are, faced with pretty incontrovertible evidence of the use of chemical weapons on 21 August in the suburbs of Damascus that has resulted in the deaths of large numbers of innocent civilians. I hope, incidentally, that we do not have to spend too much time raking over the ashes of the intelligence failures in 2003 about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Analogies can be useful, but they are never conclusive. What was at issue at that time was possession, not use. Now it is all about use.

What should be done? We should face the fact that to do nothing would be a truly terrible option, however unattractive and risky the alternatives may appear to be. Those who have spoken of the use of chemical weapons as crossing a red line and as being a game-changer would be revealed as paper tigers. Inertia by the main western allies would be a massive encouragement to all those around the world who seek to harm our values and our interests and a massive discouragement to all those who rely on our determination and firmness of purpose to deter such actions. Moreover, inaction would make a complete mockery of the international norm of the responsibility to protect to which all Governments have signed up, a norm to which we and all the members of the United Nations agreed in September 2005. That norm has already suffered much damage in Syria, but at least there is now a chance to honour it in the face of a massive breach of international humanitarian law.

Should we be stopped by the lack of any Security Council authority for taking tough action? That lack of authority is due purely and simply to Russian and Chinese vetoes that are frustrating the will of the other members, an overwhelming majority of the council. It was a serious abuse by those two countries of their role as permanent members of the council when they earlier vetoed giving UN authority to Kofi Annan’s peace plan even though it contained no authorisation of the use of force. In addition, Russia and Iran have continued to supply the regime with lethal weapons and they seem simply to have overlooked that they, too, signed up to the responsibility to protect in 2005.

As someone who has worked hard over the past 20 or so years to strengthen the UN and make it more affective, it is with a heavy heart that I conclude that the Government’s intention to take forceful action in the present circumstances in response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons and, if necessary, without UN Security Council authority, is the least bad option available. If the Government decide to go ahead on that basis and the House of Commons approves it, it could be worth while, before using force, to give the Assad regime an ultimatum to hand over all their chemical weapons to the United Nations and to allow UN inspectors unrestricted access throughout the country. That would make it even clearer where the responsibility would lie for what might follow and would make clear the limited objectives of any action taken. In any event, what is surely essential—and many other noble Lords have said this—is that any military action against the Assad regime should be accompanied by a renewed effort to convene a conference designed to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria. This may seem a long shot in the present situation, but we surely must not get drawn into a situation in which a sequence of actions involving military solutions becomes the only one available.

European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, this is a very good and very necessary time for the House to debate the work of its EU Select Committee during the previous Session. Whatever view one takes of the future role of the EU, and of the UK’s role within it, it is surely a debate worth having ahead of what is likely to become an exceptionally intense period of debate about the UK’s continued membership of that Union.

Moreover, it is a time when the role of national parliaments in shaping and influencing EU legislation is coming into sharper focus than ever before. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, mentioned in his contribution to this debate, the Select Committee is on the verge of undertaking an inquiry into the role of national parliaments. I suggest that we need to subject our own performance to the very closest scrutiny. I welcome particularly the contribution of our distinguished and effective chair during the period in question, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, who moved this debate. He has made a major contribution over the period since he took up the chairmanship and I am convinced that he will continue to do so.

This debate also marks the end of the first Session after the reduction in the number of EU sub-committees, to which several previous speakers have referred. The number of sub-committees, which conduct the majority of the Select Committee’s business, was reduced from seven to six. This allowed the House to create new committee activities in other policy areas. While I, like many others, was rather unhappy with that decision, we have nevertheless done our best to make it work. The abolition of Sub-Committee G resulted in the reallocation of its remit among the remaining sub-committees, my own included, expanding their respective workloads accordingly. Despite that, the six sub-committees have taken on and discharged their new roles effectively, as is being highlighted in the contributions to this debate. However, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in saying that I think that it would be a gross error if any attempt were made to reduce further the number of sub-committees. The elastic is being stretched pretty tight and the burden on our extremely able staff has become greater in the past year. It would be frankly irresponsible to increase it further.

I will focus first on the work of the Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, Health and Education, which I have the honour to chair, and to pay tribute to its members both past and present, some of whom are here today, for their hard work and effective contributions. During the period in question, the sub-committee produced two major thematic reports, one on the EU’s global approach to migration and mobility, normally known as the GAMM, of which more later, and one on the UK’s 2014 justice and home affairs block opt-out decision, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, indicated, I will say a bit about.

This report was produced jointly with the Sub-Committee on Justice, Institutions and Consumer Protection, first under the able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, and now under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. Incidentally, joint work by two sub-committees of the sort that we did—every single one of our meetings and all our evidence sessions were held jointly—is an extremely unusual occurrence and is not without its logistical difficulties. I believe that its success in this instance is a testament to the flexibility and adaptability of the system and, above all, to the willingness of the members of the two sub-committees to work together as a single team. I must mention that the report that we adopted, which I think was quite influential and will continue to be so, was adopted by unanimity—by people from all three main parties and from none. This was certainly something of an achievement. That joint report appeared in April of this year. We recently reopened the inquiry following the Home Secretary’s Statement of 9 July. A supplementary report to the House will be produced by the end of October, as the Government have proposed.

A third thematic report, on the EU’s next five-year justice and home affairs programme—likely to be known as the Rome programme as it is likely to be adopted under the Italian presidency in the second half of 2014—was announced by the committee yesterday. However, as this deals with matters falling within the present Session, I will make no further reference to it in this debate.

With respect to the report The EU’s Global Approach to Migration and Mobility—the GAMM—when the sub-committee conducted its inquiry into this matter, it was conscious that debates about migration, like migration itself, are not new. However, recently the tone has sharpened and there is a risk that a rational and measured discussion of complex issues will be drowned out by cries of populist outrage, riding on the back of stress caused by the recession.

Our report sought to avoid falling into that trap. The committee’s view was that, given the current and prospective demographic challenges facing Europe, member states, in particular those with skills shortages, will need to be flexible in the operation of legal migration from third countries in order to secure the economic growth and competitiveness that they desperately need. At the same time, we also recognise, rightly in my view, that member states retain the primary decision-making responsibilities in this area, including determining the number of third-country migrants they choose to admit to their territory. We did not suggest that there should be any change to that, and nor did any of our interlocutors, including the Commission and the European Parliament.

The report also focused on a specifically UK policy choice: the Government’s inclusion of international students in their current policy objective of reducing net migration to the UK by 2015 to the tens of thousands per year. My committee was one of five Select Committees of the Lords and Commons, the chairs of which wrote to the Prime Minister last January to argue that it made no sense at all to include genuine international students within the public policy scope of the Government’s immigration policy, and that by so doing the Government were risking serious damage to what is, after all, one of the UK’s most valuable, successful and vibrant invisible exports. I have not yet heard a single convincing argument in support of that policy, and I ask the Minister to address this matter when he winds up the debate.

I agree that yesterday’s announcement of an international education strategy by the Minister for Science and the Business Secretary was a step in the right direction. However, a good deal more than warm words will be needed if the higher education sector’s contribution to our involvement in the global race is not to be undermined by the Government’s immigration policy. I noted that the Secretary of State for Business, in an interview at the weekend, said what I believe: namely, that regarding students as immigrants is absurd.

I return to the important matter of the block opt-out. I will not revisit the complex arguments for and against it, nor delve into the byzantine complexity of the issue’s component parts, which the House had ample opportunity to debate as recently as 23 July, and will no doubt return to again before the end of the Session. Instead, I will focus on the process. On parliamentary engagement and handling, the Government’s approach to the opt-out decision has thus far been notable in a number of respects—but, alas, for all wrong reasons. Since the Home Secretary made her initial statement to Parliament about the matter last October, the committee has been persistently denied official information to aid its scrutiny of this important matter. Deadlines have continually slipped, and attempts to elucidate a coherent government position and rationale have proved elusive.

As noble Lords will be aware, the situation finally improved only on 9 July, when the Home Secretary made a further Statement about the Government’s intentions in this area. However, any feeling of welcome was again undermined by the extraordinarily short period allowed to this House before we were asked to debate and vote on exercising the opt-out. I admit that we were allowed a bit longer than the House of Commons, but not much. That was compounded by the Government’s decision to respond to the committee’s April report more than a month late, and only hours before the debate that took place on 23 July. I hope that the Minister will give an assurance of more punctilious behaviour in the future handling of this matter. I ask him to undertake in particular to keep the House regularly informed of the progress of negotiations with the Commission and the other member states once they formally begin in early November.

In addition to these two major inquiries, my sub-committee also conducted enhanced scrutiny of the Commission’s proposal for a revised tobacco products directive. This involved taking oral evidence from pro and anti-smoking organisations and from Public Health Minister Anna Soubry MP, as well as receiving a large volume of written evidence. While public debate in the UK has focused on the contentious matter of plain packaging, I remind the House that provision for this does not feature in the proposed directive. It will be left as a matter for individual member states to decide.

The output of the process of enhanced scrutiny was a detailed and well received letter to the Minister, outlining the sub-committee’s position on the proposal, which was broadly supportive. This work has been followed up in the current Session with another round of enhanced scrutiny of the Commission’s related proposal for an EU cigarette-smuggling strategy, on which oral evidence has been heard from officials at the EU’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, and at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. I will say, in advance of our taking that further, that what the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, said about her sub-committee’s inquiry into OLAF showed again how difficult it is to co-ordinate all parts of the British Government that have an input into this area. I am sure that we will address that when we write to Ministers after the recess.

In conclusion, I turn briefly to a matter that falls outside the purview of my sub-committee, and which relates to the Government’s balance of competences review—a matter dear to the heart of the Minister who will reply to this debate. While the EU Committee as a whole, and its sub-committees, have not engaged directly with this review, my sub-committee has made recommendations relevant to the review in both its recent reports: the one on the GAMM and the one on the block opt-out. It expects these to be taken into account by the review’s current second semester, which will include a report on free movement, which was covered in our GAMM report, and in the forthcoming third semester, which will include a report on policing and criminal justice. I hope that those will both be taken on board, and I hope that the Minister will give an assurance that that will be done.

On free movement, the committee’s GAMM report, which I discussed earlier, concluded that the free movement of persons is fundamental to the structure of the EU and is an integral part of the single market, with revision of its terms in the treaty being neither desirable nor feasible. The logic of producing the review’s report on police and criminal justice matters after the Government had made their decision to opt out of a number of existing pre-Lisbon policing and criminal justice measures totally eludes me. After all, both the block opt-out decision and the decision to seek to rejoin 35 measures are precisely designed to determine the balance of competences in this area—so why on earth did we not conduct the review before attempting to take the decision?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Advocates-General. The question of more judges is now about to come up.

On the question of students and migration, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. However, I will say now that the government line is that students who stay here for three to four years are not necessarily temporary visitors. That is one reason why the question of what role they play in the statistics is important. As the father of a student who went to the United States seven years ago and who I hope will come back to the United Kingdom one day, I am very conscious of the tensions.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I would like to save the Minister from sending an unnecessary letter in the Recess. This is not about statistics. I have said it an awful lot of times. Others, including the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, in the debate that he initiated, also said it. It is about government policy and the impact of that policy on immigration and on our higher education sector. That was what the senior member of his party who is a member of the Cabinet referred to. I ask him to send me a letter not about statistics but about how the Government will give effect to the international education strategy that was put out by David Willetts yesterday and which, I am afraid, is not totally consistent with the Government’s immigration policy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I guarantee that I will look at the strategy of the Minister for higher education and will consult further.

The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, asked about a Eurojust opt-in. The Government are now consulting on the new Eurojust proposal, which was published on 17 July as part of a package, alongside a proposal for a European public prosecutor’s office. We have been clear that the UK will not participate in the establishment of a European public prosecutor’s office, so we are now considering how to respond to that.

One thing that I hope the committee will focus on in the coming year is the area of European data protection. This applies to domestic legislation in Britain—we may have a data-sharing Bill in the next Session—and applies also at European level. When it comes to negotiation with the United States, data protection and data-sharing are becoming—as we all know and see from the German elections—a highly sensitive area in which the expertise and expert contribution of the Lords European Union Committee could be extremely valuable. A number of noble Lords have talked about democratic accountability—

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[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again, but I have to tell the noble Lord that the Select Committee did, in fact, recommend that the Government opt in to the data protection directive currently under negotiation in Brussels. Mirabile dictum, the Government did opt in.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the final shape of the data protection directive is by no means clear. We are a very long way from a final text. I merely wish to insist that it needs to be kept very well under review.

I move on to democratic accountability. The role of national parliaments and closer co-operation among national parliaments, of the sort that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and others talked about, is very much a direction in which we should be moving. The yellow card mechanism is developing. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that it is not a workable mechanism. Closer co-operation between national parliaments; better use of the Brussels office, which we have and share with others; rapid provision of Explanatory Memorandums; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, also said, closer co-operation with British Members of the European Parliament should help us demonstrate to our publics that we are actively engaged in scrutinising the necessary involvement of the United Kingdom in a whole range of regulations at the European level, but also to make sure that we are feeding into the Brussels bubble the active concerns about subsidiarity that we and many other publics have.

This has been a very wide debate, and I simply want to end by pointing out that Her Majesty’s Government are committed to staying within a reformed European Union. We are working with others to promote that agenda. I was very pleased yesterday to read from the Foreign Office a number of telegrams about the positive reaction of other member Governments to the first balance of competences papers. We are already talking to a number of other Governments about how we might share an agenda for reform. That, I hope, has the support of all members of party and non-party groups in this House. I very much look forward to the further valuable contributions that the European Union Committee of this House will continue to make. I will do my utmost within government to ensure that members of the Government—even the Treasury—co-operate as fully and as promptly as possible with the continuing of the committee.

The Future of EU Enlargement

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I speak as a habitual complainer about the dilatoriness of the scheduling of debates on the reports of this House’s Select Committee on the European Union, and indeed of other committees. However, it is only fair on this occasion to congratulate the usual channels on having arranged this debate promptly and in a particularly timely fashion, coming as it does when the EU is taking stock of its further enlargement policy.

The timeliness of the debate is wider than such rather ephemeral considerations. A combination of the distraction of the eurozone crisis, and a certain air of enlargement fatigue, has caused this issue to drift towards the margins of the policy debate about the future of the European Union, both in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe. Yet, as is shown by this report, the quality of which owes much to the skilful chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, the further enlargement of the EU is of significant importance to the future security and prosperity of the union, and to its prospects of playing a stabilising role in its immediate neighbourhood and beyond. We would be deluding ourselves if we thought that the process of definitively putting behind us the mayhem which engulfed the Balkans in the 1990s could be achieved without setting all the countries in that region on a sustainable path towards membership. We should equally be deluding ourselves if we thought that we could turn our backs on Turkey, the most vibrant economy in Europe and a rising regional influence, without serious negative consequences for ourselves. We should also be deluding ourselves if we believed that cold-shouldering the European aspirations of countries which emerged from the former Soviet Union to a shaky independence would not further Russia’s ambitions to create for itself a sphere of influence around its borders. Quite a lot is therefore at stake in the way the EU handles its further enlargement, and it cannot be said to be doing so very skilfully or very purposefully at the moment.

In addition to these general geopolitical considerations in favour of further enlargement, I want to focus on three specific issues: first, the need to avoid importing into the EU existing territorial disputes, either between future member states or between them and their neighbours; secondly, the need to guard against backsliding by new member states on their commitment to the Copenhagen criteria for membership after they have joined the club; and, thirdly, Turkey, where recent developments have been troubling for its friends even though they should not, I would contend, have shaken their fundamental support for Turkish accession.

With the benefit of hindsight, most people now recognise that the EU’s handling of the accession of Cyprus with the division of the island unresolved was, to use a diplomatic phrase, suboptimal. The report that we are debating said as much, and it has since been roundly denounced for it by both Greek and Turkish Cypriots—a symmetry of denunciation which in my own lengthy and fairly painful experience of trying to resolve the Cyprus problem normally means that you have got it about right. It is not hard to identify similar disputes in relation to the existing candidates and aspirants: Cyprus, again, in the context of Turkish accession; Serbia and Kosovo; Macedonia and Greece; Moldova and Transnistria; and a whole rash in the republics beyond the Caucasus. That does not make them any easier to resolve. In the case of Cyprus’s accession, one can see that the EU would in theory have done better to make settlement of the dispute a condition of accession. However, to have done that at a time when the leader of the Turkish Cypriots, the late Rauf Denktas, and the then Government of Turkey were making any attempts at compromise completely nugatory would have been to hand them a veto which they would not have hesitated to use. There are parallels with some of the future members. Each case will need to be treated on its own merits and the EU needs to address each in a timely and proactive fashion as it is doing, admirably in my view, in the case of Serbia and Kosovo. There is no magic solution, no template, for every case. What one can say is that some unilateral attempts at exercising pressure, such as Greece’s continuing blockage on even opening negotiations with Macedonia, are both counterproductive and deplorable. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on that point.

There is also the problem of backsliding on the Copenhagen criteria and other values and responsibilities of membership. There is experience of that in the cases of Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. It has become painfully evident that the EU is better placed to handle such problems before a country has joined the Union than it is afterwards, although some instruments are available even after accession, if extremely hard to apply. Again, as in the case of international disputes, there are no obvious, easy and universally applicable solutions, but it seems desirable to ensure that, before a country accedes, the basic values which justify its membership are firmly entrenched in that country’s laws and constitution, and that the machinery to uphold those values is in good working order. I rather doubt whether new dispositions for handling post-accession transgressions will prove either negotiable or operable.

Recent events in Turkey cannot have left any of Turkey’s friends untroubled. Even before the demonstrations in Istanbul, the repression of critical press comment had cast a dark shadow over the remarkable progress made in recent years. The peaceful demonstrations were, from the outset, met with the disproportionate use of force, and the Turkish Prime Minister’s rhetoric has been extremely divisive. That said, it is equally important to say what this is not; it is not a series of events in any way analogous to the uprisings in the Arab world against undemocratic dictators. Turkey is a working democracy, and it is for Turks, using their democratic institutions, to work out their solutions to the problems and protests that have emerged, while above all respecting the rights of citizens to peaceful protest and to express their views through a free press.

What role should outsiders play? They should certainly not, I would argue, block or suspend the already pretty stagnant process of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations. One thing comes clearly through the pages of the report that we are debating: the EU’s ability to influence candidate countries varies in proportion to the progress being made in the technical aspects of the accession negotiations. If that process moves along, long though it may be—and the process with Turkey has a long way to go—and if it is on a clear and sustainable path, the EU can exercise real conditionality and can hope to have real influence; if not, it cannot.

As a steady supporter of Turkish accession, I hope that the Government will maintain that case, while making it clear that Turkey’s eventual accession will require unquestioning and credible adherence to the Copenhagen criteria. In that context, the agreement reached in the Foreign Affairs Council yesterday to delay the opening of the next chapter of Turkey’s accession negotiations until the autumn, while perhaps better than some of the alternatives, merits no more than one cheer.

As we in this country debate our future in the European Union—and I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent statement that our future lies in the European Union—it is surely essential that we develop a positive reform agenda for the EU as a whole. Within that agenda, I would argue, the further enlargement of the EU should have a prominent place.

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[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, I first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and the members of his European Union Committee on this excellent report, which clearly outlines the opportunities and challenges as nations apply to join the European Union as new members. As the noble Lord said, it is timely that this report be debated in this House: not simply because Croatia is likely to be confirmed as a new member this week, but also because there are ongoing issues of major importance at this time. For example, there is the European Union and United States trade agreement; CAP reform, which I hope may be confirmed this week, especially for Scotland and Northern Ireland, where agriculture is important; and the ongoing major issue of banking union within the EU.

I well remember that when I was a member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, we regularly met the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. One occasion always stuck in my head. The Prime Minister said: “You should encourage greater enlargement of the European Union, because the more countries that join, the more likely it is to collapse”. That was the understanding of what enlargement would mean in practice. There could be some truth in it. Croatia is now about to become a member and yesterday it was agreed to commence Serbia’s accession negotiations and an association agreement with Kosovo as well. Of course, all this is subject to the approval of the European Council, but enlargement is ongoing.

One of the conditions is that new members in the European Union should also accept the euro as their currency. The Chancellor in his Statement on the economy today said that the eurozone is in crisis. That phrase has been used by several contributors to this debate this evening. It is the case in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Greek Cyprus and the Republic of Ireland; you have only to look at the Financial Times today to see the leaked tapes about the banking situation in the Anglo-Irish Bank to realise that there are ongoing problems in the eurozone. There are increasing fears about Italy as well over the next six months. As recently as last week, a senior French Minister said that the worst in France is yet to come. So the question arises: should accession of new members to the European Union require compulsory membership of the eurozone? Why not provide them with the same opportunity as the United Kingdom to be a member of the European Union but not a member of the eurozone?

Turkey was mentioned in the report. I well remember the European Council meeting in Luxembourg. Perhaps Members of our House have forgotten the events of that lengthy session, which went on and on until one minute before midnight, when it came out with a compromise—the deadline was midnight. The compromise was that Croatia and Turkey could apply to join at the same time. That was then agreed by the European Council.

I come from the island of Ireland, and I recognise sectarianism when I see it. As a Member of the European Parliament, I recognised that France and Germany would not agree to 80 million Muslims coming into the European Union. I remain convinced that that is the underlying problem as Turkey tries to become a member of the European Union. As has been mentioned, Turkey has its problems. Democracy in any country is not simply rule by the majority, it also requires the consent of the minority, and that does not seem to apply in Turkey today. We have the decision yesterday to start further accession talks on Turkey, which has aroused opposition from Germany, France, Austria and Greek Cyprus. It seems difficult to foresee Turkey being able to join the European Union, and I say that as one who has been a friend of Turkey for 40 years. It may well be that Germany is right and that a special arrangement with Turkey is now the way forward.

There has also been reference to Cyprus. I am delighted to see that the committee has stated in its report that it was wrong to allow Greek Cyprus to join on its own. The decision to allow EU membership before a settlement was foolishness in the extreme, and many of us said so at the time. However, the application was supported by Her Majesty’s Government on the recommendation of its advisers on Cyprus. They should now all hang their heads in shame, and many of them are now publicly doing so. Only last week, I heard one who was involved in the discussions saying so.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord for allowing me to intervene to say that I am not hanging my head in shame. I explained the situation in my speech, which perhaps the noble Lord did not hear properly. I did not say, and the report does not say, that Cyprus should not have been admitted. It states that the European Union was not sufficiently zealous at ensuring that a solution was reached before.

[Lord Kilclooney]

I have to say that I heard the noble Lord’s speech and listened to it very carefully. I have to say that his opinion at the time of the accession of Cyprus was wrong and that some of those who agreed with him at the time now say that it was wrong and are apologising. I hope that, some day, he will do the same.

On Cyprus, reference has been made to Turkey’s role, but Turkey encouraged the Turkish Cypriots to vote for the Annan settlement—oh yes—and the Turkish Cypriots voted for the settlement in Cyprus. It was the Greek Cypriots who voted against the United Nations Annan plan for a settlement, so it is wrong to finger Turkey, as is suggested in the report; it was others who created the problem.

In foreign affairs and security, the EU has only France and the United Kingdom really to rely on, because they are members of the United Nations Security Council. The others will talk a lot but do very little. As enlargement proceeds, questions should also arise as to whether the EU should cease to have a role in foreign affairs and security.

In conclusion, clearly the European Union needs to revise existing treaties as it considers a revised relationship with the United Kingdom itself.

EU: UK Membership

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the European Union is a continuous process of negotiation. We are pursuing a multilateral reform agenda and, indeed, in the past few months a number of things on that agenda have been achieved. We were committed to containing the growth of the European Union budget and the multiannual financial framework agreement has achieved that. We have been committed, as indeed were the previous Labour Government, to extensive reform of the common fisheries policy; that has now been more or less achieved. We were committed to an EU patent court; that is now here. There is a range of further items that we wish to pursue and we will do so with like-minded member Governments, many of whom share our concerns, through the processes of multilateral negotiation.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the best ways of ensuring that great concerns are not caused by British European policy would be to accept the sage advice of the Foreign Affairs Committee in another place? In its report published earlier this week it said that the way to proceed is through a broad, positive reform agenda for the EU as a whole and not by devising new cut-outs for the UK. In the effort that the Government are making to talk at all levels with the German Government, which I strongly welcome, please do not forget—and I hope that the Minister will say that he has not forgotten—about the need to talk to France, too, because unanimity is needed to get many of these changes.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have certainly not forgotten about France or the other 25 members of the European Union. Bilateral discussions and multilateral negotiations are a constant process. We welcome the report from the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and I recommend it to Members of this House.

EUC Report: EU External Action Service

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, trying to judge the performance of the European External Action Service less than three years after it was first set up, a period during which a massive amount of time and effort necessarily went into the administrative complexities of that teething process, given the impossibility of doing more in advance planning while the Lisbon treaty was going through its rather agonising ratification process, is not an exact science, nor can it lead to any very definitive conclusions. Nevertheless, we owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and his colleagues for this last in a number of really excellent reports that the committee has brought forward in the years that he has chaired it. It is a genuinely valuable account of a work still very much in progress.

The report is timely, as the noble Lord recalled, as a first review of the EEAS is now under way in Brussels and because—this is a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling—in 2014 the process of appointing a new Commission, including a new president, a new high representative for common foreign and security policy and a new president of the European Council, creates an opportunity, if it is taken, to address some of the problems that have arisen in the early years of the EAS’s existence.

If I may be tempted by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, to a bit of anecdotage, I reminisce, and I find it astonishing, how that wizard of modern diplomacy, Henry Kissinger, managed to fix the whole debate, practically for ever it sometimes seems to me, with his remark about which telephone number he had to ring. That was an extraordinary piece of chutzpah, if that is an adequate word for it, since, even when Henry Kissinger himself managed for the only time in American history—and it will probably remain the only time—to combine the offices of Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, you still needed more than one telephone number to find out what American foreign policy was: probably more than 20 or 30. It is a pity that he somehow fixed the debate, and we should not allow ourselves to be mesmerised by that objective of producing someone at the end of a single telephone number. I doubt whether it is achievable, and it certainly will not be achieved in the short term.

To add to the Kissinger stories, I add his unhappy initiative that he called the “Year of Europe”, which caused a good deal of fracas in Brussels at the time when he launched it. When he asked the man who I worked for at the time, Christopher Soames, former Leader of this House, why everyone was so upset, Christopher said to him: “Well Henry, how would you have liked it if I had made a speech saying that next year is the year of the United States?”. That brought the conversation to a short and rapid conclusion, and the year of Europe came to a conclusion rather soon after that.

I will address three main issues. First, there is the question which the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, with whom I agreed 100% on this, spoke about: the overload on the person holding the job of vice-president and high representative. This really cannot be in doubt and it is likely to get worse as the EAS and common foreign and security policy become more a part of the international scene. It is not only that the high representative cannot be in two places at once, particularly when those places are often separated by thousands of miles, but that the number and complexity of the policy issues needing to be handled exceed the capacity of one person to do so. Because the crucial work of co-ordination in Brussels at a political level cannot be effectively achieved by someone who is often absent from that city, the present situation is absurd. Even Foreign Ministers of small member states often have political deputies to share the load. However, the Commission, where there are now 28 commissioners from 1 July onwards, which far exceeds the number of meaningful separate tasks to be performed, cannot seem to contemplate a system of a deputy or deputies for its vice-president.

Alternative ways of addressing the overload problem, such as turning back to the rotating presidency to plug a gap, would seem to me a cure that is worse than the disease, risking recreating the confusion and dispersal of effort that the high representative was established to remedy. It should surely be a high priority for the 2014 process of EU appointments and the allocation of responsibilities to address this problem.

Secondly, there is the problem of policy coherence. The European Union of 2013 has a wide range of policies and policy instruments that impact on the world outside its borders, such as enlargement, neighbourhood policy, development aid, trade, environment, transport and immigration, to name only the most obvious ones. However, is it achieving the sort of coherence in the operation of those policies that will maximise their impact and maximise, too, the European Union’s influence in an increasingly interdependent and multipolar world? The honest answer is that it is not. One need look no further than the way in which both Russia and China are able to divide and rule among the member states when there is no meaningful overall policy approach towards those two countries, or at the contradictions between the Union’s agricultural policy and its development policy, or those built into the handling of Turkey’s and Macedonia’s applications for membership. The best diplomatic service in the world cannot itself compensate for, or gloss over, such a lack of policy coherence. If the EAS is to be more effective, that lacuna in policy coherence needs to be filled.

Thirdly, there is the issue of turf fighting, both within and between the various institutions in Brussels, between the Commission, the EAS, the Council, the Parliament, and the member states. If there was a gold medal for turf fighting, Europe would surely have won it quite a lot of times. One of the principle objectives with the establishment of the EAS was to reduce that turf fighting. Has it succeeded in doing so? I rather doubt it. Those who work within the Brussels machinery tell me that while there have been some improvements in the operations, such as the operation of the Political and Security Committee and the Situation Centre, there are plenty of other examples of time and resource-wasting infighting. There are some member states—the UK, I fear, prominent among them—whose lip service of support for the EAS is in sharp contrast to the resources they devote to the task of policing the lonely frontiers of competence creep, biting the ankles of the EAS whenever any transgression, however minor, is perceived.

There are plenty of other areas that need to be addressed before the EEAS can confidently demonstrate a degree of professional excellence equal to that of the best among its member states, which have, after all, been in the business for an awful lot longer. Better language skills, as my noble friend Lady Coussins said, greater effectiveness at public diplomacy, the avoidance of cronyism in the making of senior appointments and better co-ordination between the work of special representatives and the EEAS heads of mission on the spot all need to be addressed in the period ahead. Above all, the EU and the EEAS need to spend more time and effort influencing the policymaking of the rest of the world and less time arguing among themselves about the precise formulation of EU positions, whose shelf life is inevitably limited. This is work not just for three years but for as many decades. Meanwhile, I would be grateful if the Minister replying to this debate could give the Government’s views on the three priority issues I have identified—deputisation, policy coherence and turf fighting—and say what steps the Government intend to take to make the most of the opportunities of 2013 and 2014 and the general post appointments next year to address those problems.

EU: Subsidiarity Scrutiny

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord uses his characteristically robust and colourful language. There is always a tension between the time that national Parliaments wish to take for scrutiny and the pressures that national Governments, including our own, may wish to give to taking decisions. There are those in national Parliaments who regard the eight-week limit for taking a scrutiny decision as unfortunate, but I am informed by those who know the Brussels situation better than I do that the earlier national Parliaments submit reasoned opinions in the process of negotiation, the greater effect they have.

Reasoned opinions in the form of reports issued by the European Committee of this House are widely respected throughout the European Union in other national Parliaments and elsewhere. I recall with delight a Member of the European Parliament being appointed to head a committee in the European Parliament. He was asked by his clerk to start by reading three documents, two of which were reports from the House of Lords EU Committee.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, would the Minister not agree that in the short period of time that the yellow-card system has existed, the main lesson to draw is that we have to get better at enlisting other national Parliaments when we use the yellow card because that is the shortfall? Will he confirm that on the one occasion when it was used, the Commission withdrew its proposal—the Monti II proposal? Will he also confirm that the right to take action in the Court is one for this House, not the Government under the Lisbon treaty?

Georgia

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, there is plenty of time for both noble Lords. I think that we can hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and then my noble friend.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes.

I should admit that I was in Georgia by chance the week before the parliamentary elections, and, perhaps to offset some of the comments this afternoon, I should say that the massive demonstrations that took place then after the revelation of terrible human rights abuses in Georgian prisons were impeccable. There was no violence on the part of protesters and there was no force used by the police. What we need to do, surely—

[Noble Lords]

Question!

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I said that what we need to do, surely, is support those people in Georgia who showed that degree of maturity in advance of the elections.

[Noble Lords]

Question!

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I have asked a question.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. The previous Government were not perfect. There is a very large prison population in Georgia and prison conditions were clearly awful. The current Government are not perfect either; media freedom is still very limited, but we have to do what we can to encourage a process of transition to full democracy, which is still under way.

European Union Committee Report

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I believe that this may be the first occasion on which the House has debated the work of its EU Select Committee over the previous three years. Whether it is or not, it is surely a debate worth having. I welcome the participation in it of our two distinguished and effective chairs during the period in question—the noble Lords, Lord Boswell and Lord Roper, who have both preceded me.

It is a debate worth having because it has been alleged frequently in the House by at least one of its Members that the work of the committee is worthless and because it is also suggested that the resources devoted to the work of the committee are excessive. I believe that neither of these criticisms is well founded, but it is right that a member of the committee, such as me, should be ready to defend that view in debate and not simply to assert it. I was a little disappointed to see that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, made only a cameo appearance some moments ago— 10 seconds, I think. He may have gone off to get a string of garlic to hang round his neck before facing such dangerous people around the Table. If he has not, I wish that he would come and substantiate some of his claims in the sort of debate that we are having.

I will focus first on the work of the Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, Health and Education, which I have the honour to chair, and to whose members both past and present—I note that at least two of them are here—I pay tribute for their hard work and effective contributions. During the period in question, the sub-committee produced two major, thematic reports: on the European Union’s internal security strategy and on the European Union’s drug strategy. A third on the general approach to mobility and migration will be published within the next month. Since it has not yet been adopted, I will make no further reference to it in this debate.

In each of those thematic reports we have addressed European Union policies that are still being formulated and shaped, and we have thus aimed to contribute to that process, not merely to commenting after the event. I believe that we have had some success. In our work on the internal security strategy, we focused mainly on counterterrorism, civil protection and cybersecurity. Our overall conclusion can be summed up in a single, very brief phrase: Britain’s internal security neither begins nor ends at the water’s edge. We strongly recommended that a cybercrime centre be established within the existing Europol agency and not as a separate free-standing agency, and it seems likely that the Commission will accept that advice when it brings forward proposals for the development of Europol early next year. During this and other work we have done, we have formed a high opinion of the work of Europol and of its use and value to this country. That view will certainly be relevant when we take up the Protocol 36 opt-out decision in the next few weeks.

On the drugs strategy, as in so many areas with which our sub-committee deals—internal security and migration are others—we found ourselves in a policy area where there are mixed competences and where the principle of subsidiarity is alive and well and is actually being applied. We did not think in any of those cases that the boundary between the European Union as such and national competences should be shifted; rather, we thought that the European Union’s input should be better focused and less broad-brush. We called for a wide and inclusive public debate on drugs. I wish I could say that that call has been heeded, but it has not. The paucity and poverty of public debate on drugs is truly shameful.

In addition to those thematic reports, the Lisbon treaty has heaped on to our plate a whole range of new responsibilities reflecting the fact that now, for the first time in the EU’s history, national Parliaments have been given a clear role in the EU’s legislative processes. Thus, we not only intervened in a yellow card subsidiarity procedure in respect of the draft seasonal workers directive but we produced opt-in reports on the passenger name recognition directive and on the proceeds of crime directive. On the first of those, our recommendation to opt in was accepted by the Government; the second has not yet been so, but I very much hope that it will be at the adoption stage. In one area—the data protection directive—I fear that the Government failed to implement their commitment under the Ashton-Lidington undertakings to provide time for a debate before the opt-in period expired. That was lamentable. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, accepted that that had been an error and the Government’s decision to opt in was in any case what the committee had recommended. Least said, soonest mended.

In conclusion, I shall turn to two matters that fall outside the purview of my sub-committee. First, there is the EU’s multiannual financial framework, which has been referred to by other speakers, on which the main committee has spent much time and effort. The European Council’s failure at the end of last week to reach agreement was regrettable but not surprising—nor was it unprecedented. The gaps between the different groups in the Council were too wide to bridge at one attempt. That was exactly what happened, too, in December 1987, but it did not prevent a satisfactory agreement being reached in February 1988. The problem is that these budgetary negotiations really are zero-sum games: one country’s gain is another’s loss and the overall common interest tends to get overlooked as the competition for resources becomes more acute.

Our committee supported the Government’s aims to achieve a real-terms freeze over the next seven years. We did not consider that a cut was either desirable or achievable. The fact that the Prime Minister was able to work together with a group of like-minded member states was admirable and greatly increases the chances of an ultimate outcome with which the UK can live, even if it may contain some difficult compromises. Failure to reach agreement in the new year, particularly if the UK were alone to be responsible for that, would not, I believe, be in this country’s interests given that in the absence of an agreed MFF the European Union would have to fall back on an annual budgetary system that could well produce higher figures and an even less desirable distribution between policies.

The second matter, to which several other noble Lords have referred, is the decision that the House took earlier this year to cut the resources allocated to EU scrutiny and to abolish one of the Select Committee’s sub-committees. To have taken that decision shortly after the Lisbon treaty had considerably increased the overall work of European scrutiny and just when national Parliaments had gained a foothold in the EU’s legislative process was, I would say if I was being polite, counterintuitive. I would call it aberrant. I trust that when these matters next come up for review—for example, at the beginning of the next Session—that lamentable decision will be reversed. Unless the Minister, in replying to the debate, is tempted to retreat into procedural obfuscation and to argue that this is a matter for the House and not for the Government, I urge him at least to make it clear that the Government want to see the work of the EU Select Committee properly resourced and up to the challenges that it faces in the years ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I stand corrected. I am not sure whether the justice and home affairs inquiry has yet taken evidence from the Irish Government, who have a clear stake in the question of the opt-out or the opt-in. It may be that the Irish Government—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Just to enlighten the noble Lord, as he has effectively asked a question, the call for evidence does address the Irish dimension. It will, of course, be a matter for the Irish Government to decide whether or not to offer evidence. I do not think that we should go around telling other Governments what they should do. It has been made clear to them that evidence would be extremely welcome.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord very much for that. I happen to know that there are those within the Irish Government who are enthusiastic about coming to give evidence, and I look forward to them accepting the invitation that has been made.

The wider issue we all face is the gap between globalisation—internationalisation—and publics who regret the extent to which power is slipping away from local control. Last summer I read an excellent book by Dani Rodrik, the Turkish economist who is now at Harvard, on the limits of globalisation in which he talks about the underlying contradiction between popular desire for stability, local control and understanding what has happened, and the driving forces of a global economy—the global social elite, immigration, et cetera—that appear to be taking power away from the local level and sweeping away autonomy, identity, sovereignty and democratic accountability. That is the tension that we all face. In the United States the American Tea Party takes it out on international law, international organisations and the federal Government. In Britain, by and large, our often disturbed and discontented public take it out on the European Union. Part of what we have to do is address that contradiction to see how far we can persuade our public that some of the regulation that now appears to them to be imposed from the European Union is unavoidable, desirable and necessary, and to persuade the European Union in return that it should not attempt to regulate everything in sight or expand its competences too far.