NATO Summit 2018

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly welcome this debate. It could not come at a more timely moment, and I am grateful to the Government for finding the time. I begin by declaring an interest, first, as a member of the International Relations Select Committee, over which my noble friend Lord Howell presides. I have also for many years been a representative of the UK at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

I shall not talk at length about Russia this afternoon. In Warsaw a few weeks ago, I presented the first draft of a report on Russia’s hybrid war activities, but today I shall talk principally about the back-up NATO provides from its back office in Brussels, about which I have serious misgivings. Before I do, I want to say that I believe that the active operations of the four battle groups in the Baltics and Poland are the best thing that NATO has done for years. I was with my noble friend Lord Howell in Washington two weeks ago and, like him, I returned to marvel at how one man can create such confusion and uncertainty. However, I strongly support President Trump’s attacks on those NATO members who glibly signed up to move towards spending 2% of GDP on defence at the Wales summit four years ago. At the NATO assembly, it is considered impolite and bad form to name and shame those countries, such as Belgium on 0.8%, which, as I said, glibly signed up but do not seem to do much about it. A number of us have not hesitated to name and shame in that context.

I turn to my serious concern at what I believe are the clear shortcomings of NATO headquarters in Brussels in supporting the military assets engaged in active operations. I suggest to the House three examples of why I am so concerned about it. Going to NATO meetings regularly, as I do, I am continually told about the problems that arise moving military assets around the NATO member countries, whether due to roads, bridges or tunnels, as well as the complications of paperwork and customs at various frontiers. With 60 or 70 years’ experience, I cannot understand why these matters are still causing difficulties. What on earth have they been doing for 60 or 70 years still to be anxious about the logistics of moving military kit around the area?

I was at a NATO exercise about 10 years ago in Croatia, a civilian support exercise which NATO was involved in. There, again, I came across many countries that had brought emergency equipment from all parts of Europe to Croatia and were complaining about all the difficulties they had had getting through countries between home and where the exercise was. I find that totally inexplicable and I wonder what they have been doing.

Secondly, I refer to the saga of gross incompetence and dithering over the new NATO headquarters in Brussels. I merely report and point out to your Lordships this terrible saga. The decision was taken to have a new headquarters in 1999; the plans were not approved until four years later, in 2003; it was intended, if you please, that NATO would not start moving in until 2015—12 years later—and, in point of fact, staff have only started dribbling in this year, within the last few months. What does this say about an organisation that is supposed to be alert, ready and on its toes? There are a lot of questions to be answered.

Thirdly—I come to perhaps the most worrying situation—I go back a few years to a time when that admirable man, Sir Hugh Bayley, MP for City of York, was President of the Parliamentary Assembly. He pointed out then that a fundamental duty of parliamentarians is to keep a check on the accounts. It had never been done before over all the years since the NATO Parliamentary Assembly had been set up. As a result, now the NATO assembly gets reports from the International Board of Auditors for NATO. I have its report in my hand. It is headed “NATO Unclassified”, so there is nothing private about it. It refers to the auditors’ reservations and concerns. I shall read them out. If anyone wants to refer to them, they appear in paragraph 11 of the Select Committee’s report, but I want to put them on the record.

There are just four. First, it states that there is,

“no common internal control and network”.

Secondly, there are,

“recurrent and persistent weaknesses of the current internal control systems in most entities”.

Thirdly, there are,

“difficulties in accepting/developing the identification and accounting of tangible property, plants and equipment and intangible assets”,

and fourthly—perhaps more seriously—there is a,

“lack of support and even opposition, both internally and externally, to the study of the financial consolidation and the creation of a chief financial officer”.

I have tried to draw these comments from the auditors to the attention of NATO headquarters. In Warsaw in May, I asked the Secretary-General to comment on those four reservations of the auditors. He totally ignored what I had asked and made no reference whatever to the auditors’ report in his response. Last week at Lancaster House, I again asked the Secretary-General the same questions. He made no reference whatever in his response to the auditors’ report, except to say that the British Government have access to all the figures. Well, thank you very much.

As the Select Committee report shows, when the Deputy Assistant Secretary-General was a witness in April, I asked him to comment on the auditors’ reservations. He told us that it was not his area, but said he would inquire. In spite of a number of requests by the committee secretariat, we still have had no response, and this appears in the report. I am more and more concerned about this; I have to ask myself questions. Why is NATO so unresponsive? What is it unwilling to reveal? Is it trying to cover up some unattractive failures? We really need answers to auditors’ reservations of this nature. I must ask the Minister to look into this, if she will be kind enough, and to give the International Relations Committee the reply that NATO seems unprepared to release. These are important matters, and they have only recently come to the attention of parliamentary scrutiny—it is long past time. I hope the Government will consider raising these reservations at the summit. The Secretary-General needs to be confronted with them and forced to give some response, or even to acknowledge that these reservations exist.