France: Security

Lord Owen Excerpts

Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Owen]

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs when the next bilateral is planned between the United Kingdom and French governments on security issues, and whether it will involve the President and Prime Minister as well as the two foreign secretaries.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton) (Con)]

My Lords, last week, the Prime Minister and President Macron spoke on illegal migration and European security. On Thursday, I will speak to Foreign Minister Séjourné at the G7. I am confident that the Prime Minister and President Macron will meet again in person before too long. My colleagues, the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary, and their teams similarly maintain regular, action-orientated dialogue with their French counterparts.

[Lord Owen (Ind SD)]

In light of the forthcoming elections in the United States and the constant reiteration of senior Russians that tactical nuclear weapons should be used in their invasion of Ukraine, would it not be a very good thing if the French and British Heads of Government got together and discussed their own targeting strategies for the nuclear weapons they possess in Europe and give some guidance—to Europe, to the rest of the world, and, above all, to the Russians—about their attitude to this constant invocation of nuclear weapons being used in Ukraine?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question; he clearly has huge experience in this area. The Lancaster House agreement that I signed with President Sarkozy in 2010 expressly sets out areas where Britain and France will collaborate, including the most sensitive areas of nuclear weapon research and nuclear weapons. If what he is saying is that we need to enter into deeper dialogue to think about these things in the future, I agree. Britain’s nuclear deterrent is declared to NATO, and I am in favour of us having deeper conversations with the French about that.

I still maintain that one of the aims of NATO is, as Pug Ismay put it,

“to keep the Americans in … and the Russians out”.

That is still absolutely key to NATO’s future. I missed out a bit of that quotation, the noble Lord will be pleased to note. One of the things we must do is to make sure that we are talking to all parts of the American system, to make sure that NATO is in the strongest possible shape in its 75th year, with more members and more members reaching 2%, so that whoever becomes President at the end of this year can see that NATO is an institution worth investing in.

President of the European Commission

Lord Owen Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

I am confident that a date will be set, that an excellent venue will be provided, and that the meeting will be a great success. We found that in the early part of the year there was a bit of a traffic jam of summitry. So many summits were coming at the same time that finding the right time where the leading people who needed to be there could be there was a challenge. However, we are very close to meeting that challenge, and I will update the House as soon as I can.

[Lord Owen (Ind SD)]

My Lords, on the question of the manufacture of weapons and munitions for Ukraine, is the Foreign Secretary aware that there is great concern that there is a depletion of these weapons in this country? Can he assure us that manufacturing in this country of weapons and munitions for Ukraine will be stepped up considerably over the next few weeks and months?

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

I think I can give that undertaking. The Prime Minister announced the package of support for Ukraine, at over £2.7 billion, which will ensure that it has the support it deserves from the United Kingdom. The Government are fully aware that we need to step up production, not just for Ukraine but to make sure that we deal with our depleted stocks. However, at the same time, there is a real task to be done across all the countries that support Ukraine to look at any weapons systems that are close to their expiration date. We will not be able to use them, but it could use them now.

Israel and Gaza

Lord Owen Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con)]

First, I would say to the noble Lord that we have trebled the amount of aid that we are putting into Gaza. I very much take on board what he says about the pressure we need to put on not just the Israeli Government but other Governments in the region to get more aid in. Right now, as we speak, nine out of 10 people in Gaza are living on less than one meal a day. It is that serious. That is why I have had repeated conversations with the Israelis and set out a whole series of bottlenecks that need to be relieved. We need Kerem Shalom open all the time. We need the Nitzana checkpoint open all the time. I would like to see the port of Ashdod opened in Israel so that aid can get into the country through maritime routes and more swiftly into Gaza.

Crucially, we will not see more aid get to the people who need it unless the United Nations inside Gaza has the vehicles, the people and the fuel to get it around. Those permissions need to be given. I have had these conversations most recently this morning with the new UN aid co-ordinator, who I am confident will do an excellent job. We will keep up the pressure for this, because, as I have said, an immediate pause to help get that aid in and to help get hostages out is essential.

[Lord Owen (Ind SD)]

Will the Foreign Secretary consider very seriously creating a UN protection force for humanitarian relief? That was done successfully in the winter of 1992 in a very difficult situation, with no ceasefire, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I recommend that approach. Although a ceasefire is essential, it is not in the immediate future very likely, but the humanitarian crisis is getting worse every day. They cannot get relief in without some form of protection from UN forces.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Owen Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Owen (Ind SD)]

My Lords, there is a very clear need throughout the allied world for unity, and I shall therefore deal very quickly with the Irish protocol. I believe that there is no way that this country will accept abandoning a treaty by an Act of law without first a serious attempt at arbitration. That is why we have the Vienna conventions, and it is in my view inconceivable that this legislation should be presented to this House without a very serious attempt at achieving international arbitration.

Now to the main issue, which is the Falklands—sorry, not the Falklands, but that is perhaps in a way rather an interesting lapse. It is rather nice in this country to come back to a situation where you can say that the British Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence have acted throughout intelligently and with courage, and we should be grateful for that. The issue of Ukraine has not been at all easy. We can all praise the President of Ukraine, who has shown remarkable courage and intense skill. I still believe that his biggest moment is yet to come, when he decides to open negotiations with the Russians for a peace settlement.

A peace settlement will have to end this but, frankly, it will not come from suggestions in this House or anywhere else, and nor should it. It should come from that country that was very nearly, on the second invasion, eradicated. It has the right to be supported by us, and we have quite correctly supported it within the limitations of NATO being a defensive alliance. We have not crossed that border, and we should not cross it. As for this loose talk about nuclear weapons and tactical use of weapons, of course that hangs and lurks as an ever-present danger. But that issue is primarily between two people: the President of the United States and the President of the Russian Federation. If President Putin feels that he wants to cross that threshold, he will endanger his whole country—but it is not an issue for NATO; nor, frankly, one that is helped by being discussed in this House either.

What we have to do now, as a number of noble Lords have made clear, is to strengthen our contribution. That means strengthening our contribution in weaponry, as we are entitled to do as a defensive organisation, and strengthening our economic sanctions, which are all the time being reduced. The good things that have come out of this dreadful war are few and far between. However, one fact is that we have seen the strength of NATO and the wisdom of Truman when he insisted that the boys could not come home in 1945 as he had promised them; in 1946 they were to stay.

We have heard a lot of trash and nonsense talked about European Union defence. A defence organisation has to have an inbuilt authority—a command structure. We have in NATO a proven command structure. We have the capacity to use the strength of the greatest military power still in the world, the United States, and to do so with discussion, democratic debate and, finally, military decision-making. I hope that President Macron has learned that it is not brain-dead and I hope that France stops trying to eradicate or even undermine NATO. That is the fundamental issue and we have seen it in this example.

For the future, it is extremely important that the Russian people believe that we are not antagonistic to them and that we do not want to humiliate them. They have a lot of economic and deep-seated military problems. Some of us—myself included—thought that their defence capacities and their armed forces were a lot stronger than they have proven to be. We must achieve a negotiated settlement that must come from Ukraine, but in the process of getting that settlement we must understand the Russian people and not permanently alienate them. That is a hard task but it is the task in front of us.

Hong Kong: Human Rights

Lord Owen Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Owen (Ind SD)]

My Lords, I am very sad, as I think many people in the world are, about the deterioration in relations with China. It will not be easy to engage President Xi on the issue of Hong Kong. It is very sensitive. In the past, contact groups seemed to have some success; I have been involved with both of them. The first was in South Africa in 1978. Eventually, Namibia moved to independence as a result of that contact group’s work, although it took 12 years. The other was in the Balkans in 1994 and undoubtedly helped to lay the foundations for the success of the Dayton accords and all that had gone before in the negotiations. Assembling many countries to work together is difficult. The key aspect of a contact group is that it does so at all levels: politicians, diplomats, lawyers and sometimes even the military. That is one of the most practical ways of proceeding.