Defence Capabilities: EUC Report

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and congratulate my noble friend on bringing it here. I also feel rather small because many members of the EU Committee and sub-committee are here—some are down to speak and some are not—who have spent a lot of time preparing what is a very worthy document, as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said, and I am not anywhere near being an architect of the St Malo agreement.

The thing that worried me yesterday was a Question in the Chamber on the European Defence Agency in which I asked a supplementary question. Noble Lords know that at Question Time one looks around to see who you should give way to. One of the people I looked to give way to was a noble and gallant Peer. No noble and gallant Peer got up to speak. I said to one such person, who shall be nameless, that I was surprised that no noble and gallant Peer got up to speak because I was ready to give way. He did not see the purpose of European defence. It was not his priority. I can only say what I was told. No noble and gallant Peer got up to speak on the European Defence Agency. That is very worrying.

How effective is European defence capability? Two earlier speakers have dealt with this in great detail. The other main question is how many service personnel in uniform in Europe can be deployed? The largest concentration of service people in uniform that citizens of the UK have seen was probably at the Olympic Games because very often service personnel are in Germany or in Afghanistan. How many of them are there and how many can be deployed?

How to build on the UK/French defence treaties has been mentioned. They show how sovereignty can be managed, which is a point made in this report. When I read that, I thought of the “Yes Minister” series, which was always frighteningly correct. You can always imagine that it happened at one stage or another. One thing has changed for the better. When Jim Hacker was asked who was the enemy, he replied “Germany” and Sir Humphrey said, “No, it is the French”. As the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said, things have changed to a degree and our main partner is the French.

The task for other EU or NATO states is to contribute to European defence. The cost of the work to maintain and enhance the range of capability needs to be shared. How far can it go and how far should it go? What would the budget of this European capability be, what equipment should it use, where should that be manufactured and what holistic approach can we have to equipment in use by European forces? The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, mentioned Afghanistan. One of the problems of equipment in Afghanistan is: how do you get it back? In fact, much of it will be destroyed. The cost of getting it back from Afghanistan is more than the cost of the equipment.

The report talks about the scale of the European defence capability. It quite rightly calls for Germany, with all its power and ability, to become a more active participant. My noble friend Lord Teverson referred to this. The report also raises the thorny issue of adequately resourcing military missions. This policy must be able to deliver when it is needed on an appropriate scale. Is this feasible or is it just an aspiration? This report raises a lot of unknowns about whether it is adequate, has the ability to do what it is asked to do and whether the countries of Europe want to do it. The report refers to battle groups, and in this context we need to look at and assess some of the initiatives of the European Defence Agency. Helicopters were deployed, and it took three weeks, 49 missions and 487 flying hours with 550 participants from four countries. When one goes forward, I wonder how one can replicate this excellent example of working and training together.

Is there doubt that Europe needs to get its act together on defence, as the USA is demanding, and as mentioned in this report? The EU must be the configuration of choice for this, and the challenge is for European forces to be capable of deployment and to close capability gaps, as was shown in the Libyan operation.

The report quite rightly asks whether some of Europe's security issues should be handled operationally by the EU rather than NATO. It is a question that has been asked for a variety of reasons. For example, should the following be handled not by NATO but the EU; humanitarian missions, mixed civilian and military operations, operations where the geographical area is not appropriate to the USA or NATO and peacekeeping forces?

The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, mentioned Afghanistan and the fact that it has fade into the background in terms of debate. There is a big argument as to whether we should ever have gone there. A lot of efforts have been made. Afghanistan swallowed up the Russian forces when they were there. We will come out of Afghanistan and will wonder a year or so after leaving what we have achieved. We have deployed a lot of our service personnel in that area.

I mention Libya again because the operation in Libya showed deficiencies in joint operation, and in some ways a lack of a holistic approach that needs to be a priority.

There is a Question on the Order Paper for next week about the use of civilian contractors—Brits abroad who are contractors. It is an important issue. These people are seen as being UK operatives but are not actually part of our Armed Forces. I will be interested to see the questions that will be raised and the Minister's reply to those questions next week.

I want to say a few words about cybersecurity because that has not yet been mentioned. It can clearly be broken into two parts. I went to a meeting with a contractor dealing with these matters. Contractors are always talking about how they have defence against cyberattacks, but I am sure pretty sure that the same companies are also dealing with cyberattacks themselves, and that is a matter for the EU.

I believe that the European Defence Agency is one of the vehicles that should be emphasised, not put aside and regarded as not important. The air-to-air refuelling, which was also done under the EDA is another excellent example. One of the ways of getting a holistic and collaborative approach is by enhancing the European Defence Agency, which was mentioned yesterday in the House.