Brexit: Foreign and Security Policy Co-operation

Lord Suri Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, on this matter I should like to refer to the words of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. After our vote to leave the European Union some months ago, he wrote in his regular column:

“Britain is and always will be a great European power, offering top-table opinions and giving leadership on everything from foreign policy to defence to counter-terrorism and intelligence-sharing—all the things we need to do together to make our world safer”.

Even though we campaigned on different sides of the referendum, I could not feel more secure with this man as Foreign Secretary. The country voted to leave the EU, and this is not a mandate to be fudged or dodged. However, I strongly doubt that any of the Brexiteers would like to see our role in promoting western values diminished. We work together with 27 nation states to promote our strategic goals, and that is something to be safeguarded and cherished, especially in a world where the geopolitics grow more fractious.

Along with our European allies, the UK levies significant sanctions on Russia. Indeed, those sanctions may well mount as Russia bombs Aleppo to rubble to prop up its client dictator, Bashar al-Assad. I happen to be very much in favour of these sanctions as a way of applying outside pressure on Russia. However, Brexit has thrown the ability of the EU to apply sanctions into some doubt. There are officials, currently split between the Foreign Office, the Treasury and the Department for International Trade, whose job it is to do the hard and technical work behind our sanctions policy. This is not easy, and the expertise required will be hard to find, should we disengage from the programme. It would be in both our interests to maintain a unified face in the wake of further Russian aggression. Will the Minister make sure that the continuation of this programme is a priority in the relevant department that she represents?

The aggression is, of course, not confined to the Middle East but is also on the eastern flank of Europe. It is depressing to see some of the nation states in that region slip back into the Russian sphere of influence, but it is hardly surprising. More ominous is the build-up of forces along the Ukraine-Russia border. The UK possesses one of only two serious fighting forces capable of countering this threat in Europe and it would be a serious dereliction of duty for us to disengage from continental geopolitics at this critical time. We must continue to support close relations between the EU and Ukraine, as well as realise that Russian aggression undermines our aim to spread the values of democracy and freedom to all countries.

As we have already heard, we should refuse to be part of a European army, as the Commission President has suggested, but we should certainly work in close co-ordination with it to bolster stability in eastern Europe. Key to all this is a need to make sure that NATO is not displaced or sidelined by future developments. The alliance has created peace in Europe and we must remind the current generation of politicians of this.

Finally, I want to talk about intelligence sharing. Our membership of Europol is partly linked with our EU membership. I heard so many leave campaigners protesting that the two were totally separate, but that is patently nonsense. The head of strategy, Mr. Amann, has been clear that non-EU countries do not have the same access to certain datasets and services as EU countries, which is a risk to the UK. These are not trivial datasets. For example, the Europol Information System will not be available once we leave—the system has been a huge asset for our security services and there is a sad irony to the situation, as we pushed for it and launched it while holding the Council presidency in 2005. However, we have an opportunity to show our constructive intentions. Europol will be getting a new legal framework in May 2017, in which we will be provided with an opt-in service. Treating this constructively will send the correct signals that, while we are leaving, we have every intention of being good allies and collaborating in the spirit of shared reward. I would be grateful if the Minister took these points on board.