Armed Forces Act (Continuation) Order 2017

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I think we all accept that we have moved on from the apparently benign international context of the post-Cold War years to a much more unstable international order in which the advanced democracies of western Europe and North America can no longer set the rules without carrying with them the rising Asian powers. Multilateral co-operation with like-minded Governments who share our values has been among the most important levers of British foreign policy since the Second World War—through NATO since 1949 and through the European Union since 1973. It has been a force multiplier and an influence multiplier in international institutions and in negotiations such as the six-power nuclear negotiation with Iran. We will need to work more closely with others as we face this global shift in power.

The most significant change in the UK’s international environment since the publication of the 2015 strategic defence and security review has been the defection of the United States from its position as promoter and protector of the rules-based international order, to which the Motion refers. We do not yet know what the Trump Administration’s foreign policy will become or exactly their approach to NATO and their European partners, but we have seen enough to know that Trump will put America first, as he promised throughout his campaign, and pay less attention to international order and North Atlantic security, and that Britain cannot expect any greater favours than such other close US partners as Canada, Mexico, Germany or Japan.

I want to focus on the future relationship between Britain and our other long-standing allies and partners with whom we share values in promoting and protecting the rules-based international order: our European NATO allies, which are also, with the exception of Iceland, Norway and Turkey, our partners in the European Union.

Successive Governments have kept from the public and the media how close and effective our security and defence co-operation with our European neighbours has become. Tony Blair signed a bilateral treaty on defence co-operation with France in 1998, to add to our existing collaboration with the Netherlands and Belgium, the most long-standing example of which being the British-Dutch marine amphibious force. His Government, with the then George Robertson—later NATO Secretary-General and now the noble Lord, Lord Robertson—as Secretary of State for Defence, attempted to widen this into a network of European defence partnerships. He recognised that the UK could no longer afford to procure a full spectrum of military capabilities under UK sovereign control and that it therefore made sense to share capabilities to meet shared threats. But when the Daily Mail dubbed this initiative “the European Army”, he backed off and went quiet. Co-operation continued to strengthen but Ministers said as little as possible about it.

When the Conservatives came to power in coalition in 2010, they fought with their Liberal Democrat partners to keep from the public this pattern of undeclared co-operation. Liam Fox, then Secretary of State for Defence, signed a new and closer defence co-operation agreement with France but told the official responsible for UK-French co-operation that he would do his best to keep it out of the newspapers. Since then I have read about major UK-French exercises in the French press, but rarely in the British. I have been told of the exchange programmes under which British pilots fly French military aircraft and that one interception of a Russian plane not far from UK airspace was made by a French pilot in an RAF fighter. But nobody told the Daily Mail, of course.

The level of ignorance within the Conservative Party about the extent of European defence co-operation was and is astonishing. I recall a meeting in Whitehall in which a serving Minister repeated the common prejudice about the uselessness of the Belgians, to be asked by officials whether he was unaware that the strike in Libya which had just knocked out Colonel Gaddafi had been a joint British-Belgian mission. Since the 2015 election, the latest SDSR has spelled out for those willing to read as far as chapter 5 the importance of our links with France, Germany, Italy and the Nordic and Baltic states, both through NATO and through the European Union which, it reminds us in paragraph 5.41,

“has a range of capabilities that can be complementary to those of NATO”.

It goes on to say:

“We will ... continue to foster closer coordination and cooperation between the EU and other institutions, principally NATO, in ways which support our national priorities and build Euro-Atlantic security”.


This underpublicised admission of the extent of our security interdependence with our neighbours did not prevent the leave campaign from repeatedly insisting that the European Union has no security role or value, and no relevance to NATO. When the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, repeated this piece of fake news in a debate in this Chamber I gave him a copy of the 2015 SDSR, with chapter 5 carefully annotated; he seemed genuinely surprised to read what it said. I made some effort when in government to persuade Conservative colleagues to give more publicity to the impressive UK-led EU operational headquarters for Operation Atalanta, the anti-piracy mission off Somalia, based at Joint Forces HQ Northwood. Conservative colleagues agreed to invite ambassadors from other EU states to visit, and I understand that a number of Conservative MPs were also invited, but the press was kept well away. The same happened with the Review of the Balance of Competences between the United Kingdom and the European Union Foreign Policy, which stated in its executive summary that “the key benefits” of common action to the UK,

“included: increased impact from acting in concert with 27 other countries; greater influence with non-EU powers, derived from our position as a leading EU country”,

and,

“the range and versatility of the EU’s tools, as compared with other international organisations”.

But again, No. 10 delayed publication until the day after Parliament rose for the Summer Recess, and allowed David Lidington and me to brief EU ambassadors but not the domestic media.

Yesterday several newspapers carried the story that the Prime Minister is now seeking a defence pact with Germany. No mention that we already have one with France, I noted: the Government still seem unwilling to admit how close our security and defence co-operation with our neighbours has become. The Government, from the Prime Minister downwards, endlessly repeat the empty phrase, “We may be leaving the EU, but we are not leaving Europe”, with the implication that it will be in the defence and security sphere that we will remain engaged as we cast all economic integration away.

So can the Minister tell us what sort of defence pact is now planned with Germany? Will it be modelled on the treaty with France? Do we plan any other bilateral treaties of this sort—for example, with the Netherlands, Spain or Italy, or with the Nordic states, which are very grateful for the co-operation that the British quietly gave them in increasing their own multilateral integration? Or do we even consider a network of arrangements that might become in time a multilateral organisation—a sort of revived Western European Union of blessed memory?

Does this announcement mean that security in Europe and around its neighbourhood remains the first priority for UK defence, in contradiction to Boris Johnson’s promise that British forces are going to sail off again east of Suez to defend India and confront China? Do we intend to remain a member of the EU caucus within the United Nations and other international organisations, if it is possible to negotiate that? Are the Government willing to face down the hostility of the Europhobes within their party to any continuing links of this sort with our continental neighbours? Unless the Government are willing to reassert our commitment to continuing European co-operation in foreign policy, security and defence, clearly and publicly, our ability to meet the current challenges to the rules-based international order, severe as they are, will be sadly diminished.