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Dr. Cunningham : The point is well made. In Edinburgh, the European Council broadly endorsed the work at Lisbon. There will, of course, be further discussions about what should be part of that framework of conditions and what should be part of the agenda for a common foreign and security policy.
I now turn from the theory to the reality. We all recognise that what was perceived for decades as the main security threat not only to ourselves, but to the whole of western Europe, is no longer there. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact no longer exist, but the dangers that now arise are quite different. They are political and often based on ethnic instability in parts of the former Soviet Union, in the area around the Mediterranean and in the middle east. We need to reassess our stance in terms of foreign policy and how we operate, and militarily. I shall deal with the defence implications in a little while.
We support the implementation of common foreign and security policies which enable the Community and its member states to maintain their roles on the world stage and to contribute to the transition which is taking place now from the old confrontations and the old certainties to the different and, in many ways, far more threatening instability which approaches ever closer to the European continent--indeed, it involves some countries in Europe already. Such policies must be based on agreed principles. The implementation should have as objectives the maintenance of peace and security, the peaceful settlement of disputes through respect for international law, the prevention of aggression, mutual, balanced and verifiable reductions of armed forces and armaments, the promotion of social harmony and international order based on respect for human rights, and the improvement of living standards in the developing countries. That agenda, which is my party's political agenda, is not very different from the beginnings of an agenda for the European Community, to which I referred earlier. That is a sensible approach to the development of Community foreign policy.
The areas cited resemble the ways in which the Community behaves and in which it handles problems in other contexts, such as the important discussions on the general agreement on tariffs and trade and other external trade negotiations. Major member states, such as Germany, the United Kingdom and France, often react differently to international political events. Institutional initiatives will not take away those differences. Only a process characterised by new initiatives, experiments and positive experiences can result in a common foreign policy.
The first stages will have to be based on intergovernmental co-operation, which, in practice, will function effectively only if, among all others, the major member states reach basic agreement. For the time being, it is not realistic to expect those member states to distance themselves from the comparative advantages, some of which have already been referred to, or from the advantages of economic power, of nuclear power or of permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, simply to favour a European Community framework whose reliability is not yet proven and which, in some respects, we may want seriously to question.
Those are the considerations that should govern our approach to a common foreign policy. At this stage, we make our position clear. Unlike the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston), who has left the Committee, we support the view that the tests of
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unanimity should be built in, and that we simply could not move to qualified majority voting on all these important matters.Mr. Spearing : Most hon. Members probably agree with my right hon. Friend on qualified majority voting. In the past few moments, my right hon. Friend has persistently and consistently used the phrase "a common foreign policy", yet he and the Foreign Secretary, who stressed the phrase, have on occasions pointed out that one will come to a policy by unanimity where it is possible and where it is advantageous. Surely if one is to have a foreign policy as a nation, one must take a consistent and coherent stand over the whole range of issues. Surely that will not be so easily possible. There may be deadlock, as predicted by several hon. Members.
Dr. Cunningham : I understand my hon. Friend's intervention, but I do not understand his conclusion. In reality, it is unrealistic to suppose that, when important matters of national interest are involved, nations, whether this country, Germany or France, will abandon their own specific and important interests. I have repeatedly made that clear. The proposals do not expect countries to act in that way, and they do not anticipate that they will. That is the important and simple conclusion to draw. I am a little disappointed and somewhat surprised that my hon. Friend, who has spent far longer than I have dealing with European Community affairs in great detail, fails to draw such a fairly obvious conclusion.
Mr. Spearing : I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. This procedure shows the advantage of a Committee stage. I am grateful for my right hon. Friend's comments about what I have been doing for the past few years--unhappily and unwillingly. [Hon. Members :-- "You enjoy it."] I do not. I should far prefer to deal with domestic matters and not to be diverted to constitutional matters-- [Hon. Members :-- "Oh."] Oh yes.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that inside the Council, as on domestic and legislative matters, the natural interests of a nation often have to be suppressed to get some form of agreement? Although those interests may not be abandoned, they may not be publicly articulated, because there has to be some trade-off.
Dr. Cunningham : I do not want to upset or antagonise my hon. Friend, but he gave a passing impression of enjoying his long and effective chairmanship of the Scrutiny Committee. If he did not really enjoy it, he kept that well disguised. We always thought that he was enjoying it, which is why we enjoyed it--and he was very effective, too.
Of course nation states will be expected to surrender some of their sovereignty--a very emotive word--and, sometimes, although not always, it will be in their best interests as well as the common interest to do so. That has always been the case in modern government and politics, and there is nothing new about it. As I said, we have done that for decades in the United Nations, NATO, the Commonwealth and other international decisions in which our country has been involved.
I do not shrink from conceding that argument, but I oppose the continuing theme of the debate that such decisions will be forced on us, or that we will always be obliged to make concessions as a result of the proposals, as that is not my interpretation of the treaty.
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Mr. Marlow : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way ?
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Dr. Cunningham : No, I must move on.
On the defence implications of the proposals in the treaty on European union, there is an important debate about the right vehicle for the future, and whether it should be NATO--certainly not as it is presently constituted --the Western European Union, or a completely new organisation ; or whether, during the inevitable and necessary change to the position of NATO or WEU, we can modify them to take on a new role.
No exact fit exists. NATO, as we know, includes the United States of America and Canada, and is all the better for that, and some members of WEU are not members of the European Community. We all recognise, however, that the circumstances have changed fundamentally, and that our institutions and plans must change too.
The successful management of those changes is vital to our national and international interests, but we need better systems, and before we abandon any of the old systems, we need to be convinced that those proposed in their place would be at least as effective and, hopefully, more so. I need a lot of convincing that, at least for the foreseeable future, we should not retain NATO and change its role, but that is on the agenda for discussion, as is the role of WEU. In the Community, as well as in NATO, there are conflicting views about all that.
I cannot speak for the new French Government, but the outgoing Government appeared to believe that Europe should have its own defence identity and that it should not be based on NATO. My party's position, and I believe that of the Government, has been the reverse : it should be based on NATO, which is a proven and effective organisation with which we have had long and effective associations. The debate must continue.
NATO's existence makes it unnecessary for the European Community to have its own military role. NATO remains the principal defence organisation for western Europe and, as it links with the United States and Canada, we have a powerful force. In the foreseeable future, NATO will have to retain its role in the territorial defence of western Europe.
The NATO rapid reaction force was established in recognition of that fact. That is why we supported NATO leaders in their Rome declaration that the organisation is the essential forum for consultation among its members and the venue for agreement on policies bearing on our security and defence commitments and those of our allies.
Mr. Corbyn : I have been following closely my right hon. Friend's remarks on the defence implications and the development of a defence role for NATO or WEU. Can he tell us precisely where he thinks the threat is coming from and what he thinks that defence organisation will be defending Western Europe against?
Dr. Cunningham : I do not know whether to conclude that my hon. Friend does not think that we should be involved in any defence alliances. If that is the thrust of his intervention, I disagree with him. First, to deal with the question about threat, Europe is threatened by instability in the middle east, in the former Yugoslavia and in the former Soviet Union. We are threatened because, by an accident of history, countries which are unable to deal with the consequences of the break-up of the Soviet Union,
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either politically or economically, have found that they are major nuclear weapons powers and they do not know how to get out of that circumstance. It is a little wide of the mark to suggest that there are no threats.If the point of my hon. Friend's intervention was that the old threat--the Warsaw pact and the Soviet Union--no longer exists, I acknowledged that earlier. However, we do not have defence agreements or alliances simply for those reasons. We are regularly urged to intervene in conflicts, as in Somalia and other areas, simply to safeguard humanitarian aid and so we need military forces and alliances. Perhaps those forces will be trained differently and have different roles and objectives, but we will certainly need them for those circumstances. The question is how, and on what basis should the forces be organised?
Before my hon. Friend's, intervention I had said that the decision to establish a NATO rapid reaction force was the result of a realignment of NATO strategy and consequent defence requirements following dramatic international political changes. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the changes in eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Warsaw pact, the NATO policy of flexible response--with the maintenance of large-scale forward defence forces on the central European front--was no longer relevant to the new environment.
The magnitude of the changes was first recognised at Heads of Government level at the Turnberry summit in 1989. The following July, at the NATO London summit, Alliance leaders extended a hand of friendship to eastern Europe.
NATO will inevitably field smaller, restructured active forces, which will need to be highly mobile and versatile so that allied leaders will have maximum flexibility to decide how to respond to a crisis, whatever its nature. Increasingly, it will rely on multinational corps, made up of national units.
NATO's new strategic concept was also influenced by the debate within the European Community on a European defence identity. Nine members of the Community are members of NATO. The creation of the Alliance's new strategy and the negotiations on the new European Community treaty--when defence proved, and continues to prove, to be a sensitive issue--took place simultaneously and have tended to conflict with each other. Perhaps in some circumstances they have delayed each other, but the announcement of a new strategic concept in November 1991 was welcome.
In contrast, the new NATO force structure was quickly announced in May 1991. It has been alleged that that was done partly to pre-empt European Community discussions on separate European forces. I do not know whether that is true but I know that we must make some important decisions about the future development of NATO and WEU and Britain is well-placed, and is indeed obliged, to play a prominent part in those discussions.
Much of the debate about the theory of the treaty and its implications will seem a little dusty to our fellow citizens. Striving, as we are, to reach common ground in the European Community, we currently seem to be suffering several disastrous setbacks. It is difficult to conceive of greater co- operation over foreign, security and defence policies, when apparently we cannot even resolve the implications of the common fisheries policy between ourselves and the French. It does not provide a good
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example to either our European Community partners or our citizens as they see what is happening in the fishing war with the French. It was suggested earlier today that we should send bigger Navy vessels. These days, it seems that, if we send out a Navy vessel, we have to send a few British trawlers to safeguard it. Our Navy vessels do not seem able to look after themselves against the French fishing trawlers. That example shows the worst side of the Community, as the French display their determination to press their national interests in spite of Community agreements--a policy which is to be deplored. It is important that we should know as quickly as possible the attitude of the new French Government to the talks on the general agreement on tariffs and trade. That is another example where the Community has signally failed to act, not only in our best interests, but in the interests of many other countries, including developing countries.Mr. Marlow : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Dr. Cunningham : I have given way to to the hon. Gentleman twice already, and must press on.
We have discussed the determination of the Federal Republic of Germany to force recognition of Croatia on the Community for the worst possible reasons, with disastrous consequences. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) that it is curious that the Federal Republic of Germany was able to get its way against the combined views of, if not all the other 11 members, certainly the majority, but the majority has failed to get its way in respect of the long overdue recognition of Macedonia, which meets all the tests and requirements.
Given the appalling circumstances in the former Yugoslavia, I hope that we will not allow the earlier mistakes to be repeated in terms of the integrity of Macedonia and the safeguarding of its citizens.
Mr. Cash : Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are reports that the French Government are currently keeping their options open over Maastricht? Does he not agree that it would be extremely valuable if they made it clear that only 51 per cent. of the French electorate voted in the election more or less in favour, and only 36 per cent. of them subscribed to the treaty?
Dr. Cunningham : I have heard all that before. The only surprising part of the intervention was that the hon. Gentleman referred to the French Government--I did not think that they had yet been appointed. So far, only the Prime Minister has been appointed, as far as we can tell. I thought that the hon. Gentleman would be rejoicing at the advent of a right-wing Conservative Government in France, although I cannot say that I am. We shall have to see what happens. Certainly the attitude of the French towards those two important issues will be important for the well-being of the Community as a whole, and will provide an important test of whether there will be any hope of achieving in practice the objectives of the Maastricht treaty.
Mr. Marlow : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
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5.45 pmDr. Cunningham : No. I must bring my remarks to a conclusion. In the context of joint common action in the Community, is the Foreign Secretary satisfied that he is receiving all possible support from our Community partners in his campaign--which has the Labour party's complete support--to secure the release of Paul Ride and Michael Wainwright from their unjustified incarceration in Iraq? Are our European Community partners doing all they can to help us? Are our Community partners doing all they can to help us in the Government's determination--again, they have the Labour party's support--to protect the Kurdish peoples and the Shia Muslims in Iraq from the appalling actions of Saddam Hussein? I intervened in the Foreign Secretary's speech on this issue, and took his reply to mean that there was no change in Her Majesty's Government's policy towards Saddam Hussein, sanctions and Iraq. I hope that that was the right conclusion to draw.
As the Foreign Secretary knows, we have been pressing for some time for a variation in the terms of the sanctions, especially in respect of humanitarian aid to the Kurdish people and the Shia Muslims, so that we can take the aid out of the hands and control of Saddam Hussein and direct it towards those people. At an appropriate time, will the Foreign Secretary pursue that issue with his colleagues, both in the Community and the United Nations?
Mr. Winnick : I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend's comments about the need to give every possible assistance to the direct victims of Saddam Hussein's policy of terror and repression. I know that my right hon. Friend might believe that I have a prejudice, but does he not agree that the Community's record on Iraq has not been good? Germany played an active role--more active than ours, although it was unfortunate that we played any role at all--in building up Saddam Hussein's war machine, including the installation of gas. Is it not true that, if we had initially relied on a common foreign policy to combat the criminal aggression of Saddam Hussein towards Kuwait in 1990, we would never have ended the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait?
Dr. Cunningham : My hon. Friend raises several issues. First, I am not sure, sadly, that the Germans did play a worse role than the British in creating Saddam Hussein's war machine. Given what I now know about the supergun affair and Matrix Churchill, I am not sure whether our record is better or more admirable than the Germans'. The point that my hon. Friend raises about the European Community common foreign policy is one of the four points agreed for the agenda on arms control and the common approach to it throughout the Community. That is one of the reasons why that policy has my strong support. We should learn the lessons of creating monster war machines that end up in the hands of murderous villains like Saddam Hussein. We should learn the lessons together and act together in future to prevent a repetition.
I have a criticism of Her Majesty's Government's attitude to a nuclear test ban treaty. France--one of our Community partners--Russia, and the United States of America have already announced their participation in a moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. Of the five major nuclear powers, only Britain and China have opposed a complete test ban agreement. No further testing
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is necessary for either defence or scientific reasons. Whatever further work needs to be done could be adequately conducted under laboratory conditions. That conclusion has widespread support in the scientific community in this country and elsewhere, including the United States of America.Why does not the Foreign Secretary make one of the tests of a common foreign policy and security approach in the Comunity the adoption of a nuclear test ban treaty? If agreed, it would not only be a big step along the way to promoting the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons--one of the objectives--but a vital step towards the successful renegotiation of the the Community members.
I hope that the Foreign Secretary will use his undoubted skill and experience to seek better co-operation in the Community on all the issues I have raised, especially the last one.
Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South) : Let me begin by associating myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), and issuing a mild rebuke to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham). I think it a pity that my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Gentleman spoke so early in the debate ; it would have been better if they had summed up after others had spoken. As a rule, the arrangement has much to commend it. I realise that they will be able to speak later, and they may well do so ; but I wanted to make the point.
I agreed with much of what was said by both the right hon. Member for Copeland and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. I was slightly surprised, however, that neither picked up one of the points made last week, in a shrewd and perceptive speech, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell). He spoke of China's emergence into enormous economic strength, and pointed out that in the next century the balance of power would effectively move from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
That, more than anything else, is a reason for European cohesion and co- operation, and that above all makes me an enthusiastic supporter of my right hon. Friend. I believe that it is in all our interests for the nations of Europe--with the nations of the present Community at the centre- -to work closely together. I do not believe that they should sacrifice their individual sovereignty--none of us thinks that, and both my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford and the Foreign Secretary have consistently made the point--but I feel that we should all work together, for the good of everyone. During the first general election in which I played any part--the 1959 election--I acted as ADC to the candidate in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. That was the famous Macmillan election, which began with a television broadcast featuring Eisenhower and Macmillan looking at the globe. The recruitment of Eisenhower to aid his election prospects was, perhaps, a slightly unscrupulous use of a foreign visitor by the old wizard Macmillan, but it was
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nevertheless extremely effective. The slogan that emerged from that meeting rather dominated the election, certainly in our part of the world : it was "peace and prosperity".Two aims that concern all whom we represent--and, indeed, everyone in the European Community--are the ability to live in peace and the existence, or at least the prospect, of prosperity. I believe that we shall be better able to achieve that if we work together within the Community.
Mr. Allason : Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Cormack : I will do so later, but I want to develop my arguments first.
One of the amendments strikes at the heart of what many of my hon. Friends who call themselves Euro-sceptics constantly advance as a powerful argument. I agree with that argument, which holds that we need a broader and wider Europe. One of the most significant features of the Maastricht treaty is the fact that it allows for an expanding Europe and an expanding Community. Already Finland, Sweden and Norway are ready to join, and I hope that they will do so. I hope even more that, before the end of the decade, the newly independent nations of eastern and central Europe will also be able to join.
I believe that it will be possible to achieve de Gaulle's Europe--extending from the Atlantic to the Urals--in our lifetime. It will not be a tightly centralised, monolithic, federalist Europe ; it will be a Europe of diversity, and of strength through diversity. A Europe working in co- operation, however, would have a much greater chance of being a peaceful Europe than would a fragmented Europe. I do not really understand the purpose of amendment No. 227. It proposes the deletion of article 238, which governs entry into association agreements. That would make it more difficult for us to offer co-operation and participation to the nations of eastern Europe : it therefore stands in the way of our achieving the very goal that non-federalist Europeans such as myself want to achieve. I do not think that it is very sensible.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Copeland and others have mentioned some of the events in Europe that make co-operation so necessary ; indeed, they have been mentioned a good deal. We have a fragmented Soviet Union, an enormous area that now includes four nuclear powers. Russia--the great Russian federation--is teetering on the brink of what could be internal upheaval and catastrophe. Was there ever a greater need for cohesion and co-operation among the other European nations? That is brought home to us particularly strongly by what has happened over the past year in the former Yugoslavia.
I make no apology for wanting to say a bit more about that. It has been mentioned by almost every other speaker, and I take a particular interest in the subject. In all my years of involvement in public life, I have never felt a greater sense of sadness and shame than in the past 12 months when witnessing the brutality, repression and appalling atrocities that have been perpetrated, especially in Bosnia. No hon. Member on either side of the Committee can have observed the evacuation of Srebrenica in recent days with anything other than a sense of shock and shame. It is an indictment of our failure, as well as an illustration of our need to work together.
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I do not for a moment accuse the Government of not trying to take initiatives ; nor do I accuse other European nations of not trying to participate in ending the conflict. Indeed, I pay tribute- -I am sure that all other hon. Members will echo my view--to the extraordinary calm and bravery of our own troops who are now in the former Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, as soldiers have told me, it is a shaming experience for United Nations forces--some of them British--to be forced to witness the killing of women and children, and not to have a mandate enabling them to deal with the perpetrators of such atrocious deeds. It is clear beyond serious challenge that most of those deeds are being performed by the Serbs ; it is also clear--as has been illustrated by that brave man General Morillon--that, even in the past two or three weeks, there has been bombardment from Serbia. Planes and troops have entered Bosnia from that country.Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have talked of the wisdom or otherwise of recognising Bosnia. I accept that the recognition of Bosnia may well have been premature. I was one of those who were anxious for Croatia to be recognised, but I believe that there are differences between the two. None the less, Bosnia was recognised, and from that moment it became an internationally recognised sovereign state.
I believe that there is something fundamentally wrong and flawed in both the international system and our European policies of co-operation and cohesion if, within days of its recognition, a country can be the subject of aggression, and if, for a year following its recognition, it can be the subject of repression, brutality and the appalling horrors of ethnic cleansing, which bring to mind the worst excesses and terrors of the second world war.
Mr. Roger Knapman (Stroud) : Does my hon. Friend agree that the root cause of the problem in Yugoslavia is that it is a federal state which believes in ever closer union, in a single institutional framework, in the free movement of peoples, and so on? The same applies to the old USSR. Is it not possible that that is the root cause of some of the problems in Bosnia?
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Mr. Cormack : No, I do not believe that the analogy which my hon. Friend seeks to draw is either accurate or good. Many of the ingredients in the old Yugoslavia do not apply to the European Community. The same is abundantly true of the former Soviet Union. The unfolding tragedy of the last year has shown, in very sharp measure, the need for the nations of Europe to work together to preserve the peace. It has also highlighted the fact that we are a long way from having got it right. There is no point in arguing again over the points that some of us made a year or more ago. We felt that, rather than rule out the doctrine of the deterrent, we should make it plain to Serbia that we were prepared to use force. Some of these tragedies could then have been avoided. However, blood has flowed ; people are dead. We cannot put the clock back.
I hope and pray that the Vance-Owen plan--which, for all its imperfections, is subscribed to by two of the three parties--will come into effect soon. There will then be a new challenge for both the United Nations and the European Community. Bosnia will not exist as an independent sovereign state merely because three people have signed a piece of paper. It will exist as an independent
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sovereign state only if there is the will, determination and resolution to ensure that heavy weaponry is not available to the warring factions. Bosnia will exist as an independent sovereign state only if there is a willingness to create either a European Community or United Nations protectorate so that the peace can be kept and so that people who recently lived together can live together again. Only last week I called on a constituent--a Serbian from Croatia. Living with her are some of her Serbian family members from Bosnia. They told me then, as they told me in the past, that until relatively recently they lived together in friendship and that people intermarried. Theirs was a model of how an ethnic "mix" can work. The day before I called to see her last week, a letter had been smuggled out telling her that one of her relatives, a Serb, had been shot down by Serbs in the streets of the town where they lived. The widow had been refused access to the body, which had lain in the street and had been attacked by dogs. She had not been allowed to bury her husband's body. That is happening in our Europe today. We should take it as a spur to greater action to try to achieve European co-operation and integration.What is the use of bandying around words such as sovereignty, important though such words are, to people like that? As the right hon. Member for Copeland said, whenever one enters into an international agreement one surrenders some sovereignty. Had we not done that, we should not have gone to war in 1914 or in 1939, and we should not have won the cold war. As the right hon. Gentleman said, that is what collective security is all about.
I believe that out of our European Community it is possible to forge greater collective security, with greater protective power, than our continent has ever enjoyed. I believe, too, that if we do not do that, the messages of impotence that will go out to the territories of the former Soviet Union will be dire indeed. I urge all my right hon. and hon. Friends, whose scepticism I respect and which, to a degree, I share, not to allow themselves to become bogged down in legalistic niceties. I urge them to realise that there is an opportunity to forge a degree of collective security, and that if we opt out of the treaty now and turn our backs on the other 11 nations of the Community, we shall jeopardise that opportunity.
Mr. Marlow : Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Cormack : My hon. Friend has frequently had his say. This is the first time that I have intervened in these debates, and, as it may be the last, I want to make the point that we shall jeopardise, to the peril of our children and grandchildren, the opportunity to live in a peaceful Europe. That is why I believe that this is the right course to take. I believe entirely in what the right hon. Member for Copeland and the Foreign Secretary said in their speeches : that we preserve, by insisting upon unanimity--I should vote against it if it did not--our ultimate independent sovereignty, some of which should be pooled in the interests of the future peace, stability and prosperity of Europe.
Mr. Menzies Campbell : For some considerable time the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) has been an able advocate of the Bosnian cause. I cannot imagine that any hon. Member who has just listened to him has failed to be deeply impressed by the passion with which he spoke and by the perception that he brought to
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bear on Bosnia and the fate of the former Yugoslavia. Although I do not think he said so in terms, the hon. Gentleman made what, in my judgment, was one of the most persuasive arguments in support of a common foreign and security policy for the European Community that I have ever had the privilege to hear.I have no reservations about a common foreign and security policy, nor do I have any reservations about the common defence policy to which, in my judgment, it will inevitably lead. I believe that to be right, for some of the reasons that have been given by the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South. Europe needs policies that result in a far greater integration of our attitude towards foreign and security affairs. I believe, too, that the very momentum which will be created by the Maastricht treaty, once signed and ratified, will inevitably bring about that integration. In particular, it will bring about a far greater degree of integration in defence matters. The terms of the treaty may not make that legally inevitable, but I believe that events will necessarily make it so.
I do not for one moment minimise the difficulties involved in the evolution of a common defence policy. If, however, one thinks back over the history of the Community, the fact that matters have been inevitable has not necessarily meant that they have been easy to achieve. Sometimes it appeared that the more inevitable a stage in the development of the Community was, the more the difficulties that stood in the way of the achievement of that objective.
We should consider this issue against the background of the Single European Act and the treaty. They necessarily imply that a greater degree of economic integration will also lead to a much greater degree of political integration. If economic integration leads towards political integration, the inevitable consequence is that we shall require a common foreign policy. If we have a common foreign policy, we shall also need a much greater degree of integration on security matters. One cannot have that, in my judgment, without a common defence policy as well.
The progress will not be institutional ; it will not be determined by the passage of the Bill with whose Committee stage we are at present concerned. The progress will necessarily be organic. It seems to me that, if one had wanted to stop this progress, one would have had to take the austere position of the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor), who I see is not with us today. He has had in the past a wholly consistent attitude in these matters and was arguing a long time ago that the mere fact of economic integration contained political implications which, in his judgment, it was improper for the United Kingdom to contemplate.
I believe that when we embarked upon the process of economic integration we established, perhaps not knowingly at the time, a number of objectives. Of those objectives, a common security and foreign policy was certainly one and, for the reasons that I have already given, an inevitable consequence of that would be a common defence policy.
Mr. Cash : The hon. and learned Gentleman is arguing that the institutional arrangements are not really needed and that political integration in both foreign and security policy and defence policy will evolve in an organic way.
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Why, then, does he think that it is necessary to include these provisions in the treaty? These are international legal obligations. I take it that he agrees that they are a good idea, but his arguments suggest that they are not necessary, so why is he going along with them?Mr. Campbell : The fault may be one of delivery, or indeed one of comprehension. It would be better perhaps not to speculate on which it is. Let me make it perfectly clear that I believe that the development of a common defence policy, which is hinted at in the terms of the treaty that we are discussing, will be an organic matter. The point that I was endeavouring to convey was that, as soon as we entered into an economic community rather than a free trade area, we set ourselves upon a path towards a much greater degree of political co-operation, and the path of political co-operation, in my judgment, inevitably led to arguments, compelling in themselves, for much greater co-operation in foreign policy, security and, ultimately, defence policy as well.
That was why I cited the example of the hon. Member for Southend, East. He at least saw, as long ago perhaps as the accession of the United Kingdom to the treaty of Rome, that the first economic step contained within it political implications which were objectionable to him. It is a pity that many others who now find this treaty so objectionable were not so minded at the time when the hon. Member for Southend, East foresaw with such clarity what we might be discussing today.
There is another economic argument which, in relation to defence policies, is at least worthy of consideration. It lies somewhat pragmatically in the cost of defence procurement. It is clear that, in order to continue to afford to procure equipment, it will be increasingly necessary to do so on a co-operative basis. The increasingly sophisticated nature of defence equipment makes it extremely expensive.
A country such as ours will therefore find itself facing a choice. Either it will have to go it alone, which will be expensive, perhaps becoming entirely, or substantially, reliant upon the United States of America--and I think that many would see that as politically undesirable and as having adverse economic consequences for the United Kingdom--or it will have to continue to enhance and encourage co-operative projects with our European allies. The more common our procurement becomes, the more easily will joint defence policies be implemented.
6.15 pm
Mr. Spearing : The hon. and learned Gentleman rightly pays a tribute to the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor). Does he not realise that these views were held by many hon. Members, irrespective of party, and that he is rightly saying what some of us foresaw at that time? In respect of security, does he not agree with me that real security comes from something much deeper than having weapons, and that real security for a community is the ability to have employment and a secure future for one's family and oneself? The Procrustean way in which the European Community operates will probably breed great dissatisfaction and there may well be a problem of internal security, which could produce very ugly and difficult scenes and problems, not least for us in this place.
Mr. Campbell : I was with the hon. Gentleman until he got to Procrustean, and at that point I am afraid that he
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lost me--not because I did not understand the meaning of the word, but because from then on he was saying something that I simply could not agree with. It is right that he has been a sceptic, in the genuine sense of the word, about the European Community. If I ought, in generosity, to pay him the same tribute as I paid to the hon. Member for Southend, East, I am very happy to do so. He can claim consistency in that respect at least.I agree with the hon. Gentleman that security does not depend simply on the number of tanks, weapons or men under arms. Security is a much more fundamental issue. Indeed, the more we can satisfy the economic aspirations of the members of the former Warsaw pact, the less we may need to be concerned about the prospect of large-scale immigration. If there are ways of doing this that involve economic assistance to those countries, it could be argued that a Community of 12 might be better able to give that assistance than countries operating on an individual basis, and thus to ensure the security of the former Warsaw pact countries and of ourselves as well. I will examine this matter for a moment against the background of changing attitudes in the United States of America. It would appear that the new Administration have fixed on a level of 100,000 troops in Europe, but none of us can believe that this number has been set in concrete. The next time the United States budget requires to be trimmed, it cannot be imagined that that number will be sacrosanct. A United States senator of my acquintance said to me not long ago that, if it came to bringing troops home from Europe or preserving a defence installation in his state, there would really be no choice. It is clear also that the attitude of the new Administration in the United States is to expect Europe and the Europeans to take a bigger share of the responsibility for the defence of Europe. That is not a new concept ; we have been talking about burden sharing for the past four or five years. The question that now arises in a very sharp way is how that can best be done, and not just in the short term. I accept that for the foreseeable future we shall require the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. I accept that the bridge of the Western European Union is a necessary part of the greater responsibility for the defence of Europe which the Europeans will have to take. But we must also on an occasion such as this have some regard for the long term. I believe that in the long term Europe will require to have its own defence policy.
In the debate there has already been reference to the fact that NATO contains not just the United States of America, but Canada as well. It was said that this was a good thing and highly desirable. But we should ask ourselves how many troops the Canadians have in mainland Europe. At the moment there are 1,300, and by the middle of next year they will have none at all and all their bases will be closed. I believe that if there is a change in Government there may be a slight modification to that policy, but the commitment of Canadian resources to Europe is clearly very substantially under review.
The United States of America is increasingly influenced by economic considerations, as the conduct of President Clinton's campaign eloquently demonstrated, and we know that it has embarked upon a fundamental review of its defence commitments. I believe that the United States will remain in NATO and I trust that Canada will continue to play an important part in NATO, but in the long term it is surely right for the European Community to consider
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how it can best preserve its own security, with that necessary component, among others, of sufficient and adequate defence. The co-operation to which the Secretary of State referred will, if it is effective, become one of the most compelling arguments for yet closer integration. As the debate has developed, a number of hon. Members have made it clear that they are of the view that title V will lead to an erosion of national sovereignty. The focus of that attack seemed to be on the introduction of joint actions to be taken in areas defined by the Council"on the basis of the general guidelines from the European Council".
Some interventions demonstrated that hon. Gentlemen were breaching the first canon of the construction of all statutes and treaties--that one must read the document in the round and not extract pieces or proposals to justify one's own position. In particular, it is perfectly clear from paragraph 2 of article J.3 that any single member state can insist that there is no majority voting on a subject, and that all decisions connected with a joint action must be taken by consensus. That is self-evidently the case in paragraph 2 of article J.3 and it necessarily qualifies other parts of the title. To extract parts of the title and seek to allow them to stand alone is to fly in the face of any sensible construction of the provisions of the treaty.
Mr. Corbyn : The hon. and learned Gentleman says that we should take the document in the round. In that sense, the document we are discussing, the title as part of the treaty, has an enormous effect on individual countries' policies. For example, under the commmon defence policy, what is the future of Irish neutrality or the non-nuclear defence policy of the Danish Government and people that has already resulted in one no vote in a referendum and that I hope will contribute to a second no vote in a referendum?
Mr. Campbell : I understand the hon. Gentleman's intervention, but I do not understand what point he seeks to make in relation to what I have been saying. At Maastricht, Denmark was able to negotiate and obtain a derogation in relation to certain matters. There is no common defence policy--that is the fundamental mistake in the hon. Gentleman's intervention. The title seeks only to establish a common foreign and security policy. I believe that in due course there will be a common defence policy and the treaty refers to that possibility, but, in relation to the hon. Gentleman's intervention--
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