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Franco-German Armaments Agency
12.59 pm
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of British participation in the Franco-German Armaments Agency. Some may judge it an arcane, esoteric matter, yet the fact that so few have heard about it--judging from the attendance this morning, not many more will have heard about it following the debate--does not mean that it lacks military, industrial or even political importance.
Britain's accession to what began as the Franco-German Armaments Agency was accorded so little publicity as to be almost clandestine. There was no statement to the House. It was accorded laconic references from the Dispatch Box in defence debates and in answer to questions. The "Statement on the Defence Estimates 1996" contained a section on defence procurement and the defence industry, with six unexceptionable paragraphs on procurement policies. The five paragraphs that followed, on collaboration, beg the questions that I shall put today, which I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence Procurement can answer.
Paragraph 434 of the statement says:
Paragraph 435 goes on to describe how
The assumption can now reasonably be made following Italy's accession with the United Kingdom to the Franco-German Armaments Agency that the quadrilateral agency, as it is now called in English, will grow with the accession of further European members and by the accretion of responsibility for additional equipment programmes into the fully fledged European armaments agency described in the defence White Paper. It must be asked why there is this preoccupation to participate in such bureaucratic European structures. It is more a feature of continental than British governance and there are further questions to be answered.
The Maastricht treaty's declaration on WEU specifically mentions
Paragraph 1 of article J4 of the treaty states that the common foreign and security policy shall include all questions related to the security of the Union, including framing of a common defence policy which might
The European Union has long held ambitions to arrogate to itself jurisdiction in armaments collaboration--indeed, ever since the Klepsch report on the subject to the European Parliament many years ago, perhaps as long ago as the good old days, Mr. Deputy Speaker, when you and I were members of the British delegation to WEU--with the objective of finding an entree to wider defence competence for the EU.
If anyone harbours any doubts of where Franco-German ambitions lie, he should read the text of the Franco-German common security and defence concept document issued after the bilateral summit in Nuremberg on 9 December 1996. It speaks of
Just to confirm the goals of French armaments collaboration policy, it is worth reading the interview of Mr. Helmer, the French directeur general des armaments, or DGA--the procurement chief--in Defence News this week.
One should note that even this morning our own European Standing Committee B has been examining the European Union's Court of Auditors report on expenditure of the Union in which it is quite clear that more than 10 per cent. of expenditure is unaccounted for. One therefore wonders whether those European practices--I will not say Spanish--of fraud, waste and malpractice, now endemic in the EU, may not transpose themselves into the new bureaucracy to be formed as the European armaments agency.
It is again instructive for us to bear it in mind that our own National Audit Office, in a report just published on the latest Court of Auditors report on the European Union, confirmed that effective control of expenditure of taxpayers' money within the Union is almost non-existent. I hope that the same will not be true of the European armaments agency, although I must confess to having my doubts.
Although there is informed comment in the press and specialist circles that, ultimately, OCCAR will aspire to come under the aegis of WEU, it was not spawned by it. Nevertheless the question of to whom it will be responsible is very much a key one, as is how it will not develop protectionist, pro-European and anti-American preferential tendencies in its procurement policies. I have long deprecated the United Kingdom's propensity to be sucked along in the Franco-German slipstream.
Even the location of the OCCAR headquarters in Bonn, presumably to fill office space soon to be made redundant by the impending move of the German Federal Government to Berlin, is significant. I remember how my repeated pleas for the collocation of all the institutions of WEU at County hall, across the river, when its permanent council was already in London, fell on deaf ears in favour of Brussels.
If the founding document for the establishment of OCCAR, signed last year by my noble Friend Lord Howe, is studied, it looks clearly like a blueprint for a burgeoning bureaucracy, just as the Maastricht treaty, when studied, looked exactly like what it turned out to be--the blueprint for a united states of Europe.
European armaments collaboration has not especially benefited from the activities of agencies and their attempts at control. Certainly the NATO Multi-role Combat Aircraft Management Agency for Tornado Development and Construction and the NATO European Fighter Management Agency for the Development and Construction of the European 2000 do not seem to be models to me. Bilateral programmes such as the Jaguar, the family of three Franco-British helicopters, and now the Italian-British programme for the Merlin, have always been more effective than multinational programmes in Europe.
One must remember that American collaboration with the Goshawk--the T45--the AH64 Apache for our own Army and the C130J Hercules for the Royal Air Force have brought considerable benefit to British industry. Such collaborations must always be an option, as should the outright purchase of items of equipment unique within their class, such as the C17 Galaxy heavy-lift transporter.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence put it well in his speech on the defence estimates on 14 October, when he said:
"Together with our WEU partners, we have also been pursuing the possible establishment of a single European Armaments Agency. Such a body might initially provide a forum for joint armaments research projects while opening the possibility, under the right conditions, of enhanced European co-operation in procurement."
I presume that the body would eventually subsume the work of the West European Armaments Group, the successor under the aegis of the Western European Union of the old Independent European Programme Group.
"The United Kingdom has agreed, in principle, to join with France and Germany in their current work on setting up an armaments agency which offers the potential to maximise the benefits of defence equipment collaboration. This follows the decision to collaborate with these two nations on our requirement for an armoured utility vehicle. The decision underlines the Government's commitment to play a full role in European defence collaboration at both the political and industrial level."
Quite why the multi-role armoured vehicle needs to be produced in collaboration when companies such as GKN, Vickers and Alvis could produce the vehicle perfectly well alone escapes me.
"enhanced co-operation in the field of armaments with the aim of creating a European armaments agency"
as a proposal to be examined further. The provisions in the Maastricht treaty on a common foreign and security policy relating to defence have always been taken seriously within the Franco-German-Italian axis in Europe.
"in time lead to a common defence."
Paragraph 2 of article J4 states:
"The Union requests the Western European Union (WEU) which is an integral part of the development of the Union, to elaborate and implement decisions and actions of the Union which have defence implications."
"The common destiny uniting France and Germany."
The preamble is unambiguous. It says:
"In the European Union our two countries will work together with a view to giving concrete form to a common European defence policy and to WEU's eventual integration into the EU."
The guidelines for armaments co-operation in paragraph 4.3 of the defence concept document are even more specific. They are worth quoting verbatim. They say:
"Greater Franco-German armaments co-operation is not just in our bilateral interest since it also meets the objective of building a European armaments policy. It must in particular be the mainspring of a European solution to the general rationalisation of the European armaments sector. It will thus constitute an essential component of the common foreign and security policy and the common defence policy called for by the Maastricht treaty and a significant step towards the emergence of a European security and defence identity. The most economical solution must be resolutely sought for the requirements expressed by the armed forces and the establishment of a competitive European defence technological and industrial base. This necessitates common rules in the CFSP framework for the procurement and transfer of defence equipment within the European Union and for exports to non-EU states."
That implies an extension of EU competence in armaments procurement, transfer and--interestingly enough--exports, which are rightly matters for national Governments alone.
"What is important to us now is that the Organisme Conjointe de Cooperation en Matiere d'Armement"--
OCCAR, the defence agency about which the debate is being held--
"obtain a legal personality that will give it the ability to award contracts without having to go through the cumbersome administrative procedures of national procurement agencies and to receive multi-year financial commitments from member Governments."
How that is compatible with effective parliamentary control of expenditure in national Parliaments is not clear to me. Nor is the idea of multi-year financial perspectives,
in the European jargon, appealing to someone like myself, who of course went through all the trauma of the European Communities (Finance) Bill.
"European industry must strengthen itself to face the competitive challenges that lie ahead . . . the Government want to give political support to changes in Europe that are industrially driven. Industrial logic should dictate the formation of industries in Europe, not political diktat."--[Official Report, 14 October 1996; Vol. 282, c. 486.]
Hear, hear, say I.
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