House of Commons Hansard Debates for 27 Nov 1998 (pt 17)

1.50 pm

Mr. John Maples (Stratford-on-Avon): The debate has been wide-ranging, covering issues from dog licences to arms brokerage. In the middle of it, we had a thoroughly authentic restatement of the Labour party's position from the mid-1980s. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not comment on every speech; some were excellent, but I should comment on the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke), which was most charming and eloquent. He has a way of insulting his opponents while making them feel amused at the same time. I wish that we all shared that talent.

The end of the cold war has brought about a radically different security environment. The 20th century--especially from 1939 to 1989--has been continentalist; it has been dominated by continental powers such as Germany, Russia and China. That situation has dictated British defence planning and deployment. We were

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previously often the great practitioners of a maritime strategy based on naval predominance and expeditionary operations. That changed after the first world war, and continental issues dominated. Since the end of the second world war, our naval deployment has been almost entirely configured for anti-submarine warfare in the north Atlantic, and that of our Army and Air Force has, for the same reason, been entirely configured to meet a Warsaw pact threat in Europe.

The end of the cold war has, at least for the time being, brought an end to that continentalism. We do not have to configure and deploy our forces solely to meet the Warsaw pact. The new strategic environment demands the ability to respond flexibly, quickly and outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation area. We will have to be able to respond to threats and challenges in north Africa, the Gulf and the middle east, which will involve joint force operations in conjunction with allies. Although such a concept is far from new, it was largely irrelevant in the cold war.

Such concepts have increasingly influenced defence policy over the past eight years or so. The previous Government began the post-cold war reconfiguration of our forces; the Government are continuing it, and we support those aspects of the SDR that carry it forward. At the same time, I am concerned that the SDR is a little too optimistic in its view of the threat to western Europe. The Defence Committee shares that concern. There are still serious potential threats, and it is in the nature of these events that the eventual threat has neither been foreseen nor planned for. We shall return to the question of asymmetric threats, chemical and biological warfare, ballistic missile defence and information warfare, none of which were adequately addressed in the SDR.

The Government should also be a little more cautious in their zeal to resolve the world's problems. Our foreign policy and our military action must be driven not by good intentions, but by Britain's interests alone.

I must express the enormous admiration in which our armed forces are held by all of us. They are constantly involved in operations in the south Atlantic, the Gulf and elsewhere, and they consistently acquit themselves with success and distinction. We are lucky to have them, and our duty as politicians is to make sure that they have the men, the equipment and the training to do what we ask of them.

Of all the major issues facing the armed forces, probably the biggest faced by all three services is recruitment. All three plan to recruit up to full strength over the next few years. The problem is inextricably linked to retention and welfare issues. If those who are recruited were to stay a little longer, the need for new recruits would partly, if not largely, be solved. The retention rate is crucially related to overstretch, housing and welfare--personnel issues that do not often feature in major defence debates. I know that all three services will address the issue, and I hope that they will be successful. It will be difficult within the current tight budgets, but we shall support them in their efforts and watch closely to see whether they achieve the Government's objectives.

There have been several defence debates recently--this is the seventh day of defence debate in five weeks. I hope that the rate diminishes over the next few weeks, and I am sure that that hope is shared by Ministers. During

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those debates my hon. Friends and I have explored various procurement issues, which I shall not go over again. However, I shall mention two topics.

The first is the carriers, which are a vital element of our armed forces' expeditionary capability. They must be built and delivered as planned, in 2112 to 2114. We shall watch events closely, as we suspect that the Navy's commitment to those carriers is greater than the Government's.

Secondly, smart procurement is an interesting and ambitious idea, but I sound a word of caution about some aspects of it. The concept is built on current business fashion, just as the Levene reforms were built on the competitive fashion of the 1980s. Both have their merits and both have relevance to the procurement process, but there is a danger of the Government adopting uncritically the current management fashion, whatever that happens to be.

Procurement of major weapons systems is necessarily a lengthy, technologically difficult and expensive process. All those elements involve risk, and I doubt whether much of the risk can be transferred to the supplier, as is done in the business model that smart procurement attempts to follow.

Partnership attitudes are vital. The Ministry of Defence must have a long-term partnership arrangement with companies such as British Aerospace, Rolls-Royce and GEC, but it also needs the stimulant of competition and risk. I am slightly concerned that the proposed pilots are to last only a year or 15 months before the system comes fully into operation.

I understand that smart procurement will apply to everything from April 2000. Some pilots have begun, including some covering very large projects such as the replacement for the Tornado and the aircraft carriers. I am concerned at how fast we are going. I should have thought that a more evolutionary approach would be better. Smart procurement should be tried with a few new projects so that we can see how it works. It looks good on paper, but I believe that I can say with confidence that it will not work as well in practice.

Several hon. Members mentioned the Territorial Army. Last week, the Secretary of State confirmed our worst fears about his plans for the TA. It is to be cut by a third and many of its bases are to close. At the time, I said that I believed that the Secretary of State had made a mistake. We believe that the TA plays a vital social role in giving the Army a presence in our communities, and in recruitment to the Regular Army.

In future, the TA is to be confined to our large towns and cities, leaving large swathes of the countryside and rural areas without any TA or Army presence at all. Our main criticism is that with a small Army, we need a bigger general reserve as an insurance policy to meet the unforeseen threats that I mentioned.

Will the Secretary of State deal with some questions about Kosovo when he winds up? Will he clarify the plans for the evacuation of the OSCE observers, if that becomes necessary? I understand that such planning is being taken forward by the French, and I should be grateful if he would confirm that that is being done. Can he say whether the plans are being developed at NATO and whether such

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an operation, if it unfortunately became necessary, would be a NATO operation? Does he believe that a United Nations resolution would be needed to implement any such plan?

On the subject of the Balkans, can the Secretary of State confirm that the costs of the Bosnia operation will fall on the reserve and not on the defence budget in the current year?

I shall devote the last part of my speech to European defence policy and the nation's alliances. I can think of no more important issue and no greater responsibility of the Government, but there is confusion, to say the least, about the Government's intentions. We have found the Prime Minister playing politics with the matter. In his never-ending quest for a good headline or the temporary friendship of others, there is apparently no national asset too precious or too valuable to be put into play.

For the sake of a better atmosphere at the Austria summit for one weekend, the Prime Minister was apparently prepared to undermine our fundamental security alliances and throw doubt on our commitment to NATO. He was also prepared to reverse his own policy, which he had boasted about after Amsterdam.

In The Times on 20 October, Philip Webster, the political editor, quoted the Prime Minister, whose comments have not be controverted or denied by Downing street. The article says:

"Tony Blair made plain that he was to drop Britain's long-standing objections to the European Union having a defence capability."

We are talking not about the development of a common foreign and security policy, but about a European defence capability. The view expressed in that article directly contradicts what the Prime Minister said after Amsterdam. He said that Europe's defence should remain a matter for NATO and not the EU, which had proved itself unable to run a successful foreign policy. He went on:

"What matters is what works; and what works for Britain and for Europe is Nato."

He added that the Franco-German plan was

"like an ill-judged transplant operation."

[Interruption.] I am glad that the Secretary of State for Defence is roaring his approval, because that is a long way from what the Prime Minister has been saying recently.

In his press conference after the Austrian summit at Portschach, the Prime Minister said:

"We are at the very beginning of that debate, we need to get the international mechanism right, we need to make sure that that institutional mechanism in no way undermines NATO but rather is complementary to it".

That is not what he had said previously, when he referred to an EU defence capability.

That is a fundamental shift in defence policy, not just from our position when we were in government, but from the Prime Minister's position until about three weeks ago. Apparently, the Secretary of State for Defence and his Ministers knew nothing about that. [Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary nods, but the date of the Prime Minister's interview happened to be the second day of the debate in the House on the strategic defence review.

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During that debate, the Secretary of State for Defence reiterated the post-Amsterdam position very clearly. He said:

"The Government's view on the common foreign and security policy and how it relates to European defence was determined definitively at the Amsterdam summit . . . The challenge for the European Union is relevantly to apply the common foreign and security policy to events."--[Official Report, 19 October 1998; Vol. 317, c. 974.]

That was the post-Amsterdam position, but it was not what the Prime Minister was saying the next evening. That position was confirmed by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence when he wound up the debate. Several hon. Members and I raised this issue, and he said:

"We are also playing a central role in developing an effective European security and defence identity in NATO."--[Official Report, 20 October 1998; Vol. 317, c. 1176.]

We have no problem with that, but it is not what the Prime Minister was saying, nor what the Under-Secretary said a couple of weeks later.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) was so concerned about this subject that on 11 November, he secured an Adjournment debate to discuss the matter further. The Under-Secretary replied to that debate, and tried to pretend that nothing had changed. However, he gave the game away, because he said that

"our aim is to enable the European Union to have a more united and influential voice . . . That voice must be backed up, when the need arises, with effective and prompt military action."

The European Union is to have the ability to mount military action. He went on:

"If Europe is to have a stronger voice in the world, European armed forces will need to be capable of supporting our position. We need to put muscle behind Europe's foreign policy".--[Official Report, 11 November 1998; Vol. 319, c. 301-04.]

In that context, Europe's foreign policy can mean only the European Union's foreign policy.

We are no longer talking merely about the common foreign and security policy. [Interruption.] This is a serious issue. I should be delighted if the Secretary of State could clarify this matter in his response. It is not a matter to be trifled with and treated lightly, or for a junior Minister in his Department to laugh about and mock at. These are serious inconsistencies in the Government's case, and they should clarify them.

Having ventured the thought in October, by mid-November the Prime Minister was out in the open. In an article in the New York Times on 12 November, he is utterly unambiguous. This is not a matter of a European defence identity within NATO. [Interruption.] It is easy to laugh, but this is the most serious matter that the Departments represented by these two Secretaries of State have to deal with, and they should take it seriously. If I, and many other people outside the House, misunderstand their intentions, it is because they are not speaking with one voice. They now have an opportunity to clarify matters.

In the New York Times, the Prime Minister said:

"To speak with authority, the European Union also needs to be able to act militarily on its own when the United States is not engaged. Britain backs that".

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Nothing could be clearer than that. I understand exactly what that means. If I was in any doubt, that doubt was removed next day, when the Prime Minister said it again at the North Atlantic Assembly. He said that we must ensure

"that the European Union can speak with a single, authoritative voice . . . and can intervene effectively where necessary . . . Diplomacy works best when backed by the credible use of force."

He also said:

"Europe needs genuine military operational capability"--

again in the context of the EU.

In some of those statements--especially by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence--there is confusion between Europe and the European Union, but the policy shift now seems to be absolutely clear from what the Prime Minister said in his New York Times article and his speech in Edinburgh to the North Atlantic Assembly.

At the weekend, an obviously heavily briefed article in The Mail on Sunday spoke of "Blair's . . . EU strike force". It said that the Prime Minister

"hopes the plan will keep Britain at the heart of EU decision-making."

There we have it. That is what it is about. The Government support the proposal, not because they believe that it would be better for the country's defence or that it is a better way of looking after our interests, but so that, when the Prime Minister attends European summits, he gets a better reception from Mr. Chirac, Mr. Schroder and the rest of them. He will have trouble getting a good reception from Mr. Fischer, who seems to have gone even further out on that limb than the Prime Minister has, but it is now clear that it is all part of the Prime Minister's public relations effort.

I want to get the matter clarified--the sooner the better. The Secretary of State for Defence can do it today. He can tell us whether we are talking about a European Union military capability or a European defence identity within NATO.

I should like to make our position clear. We support the development of a European defence identity, and even capability, within NATO, perhaps using the Western European Union as a vehicle for action without the United States. We began that process when we were in government, and agreements are in place for any such Western European Union operation to use NATO planning and command structures and to use American intelligence and heavy lift capability.

The problem is not with the institutions. If Europe cannot sing with one voice on defence or foreign policy, it is not because the institutions are at fault--it is because the major powers in Europe have different agendas and different interests, and find it very difficult to co-ordinate their views on things.

We do not support the idea of that NATO-WEU role being taken over by the European Union. However, the confusion continues, because yesterday Lord Gilbert, the Minister for Defence Procurement, said, in absolute contradiction of what the Prime Minister said:

"He has spoken of the need particularly to improve Europe's defence capabilities within NATO. I cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of those last two words 'within NATO'."--[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 November 1998; Vol. 595, c. 138.]